Light Posting For The Next Couple Of Weeks

Folks, we have been running at 110% for the last two years straight.

We are fortunate that we have a bit of time in between now and our next series of large projects.

So, we are going to step back a bit for the next couple of weeks.

We will be spending time with our families and enjoying some of the beautiful weather as well as some neat surprises for our kids!

Thanks for your support and for reading this blog on an ongoing basis.

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 2008 Install – No NIC Found For Xeon Processor 5600 Or Xeon 3400 Series Servers

We have found that SBS 2008 RTM or SBS 2008 with SP2 slipstreamed into the media will not find some of the newer Intel based NICs in our newer Xeon 5500/5600 and Xeon 3400 Series servers.

On one of our recent Answer File installs we were greeted with the following screen the next day:

Install Windows Small Business Server 2008

A network adapter was not found

We plugged in a USB flash drive that had the most current Intel ProSet driver executable on it.

We then clicked the Browse link shown in the screenshot above.

We navigated to the USB flash drive and double clicked on the ProSet file. Once the driver install routine spooled up, we made sure to select only the NIC Driver.

We were then saw:

Once the NIC drivers were set our SBS install routine continued on from there:

When we have a bit of time we will use the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Win 7) to inject the new Intel Pro Set drivers into the SBS 2008 SP2 WIM and burn a new DVD thus eliminating any further install interruptions.

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

Troubleshooting Flaky Systems Behaviours

Sometimes, we need to learn lessons the hard way.

I remember replacing the rear end on a 1500 series truck (mine) due to a major squealing sound that did not go away _after_ the change out. The problem turned out to be the hanger bearing. Lesson learned.

When it comes to computers, there is the workstation that behaves rather erratically over time. We would go through the regular troubleshooting steps looking in common problem areas such as software conflicts, memory issues, or physical problems on the hard drive’s platters.

Or, how about the printer that behaves fine for a number of days then stops responding or prints out funky characters instead of the page(s) sent to the printer.

The lesson being highlighted here has to do with starting with troubleshooting the small things first.

One of the small things that is common to both IT related problems listed above was that the interface cable turned out to be the culprit.

In the first example where the workstation was behaving flaky, the SATA cable connecting the hard drive to the motherboard turned out to be the problem.

For the printer, the USB cable connecting the printer to its workstation was the problem.

It is probably due to just how rare a cable turns out to be the culprit in a problematic setup that we overlook changing them out as part of our early troubleshooting steps. We usually go to some fairly great lengths to troubleshoot a problem before a cable even becomes a consideration.

So, sometimes, depending on the errant behaviour, it may be a good idea to actually _start_ by swapping out whatever interface cable or cables. We can then eliminate them right out of the box.

BTW, when it comes to USB cables and printers, watch the length of that USB cable relative to the cable’s diameter. If there is a need to run a cable longer than the standard 6’, then make sure that the extra length cable contains a heavier gauge core cable set to reduce the possibility of signal loss between the PC and the printer.

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

Clients And The Cloud

We have been hearing a lot lately about the demise of the in-house IT model and how everything is going to shift into the cloud.

We are hearing this from business leaders, technology gurus, and even surveys.

So, what do our clients really say?

Do they know what HaaS and SaaS mean? Do they know what Cloud means?

Is there an understanding that in-house is the “Buy” model versus the Cloud’s “Lease” model?

And ultimately, will the Cloud really be cheaper than in-house?

In the long run, there is going to be a lot of jostling for our client’s e-mail and data. Control those and there is no turning back.

There are a lot of honest questions that need to be asked without the hype surrounding things.

Those questions are ultimately tied into what is best for our clients.

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

What Facebook Privacy? Search & See What’s Public and A Facebook Profile Delete Method

Here is an interesting read on Mark Zuckerberg’s possible view on Facebook user’s privacy:

• Business Insider SAI: Well, These New Zuckerberg IMs Won't Help Facebook's Privacy Problems

As with anything, the above IM conversation content may be taken out of context, but given Facebook’s history with user content privacy there may be shreds of truth in the attitude indicated.

An interesting site that polls Facebook for publically available information:

• Openbook: YourOpenBook.org
• Note that a random search word set will bring up results when the page first loads.
• The search terms and the results can be surprising and even a bit shocking in what they reveal.
• About Openbook

A Facebook Group page dedicated to deleting a Facebook account:

• How to permanently delete your facebook account.

If there is one rule of thumb for the Internet it is that anything published to the Internet can never be taken back.

As a result, _everything_ that we do from the moment we start publishing on the Internet whether via Twitter, Facebook, or other online venue needs to be carefully considered.

