How to test the Autodiscover._tcp SRV record for Exchange

We needed to test a domain's autodiscover setup that we had them configure since we are not confident in the hoster's abilities anymore.

1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. NSLookup [Enter]
3. set type=srv [Enter]
4. _autodiscover._tcp.mpecsinc.ca [Enter]
• 

And, the test for the hosting provider shows that they did indeed make a mess of it. Back to the drawing board. :(

The How-To for formatting the Autodiscover SRV record is in the TechNet article below. That method works for our own SBS 2011 Standard integrated Exchange and our client's setups as well.

We now use this SRV record for all of our client's Internet DNS setup.

• Microsoft TechNet: Integrate an on-premises Exchange Server with Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Hat tip: Unify and Conquer: Quick Tip: Testing DNS SRV Records with NSLookup

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

RDP Client in Windows 8 and Server 2012 Neat Features

While working from a Windows 8 Enterprise system here in the shop we connected remotely to a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V environment that we are in the process of setting up for a new client.

A couple of neat new features in the MSTSC (Click Start (WINKey+R) –> Run –> mstsc [Enter]), that is the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client (MicroSoft Terminal Services Client) are the following:

There is a little drop down menu available on the far left of the RDP status bar at the top of the session that gives us access to Windows 8/Server 2012 specific features.

The other thing we noticed was the “wireless” status bars to the right of the Pin.

Click on that and we see the following:

The drop down menu will certainly be handy for windowed RDP sessions since that is how we run most of our remote management sessions.

The connection status bars not so much. It is pretty obvious when we are having connection issues.

Have a great day and thanks for reading! :)

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Wondering Out Loud: Are Adobe's and Oracle's Updates A Way To Get Chrome and the Ask Toolbar Installs Up?!?

Okay, so this post is facetious bordering on sarcasm.

The number of security related problems in Java is mind boggling. The fact that Oracle "bundles" the Ask Toolbar with a security update is just plain dumb.

No, I don't want to install Chrome with this particular update to Flash.

With the quality assurance department getting a failing grade at so many companies today one must wonder how we are ever going to get anything done with our credit card numbers being stolen, our identities being stolen, our Inboxes being inundated by compromised Yahoo account's link SPAM, and so much more InterWebs connected rubbish.

Maybe Oracle can employ one or two of these white hat type folks and pay them to find the vulnerabilities in their software _before_ the software goes out the door as garbage! Aren't software vendors supposed to employ folks to do that?

Or, why can't the developers find the bugs in their own the code?

Holy Sugar Smacks! What the chicken is going on here?!?

Someone's mom needs to give their kid in charge of finding bugs in Java a stern talking to at Oracle. They are obviously failing at their job. :P

Would someone _please_ buy Java away from Oracle and clean that crap up?!? Huh?!? PULEASE!

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

HP Smart Array P420i: Post Disk Add To Array Logical Drive Changes

Now that the P420i has finished incorporating four new disks into our HP ML350p G8’s RAID 10 setup we now see the option to extend the existing logical drive on the RAID 10 array:

We click on the Extend Logical Drive button and we see:

Since we already have fixed VHDX files on the existing logical drive that cover almost 500GB we are not going to shuffle the setup. We will extend the existing partition the full amount available to us.

Once that process has completed we will jump into Windows Server Drive Management and extend the existing OS partition.

When we click the Save button we get this interesting warning:

About ten to thirteen years out of date, but possibly applicable somewhere. :)

The process was surprisingly quick.

After hitting Rescan Disks in Disk Management we saw:

A quick couple of clicks and we had:

Now to rework the necessary VHDX files in Hyper-V Manager after shutting down the VMs.

All in all this process turned out to be a simple one.

Prior to making these changes we made sure to back up our guests just in case the process caused a failure.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

A little fun with the Microsoft Surface Pro: Desktop Data Centre

This is a pretty neat video and highlights the new Hyper-V Shared Nothing Live Migration in Windows Server 2012 on a set of four _Microsoft Surface Pro_ devices.

Surface Pro Tabletop Data Centre

The original blog post on the Building Clouds blog:

• Surface Pro Hijinks: The Video

This setup certainly gives us food for thought as far as some of the virtualization options that we can offer for our SMB/SME clients.

Take things one step further with a failover cluster and we have resource redundancy as opposed to resource portability.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

HP P420i Smart Array: Adding 4 New Disks to a RAID 10 Array

We started off with a new HP ML350p G8 that our now client had purchased.

