I am and am wearing the black Microsoft Geek shirt.
Lots of good info. If you are an Intel Partner then check into whether ICC will be in or near your city and check it out.
Product knowledge is a good thing! :)
Philip
Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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In our case, we are just setting up the HP MediaSmart Server and thus running the available updates.
This update run seemingly stalled:
Notice that it is stalled at IE8.
Now, the above screenshot is actually a clipping since the Update Windows Home Server screen covers the entire WHS Console window (it is maximized).
Having seen so many IE8 updates, it was readily apparent as to why things were at a standstill.
But, how do get to the IE8 setup dialogue box?
An old Windows 3.x method: Click on the top left corner of the update window on the Windows icon:
Click Move and hit any arrow key on the keyboard and the updates window should actually window itself to reveal the IE8 dialogue sitting in the background waiting:
While we have come a long way in the Windows world, there are still some threads of Windows Past included in each and every version. :)
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.
We are just in the process of setting up the Windows Home Server box by HP.
What a neat little box! It is almost bullet-proof in its set up routines and uses a very easy console for management.
At the SMB Nation Fall conference fellow MVP Kevin Royalty crashed a laptop that was being backed up by a WHS box. He had it restored to a new hard disk in under 2 hours.
That was a pretty killer demo and sold me on installing WHS HP boxes at client sites to backup key workstations.
And ... The HPs do Mac backup and selective restores! The HP Media Vault series coming down the pipe will actually do a full backup and restore of OS X Macs.
They are definitely something to look into.
Philip
Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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After downgrading a client’s new Tecra S10 to Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 we ended up with a mysterious device in the Device Manager.
USB\VID_067B&PID_2303\7&2DDF17D&0&2
As it turns out, the device is a Prolific PL-2303 USB to Serial Bridge.
We needed to download the driver from here:
Note that the driver we downloaded was released in July of 2009 and is v1.0.5.18.
Once we extracted the zip file we ran the update driver routine from within the device’s properties.
Once properly installed we saw the following in the Device Manager:
Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port (COM4)
One other oddity with this downgrade was the default Realtek audio drivers being knocked out when we set the laptop into its port replicator. We needed to download the latest driver from Toshiba’s Web site for this particular model.
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.
We just rebuilt a client’s Lenovo T500 that we had installed Windows 7 RTM and XP Mode RC onto.
Besides the need to start fresh with an RTM version of XP Mode, our client also had us install a 160GB Intel second generation Solid-State Drive.
So, we decided to start with a fresh install of the Windows 7 Enterprise x64 OS and XP Mode.
The main thing to keep in mind when it comes to working with RTM versions of XP Mode and users changing out their hardware is the ability to take that XP Mode VM with them to the new system.
Another reason to keep this in mind is that the previous drive in this case was encrypted with BitLocker. We may have been able to gain access to it if we had a similar T500 series around the shop and the original BitLocker backup key . . . maybe.
Thus, a new consideration when it comes to migrating a user’s profile to a new workstation (workstation setup checklist post) is to get those VHDs.
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.
*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.
One of the most significant brain busters with Intel’s new Core i7 architecture as well as the new Intel Xeon Processor 3400 Series and 5500 Series architectures is trying to get a straight answer on how to come out with a certain amount of RAM in the system.
This is the Intel Server Board S3420GP Xeon 3400 series memory page out of the product’s technical product specifications manual:
There are more pages both before and after this one that get into how to configure memory for this particular server board without really making things entirely clear.
There is the Intel Server Configurator Tool that will only allow certain RAM part combinations during the configuration process, but it does not tell us why it allows or does not allow us to choose a certain amount of RAM like 24GB for one box.
In comes Intel’s new Memory Configurator Tool:
We are looking to have a Xeon 3400 series server configured with 24GB. This tool will actually show us the how/what/where/why of getting there.
The tool at least takes some of the guess work out of configuring servers.
