Man am I confused? Charles Van Heusen has left me with many more questions
So I was reading what Charles Van Heusen has had to say about the up coming Windows Small Business Server Codename Cougar
What I can share about the versions is outlined in the slide above, the "standard edition" will include Windows Server 2008, Exchange 2007, and Windows SharePoint Services v3 out of the box.
The "premium edition" will include the same core products above, plus a new twist, a 2nd Windows Server 2008 Standard edition license, a flavor of SQL Server 2008, (which one has yet to be announced), as well as support for Virtualization. Cougar will support the Hypervisor feature set (Virtualization) that Win2k8 standard supports. The RAM limitations will be the same as for Win2k8 standard.
Most customers purchased SBS2003 premium for SQL. With Cougar Premium, you can now offload the LOB app that relies on SQL on a separate server with the inclusion of Win2k8 standard and SQL 2008. This will also allow our customers who want to deploy terminal services in app sharing mode to do so on the second server.
Now I really like to see things in a graphical representation and this slide "should" have really helped me but here is where some of my confusion comes from.
Standard has Windows 2008, Sharepoint Services 3.x and Exchange 2007
Now Premium brings a second server on which I can do:
* SQL Server 2008 (??? Edition)
* Virtualization
* Terminal Services (as Charles suggested workload)
BUT I would not want to do any two together (just me) If I'm paying for SQL 2008 I will want to use it and I'm pretty sure I will not load it on a Terminal Server, so to me that makes it a separate server too. If I am reading press releases properly there will be a version of Windows Virtualization called Hypervisor Server which if I am not mistaken is the $28USD Virtualization Layer.
Here is what I would do given the diagram above and Charles Suggested possible workloads:
Deploy Cougar Standard features on Server 1
Deploy Hypervisor Server on the second Server Hardware then load the 2nd Sever Software to run SQL 2008 ??? Edition, then of course buy a third Windows 2008 Server to run as a Terminal Server (if needed depending on the customers Branch Office requirements)
I think this will be a greatly flexible solution if I can deploy it as I have described, I am a little more used to the SBS team being a lot more prescriptive with the deployment scenario so perhaps that will come later in the development cycle.
I do notice a missing piece from the picture and I wonder where it is intended to be deployed? There is no mention of System Center Essentials 2007 in what Charles has to say nor the Diagram. We know SCE 2007 is included because we have been told by many people over the last little while and the announcement was made as far back as TechED 2006, so not seeing it on the chart is a concern although this may just be that there is no decision as to which version of Cougar to release it on. ***Hint put it in BOTH editions***
Now if I were to speculate SCE 2007 would be a workload for Server 1 and to that end I have done some work with SBS 2003 R2 to run SCE 2007 and with the promised memory improvements SP1 will bring this seem to be a good choice, after all if a third server were deployed I'd be an ISA Server away from Essential Business Server 2008.
So where are we at? I am a little concerned that there is a far bit of deployment variation possible which is not very SBS Sized and I still don't know details of how this will be managed, however given the track record of dropping features, I have only really seen MS drop promised deliverables because they are not ready, so since SCE 2007 is already shipping I expect to hear more about where it fits in this suite very shortly.