back to article Microsoft waves goodbye to Small Business Server

Small Business Server from Microsoft is "going off the air." With Dell's announcement of unavailability access to the last remaining copies will prove ever more scarce. If you are a managed service provider that specializes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) I recommend you shake down your suppliers and build up …

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  1. Stuart Ball

    Zentyal/Zarafa

    I've been looking to replace the email service at the Scout Group I run the web ops for as Lunarpages Shared Hosting server is having a hissy-fit at the moment, and I was told "It's a shared platform....deal with it" essentially...

    Looked around for a collaboration bundle on a LAMP stack and came across Zentyal.com which is a small business in a box software stack.

    It has a community edition which is free, of course, and comes with Zarafa which so far is looking like a good replacement for Exchange.

    Zentyal is multi-role and is well worth the look based on my evaluations this week.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MS abandoning small businesses

    You know, the ones out there in the RURAL community. Lots of these places have despite Gov promises very slow Internet connectivity. Move to the Cloud? Who are the kidding? sure they could host a web page or two but run their business on some server that might as well be a gazillion miles away, forget it.

    MS seems to be getting rather good at shooting themselves in both feet in recent months.

    1. Mephistro
      Happy

      Re: MS abandoning small businesses

      "MS seems to be getting rather good at shooting themselves in both feet in recent months"

      It's pure virtuosity! The last time, the bullet ricocheted from the left foot and hit them in the crotch. I can't wait for their next show!

  3. xj25vm

    I guess those of us who didn't trust MS way before more recent events and didn't hitch our wagon to their ransomware are a bit more sheltered from this storm. Yes, I agree, running a Linux server with Samba 3/4 in domain mode, Exim, Dovecot and Horde for email, contacts and calendar, Burp for encrypted backups and Asterisk for telephony is not a mean feat at all. But that's where some of us have risked their future on building up a skills set - while others have bought into the marketing machine from big companies and have essentially become glorified accounts managers for various vendors and suppliers - with next to no skills to their name except for being able to hang the phone on various support lines. Enjoy having your balls squished in the proverbial!

  4. GlenP Silver badge

    Why MS

    We upgraded last year from SBE to a full Windows/Exchange setup having outgrown the limitations. We're tied to MS-SQL by our ERP provider anyway so it was a no-brainer. I wouldn't even consider the cloud for most of our stuff - I want to retain the control locally as we have some complex requirements and fairly flakey comms.

    This announcement doesn't really surprise me, but I don't think going cloudy is the answer for most of us.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    We're going FreeBSD (and Mono)!

    My company is using 2 (in-house) Windows Server 2003 versions and the only reason we have 2 is because of TechNet (the original plan was 1 license for production and one for testing. Thanks to TechNet we could use 2 licenses for production and the TechNet license for testing).

    TechNet is basically gone (you need to make business decisions as soon as possible; so I already decided this way), 3 Windows 2008 server licenses is too expensive for the company and although I was considering to look into a small business server I made up my mind a few weeks ago: we're going FreeBSD.

    Common tasks like file sharing and such shouldn't be a problem with Samba, Internet services.. Well, that should be a given.

    And also interesting: with the Mono project and the mod_mono plugin I can even get Apache (or perhaps nginx, which is said to be better with proxying) to parse ASP.NET code and feed it into mod_mono. Although it's not up to speed with the latest ASP.NET standards, it should be able to cope with common forms and mvc projects.

    And there's ZFS :-)

    Also interesting: FreeBSD can be picked up free or charge, and I got a feeling it will last quite a while.

    So although it's going to be one hell of a project (one I'm not really looking forward to due to the time it's going to take) I think that's still the better way to go.

    Microsoft has turned into a very unreliable partner for small to mid-range businesses. And we (IT based company) know better than to put our data into the (Microsoft) cloud (even though I don't think Microsoft is untrustworthy with this, but a private server never fails when there's an Internet outage).

    Why do I keep hearing AC/DC's "Highway to hell" in my mind as of late, whenever I'm thinking about Microsoft?

  6. Jim Willsher

    Typical, misguided Microsoft

    I look after (or advise upon) half a dozen small businesses in the area. We knew SBS was being killed so over the last 9 months we've upgraded all our SBS2003 and SBS2008 installs to SBS2011 (the final one was done a week ago). All are on new Dell hardware, all of which was purchased with 5 year warranties (one has a 7 year warranty). So hopefully we are safe for a few years.