The above 24GB configuration request yielded the following result:
It says we can do 6x 4GB Registered DIMMs at 800MHz up top with the bottom right quadrant indicating the DIMMs can be Single, Dual, or Quad Rank when it comes to the memory chips on the DIMMs themselves.
Now, is the tool right?
Well, we will find out in short order since we have an SR1630HGP 1U server system based on the S3420GPLC series server board with six 4GB Kingston quad ranked registered ECC RAM sitting in the shop waiting to be built.
When we run through the Intel Server Configurator Tool and come to the memory configuration portion, we get the following:
The Configurator indicates up to 4x 4GB Registered Quad Rank DIMMs which does not meet our 24GB need. So, we shall see soon enough which one is right.
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.
With solutions built upon virtualization becoming all the more common, it is important to understand how the underlying hardware may or may not work with the chosen hypervisor platform.
Whether putting together a server solution based on Tier 1 or Intel’s server products, it is up to us to be “in the know” when it comes to how the hardware will work or not work for virtualization.
For instance, Intel’s add-in server class NICs have older versions that do not support advanced virtualization capabilities such as Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (Intel VT-c).
The new VT-c enabled NICs enable some task offloading from the CPUs as well as direct hypervisor access to the NIC hardware.
The following screenshot of Intel’s NIC site show clearly which NICs are VT-c enabled and which ones are not:
From Intel’s VT-c site linked above:
To optimize these opportunities, Intel® VT-c provides I/O technologies that optimize virtualized performance:
- Enhanced data acceleration across the Intel® multi-core processors platforms
- Improved data processing performance across multiple queues on the network controller
- Direct VM connectivity and data protection between the VMs
Server hardware is evolving at an extremely fast rate. We are fortunate that Intel has structured their product releases in a Tick-Tock Model thus giving us adoption room around each Tick-Tock cycle.
Otherwise we would be completely inundated and that would be a real problem.
For us, being at the Associate Level in the Intel Reseller Partner Program is also very helpful in providing us with the directions Intel is taking with their products. There are a lot more benefits to becoming a part of the program for us small I.T. shops 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.
In a User Bulletin, Thomson Reuters indicates that Practice CS will no longer support the Windows 2000 OS and SQL 2000 Server (All Editions).
From User Bulletin 4607:
NEW SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
With the next release of Practice CS version 2009.2.0, we will be discontinuing support for Microsoft® Windows® 2000 (all editions) and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 (all editions). Practice CS will no longer function on these operating systems. Please see the System Requirements under the Support section of our website at CS.ThomsonReuters.com for additional information on supported operating systems.
While most firms may be fairly current with the desktop operating systems and their backend server setups, there are some that are still running on Windows 2000 era Microsoft products.
Apparently the next update cycle for Practice CS will be in this coming November.
The current version is 2009.1.3:
Also, among the fixes coming down the pipe in that update will be one for client contacts integrated into Exchange Public Folders that are not seemingly synchronizing properly. This was the reason we were calling support in the first place.
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.
We do have occasion to order the OEM product, but it is not too often anymore.
Windows 7 Professional:
Windows 7 Ultimate:
Note that only Fully Packaged Product, that is Retail, gives us both the x86 and x64 versions of the OS.
Windows 7 FPP (Retail)
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.
For some strange reason we cannot seem to get the download started for the RTM version of Windows 7’s Windows XP Mode.
Here are the direct download links:
The download page is here:
While Windows XP Mode will certainly deal with the issue of needing to run legacy applications on or under Windows 7, it is far from the best answer.
We have had a need to implement XP Mode for our accounting firm clients due to the need to run a lot of applications that are just not coded for the Windows Vista/7 platform.
As a result, we have some first-hand experience. We will leave those experiences for another post. Suffice it to say that XP Mode will work, but it may not be a very satisfactory solution in the long run.
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.
Didn’t catch this morning’s Windows 7 Launch keynote by Steve Ballmer?
