Eric Ligman has helped the SMB community significantly.
His blog posts on navigating the sometimes confusing waters of Microsoft Licensing are awesome.
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.
It's a marmot according to a fellow on the platform with me.
Late flower blooms here too so the area smells wonderful.
Enjoy the rest of your day and thanks for reading!
Philip
Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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I have always been a bit of a sceptic. From business to life, one needs to be very careful about giving one’s word and accepting another’s.
In business, we have business relationships that have been built up over the years. Our longest standing client relationship is now running over 11 years!
In those business relationships, we have built up a strong trust between us and our client contacts and business owners.
As a result, we have an understanding with our ongoing clients that sometimes things do not work out quite the way we would expect them to. For the most part, when things don’t work, the problems tend to last hours instead of days and we do our best to make up for any lost time.
In our experience with Cloud vendors such as OWN (our primary Cloud partner), there have been a few service related issues causing slow downs, but so far we have not seen a complete service outage other than for server/cluster reboots.
As we can see, most of the indicator’s in OWN’s NOC status has to do with ongoing maintenance.
Now, let’s have a look at Microsoft’s Cloud offering in the form of BPOS:
The MOSN RSS link comes to us courtesy of Susan Bradley.
When we look at Microsoft’s RSS feed, we can see that there are a lot of service outage reports.
From here we look at Intuit’s latest:
In Intuit’s case, this latest outage lasted around 2 days for most customers with some still dealing with issues after that.
The Cause for Pause when it comes to hype about the Cloud is to make sure that the Cloud services we choose on behalf of our clients, or that they choose, are indeed the best option for them.
When we look strictly at hosted e-mail and SharePoint, we can see by the above two RSS feeds that OWN provides a far superior uptime and service quality to the Microsoft offering. Yes, OWN has been at it a lot longer than Microsoft . . . and it shows.
Only time will tell if Microsoft’s offering provides the same level of Cloud service performance and stability as OWN’s hosted Exchange and SharePoint solution does.
Part of any evaluation is to look at the costs associated with being disconnected from those Cloud based services.
For folks needing to process payroll during that two day outage at Intuit Online, there was probably a lot of nail biting going on by both management and their employees.
On top of payroll, any inventory, sales, or other business related activities would have been impacted. Calculating the lost time and revenues for these business aspects can be very difficult.
If a client’s Internet connection goes down and they are totally cut off from the Internet, the cost associated with this type of service outage needs to be considered. A USB modem via cellular or other wireless form of Internet connection for critical PCs may be an alternative backup plan.
Just as it is with any other new technology, we need to test and make sure that any Cloud based service will follow through on its promises.
We need to dig deep into a Cloud based vendor’s reputation or lack thereof and find out if they really follow through on their commitment to provide good value and trouble free services.
Since the Cloud is a relatively new push, we are seeing a rush of new vendors vying for a piece of the Cloud pie. These new vendors are essentially untested technologies and should be approached as such . . . with great scepticism and caution on behalf of our clients.
And finally, the question to ask any business owner is, “How long can your business be down before the possibility of closing the doors looms?”
Obviously this question must include _all_ aspects of a business’s processes to provide a thorough answer not just the usage of Cloud based technologies.
Some light 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.
David Moisan is the IT Director for Salem Access TV in Salem Mass.
We have crossed paths over the last number of years due to SATV’s running SBS as their principle server.
Lately, David has had some very good blog posts on the need for technology in his organization. He provides some good insight into the how they use technology and why they need it.
He also speaks to the juggling that a non-profit has to do in order to finance their needed technology.
David’s blog:
Some of his SATV technology posts that are excellent reads:
We deal with a number of local as well as remote non-profit clients. We get to see first-hand just how difficult it is for them to make any real advances in their technology usage due to financial restraints.
For us as IT providers, we need to give back to our communities. One way to do so is to contribute in some way to a non-profit’s technology needs. We can do so by donating some of our technician’s time, giving significantly reduced labour rates, or by offering technology to them at little or no cost.
It is up to us to choose which non-profit’s mission statement and services best fit with our own business vision then create an offering plan that works and make contact with the Executive Director of the organization.
In the end, we both benefit from helping them 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.
Microsoft has released Exchange 2007 SP 3.
Now, with Exchange 2007 SP2 we needed to download a special wrapper for SBS 2008 so that the Exchange SP did not break anything.
When we read through the KB on the new SP, we can see that it is clearly indicated that Exchange 2007 SP3 will install on a production SBS 2008 without needing to do much beyond disabling the Forefront services if present.
Note that the Service Pack should be applied after running the Getting Started Tasks Wizards to avoid complications in IIS on SBS.
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.
If you have a few minutes to kill and would like to have a look at some of the new features in PowerPoint 2010, then check out this Channel 9 video:
Doug Thomas who is a content producer for Office.com goes through and explains each of the key features now included in PowerPoint.
The video is also a good place to send client users when it comes time to introduce them to PowerPoint 2010 and its new features.
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.
Just before our last family trip outside of Canada, I was chatting with a friend of mine, Kevin Atkey, about the flight costs and the travel insurance costs associated with the online vendors.
Up to that point, I had a number of trips into the US under my belt with the online merchant’s travel insurance being purchased for each trip.
He asked if I had an AMA (Alberta Motor Association) membership which I do for both Monique and myself. He indicated that he had an annual travel insurance plan that covered his whole family for any travel in the year of coverage for a very reasonable rate.