    There is absolutely no way we will EVER put anything into the cloud. Firstly, we don't know who is looking at it (and the Yanks seem to feel an implied right to look at anything). But more importantly, all these half-dozen sites are on broadband connections of 5Mb or less, so the prospect of anything bar emails going up and down the line is nonsense. Cloud storage for files and backups? You must be joking.

    So that's one "alternative solution" ruled out. The second - Server and on-site Exchange - is far two costly. With SBS it's all in one; with Server + Exchange we'd need two servers, Server CALs, Exchange CALs, two sets of backup drives etc. For SMEs it's not going to happen. We don't use Sharepoint and think it's cr4p, but we use Exchange heavily, and SBS was the most cost-effective way to get both products on the same box, plus WSuS and backup configured as a bonus.

    Once again, Microsoft has cut of its nose to spite its face. We've used SBS since SBS 4.5, then 2000, 2003, 2008, 2011 - a gravy train for Microsoft. But now that SBS has gone we will be sticking with SBS 2011 until the servers fall apart, and then we will see what's out there.

    1. dogged

      Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

      I realize this may not be feasible, but you could always just follow the bear.

      Assume that you run support and management for say, ten companies running SBS.

      Those companies are going to hav issues when the product end of lifes.

      Fuullblown Server2012+Exchange+SQlServer is too expensive for them justify - each.

      BUT.

      What if YOU set it up? What if your company basically made a "cloud" and sold the service to those SMEs, complete with known access to data, detailed backup and D/R strategy? And they paid you a sub to use YOUR servers instea of Microsoft's?

      *shrug*

      As i say, there are many possible reasons why it might make no sense. But then again, it might.

      1. xj25vm

        Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

        Being at the supplier end of the cloud generally makes sense on a large scale. Are you sure you can provide the required SLA's just for 10 companies - and still make sufficient profit from it? You know, data centre grade hardware, data centre grade support, your own UPS's and generators in case of power failure, large pipes to the Internet with the associated bandwidth costs, data/premises security etc. I can't say that I've tried it myself - but the numbers don't seem to be stacking up favourably.

        1. dogged

          Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

          Agreed, however in this case the goal is not to provide MS Azure. It's to provide a comparable level of service to their SBS installs.

          Now obviously, there's some effort involved in it and you have to offer some incentive - service level is usually the obvious one. But just from the point of view of practicality, if you're supporting those SBS installs anyway, why not keep the boxes somewhere where your client can't fuck with them?

          1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

            Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

            Maybe those costs are not so prohibitive. Initial costs are likely higher, but you may achieve better reliability and lower operating costs in return. If you plan wisely, that is.

            Mostly an issue of trust, as with all those hosty-cloudy affairs.

          2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

            Because you add another point of failure - both internet connections - to the equation that just don't need to be there. Or in your world does every company out there have dual redundant gigabit fibre links? Or are we not using the SBS server for file storage. How much are we paying for that extra file server on site? What are we paying for bandwidth? Your profits are down by the cost of your internet pipe and the bandwidth to sustain it. Your client's profits down by the same on their end.

            For what?

            Because Microsoft as asshats that want you in the cloud? There is no good business reason to start moving all this stuff into the cloud for SMEs, especially when internet connectivity isn't a 100% guaranteed thing. Believe it or not many - if nor most - companies still get work done when the internet is out. They even use computers to do it.

            Zoiks.

            1. Roger Greenwood

              Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

              "still get work done when the internet is out"

              Absolutely. But we would soon grind to a halt if we lost all computers - our production machinery needs to get data from the servers, at least every 20 to 30 minutes, so a local server is essential.

              Cloud is good for fluffy stuff like sales, marketing, even accounting. In manufacturing these are generally not time critical and affect a small proportion of your workforce. Stopping a production line because the phones are out is not good.

      2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

        Microsoft licensing does not allow you to run a multitennanted environment such as you describe. Different company? Different domain, different physical server. More licences. Separate CALs. Each company pays for it's own CALs, not you.

        Microsoft licensing was designed by the dark forces underpinning all evil in the universe.

        1. dogged

          Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

          Microsoft licensing was designed by the dark forces underpinning all evil in the universe.

          No arguments here.

        2. dogged

          Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

          Actually, I should go back to this.

          Microsoft licensing does not allow you to run a multitennanted environment such as you describe. Different company? Different domain, different physical server. More licences. Separate CALs. Each company pays for it's own CALs, not you.

          None of this disqualifies outsourcing of Exchange and SQL Server while keeping an in-house fileserver.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

            You talked about the MSP running it. Where does that even begin to make financial sense except at hyper scale? How is that even viable for small players? You also don't address the fact that this scenario doesn't address the TCO imbalance nor how broken you have to be in the brainpan to put your SQL server in "the cloud" if you are running things like financials databases on it that tend to blow up if you wink at them strangely. (SQL and financials do not do with with flaky connectivity or having the DB drop out under a transaction for any reason.)

