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Microsoft Recalls Small Business Server

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the another-day-another-delay dept.

dasButcher writes to tell us VarBusiness is reporting that hot on the heels of many other delays, Microsoft has recalled their Small Business Server 2003 R2. The operating system started shipping to OEMs, distributors, and systems builders in July but was immediately recalled after a recent audit.

4 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. SBS made me quit my job... by BinaryCodedDecimal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Slightly off-topic, but SBS is the reason I changed my job. I leave this place at the end of the month, thank god. I support several companies, 10 of which are using SBS. It has to be the best way of putting all of a company's eggs in one basket. It goes against everything that makes good sense about creating an available, stable network with some redundancy. If you go for the Premium edition and install everything, you'll find yourself running: - Exchange - SQL Server - ISA Server - IIS - File/Print services - DNS - DHCP - WINS All on the same box which is ALSO a domain controller for your network. If that box fails (some of our clients are cheap enough to have declined a RAID solution, against better advice), then that's it... the whole place is down the toilet until the box is rebuilt, and you'd better pray that the backups are good. It's a horrible, horrible way of running things, IMHO. I'll be glad to not have to support these boxes any more.

    1. Re:SBS made me quit my job... by ericlondaits · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I work at a small company. We don't have a full time sys admin (I do the chores myself, while also working as a programmer). We have a single Linux server that runs:
      - SMTP
      - POP
      - DNS
      - Apache (hosting mediawiki, mantis, dotproject, phpMyAdmin)
      - MySQL (for the mentioned web apps)
      - A SAMBA fileserver
      - DHCP

      The only thing that's not in that server is the firewall... which I kept in a different machine with no services running whatsoever, except those that handle our aDSL connection (pppoe, and sshd to connect from inside the LAN).

      Our setup is not great on redundancy... but we can afford a couple of days of downtime (we had to, once or twice over the years) more than we can afford doubling our setup. Our services are used by a small number of employees (six, actually) and none are critical.

      If Microsoft wants to pull us away from Linux they'd have to offer a Windows Server with all they usual servers (like those you mentioned), even if they're somewhat limited to prevent being used in a large corporation (max database size, max number of clients, etc.), priced appropiately for the use we'd give it. This product sounds like what we'd need... despite some companies misusing it for some reason.

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      As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
    2. Re:SBS made me quit my job... by jimicus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Linux can be done - I know of at least one company in the area that does it. They don't sell it as Linux; they sell it as an "entire IT system in a box for solicitors".

      You would have to streamline everything a lot though:

      - The customer isn't expected to do anything with the server. That's the support companies job (this isn't a million miles away from how a lot of these places work anyhow, so that's not a big deal).
      - Installation is nailed down to "insert CD, turn system on". All the configuration is pre-done by the support company, and every customer gets the same configuration. The customer doesn't do the install anyhow, the company sends someone to site if necessary, but the fact that everything is already nailed down means that you could get away with shaving a chimpanzee, putting them in a shirt and tie and sending them out to site.
      - Server hardware is specified (and usually supplied by) the support company.
      - Desktops aren't heavily locked down, but are locked down enough to minimise the likelihood of someone completely hosing their system. Combine that with Ghost, and running as much as possible from the server, and the desktop support overhead almost evaporates.

      You could easily charge £a few thousand per company per annum doing this - for the customer, it's a lot cheaper than paying a fulltime IT person when they probably only need a couple of man days a month, and gives them peace of mind.

  2. humm by crashelite · · Score: 3, Interesting

    no wonder why the server never worked. it was still in beta. i wonder what will happen to vista now?

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    (yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change