We had the RAM bumped up to 128GB and then suggested changing the existing 4 disk RAID 10 plus hot spare into a RAID 6 array across 8 disks.

We managed to secure the additional three disks for the task but for now we will hold off on RAID 6 as that requires a "feature activation license" according to HP.

We start by opening the HP System Management Homepage.

We then click on the Storage icon.

Next up is the Array Configuration Utility (ACU).

We then select the P420i Smart Array controller.

We then get a list showing any available disks, in this case 3, and the array we plan on expanding.

The fourth disk we plan on adding to this array is actually the current Global Hot Spare.

We can't see the hot spare in Logical View so we change to Physical View.

Click on the SAS Array A with Spare and we see the following options.

Click on Spare Management and we see:

We unselected the spare drive and chose Save near the bottom right.

We not longer had a Global Hot Spare.

Making sure that SAS Array A is selected we clicked on the Expand Array option.

We clicked the Select All (4 Drives) check and clicked Save.

Our status changed immediately:

We click on the View Status Alerts link to see what the exclamation mark is all about.

So, we have not cache while the RAID array is in the process of changing.

It took a few clicks to figure out where the status report was for the ongoing change. It's under Logical View.

We ran a timer for 1% to see what kind of time we were looking at and the result was about a minute and a half. So, about three to four hours for the initial step to be completed.

Hopefully once this process has completed we will be able to expand the existing array. We shall see...

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Troubleshooting System Instability– The MDOP Crash Analyzer Wizard

It is our preference to have Software Assurance and MDOP on all desktop operating systems in a client site. The SA benefits have been growing leaps and bounds over the last few years with MDOP being the cream of the crop.

• Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack
• Bing: MDOP Results

We need to test a Toshiba Tecra R950 for some lockup issues.

The machine that we have the Crash Analyzer Wizard (a feature of DaRT via MDOP) has been around a few years.

After a couple of Next clicks we ended up with this:

That was one too many clicks since the files we need to analyze are MiniDump files pulled from the affected machine’s MiniDump folder. However, it’s nice to see that the machine we examined has not had a problem for about three years now! :)

The above check mark is the one we so blithely past by without unchecking. ;)

After unchecking that option and clicking next we get to choose our file:

And click Next . . .

Note that there are a couple of prerequisites for the tool to work:

• Download: 64-bit Debugging Tools for Windows
• Download: Windows Symbol Packages

Now, there are most certainly freebie tools out there that can run this task. But, none of them have been as simple and straightforward to get going as the Crash Analyzer Wizard.

In our first DMP we see:

And, in our second dump we see:

Both of our crashes were on the same driver. So, we have the most current ATI/AMD driver on its way down from Toshiba’s support site.

To cap it all off, the driver version indicated in Device Manager versus the individual file’s versions can be quite confusing since the files themselves have all sorts of version numbers.

Hopefully we see the problem fixed after this. Otherwise we may need to RMA this unit for a failed video subsystem. As a point of reference the Toshiba Tecra unit is an R950-00N (Canadian model).

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Need Microsoft Partner Help: Please Log in and Vote “Me Too” On These Forum Posts

Hi, we need some help please:

• Microsoft Partner Forums: Exchange 2013 - Internal Anonymous Relay
• Bit.ly: http://bit.ly/YOO2FI
• Microsoft Partner Forums: Exchange 2013 Destroys PDF Attachments sent from MFP/Copier/Network Scanner
• Bit.ly: http://bit.ly/Zvbx8Y

Note the number 4 showing that four folks have bumped this thread. Thank you for doing that! We have one bump on the PDF problem.

Please click on the link, log in with your Microsoft Partner account, and click the “Me Too” button! Then, do so for the other question.

The internal relay question is due to a documentation fail while the PDF Attachments being mangled is an outright catastrophic fail as the Microsoft Exchange 2013 product went out the door like this.

We hope that we can get a lot of support underneath these two questions since both directly impact SMB/SME/ENT.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Exchange 2013 Full Stop: MIME/Multipart/Mixed Message Scrambled Error

Wow, did we ever hit a full stop at 110MPH today. :P

• Microsoft TechNet forums: [exchange 2013] Problem with multipart/mixed message

Needless to say we have found out that Exchange 2013 does not like to receive PDF attachments from a copier/MFP/scanner.

The above snip is from an e-mail that shows the PDF attachment as a bunch of characters in the e-mail body itself that goes on and on and on.