            1. Corborg
              Go

              Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

              ....You can run SQL server on Foundation server 2012 locally.

              To everyone who has not tried the product. Foundation Server 2012 is just like Server 2012 standard, but for up to 15 users. It has AD, IIS, RDS, Storage Spaces, Branche Cache, Direct Access and all that good stuff.

              What it lacks compared to SBS is built in Exchange server, Sharepoint and those fluffy web interfaces for RDP'ing into your internal PC's.

              This OS is not forcing you to use cloud services. It doesn't ask you to create any cloud accounts to use it.

              Let the hysteria continue.

              1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

                Excepting that the cost of SQL server in your scenario is quite a bit higher (especially per user when looking at 75 users!) than SBS Premium 2011.

                Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea. You can smash your genitals with a clawhammer and call it sex. That doesn't make it a kind of sex that any rational being would enjoy.

                Similarly, the ROI of your solution is astoundingly awful compared to the ROI of SBS 2011.

        3. david flacks

          Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

          Incorrect. SPLA licensing allows you to do exactly that.

          There has been a multi-tenant version of Exchange for years.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

            Multitennant exchange as a separate item? Yes. Multitenanting an entire AD + Exchange + File Storage + Sharepoint + WSUS + SQL environment? No.

            Exchange as a standalone application can be multitenanted if you agree to pay through the nose for the privilege (especially when compared to the per user TCO of SBS 2011) but mimicking the full breadth of SBS isn't quite allowed in a multi-tenanted environment.

            It's a money play; nothing more. You are "at scale" or you are a burden. There is zero in between with Microsoft.

            Step 1) Remove any avenues for SMEs/enthusiasts/power users to affordably use your products.

            Step 2) ???

            Step 43) Profit!

            I'll be sure to leave Microsoft some old underpants so that they feel they have succeeded.

    2. BongoJoe
      WTF?

      Re: Typical, misguided Microsoft

      I have a client who uses SBS and even they are on broadband the line speeds are so slow that's it quicker for one person to drive home to send largish eMails. My client is not quite in the middle of nowhere but right next to an exchange that BT has managed to butcher.

      But they need to have Exchange running for one of their server applications. They can't afford to buy/rent/licence Exchange shoving it on the cloud is going to be a no-no for lots of reasons.

      The SBS was a perfect package and, well, this simply astounds me.

  7. Peladon

    Microsoft and Small Business Server. Adobe and - well, just about everything Adobe-ish. 'Come to the Cloud'! Don't give us a pint of blood today - you can have Our Wonderful Product for the low, low price of, um, half a pint (Terms and Conditions apply, and yes, we do mean half a pint a (insert time period here) for the rest of your natural). It's a bargain!

    And that's before we get to things like Compliance, Privacy, Confidentiality (no - they're not the same thing :-P), sudden service closures due to market pressures - the list goes on.

    Or it could. But I'll be good. _I_ won't, at least (blush).

    sigh.

  8. joewilliamsebs

    For small customers, hosted Exchange has made more sense than SBS since SBS2k3 bit the dust.

    For large customers, onsite Exchange is still cost effective.

    Its the 25-75 user companies that I'm having the greatest trouble with. O365 is an expensive monthly sub. Onsite Exchange is an expensive capital investment. Alternatives are available, but without the large support infrastructure - tying my clients down to my knowledge of the installed system.

    My feelings towards MS at the moment are very much "Bah."

  9. hamiltoneuk

    What's wrong with WS2012E

    I'm interested. What is wrong with WS2012E as a replacement for SBS? I ditched SBS2003 R2 anticipating the end of support some time and replaced it with WS2012E and it seems fine. I don't do anything fancy with it and avoid cloud like the plague. WS2012E seems fine to me. Am I missing something?

    1. h3

      Re: What's wrong with WS2012E

      It doesn't include Exchange or loads of other stuff.

      The SBS config is pretty much totally undocumented which is good if you know how it works and people are paying you to deal with it but a nightmare otherwise.

      I really like 2012 Essentials as well.

      Cannot imagine it being cheaper to pay a contractor than to use the Microsoft Stuff like intune / hosted exchange (With someone where it is legal to do so).

      Most really small business would be better off with home server 2011 and Libreoffice so I can see why Microsoft got rid of that.

      (I would be happier dealing with UNIX email for 20000 people than exchange for 20 on SBS).

