small business server 2011 essentials

[brucestephenson]

Anyone have any experience / problems with sbs 2011 essentials and OD?

[brucestephenson]

I am underwhelmed by the responses to this posting! 
So I will add a little of my experience; so far, so good. I am “bread boarding” the system at home before I bring it to the office. SBS 2011 Essentials seems an excellent solution for dental offices with fewer than 25 computers which is probably most of us.
Some advantages:
1. Max of 25 users
2. No CAL’s (extra license fees)
3. Designed for small business without in-house IT staff (I am in the in-office IT staff and I love “easy.”)
4. Cheap – about $350
5. Microsoft also has a version of server 2008 called “foundation” with a similar price but max of 15 users and not “simplified” for non-IT business owners
6. Automates many processes including installation; you put the cd in and come back in 30 minutes. It formats and partitions the drive and sets most basic configurations
7. Client computers can run XP pro, Vista or any version of win 7 although it likes win 7 pro or ultimate if you are automatically backing up client computers onto server (I’m not)
8. Runs MySQL and open dental just fine; “seen” by open dental clients whether they are part of the essentials domain or just on the same network (but firewall on server needs to be turned off or specific open dental required ports opened – I have not done this yet – need a call to open dental to find out which ports)
9. Handles all the usual file and printer sharing roles of other server software
10. Available pre-installed from at least one OEM – TigerDirect

So far, this seems like the best product Microsoft has released since windows for workgroups 3.11 (the first windows with network integration – I go back a long ways with Bill!)

I would love to hear the experience of others … especially any problems so I can avoid them.

Bruce Stephenson, DDS
Bruce@PaperlessDentistry.com

[brucestephenson]

I neglected to mention that in order to use xp on a client computer, the hard drive needs to be formatted with NTFS, not fat32. That is sort of a PITA – I had two computers with fat32. One I replaced with a new Costco computer and the other I reformatted and installed win 7.

[stjames70]

May I ask why you need a server at all?

In OD, you need one computer with the main database (we will call this the 'server'), and all the other computers will connect to this 'server'

As far as I know, there is no limit to how many computers you can link together with Windows 7 and with Win XP there is a workaround which will allow you to link more than 10 computers if your 'server' happens to be a WinXP machine.

Are you going to host your own email server? You will need a server if that is the case, but I have very seldom or ever seen an office really need server software to fulfill their needs.

It would be wise if the computer hosting your main OD database has 'server' class components so it can just stay on 24/7.

[brucestephenson]

“May I ask why you need a server at all?”

I think that is a very good question!
As a general rule, I think is a whole lot of misunderstanding and superstition regarding “servers” in dental offices. In my own case, I am not planning on using it as an email server or connecting to any of the Microsoft “cloud” services which are also integrated into sbs essentials. I was using server 2003 machine as a dedicated server until the hard drive started to fail. I then moved everything to the Costco win7 machine ($500) on my desktop. This is currently acting as the server for 15 other office computers AND as a workstation for me (I know! A real no – no! But it is temporary). This has worked very well without any problems for the last 3 months. So I very seriously considered using win 7 on the new dedicated server.
I decided to go with sbs essentials for a few reasons:
1. I’m curious
2. Cheap; $390 from amazon ($140 for win 7 pro)
3. Probably a little faster as a file server, although even if this is true, it is probably marginal at best
4. Better, easier print server as it allows you to install both win 7 and xp drivers. I tend to switch out workstations fairly frequently and setting up the printers (we have 5) each time is a PITA. Essentials make it a little easier and quicker
5. May be a little more secure
6. Ability to centrally back up data on the client workstations. You can even do images of client machines which would make re-installation easier if I did that. I usually just buy a new machine because it is usually an older machine that conks out. Backing up some data from some client machines should be useful, however. When I get around to it!
7. I certainly don’t need a domain but there is no disadvantage but the ability to control access by user groups may be handy – gotta’ keep those pesky hygienists away from QuickBooks!
8. I think the biggest reason for me is the “mystique” of the server will tend to keep other people from trying to modify or “fix” the server. I have never seen this written anywhere but I think one of the big reasons computer consultants like server software is that it keeps their clients from trying to make changes! And I think this tends to be a good thing in many cases. I have 4 other dentists in the office – two of them under 30 – and I think ignorance makes a good firewall. On the one hand, sbs essentials is really easy to setup and change – a big advantage for me personally – but still “different” enough to keep other people from trying to make casual changes. I actually think this is the most important reason in most dental office situations. The “ignorance firewall” can prevent a lot of problems!

SBS essentials also has some pretty neat backup and restore options but these are really not too important to me. A really big advantage of open dental is a very quick “fail over” option. If the server goes down for any reason, I have several other workstations in the office that have MySQL installed and the OD data backed up automatically onto them every night. Any one of them can be quickly re-configured as the new open dental server and the other workstations redirected to the new server. A ten minute job. (The OD data, but not the images, is also backed up to dropbox every night and, in turn, copied to two of my home computers and one of my partner’s home computers.)

