SBS 2008 PM Interview and Demo

Posted By: David Tesar | Mar 17th, 2008 @ 11:59 PM | 16,657 Views | 8 Comments

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Sean Daniel has been the program manager for Small Business Server since the 2000 release of the product and in this video, he tells us a little bit about what's new in Small Business Server 2008 (a.k.a. codename Cougar) as well as shows us a demo of the SBS 2008 console. He goes through the backup wizard and we learn how the backups have gotten dramatically quicker and more customizable. Furthermore, he gives us the insight behind what the major innovations have been thus far and where the team is headed to take product next.

Tag: SBS

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michaelsainz

Am I seeing things here? Doesn't the description of this post indicate that SBS is EBS (Essential Business Server)??? SBS is not EBS. SBS is targeting small businesses and EBS is targeting mid-sized companies.

SBS 2008 is code named Cougar. EBS 2008 is code named Centro.

Am I right Technet team?

extreme

Thanks for noticing Michael. It must have been late when I wrote this or something Smiley . It is updated now.

michaelsainz

No problem!

michaelsainz

Now that I've actually had time to view the video, I have a concern.

When Sean talked about the backup functionality, specifically with eliminating the option to store on an internal drive, I find this a bit limiting. I know a few IT shops where they store the backup job on a seperate drive that is directly connected and then batch job it forward to either a NAS or network drive. This also raises the question of eSATA. Doesn't eSATA come online and appear as an internal drive?

I would have thought that a better alternative would be to default or persuade the user to use USB drives through the wizard, but if need be have the capability to use an internal drive within the wizard also. Was this a concern for the SBS team?

Thanks for the video though, great information!

seanda

This is a good point, and one we've debated internally a lot. Ideally for a backup to be successful, it needs to be restorable. If you have a fire, or a machine theft, and the internal disk is gone, you the backup was not useful at all. Thus the strong recommendation to take the disk offsite, and the need for it to be external.

However, we have added the functionality to back-up to a local drive as well, and this is to accomidate eSATA drives.

ye110wbeard
I'm Sean - I'm a PC - and I'm ENERGIZED

Actually I have one question.

What if you prefer to still use a tape based solution on the server Even in conjunction with hard drives?

Can you still utilize an 800 gig LTO unit if you have one?

Jerdman

So how do migrations/upgrades work? Is there a whitepaper to get a client from SBS2003 to SBS2008?

seanda

In reply to ye110wbeard

#Mar 27th, 2008 @ 9:36 AM

For Ye110wbeard,

Unfortunately the backup to tape option is no longer included with Windows Small Business Server 2008. So you can use this functionality with 3rd party backup applications. With the built in application, you will have to use an internal or external disk that doesn't have system information on it.

For Jerdman,

There is a migration whitepaper on how to perform a migration from SBS 2003 and SBS 2008 to SBS 2008. The process is far simpler then it was in the 2003 timeframe, and well thought out. The whitepaper will be posted to our technet library. Here is a link to the general area: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc546034.aspx