So, you thought that you have by now become comfortable with the Surface Area Configuration Tool in SQL Server 2005 and are ready to do the configuration once you install SQL Server 2008.  Well, the tool does not exist anymore in SQL Server 2008 and has been added to the deprecated feature list. As you will recall, we used to use SAC for doing configuration for services & connections as well as for features.

So, how can you go about making configuration changes via the GUI?  It has been divided up into different tools now:

Instance and Database Engine Features:

This will now be done through SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio).  Right click on the instance and select Facets as shown in the image below:


Once you select it, the next screen that you will get is this one:

And you can pick and choose what you want to confgure.  Surface Area configuration is one of the facets.

Another thing that you would note at the bottom right hand side is “Export Current State as Policy” – using this, one can then use that policy across the group in order to have a consistent environment.

References
Understanding Surface Area Configuration
Systems Engineering and RDBMS