      There is loads of things that can happen with SBS where I would just have to restore from backup.

      If there are any other reasons than just don't want to pay for licenses for Exchange and Windows Server I don't know them.

      I think Microsoft is wanting to stop the money going to people on consulting services and get that money paid to them. (Same sort of thing that happens to other companies who partner with Microsoft - other than Citrix for some reason). Microsoft are ok whilst yours and their interests align reasonably. (They wanted rid of Netware in small businesses which is probably how all this started now they are basically gone then they have no use for people like the poster of the article).

  10. Ryan Clark

    Public folders

    "SharePoint is the mandated replacement for "public folders" in Exchange"

    And yet public folders have now been brought to Office365.

    We have migrated a lot of businesses from single local servers onto Office365, the lack of hassle and predictable costs make a lot of sense for many.

    For those quoting privacy issues, many small business are already using hosted email services so where is the difference?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Public folders

      Privacy issues come into play in certain fields. Those where you'd rather your RAID array crashed and burned taking 5 years of emails with it and no viable backup than there was a suspicion that somewhere else there was a functioning platter with your conversations about delicate subject intact.

    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Public folders

      "Subject to American law" is the difference.

      There are 7 billion people on the planet. Only 0.3 billion of them live in the US. "Subject to American law" is a "no go" bug. It is not in any way a feature.

    3. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      "many small business are already using hosted email services so where is the difference?"

      Oh, so because a lot of people are blissfully unaware of the consequences of a bad decision that makes it OK to make another bad decision of the same kind ?

      Don't think so.

  11. KrisP

    short sighted with head in the clouds

    As you rightly pointed out, it is the customer's prerogative to upgrade when they what to. Most often, I have also noticed that small business servers are upgraded once in 2 upgrade cycles. I know one company which is still using the SBS 2003 version which satisfies their requirement quite well.

    Microsoft is losing its core competencies of helping SMEs with reliable IT.

    1. Small Business Server. Removing the ISA (now TMG) option was also a mistake.

    2. Another great product they dumped was Windows Home Server.

    If they had nurtured these properly, these could have been the so called billion dollar businesses for Microsoft!!

    As a company developing on Microsoft tools, dumping Silverlight I think is also a big mistake. It is still the ideal platform for LOB apps. Look at amazon, they are bringing back flash!!.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A useful product

    Simple day to day tasks - add user, check for software updates, checking to see that antivirus was up to date - could be handled by someone in the office as a part-time add-on to the normal role, with the tricky tasks handed off to a third party support. But equally it could also be used by a one-man IT team within a company through all the usual tools.

    I joined this company in 2001, and have seen three SBS setups - 2000, 2003 and now 2011. Each upgrade was merited more by a significant hardware failure rather than a problem or limitation with SBS.

    The appeal of SBS was a solution in the one hardware box. SBS2000 gave you email, files, user control and ISA which allowed you to control and report on employees web, VPN etc use. SBS2003 gave you WSUS for update control but took away ISA.

  13. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Meh

    So microsoft is a *cost* not a benefit (according to Microsoft). Interesting sales plan.

    Now the question is that a cost businesses need or is it one the want or is it one they want to avoid?

    Looks like businesses are going to get a chance to find out.

  14. N2

    Thank fuck for that

    Goodbye & good riddance,

    Or is it because everyone knows its a complete crock o' shite & MS have to dream up some other way to screw customers?

  15. Daniel B.

    El Cheapo Windows Server

    I remember once monkeying around with Windows Server 2003 SBS. Wasn't it mostly a cheap package with WS2003, with added Exchange and easier wizards for setting up stuff? It did seem to be nice if you had n00b IT folks who didn't know how to set up a full blown Windows Server, but I remember just going for the full WS2003 Standard edition. Of course, my employer back then had licenses for both products so the cost issue wasn't a problem.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Power NAS

    They are forcing you to go Linux or some fancy NAS offering

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bye, Microsoft

    We've build a company on SBS servers. We are Microsoft Gold Clients, and as a team of about 15 we suppot some 60 small business.

    There is 60 small busines that will, when the time come, go to linux.

    1. Corborg

      Re: Bye, Microsoft

      Why? We are currently migrating our customers off of SBS to 2012 Foundation. You don't have to use the cloud services at all if you don't want to, and it's a far better OS than 2003/2008. Our customers haven't missed SBS one bit.

  18. Tim99 Silver badge
    Unhappy

    I think the big integrators killed it too

    You can blame Microsoft who need to get everyone to follow their new business model of renting stuff (Although I think that their business model always relied on renting software, we just called it "Upgrading").

