The designers of Windows SBS 2011 have made many of the installation
and configuration decisions that Windows Server 2008 R2 administrators
must make. The default server configuration implements a series of best practices by installing certain roles and features and configuring them to create a standard Windows SBS server configuration.
These best practices are not required to run Windows SBS 2011; you
can make whatever changes to the operating system and its applications
you want. However, you should be conscious of the repercussions that
deviations from the standard configuration can have. The Windows SBS
2011 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) is a tool that can examine your
current system and network configurations and create a report listing
the differences between it and the recommended Windows SBS 2011
settings.
The Windows SBS 2011 BPA is not supplied with the Windows SBS 2011 product. You must download it—and the Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer 2.0 (MBCA)—from the Microsoft Download Center at http://microsoft.com/downloads and install them on your Windows SBS primary server. The BPA and the MBCA are both packaged as Microsoft Installer (.msi)
files, which you must execute on your primary server, MBCA first and
then BPA. A standard installation wizard takes you through the process
of approving the license agreement and specifying a location for the
program. You can also choose to integrate the Windows SBS 2011 BPA into
the Windows SBS Console, which enables you to view the results of the
BPA scan in the Detailed Network Report.
Once you have installed the software, use the following procedure to run the Windows SBS 2011 BPA and perform your first scan:
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Log on to your Windows SBS 2011 primary server, using an account with network Administrator privileges.
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Click Start. Then click All Programs > Windows Small Business Server Tools > Windows Small Business Server 2011 Best Practices Analyzer. When the User Account Control dialog box appears, click Continue. The Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer 2.0 page appears.
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In the Select a product drop-down list, select Windows Small Business Server 2011 BPA and click Start scan. BPA proceeds to scan the system and displays the resulting report.
