Intel Remote Management 3 A Must

Today, the cost of adding in the Intel Remote Management 3 (RMM3) module in most Intel Server Systems or server boards is very low. To our clients it is actually worth about one visit. So, why not have one installed where we can so that on-site time is reduced?

For Dell we have the DRAC i6 Enterprise, HP has the iLO with Advanced license, and there are others.

What these components do for us is provide a number of out-of-band management features. That means that we do not need an OS to work with the server.

• Console access to the OS, BIOS, firmware, and other server components.
• This is done by redirected KVM session over HTTPS.
• Ability to reset the server, power it up, or power it down.
• Check the server’s sensor logs for errors.

The initial setup of the RMM3 is done in the BIOS of the server. We enable USER3, rename the user, give it a password, and make sure that it has Administrator permissions.

When we first hit the IP address of the RMM3 we need to log on using the above created user:

The page that we will be greeted with will be a summary of the system.

From an RMM3 on an SR1625URR Server System:

From an RMM3 on an SR1630HGPRX Server System:

The FRU Information link gives us our server’s PBA (Part/Model Number), serial number, and other needed information if we are in need of support or warranty replacement.

The Server Health tab gives us a view of the server’s sensor status along with access to the server’s internal Event Log.

The SR1625URR’s sensor readings:

The SR1630HGPRX sensor readings:

Note the difference in the number of sensors between the server systems. The SR1625URR is a dual Intel Xeon Nehalem 5000 series 1U server while the SR1630HGPRX is an Intel Xeon Nehalem 3000 series 1U server.

While all of the above features are very helpful as far as keeping an eye on the server’s health and for troubleshooting purposes the key RMM3 feature is its ability to give us console access to the server’s OS.

Once we click the Launch Console button we will need to approve some Java security warnings before the redirected KVM session begins.

Once we do get our session we are “sitting in front of the server”.

This is a screenshot of the SR1625URR’s KVM session:

We currently have both 1U server’s RMM3 network ports connected to our own internal network. Once we have plugged in the needed optical disk for the OS install if needed and/or USB flash drives we no longer need to be standing at the workbench to run a fresh OS install as is the case in the above screenshot.

We can have a technician run several OS installs and post install configurations while working at their own station.

Once these servers are ready to go into production, the RMM3 Ethernet ports will be set with an ISP delivered static IP address and a GoDaddy certificate will be installed to eliminate the SSL warnings for the Web portal.

When it comes to a standard access method such as Terminal Services/Remote Desktop Services or TS/RDS via TS/RDS Gateway we are stuck if the underlying services get knocked out by an update or something breaks along the way.

Using the RMM3/DRAC/iLO to run those updates means that we do not need to be concerned about the underlying services plus we can watch the server reboot through its BIOS POST as well as RAID Controller POST status indicators.

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

Camtasia Video Rendering On Intel Core i7-875K

This is what a one hour video being rendered to Web MP4 video looks like on our new Core i7-875K based system:

In the above screenshot the Camtasia process is running at 64% across all cores four cores plus HyperThreading.

The above CPU usage shows that Camtasia is quite capable of utilizing all of the cores and threads the Core i7-875K has to offer to run its rendering process.

Note that Intel TurboBoost shows that currently the CPU is running at 3.2GHz to try and keep up with everything.

Meanwhile, the system is still quite usable.

Start time for the process was 16:15Hrs (4:15PM) and is about half done. So, it looks as though the entire 1 hour video that was captured at about 1400x900 will take about 30 minutes to render.

Here we are a while later with the finished product being rendered at about 16:42Hrs.

The original Camtasia capture was just shy of 1 GB in size and resides on our storage server. So, the above rendering was being done by processing the original on the network with the finished product being dropped into a local temp folder on this machine.

If we have time, we may run the render again with the project source files on the local machine to see how much of a difference there is. The storage subsystem is using the on board Intel software RAID controller to run a RAID 0 stripe across to 80 GB X25-M Intel SSDs.