On my next visit to AMA I found out that the cost to cover my family for one year for any trip up to 15 days in length over that year of coverage cost the same as the sum of the previous two online merchant travel insurance packages.
Oops . . .
So, we picked up a family package that included the 15 days of travel coverage for medical, extraneous medical, dental, and more. The plan includes an option to extend coverage beyond the arbitrary 15 day limit on this particular plan as long as the exception is coordinated ahead of time.
Sometimes, the obvious is completely missed as was the case here. Fortunately, the cost of not asking the right people the right questions was minimal.
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 our SBS 2008 Setup Guide V1.5.0 at step 22 we indicate some customizations to the WSUS setup.
If we have Forefront Server Security for Microsoft Exchange licensed on the SBS 2008 box, we would set a synchronization schedule of once per hour.
Now, since we use ExchangeDefender for our e-mail sanitation needs, we generally do not need to synchronize WSUS with such frequency as Forefront would not be installed.
However, we tend to set that frequency to at least 6 checks per day which equates to synchronizing every 4 hours.
Why?
In the above blog post, Damian examines an issue with a SVCHOST process causing a spike in the SBS server’s CPU.
After some troubleshooting by Damian, the problem turned out to be the Windows Update client and a series of Forefront updates.
Here is another WSUS update related issue that hit us:
So, when a problem fix is published by Microsoft to WSUS, it will not hit SBS until the next scheduled sync. The default is 1 sync per day (24 hours).
Our setting the WSUS sync schedule to every 4 hours is our attempt to mitigate any possible problems we may encounter.
As far as not allowing drivers to come down through WSUS, we do this for heterogeneous networks that still have Windows XP Professional installed on physical hardware.
For homogeneous Windows 7 networks, which are starting to be the norm, we enable the Drivers classification as the drivers delivered have been consistently stable in both the update process and in post update system 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.
Fellow MVP Mitch Garvis will be presenting at the Edmonton Microsoft User Group this evening.
For those that have not been present for any of Mitch’s presentations, he has a very engaging presentation technique.
His content is always relevant and he is an awesome speaker.
One of his blog posts that is a really good read on the recent “lost” Apple iPhone 4G debacle and Gizmodo:
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 gearing up to do some testing here in the shop of some new USB 3.0 gear.
The components:
We will use a standard 7200 RPM Seagate SATA drive to provide the baseline for performance. We will then use a Western Digital 150GB VelociRaptor and an Intel 80GB G2 code SSD drive to push the USB 3.0 bus to its limits.
We already know that USB 2.0 gives us a real world throughput of about 35MB/second.
We have seen eSATA give us around 60-70MB/second in our own real world testing and usage of the connection.
So, we look forward to seeing if USB 3.0 is all its cut out to be.
Once we have a good idea of what the speed advantages are, we will install the Vantec USB 3.0 PCI-E Host Card into one of our lab servers with an SBS 2008 OS installed. We will configure the SBS Backup to run once an hour. Hopefully we will be able to gain some insight as to whether the Vantec card will work with our servers.
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 doing a bit of research on 3D scanning and reproduction.
This is some pretty neat stuff:
The above video gives us a pretty good idea of where the technology has gone since the last time we were researching solid printing on behalf of a client.
Essentially, anyone looking to develop a product prototype with the need to conceptualize the finished form of that product, this technology is a perfect fit.
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 I.T. providers that have partnered up with OWN for hosted services along with ExchangeDefender services, OWN’s NOC (Network Operations Centre) RSS feed is a must.
We have subscribed to the feed on our workstations as well as Windows Mobile phones so that we can be aware of any service issues that may impact our clients.
We use OWN to provide the following Cloud services to our clients:
The hosted services prices are quite reasonable for the level of service we receive from 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 is pretty neat.
Folks were invited to develop an app for the Sync platform that is powered by Microsoft and found in many of Ford’s current vehicles.
The winning group of students built a social media integrated application for tracking a caravan of vehicles.
We can see a lot of great uses for this application.
Very well done and congratulations to Team Bobcat on the win.
From the above article on the team:
John Ciccone, Collin Hockey, Sangmi Park and Joe Phillips make up Team Bobcat, the student think tank that came up with Caravan Track, the winning application of the American Journey 2.0 open innovation research project between Ford and the University of Michigan.
Caravan Track allows a cluster of vehicles traveling together to track each other along the journey. The application was installed in a 2011 Ford Fiesta for the ultimate test drive to the 2010 Maker Faire in California.
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.
Tim Barrett has a pretty neat little comic strip he publishes on his blog NoGeekLeftBehind called Have U Rebooted Yet.
This latest one really describes a lot of the angst in the SMB/SBS community:
Check some of the other comics as they can be both quite funny and very astute in their comment on our industry as in #18 above.
Some of my favourites:
Good job Tim! :)
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 Microsoft Licensing console has an old URL that still indicates Office 2007 for HUP.
The correct site is:
This site will give eligible users the ability to obtain their Home Use Program version of Office.
Essentially, any company that has Software Assurance on their Microsoft Office products gives that company the ability to have their users obtain a copy of Office for their home computer for a small shipping fee.
A two for one deal if you will.
With users working with Office 2010 at home, their familiarity with the product grows a lot faster than if they were only using it at work.
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.
