New Scenario for the SBS 2011 Premium Add-On

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy David Fabritius from Windows Server Marketing]

Last year we introduced the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-On, which offers a more flexible solution to our customers’ needs for running line-of-business (LOB) applications and other workloads. Today we are happy to announce that starting September 15, 2011, we have pushed that flexibility even further: you may now use the SBS 2011 Premium Add-On in SBS 2008 environments! The SBS 2011 Premium Add-On includes an additional license for Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, which allows you to deploy another server in your SBS 2011 or SBS 2008 network, and SQL Server 2008 R2 for Small Business, which contains a range of features that can help businesses maximize the value of their information with greater capabilities in development, manageability, business intelligence, and data warehousing. SQL Server 2008 R2 for Small Business has exactly the same capabilities as SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard, however it is only available to use in SBS 2011 and SBS 2008 environments.

Starting today our customers who have SBS 2008 Standard but need the additional functionality of the SBS 2011 Premium Add-On to improve the way they run their businesses can take advantage of this opportunity to add premium functionality without fully upgrading to SBS 2011. And customers who already have SBS 2008 Premium can add an additional SBS 2011 Premium Add-On server to their network should that need arise.

Deploying the SBS 2011 Premium Add-On in an SBS 2008 environment requires an additional SBS 2011 CAL Suite for each user that connects to the SBS 2011 Premium Add-on server. Also note that the total number of SBS 2011 Premium Add-on CALs must not exceed 25 for SBS 2011 Essentials environments and 75 for SBS 2011 Standard or SBS 2008 environments.

For more information, please visit https://www.microsoft.com/sbs.