eBox Vs MS Small Business Server 2008

It's always a need for small enterprises to have their complete IT infrastructure management tools on a single box and that too with a minimum cost

Thursday, January 01, 2009

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In this article, we are going to do a one-on-one comparison of two products which let you manage your IT infrastructure from a single box: one is totally free and open source (eBox), and the other is Microsoft SBS 2008.

Both products are meant to be deployed in a new environment, where deployment is being done for the first time. Both share some common features like user management, sharing resources like, printer, fax, network gateway, email, instant messaging and backup tools. Now let's see the capabilities of both.

Base OS and hardware requirement
eBox is based on Ubuntu Server with 2.6 kernel, whereas the SBS is a MS product having base OS Windows Server 2008 Standard. The difference between the two is that eBox has a striped down version of Ubuntu server, hence you will not get any visual interface on the host machine. So for accessing the GUI (for management), you require a second machine which should be able to connect to eBox. In case of SBS 2008, you will get a complete GUI on the host machine itself.

SBS 2008 requires atleast 2 GHz processor in case its single core processor whereas 1.5 G Hz or higher for multi-core, atleast 4 GB RAM, 60 GB HDD and fax channel. The clients supported by SBS are: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition SP2 or later, Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate, Windows Mobile 5.0 or later. There is no specified hardware requirement for eBox, and so it depends upon the number of users you will be handling. There is no restriction to what client OS you use with eBox, but this is for sure that what SBS can do with its clients, eBox does only some part of it.

Messaging and collaboration
Messaging is a must have for any business especially today. SBS 2008 provides you messaging with Exchange 2007 which is indeed considered to be the best. It includes much more than just mailing. For example, if you need to access your mail, you can check not only from your desktop's mail client but also from mobile device and even from a ordinary phone. Exchange also provides you an integrated support of anti-virus, anti-spam and anti-phishing. eBox also provides you with Postfix for email, but does not provide unified communication like SBS. For anti-spam and anti-virus, eBox integrated with spam-assassin and clamAV. Moreover, eBox also has built-in instant messaging tool Jabber for your corporate environment , helping your employees interact and collaborate right from their desk.

For collaboration, SBS 2008 has MS Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 included, which helps in increasing the efficiency and productivity of your organization. It helps in sharing internal document, calenders, manage issues and held discussion even you are away from office securely. With its easy-to-use GUI, managing users and deploying access rights to the resources depending upon the designation became easy and fast. Whereas in case of eBox, there is no such feature available similar to SharePoint, but it provides you with a web server which allows you to share content or file publicly via HTTP or samba. But you can deploy anyopen source and free solution like Alfressco as a substitute to SharePoint on eBox.

The dashboard of eBox provides you a comprehensive view of all the services that are runningincluding information about the system and the network.

Keeping systems up-to-date
This feature is of course useful even if you have more than 10 systems on your network. When the number of systems increases on your network, it becomes very difficult to monitor each and every computer and keep it up-to-date. Moreover, if there are say 20 computers on your network and each of them updates itself via Internet, it results in a lot of bandwidth consumption. SBS 2008 is equipped with a nice feature called network updates powered by MS Windows Server Updates services. Take for example, whenever an update is made available, SBS downloads and saves it, and after the confirmation by the administrator, all the systems on the network get updated from SBS system and not via Internet, thus saving lots of bandwidth. Supposing SP1 of Vista is released and it has some bugs (suppose) then the update can be postponed for all the system until a stable version is released. eBox doesn't have a update server out-of-the box, if you want, you have to configure it on your own.

Network management
If you are looking for a perfect network server, then both solutions offer you almost everything. Both SBS and eBox facilitates you with remote access, DHCP server, DNS server and Web server. But still there are differences between the two. SBS 2008 allows users to connect directly to their desktop from anywhere (via Internet), plus the user will see only the files or folder which are associated with him or which he has proper access to. Whereas in case of eBox, (uses OpenVPN) first you need to get into the corporate network of the organization and then you have to manually connect to your system. A certificate authority is also integrated with eBox which makes the VPN connections more secure.

eBox also provides the option of checking the installed version of different components.

Security
Both SBS and eBox can serve as a network gateway, providing gateway level security. The administration tool of both solutions let you manage firewall and other tools with ease. eBox is powered by Squid for bandwidth management, DansGaurdian for content filtering, iptables for firewall and iproute for controlling TCP/IP networking and traffic control. SBS 2008 is powered by Windows Live OneCare Server edition which protects against viruses, spyware, hackers, and other unwanted intruders. But Live OneCare that is included with SBS 2008 comes as a trial of 120 days, after which you have to subscribe .

SBS also provides you lots of information in detail about what is running in the system.

Online
You won't find this in eBox. SBS 2008 gets integrated with Office Live small business, which helps you in creating your online presence. It lets you create web pages without knowing HTML codes or any scripting language. It also helps in promoting your business online via email marketing and keyword advertising in case of products or even solutions. It also lets you manage documents, contacts, projects and workspace online. It also lets you collaborate online easily.

Unlike eBox, SBS provides you single view for all the shared folders and website that are hosted.

Backup and restore
In case there is data loss on the server or the OS gets corrupted, it is always necessary to have backups. Both the solutions provide backup solutions. SBS 2008 provides very extensive backup solution, apart from file and folder backup it also allows backup of system state, exchange, WSS (SharePoint), SQL 2005 instance, MSDE instance. All these backups in case of SBS 2008 is done via a simple and easy wizard, hence worry free backup. You can also schedule the backup time, so that the machine automatically backs up everything, reducing your work. eBox on the other hand, provides you the similar kind of backup solution. It gives you two backup options. One is configuration backup, which backs up only the configuration of eBox including managed services and other is Full backup which backs up configuration file including such stored files from shared directories, log messages and hence takes up huge amount of space.

Under the security tab, SBS provides status of each component, e.g virus protection for email, anti-malware, etc.

Conclusion
But before concluding, it's important to understand two more critical aspects, cost and support. While SBS 2008 comes at a price which includes support, eBox is free and you have to rely on community support. So before deciding which one to choose, you have to compare these two aspects. If you don't have inhouse expertise on Linux, then you will have to spend time and money building them. Even if you do, you have to judge whether you can trust your business on a platform like eBox that doesn't have any company you can hold accountable if something goes wrong.
If you can't, then you're better off getting MS SBS.

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