Apparently the servers we connect to from our location here in Canada are not updated yet:
Hopefully we will see them updated sometime soon so that we can begin downloading both the 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows 7 RTM.
Anyone out there downloading yet?
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)
Karl Palachuk has asked me to write the forward for his upcoming Network Migration Workbook which I have accepted to do.
Tied into the workbook is the upcoming Zero Downtime Migration Deep Dive Seminar on October 1st in Las Vegas.
Since I am in Las Vegas for the SMB Nation Fall Conference from the 2nd to the 4th of October, Karl offered a guest pass to the seminar for writing the forward!
I accepted his offer and am really excited about attending the seminar.
If you are new to SBS and/or the SMB market, then the SMB Nation conference and Karl’s Zero Migration Deep Dive Seminar would be two events to deepen and strengthen your SBS/SMB knowledge base.
The costs may seem quite high for both events, but one thing I have learned in my own I.T. career is that we need to spend money to make money. Money spent on deepening our technical knowledge and experience along with developing our business sense is money well spent.
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)
The Intel ProcessorFinder site is the place to go when looking up the features that a particular CPU supports.
Each CPU series shares a common feature set with some exceptions where there may be a couple of versions at the low end of the model set that have features "disabled" to augment the value at the high end.
Intel did this with the 5200 series Xeons as well as others, and still does it with the Core 2 Quad series with the amount of L2 cache being 50% smaller on the "value" versions of the CPU line. Most of the CPU lines have subtle feature differences between the entry and top end products.
Virtualization (Intel calls it VT) is a base feature. The desktop Media G series boards support VT (C2D, C2Q), while the Executive Q series (vPro) supports higher end VT-d and VT-Appliance settings for more advanced virtualization scenarios such as embedded VMs or the XP Pro Mode in Win7.
The base G series with VT enabled will also do XP Pro Mode since the hardware virtualization has been embedded in Virtual PC 2007 which is what XP Pro Mode is based on.
In the end, we always try to make sure we have the right product for the job.
Laptops have been very iffy when it comes to BIOS enabled hardware features implemented.
To get hardware virtualization on laptops, the laptop needs to have at least the Centrino Pro series chipset in our experience.
Information on the Centrino Pro chipset:
If XP Pro Mode is required by a client, we need to be particularly aware of the hardware setup Windows 7 will be running on as XP Pro Mode does require hardware level virtualization to be enabled in the system’s BIOS.
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)
We have seen some mention made of the SharePoint configuration databases getting quite large.
To date, we did not see any simple way to reduce the size of those databases.
Microsoft Support has released a Knowledgebase article with a simple SQL based script to trim the database size:
Make sure to run a full backup just before running the script. This will enable a quick recovery of the server if things go sideways.
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)
While things are not 100% in place yet, it looks as though I will be attending the SMB Nation fall conference in Las Vegas!
It will be a good time to finally meet some of my fellow MVPs and hopefully get to know some of our regular blog readers!
If you plan on being there, please e-mail me!
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)
One of our non-profit clients needed to replace an aging server with new hardware. Since their licensing covered moving the OS to another box, and the legacy app on that box would not run on Server 2008, we used ShadowProtect to move the OS to new hardware.
Unfortunately, virtualizing the legacy setup was not an option or we would have taken that approach.
The source server was set up with a pair of dynamic disks that were mirrored via an OS software RAID.
When recovering a server that uses a set of Dynamic disks for an OS based software RAID, there is an extra step to the image recovery process.
If the server is a member server, as was the case for us, make sure to reset the local admin password on the server and have that change reflected in the SP image before the image is used for a restore.
Once the SP image has been placed on the new drives, or in our case on a new server, we needed to boot to the Windows Server 2003 CD and log onto the recovery console.
At the recovery console we needed to run the following commands:
This will reset the dynamic disks to basic and allow the OS to boot.
Remember to follow the required post Hardware Independent Restore steps (previous blog post) if moving the OS to new hardware as we were doing here.
StorageCraft’s white paper on dynamic disks:
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)
We took some much needed time off this last week and a half.
So, we will now focus on some neat client projects that are at hand over the next month to two months.
We have a Windows Home Server project for the principle at one of our clients that just moved into their newly built home.
We have a live SBS Migration that we will be scheduling as soon as we can put a couple of days together sometime in the next couple of weeks or so.
We then have a few server migrations, both SBS and Windows Server, to accomplish for our clients.
And, we have some consulting to do on behalf of others that offer SBS I.T. services to their clients.
Things are looking to be quite busy here until at least Christmas! :)
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)
On one of our Windows 7 RC machines we do a bit of online banking. We need to digitize some of the transactions so as of late we had been using the OneNote “printer” to generate the required Note page and then save to PDF.
While there are solutions that work and are free, some can be somewhat troublesome to install on Windows Vista and/or Windows 7.
It seems that we will not be seeing the ability to send anything to OneNote via the print driver on 64 bit OSs until the next version which should be released sometime next year.
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)
We had a call to look into why the built-in OS X mail client was no longer pulling e-mail into the inbox.
The 24” iMac was running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) with most of the recent updates.
The e-mail stopped flowing on July 9 at 16:45hrs (4:45PM).
Click on the gear near the bottom left corner of Mac Mail and then click on Get Account Info and the window that came up would connect to the POP3 server and list all e-mail on the server including any new e-mail not being retrieved.
