Switch Systems Blog

In a recent blog post, Microsoft explain their reasoning for removing the Drive Extender technology which was to allow WHS style drive pooling and fault tolerance.

Whilst a lot of people will see this as a step backwards, I’m personally happy with this decision – drive extender tech makes it a lot harder for us ‘real’ sysadmins to determine where data lies in a disaster recovery situation, plus we’re much more familiar with RAID based solutions.

A big part of our business is supporting Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS). SBS is a collection of Microsoft technologies consisting of Windows Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, all of which are tightly integrated to make a good value offering for small businesses to step up their infrastructure to a more efficient, secure and centrally managed solution.

Microsoft have just announced the latest editions of SBS. Codenamed “Aurora”, SBS 2011 Essentials aims to align with Microsoft’s strategy of storing data in the Cloud (distributed on-line servers, much like Web E-Mail), while maintaining the already mature features like Remote Access, automatic server backups and remote web workplaces.

Another SBS name change, SBS 7 is now to be known as SBS 2011 Standard.

We continue to look with interest at Microsoft’s Cloud Strategy, and no doubt will be testing the final releases of SBS 2011 in our labs as they become available.

Aurora is Microsoft’s new server system aimed at startup/small businesses, a cross between Windows Home Server and a full Small Business Server setup.

We look at the installation process, key features, and take a look under the hood (continue reading…)