The Small Business Server of Minnesota User's Group Network is comprised of partners, consultants & professionals devoted to furthering their knowledge as a reference platform for small-to-medium business (SMB) relationships.

SMB partners and consultants of varying skill levels are invited to attend our meetings to share ideas, meet other SBSers, discuss Microsoft Small Business Server and other SMB technologies, as well as business issues and opportunities related to the SMB segments.

Please check our Next Meeting page for details.

We invite IT professionals who install and support Microsoft Small Business Server and other Microsoft technology products to join our group. To receive meeting notices, please join our LinkedIn Group.

Windows Server 2012 Essentials

"The right tool for the job… Server Essentials makes client backups so simple that not doing them borders on criminal. Combined with the Microsoft Online Backup service [Windows Azure Online Backup] (and possibly with replication based on Hyper-V), the backup features make for a much more disaster-resistant small network. And the integration with Office 365 and Exchange (but mostly with Office 365) greatly reduces the complexity of user administration.” - Ars Technica, A server for the rest of us: hands-on with Windows Server 2012 Essentials

The Windows Server 2012 launch was completed earlier this month with the public RTM announcement for Essentials! The product is available in Volume Licensing as of November 1, with MNA partners shipping server systems by the end of the year.

Windows Server Essentials (WSe) provides a robust, simple to use, cost-effective platform for Small Business to manage their on-premise environment, while taking advantage of all of the benefits of Cloud based services such as Azure back-up and out-of-the-box integration with Office 365.

In addition to its value alone or with Office 365, all the customers that buy Windows Server 2012 Standard and Datacenter in Open, can downgrade one their Virtual Machines to Essentials at no cost. This will allow them to set up a powerful, flexible, scalable and yet economical multi server environment, with their Standard instance to run legacy LOB applications, and a WS Essentials instance running their Domain Controller, Active Directory, Back up roles and acting as a management console for Office 365.

Call to action:

• Get familiar with “the First Server” campaign materials already available to help you engage with our partners.
• Read the full Windows Blog entry available here, the datasheet and the FAQ document.
• Encourage our partners, to take a deep dive with the newly released Hands On Labs, licensing guidance, to download the trial version and to use the attached migration guidance document for their customers with SBS.

Download the SBS Migration Sales Sheet here.