Because the Account Info dialogue allowed us to connect and view content on the POP3 server, we knew that we were not dealing with an authentication or improper credentials problem.
A search for a solution to the problem took a few different keyword iterations before anything reasonably close came up:
Now, the above link deals with an e-mail that is malformed with a 0KB size that causes the stall.
In our case, the e-mail that was next in line, when sorted by date, had a 35KB size and was a broadcast self-addressed e-mail with a number of BCC addresses in it.
Somehow, that e-mail was causing the hang-up because as soon as it was deleted using the Remove From Server button in the Account Info window the user’s e-mail started to flow.
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)
We all know that static can be deadly to electronic components. Despite this knowledge, we still encounter folks that do not take the appropriate precautions such as antistatic straps and grounding themselves while working on servers, workstations, printers, and more.
Our most costly mistake was the loss of a client’s HP LaserJet that did not take too kindly to having the formatter board touched without a static strap. The printer came up fried after replacing a driveline component in the printer.
So, what brings this post about?
Right now, ShadowProtect is in the process of restoring a client’s SP image from about 11:30 this morning.
The restoration is being run on one of our lab boxes using the Hardware Independent Restore feature since the SBS server hardware has seemingly taken a complete dive into non-responsiveness.
The cause of the death of this particular server was the moving about of a number of desks here in their office. Components were unplugged, things moved around, and in the mix somehow there was enough of a spike passed through the network cabling to cause the server to lock up and not come back.
The box itself is about 4 or so years old. It has seen better days and has been misbehaving on occasion over the last three to six months. So, something happened today to push the box over the edge.
When it comes to moving systems around, it is important to let users know that they need to keep contact with a metal component on the CPU tower before and during any moves taking place.
The system should be properly powered down before removing any cables from the back of the tower.
Once the machines are powered down, it is important to make sure to remain in contact with that metal while removing the VGA, DVI, USB, and network cables.
The A/C cables should be the last things to be removed from both the CPU tower and monitors. Make sure to use the power switch to turn off the power supply if one is present before pulling the plug.
The reverse order should be used to connect everything back together all the while making sure to be grounded during the process.
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)
We are in the process of equipping all of our technician laptops with a 3G modem.
This enables us to have a laptop at a client site and not need to plug into the client’s network where there are dedicated remote desktops available. We can remote in via RWW and work on the network that way.
We have not completed any tests of Network Access Protection on our SBS 2008 networks yet, so, we do not plug our laptops into any client network unless it is absolutely necessary whether SBS 2003 or SBS 2008 based.
The unit is a Sierra Wireless USB 598. It has a built-in flash drive that kicks in when the unit is plugged in that allows us to install the modem software and drivers via AutoPlay.
If the software and drivers are already on the laptop, the modem initializes and becomes available for connection to the Internet when plugged in to the USB port.
The connection speed was 3.1Mb/Sec (Megabits not Megabytes) during our first test on an old Toshiba running Windows 7 RC x86.
We did not sign into any long term contracts since the main CDMA players here in Canada are promising to have their new HSPA 4G networks available in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
The new network will be cross compatible with Rodger’s current network structures giving us access to the iPhone and other high speed goodies when this happens. :)
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)
We manage most of our client’s domains as part of our service offering.
In this case, one of our long-time clients answered a snail mail letter requesting they renew their .ORG domain. At the time we were not managing their domain.
Well, the letter requesting a domain renewal was not so legit.
The first link is a copy of the letter and the second explains what domain slamming is:
They did indeed send out a cheque for the domain renewal and at the time the domain was not locked so the transfer to DROC went through without a hitch.
We are going to unlock everything at DROC and transfer the domain to Domains At Cost which is the registrar we have been using for years as they have great customer service.
It never ceases to amaze us the lengths folks will go to get business.
For larger organizations that have a larger A/P section, something like this could slip under the radar and get paid … whether DROC managed the domain or not.
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)
Our blog post:
So far, the Yes and the Download Later results are in a close tie for first place among those of you that have responded to the poll.
Please make your opinion known by commenting on the original post or by responding to the poll if SBS 2003 to 2008 migrations are of interest.
Given the current results, the likely path will be to run the live migration and then have the recording available for download at a later date.
Thanks to those of you that have responded so far!
And, 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)
One of our clients received a link via an e-mail from a friend saying that they needed to purchase, download, and install a product to help keep their system running great!
Now, the machine is virtually unusable due to constant battering by pop ups from a product called System Security 2009 (also a Rogue AntiSpyware blog link). The rogue also prevents any .EXE from running on the system except an IE window that takes us to the “online activation system”.
We are going to flatten this system, extract their data from an earlier ShadowProtect image, and start fresh.
Since much of the infections legitimately found on the system are Trojan related, there can be no guarantees that removing them does not leave a backdoor of some sort into the system.
The desktop as it is now:
And:
Our client new something was well out of sorts due to the misspelling of “YOUR’RE” when the background started showing up.
Note the constant fight between the malware and AVG Free.
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)
We are in the process of working with a quick video taken via one of our digital cameras. It is an AVI and huge, so we need to trim it down to a respectable size.
We are working on a Windows 7 RC workstation with the beta having been previously downloaded and installed.
The above Check for new version button takes us to:
Now, we shall see if we can do something about the size of the video!
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)