Mr. Ballmer gets introduced by Kylie who is the little girl in one of the I’m A PC ads.
It is a really good all around presentation on Windows 7 along with demonstrations of the various Windows 7 features with various PC and PC Component products.
The keynote runs at 54 minutes, so keep that in mind when it comes to checking it 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.
How many of us have had to compete with other providers quoting with Cisco products in the SMB space?
Probably not a lot.
That will change as Cisco had their engineers team up with Linksys engineers to collaborate on an entirely new GUI driving line of products priced to sell into the SMB market.
In a conversation with a prospective client where we were talking about a Small Business Server 2008 solution, they had some information on a few different firewall products.
When we mentioned that Cisco had some new SMB focused and priced products they really perked up.
Now, what business owner or manager has not heard of Cisco and their products?
Once through the initial Cisco Partner registration process, click into the Profile Manager then the Addition Access link:
Click on the Cisco Channel Partner or Authorized Reseller link to begin the process of registering the company in the Cisco Partner program itself.
The process itself is a bit cumbersome, but once through it, we will have our Cisco Partner ID that will unlock access to Cisco products at the distribution level (Canadian Distribution Shown):
The Distributor Locator will give results for specific geographic locations.
Our interest in Cisco started when a Cisco representative at the SMB Nation Fall Conference sat at our table to lunch with us. Kim M. Dunlay did an awesome job of talking to us about Cisco’s new SMB line of products.
Every one of us at that table, and there were 8-10, pretty much bypassed the Cisco booth because of our assumptions about Cisco’s products and price points being out of reach for the typical SMB.
After our discussions, and Kim referring one of the Cisco engineers to chat with me about some specifics for the new SMB product lines, it became pretty clear that we needed to examine their new SMB products very closely.
The principle reason why?
The Cisco name sells itself. It will take very little convincing on our part to provide a Cisco SMB focused firewall appliance that has the necessary features our clients need at a competitive cost.
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.
*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.
There have been a few blog posts here on the new second generation Intel Solid-State drives (post category search) lately.
A while back, we put together a box for a client that included an EVGA nVidia based motherboard (EVGA category search). We have had quite the odyssey with this particular system.
The Raptors have consistently broken the RAID 10 array we created via the onboard RAID setup. There has been no rhyme or reason to the array breaking. We even replaced the entire drive set with brand new drives hoping that it would be fixed. No joy there.
Each time the box visited the shop we made sure to update the BIOS on the motherboard and we were still hit with broken arrays.
So, we removed three of the four Raptors leaving the one behind for storage.
We installed a single Intel X25-M 160GB second generation SSD.
We then installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 retail in 12 minutes using our OCZ ATV Turbo as the source.
Both the SSD and Windows 7 Ultimate retail were provided to our client at no cost along with the labour to install all of their needed applications. We needed to make sure that we made things right.
The scary thing is that the single Intel SSD boots the entire Windows 7 Ultimate OS from start to finish in about 15 seconds! 15 Seconds!!!
We define a completed boot as having the ability to click on the Start Button and open any program in the recent list or pinned there.
Even a set of four VelociRaptors configured in a RAID 10 array can’t touch that and they are fast too!
Since installing an Intel 80GB SSD in the Netbook, and soon the Tecra will be getting a 160GB version, bumping out the spindle for an SSD has been an easy sell to our clients.
They can see the visible excitement in me when I am demonstrating a full OS boot in 20 seconds on a Netbook with Windows 7 Pro and an SSD for a drive. Then the application performance for opening them as well as flipping around between open windows and more is pretty impressive on a Netbook.
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.
Probably the one biggest hiccup that happens when working on the same Excel 2007 native (XLSX) spreadsheet at one point on the MacBook Pro and then on the PC is a mysterious margin change.
We have a number of fairly complicated quotation sheets that we have built in Excel on the PC.
When we set up the quote on the PC, then go in and tweak it later on via the MacBook Pro, the MacBook refuses to PDF or print the spreadsheet in the same manner as the PC.
