Kingston USB 3.0 Flash and SSD Drives

With the advent of USB 3.0 on most motherboards that are either in the market or just coming to market there is really no reason to be purchasing USB 2.0 beyond perhaps the cost to purpose ratio.

While chatting with one of our long term local suppliers about a pair of DTU30/64GB USB 3.0 drives that were supposed to show up late last week they indicated that they were accidentally sent the 32GB version instead.

We will be picking them up later today anyway and will run a few read and write tests to get a feel for their true USB 3.0 performance.

In our opinion, USB 3.0 puts to rest any alternative connector to USB 3.0’s hot swap capable quick connect ability with ultra high bandwidth. At 5Gbit/S the reality is that most peripherals could not come remotely close to saturating that bus.

Fresh OS Installs

For a small shop like ours, USB 3.0 gives us a reasonable alternative for delivering our fresh OS installs to new hardware versus a network based Windows Image system. Since we consistently deploy four or five different OS versions to new hardware we could have our needed OS images set in folders on the drive for quick access.

Those images would be kept up to date with current drivers as our only product line for servers, workstations, and desktops are Intel based.

The folder structure on the 32GB flash drive would look something like this:

• Drivers
• Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
• SBS2K11
• Service Packs and Updates
• Win2K8R2
• Win7Ent x64
• Win7Pro x64
• Win7Ult x64

As needed, we would bump the needed OS to root, change the flash drive’s name, and use it for the OS load. Once completed we would bump the OS files back to its respective folder.

Server Backups

The one benefit we will be seeing in our SMB space when USB 3.0 become ubiquitous will be the improvement in backup speeds. With that increase in write speed comes the ability to run a spot backup or an incremental backup in a fraction of the time it currently takes for a USB 2.0 based destination device.

Thus, we will be able to run a backup just prior to rotating a drive out or run an incremental just before taking a server offline for service and not have to wait as long for the backup to be completed.

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

SBS 2011 Time Bomb Workaround

Okay, so yesterday turned out to be an 11th hour type of day as feedback was made to us MVPs that our beta bits could be extended by running the following steps.

To extend the expiry, please follow the directions below:

1. Install WS08 R2 SP1 RC on the server by clicking here
2. Logon on https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer with your connect credentials
3. Click on Product keys (in the left hand side column)
4. Click on Request a new product key
5. Click on Get Key
6. In Windows Home Server, open a command prompt
7. Type “slmgr.vbs -ipk ABCDE-FGHIJ-KLMNO-PQRST-UVWXY” (where ABCDE.. is your new key as requested above)
8. Type “slmgr.vbs –ato”
9. Reboot the server, and your beta timeframe has been extended.  You can check this by opening up a command prompt and typing winver

We did not need to reboot after running step 8. When we ran the WinVer command in the command prompt before rebooting the expiry date had moved to March!

*Phew*

• Microsoft Forums: Workaround for expiring Vail August Preview

Our post yesterday:

• Blog Post: SBS v7 Beta Bits Expiring Today – No Date Reset Either

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

iTunes Accounts For Sale?

From the BBC news site:

• BBC News: Technology – Thousands of stolen iTunes accounts for sale in China

Tens of thousands of fraudulent iTunes accounts are for sale on a major Chinese website, it has been revealed.

About 50,000 accounts linked to stolen credit cards are listed on auction site TaoBao, the country's equivalent of eBay.

Buyers are promised temporary access to unlimited downloads from the service for as little as 1 yuan (10p) a time.

Apple, which recently stepped up iTunes' security after a series of break-ins, declined to comment.

However the company has warned users in recent months to safeguard their personal details.

It is no secret that we are very much leery of leaving any credit card information in any online merchant’s site if we can help it.

The question around iTunes account security has been one that we have been keeping an eye on for quite some time now.

• Blog Category: iTunes

So, when working with client’s iTunes set ups, or other online merchant activities we suggest that they never save their credit card information and if possible purchase gift cards to use with the online service.

