Progress report -- if you are interested. Please don't feel obliged to answer; I can probably work this out by myself, but it is very helpful to have your input if you are willing.
Changing to SBS Essentials is not too hard, I think, but I am going very slowly, so as not to upset what already works very well. It is not, however, a piece of cake.
At Sandeep's recommendation I got a SuperMicro server board and E3-1230 Xeon Ivy Bridge processor. Also Crucial 256G SSD for main drive and conventional 1TB drive for backup. Decided I could add a second Crucial drive and a RAID card later if this whole thing works, but wanted to minimize complexity at first.
Glitch #1 -- put it all together, powered up, and got 4 short beeps. Nothing else. SuperMicro has nothing anywhere about 4 short beeps in their error code list, but dredging the Internet, I discover it is an undocumented beep-code that means "unrecognized processor". Turns out, the motherboard comes in two versions, just like the E3-1230 CPU, and you have to upgrade the BIOS to make v1 work with v2 Ivy Bridge processor. It's just that you can't tell by looking at the box or the motherboard which version you have (Newegg doesn't know), and you can't upgrade v1 board unless you have the "recognized" Sandy Bridge version of the CPU! SHAME SuperMicro. I bought a Sandy Bridge processor, and hope that NewEgg will take the Ivy Bridge back on RMA. Server works fine, and I'm sticking with Sandy Bridge, v1!
Glitch#2 -- Called Medware (Sage, nowdays) to get some help putting our venerable Medware program on the server. They said it COULDN'T BE DONE, don't even try, and they won't help --so then I am left racking my brains -- how am I going to run a Workgroup for Medware and a Domain for the AC Server in our little office? Can't have two computers at everyone's desk! That won't work.
Turns out, Medware will run just fine, so far as I can tell in my testing so far, on the domain, on SBS Essentials -- as long as all the clients that use it are signed in as Administrators. A little security problem, but tolerable in a small office. But sort of makes the Domain into a peer-to-peer network, so not sure what we have gained. Maybe someday the practice management part of AC will actually be useful (my hope is to eventually have it all together anyway) -- running two programs is a little clumsy, but the staff has adapted.
Now - Problems to work out before I really deploy this so-far test bed:
1. Backup. Can AC be made to put the automatic backup somewhere other than in the AmazingCharts folder on the main drive? That fills up really fast, especially since SBS only gives me a 60GB partition to put all the programs in. I have to go in and manually delete the old backups, or it won't even work to back up to other, larger drives.
2. I don't understand how SBS partitions the main drive. What is Drive D for? Programs all install on C, and D seems to be reserved for things that SBS does for itself.
3. I thought I could use the 1TB drive as a backup for Medware and AC -- but if I assign it to SBS backup, the operating system just takes the whole drive and makes it disappear. What? I partitioned the drive, hoping half could be SBS and half AC and Medware -- but no go. SBS wants the whole thing.
4. Haven't got remote access working at all yet. Even with manually forwarding the port, the SBS remote access wizard won't work. I wonder if that is because I am still using the evaluation version, and I have to actually buy it to get whatever certificate it is that I need. And Remote Desktop behaves strangely -- at least on the local net. If I use RDP to access either the main server or a client running AC, I can not run AC remotely. It automatically comes up on my local machine! Don't know if it works like that from outside over internet. This clearly will take some work.
5. If I finally get this test bed working -- this is all being done in parallel with our working office system; the domain doesn't seem to conflict with the workgroup even using the same router -- can I just use the key code on my purchased SBS software, or am I going to have to re-install everything from scratch with the paid-for version?
This is all very interesting, and I suppose a useful exercise. It is an intellectual challenge, but it sure sucks up a lot of time! Of course, I can hire my IT guy to do it all, but that isn't the point.