For some really strange reason, the Mac will shift the right margin to the left by two columns (1 Pt each) and thus refuses to print the page out as we would expect.
Here is a screen clip of one of our quote sheets in Print Preview mode on a PC:
Note the fact that there is a border on the right hand side one column to the right of the Amount column. In the above screen clip, the Mac would actually clip off the column to the left of the bold boundary as well as the Amount column.
Go back to the PC though, and we will see the above properly formatted printout in the same worksheet after working on it with the MacBook Pro.
The other bit of weirdness that happens is the intermittent disabling of the auto-calculate feature in the Excel spreadsheet.
While working on this evening’s quote the sheet was mysteriously not updating any changes made. It took a few seconds and a settings check to figure out that the auto-calculate was turned off. This was after the quote was worked on while on the MacBook Pro.
When it comes to a multi-platform setup where both Macs and PCs are used to collaborate on projects, it is a really good idea to be familiar with these types of hiccups between platforms.
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.
Fortunately, the Caravan took the brunt of it and she is okay.
It could have turned out a lot differently.
It sure gave me the need to pause and realize the value I place on her and the kid's presence in my life!
Hug the ones you love because we just never know. :)
Philip
Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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While we are waiting for our Acrobat Standard licensing order to go through for some new workstations here, we installed the trial version of Acrobat 9.x Professional via a download from Adobe’s site.
While there are other products out there to use for generating and working with PDF documents, some are even free, we prefer to run with Acrobat Standard for basic PDF generation and modification needs.
Yes, Acrobat, and any product that works with active data PDFs, has had their fair share of vulnerabilities lately, but now that they are getting a lot of attention from the bad guys they sure are cleaning up their code! Hopefully this realization transfers the need to keep their code tight to the new codebase for Acrobat version 10.x.
We choose Acrobat Standard because the product just works. We have tried to work with others out there, but they all have their quirks and hiccups to get working on a buttoned down network like ours.
A mandatory credentialed Windows Vista/7 UAC setup via Group Policy on our network is probably the one biggest killer for some of the PDF products we have tried.
The one catch with running Acrobat 9.x Standard or Professional on a 64bit OS is to run the product update after installing to get the PDF Printer to show up.
Anyway, back to the trial version:
We generate a lot of PDF documents from the various software products we use. We are virtually paperless in many aspects of our business. While some software products have a PDF generator built in such as QuickBooks (rarely works), others do not. So we need a dedicated PDF generation solution.
With the trial version we are able to generate one or two PDF documents via the PDF Printer before the above message comes up and prevents us from generating anymore PDF documents.
So, we need to log off and then back on again, as the activation prompt does not want to come back even though something was blocking the PDF generation.
This is a very frustrating situation for us as the trail version is supposed to work just as a normal version would for the full thirty day period. But, it activation nags every time we log on and open Acrobat Pro and does not seemingly make the PDF Printer work as expected once the nag screen has been acknowledged.
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.
We received a call from one of our clients that runs 100% Mac systems on their network.
Apparently, they could not connect to the Internet, send e-mail, or print. Thinking that perhaps there was a problem within the Leopard OS X itself, they did an in-place upgrade to Snow Leopard.
Well, that did not fix the problem. So we received a call.
When we got there, there was no DNS resolution, no ability for the iMac to get anywhere even on the internal peer-to-peer network.
After poking around in the Network Settings, the network adapter was set to pull the iMac's IP address via DHCP and seemed to release and renew without a problem.
At first glance, the DNS field was not empty and the IP address that was in there did not register. It took a minute for the realization to hit: They had the IP address of their own iMac set as the DNS server!
No wonder there was nothing coming in. As soon as we deleted the iMac's IP address and released and renewed the IP the network's own DNS servers showed up and we had connectivity.
The e-mail issue turned out to be some in correct settings in their Mac Mail program while the Ricoh Aficio MP C2050 was another problem altogether.
