Recently I got an opportunity to provide a server solution to a local small business in NJ. They are into trucking business and the business owner wanted to replace his old Dell PowerEdge server. When I visited the office, I instantly thought that the server is being replaced because it was making so much noise 
Anyways, I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and started looking towards small business server because the name itself suggests that they are made for small businesses like that (just like the Windows Home Server made for my home and no doubt I love it… I have not migrated to Windows Home Server 2011 yet). All they wanted was a domain controller and a file share. But when I started looking into Small Business Server’s feature set, I thought of making a list of things they would get and I did exactly so. And you know what.. it was not that difficult to sell it. I proposed the cost of hardware, SBS 2011 and the client licenses and it was accepted as-is. After all, who does not like 15 features when only 2 were expected. The small business was excited about emails for each individual and the remote access and not to mention access to emails on their smart phones….
I tried to order SBS 2011 online but realized that HP, DELL etc are still a few weeks or months away from shipping it. So I thought of building it and I ended up putting a huge hardware order at my favorite site: newegg.com. I also thought of making a RAID 5 array. I ordered 3 hard drives and configured RAID 5. It did not take much to realize that RAID 5 was very slow.. so finally I ordered the 4th drive and configured a RAID 10 solution on it. This was the first time I configured RAID feature. I did not order a dedicated controller because the on-board controller was giving acceptable performance. I am still surprised at the price of the dedicated controllers though.. they are too pricey!
I spent at least 2 weeks (part time, of course) to build the server and install SBS 2011 on it. The installation of OS was – as usual – very smooth and post installation was a bridge too. Well done Microsoft! I could not test the email functionality at my home though because it needed a dedicated domain registered with godaddy.
The small business had already registered a domain with godaddy, so connecting SBS to internet and configuring domain was not that difficult after I moved the server to the small business location. In the mean time, I suggested them to get a static IP from their ISP and that was already done!
So the end result is that the deployment was successful, I had all their client computers connected to the SBS 2011, their file shares moved to SBS 2011, each employee now had their own email address and guess what, they were able to send and receive both internal and external emails… Emails was most satisfying (apart from the payment from the small business) to me though.
I wish a few more small businesses contact me soon ….
My next project is to upgrade to Home Server 2011. I am little reluctant at this moment because I know I will not have the drive extender functionality anymore. But then now that I know RAID, I want to check if my motherboard supports RAID configuration so that the decision to move to Home Server 2011 is easy!