As per the forum post apparently this will be fixed in the first Cumulative Rollup for Exchange 2013.

In the mean time we are scrambling to work on a workaround for those folks that are hitting this problem.

And, we may have found one:

• Microsoft KB 2600912: How to set up an SMTP relay in Office 365

The instructions are almost useless. Almost ...

We have an account set up, we went in as per the above instructions, and we set up the copier to use port 587 and encryption. Now on to get it going.

Copiers are never easy to work with. However, we will hopefully get them going this way until Microsoft releases the fix for this problem.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

WSUS for Windows 8/Server 2012 and Fixing the 800B0001 Windows Update Error

We need to apply the following update to our WSUS servers to allow Windows 8 and Server 2012 to be updated via WSUS.

• Microsoft KB: 2734608 An update for Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 is available (KB2734608)

And, since we a fair way down the road since both products were RTM we need to read the following caveat:

• SUS Blog: Additional note on KB 2734608 regarding WSUS, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012

From the blog post:

If you have Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 clients that synchronized with WSUS 3SP2 before you applied this update, wait for the update to be applied to the WSUS servers, and then follow these steps:

1. On the affected client, open cmd.exe in elevated mode.
2. Type the following commands. Make sure that you press Enter after you type each command:

Net stop wuauserv
rd /s %windir%\softwaredistribution\
Net start wuauserv

This is what we are seeing in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012:

• Windows could not search for new updates
  • There was a problem checking for updates. Error(s) found: Code 80096002

We ran the above update on our SBS 2011 Standard server.

And:

And then the waiting game began:

The server came up with everything in order.

And, on the Windows 8 clients:

NOTE: We recommend rebooting both Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 _as soon as the updates are applied_ and not leaving either OS in a half-patched state!

And, on to the next WSUS snag:

• Microsoft KB 2720211: An update for Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 is available
  • We are starting with this one.
• Microsoft KB 956702: Error 0x800B0100 when you try to install Windows Updates or Microsoft Updates
  • This is the WSUS/Windows Update Service Nuke & Pave option.

This fix corrects the 800B0001 error clients may see where the client machine has had its Update Services backend updated but the WSUS server has not been updated for the changes Microsoft has made to the Update Services structure.

For this particular update we will need to wait as our own WSUS infrastructure has not had this issue. But, we have seen a number of clients that have.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Exchange 2013: Outlook Anywhere Shows Mailbox GUID

This is interesting:

We are in the process of finishing up a bunch of remote mailbox setup on Outlook 2010 for a client with a Greenfield Windows Server 2012 Essentials and on-premises Exchange 2013 Standard setup.

It seems that instead of representing the server name Exchange 2013 likes to drop the mailbox GUID into that spot.

Nothing out of the ordinary is happening mail wise, we just thought it was interesting that we no longer see MailboxServer.Domain.Local as the indicated server name.

Nothing to see here, move along folks! ;)

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Cisco SA520 and SA540 Small Business Pro Line EOL

And EOL with a full dead stop!

• End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Cisco SA520 Security Appliance

Service and support comes to a full stop on April 30th, 2014.

Cisco is recommending the ISA500 Series Integrated Security Appliances.

• Cisco Small Business ISA500 Series Integrated Security Appliances

Now, as a rule our preference it so utilize ExchangeDefender to sanitize all e-mail prior to it getting remotely close to the production network.

We then have the ability to allow the ExchangeDefender server’s subnets inbound for SMTP traffic thus avoiding SMTP authorization attempts.

And, because we tend to have only one MX record registered we don’t have to worry about spammers pumping spam into secondary MX servers which in some cases will not have any or very little spam protection.

Our primary goal is to filter all inbound and all outbound WAN based traffic. That is, we set up whitelists for Internet bound and server services bound Internet traffic.

Besides filtering inbound SMTP traffic we set an outbound SMTP rule to be allowed only from the on-premises Exchange server as well as other server(s) on the network. If a user gets compromised by something that tries to spew e-mail via SMTP it stops there and we get a call for a machine that’s dragging its feet. :)

We have applied for an ISA550 demo unit from our Cisco rep at D&H Canada. Once we receive it we will post our experience with it as well as a configuration guide.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

HP Smart Array P420i Controller – Caveat: Need Flash Based Cache to Make Any Online Array Changes

We are in the process of setting up a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V host with two server operating system guests, one DC and one RDS, and a couple of desktop operating system guests.