Out of all of the troubleshooting time spent there, most of it was spent on getting the iMac to reconnect to the copier.
Knowing how an in-place upgrade can kill any already existing drivers we downloaded the newest printer driver set from Ricoh's Web site and installed it. We deleted the two Ricoh printers in the iMac's Printers and reinstalled using the copier's IP address and the correct LPR queues.
Still no joy though.
In the end, we needed to perform essentially what is a ground level reset of the entire printing subsystem in OS X.
This is the Apple KB article that we needed in order to fix the problem:
It is important to note that we were unable to fix the problem by clicking on the "-" sign to remove the printers. We needed to perform the drastic measure in the KB:
Resetting the printing system in Mac OS X 10.5.x
To use the Reset Printing System feature in Mac OS X 10.5.x, follow these steps:
- Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
- Choose Print & Fax from the View menu.
- Control-click on list of printers on the left side of the window, then choose "Reset printing system" from the contextual menu.
- If you don't see a list of printers, Control-click on the text "Click + to add a printer or fax" and select "Reset printing system..."
Once we reset the printing system we were able to install the copier via LPR using its two queues, one for black and white and the other for colour printing.
Written using MarsEdit on the MacBook Pro. This blog post editor looks promising as I know enough HTML to be dangerous. We shall see if it can upload images to Blogger's Picasa Web Albums to clinch the deal.
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.
One of our long time clients has delved into currency trading and is using a proprietary monitoring and graphing application for the various world currencies being watched and traded.
Their current system is a high performance system we put together for them six years ago.
That system was based on a P4 with HyperThreading, Windows XP Pro and 1GB of RAM. We had our client bring the system here to the shop to run various process monitoring utilities on the PC while the proprietary application was up and running.
We were looking for a couple of specific things:
What we discovered was an application that is capable of taking advantage of as many “cores” as possible.
The last test we ran was the generation of a new graph with everything else going on in the background. The new graph being generated pegged one of the “cores” on the system, so that particular process was single threaded . . . maybe.
Now that we had a pretty good overview of how the application performed, we now knew some key performance needs:
So, the configuration we have come up with for the system to be built to meet our client’s needs will be as follows:
We expect the ability of each of the Xeon Processors to bin one or two cores upwards to gain the needed extra performance will make this rig fit our client’s needs perfectly.
Using the second generation Intel Solid-State Drives plus a second generation Intel RAID controller aught to help us virtually eliminate any disk subsystem bottlenecks.
The extra RAM and the 64bit capabilities of Windows 7 Ultimate round out the setup.
The workstation board S5520SC has a Trusted Platform Module version 1.2. Since we are installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Edition on this setup and due to the sensitivity of the tasks being accomplished by the user we will be encrypting the contents of any partition created with BitLocker.
In the end, the system should provide our client with exactly the responsiveness they are looking for in a system and also protect everything on the system via encryption.
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.
Attempt number one at finding a blog post editor for Mac OS X: Ecto.
Simple and straight forward, but unfortunately no native support for Picasa Web Albums where Blogger posts images to.
Ecto does support Flikr, but why start a whole new location for images when our Picasa Web Albums account is only 20% full after close to three years of blogging?
While the editing abilities of Ecto are pretty good, due to the incompatibility with the Blogger native image location we unfortunately have to give Ecto a fail.
On to the next editor . . .
Windows Live Writer may be a bit clunky, but at least it works with the native tools.
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.
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.
This says it is:
Those ISO files copied over really quick!
With our best USB flash or hard drives we are fortunate when we see a 30-35MB/Second write speed.
65MB/Second is almost double the USB flash drive write speed.
So, if the server supports eSATA and the ability to hot swap those eSATA drives, then use it.
Is it worth it to install a third party eSATA PCI or PCI-E card into existing hardware?
Probably not. They will require proprietary drivers that may or may not work with our server or workstation hardware. So, they are not worth the risk.
