Office 365 Beta Sign Up

Okay, so we clicked the link:

• Join the Office 365 Beta (Link to actual site without all the e-mail tracking stuff)

After clicking the JOIN THE BETA button we filled out the form and we were presented with two options:

We chose the Enterprise level Beta so we could look at what was happening there.

Now, probably the number one stopping point for us and Microsoft’s hosted services is the fact that we are not the ones to bill the client _they_ are.

We resell a fair amount of Microsoft licensing as our primary way of licensing Microsoft products at client sites. So, Microsoft gets our client’s names. Thus, this is not the sticking point.

The sticking point is that we have _no control_ over billing, pricing, services, support, and other aspects of the online services. We also have no control over the very _small_ residual that comes to our company as a result of our signing up say a 250 seat customer.

Much of the feedback that we have heard from fellow SMB IT focused providers on Microsoft’s hosted services follows along the same lines. We have no real relationship with the customer/client.

Own Web Now

We stand by our decision to resell OWN’s hosted Exchange and SharePoint services. The service is excellent, the support folks are pretty good about getting things going when there is a need, and we get to be the face behind the product.

On another note, we have signed up for OWN’s SBS 2011 Essentials integration beta with an HP ProLiant MicroServer on its way to be a part of this beta in a small client setting. So, we will see OWN’s hosted Exchange services integrate into Microsoft’s new SBS product!

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 PROSet v16.2 Released

Most of our servers and workstations have Intel network adapters in them. When supplying tier 1 servers that use Broadcom or other manufacturer’s NICs we tend to have a dual port Intel server NIC installed to use by default.

Version 16.0 of the Intel Network Connections Software (PROSet) has been out for a while now. As is our customary practice we waited for the version to be bumped up a couple of bins before doing any broad scale driver updates.

• Intel Download Center.
• Intel PROSet v16.2 Driver Download for x86 and x64.
• Intel(R) Network Connections Software Version 16.2 Release Notes (direct link to TXT file).
• Intel® Network Connections Software and Drivers – Installation Readme.htm

It is important to take note that there are a number of caveats listed in the Known Issues section of the Release Notes that may impact performance or system stability on various Microsoft operating systems.

We will begin to test the driver on our in-house Hyper-V Core and Full GUI based servers with teaming enabled. From there we will install them on our physical servers running various roles.

Once we are sure that the drivers are stable we will deploy them to our client’s servers.

Note that an out-of-band management solution such as Intel’s RMM, Dell’s DRAC Adv., HP’s iLO Adv., or other such product would be required for this update.

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

Microsoft Exam: 070-169 SBS 2011 Standard, Configuring Scheduled

We were so busy during the beta time period for the new SBS 2011 exam that there was no time left over to write it.

Given that we are gearing up for quite a few SBS 03 to SBS 11 migrations among other tasks we scheduled in the 070-169 SBS 2011 exam for the earliest possible date here in Edmonton which was May 12.

There are some seats available in Calgary for this month, but it is a three hour trip one way so that kind of time sacrifice is out of the question.

It looks as though the availability of the exam, at least for the next few months, looks to be quite limited in this geographical region.

So, if there are any plans to write the exam, now may be the time to check out its availability and schedule one accordingly.

• One exam site: www.prometric.com

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

Excellent How-To: Creating a SAN Using the Free Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3

The Canadian IT Pro Connection blog has a series on how to get things going with the new iSCSI Target software from Microsoft.

• Canadian IT Pro Blog: Creating a SAN using Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3

The How-To includes lots of good information on _why_ things are being set up the way they were. The article was written by fellow MVP Mitch Garvis who has an awesome ability to teach.

• Canadian IT Pro Blog: All for SAN and SAN for All!

The above article also written by Mitch gives a good explanation for the various types of shared storage and how they operate.

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

A Wonderful Way To Start The Weekend

We had around three to four inches of snow!

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading!

Philip

Sent from my SBS 2011 integrated Windows Phone 7

ExchangeDefender Message Security: Check Authenticity

HP ProLiant MicroServer – Rebuilding An Array

Okay, so while installing the RAC one of the primary OS drive cradles must have been nudged enough to either disconnect the drive or the tray was not fully seated in the first place.

