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4 CHAPTER 1 INSTALLING WINDOWS SMALL BUSINESS SERVER 2008

Limitations of Small Business Server 2008

Now that you know about the advantages and power of Small Business Server 2008, it’s time to

talk about the limitations. After all, Microsoft can’t give away everything with a small-business

product. So, without further ado, here are the limitations speciﬁed by Microsoft TechNet:

◆ Small Business Server 2008 doesn’t support more than 75 users or devices.

Unless you upgrade from Small Business Server, this number is an absolute. But keep in

mind, 75 employees is a lot of employees! A ‘‘medium-sized’’ business is a business that

has more than 50 employees, according to the Microsoft mind-set.

◆ The SBS 2008 Standard edition server must be the root domain controller of the forest.

This isn’t necessarily a big deal, but it means you can’t join an SBS 2008 Standard server to

a complex Enterprise edition environment and thus correspondingly beneﬁt from all the

contained features. Microsoft disallows this because it suspects if you’re doing this, you are

probably just trying to get out of paying for the entire the product line.

◆ The SBS 2008 Standard edition server must hold the ﬂexible single master operations

(FSMO) roles.

This is another hard-lined rule, but it effectively means that the Small Business Server must

be ‘‘in charge’’ of its network.

◆ The SBS 2008 Standard edition server must be a global catalog:

Similar to FSMO, the Small Business Server needs to be the main global catalog for the

enterprise.

◆ There can be no interforest trusts or child domains.

The real restriction here is that this means Small Business Server 2008 can’t be joined

or attached to extra forests or child domains, and thus it can’t be used for large-scale

expansion.

◆ Terminal Services Application Mode is disabled on SBS 2008 Standard edition server.

This is a real limitation compared to Windows Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise edition.

The use of Terminal Services has become popular of late, and removing these features is a

real inhibitor. However, not all Terminal Services features are unavailable. For one, users

can still utilize Remote Desktop.

◆ The Premium edition server must be a member server or an additional domain controller

of an SBS 2008 network.

This is not really an inhibitor, but this does mean that the Premium server requires a bit

more licensing.

If you remember from a bit earlier, I mentioned that Windows Small Business Server 2008

comes with Forefront Security and Windows Live OneCare. Well, that’s true. It does come with