Hello and welcome to my review of Harry Brelsford's Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices. I hope you have read my review of Eriq Neale's book. If not, go ahead and do it, I'll wait right here until you get back. The book is 14 chapters long. I intend to review every chapter except chapter 13 which covers ISA2K. Since ISA2K4 is the standard, I can't see going backwards. Without further adieu, here is chapter 1.

Harry gives a list of SBS features. He then gives a history of SBS. He gives a good talk about people who do use and who should use SBS2K3. Harry then talks about the Finder, Minder and Grinder. The Finder gets the business. The minder is the manager type and the grinder is the worker bee. Harry then talks about the business of SBS and the philosophy of SBS. He then talks about 4 walls. That means SBS should be only in one location. That is, it should not be used for branch office situations. Later on though, that seems to be reversed.

The chapter then covers the SBS market. The three keys are attitude, affluence and expertise. The next couple of pages goes through each of these points. He spends 2 or 3 areas talking about the various numbers of small businesses. He does admit that a majority of these businesses are overseas.

The chapter next moves into the architecture of SBS. Harry has a nice picture of the architecture. He carries the topic to the single domain and having all the 5 FSMO rules. It should be the only DC, but member servers can be used. The discussion then looks at the client side and business applications. Mainly those that will run on the server using SQL. The apps are not named, but a general discussion is used.

Competitors are now discussed. The first one is Windows 2003 Server. MS vs. MS! XP in a peer to peer setup. It can happen is small shops. Novell Small Business Suite is the final competitor discussed. It is based on Netware so that is that. Harry finishes by talking about the product launch and then a short summary.

Chapter two covers Design and Planning. I will try to get through it quickly, but it may not happen. I am going on vacation to Colorado this Saturday for a week. I pull out at 5:00 AM and will not be back until late the following Saturday. Therefore, it may be awhile before I can get through chapter 2. Just giving you a heads up. Take care until we meet here again. Thanks for reading.