Either way we ended up with a Critical error on the OS’s RAID 1 array.

The BIOS for the “RAID” at the motherboard level holds no clues to how to rebuild the array once we re-seated the drive.

We booted the server since our experience with software based on board RAID chipset failures require the driver to be loaded and available before a rebuild could be initiated (some Intel on board RAID chipsets are an exception to this rule).

Once into the OS we found the AMD RAIDXpert “console” link:

What came up was a Web based console that asked for a username and password. Fortunately the default username and password was right there on the logon page.

Once in we were able to initiate a rebuild of the RAID 1 array:

The rebuild time for a pair of 750GB Seagate ES series drives took quite a few hours on this particular box even though there was not a lot of disk action going on via the network.

The Performance tab in the Task Manager during the rebuild process looked like this:

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

HP ProLiant MicroServer Remote Access Card

We just installed the HP ProLiant MicroServer Remote Access Card (RAC).

The piece of paper that comes with the RAC makes the process of installing the card a fairly straightforward one.

However, the document does not contain the default username and password that the RAC uses out of the box.

Thanks to SBS MVP Merv Porter (Bing Search) for ferreting out the following link:

• HP Support: HP ProLiant MicroServer - How to Reset Password for ProLiant MicroServer Remote Access Card.

Out of the box the default username and password is:

• Username: admin
• Password: password

Once we had logged in we saw the following Web based console:

As noted in the screenshot above the firmware level is version 1.2.

• HP ProLiant MicroServer RAC Firmware Update Page

The update is also available on the ProLiant MicroServer’s product support page.

• HP ProLiant MicroServer Drivers and Software

Since our firmware was up to date we went right to the Security section to generate an SSL certificate CSR for the URL that will be used to connect to the RAC via the Internet.

Once we have completed all of the needed configuration on the RAC we will then have remote based out-of-band management for the MicroServer meaning full BIOS and RAID controller management along with the ability to power cycle the machine:

Once the system had finished booting we had our console session:

We install out-of-band management in all of our client’s servers whether that client is up the block or half way around the world. Having direct access to the server’s console, BIOS, firmware, and more enables us to manage the box right down to doing a full bare metal restore if ever there was a need.

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

Pending: Migrating to SBS 2011 (Standard and Essentials) from SBS 2003 Guide

We have the basic steps outlined for the migration process from SBS 2003 through to SBS 2011. We have not had time to get them together in a blog post yet.

But, we are just about to run through a migration virtually prior to running the actual migration for a client so we will validate all of our steps then.

Once we are confident that our steps follow the Microsoft documentation and also include the extras that we see as part of the process we will be releasing our migration guide.

We are also getting ready to migrate an SBS 2003 R2 Premium site to SBS 2011 Essentials as their e-mail resides on a hosted Exchange server setup. So, we will be running through the Microsoft documentation and creating a guide for this process too.

More to come and thanks 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.

Windows Live Writer

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 Available for Download

The download is here:

• Microsoft Downloads; Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1

Note the caveat for remote administration of the SP1 integrated product:

Remote Administration:
In order to configure the new Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 feature settings (RemoteFX, Dynamic Memory), make sure to use the the latest Windows 7 SP1 Remote Server Administration Tool(RSAT) for the client or use Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. The Windows 7 SP1 RSAT tool can be downloaded from here.

Note that the download is quite large so it may take a while:

We will blog about our experiences with setting up the revised version of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 in the coming weeks. One of the first steps will be to stand up a cluster based on it.

Hat Tip: Susan Bradley

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

Adobe Offers Subscription Model For Software

We currently hold a license for the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Premium software. We use InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator primarily for designing various publications from books through to pamphlets. We also use the Adobe Acrobat Pro features quite a lot.

We were looking to upgrade to Creative Suite 5.5 when it releases sometime next month.