Hat Tip: Derek Knight

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

SBS v7 Beta Bits Expiring Today – No Date Reset Either

We managed to get our hands on an NDA copy of the SBS v7 bits a number of months back. We worked our way through the migration from SBS 2003 R2 Premium to our current SBS v7 configuration.

When we logged into the server a couple of days ago we were greeted with a message about the bits expiring.

We typed “WinVer [Enter]” from a command prompt and we saw:

The plan was to run the migration into an SBS 2011 RMT based VM over this last weekend but 12” of snow among other things kept us out of the shop and off the computers this last weekend.

It was mentioned that applying the release candidate of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 may extend the deadline for these particular bits.

So, we ran the RC Service Pack:

Note that it looks as though the service pack has bits built in for SBS 2011.

The update took about 25 minutes on the server the bits are currently running on (1U, 8GB, Xeon X33xx, Intel RAID, 300GB 15K SAS x3 in RAID 5).

Once we were done though we were greeted with the following after a WinVer:

No change in expiry date.

That has meant a crash SBS v7 to SBS 2011 migration today all the while working on client needs.

We are following the SBS 2008 to SBS 2008 migration documentation for this process as it should be fairly similar though Exchange 2010 may add a few hiccups along the way.

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

SBS 2011 – Volume Licensing Downloads

As with SBS 2008 we are still not able to download the full SBS 2011 DVD (weighs in at 6.5GB) via the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Web site.

We will, however, be able to download the SBS Premium Add-On 2011.

Note that there are two options under Operating System Type: 64 bit and 32/64 bit.

• Windows Server 2008 R2
• 
• SQL Server for Small Business 2008 R2
• 

Note that the combined total for the downloads is close to 7GB.

The SBS 2011 RTM bits are available to MAPS subscribers via the TechNet site.

• Correction – SBS 2011 RTM via TechNet is Microsoft Action Pack TechNet

Though, after checking in with our non-MAPS account it looks as though the bits are available for all TechNet accounts now:

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

QuickBooks 2010 and 2011 MSVCR90.DLL Crash Error – Solved

Our previous post on the problem:

• Blog Post: US QuickBooks 2011 R1 – Third Party Components Install Error Plus Error on MSVCR90.DLL And More

We had a number of people pulled into working on this problem and in the end it was Susan Bradley that put together the fact that QB would crash locally but not crash via RDP/Remote Assistance.

The common denominator?

While connected via Remote Assistance or RDP the video subsystem is taken over by the RDP protocol to render anything that QB would require.

The Fix

While the user was logged in the ATI driver (a Dell configured with a Radeon HD 2400 XT) would be the one to render whatever QuickBooks required.

So, we followed Susan’s suggestion and downloaded the newest Catalyst driver for Windows Vista x86 (32-bit) and rebooted.

We had the user log on and try to start both QuickBooks 2010 and 2011 and sure enough they both started without a hitch.

So, we had our culprit . . . the video driver.

Intuit Support’s Comment

After the fact Arvid, who is an engineer with Intuit, mentioned that Intuit introduced features within the QuickBooks products from 2010 on that required video acceleration. So, the out-dated Radeon HD 2400 XT video driver on the Dell was not able to handle whatever rendering requests were being made by QuickBooks.

Conclusion

Sometimes it is a good idea to reach out and ask others for assistance when a problem seemingly has no fix. Fortunately, we had a number of avenues to pose the question with Susan ultimately being the one to put the pieces together!

Thanks Susan and to all of those that provided input. :)

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

SBS 2011 – Remote Web Access (RWW) Shared Folders Upload With Easy File Upload Tool

When we first saw and started to use the Shared Folders access feature in the Remote Web Access portal (formerly Remote Web Workplace or RWW), we did not see it as being too useful except for spot file access.

Today definitely confirms that the Shared Folders feature is indeed useful especially when it comes to getting many large files uploaded onto our network.

The screenshot above shows a ZIP archive of two ProcessMonitor files that were created a few minutes ago.

One of those files contains the ProcessMonitor results of a successful QuickBooks 2010 open while connected using Remote Assistance while the other contains the ProcessMonitor results of the QB 2011 crash when the user opened it without any remote connections.