So that’s way I chose to go with sbs essentials on the new server. But I would certainly not put up too much of a fight about using win 7 instead!

[jordansparks]

Servers come in handy for many purposes. For example, DNS, Remote Desktop Services for virtual terminals, DHCP, hosting an internal wiki, hosting a website or a web service, hosting a forum, staging and testing installations, restoring backups, phone PBX, and on and on. I strongly resisted servers for a long time. I think we went as high as 30 workstations before I broke down and bought the first server. The first one was the hardest only because we had to read up on how CALs worked. But once we got past that hump, it's now really easy to add more servers because the licensing is already covered. We're up to about 12 servers now, with 3 more planned. Of course, we are no longer a dental office, but maybe that will help give you a feel for why you might or might not need a server.

[stjames70]

I of course have heard the argument that your 'server' and your personal 'workstation' should not be one and the same machine.

But then again, I know many business where separating the server did not help one bit when multiple hardware failure points occurred and data was lost.

Now let me propose this particular set up, and I would like your input, particularly on possible failure points:

1) Main 'server' with a six drive RAID 1+0 array with a few cold spare drives on the side when one of the RAID drives start to show failure
2) 'Server' is MacPro OSX running Win7 under VMWare Fusion. Win7 runs as a virtual machine and 'snapshots' are taken at least once a day so you can go back to a time point where everything was still working.
3) OD is backed up daily to a connected hard drive
4) OD is backed up and restored in my Win7 copy at home so that I know the backup is functional
5) OD's database is automatically backed up to Carbonite daily

The only difference is I am still working on the RAID array in my office. There is no guarantee that any hardware setup will not fail, but if you start with server class components which are meant to run 24/7 and you setup a RAID 1+0 array, the only way for you to lose all your data would be fire, theft or an act of God.

[brucestephenson]

Using the MacPro and running win 7 virtually is an interesting configuration. How is the speed compared to a straight windows machine? Also your RAID configuration gives you redundancy for hard drive failure but does not protect you against power supply or motherboard failures which appear to be the next most common points of failure. Again, I think a nice feature of Open Dental is that it allows such an easy “fail over” solution by simply having other machines with Mysql installed and the OD data backed up on them automatically at night. Only ten minutes to reconfigure the whole network to run on the new server. The only issue is lost data since last night’s backup. And, really, the only issues there are the appointments that were made since that backup. For most other data, there is still a paper trail in the office to use to re-enter stuff.

A question for Jordan: does the OD backup stop the mysql service while that backup runs? If it does not, can the OD backup be run while others are using Open Dental? If others can use OD while the OD backup runs, it would be possible to do more frequent backups during the day. Not a big issue but it would be nice is possible. Also, Jordan, I don’t think my … or most other … dental office is quite ready for 12 servers! That sounds like way too much fun for me!

[jordansparks]

The bigger the office, the less realistic it is to rely on a paper trail and staff memory to fill the hours gap.

We run our CrashPlan backup every 10 minutes I think. We have always done all backups with all software without stopping the mysql service. The worst that might happen is that a backup is done on a file right in the middle of a transaction. In that case, we would use the the backup from 10 minutes earlier, but we've never actually seen that situation. Keep in mind that CrashPlan only backs up the changed files. Possibly only the changed bytes in a changed file. So it happens very quickly, maybe 5 or 10 seconds. And we can restore to any previous point in time going back about 3 years. Modern hard drives can handle the backup size easily.

[stjames70]

CrashPlan eh? It looks good -- question: 1)Has a crash occurred and you had to restore from backup?

As to the previous question regarding Win7 on a MacPro: speed is not and probably will never be an issue on OD since I can run OD even on my POS Dell workstations which are nearly 7 years old and running good old XP. But to answer directly, Win7 virtualized run seamlessly -- I don't think speed is any slower at all on the Mac. The greatest issue is network speed connection -- in this, we are fine using Apple's Airport wi-fi solution. Somedays (and those are extremely rare), I wish I had hardwired ethernet (which we will do this month).

I have a clone of the virtual machine 'server' in my home which I personally restore the databases, essential files, etc., every night. In case of total failure, I would need to come in the office and bring in a copy of the virtual machine and install it in any of the existing iMacs. The computer ID is cloned so that all the existing workstations would automatically recognize the clone as the original in the workgroup. Bothersome to do this sometimes, and it does depend on one human being, but then again, if your systems failed in your office, you would also be the go to guy I am sure.

[jordansparks]

1) no. We have restored from a backup, but not because of a crash; just for testing.

[Jay]

Sorry if these questions are obvious to others but...

1. For the sake of completeness is there a way to 'check' if a restored backup is really and completely restored? In other words, after restoring is there any standard diagnostic procedure?

2. Is the procedure for restoring any different if the installation being backed up is a beta version of OD?

[jordansparks]

1. File size comparison would be a good start. Trying to run it and view today's schedule is also an excellent indicator.
2. No.