For folks that make a living where CPU intensive tasks are part of the process, the Core i7-875K may make a great compromise instead of an Intel Core i7 Extreme series CPU setup especially for those just starting out.

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

Vantec NexStar SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hard Drive Dock Do Not Lock Up Intel Server Boards

We have been testing a number of different options to move forward with when it comes to hooking up a hard disk to an SBS 2008, SBS v7, or Windows Server 2008 box for backups.

We are finding that the new NexStar SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docks (NST-D300S3) are not locking up our Intel server configurations on a warm boot.

Note that because we are handling the bare hard disk a little precaution is required to protect the sensitive electronics on the drive.

We make sure to touch ground before swapping out a hard disk. We also make sure that we _do not_ touch the drive’s electronics.

We store any hard disks in the backup rotation in a standard 3.5” plastic hard disk clamshell to protect them. All drives are appropriately labeled using a labeling device so that we can keep track of the drives.

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

A Perfect Cup of Coffee Every Time

As mentioned in our Thanksgiving post we are pregnant with our fourth child. One of the adventures with each pregnancy has been the various cravings that Monique will have.

One of my favourite cravings was during our first pregnancy’s second trimester. We had Monique’s pancakes, whipped cream, maple syrup, and all of the fixings _every day_ for close to four months. I gained quite a few “sympathetic” pounds during that period! ;)

Lately, one of Monique’s cravings has been for a cup of coffee in the morning. Monique was normally a tea drinker up till then. Since we generally made coffee with a stove top percolator to “cook” the coffee grinds to our preferred strength, we needed a coffee maker that would make a decent single cup of coffee on short order.

We looked at a number of coffee makers that used a pre-packaged cup or disk with the coffee grounds in it. After evaluating the various machines we ended up purchasing a Cuisinart Keurig Single Server Brewing System (SS-700C) (Canadian product site).

We chose the Cuisinart model because it has the ability to use an included My K-Cup Reusable Coffee Filter which meant that we were not locked into purchasing the pre-packaged coffee cups. This feature was critical because we absolutely love Tim Hortons coffee with a close second for Starbuck’s Verona or Sumatra blends.

So, after working through the various water volumes (8oz, 10oz, and 12oz) and coffee grind scoops we have managed to come up with a near perfect cup of coffee every time:

• Keurig Settings
• Water Temp: 194 Degrees Fahrenheit
• Default cup size: 8oz
• Tim Hortons Fine Grind
• 2.5 scoops of coffee.
• 8oz water setting.
• Add the required cream and sugar to taste (or black).
• Starbucks Sumatra and Verona Espresso Grind (ultra-fine)
• 2 scoops of coffee
• 10oz water setting
• Add the required cream and sugar to taste (or black).

When we purchased the bag of Starbuck’s coffee the Keurig was new so we did not know what grind level would be best. When it comes time to replace the Starbuck’s coffee will will step back the grind setting so that the grind is not so fine.

We only use osmotic water for our coffee.

IT Professionalism

So, what does brewing a perfect cup of coffee have to do with our own IT business?

Drinking a lot of coffee to figure out the needed coffee to water configuration brought us to the point where we could _document_ the required process to make that coffee _every time_ a cup of coffee was required. Thus, our “client”, Monique, was able to enjoy her morning coffee consistently.

Not only do we need to take the time to work out the best process for configuring our IT Solutions, but we also need to take the time to consult with our fellow IT professionals to see if there are ways that we can improve our IT processes and/or IT Solutions.

In the end, when it comes to implementing an IT Solution we must have the right documentation in place, checklists to guide us through the set up procedures, and key vendor representatives on-call to help us out if we get into a pinch.

These processes are an absolute must to providing our clients with a Professional long term trouble free IT Solution.

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

.CA Agency CIRA Is Down For Maintenance

We need to make some changes to one of our .CA domains and are looking to register one. When we went to our registrar of choice DomainsAtCost.ca to manage our domains we saw the following after logging in:

Please be informed that CIRA, the .CA registry, is currently closed for a 24 hour maintenance period from October 12, 2010 at 9 AM until October 13, 2010 at 9 AM Eastern.

