Windows 2003 Small Business Server Activation

SBS 2003 is a bundle of several products, all of which run on one server. The $599 Standard Edition includes Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, and Outlook 2003, along with five Client Access Licenses (CALs), which you need either for each computer or for each user. The $1,499 Premium Edition adds SQL Server 2000, ISA Server 2000 (for network security and proxy server functions), and FrontPage 2003 (for Web design). Each component delivers improvements substantial enough to recommend SBS 2003 to both existing users and newcomers.

Microsoft includes a Quick Start setup chart, guiding you pictorially through the setup steps. But as easy as the Setup Wizard makes things, the only small businesses owners who will be able to set SBS up by themselves are computer professionals. Setting up a network is just too complicated for nontechnical users to do without a consultant or system integrator. We tested the preloaded configuration.

Apart from its greater storage capacity, those familiar with Exchange 2003 won’t see any differences. However, novices will find wizards for virtually every operation. These are designed to keep you away from the innards of SBS, and for good reason: the sheer size of this package makes manual configuration very hard. Client setup is easy, with Outlook and shared fax services automatically deployed, and you can add custom apps to this process. It will also offer to load the Connection Manager for remote workers and ActiveSync for Pocket PC users. The next time a client logs on to a target system, all the selected apps will be automatically loaded and preconfigured.

A limitation in the previous version of the product prevented you from running additional servers for certain processes you wanted to isolate, such as Exchange. The good news is that SBS 2003 does allow you to run extra servers; the bad news is that you can't take the programs that came with SBS 2003 and run them on any system other than the server where SBS 2003 itself is installed. So if you want to run SQL Server on another box, you need to buy a second copy of SQL Server. Not only will this cost you more money, but best practices argue against running so many critical network functions on a single server system, as SBS does.

For existing users of SBS 2003 Standard Edition, the small number of improvements in R2 makes it worthwhile acquiring only if you qualify for a free upgrade or can see value in the new CAL schemes. Premium sites get a slightly better deal with the upgraded SQL Server software and reporting functions. But FrontPage 2003 has now been discontinued, making this feature redundant. However, the sheer number of features in the Standard Edition makes it an ideal companion for small businesses looking for a complete server solution in one package.


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