Dear Community,
I wanted to know your experiences with replacing the now abandoned Windows Essentials series of server versions. I have maintained a Windows 2012Essentials domain for a friend of mine for quite some time. Essentials (and before this SBS2003) was always a good fit for the company because of their limited IT skills and also limited number of users. The 25 user limit was never a problem and they did not have very strong requirements for a computer system. We have now decided that the current 2012 Essentials setup is no longer safe and we want to replace it. One option would be to move to 2016 Essentials (2 version up skipping 2012R2 Essentials). This is still an option but now with the release of 2022 this seems like an outdated option. So we are looking to going to 2019Essentials (or even 2022 Essentials). We try to keep close to essentials because Standard with CAL's seems too expensive.
However if we switch to 2019Essentials or higher, there is no experience role anymore. So I am thinking how to compensate for this loss in functionality. I am very curious how others have dealt with this situation so please share your experience if you have any!
What we are using currently (from 2012Essentials)
- ActiveDirectory, DNS, DHCP (< 25 users) : no CAL
- FileSharing (SMB) : company produces documents. These are saved here.
- A seperate domain joined 2019standard application Server
- Remote Access through VPN & RDP : working from home on the desktop on-premise
- Remote document sharing through remote web access : when on the road: get the document through the web
- Client pc backups : safety first
- Server backups: On Synology NAS & off-site Synology (Rsync)
When going with 2019 / 2022 Essentials I think we get:
- ActiveDirectory, DNS, DHCP (<25 users) : no CAL
- A seperate domain joined application Server
- FileSharing (SMB)
But how to get alternatives for:
But what are the thoughts of going for a cloud-bases option:
- Azure Active Directory with Azure Active Directory Connect
- No on-prem ActiveDirectory, DNS needed
- A seperate domain joined 2019standard application Server: can this join an Azure AD ?
- DHCP through router?
- Filesharing through sharepoint / onedrive
- Combined with options above for VPN/RDP/Backups
I have no experience with Azure as a replacement for small companies. We have already gotten office365 so a azure domain is existing but not connected to the onpremise AD-domain. I understand that 2019Essentials (Azure AD Connect) can synch with this domain but is this necessary or can we abandon an onpremise AD altogether? Simpler looks better for us.
Very curious on the solutions you came up with as I gather a lot of people will be searching for solutions out of this Microsoft created gap of SBS/Essentials!
Kind regards,
Martin