Our price to upgrade from CS 3 Premium to CS 5.5 Premium (CS 5 today with up to CS 5.5 for free) when it comes out is:

When we click on the Upgrade Eligibility link we see:

So, our price is $799.00 for the download version of the product. Given the strength of our Canadian dollar against the US dollar we are wise to purchase today. There were times in the past when we were purchasing at $.60 Canadian to the US dollar!

Now, if we were looking into getting things set up for the first time or if we were beyond the Upgrade from 1 Suite position we would probably look at Adobe’s new subscription model.

For $1,140.00 per year we would have the required license plus access to the newest version when released without too much fuss. In the end it may be a bit less expensive to run with the subscription model, however one would need to keep in mind that when the subscription lapses so do the licenses.

• Adobe Buying Guide: Suite Editions
• Adobe Buying Guide: Subscriptions

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 S1200BT Server Board and R1304BT Server Systems Memory Setup

With the introduction of the new S1200BT series Intel Server Board and the associated 1U Intel Server Systems we have a bit of a memory configuration change with the new platform.

• Intel S1200BT Technical Product Specification v1.0 (TPS - PDF).
• Intel S1200BT Product Support Page (All support related content).

So far we have not yet seen a tested memory list from Intel on the new product’s support site.

In the S1200BT TPS we see the following on pages 17 and 18:

So, the first thing off the top is that the boards now only support Unbuffered DIMMs with a single or dual rank with only two slots per channel.

Okay then, off to Kingston’s site to see if there are any new part numbers for these boards:

• Note that the part number shown in Kingston’s list should be: R1304BTL Server System.

What we see here is what appears to be compatible memory though not in the same way that previous Kingston Intel tested memory would indicate via the “i” suffix in the part number: KVRxxxxDxExSx/4Gi.

We called into the Intel Channel Support line to find out whether there was a list that had not been posted yet. They indicated that the list is a work in progress. The support technician did send us a copy of some of the memory parts on one version of the upcoming list:

• 8GB Samsung M391B1G73AH0-CH9
• 4GB Samsung M391B5273CH0-CH9

With the partial list we received from Intel we are not able to outfit any of the new server configurations with 32GB without paying a very high price for the 8GB Samsung RAM. Any Samsung or Hynix part number is very difficult to come by for us here in Canada as of this writing.

We went on to check out Crucial’s product site to see what would come up:

Nothing seemed to come up in our site searches so we clicked on the Live Chat button. In the chat session we were pointed to the following page:

• Crucial.com: Guaranteed-compatible memory upgrades for your Intel S1200BTS Server.

Like the Kingston site we see the “Guaranteed-Compatible” statement.

The problem for us is that while both Kingston and Crucial say their products are guaranteed to work with the Intel products in question we hit a roadblock with Intel’s support team if the memory installed in the server is _not_ on the Tested Memory List. The very first thing we would be told when trying to troubleshoot a problem would be to purchase memory on the approved list.

For now we will be sitting back and waiting for a while for the new product line to mature some.

Previously, we did not wait until the Xeon 3400 Series CPUs and Intel Server Systems based on the new Intel Server Board S3420GP and subsequently the Intel Server Board S3420GPRX product lines matured. That generation of hardware had virtualization capabilities that were key to us jumping on the new products as soon as we could get them.

Also, there are no indications as of yet whether we will be seeing a new SKU for the Intel Server System SR1695GPRX which is one of the best virtualization platforms available to us from Intel at this time. So, we will be sticking with this server system for the time being.

UPDATE 2011-04-12: The list as it stands that Intel sent us is as follows:

Hopefully we will be seeing both Crucial and Kingston enter the running with 4GB and 8GB parts so that it is not so painful for us to get more than 16GB of RAM in these boxes.

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

Facebook – Open Compute Project

It seems that Facebook has released their entire data centre design and called it the Open Compute Project.

All we can say is, “Wow”!

Their data centre is significantly more efficient in its power usage over traditional data centre structures. Not only that, they _custom_ built their servers using commodity Intel and AMD boards, generic chassis, and more.

There is a lot of good reading on the site that covers the entire setup from start to finish including CAD drawings no less.