So, it looks as though we are on hold for our .CA needs at the moment.

The Cloud

While Cloud vendors may be a little more conscious of their user’s needs and try to run maintenance at a time when their services use is at its lowest, this situation brings cause for pause when it comes to evaluating how a Cloud service can either benefit or hurt our client’s operations.

An honest evaluation of the Cloud service and the costs to our client’s business if the service is down must be taken so that our client can evaluate the risks to their business as clearly as possible.

Once those risks have been evaluated and approved we can move forward with setting them up with a hosted Exchange and SharePoint environment (we are partnered with Own Web Now for this service), or even go so far as to serve SBS 2008 and Windows 7 desktops to them via SPLA licensing on our servers.

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

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

We have a lot to be thankful for this year!

Our family is growing by one, everyone is healthy, and our business has had a banner year.

Thanks to all of you too for your ongoing support!

Thanks for reading and enjoy those turkey sandwiches! :)

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

LaCie d2 Quadra 1 TB PC to Mac Fail

We performed a data recovery operation on an older PC that was successful. We were eventually able to create a ShadowProtect image of the original drive.

The customer brought in a LaCie d2 Quadra 1 TB USB hard disk for us to copy the recovered data onto. Once they dropped off the USB drive we set up a partition on it and copied the data over to the drive.

Our customer decided to purchase an iMac to replace the ageing PC that we had here in the shop.

Once we had the data copied onto the LaCie drive we got it back to them.

This was about a week ago.

Since then we have been in almost constant contact as the LaCie absolutely refused to show the partition we created on their iMac. When the drive was plugged into the iMac the LaCie Setup Assistant would pop up and ask them to format the LaCie drive.

We had them bring the d2 Quadra back to the shop and sure enough when we plugged the drive into any of our Windows machines the partition with the recovered data would show up.

So, we plugged the LaCie drive into our own MacBook Pro and up popped the LaCie Setup Assistant. We tried to close that, find the partition in Finder, and to see if the Mac’s disk management utility would see it which all failed.

There seems to be some sort of firmware/software intercept built into the LaCie drive that hides any existing partitions on the drive from any Mac based system even though those partitions show up just fine on a Windows machine.

We burned about half an hour trying to see if there were any other options to gain access to the partitions without having to run that Setup Assistant utility which would probably flatten the drive. There were none that we could see.

So, now we are copying the customer’s recovered data to one of our 2.5” USB drives formatted FAT32 and will loan it to them so that they can get their data onto the Mac.

The LaCie Setup Assistant needs to be tweaked to check for any existing partitions if plugged into a Mac for the first time and allow access to those partitions. We will not be recommending this product to anyone from now on.

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

An iPad Killer From Down Under?

We are in the process of finalizing an order for a product that is just in the process of being released to the general public.

Yes, that is an iPad sized tablet running Windows 7. After a colleague dropped an iPad off at our shop for us to use for a week or so earlier this year we were not too impressed with the machine. The iPad has its purpose but that purpose did not suite us here.

The Tegatech TEGA v2 Touch Tablet was introduced to us by fellow MVP Wayne Small (his article on the TEGA v2).

With a Windows 7 operating system installed the TEGA v2 will do everything we need it to do _natively_ without any additional apps beyond Office 2010.

Running an Intel Atom N455 1.66GHz CPU with a 64GB SSD the TEGA v2 will run circles around some of the older Toshiba Tecra laptops with Pentium M series CPUs that we still use as shop systems. It should also run on par with the Intel Atom based netbooks that we use in our business that have had their spindle based drives replaced with Intel X25-M SSDs.

So, with the TEGA v2 coming with an SSD out of the box that is large enough to host the OS, Office 2010, and a few additional applications and utilities we will have ourselves a very portable and very usable little machine.

Time is Money

BTW, when it comes to deciding on the use of any new technologies we always weigh in on what it will cost us in time to figure the new tech out. With the iPad, there is a bit of a learning curve involved for those that are not part of the “iN” crowd.

