Small Business Server 2008 - RC0 Public Preview will be available this week ...

For those of us on the private SBS 2008 "Cougar" beta program, we have been privileged to have access to the new RC0 build of SBS 2008 since late last Thursday.

The Public Preview will be available via link this Microsoft Web page: Windows Small Business Server 2008.

Note the "Be the First to Get a Public Preview" for SBS 2008.

The link should go live sometime this coming Wednesday May 28, 2008.

Since this is a Release Candidate version of the product, it should be installed for testing purposes only. Use of the RC0 software in a production environment will not be supported by Microsoft, so if things blow up and that is where the RC0 SBS box happens to be ... there will be no support.

There is a huge learning curve involved with this new product release.

While the install and administration has been simplified to meet the needs of those with no real I.T. background to setup an SBS 2008 box, there is a lot underneath it all that we can get our fingers into the customize those boxes! ;) A neat thing about those underlying features: It is a lot easier with this edition to set things up so that our builds will be greatly simplified, and identical.

Some of the new aspects we will need to grapple with:

• Install options are now available: New and Migration.
• Answer File for installs (fairly straight forward).
• New Management Console.
• New Remote Web Workplace features and capabilities.
• Default data location on the C: drive with wizards to move to other partitions after the fact.
• Active Directory, Group Policy, and ADMX management.
• Exchange 2007 SP1 and its features and abilities
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• Interet access management, filtering, and firewalling for prior SBS 2K3 Premium clients.

We will be putting together a box for RC0 this weekend, with a deeper dive into it this coming week.

We are now able to comment on the product publicly, so we look forward to sharing our SBS 2008 experiences here in the near future!

Will this be our first public comment? Not really, but: Windows Small Business Server 2008 will really ROCK! :D

For those of us who love to build solutions ... real solutions around a whole host of server products, services, and components available in the hardware and software we work with, SBS 2008 will be the "cat's meow".

We will be able to take SBS and especially Remote Web Workplace to that next level providing integrated solutions that will provide our clients with a really kewl plethora of workflow collaboration and data access abilities.

Check it out folks ... SBS 2008 is the bread to our services butter! ;)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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