Yes, we are _still_ fighting to get QuickBooks 2011 and now QuickBooks 2010 to run at a client’s site:

• Blog Post: US QuickBooks 2011 R1 – Third Party Components Install Error Plus Error on MSVCR90.DLL And More

To get the 65MB file to our own site is now quite simple as we no longer need a third party service or VPN (bandwidth soak) to get the file.

While preparing to upload the file we saw the option to install the Easy File Upload Tool in the portal. So, we clicked the link and installed the ActiveX control that was needed:

Once we clicked the Install button our Upload page now looked like:

Now we no longer need to use the cumbersome Browse button method to add each file that we need to upload into the folder.

The folder access feature has become quite important to us because it is so simple to use especially once we have the Easy File Upload Tool installed!

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

Using The SBS 2011 Best Practices Analyzer

Something new to the SBS BPA series for 2011 is the need for a separate download and install to be run prior to installing the SBS 2011 BPA.

• TechNet: Using the Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard Best Practices Analyzer

First, we need to download and install the Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer 2.0.

Once we have the MBCA installed we then need to download and install the SBS 2011 BPA.

Note that we now have the ability to connect and scan the SBS box remotely:

The SB SBPA also has the ability to update itself automatically:

Once the BPA has been installed we can then run it to evaluate the status of our freshly installed SBS 2011 box or VM.

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

SBS 2011 Setup Guide – V1.3.1

Our SBS 2011 Setup Guide has been updated.

We added the time setup steps for SBS or other OS installed into a VM that will have a high load and thus probably skew the OS’s time.

We added the option to raise the AD Forest and Domain functional level to 2008 R2.

We added a troubleshooting step for a SharePoint Foundation error that we encountered. The post was also bumped up.

• SBS 2011 Setup Guide v1.2.0

Thanks for reading!

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

SBS 2011 – SharePoint Foundation Event ID 6398 – Access Denied Every 30 Minutes

We applied the following update via WSUS on one of our production hosted SBS 2011 VMs:

• KB2345322: MS10-072: Description of the security update for Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010: October 12, 2010
• 

Since doing so we have seen a lot of the following errors in the Event Logs:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation
Date:          1/5/2011 12:30:17 PM
Event ID:      6398
Task Category: Timer
Level:         Critical
Keywords:     
User:          DOMAIN\spfarm
Computer:      SBS.DOMAIN.local
Description:
The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUsageImportJobDefinition (ID xxxx-xxxx) threw an exception. More information is included below.

Access to the path 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS' is denied.

To fix the error we need to reset the permissions on that folder as the KB sets the following permissions:

1. Check Include inheritable permissions …
• 
2. Add Network Service and set FULL permissions.
• 
3. WSS_ADMIN_WPG (DOMAIN\WSS_ADMIN_WPG) has Modify
• 
4. WSS_RESTRICTED_WPG_V4 (DOMAIN\WSS_RESTRICTED_WPG_V4) has Modify.
1. 

The errors should clear up after the above changes are made.

Thanks to Microsoft’s SBS PSS Wayne McIntyre for the fix.

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

Hyper-V: Preparing A High Load VM For Time Skew

We have a previous post on setting up the Windows Time service here:

• MPECS Inc. Blog- SBS 2008 Physical And Hyper-V – Set Up the

To date we have had decent success on reigning in a heavily loaded VM’s tendency to skew its time.

What we have come with via a number of sites listed below and a lot of reading in online forums follows.