But for those situations where the laptop or workstation has a built-in eSATA port that is hot swap capable, then the small added expense of purchasing an external hard drive with the port in it is worth it.
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.
Since we have started to install the second generation Intel SSDs in our laptops, there has been a need to look at additional storage.
Since we keep an ISO copy of the various software products we work with on the laptop, which is BitLocker enabled, it is preferable that any external storage device being used to store the content also be encrypted.
Enter in BitLocker To Go which is a new feature with Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise.
We have a 500GB 2.5” external USB/eSATA drive that we will use for portable storage with the laptop. The drive in the enclosure is brand new:
Once we have partitioned the drive with an NTFS partition, we jumped into the BitLocker management page:
We clicked on the Turn On BitLocker link for the attached 500GB drive:
In this case we enabled the need to use a password every time the drive is attached to the host as well as any other systems the drive may be connected to.
We saved the recovery key to a USB flash drive. From there, we upload all of our keys to Vlad’s off-site storage facilities that we subscribe to as well as resell.
It is important to note that any content on the BitLocker enabled external storage will be read only when connected to any other machine but the original host.
After clicking next, there will be a final warning:
Here we are ten minutes later after clicking the Start Encrypting button:
Even with the eSATA connection being used to hook the drive up to our Tecra S10, the process was going to take a while. We had started it just before finishing up for the evening, so the whole encryption process took somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3-4 hours for 500GB.
We can now keep anything we need to on the external drive with no real worries about losing it or having it stolen.
When it comes time to plug the drive in, take note that there will be a UAC prompt and then:
Note the option to “Automatically unlock on this computer from now on” is not checked.
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.
While in Las Vegas a lady left a voicemail asking us to help them out with networking together 3 PCs.
A quick call back to them late last week to let them know we received the message but were getting caught up and would get back to them led to another call last Friday and a chat with the general manager (GM).
They had spec’d out a Dell server at $8,000 for their needs!
Okay, so we needed to see what was going on so we arranged for an appointment that ended up happening this morning.
To date, none, none of the other I.T. service providers had called them back besides us.
Think about that for a second.
No one bothered to call back to even ask them what it was they were looking for. No one thought about how 3 users connected to Exchange and SharePoint hosting (OWN) resold by them would add that little bit more to the bottom line.
The icing on the cake was the actual visit.
It seems that the lady that put out the feeler call to all those I.T. shops including our own had somehow managed to interpret the GM’s instructions about getting things networked together to mean her machine, the QuickBooks user’s machine, and the GM’s machine connected to a server.
In reality, there were about 10 seats with a couple of laptops needed in the mix. From there, they need at least two new workstations, Remote Web Workplace connectivity was a must once demonstrated for key folks, Office 2007 licensing was needed for most of their desktops and laptops, AntiVirus, a firewall, and more.
So, where does that leave us? At a very distinct advantage to put together an awesome solution around Small Business Server 2008, Intel Server Hardware, Intel Workstation Hardware, a Microsoft Open Value Agreement for their licensing needs, and more!
Lesson to be learned?
Sometimes those opportunities may seem like they are “not worth it”, but even the smallest of deals can be that seed sown that later pays off in the way of strong business relationships and business referrals.
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.
Please check www.mpecsinc.ca for up to date information on where and when I am going to be doing things.
The LiveMeeting link:
Please keep in mind that this is my first run at this so things might be a bit bumpy to start with.
Also, the LiveMeeting will be recorded and rereleased at a later date.
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.
For us Canucks, this weekend is our Thanksgiving.
We have lots to be thankful for in the last year and lots to look forward to in the new year. :)
Thanks to you 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.
A while back, we blogged about installing Windows 7 Ultimate x86 on an Asus Eee PC:
The fact that the OS ran really smooth on the Netbook with 2GB of RAM installed on it was pretty kewl.
Well, we just received a shipment of second generation 80GB Intel X25-M SATA Solid-State Drives just before I came back from Vegas.