We were brought in to set up the environment at the hardware vendor’s request. So, this box was set up prior to our jumping in.

Since we do not work with HP servers on a regular basis we are not up on their terminology nor product features throughout their server lines.

We are in the process of looking into filling up the 2.5” hot swap drive bays as the server came configured with a RAID 10 (RAID 1+0) array and one global hot spare.

• HP Smart Array P420i Controller QuickSpecs Page

Having worked with Intel RAID Controllers most of the time as well as LSI RAID controllers we have come to expect advanced features to work out of the box. This is primarily due to the fact that we run with mainstream series or high performance series RAID controllers out of the box.

We avoid entry level if at all possible.

As we have discovered today, this is one reason why:

Note the following:

• Modular, easy-to-upgrade design lets you optimize performance by upgrading from 40-bit 512MB cache to 72-bit 1GB Flash Backed Write Cache or 72-bit 2GB Flash Backed Write Cache (FBWC).
• Addition of the flash backed cache upgrade enables array expansion, logical drive extension, RAID migration, and stripe size migration.

Obviously the emphasis is ours.

So, we are now in a position where we need to find out the cost on the 1GB and 2GB FBWC options for this particular server.

We are not sure what that cost will be but it will probably beat out our having to back up the entire server and its guests, that are already set up for production, and restoring the box using our ShadowProtect IT Edition license.

The clue that something was up came via the HP management utility that showed the following for the current RAID array configuration:

Note the distinct absence of RAID 6.

Apparently there is a license key that enables RAID 6 in this particular controller.

So, we hit two caveats with this setup:

• Flash based Cache is required for advanced RAID features.
• A license pack is required to enable RAID 6.

Ever try to purchase a base model car and add _just_ the features needed like cruise/tilt/air and a decent stereo and end up more expensive that the “LX” version of that vehicle?

It has been a disappointing trend in our industry to no longer be able to configure a Tier 1 server system, desktop system, or workstation system without having to knew the bits and pieces that these systems are made up of. We used to be able to configure systems that would just work as we expect them to and have the features we would expect for the price we paid.

Also, it has been our experience that the Tier 1 sales folks that _know_ these bits and pieces are very hard come-by with the onus being on us to make sure we have our ducks lined up _before_ we initiate contact.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Create a Google Account Without GMail for Blogger

We are setting up a new Blogger site on behalf of a start-up business.

When we went to set up the site Google required us to set up a GMail address.

Well, we do not want a GMail address as we only want an account to access the Blogger service.

So, we go to Google Drive and sign up there using the start-up's existing blog@ address.

And, voila:

When we click the link:

We punched through and chose to receive a text message to verify that we were not a robot.

We then were able to click the More drop down and click through to the Blogger site. We were asked to sign in using the new Google Account and we were in.

Well, almost. The next series of questions about profiles and such required some Terms & Conditions reading.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Cloud: An Example of a Different Industry’s Adaptation to Change

I spent many years working in the automotive industry. I started tearing down engines when I was in my mid-teens and discovering and putting together hi-performance engines later in my teens and early twenties.

It can be said that I’ve got oil running in the veins. I _still_ love anything car related.

A conversation thread on the Yahoo SBS2K list bears repeating here.

About a decade ago I was touring about one of the summer car shows. It was the Rocking August show that goes on in St. Albert, AB. It is a _large_ show to say the least with entries coming in from far away places.

The cars, trucks, and customs can be absolutely stunning.

Looking at one late 60s or early 70s Chevy truck I stood there for a while pondering the distributor location, exhaust port layout, and other visual clues to the block/head arrangement on the motor.

I was stumped so I asked the owner about it.

The motor was over 500CID (Cubic Inches Displacement) so I immediately thought Cadillac or stroked. Nope.

He bought the engine, complete, from GM. It came in a crate.

I was stunned. But, his justifications for not building his own were very valid.

• Time savings (ever done a tear-down, machine shop trip, assembly, and break-in?).
• Power setup out of the box.
• Warranty.

There are most certainly a huge number of engine blow-up videos on YouTube for NOS applications going awry to over-boosting via turbo/blower to starving bearing surfaces and so much more.

So, the last one is most certainly a big plus. The motor comes off the crate with gobs of power and if it breaks, within reason, GM covers it.

The custom machine shop industry had to adapt or die. Gone were the days when a guy like me would drop by with a 350CID block to have it hot tanked, reamed, bored, and honed. Or a set of heads to be planed, ported, and polished along with the requisite valve work.