For example, someone applying for a job may not remember a big party from a few years ago. But, a prospective employer found the descriptions and _pictures_ of the “fun” that night via an online forum. Depending on the employer, the activities of that evening may very well weigh in on their hiring deliberations.

Given Facebook’s history with “private” bits published on their site, and the Terms & Conditions on many other sites that can hold our data, we need to be truly “Internet Street Smart”. Essentially, that means that we read those T&Cs and keep close track of any site’s data privacy settings and what those settings do.

If we don’t agree with with the T&Cs as well as the site’s privacy policy, then we don’t sign up.

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

Unicode Characters – The Interrobang?!?

I am into cars as has been mentioned in this blog before. Having discovered computers just as I was digging into my last year towards a Journeyman’s ticket as an automotive mechanic, I got the tech bug and never looked back.

We all know where I ended up with that bug now don’t we? ;)

• Image: Jalopnik

While reading the above Jalopnik article on the 2010 Ford Focus RS which looks to be an amazing little car, one of the lines in the article mentioned folks faces personifying the Interrobang (Wikipedia) when they first saw the Focus RS.

Having not heard of such a thing, I ventured over to the Wikipedia article to find the above character.

Ah, the writer in me sees the above character as being _very_ useful for those occasions where “?!?” just won’t cut it or other expressions/acronyms are just not quite polite enough! :)

Now, a neat thing is that Microsoft kindly included the Interrobang in their created for Office default font called Calibri.

This is what the Interrobang looks like in a Web based font: ‽

Note that in Windows Live Writer the character shows up fine. But, it may get toasted by the upload process to Blogger or by Blogger itself when it renders this post.

As mentioned, I see the Interrobang as being very useful for those of us that write. Now that I have discovered it, it will probably find its way into the various writings that I do.

• Unicode General Punctuation Range: 2000-206F (PDF)
• Interrobang: 203D
• MSDN Font Blog: Interrobang?! — Interrobang!?

From the MSDN Font Blog comments comes this little gem from Si:

• Interrobang keyboard shortcuts
• ALT+8253 (numbers on #pad)
• 203D + ALT+X (in Office Apps)

Both shortcuts work quite well. What I did not know was about the second one and how Unicode characters work in Office Applications.

In Microsoft Office type the Unicode string number with the keystroke combination ALT+X after it to bring up the Unicode character. After firing up Word and typing 203D then hitting ALT+X sure enough the Interrobang showed up!

To date, I would either used the ALT+# (not possible on a Microsoft Entertainment keyboard that has no separate number pad) or the Character Map tool in Windows.

Using the Advanced view I can search for a character quickly when I know its name then copy and paste it into my work.

Not bad from one Jalopnik article eh‽ :D

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

Neat Tech – Honda’s U3-X Personal Mobility Prototype

This is just too neat not to share:

The device is a pretty kewl unicycle.

The U3-X, if it goes into production, may be an excellent option for folks that are in need of an ultra portable mobility assistance device when they are out and about.

The U3-X could also be a good thing to have for technicians that need to work long term in a server closet! :)

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 2008 – Outlook 2007 Cannot Connect To Exchange Error

We set up a new Windows 7 Enterprise x64 VM for a client this afternoon.

We then installed Open Value licensed Office 2007 Standard via a network share where an MST file with their settings and the service pack files are already in the Updates folder.

When we opened Outlook to set up the user’s mailbox we were unable to do so. No matter what we tried we kept getting a password prompt which would eventually lead to a Failed to Connect to Exchange error message.

Starting Outlook /RPCDiag brought no clues other than to indicate that Outlook was seemingly not even trying to connect. The dialogue did show DNS resolution to be working as the SBS 2008 server name showed up there.

Running Windows Update, which was by default tied to WSUS on SBS, did not resolve it. We needed to run the online Microsoft Update version, install MU, then check for updates to see the Microsoft Office 2007 updates that were available post SP2.

Once we installed the MU Office 2007 updates, we rebooted. After logging in we were able to get the user’s mailbox configured in Outlook.

SBS 2008 is up to date on this particular network. So, there looks to be an Office 2007/Outlook 2007 update that needs to happen in order to get the two of them communicating again.

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

The new iPad in Canada May 28

We are subscribed to the Apple News e-mail service via our MacBook Pro registration.

This is the latest:

We here in Canada will be able to purchase the iPad on and after May 28th.

Here is the Canadian Apple iPad site:

The initial 3G version of the iPad will be available on the Rogers network.

Since we travel back and forth in rural areas not covered by Rogers, if we were to purchase an iPad 3G we would wait until Bell picked them up.

For now, we will wait and see if there is a need for one of the devices here. And since we have already had some experience with the device, we will need to see what the Canadian App Store offers us in the way of productivity apps that suit our needs.

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

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

Windows Live Writer

Update – Heartland Payment Systems Breach Costs

Computerworld has an updated figure on the approximate breach costs to Heartland Payment Systems.

• Heartland breach expenses pegged at $140M -- so far

The breach dollar amount is arrived via Heartland’s published quarterly financial results.

What does that tell us?

Not a lot since Heartland has been quite closed about publishing any information on the real impact that the breach has had on their clients that use them for payment processing.

We have a number of posts on this particular breach since we were directly impacted by it.

• MPECS Inc. Blog Category: Breach

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

Further to Licensing Office in a Terminal Services Environment

Eric Ligman kindly wrote a follow-up e-mail asking about the scenario posted in our earlier post today on Licensing Microsoft Office in Terminal Services.

And the clarification made by Eric:

• Office is licensed per _device_ accessing the application no matter where the application is installed.

In the original post we had _desktop_

So, in the previously mentioned situation where we have 22 users total with 11 of them locally and 11 of them remote, we need to keep count of the number of _devices_ being used to access Office on the Terminal Server.

For example:

1. 22 users using Office.
1. 11 Office users on 11 local PCs (11 devices).
2. 11 users on 11 remote PCs into Terminal Services Office (11 devices).
3. Licenses required: 22.
• This is our original situation.
2. 22 users using Office in a shift work environment.
1. 22 Office users on 11 local PCs (11 devices) via 2 shifts
2. Licenses required: 11.
3. 22 users using Office on multiple PCs and laptops.
1. 11 Office users on 11 local PCs (11 devices).
2. 9 users on 9 remote PCs into Terminal Services (9 devices).
3. 2 users on 2 remote laptops into Terminal Services (2 devices).
4. Same 2 users on 2 remote PCs into Terminal Services (2 devices).
5. Licenses required: 24.
4. 22 users using Office on multiple PCs and laptops.
1. 11 Office users on 11 local PCs (11 devices).
2. 7 users on 7 remote PCs into Terminal Services (7 devices).
3. 4 users on 4 remote PCs into Terminal Services (4 devices).
4. Same 4 users on 4 remote laptops into Terminal Services (4 devices).
5. Licenses required: 26.

Thanks Eric for making sure that we were absolutely clear on how Office licensing works.

With that clarification we can be 100% confident that we will offer the correct answer to our clients when they ask about delivering Office to remote users via Terminal Services!

Eric’s original post:

• Answer to a question on how Microsoft Office is licensed in a Terminal Services environment and why OEM Office doesn’t cover it, in plain English

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

Licensing Microsoft Office in Terminal Services

This post has an update here: Further to Licensing Office in a Terminal Services Environment.

This one is a bit of a brain buster to figure out, though Eric Ligman has done a great job of clarifying the way to properly license Microsoft Office in a Terminal Services environment:

• Answer to a question on how Microsoft Office is licensed in a Terminal Services environment and why OEM Office doesn’t cover it, in plain English

Essentially:

1. Office is licensed per _desktop_ _device_ accessing the application no matter where the application is installed.
2. Open Licensing provides the rights to run Office in a Terminal Services environment.

So, we have a client that we are setting up that has a combined total 22 users in their Active Directory with 11 physical machines on the network and 11 users connecting remotely via TS Gateway on SBS to their internal Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Terminal Server.

Office and their Line of Business application will be delivered via TS RemoteApps as well as Remote Desktop Services for certain users that require a desktop to work from.

All 11 systems will have Office and all 11 TS users will be accessing Office on the Terminal Server so we will be providing them with a sum total of 22 Open Value based licenses.

A couple of key Office Open Value part numbers:

• Office 2007/2010 Open Value 3 Year Agreement with 3 Payments
  • 021-07257: Office 2007/2010 Standard
  • 269-09046: Office 2007/2010 Professional Plus

The Microsoft License Advisor site:

• Microsoft License Advisor

There are three physical servers on this particular network with SBS 2008 Premium and Windows Server 2008 R2 being licensed with an Open Value Agreement.

UPDATE: Eric kindly e-mailed us with some clarifications based on our client situation mentioned in this post. His thoughts are developed with some examples in our post Further to Licensing Office in a Terminal Services Environment.

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 Next Generation Core i3-i5 DQ??xx vPro Mini-ITX Is Due When?

We put most of our local client systems together around the Intel Desktop Board DQ45EK Mini-ITX motherboard.

We do this because it offers dual DVI out along with Intel’s Active Management Technology (vPro designation).

