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Business Management Book Store > Business Management books beginning with U
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Using Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 |
Author: Jonathan Hassell
Published: 2005-04-01 |
List price: $34.99
Our price: $31.10
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As of: January 07th, 2009 09:35:16 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Best Primer and First-time Installation Guide for SBS Newbies
My small technology company is relocating. We are completely rebuilding our network and server topology prior to moving to the new location. We have operated a specialized online service since 1983 that controls building automation systems at 140 client locations (large institutional buildings). We have sophisticated internal IT software and hardware engineering resources.
We bought seven SBS books from Amazon looking for an easy primer and guide for our first SBS installation efforts and also for other books to be used as authoritative references for later fine tuning. We have found in the past that a few days spent reading are needed to ensure an effective, low-maintenance installation of important IT infrastructure. (We use no outside services for software development or hardware maintenance and have a 1,000 volume technical library.)
We have selected this book as our SBS primer and first-time installation guide. We also liked the somewhat longer (and more theoretical) "Pro Windows Small Business Server 2003" but found this book by Jonathan Hassel a better match (a quick and easy read) for the inexperienced software engineer on our staff who will do the grunt work on the installation. "Small Business Server 2003 Unleashed" by Neale at al. is likely to be our reference book, but it seems too difficult for the first SBS course. Two senior staffers will also read our SBS primer, so that we share a basic understanding of SBS capabilities as we plan our configurations.
The book is theoretically not very deep and does not explain well the limitations of SBS. The book is uneven in its coverage. The chapter on Active Directory (the network directory and heart of Windows networks) is poorly written, and the single domain limitation of SBS should have been properly covered here. Coverage of Exchange (part of the Standard Edition) is brief but perhaps adequate since it is well covered in many other books. SQL Server (part of the Premium Edition) receives only brief mention, but this is appropriate since SQL Server is really an application running on top of SBS with little integration with the SBS core.
It is harder to understand the absence of all but a brief mention of ISA (software firewall, part of the Premium Edition). We have found ISA to be an important part of our network topology. Failure to carefully plan the Internet connection and any router and span appliances or software that will run between SBS and the Internet can result in disasters. With SBS usually running as the gateway to the Internet, security and anti-spam problems can easily bring an otherwise faultlessly planned network to a halt. Although our internal network has been virtual unchanged for six years, we find it necessary to frequently upgrade our perimeter devices (router, firewall, Barracuda antispam) because of threats and also because of the increasing need for mobile connectivity.
In any case, this book will get you watching SBS live faster than any other, and you can grow in your knowledge from there.
Here is what we are doing.
We now have twelve servers and twenty-five workstations on a Windows 2000/2003 network with three Active Directory (Window's network directory) trees (namespaces) in our enterprise forest. Each tree has a single domain. For the last six years we have run ISA, IIS, Exchange, and SQL Server on four separate servers and each has a backup server. We also run two domain controllers on separate servers for each of our three domains. All of the servers are very lightly loaded, and we have a very robust infrastructure to support our 7X24 operations. We run Office on all workstations together with specialized line of business applications. We are heavy Internet consumers, email users, mobile device users, Intranet users, and remote control users (using GoToMyPC).
We found that we can easily reduce our topology to a single .com namespace with a single domain as required by SBS. We intend to install SBS on a new server twice for practice and then a third time for real. Wd we will not connect the old and new internal networks at any time or migrate any of our present Active Directory or Exchange settings to the SBS installation. However, we will be remounting and running our web site and data base applications and our old email stores on SBS. The SBS box initially will be doing the duty of ten of our exiting fourteen servers; four others on abandoned domains will no longer have any function. The box will be a medium-high level Dell with 4GB of memory and raid 1 (two drives, each mirroring the other). Minimum system requirements are far below this. We are looking forward to adding VPN remote networking and RWW (Remote Web Workplace) remote-control for offsite users with the services that are bundled in SBS, rpelacing third-party solutions for this remote connectivity.
Although SBS is restricted to a single domain and 75 users, there is no limit on the number of Windows 2000/2003 servers that can run within the domain; so, as we grow, any of the server products running on SBS can be moved to a separate server after purchase of a standalone copy of the application and the necessary user/device licenses.
 Great book for your 1st book on Windows 2003 SBS
I picked this book up because it was cheap, and the only one in the Chapters Book Store I was in that day. But to be honest, I was very surprised and very pleased with the way this book was laid out. If this is your first book on Microsoft Windows 2003 Small Business Server, you will not be sorry you bought it. I think you will find that it will only lite the fire for you to buy more books on SBS 2003, like I did.
[...]
Excellent book for someone getting started with SBS
Overall, I'd say that if you haven't read a book on SBS and are fairly new to the SBS 2003 Standard product, that this could be a good first book. If you have some experience under your belt and are using the server product yourself, you might find this to be a little too high an overview to be greatly valuable. I liked this book a LOT more than Brelsford's first book as a primer.
The title should be changed to be "Using Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition". There is almost no mention at all of ISA Server 2000 (or 2004 for that matter), and no mention made of SQL Server either. There isn't any effort made to justify an upgrade to Premium. A striking omission in my opinion.
Even having worked with SBS for almost 3 years now and having read almost every book on the market on SBS, I can't say I didn't get anything out of this volume, because I did. Some of the things I liked were: the walk through on setting up GPO's, getting PDF's to be indexed, and using FrontPage to customize SharePoint.
