SBS 2003: Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 Previous Versions List Shows Same Date for all Versions?

This was a bit of a puzzler:

The puzzle was in exactly what search terms to use to find the right answer as our searches were turning up fluff.

Folks that went to recover content via Previous Versions (Volume Shadow Copy) saw the above list of snapshots where all were stamped at the time the Previous Versions tab was clicked.

One could then double click on any of the versions and the contents themselves would be what should be in the snapshot but the titles in Windows Explorer would be missing as well.

This is what they _should_ look like:

All that would be in the Address Bar was the folder name that the content was sitting in.

The Fix

Thanks to Susan Bradley we were pointed in the right direction:

• SBS Blog: Windows 7 Cannot Access Shadow Copies in SBS 2003

Before:

After:

Note that no reboot of the SBS 2003 server is required.

We then browsed the file share from a Windows 2008 R2 Standard server and saw:

Folks will now be able to recover their content!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

On a Deployment

We have been on-site since last Friday deploying three new servers.

• Small Business Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008 x64
• Two instances of Microsoft SQL Standard for Small Business x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Terminal Services serving RemoteApps via the Remote Web Workplace

This particular solution replaced the existing SBS 2003 and Windows Server 2003 TS box.

We did not migrate because the source domain was too messed up.

Posting will probably remain light for the rest of the week and into next due to the volume of client work that we are dealing with both with this deployment and other client needs.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Poll – Would you watch a live SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration?

We are set to migrate our own SBS 2003 network to SBS 2008. The idea is to run the migration steps according to our SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration Guide, with content from our SBS 2008 Setup Checklist, and address some SBS material in my SBS 2008 Blueprint book.

If we broadcast the migration via LiveMeeting, would this be something worth watching for you? We would have the Q&A open during the entire process so that you will be able to ask questions as the process moved along.

Realizing that not everyone will be able to sit through the entire session, we will try to record it and then have it available at a later date. We may also run two separate sessions. The first session would run up to the mailbox move, and the second would run the following day after the move completed. The second session would be the longer of the two.

A poll has been added to the right hand column of the blog to let us know what you think. If the poll answers don’t quite fit, please feel free to leave a comment here.

Thanks for reading!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

The Catch-22 – Almost

We have already mentioned that we are working on a pretty messed up SBS install.

• One DIY and one "Professional"
• ShadowProtect Image Recovery into a Hyper-V VM

The deeper into the test Swing we go, the clearer it becomes that we need to Swing the actual production environment.

There are so many things going on in the background, from the Terminal Server that runs their proprietary accounting LoB, to the Linux box that they are going to deprecate at some point that has their old accounting system on it.

Going with a completely fresh SBS install is looking more and more prohibitive due to all of the “customizations” that we are seeing as we go through the Swing steps.

While we will be able to tidy up Group Policy, DNS, and have functional SBS Wizards and features like the Companyweb and Remote Web Workplace, we will not be able to tighten up the security structures as we had hoped, and we will not be able to restructure much in the SBS domain.

While there are still some unknowns that may rear their heads and try to bite us, the Swing Migration is giving us the confidence we need to come through this coming weekend and the actual Swing Migration with a fairly stable SBS and users that find everything working as expected … we hope! ;)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

ShadowProtect Image Recovery into a Hyper-V VM

We need to get to images restored into VMs running on Hyper-V for the test Swing Migration we are doing for the messed up “Professional” SBS in this post.

The deeper we are digging into this the more and more it may be a good idea to start fresh and work the client workstations from there.

But, we have committed to the business owners to run through the Swing test anyway, so we are well into it now.

The existing SBS was imaged using ShadowProtect and has been restored to one of our lab servers using the Hardware Independent Restore feature. We cleaned up the IBM XServe hardware pieces in the Device Manager and made sure that the lab server hardware drivers were installed and stable.

• Cleanup methodology blog post: SBS & ShadowProtect - Some Hardware Independent Restore considerations.

We are running a portion of the Swing virtually with the NewSBS ending up on the same lab server we have the restored SBS on now which is a Swing Off and Swing On again.

On this particular SBS network there is a Terminal Server. So, we took an image of it as well as one critical workstation. We are restoring both images to VMs running on Hyper-V Server 2008 (yes, we got it up and running though with no add-in RAID controller).

When we went to boot from the ShadowProtect I.T. Edition ISO in the VM, the WinRE would choke on the networking portion of the ShadowProtect startup routine. We ended up needing to uninstall the standard Hyper-V NIC and use a Legacy NIC to get things rolling. We were using the Windows Vista WinRE version too.

We placed the two ShadowProtect images on a network share to run the restore process in the Hyper-V based VMs using drive mapping feature in the ShadowProtect recovery environment.

When it comes to restoring an encrypted ShadowProtect image that is password protected using AES 128bit security, CPU crunching capabilities and GHz speed sure make a huge difference on the restore times.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer