I just returned from SMB Nation 2008 fall conference in Seattle. Actually the conference was held over the October 4th weekend but my wife and I took advantage of the trip to take a short vacation and tour southern Washington state and Oregon. Oregon is beautiful, as is Washington. Lots of wineries!
The main take away from the conference was some tips and cautions on moving to SBS 2008. Looks like SBS 2008 will have plenty of WOWs but they are offset by some gotchas when moving to it from SBS 2003. Jeff Middleton, SBSMigration, gave a great presentation on the pitfalls of migrating to SBS 2008. Seems the Microsoft migration takes quite a long time because it has to do a MOVE on each Exchange mailbox from SBS 2003 to 2008. It also changes the original SBS 2003 box so there is no roll back in case there is a 'problem'. The SBS MVPs attended a week long deep dive training on SBS 2008 just before the conference and the consensus was allow 4 days for the migration.
Amy Babinchak, ISA MVP, gave a great presentation on choosing a firewall since ISA will no longer be included with SBS. The take away here was to decided what solution best fits your client and present that, and only that. You are the trusted technical advisor. You make the decision, don't make the client try to decided other than whether to purchase your solution or not.
Susan Bradley, SBS Diva, and Ofer Shimrat gave a presentation on the Gotchas of SBS 2008. They were introduced by Australian honorary MVP Ken Gareoux (see picture). Big take aways here are be sure to have plenty of hardware. EVERYTHING starts on the C: drive. You can move it later but it starts on C: so have a big C: drive. Also have LOTS of RAM. 4 GB is the minimum. The more the better. Obviously a good fast CPU(s) is (are) best. They gave us a lot more but you would have to be there...
The second day was dominated by presentations on EBS (Essential Business Server). It appears to be a great product for the mid-sized company with an IT person on staff.
It was once again a great conference. If you have the chance to go to SMB Nation 2009, go. Harry puts on a great show. Great parties, great venue (right on the water). It was great to see many old friends, MVPs and otherwise, and to make new ones. Hope to see you there next year.