SBS 4.5 adds usability features for small businesses with up to 50 PCs
In October 1997, Microsoft shipped the first version of its integrated server suite of small-business applications: BackOffice Small Business Server (SBS) 4.0. By the time you read this article, Microsoft will either have recently released or be very close to releasing a major usability overhaul of the suite: SBS 4.5.
Even though Microsoft is charging full-speed ahead in the enterprise arena of clustering, data warehousing, and 16-way SMP, the small-business market is clearly on the company's radar screen. Why is Microsoft interested in perfecting client/server technology in the 5- to 50-PC market space? Steve Brown, SBS product manager for Microsoft, bases his forecasts primarily on research from analysts such as International Data Corporation (IDC) and Forrester Research, which count approximately 7 million US small businesses (i.e., businesses with fewer than 100 employees). According to Brown, less than 30 percent of US small businesses have a network, which places the number of potential small-business networks in the millions.
Updated System Requirements
Microsoft hardly changed the hardware requirements for SBS 4.5 beta 2 from those of SBS 4.0. Microsoft recommends a 120MHz Pentium processor as a minimum, with a 200MHz Pentium processor or faster preferred. Baseline memory requirements include 64MB of RAM and 2GB of hard disk space.
My goal was to simulate a small-business environment with budget constraints, so I went with a low-end hardware configuration on a nonbranded system assembled from branded components. My test server had a 133MHz Pentium processor, 96MB of RAM, and 4GB mirrored SCSI hard disks. Initially, I attempted installation with 64MB of RAM and a 2GB hard disk. With only 64MB of RAM available, I found performance too sluggish, even for testing. Also, when I included Office 2000 Professional on the system, I found that the SBS applications were unable to successfully complete unattended setups on a 2GB hard disk.
After speaking to Microsoft, I learned that the disk-space minimum depends on whether you have the SBS 4.5 and Office 2000 Professional bundle. With only SBS 4.5, the disk-space minimum is 2GB, and the file size after installation is approximately 1.3GB. Office 2000 doubles the minimum disk-space requirement to 4GB, and the file size after installation is almost 2GB. SBS 4.5's unattended setup needs the extra space to decompress the BackOffice suite components. Table 1 shows the SBS 4.5 and Office 2000 Professional disk-space usage.
Also, an SBS 4.5 server requires a 3.5" disk drive configured as the A drive, a video adapter that runs at a minimum resolution of 800 * 600 * 16, a CD-ROM drive, and at least one modem and network card from the SBS 4.5 Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). If you want the SBS 4.5 setup to automatically install and configure Proxy Server, modem sharing, fax serving, or RAS, you'll need at least one modem present during setup. In SBS 4.5, you can add and configure modems following setup. Microsoft says it changed the modem setup because small businesses typically use asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) and router-based connectivity. Microsoft recommends a tape backup drive, a UPS, additional hard disks for RAID capabilities, and two phone lines—one dedicated to faxing and one dedicated to DUN.
The SBS 4.5 client requirements also remain largely unchanged from those of SBS 4.0. The SBS 4.5 client applications can run on Windows NT or Windows 9x. If you purchase the SBS 4.5 and Office 2000 Professional bundle, use Office 2000 hardware requirements for your desktop specifications. To simulate typical small-business hardware, I tested the SBS 4.5 client on a Dell 166MHz OptiPlex GXi with 96MB of RAM running NT Workstation 4.0 and on a Compaq 166Mhz Deskpro 2000 with 64MB of RAM running Win95. Both client configurations performed admirably. After the client setups completed, I used Internet Explorer (IE) 5.0 to browse internal and external Web sites, and I used Outlook 2000 to send and receive internal and external email.
SBS 4.5 and SBS 4.0 Differences
SBS 4.0 doesn't limit the number of user accounts that you can create, but it limits concurrent workstation connections to 25. SBS 4.5 lets you create any number of user accounts, and it supports 50 concurrent workstation connections. Microsoft maintains that hiring a full-time IS person becomes cost-effective for small businesses with more than 50 PCs: Small businesses with fewer than 50 PCs often rely on external service providers for installation and support.
SQL Server 6.5 in SBS 4.0 limited total database space to 1GB, including transaction logs. SBS 4.5 includes SQL Server 7.0 and increases the maximum size of each database to 10GB with an unlimited number of databases per SBS server.
SBS 4.5 comes with other version upgrades, including Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0, Exchange Server 5.5, Outlook 2000, FrontPage 98, and Proxy Server 2.0. Although Microsoft made IIS 4.0 and Proxy Server 2.0 available as free upgrades for SBS 4.0 users, however, SBS 4.5 integrates the upgrades into the setup program.
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