Small Business Server Setup Enhancements

One of the chief complaints about Small Business Server 4.0 was the lack of flexibility in setting up hardware.

Because Small Business Server 4.0 was supposed to be simple enough to install that small business owners could purchase it in Sam's Club stores, the Small Business Serve product team had to make certain flexibility concessions in order to maintain absolute ease of use.

With Small Business Server 4.0, you had very little choice about target drives and folders during the unattended setup. It was basically a "take it or leave it" deal. 

Small Business Server Setup Enhancements and Great Flexibility

Under Small Business Server 4.5, a new powerful dialog box is introduced to the setup program that allows you to alter target folder locations of all the Small Business Server applications. The only exception is NT Server 4.0, which installs prior to the Small Business Server 4.5 setup program. 

The following Small Business Server applications allow you to alter the target volume and folder locations at the time of setup.

• Internet Explorer browser

• SQL Server

• Windows NT Option Pack

• Proxy Server

• Microsoft Management Console

• Microsoft Fax Server

• Modem Share Service

• Exchange Server

• Small Business Server Administrator

• Client Applications

Small Business Server Setup Enhancements and Great Flexibility Help with Hard-Drive Real Estate Issues Too

And of course the most dramatic of the setup enhancements: the Small Business Server 4.5 setup program simply provides the much-needed flexibility for determining target volumes and folders for Small Business Server application.

Now you can also review individual disk space requirements to make more informed decisions about where to install each Small Business Server application. 

For example, if you purchased the Small Business Server 4.5/Office 2000 Professional bundle, Microsoft recommends that you have a 4GB drive or larger for a successful installation. Even though the installation, once complete, only occupies about 2GB of drive space, the Small Business Server 4.5 setup program requires a substantial amount of "headroom" or "overhead" for expanding compressed files during individual unattended Small Business Server application setups. 

Now with this new batch of setup enhancements, you can successfully install the Small Business Server 4.5/Office 2000 Professional bundle across two 2GB drives. All you'd need to do is point 500-700MB of applications toward your second hard drive and you'll have more than adequate free space for completing the Small Business Server 4.5 unattended setup.

With this same new set of setup enhancements, you can also minimize the number of files that have to be installed on the C: drive. 

With the Small Business Server 4.5 setup program that runs following the installation of NT Server 4.0 and SP3, you can install all of the remaining Small Business Server applications on a drive letter other than C:.

Finally because of these setup enhancements, on a fresh installation of Small Business Server 4.5, you can now point the data folders for both "company" and "users" to a non-default volume or path.

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