Indeed, today there are most certainly nowhere near the number of performance based machine shops around as there were even ten years ago.

Those that survived were the ones that engaged the new crate motor industry and/or carved themselves a niche within the local, regional, or even international engine performance industry.

The cookie cutter Cloud industry and our ability to adapt to what is happening in our industry is not unlike what the peripheral engine industries had to do to survive: Adapt.

Our thought processes on this adaptation can be found in my SMB Nation presentation video on our YouTube channel.

Thanks for reading. :)

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Royal Bank of Canada Business VISA – Electronic Statements Available with Live Balances . . . Finally

One of our alternate financial institution’s credit cards has had online statements and live available credit balance for years.

It’s good to see that the Royal Bank of Canada has just enabled electronic statements for our business VISA card.

So, instead of having to run all 12 month’s worth of VISA statements through the ScanSnap 1400 to create PDF documents we can download them straight out of the bank’s online portal.

We are most certainly glad to see that the bank is catching up with the smaller institutions that have had these features for a few years now. :)

Now, to figure out how to stop all of the RBC statement/billing notifications that come to our e-mail address.

They should be off by default. Folks need to take a bit of initiative with online banking so that the Phishing folks don’t have a leg to stand on.

And one more thing, it’s a good idea to subscribe to a credit bureau’s quarterly credit report along with the ability to be notified any time a credit search hit has been done against one’s credit profile. It’s one of the ways we can protect ourselves against identity theft.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

SBS 2008: SharePoint Configuration Log File Huge

We have a client setup that is getting a bit constrained on storage:

One of the culprits was the above SharePoint Configuration log file.

The following KB has the fix for us:

• Microsoft Knowledgebase KB2000544: SharePoint database log file is getting large in Windows SBS 2008

We need to copy and paste the following into NotePad on the affected SBS:

declare @ConfigDB varchar(255);
declare @ConfigDBLog varchar(255);
declare @ConfigDBCmd varchar(255);
select @ConfigDB = name from sys.databases where name like 'SharePoint_Config_%';
set @ConfigDBCmd = 'BACKUP database [' + RTRIM(@ConfigDB) + '] to disk=''C:\windows\temp\before.bkf''';
execute(@ConfigDBCmd);
set @ConfigDBCmd = 'use [' + RTRIM(@COnfigDB) + ']';
execute(@ConfigDBCmd);
set @ConfigDBCmd = 'BACKUP LOG [' + RTRIM(@ConfigDB) + '] WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY';
execute(@ConfigDBCmd);
set @ConfigDBCmd = 'use [' + RTRIM(@COnfigDB) + ']';
execute(@ConfigDBCmd);
select @ConfigDBLog = name from sys.database_files where name like 'SharePoint_Config%_log';
set @ConfigDBCmd = 'use [' + RTRIM(@ConfigDB) + '] DBCC SHRINKFILE([' + RTRIM(@ConfigDB) + '_log],1)';
execute(@ConfigDBCmd);
set @ConfigDBCmd = 'BACKUP database [' + RTRIM(@ConfigDB) + '] to disk=''C:\windows\temp\after.bkf''';
execute(@ConfigDBCmd);
go

We then need to save the file as "LogShrink.sql" in a Temp folder on the server. In our case we saved it to C:\Temp

We encapsulate the full name of the file in quotes to force the .SQL extension on the file name.

Open an elevated command prompt and:

sqlcmd -S \\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query -E -i c:\temp\logshrink.sql [Enter]

Once completed our log file was a paltry 1MB in size:

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

A Little Saturday Evening Fun – Reprise

Apparently some folks are not able to run the tracert command so here is the result that we had tonight and previously:

tracert /h 99 216.81.59.173

Mr. Werber obviously had a lot more time on his hands! :)

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Small Accounting Firm: Microsoft Stack Licensing and Solution Costs Example

Up here in Canada the incumbent cell providers have it pretty good. When travelling to the US we can obtain a RoamMobility plan for pennies on the dollar versus our Canadian provider’s rates.

The average small firm pays between $80 and $110 per month for each cell phone they provide to their users. This includes talk, text messaging (text, picture, and video), and the requisite 1GB to 3GB per month of bandwidth.

If we take the mid-range for this example we can say the average firm spends $90/Month so for a ten seat firm the cost is $10,800 user per year.

Now, let’s look at what the cost of a stack based solution is for the software licensing (New Open Value Agreement with the 3 Year Spread Payment option).