That is one of the reasons that we are looking at the TEGA v2. There is no learning curve involved since we already know how to use Windows and Windows based devices.

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

Intel Server System SR1695GPRX 1U 1P 4x Hot Swap = Excellent SBS Virtualization Platform

The question was asked a while back in the comments section about the platform we would use to virtualize both servers included with SBS 2008 Premium.

It is our preference to set up and install rack mount server products so that everything can be mounted in a relatively inexpensive enclosure thus keeping them physically secured.

Standalone Virtualization Server

To date, we have been using the Intel Server System SR1630HGP outfitted with an Intel Xeon X3450 or X3460 CPU and 16 GB of RAM. The RAM would either be four 4 GB Kingston Intel tested DIMMs or recently we have been looking into the 8 GB Hynix Intel tested DIMMs that we can get branded as a SuperMicro product.

We then install an Intel RS2BL040 RAID controller with the battery backup and three 300 GB or larger Seagate 15K RPM SAS drives.

• Intel Server System SR1630HGP(NA) 1U 1P rack mount server system
• 3x hot swap bays for SAS/SATA
• 2x Intel Gigabit NICs
• Intel Xeon Processor X3450 or X3460
• 16 GB ECC RAM (4x 4GB Kingston Intel Approved)
• Intel RAID Controller RS2BL040 PCI-E 8x Gen 2.
• Intel RAID Smart Battery Backup
• 3x 300 GB Seagate 15K.6 or 15K.7 SAS drives
• Advanced rack mount rail kit for in-rack servicing (AXXHERAIL or AXXHERAIL2)

The newer Intel Server System SR1630HGPRX 1U 1P system is an “almost there” as far as needed product features in an entry level 1U server. We gain access to remote KVM over IP via the RMM3LITE add-in along with the five NICs on the server board. One NIC will be dedicated to the RMM3LITE while the other four are enterprise class Intel PRO/1000 EB NICs that support hardware acceleration for virtualization features.

Since they have become available here in Canada recently we have been using them as our base platform for all 1U 1P server systems.

Ideal Standalone Virtualization Server

As mentioned above, Intel has been moving towards providing us with Intel branded server systems that compete with Tier 1 systems that have had needed server features such as remote management and multiple NICs for years. This is a very welcome change in the rack mount product line.

The system we would configure for a client requiring a standalone server with the Hyper-V role set up on it and SBS 2008 along with Windows Server 2008 as guests would be as follows:

• Intel Server System SR1695GPRX2AC(NA)
• Dual power supply version of the server system.
• 5 Intel Gigabit NICs (4x EB series)
• Intel Xeon Processor X3460
• 16 GB Kingston ECC RAM (4x 4 GB Intel Approved)
• Intel RAID Controller RS2BL040
• We would option out the RAID battery.
• Cost wise it does not make sense to use the budget I/O Expansion Module RAID controllers.
• 4x 146 GB 15K Seagate SAS drives RAID 10
• Trays support both 3.5” and 2.5” drives so X25-M SSD would be an option to our clients.
• Intel Remote Management Module 3 (AXXRMM3LITE)
• Gives us out-of-band remote KDVM console access to the system whether the host OS is functional or not.
• Intel Tool-less Rail Kit (AXXHERAIL2)
• Quick and easy access to the chassis.

The Intel ServerConfigurator Site shows the new server system product but there are still some parts like the dual and quad port Gigabit I/O Expansion Modules (product site) that are missing.

Those missing components are important in that the SR1695GPRX provides an excellent platform for an inexpensive 2 node Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 cluster using iSCSI for SAN access.

We posted a base server configuration sheet similar to what our clients would get on our Web site:

• MPECS Inc Web Site: Intel Server Configuration Sheet Folder

The premium for this particular base 1U versus our SBS base pedestal is actually not that high. Since we are going to be running both the SBS 2008 OS and the Windows Server 2008 OS on this one box we provide power and cooling savings over the 36 month life of the system.

Hyper-V Features

Now, the one thing that we would miss with the SBS 2008 Premium setup would be the hot swap disk capabilities that we have in the R2 version of Hyper-V. Given that the cost of an Open Value License plus SA is not that expensive year over year we would discuss the option of running Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard x64 as our host OS. Having hot swap capabilities means no down-time when there is a need to swap out external USB/eSATA backup drives.

Once SBS v7 RTMs we will have a Premium SKU that adds a separate Windows 2008 R2 Standard license just as SBS 2008 Premium adds a Windows Server 2008 Standard license. When that happens then we can use the 1+1 licensing of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard to virtualize our SBS v7 “Premium” solution.

• SBS v7 Beta Site
• SBS v7 Beta Brochure (PDF)
• Note that these links will probably break once SBS RTMs.

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

Promise VTrak Performance Graphs Part II

We have brought our client’s Promise VTrak E310sD RAID storage online and are in the process of restructuring the IMS cluster’s storage to incorporate the new addition.

Our SBS 2008 VM is currently moving its WSUS content over to the new VTrak located storage while we are also in the process of moving Windows 7 desktop OS VHDs over to the VTrak as well.

We will continue to monitor the VTrak’s performance when our client’s facility comes online early tomorrow morning.

All user’s redirected data will be located on the VTrak as will a mapped Company folder that will hold all of their data.

The storage that we have freed up on the IMS SAN will be reallocated to their SQL server and to expand the SBS 2008 VM’s OS partition.

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

SBS v7 Safe Mode and VM New Cluster Re-Attach Error

We had an SBS v7 server setup that we had initially set up on a Hyper-V cluster here in the shop. While we ended up flattening and rebuilding the cluster we left the logical disk containing the SBS v7 OS VHD alone to reattach to a new cluster.

We just finished booting that SBS v7 VM up and ended up with a strangely stalled OS after logging on. For some strange reason Windows Explorer and thus the desktop would not start.

So, we have booted into SBS v7’s Safe Mode:

To check on our network settings:

Which sent up the following when we set the correct IP address:

Microsoft TCP/IP

The IP address 192.168.40.254 you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter (Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus Network Adapter) which is no longer present in the computer. . . Do you want to remove the static IP configuration for the absent adapter?

We clicked the Yes button.

So, as long as the new settings have taken the VM should boot into the OS and hopefully allow us to run the Fix My Network Wizard (FMNW) which will clean up the GUID associated with the previous vNIC.

When the server came up this is what we found in the NIC’s IPv4 properties:

Note the missing Gateway setting.

This is what the IPConfig /all looked like:

Note the 169.254.142.5 address for the IP instead of the 192.168.40.254 IP address indicated in IPv4 properties. So, we still had no network connectivity happening as we also have a Windows 7 Enterprise x64 VM sitting on the same isolated VLAN.

We ran the Internet Address Wizard to see if we could reseat the IP address configuration. Now, we do not have the appropriate VLAN settings in our Cisco SA520-K9 Security Appliance to allow for communication between the SBS v7 VM and the Internet yet but we will soon. So, we ignored the Router Not Found error and ended up with the correct IP address setup.

We also used our Hardware Independent Restore (previous blog post) methodology to clean up the previous NIC’s GUID.

Once we had completed the above and ran the FMNW we saw the following potential network issues:

The results were in:

Dive into the logs and we found:

So, we verified the settings once again for the vNIC and rebooted the server which came back with:

Another 169.254.142.5 IP address. :(

Yet, this is what we saw in the NIC’s IPv4 properties:

In the registry editor under the NIC’s GUID we see:

The IPAddress setting is blank yet our own SBS v7 IP address is not:

So, we set the IP address into the registry manually but the NIC’s IPv4 status still showed a 169 address. We then checked the IPv4 properties for the NIC and it had the wrong subnet setting (255.255.255.255). We reconfigured that one and ended up with the following:

Note that now we see both IP addresses!