• Facebook: Building Efficient Data Centers with the Open Compute Project
• ZDNet: Facebook open sources its server, data center designs: Hardware fallout to follow

Very kewl stuff! :)

Hat Tip: Amy of Third Tier

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

Windows Phone 7 – March Update _Really_ Improved My WP7 Experience

We get to work with all sorts of devices from a large variety of vendors.

There was something about the HTC HD7 experience that did not quite sit right with me though it was not quite possible to figure out just what that was. . . at least until now.

When using an Apple iDevice the touch interface is probably one of the best out there.

The ability to touch, hold, and move the cursor about on the iDevice while working with text in the various Apps and the GUI is excellent.

The HD7 Windows Phone 7 (WP7) on the other hand was Neolithic in its implementation. Trying to get the cursor to move about precisely in IE, Word, e-mail, texting, and other places in the HD7 was nothing short of painful.

The WP7 March update that included the ability to Copy and Paste changed all that.

Not only do we now have the ability to copy and paste, which works really well, but now have the ability to move the cursor about with an almost absolute precision.

The cursor movement improvement will make, and already has made, the HD7 usage experience that much better.

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

Microsoft Releases iSCSI Software Target Version 3.3 For Windows Server 2008 R2 . . . For Free!

This is a pretty kewl bit of news since messing around with third party free iSCSI Target software is not always easy.

What do we use iSCSI Targets for?

Primarily for shared storage located on a device that is used by a Hyper-V Cluster and available across a LAN.

So, with a couple of no-name desktops and a small NAS that is iSCSI Target enabled we can build a lab based Hyper-V Cluster.

Since we already have a TechNet Plus subscription we have Windows Server 2008 R2 licensed for a lab based environment.

So, downloading the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 and tying it into Windows Server 2008 R2 in a lab setting is pretty much straight forward as far as the licensing side of things go. Getting it installed, configured, and then a Hyper-V cluster up and running and Live Migration functioning as expected is a whole different ball game! ;)

A great candidate for Win2K8 R2 + iSCSI Software Target would the the HP MicroServer. We can drop an Intel PRO series dual or quad port server NIC to allow for some teaming if required, or even drop in a hardware RAID controller to bump up the performance on the disk subsystem.

• Microsoft Downloads: Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3

After downloading the software have a look at the following:

• Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 Known Issues and Updates.

Jose’s blog post is an excellent resource:

• Jose Barreto’s Blog: Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 for Windows Server 2008 R2 available for public download

Hat Tip: Mikael Nystrom – The Deployment Bunny Blog - Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 for Windows Server 2008 R2 available for public download

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

Windows Phone 7 March Update Available on Bell

The HTC HD7 just made us aware that there is an update available for the Windows Phone 7 OS:

It is refreshing to see that the Windows Mobile experience where carriers would essentially release a phone and then avoid any updates for the WM OS to “encourage” us to move to a new phone has essentially ceased.

Copy and Paste eh? Hmmmm … a Windows feature that is a part of an update. :| Ooops.

So far, the phone has more than met our expectations though there are a few little things that may or may not be OS related that can be annoying.

• The camera button on the HD7 is really tough to work. It sometimes responds while at other times it seems to be a bit of a fight to depress it.
• The Marketplace choked on more than one occasion (looks to be addressed with this update).
• Occasionally the Enter button on the touch pad while horizontal will stop responding. Instead another key above or beside the Enter key seemingly gets depressed. This happens in the phone dialler too. The 7 key gets pressed no matter where on the screen the finger is.
• There is a third party screen protector on the phone so these issues may be related to that.
• The arrow, Windows, and Find touch sensitive buttons are easy to hit with my chubby hands and fingers while working in something else.
• I really need to learn to stretch that finger to the “i” on the keyboard while horizontal. I keep hitting the “o” which can be quite awkward when the word is supposed to be something like “things”! ;)
• Where is the HotSpot capability that other phone OSs are capable of?!?

Still, the SharePoint integration is totally kewl, e-mail management is really smooth, and I like the ability to link people’s various accounts under one contact.

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