Removing SBS2008

[walkities]

This is going to be a silly question as Im sure any expert would say keep sbs2008 in our network buuut we have recently renovated our small store and our network now consists of our sbs2008 server and one computer. At most we ever had 4.

I've been instructed to remove sbs from our network as it's currently costing us to much to lease and seems like overkill for one computer to our owners.

In a very vague question how would I go about removing this? Obviously I could just unplug it (haha) but Im sure all the past computers have a tie to the server (for ex. the internet on each machine wont work while the server is off which I assume is the web server certificate?), as well we have some debit machines running on this same network that go down if the server is off. Can I remove this certificate to solve that?

 

[NetworkTek]

It would be quite an involved process. Small business server is designed to be an all in one solution providing several different functions. The are multiple things to take into consideration. Here is a quick run down.

1. Does this server provide your email?
2. Do you have any server/client based applications that are installed on the server? If so you need to research and see if those applications can be moved to your pc and the process to do that?
3. Are there any databases for those applications?
4. DNS/DHCP services need to be migrated to some other device. Most likely your router. This is also why when your server is off the internet is unavailable.
5. Remove your existing pc from the SBS2008 domain. Create a local profile on that pc and migrate data from the old domain profile to the new one.
6. Do you have any network printers? If so is the SBS box serving as your print server?
7. Does this server host any web applications? Web site, Remote Web Workplace,etc.

These are just the major things off the top of my head I can think of. While I agree SBS2008 may be overkill for your environment it could be a larger task then you are prepared for. But may be well worth while to remove if you are paying a high lease bill for it. Any additional information you could provide would be helpful as the information provided was just off of the top of my head.

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[walkities]

Thanks for the reply figured it would be an involved process.

As for your questions,

1. No email is used, we use our ISP IMAP server.

2. Im only aware of one server/client based application and that was Symantec Endpoint. The server was more or less used primarily for backup.

3. There was an SQL database for one application but since we've changed we no longer use that database.

4. Currently we have a firebox Edge as our router but again paying to renew each year is just an added cost for them, we dont share our internet with anyone so we will replacing the Edge possibly with a new router.

5.I have moved the local computer off the domain and into a workgroup and copied/installed some of the programs needed for it to run (mostly office and simply accounting). Everything for the moment is working fine.

6. One network printer but not a huge issue as we have another inkjet computer we've been using as well.

7. No website, no remote workplace etc.

Primarily from all accounts I seen this was more so used as a way to filter web traffic, a backup server, and to run our old inventory SQL database.

I already have the individual computer running by itself, the only thing I need the server for is the internet. I will try and reroute that to our router and see what happens.

 

[NetworkTek]

Then it won't be to awful bad. Sounds like you have done the biggest part. The biggest part then is to move DHCP to your router or since you only have one workstation you could manually assign the pc an ip address and set a default gateway(edge firewall) and a dns server(Edge Firewall and a Public DNS). Dhcp would be easier if you will be expanding and adding more devices. Also make sure there are no proxy settings in your browser. That will also prevent you from browsing the internet.

Network+
Inet+
MCP
MCSA 2003
MCTS