1. Hyper-V Integration Services: Time Synchronization remains enabled.
   • Yes, even on DCs.
2. Registry edit to allow the VM to pick up its time from the Hyper-V host only while booting:
   • reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\VMICTimeProvider /v Enabled /t reg_dword /d 0
   • Copy and paste the above into Notepad to make sure there are no line breaks as it is all in one line.
3. Edit the Windows Time registry settings to make the time service poll more frequently:
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\W32Time\Config
• "MaxAllowedPhaseOffset"=dword:00000001
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
• "SpecialPollInterval"=dword:000000XX
• We start with an interval of 120 Seconds
• 
4. Set the appropriate time server source:
• w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual "/manualpeerlist:0.ca.pool.ntp.org,0x1 1.ca.pool.ntp.org,0x1 2.ca.pool.ntp.org,0x1 3.ca.pool.ntp.org,0x1" /reliable:yes
  • Note the quotes enclosing the time server names.
5. w32tm /config /update
6. net stop w32time && net start w32time
7. w32tm /resync /force
8. w32tm /query /source
   • 

Further Reading:

• MSDN Blogs: Ryan Sizemore: Configuring the Time Service: NtpServer and SpecialPollInterval
• Jaylee.org: Hyper-V, CPU Load and System Clock Drift
• Virtual PC Guy’s Blog: Time Synchronization in Hyper-V
• Yahoo Groups: SBS2K: SBS Time
  • Great contributions by Chris Knight to this thread.

NOTE: This post may be updated at any time to reflect changes to the above methodology. Please keep in mind that this is a work in progress.

UPDATED 2012-03-06: Tweaked the registry settings as per comments below and the setting found in the MSDN article linked above.

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

Volume Licensing Program Guide Downloads

There are some important Microsoft licensing guides that can be downloaded from Microsoft’s download site.

• Microsoft Volume Licensing Reference Guide
•  
• Volume Licensing Program Guides, Datasheets, and FAQs
• 

Since most of our Microsoft Licensing is Open Value based we downloaded the Reference Guide and then the Open License Program Guide.

From the Reference Guide:

From the Open Value License Program Guide:

We prefer to license our clients, if we can, using Open Value licensing because it gives our clients and us access to a wealth of additional product features. We select the three year spread payment option for all of those agreements so that our clients can distribute the costs across the life of the agreement.

We get a bonus by having recurring revenues over the life of the agreement too.

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

ExchangeDefender – Video How-To: Encrypt And Decrypt E-mail

One of the ways that we will be working on improving our client’s IT use experience is by creating both internal and public training videos.

This is our first public video how-to:

ExchangeDefender How-To: Encrypt and Decrypt (~1:10Min) ED based E-mail.

We step through the process of creating an encrypted e-mail. From there we go through the steps needed for the recipient of that encrypted e-mail. Included is the first time need to register on the ExchangeDefender site.

• Our YouTube Channel: MPECS Inc.

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

Logitech diNovo Mini Keyboard Is A Great Compliment To The Tegav2

We have not had a lot of time to work with the Tegav2 due to a number of factors.

Now that we are relatively caught up we had the time to get a few different Bluetooth keyboards hooked up to the Tegav2 tablet to see which one came out on top for ease of use, quality, and portability.

The diNovo Mini Keyboard has taken us by surprise as being quite the versatile little keyboard and mouse (via touch disk) combination.

The above shots are from Logitech’s product site for the diNovo Mini.

In the top shot the disk is in arrow mode meaning that the disk behaves the same way as the arrow keys on the keyboard.

The bottom shot shows the disk in mouse mode. The disk is touch sensitive in the same way as a touchpad so it is actually quite easy to mouse about the Tegav2’s screen. The disk can also be pressed to Left Click or the button at the top left of the diNovo Mini acts as both a left click (press) or right click (Fn + press) mouse button.

Note that the colour of the background lighting is different between the two modes along with the changes made in the in-disk lighting.

In the end, this little keyboard is an excellent addition to the Tegav2. Spot usage of the touch screen based keyboard is okay but having the diNovo along will make extended usage of the tablet a lot more palatable.

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

Microsoft MVP for SBS Awarded For 2011!

Well, it looks as though I am around as an SBS MVP for yet another year! :)

Thanks to Microsoft and to all of you that have supported me in my endeavours to share a bit of the knowledge over the last three or four years!

Thanks again for all of your comments, e-mailed questions and comments, and for reading!

We here at MPECS Inc. hope that all y’all have a great 2011!

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