Lukas Beeler, a blogger with his own site here, commented on my recent post about SBS 2008. His thoughts were insightful enough, I thought it useful to elevate them to their own post. Lukas writes:

I really have a Love-Hate Relationship with SBS.

First the good things: The pricing can't be beaten - it's awesome to get so much for so little money. Microsoft reasonably automated the setup in SBS 2003, and fully automated it in SBS 2008, making deployment a breeze.

The bad things: Microsoft for some reasons thinks that a Small Business owner can setup SBS on their own. This is a bad idea. I don't care that much about lost business (i just get a salary), but i care about the fact that i often have to clean up SBS installations done by people without enough knowledge. And Microsoft advocates this.

The problem here is that SBS is actually more complex than a "normal" Setup. SBS runs Exchange, DC, Fax, Files, everything on a single machine (SQL/ERP on a second in 08 - Great!). This makes debugging problems a lot harder as none of the components are isolated.

SBS is more complicated and you have less possibilities of fixing a problem the "hard way". e.G. if you have a issue with your backup software that neither you nor their support seem to able to resolve you can't just say "lets reinstall Windows on the backup server".

With my actual production experience with SBS being relatively light, information like this is good to get a full perspecive on the product. Lukas is right in that Microsoft shouldn't attempt to convince the non-technical business owner that they can handle these tasks on their own. More often than not (a situation I've also had to pick up the pieces after) those non-techies find themselves in a world of hurt down the road.

Have you had a similar experience? Comment below with your SBS horror stores (or what you like!)