The book provides an introduction to the software and then walks through the process of installing the software. This is largely explanations of options as opposed to explaining why one option might be better than another. I'm not sure you'd get much out of this chapter that you couldn't get from the help files, which I might add, are very good.
Chapter 4 is titled "Exploring Windows Server 2003". And such it is. However, it fails to take into account the limitations of SBS, specifically that there are NO trusts with SBS. The discussion of forests was out of place and didn't even mention this limitation. I got the impression this chapter was lifted wholesale out of another writing and put in here without change. Other than that, it is a good review of file sharing, permissions and Group Policy.
Chapter 5 "Exploring Outlook 2003 and Exchange Server 2003" is a brief overview of the Outlook software and Exchange capabilities. There is a segment of the chapter which covers the SBS-specific aspects of Exchange: POP3 connector, Attachment and Content blocking (with a whole table of blocked extensions) and Multiple Stores. In the multiple stores section, the author writes that MS limited the SBS Exchange to 16G. This is not entirely accurate. SBS uses the Standard version of Exchange which has the same limit. It is not SBS specific. However, he discusses how to get around the limit which may be even more useful when Exchange Server SP2 comes out and changes the store size to 75G.
Chapter 6 "Windows SharePoint Services Techniques." I really liked this chapter. I thought it was a well rounded overview of some of the capabilities of SharePoint. Integrating it with an Access database, customizing views, using themes, and even modifying the Cascading Style Sheets using FrontPage 2003. He discusses how he uses SharePoint to assist his business processes, mentions another SBSer Chad Gross and his customizations and gives the reader a fairly broad overview of the technology. My favorite aspect of this chapter was the section on backup and restore options. A customized SharePoint installation gets to be such a huge investment in time that protecting it is a very important step.
Chapter 7 "Exploring SBS Standard Security" begins with a brief overview of security considerations. Hassell then continues with several tools used to secure the both the server and the clients: Security Templates, Security Configuration and Analysis, and Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. A discussion of securing clients then follows. Some of these explanations I found useful for why they needed to be in place. It made for interesting reading.
Chapter 8 "Using Remote Access Features" is a good overview of the remote access functionality. Remote Web Workplace, Outlook Web Access, Remote Desktop Connection and Virtual Private Networks are discussed. OMA was only briefly mentioned, but was in the chapter on Exchange.
Chapter 9 "The Shared Fax Service" is a walk-through of the basic fax functionality of the software. I don't use the fax capability very much, though it is a welcome set of functionality and this is a good overview of it.
Chapter 10 "Monitoring SBS Server Health and Performance" is a good overview of the capabilities of monitoring. Hassell discusses scheduling reports, understanding the reports, using error logs and setting up baselines. Overall a good introduction to the topic.
Chapter 11 "The Indexing Service" is a chapter that I can say that I have had very limited experience with. It was a very interesting read. I have yet to implement the functionality, but am intrigued by the concepts. I especially appreciated the section on indexing PDF's, a capability I have read about, but have yet to perform.
The index was 15 pages long and seemed rather thorough. I was able to find specific items with ease on the occasions I went back to reference things.
Of the Small Business Server 2003 books I have read so far, I would recommend this as a first volume to someone getting started with Small Business Server 2003. It provides a lot of information that will provide a good basis for getting started and help to understand the utility of SBS 2003 Standard. I think the Microsoft Administrator's companion probably provides more useful detail to get started with actually installing your server. The SBS Advanced Best Practices by Harry Brelsford and a slew of SBS MVP's would provide far more detail than this book, but is really aimed at a far more experienced audience which would already by familiar with the concepts from this book.
 Just in the middle....
I purchased this book to help me configure SBS. Unfortunately, the information provided is just too general and high level for that purpose. The author has added a number of screenshots to illustrate the wizards. I don't think that the book adds much value over and beyond the information provided by the wizards.
The book may be a reasonable buy if you consider purchasing SBS: the book provides somewhat of an overview of what SBS can do for your organization. However, the book provides very little what you could not easily and quickly obtain from the public domain.
Successful book for what it sets out to cover...
If for whatever reason you've made the decision to implement Microsoft's Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 package, a good place to start might be Jonathan Hassell's Using Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 (Apress).
Chapter List: Introduction; Installing SBS 2003; Initial Configuration; Exploring Windows Server 2003; Exploring Outlook 2003 and Exchange Server 2003; Windows SharePoint Services Techniques; Exploring SBS Standard Security; Using Remote Access Features; The Shared Fax Service; Monitoring SBS Server Health and Performance; The Indexing Service; Index
To be honest up front, I'm not a huge Microsoft fan. In fact, as a IBM/Lotus professional, you might even say I'm a bit antagonistic towards them. But realistically, there are a number of reasons why small businesses might want to implement SBS 2003. Hassell's book would be a good starting point for a power user who wants to become the default system admin, or for an experienced admin who wants to get started with SBS 2003. He does a pretty good job of explaining the setup of most of the moving parts, and it's done well enough to ensure a reasonably good likelihood that you'll be up and running when you're done. Now *because* there are so many moving parts (like SharePoint, Exchange, etc.), this is not the book you'd turn to if you have to get into some major troubleshooting. You can only do so much in 250 or so pages, and Hassell doesn't try to go overboard. As a result, the book maintains a good focus on what it sets out to do. But if something does go wrong, you'll be doing on-line research or be visiting Amazon to get the 1000 page book that covers nothing but Exchange, SharePoint, etc.
To the right audience, this book serves its purpose well. It won't be the only book on your shelf (nor should it be), but when you get done with it, you'll know what it is you don't know...
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