• Base Server: OS for DC and WSUS+LoBs (2 VMs)
• R18-01855 Server CAL $27 ($1270/Year)
• 6VC-00701 RDS CAL $77 ($770/Year)
• P73-05599 Server STD $750
• DC + RDS/WSUS/LoBs base solution with 2 VMs stop here.
• Solution cost: $2,790/Year
• $23.25/User/Month
• Add Exchange into the mix: Exchange + RDS Role moved here (2 VMs)
• 312-03037 Exchange Standard: $439
• 381-02257 Exchange CAL $49 ($245/Year)
• P73-05599 Server STD $750
• Solution cost: $1,434/Year
• $11.95/User/Month
• Total cost: $4,224 (Works out to $35.20/Month/User – More than half a cell contract cost)

A small single socket E5-2400 series server with 64GB ECC, Hardware RAID + flash cache, 8x 600GB 10K SAS in RAID 6 would be about $4,500.

We amortize the cost of the server over 36 months as that is our expectation for its service life.

• Server Cost: $4,500
• 10 Users = $12.50/Month/User amortized over 36 months.

So, our IT Solution total cost per user is now $47.70/Month.

That’s about half our cell contract cost per month per user.

The labour costs and ongoing maintenance costs would be the next thing to discuss with our prospective client. Suffice it to say that the labour and support portion would place the monthly cost per user into the $30 to $70 per month range depending on the services we provide.

Costs, benefits, and drawbacks would certainly be a part of this conversation.

• Are there any concerns about data ownership?
• Are there compliance regulations that need to be followed?
• Would there be a need to grandfather communications data for legal access at a later date?
• Note that for an accounting or law firm this situation could arise years down the road.
• What are the risks versus benefits for an on-premises solution versus a Cloud solution?

In the end the firm gets the best solution for their IT budget and it will work with their proprietary accounting applications and/or other Line of Business applications that can be quite finicky to work with.

Plus, they can be assured that the IT Solution will more than meet their expectations for up-time and performance for its entire service life.

Remember, when it comes to the conversation we need to have with our clients or prospective clients we need to focus on the cost per month per user. Yes, there will be some sticker shock involved, there always is, but once the numbers have been put into perspective relative to the per month cost folks can begin to see the value in what they are receiving.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: NIC Teaming Setup and Caveat

When it comes to NIC teaming there are times that we need to pay attention to how the NICs get attached to the various services that will be run on the server.

If we are working with a server that will be solely a Hyper-V server using the native teaming in Server 2012 then we should be okay with the way the teaming process transpires and the resulting team(s).

However, when we are working with an OS that will have NICs teamed and it will also be delivering roles and/or services to the production network we have encountered some funky behaviours in that server _after_ the NIC team was created.

If we have a physical box with 4 NICs we have 4 MAC addresses.

When we set up the roles/services on that box before teaming and bind them to the IP address we will be setting to the team we run into a small problem.

The MAC address that is currently bound to the NIC with that IP address may _not_ be the MAC address that the team inherits going forward.

So, as a rule we recommend setting up the NIC teaming as one of the first steps before anything else is accomplished on the box.

We tend to set up two teams across at least two separate adapters. We prefer to run Intel NICs in our server configurations as a rule.

1. Team 0: Management
1. NIC 0 & 1 port 0 (2 ports)
2. Team 1: vSwitch
1. NIC 0 & 1 ports 1-7 (6 ports)
• On Server 2012: Static Team with Hyper-V Port chosen

From there, make sure the binding order is set correctly _after_ a reboot. If changes are made to the binding order then a reboot will be required.

1. Start –> ncpa.cpl [Enter]
1. 
2. Hit the ALT key on the keyboard
3. Advanced
4. Advanced Settings...
1. 
5. Verify binding
1. 
6. Production network is run by the guests so vSwitch gets priority.

Once we have our binding order verified we can look at setting up the respective VLANs.

As a side note, there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to the way the NICs get named in the OS.

In the above snip, based on an Intel Server System R2208GZ4GC with dual Intel Quad Port i350 NICs, we have done a lot of testing with various storage setups. Thus, we have had a number of fresh operating system installs and to date _none_ of them have had the NICs named the same.

Since we always use the same two ports, port 0 on both NICs, we usually just pull the cables on those two ports for a quick “which one is which” check. Another way we could do that is via the Cisco SG500 series management console by turning off the ports.

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

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer