SBS 2008 RC1 Is Out

Microsoft have made SBS 2008 RC1 available via Public Preview. It can be downloaded from here.

Other useful links from the TechNet site:

Release Notes, Installation Guide, SBS Documentation, SBS Resources and the SBS 2008 Evaluation Centre.

 

Very handy documents to download and read:

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Installation Guide

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Console Help

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Migration Help

Migrating to Windows Small Business Server 2008 from Windows Small Business Server 2003

Migrating to Windows Small Business Server 2008 from Windows Small Business Server 2008

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Release Candidate Reviewer’s Guide

 

Three very useful resources to keep an eye on while evaluating and testing SBS 2008:

The Official SBS Blog

SBSfaq.com

Smallbizserver.Net

 

And finally, if you plan on testing this in a Virtual Machine, check out:

VMWare Settings for SBS 2008

Note that SBS 2008 requires 4GB of RAM. It won’t install with any less memory than this. You can use an evaluation of VMWare Workstation or either VMWare Server or VMWare Server 2.0 Release Candidate. Both VMWare Workstation and VMWare Server 2.0 Release Candidate support USB 2.0 devices, so you can test server backups/recovery with removable USB drives with these products.

Essential Business Server RC1 Is Out

Microsoft have made EBS RC1 available via Public Preview. It can be downloaded from here.

Other useful links from the TechNet site:

Release Notes, Installation Guide, EBS Documentation, and the EBS Evaluation Centre.

 

Very handy documents (in .doc, .pdf or .xps format) to download and READ (as Susan says) before any migrations:

Windows Essential Business Server Product Overview

Windows Essential Business Server Getting Started Guide

Windows Essential Business Server Installation Guide

Migrating Active Directory Domain Services Scripts, Roaming Profiles, Redirected Folders, and Home Directories to Windows Essential Business Server

Migrating the DNS Role to Windows Essential Business Server

Migrating DHCP Server Service to Windows Essential Business Server

Migrating Microsoft Exchange Server to Windows Essential Business Server

Migrating from Windows Small Business Server 2003 to Windows Essential Business Server

 

Two very useful resources to keep an eye on while evaluating and testing EBS:

The Essential Business Server Team Blog

EBSfaq.com

 

And finally, if you need some gear to run this on, check out:

HP BladeSystem – in particular, the c3000 enclosure (“Shorty”)

IBM BladeCenter – in particular, the BladeCenter S offering

Intel Modular Server

Hyper-V Release Candidate is Here

Microsoft have made the Hyper-V Release Candidate available.

The Release Candidate has better (but not complete) localisation support, support for the x86 versions of Windows Server 2003 SMP, Vista SP1 and XP SP3, integration components for Vista SP1 and XP SP3 (yay!), and improved performance - especially with pass-though disk support.

It's looking good so far...