[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Planning your growth - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Wed, Apr 13 2011 23:22 bradley

Planning your growth

So the Dutch Gardens catalog came the other day and it's time to plan ahead.  Do I want early -and- late tulips this time instead of just the early ones I got last time?

Do I want different colors? Do I need to get more Daffodils?  What kind? Normal King Alfred style or various ones for naturalizing.... decisions decisions.

Just as you plan in gardening, so too do you do in selecting your "go to market" plans.

So one of the questions I heard on Amy Babinchak's very good TS2 with Charles Van Husen webinar on SBSism today was how her clients made plans.  Some decided on standard because they didn't want the monthly cash flow issues.  Some decided to go with the online BPOS because they needed less chunk of change outflow up front.  It was interesting to hear that the decisions weren't necessarily being made due to mobility needs but cash flow needs.

The other interesting question that I hear over and over again ... and one that honestly one that I don't have a really good answer for right now is how do you plan for growth. SBS essentials fits under 25 users and supports client backup of the workstations and it designed so that Exchange and SharePoint are hosted.  It assumes the DHCP is on the router, and it's being placed in as the very first server to the network.  SBS standard tops out at 75 users, wants to be the dhcp of the network, and has on premise Exchange and SharePoint.

If you decide that SBS Essentials is PERFECT for a 10 user firm and they grow in 6 months to 26 users, there's really not a really good strong migration path between each subset of SBSism.  You will need to look at each firm and decide if that garden of theirs is going to remain within the boundaries of the yard or if it will explode in growth. 

Show me many a small firm and I'll show you a firm that CHOOSES not to grow.  These days being small gives you a LOT more flexibility I'd argue than being big.  Certainly less red tape, less need for regulations and requirements.  But if you have a business that they think will go from 5 or 6 to dot.com boom in a heart beat, just know that you'll be performing some sort of active directory migration to something else or deciding to go the more expensive full server skus from the get go.

Bottom line see what growth plans they have and plan accordingly.

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# re: Planning your growth

Thursday, April 14, 2011 3:58 PM by Dean

" It was interesting to hear that the decisions weren't necessarily being made due to mobility needs but cash flow needs."

I can't believe for one minute that your surprised.

# Is it time for another migration doc?

Friday, April 15, 2011 7:57 PM by Joe Raby

Perhaps you should sharpen your pencil to start work on the doc: "Migrating away from SBS 2011 Essentials: For when you outgrow the 25 user limit".

I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't provided any guidance on this yet.  I guess the options are either: upgrade (read: migrate*) to Windows Server 2008 R2 (insert SKU here) and keep your cloud services, or upgrade* (or as some would say: grow up ;) ) to an on-site infrastructure using SBS Standard or component servers built on Windows Server.

I'd like to see less of the MMC-based consoles in the larger servers.  Just because you can manage more users, doesn't mean you should give up on ease of use.  Ditto for Power Shell: there's a lot of commands only accessible via a commandline (think Exchange) where there's no reason why the same functionality can't be exposed via a few checkboxes in the GUI.