We restarted the DHCP service to see if it would at least start. It did and we were able to receive an IP address for our Windows 7 Enterprise VM:

We rebooted the VM to see if the IPv4 settings would stick.

They seemingly did:

Somehow, this process did not turn out to be as simple as we had hoped.

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

Key Hyper-V Role and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Updates

When putting a new Hyper-V R2 based server into production, there are a few updates that should be applied prior to bringing that new box online.

1. MS KB2264080: An update rollup package for the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2: August 24, 2010
• This one needs to be downloaded from the Update Catalogue.
• Blog post: Can’t Download Hyper-V Update Rollup Package 2264080 from Update Catalogue.
2. MS KB975354: A Hyper-V update rollup package is available for a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2
3. MS KB974909: The network connection of a running Hyper-V virtual machine is lost under heavy outgoing network traffic on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer

Once the updates have been completed we reboot the Hyper-V box prior to beginning our configuration steps.

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

Intel Modular Server – MPIO Driver Install Requires Second Reboot

When we are in the process of standing up a new Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 cluster node on the Intel Modular Server we walk through an initial set of OS preparation steps.

One is to install the Intel MPIO driver.

When we do, once the compute module has completed its reboot it will more than likely request another reboot:

It’s important to note that the reboot request dialogue box may not show up right away depending on the CPU configuration in the compute modules.

After installing the MPIO driver and logging in once the compute module reboot cycle finishes, give the OS some time to process the changes that have been made. The reboot request should come up then.

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

Intel DX38BT to DP55KG Caveat – Activate Again

Our main office system decided to die this morning. It has been behaving a little on the strange side with network related communications becoming somewhat spotty. The Outlook connection seemed to receive the quickest impact from whatever was going flaky.

We had ordered in an Intel DP55KG, Intel i7-875K, and a CoolerMaster v8 CPU cooler early last month for the purpose of swapping out the system’s DX38BT, QX9650 C2 Extreme, and Zalman CPU cooler. There never seemed to be enough time to do the swap.

Well, this morning’s death made the swap a necessity.

The component swap went painlessly. After running the Intel PROSet driver update, a chipset update, and a few “New Hardware Found” dialogues and reboots the system came up flawlessly. The dual 80GB X25-M SSDs in a RAID 0 stripe were picked up by the newer version on board software RAID without an issue too.

Windows 7 did not ask to be re-activated as we are running Windows 7 Enterprise x64 throughout our organization.

But, Office 2010 Professional Plus (Open Value) and Adobe Design Suite Premium CS3 both requested to be activated again:

This hardware swap experience sure contrasts to how things were five, ten, or more years ago. In years past we would be hard pressed to save the OS and applications if we needed to change out the motherboard.

We have come a long way indeed.

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

Quick IE Search Tips: Blog & MSFT KB Examples

This neat tip comes originally from Mariette Knap which we have modified for our own purposes.

• Internet Explorer IE Knowledgebase Quick Search (ZIP file)
• The above file has the needed registry entry for doing a quick KB search.

After merging the above registry file we may need to restart all IE session for the change to take.

So, just what does the above do?

Well, let’s say we need to get to the Hyper-V Nehalem hotfix page really quick. Since we know the KB number off by heart we type the following in IE’s address bar:

Once we hit the Go arrow or Enter we end up at:

Okay, we now have quick access to Microsoft Knowledgebase articles that we know the article number for.

Now, we search our own blog _a lot_ as it is a knowledgebase for us too. Thus, we would love to see:

Give us:

After tweaking the registry entry a little we figured out how to get the above search results by typing the keyword “mblog” and our search terms.

The registry file can be found here:

• MPECS Inc Download: IE MPECS Inc. Blog Quick Search

Here are a couple screenshots of the registry settings:

Microsoft Knowledgebase Quick Search

MPECS Inc. Site:blog.mpecsinc.ca Search

These little IE tweaks will save us a huge chunk of time!

Susan Bradley also pointed out the following:

• Help Desk Geek: Copy Title and URL Context Menu Extension for Internet Explorer

The above would have been very handy to get that link into this blog post! :)

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