Oliver Sommer 

Since December 15th we (my company Trinity Computer) are using the Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) Beta version in production. That means we run our business on EBS not any more on the SBS2003 environment we migrated from.

Management Server Preinstall Checks

At first: EBS is doing quite well and honestly far better than I expected.
So far we only have one little but somehow anoing issue with Exchange authentication, where Outlook and mobile devices are asking for credentials several times a day.

After migrating the Active Directory of the SBS we demoted the old SBS, flattened the system drives and installed it using Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition x86 as additional server into the EBS environment. This is mainly because we are using the ex SBS maschine as filestorage and sharepoint server.
One issue using x64bit servers  is that Faxservices using our Eicon/Dialogic ISDN card with virtual TAPI modems by now are currently only work for 32bit maschines, because the x64 drivers for the ISDN card do not contain TAPI modem support by now. Dialogic promissed me to change that with the 8.5 driver version.

Our main problem installing EBS has been an IP address conflict because the maintenance LAN controller of one of the servers has been set by us some time ago to use the IP we picked to use for the EBS mailserver and because of that EBS install told us correctly that the IP is in use. Finding what occupied the IP has been the challenge on that and made us prove the ability to restart EBS installation in case of a failure. BTW: I love that feature and it seems to be very fool prove even now also it's only Beta. In practice: If anything fails during the install of the second or third server you may just restart the install of that server all over again, the setup procedure recognises that it's been running before and wipes the former install out of AD and whereever else before reinstall continues.

Security Server install Progress

One big thank you goes out to the product team and the Microsoft premier support service for TAP customers especially to Mark Stanfill who spend several hours chatting with us during the installation. @Mark: Thanks, I owe you a drink!

Thanks for giving us the oportunity, confidence and trust in our abbillity to run EBS as first company in production outside the Redmond area and third company at all.
To explain that: Normally product groups like having TAP customers located next to them, because MS gives the promise that they'd cover problems in person onside if needed. So in extreme this could have meaned that a support engineer would have to fly in to germany from the US.

to be continued...