With a little bit of time on my hands, I decided to install one of the SSDs into the above mentioned Asus Eee PC and install Windows 7 Professional x86 instead of Ultimate.
The box:
The package is seemingly larger than would be expected for a 2.5” SATA drive form factor.
But, once the box was opened, there was a good reason for the extra packaging space:
Underneath the cardboard tray the drive itself sat in was space for an adapter to install the drive into a standard 3.5” hard drive space along with the needed mounting screws.
Rounding things out are the installation manual on paper and CD as well as a MY SSD ROCKS! sticker that went onto the LCD cover of the Eee PC once the OS was installed successfully.
The Eee PC came with a weak 160GB 5400RPM Hitachi (we have a 50%+ fail rate for their drives in laptops) though the actual space utilized by the OS, Office 2007, and the Live applications was about 25GB-35GB. So, there would be lots of room to spare on the 80GB SSD.
The installation method of choice for spot Windows 7 OS installs is via USB flash drive.
Now, no two USB flash drives are alike. And, for any shop that depends on timely file transfers to and from a USB flash drive the cheap 8-12MB/Sec drives are out of the picture.
We bench tested a number of USB flash drives and came out with the 4GB OCZ ATV Turbo (OCZUSBATVT4G) as having the best overall performance at 35MB/Sec read speeds and 30-35MB/Sec Write speeds.
The 4GB OCZ ATV Turbo was the flash drive that was used to install Windows 7 Professional x86 on the Asus Eee PC.
Okay, so we have the OS on the ATV Turbo, it is active and good to boot from. Once we had booted into the setup process we clicked through and assigned the full 80GB to the OS.
Can anyone guess how long it took the OS to install on the Netbook from the point where we clicked Next?
Well, during the first part of the OS install the ATV Turbo’s LED was blinking pretty furiously with the Eee PC’s HDD light blinking intermittently.
Once the first reboot happened the HDD light remained lit almost constantly.
The entire OS install routine from the point where the Next button was clicked and we could click on the Start button after the OS desktop appeared and have it respond was 14 minutes.
That is just mindboggling for an Intel Atom N280 processor in a Netbook!
The next test for the SSD will be to see how it affects the battery life in the Netbook. With the Hitachi SATA installed we were getting an average of 7 hours of battery life. So, this will be the next step.
Once back in the shop we will run some hard drive benchmarks to get some real world numbers.
The next machine to get an SSD will be the Toshiba Tecra S10 that this blog post is being written on. Since 80GB is a bit too small, an external laptop sized USB/eSATA hard drive will be levelled with BitLocker To Go and travel with it for extra storage.
Again, it will be interesting to see what kind of performance increases as well as battery life increases the SSD installation will yield.
So far, we are very impressed with the Intel X25-M SATA Solid-State Drive.
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.
On one of the e-mail lists that I follow that focuses on security, one of the threads caught my eye as I was working my way through the volumes of e-mail.
Apparently, Adobe Flash Player has a cookie tracking mechanism built into it.
“Oh really?” you might say. What does this mean for me?
Well, think about the last In-Private browsing session that was used while working on a client machine with IE8 installed. We use In-Private to browse our own business specific sites if there is a spontaneous need while at a client site and working on their system.
Apparently, the IE8 In-Private feature, or any other browser’s similar feature, does not coordinate with Flash Player!
This was brought to my attention by fellow MVP Derek Knight:
There are a number of ways to deal with this situation.
One is to manage the cookies on Adobe’s Web site:
There is something that is just not comfortable about the above procedure.
From there, we can manage them locally:
All of the cookies will be contained in some randomly named DataFolder under #SharedObjects.
Or, Derek mentions a tool on his blog post that will take them out in one fell swoop:
The nice thing about Steelworxs Steelworx Flush Flash is that it is both Windows and Mac (Leopard and up) friendly.
This little blindside was definitely a wakeup call to make sure to discover all of the tracking mechanisms that can be used on our systems.