    I think we also should also blame the larger VARs who always saw SBS as a threat to their bottom line - They really didn't want something that supports almost all of the IT requirement of 5-75 users for <$10,000.00 and only costs a few thousand a year in upkeep. There is little scope to gouge the SMB punter with multiple servers and CALS of the normal Windows Server lines.

    I used to supply and configure SBS to 50 user or less organizations - We wrote and supplied custom software that could use MS SQL Server, and found that it was cheaper and less hassle than supplying Windows and SQL Server separately. Exchange was a "free bonus".

    I am retired now, but have been on the Board of a not-for-profit who had a grant to use public money to replace their ageing 12 computer Windows XP professional peer-to-peer network. The hardware was very unreliable, and the users would occasionally get the Windows licence exceeded message when more than 10 users tried to access the same resource. The business relied on a Microsoft Access database, Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and several users running Outlook who would export their e-mail messages to relevant staff to read. It was dreadful, but worked surprisingly well.

    With the lure of public money, a very large local VAR gave a quote. They came back with a design that used a bespoke SQL Server/Sharepoint/Exchange; a SNA; networked high quality printers and 7 Windows servers to hold it all together for an organization of 14 staff and a CEO. The quote was $440,000.00. I told the Board that there must have been a mistake and suggested that they got a revised quotation.

    I went on a 12 week trip abroad, and when I came back they had installed a cut-down system using only 4 new servers. They also used repurposed one of the old XP machines that had held the Access database as a Backup Domain Controller. The revised cost was only $218,000.00. This might have been acceptable IF IT HAD WORKED. The Exchange Server was under specced so that it was impossible to reclaim unused space as there was not enough disk space to consolidate the databases, so Exchange would fall over taking the SNA and back up server with it. The down-time was in the order of 3 days a week, and the organization was without e-mail for 16 consecutive days. When the CEO asked why they were having problems, the VAR said that the system was too small and that they should have spent more... After an emergency Board meeting (where I showed that if they had used SBS it would have been very difficult to have spent more that $65,000.00 including software), we managed to get the VAR to upgrade some of the hardware such that the down time was only about 1 day a week. The VAR still wanted about $18,000.00 a year to maintain everything.

    I had some health issues and retired from the Board. I found out that they then shared the hardware with a larger government/not-for profit organization, and that the down-time was now OK; but the system still did not do what they wanted.

    The last I heard, was that that they were looking at getting rid of it all and replacing it with an OS X Mac Mini Server, 3 MacBook Airs/ MacBook Pros for the CEO and clerical staff and the other users would be given iPads and/or iPhones, so that would be a total spend of less than $25,000.00.

  19. Corborg

    It's not all bad

    SBS 2003 was great. SBS 2008 was a bloated monster. SBS 2011 went some way in addressing it but was still bloated.

    My experience of combining Server 2012 Foundation with a hosted Exchange service (not office 365) has been a good one. removing the complexities of Exchange server from the local site is good, and the state of our broadband in the UK is suitable for hosted email services in an SME. 2012 Foundation gives a good halfway house of locally hosted files and cloudy email.

    In the longer term I'd hope that as broadband reaches 100mb + the "cloud" will no longer mean huge data centre, but our local cloud which we host in house. Whether or not that means pulling Exchange back in house without a dedicated IT tech, or keeping it hosted externally I'm not so sure.

  20. Michael Habel

    Hopefully this will just drive the mass adoption of Linux and BSD to those Markets.

  21. david flacks

    Minor correction - Sharepoint is no longer the 'replacement' for Public Folders but it's an addition to them.

    Exchange 2013 introduces "Modern Public Folders" which are essentially a mailbox inside a standard database subject to the rules/replication of a database/DAG etc but appear just like a traditional Public Folder to the client.

  22. Bruce Ordway

    Won't miss SBS

    I'd be interested in using Linux to fill in.

    Anyone know of a Linux mail server that can play well with Outlook?

    One small company I know of migrated from SBS to a domain server and Office 365.

    I'm not a big fan of Office 365 but it is working for the most part.

    And I won't miss SBS.

    It seemed like there were continual problems.

    To be fair, I didn't have to any faith in the person who originally installed and maintained SBS.

    Once he moved on, it seemed to stabilize a bit.

    As for Sharepoint, it is one of those things that sounds great but seems like it is hardly ever utilized.

    Users I know seem to prefer a simple directory structure they can remember and browse using Windows Explorer

  23. Patrick Kalonji Ngoyi

    Opportunity for others!

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