Small Business Server 2011 Standard - Build Document III. Key Tasks After the Server Is Installed

MAKE A BACKUP

INSTALL CERTAIN UPDATES FIRST

     Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 can, and should, be installed on SBS 2011 Standard per the official SBS blog post here.  To get the Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 to be immediately offered, three updates are needed; subsequently, then you can search using Microsoft Update and have SP1 advertised for installation.  explained in detail here

While Exchange 2010 has SP1 already on the box, you should be offered Exchange update rollups.  Exchange 2010 SP2 is now released along with related update rollups for consideration to install; remember that Exchange Service Packs are irreversible aka you cannot uninstall or go back.  So unless a feature is desired in Exchange 2010 SP2, you'll be wise to go with what is a known good quantity.

All of the released Security updates for Windows 2008 R2 will also need to be updated..  After that you can manually install all of the updates after you flip the box over to Microsoft update.  While you can install using WSUS, using Microsoft update is a faster way to get the box updated. 

SPEED UP REBOOTS

     Unlike SBS 2008, SBS 2011 shuts down Exchange quickly thus at this time we don’t recommend you do any tweaks to speed up the reboot.

FIXING DNS

 Before running the Internet domain wizards determine if you will use the native DNS which points to root hints or will flip over to DNS forwarders.  There is a known issue with the DNS in Windows 2008 where the root hints may fail in certain circumstances.  R2 suffers from the same issue and the registry change was not set by Sustained engineering.

                  To fix this perform the following:

                  If you want to use root hints, you can set the maxcachettl registry value on the Windows 2008 DNS Server as follows:

                       a. Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe). 
              
                       b. Locate the following registry key: 
                       HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters 
              
                      c. On the Edit menu, click New, click DWORD (32-bit) Value , and then add the following value: 
                       Value: MaxCacheTtl 
                       Data Type: DWORD 
                       Data value: 0x2A300  (172800 in decimal = 2 days)

                       d. Click OK . 
                       e. Quit Registry Editor. 
                       f. Restart the DNS server.

                        Data type                       Range  
                        REG_DWORD 0x0 | 0x1 - 0xFFFFFFFF seconds Default value:0x15180 (86,400 seconds = 1 day)

                       You may see this behavior in Windows 2008, SBS 2008 and EBS 2008.
                       Alternativley you can use this script to set this Value for you. http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Set-DNS-Max-Cache-TTL-Value-09aced02

           2.  Setting DNS scavenging to ensure that Remote Web Workplace will properly work.

IE TRUSTED SITES

    Using the server to browse the Internet is not recommended, However, you may need to download files from Microsoft when there is no workstation available. Add these URLs to Internet Explorer trusted sites to prevent downloads from Microsoft from being blocked:

• Start up Internet Explorer, and click Tools > Internet Options > Security tab > Trusted Sites > Sites
• Add following URLs
  • download.microsoft.com
  • *.download.microsoft.com

Alternatively you can disable enhanced IE by launching the server manager, scrolling down, finding IE ESC and launching the console.  From there disable it for Administrators only and then NEVER surf from the server.

MOVE DATA

1. If you move the location for storing user data, please turn on Shadow Copies for the volume where the files will reside.  Optionally enable Access Based Enumeration for the shares
2. Unlike SBS 2008, the SBS 2011 is set to automatically trim the WSUS logs,
3. You can also move the SUSDB following this blog post.

DHCP SCOPE BEST PRACTICES

1. <to come>

To return to the outline of the SBS 2011 build document, click here.