Exchange Server 2010 SP1 in Small Business Server 2011

What is the difference between Exchange 2010 SP1 in Small Business Server 2011 and in the so-called normal deployment of Exchange Server 2010?

This is a question that has been wracking my brain for weeks.

I’m working on the Exchange-side of our upcoming Small Business Server 2011 training. My brother-in-arms Ed Liberman has graciously allowed me to join him on his new series and it’s a challenge for me because I don’t typically play with Exchange on SBS but in “normal” deployments, if you can call them that.

I have to admit, I was expecting there to be all sorts of governors, tourniquets, lock-downs (call them what you wish) on the Exchange side in SBS 2011 but I keep finding it to be exactly the same. The same as a typical installation of Exchange in a standard deployment.

Oh, sure there are some differences in that I wouldn’t deploy my Exchange on a domain controller in a normal rollout but SBS has been doing that forever so that isn’t a problem here. And I do find it a bit freaky that some things have already been done for me on the Exchange side thanks to SBS wizards.

I do like the way users are automatically configured from your SBS Administration Console, but I can still go in to the Exchange Management Console or Shell (or ECP) and do all the typical configuration work on the back end. All-in-all… I’m impressed!

But I assumed there had to be something that wasn’t the same, but beyond the obvious, it turns out there isn’t much. I created a quick video (because that’s what we do folks) that will explain the minor differences between Exchange 2010 SP1 in Small Business Server 2011 and a typical deployment of Exchange Server 2010. Hope you enjoy it.

In it I reference the SBS FAQ and if you want to read up on some of these things you can download it here: SBS 2011 Licencing FAQ.

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