Overview of Small Business Server 2003 and ISA Server 2004

The SBS environment is unique in that you have a single server that contains the crown jewels of your computing environment. Any downtime for the ISA server also affects the server that authenticates clients, processes e-mail, and runs your SQL server. It's important to plan your upgrade to the system carefully, so that the downtime (which can last between three and eight hours) doesn't affect normal business operations.

Because upgrading ISA Server is just one part of upgrading SBS 2003 to Service Pack 1, you should take into consideration the whole process of upgrading Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange, and the like.

For more specific information, see the excellent article "How to Install Service Pack 1 For SBS 2003," by Mariëtte Knap et al., located at http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?tabid=236. This article provides detailed information about the entire process of upgrading SBS.

How Different SBS Versions Interact with ISA Server 2004

SBS 2003 comes in two editions: Standard Edition and Premium Edition. Only SBS Premium Edition includes ISA Server, as shown in Table 20-1. If you are using the Standard Edition, we recommend either upgrading to the Premium Edition, or installing ISA Server on a separate machine as described in Chapter 2, "Installing and Configuring Microsoft ISA Server 2004 Standard Edition." For the rest of the chapter, we focus solely on configuring ISA Server with SBS Premium Edition 2003.

Table 20-1: Comparing SBS 2003 Standard Edition to Premium Edition

	SBS 2003 Standard Edition	SBS 2003 Premium Edition
Windows Server 2003	Yes	Yes
Exchange 2003	Yes	Yes
Windows SharePoint Services	Yes	Yes
ISA Server 2000	No [*]	Yes
ISA Server 2004	No[*]	Only after installing SBS 2003 Service Pack 1 and installing ISA Server 2004 from the Service Pack 1 CD
SQL Server 2000	No	Yes
[*]You can use ISA Server in an SBS Standard Edition environment when it is installed on a separate computer from SBS itself.