The original study on the subject:
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.
For those of you that may have noticed the LiveMeeting event in the calendar on our Web site, I am not going to be able to follow through on it tomorrow morning.
I am just getting back on my feet after getting hit really heard hard with a flu bug that started to show itself last weekend in Las Vegas.
The plan is to set up some LiveMeeting events limited to 30 or so registrants so that I can open up the microphone to facilitate a conversation around SBS migrations or any other topics that may come up.
So, keep an eye on that calendar for upcoming events that I will be attending along with some LiveMeeting conversations.
My apologies to those that were hoping to get in on tomorrow’s event.
UPDATE: My brain is still a bit scrambled from the flu bug. :)
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.
There are a number of little sponsorships that I have received in the last little bit.
One was the free Zero Downtime Deep Dive done by Karl and Manuel Palachuk in Las Vegas on the first. Now, in all fairness the complimentary attendance was offered to me because I wrote the Forward for their Zero Downtime book.
Karl and Manuel, thank you for the opportunity to write the Forward and to attend the seminar.
The second was the complimentary pass to the SMB Nation Fall Conference. This pass was given to me as a result of my MVP status with Microsoft.
Thanks to Harry Brelsford and his awesome crew for putting on such a great show!
The catch with both of the above though is the cost in time, flights, hotel, and living expenses. All of the folks that attended the Pre-Day event(s) as well as the SMB Conference itself sacrificed a huge chunk of their client focused time to be there.
As a rule Sundays are family days for us. So, the actual cost in time spanned Wednesday September 30th through Monday October 5th except Sunday.
If either event was not worth it, that is the content was a wash, the event itself was poorly run, and so on, then given the value of the time spent there, we would be sure to voice our opinions as such.
But that was not the case. Both events were very well done with the SMB Nation conference being one of the best conferences I have ever attended.
Finally, it is no secret as far as what we think of the products and services provided by Vlad’s company Own Web Now as well as his e-mail sanitation and continuity service called ExchangeDefender.
We think that OWN provides us with an excellent set of products and services. Along with that OWN gives us an awesome opportunity to build passive income for our business.
So, there have been many posts on this blog here (ExchangeDefender) and here (Own Web Now) to that fact.
While in Las Vegas, Vlad shipped a box out to both Susan Bradley (her disclosure post) and myself. In that box were a couple of 13” MacBook Pros one for Susan and one for me.
The gift was an unexpected but pleasant surprise! So, courtesy of Vlad and OWN we will begin to post Mac specific content again.
Thanks Vlad for the gift!
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.
The SMB Nation Fall Conference in Las Vegas was a really good event.
Now that I am back, there is a stack of things waiting for me to attend to.
Posting may be light for the next bit until I catch up.
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)
The last couple of days have been extremely full. Talk about keeping us busy!
Way to go Harry and the SMB Nation crew! This convention was one of the best that I have been to yet! :)
There was a need to get quick access to an OS ISO on this Windows 7 laptop. Unfortunately there was no way to mount the ISO natively in Windows 7.
A quick search turned up:
SlySoft.com
After downloading and installing the utility the ISO was able to be mounted and its content accessed without rebooting the laptop.
Note that a reboot may be required for Windows XP.
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)
What a beautiful sunrise!
The strip sure has changed in the 20 years since I have been here!
A fellow consultant, Stephen Kennedy, met at the SMB Nation Spring 2008 event in Toronto last year picked me up at the airport and we drove the strip to the Riviera where I am staying.
Wow! The various theme hotels, the shops, and all of the people are a stunning site.
Karl’s Migration Deep Dive starts shortly in Capri 109 and 110 here at the Riviera. So, it is time to grab a bite and enjoy the huge cup of coffee the restaurant gives us . . . it’s not like they don’t want us guests to stay awake now do they? ;)
The coffee has a pretty good kick too . . . though I think they may learn something from Tims! :D
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)