It also gives us the flexibility to utilize an ultra small form factor case such as the A-Open S145A or In-Win BM639.

What has been puzzling has been the fact that the Micro-ATX DQ57TM board has been available for quite a while but its smaller Mini-ITX sibling has been conspicuously absent.

And, based on this we may not be seeing a newer generation Mini-ITX Executive Series board for a while:

 

• Intel® Desktop Board Extended Life Cycle Plan (North America only)

It seems that the DQ45EK is on extended life support at this time. As a result, a newer Mini-ITX board capable of supporting the new Core i5 or i3 series CPUs may not be available until sometime next year.

When that is exactly has yet to be made public.

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

Installing Windows Home Server “Vail” Beta On An Intel SS4200-EHW NAS box

The new version of Windows Home Server is now a public Beta and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Connect site:

• Windows Home Server Beta on Connect

Since we are dealing with Server 2008 R2 code, we can mount the ISO and copy its contents onto a high speed USB flash drive and run the install from there.

We are currently doing that on a hacked apart Intel SS4200-EHW NAS device:

The primary drive is a 500GB Seagate ES.2 drive. Note that in the image below the SMART status of the drive is BAD. We replaced it with another drive out of that pile of project drives before running the OS install. We will install additional drives once we see that things are settled in with the OS.

The SS4200-EHW comes with an Intel Celeron 420 CPU that is EMT64 capable.

But, it only has a 512MB PC2-5300 stick of RAM which is half of the minimum required 1GB of RAM. So, we dug around the parts bin and found a 2GB Kingston KVR667D2N5/2G stick. Once installed, we booted into the BIOS and found 2048MB of RAM available to us.

Since the SS4200-EHW is headless with no VGA connectors whatsoever, we needed to find a PCI-E 1x video card as that is the only slot available to us on the motherboard.

Again, in the parts bin we happened to have an ATI FireMV 2200 quad port PCI-E 1x video card. The card can be seen without its mounting bracket in the above image.

Once installed, we will be copying our multimedia archive onto the unit as well as configuring the PC backup with some of our workstations here in the shop. We will then crash one of them and use the restore disk to see how the recovery goes.

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

SharePoint Designer 2010 x64 and x86 Downloads Are Available

The free SharePoint Designer 2010 RTM downloads for both CPU architectures are available on Microsoft’s download site:

• Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 (64-bit)
• Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 (32-bit)

As we have noted in a previous post, SharePoint Designer 2010 will only work with the current SharePoint 2010 versions (previous blog post).

We need to have SharePoint Designer 2007 installed in order to work with Windows SharePoint Services v3 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

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

Deploying Office 2010 via Group Policy

We are getting ready to bump all of our clients that have Open Value agreements up to Office 2010.

We will be using the 32bit version of Office 2010 since that will mean that we can use our existing GPO based script with some tweaks to the settings.

If we went to deploy the 64bit version of Office, we would need to look at significant changes to the script. So, we will leave that for now.

Also, Microsoft has a “strong suggestion” on their Open Value download page stating that we should be deploying 32bit versions by default. So, for now we will be doing so.

We do have the 64bit versions installed here in the office to see what the differences may be. We shall also keep an eye on the 64bit product’s stability.

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 SSD Expected Lifetime And Gross Data Throughput Capabilities

While working on the previous post on Intel SSDs configured in the Intel Modular Server SAN, the twelfth slide in the IMS IDF2009 presentation was a real eye opener:

Note the numbers for the amount of data that can be written to the X25-E series drives as well as the two X25-M series drives!

• X25-E Series
• 3 Years of random writes
• 1-2 Petabytes of data volume
• X25-M Series in a Client setting
• 5 Years of random writes
• 35 Terabytes of data volume
• X25-M Series in a Datacenter setting
• 3 Years of random writes
• 7.5-15 Terabytes of data volume respectively

Those numbers give us a view of Intel’s expected lifetime for their Solid-State Drives in terms of the total volume of data to be written to them.

On initial view, the numbers seem relatively small volume wise. But, given the fact that we deal with some substantial amounts of static data both on servers and workstations we need to be mindful of the actual volume of data written to the disk over its expected lifetime.

Once we have a server OS and whatever applications installed on the disks, we are probably going to fall fairly far below the 20GB/day listed for the Intel X25-M series drives in a Client setting for example.

Intel Source:

• IDF2009 STOS004- Unleash Ultimate Virtualization Performance- Intel® Modular Server with Intel®

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 and Intel Solid-State Drive Performance IDF2009 Presentation

The 2009 Intel Developer Forum presentations are all available online here:

• IDF2009 Session Presentations with Audio

Of particular interest to us is the presentation on configuring Intel X25-M or X25-E Solid-State Drives with the 2.5” drive MFSYS25 series Intel Modular Server.

