Downgrade rights for second Windows Server in SBS or EBS 2008 Premium – What’s the deal?

re: Downgrade rights for second Windows Server in SBS or EBS 2008 Premium – What’s the deal?

Eric Ligman — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:18:39 GMT

@ Dawn - Dawn, I actually published the steps, part #s and contact #s in subsequent posts on the Blog to do this. Here are the links:

- Part numbers for the SBS SA benefits media kits you need from my earlier post: http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2008/12/09/9188009.aspx

- How do we get the SBS Software Assurance benefits such as: Outlook 2007, Entourage 2008, ISA 2006 + additional Windows Server 2003, and Office SharePoint Designer 2007 now that SBS 2008 is out?: http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2008/12/05/9180289.aspx

re: Downgrade rights for second Windows Server in SBS or EBS 2008 Premium – What’s the deal?

Dawn Lutz — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:53:25 GMT

Our customer purchased SBS 2008 Premium Edition from Dell through the Microsoft Open License program. We need to install Windows Server 2003 on a second server which should not be a problem, but we are unable to figure out where to the get the media/key for this downgrade. Our customer has spent hours on the phone with Dell and Microsoft and we have looked at the Solutions Pathway page but can't figure out the logistics for this downgrade.

re: Downgrade rights for second Windows Server in SBS or EBS 2008 Premium – What’s the deal?

Eric Ligman — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:07:22 GMT

@ WaltB - What you are asking is if you can use your downgrade rights on your SBS 2008 rights you received through SA and utilize the second Windows Server license in doing so. The answer is no and is something I covered in my post on October 15th: http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2008/10/15/9000514.aspx

re: Downgrade rights for second Windows Server in SBS or EBS 2008 Premium – What’s the deal?

WaltB@ComputerConsultation.com — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:48:51 GMT

If you have a current SA agreement with SBS 2003 Premium I wondered if you can do the following:

1. Leave SBS 2003 on the server hardware it is currently running on.

2. Install the 2nd Windows Server license that is part of SBS 2008 Premium (either Windows 2003 R2 or Windows 2008 Server) on a new piece of server hardware.

3. Then install the SQL license that is part of SBS 2008 Premium (either SQL 2008 Standard or SQL 2005 Standard) on the new server.

At the point down the road (12 to 18 months) that the existing hardware running the SBS 2003 server is ready be replaced we would install SBS 2008 on that replacement server hardware.