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SBS 2011 Premium Add-On Installation on Same Server as Existing SBS 2011 Standard

Answered SBS 2011 Premium Add-On Installation on Same Server as Existing SBS 2011 Standard

  • Sunday, December 30, 2012 3:21 AM
     
     
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    Hi,

    I've recently finished upgrading our server from SBS 2003 to SBS 2011 Standard.

    Now we are looking to deploy the SBS 2011 Premium Add-On for the SQL server support and I need advice on how to go about doing this. Firstly, I've not setup virtual servers like this before, so if anyone can reference good reading material then it would be greatly appreciated.

    As far as I am aware, SBS 2011 Standard cannot be used for Hyper-V and, therefore, cannot be the primary OS. So I would have to install SBS 2008 R2 and set it as the main OS. Then setup two virtual servers using Hyper-V and install SBS 2011 Standard and the Premium Would it be possible to retain the existing SBS 2011 Standard installation along with all of its files? Or would it require a fresh installation?

    Basically, I'm looking for a way to setup the premium add-on without having to rebuild the SBS 2011 standard installation from scratch.

    Kind Regards,

    Peter Scott


     

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  • Sunday, December 30, 2012 8:50 AM
     
     
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    Hi Peter

    The only realistic way of you keeping your settings is to use a P2V tool to convert the physical box to a VM. There are various tools to do this, such as VMM.

    Clearly, life would have been a million times simpler if you'd known about this requirement before you started, as you could then have had SBS as a VM to begin with.

    Once you have SBS as a VM you install 2008 R2 (not SBS 2008 R2 as in your post) and enable the Hyper-V role. You then set up your two VMs, one for SBS and one for SQL.

    If you ONLY need the SQL part of Premium then it *can* be installed directly onto the main box, but there are some risks involved with that as there are already a number of SQL components on the box.

    Jim

     
  • Sunday, December 30, 2012 9:02 AM
     
     
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    You might also be able to take a full backup of the SBS 2011 box, then do a bare metal restore from the backup into a VM.

    Jim

     
  • Sunday, December 30, 2012 12:59 PM
     
     
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    Hi Jim, thank you for the reply.

    For deploying the virtual server, as I need Windows Server 2008 R2 (thanks for the correction), I believe I will need a license key for this new OS. What's more, if Wikipedia's breakdown of the licensing is correct, then I would need at least the enterprise edition since 2 virtual machines would be required (one for SBS 2011 Standard, and one for the SBS 2011 Premium Add-On).

    If this is the case then it would be prohibitively expensive as a license for Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition would cost around £1500. For that money we would be better off purchasing a new server entirely and installing the Premium Add-On as a second server on the network.

    Would you say that this is a correct analysis?

    Peter

     
  • Sunday, December 30, 2012 2:44 PM
     
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    No, that's incorrect.

    When you buy SBS 2011 Premium, you get three DVDs. The first is SBS 2011, the second is Win 2008 R2 and the third is SQL 2008 R2. With that second DVD, Win 2008 R2, you get what's called 1+1 licensing. That allows you to install Win 2008 R2 on a physical system, enable JUST the Hyper-V role, and then install one more copy of 2008 R2, from the same DVD and license key, as a virtual machine. So, two installs of 2008 R2, one as the physical system with just Hyper-V and one as a virtual system. You then install SQL on that second (the virtual) 2008 R2.

    SBS 2011 then gets installed as a second VM (and you can run as many VMs as you like, subject to horsepower and each being licensed. The 1+1 licensing allows you to use the 2008 R2 license key twice, 1 physical and 1 virtual.

    Now that 2012 is out, I would probably use 2012 Hyper-V as the parent OS, and then have 2011 and 2008 R2 from the SBS Premium discs.

    Jim

     
  • Wednesday, January 02, 2013 6:25 PM
     
     
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    Thank you for the help.

    I've not replied untill now because I wanted to make sure that everything was up and running properly before I rounded off this thread.

    I setup the new host operating system and installed SBS 2011 Standard and Server 2008 R2 on virtual machines and this went without difficulty. However, I wasn't able to retain the previous SBS 2011 Standard installation - I attempted to restore from a bare-metal backup I had taken before setting up the new operating systems, but windows would not start. It's probable that I made a mistake somewhere, but I opted to rebuild everything from scratch since it's only a small network and this method at least offered the assurance that it would work.

    Due to the fact that the license was already included with the discs, I've deployed Server 2008 R2 as the host operating system instead of 2012, as you suggested.

    Finally, I'd just like to say that, having never use dit before, I am very impressed with Hyper-V. Very robust, simple, etc. and, if nothing else, it drastically reduces the restart time for the main server (which is a virtual machine). The only issue I've come across so far is that you can't share USB ports with the virtual machines - an irritation for things like network licensing dongles, but it can be easily resolved.

    Anyway, thanks again,

    Peter