• IDF2009 STOS004: Unleash Ultimate Virtualization Performance: Intel® Modular Server with Intel® X25-E Solid-State Drives

This particular presentation runs about an hour is chock full of good information comparing the performance characteristics of traditional spindle based SAS drives and Intel’s Solid-State Drives.

There are some pretty good explanations of the various features and abilities of the Intel Modular Server too.

A point in the session that we have focused on here has to do with the actual I/O performance (IOPs) of the onboard SAN storage in the IMS (MFSYS25) with either SAS or SSD drives installed:

Note that when it comes to actual disk performance, the read and write throughput (MB/Sec) numbers are important, but those numbers become a moot point if the hard drive’s IOPs capabilities are relatively low.

IOPs (Wikipedia), or the number of Input/Output Operations Per Second a drive is capable of can make or break a server setup whether it is serving a very busy database or a series of IMS SAN located VHDs for VMs running in a cluster.

Even the largest RAID 10 array can perform quite poorly if the drives running in that RAID array have a relatively low IOPs capability.

Based on our own experiences with the Intel X25-M series Solid-State Drives, the above SSD performance slide is quite realistic considering that the X25-E series drives have an even higher IOPs capability than the X25-M drives.

The Solid-State Drives do indeed trump the traditional spindle based drives, even with a spindle rotational speed of 15,000 RPM, by huge margins.

So, our storage configurations need to be planned based on what each server node will be doing or storage sharing with the other nodes.

A blog post will follow to develop our thoughts on IMS storage options.

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 – v6.1 Firmware Update Package and Other Driver Updates Available

The Intel Modular Server has a new CMM firmware update available:

• Intel Download Center: IMS Downloads

The new firmware updates the MFS5520VI series compute modules to support a version change in the Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series CPUs. From the v6.1 ReadMe.txt:

E. NEW FEATURES/FUNCTIONS IMPLEMENTED IN THIS RELEASE
Intel® Xeon® 5600 Processor series – Updated Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 series B1 Microcode to version 0x0C

Here are some driver updates for the following IMS components along with the CMM firmware link:

• IMS CMM Firmware Update Package v6.1
• IMS SAS 1064e Driver for Windows
• IMS MPIO Storage Driver for Windows
• Includes WHQL certified drivers for Windows Server 2008 R2 which includes Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

If the above links do not work beyond this post date then:

• Intel DownloadFinder Site
• Search MFSYS25 or MFSYS35 depending on the model.

As part of the preparation that we do on a new IMS, we update the default firmware on the box following the instructions contained in the v6.1 Install Instructions Release Notes.txt file (direct link to the text file as of this writing). We do so because a new IMS may have a CMM firmware version earlier than v2.7 on it out of the box.

B. GENERAL INFORMATION The system must be at firmware level V2.7, V3.0, V3.6, V4.0, V4.1, V5.0, V5.5 or V6.0 prior to starting this update.

So, keep in mind that an out of the box IMS will take a couple or three hours to run the two firmware updates if it has CMM firmware v2.6 or earlier.

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

Merry Christmas!

This is the pleasant surprise we woke up to in the Greater Edmonton Area this morning.

It's about 1 degree Celcius, so at least we are not being frozen out.

Traffic is moving along at a joyful 30KM/H! :)

We did not swap the winter tires off yet, so this is a good thing!

I _love_ it! :o)

Philip

Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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SBS 2008 Set Up Guide v1.5.0 Released

We just changed our SBS 2008 Setup Guide with a number of additions as well as some restructuring.

• SBS 2008 Setup Guide V1.5.0

The Guide is provided to help us provide a consistent install experience for SBS 2008.

The more consistent we are in our installs, the simpler troubleshooting becomes if there is a problem with something on the software side of things or the hardware side of things.

Having that consistency also makes it a lot easier for a technician working with multiple SBS boxes throughout the day to accomplish their job.

BGInfo by SysInternals takes are of putting the server name and IP address on the desktop so that they have one of many visual cues as to which server they are managing.

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

Online Service – We are experiencing temporary problems. Please try again later.

We are trying to send an e-mail money transfer to pay a bill.

This is what our bank’s online interface has been telling us over the last couple of hours:

We are experiencing temporary problems. Please try again later.

Fortunately, we can pop into our local branch that is open today and do the transaction manually.

However, this situation emphasizes the need to evaluate our dependence on remote Cloud based services and the cost to our business if we cannot access those services.

In this case, there was a fallback. But, if there was not, we may have been hit with late payment fees and interest charges.

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