Hyper-V RC0

Hi

I have been testing Server 08 standard RTM and playing with Hyper-V
I found a good blog with some install details although its pretty easy anyhow.

http://blogs.technet.com/natasha/archive/2008/03/19/installing-the-new-hyper-v-rc0-formerly-windows-server-virtualization.aspx

Windows XP SP3 RTM!!!

We have some great news - Windows XP SP3 - this would have to be one of the longest awaited major service packs.

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3214173&SiteID=17

Microsoft did a great job with XP and what a fantastic situation for Microsoft where consumers are arguing over which Microsoft desktop OS is better - either way its a sale. Most other companies in the world have to be worried about being compared to their competitor's products.

Hockey Pants, SBS and EBS

Here is a funny little vid about SBS vs EBS. Wyane Small and Dean Calvert are responsible for these :) There is of course a message behind all this.

Hockey Pants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gzScc2WKYE&hl=en

There are another two over on his blog.

http://blog.sbsfaq.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=161

Content Filtering on SBS (including standard)

SBS Premium has been able to do basic content filtering for a long time. It is just a matter of setting up something like a block list and adding the URLS to that list.

However these days customers are asking for category blocking - ie they want to block all "adult entertainment sites" or "social networking sites"

Well the solution I have found that works well, is cheap and reliable is to use OpenDNS
To get it to work with SBS you will first want a static IP - (I assume you have this already for exchange - you CAN use dynamic DNS but it takes some extra setting up).

Then the next step is to add the OpenDNS servers - 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (check the site to make sure these are still correct) as forwarders in the Microsoft DNS console on your SBS server.

You can have additional DNS servers as long as you put them AFTER the OpenDNS servers - this way if both OpenDNS servers fail (unlikley) then the internet would still work however without content filtering.

You should also remove the root hints (although again it prefers to use the forwarders so will usualy still work).

OK next setup an account on OpenDNS, setup your static IP as a network (make sure you only include the static IP or block of IP's that are yours (don't include a whole class C if only one IP belongs to your connection). It will then verify that you own that IP, and you can setup your content filtering categories and block messages.

Now I assume that you hand our your IP's via DHCP and ONLY have the SBS server as a DNS server for your PC's. If you have additional internet connections and/or branch offices you will need to set those up.

For most deployments the whole thing can be set-up, tested and the manager shown how to manage categories in an hour or two.

Make sure you read the T&C's as this service is not really designed for resale - its more like a free service on the internet that you can use yourself or help set-up for customers but explain to them how to use it and that it is free.

Xperf - A great performance diagnostic tool

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/perftools.mspx

OK go to the above URL to download it - It gives you a informative graph style screen that helps to quickly identify where problems exist within a system - eg disk performance.

ADSL Blackspots

I have been following this blog for a while on a IT guy who just wants to have ADSL at home.

In Australia we don't have waiting lists for ports (although I think we did at one stage). So the trick is to just keep re-applying. You can automate part of the process with various scripting tools. Eg roboform

http://mordie-nitemare.blogspot.com/

Anyway I wish him the best of luck with it all.

Exchange Defender

Looks like Exchange Defender has been improved. I have a site that uses Exchange Defender and it works very well.

http://www.ownwebnow.com/blog/2008/03/the-new-soul-of-exchangedefender/

In some ways however a software based solution does have advantages in that you can set it up instantly, it knows about new users/smtp-addresses and you can troubleshoot/make policy changes in real time.

We are also using EHS from Frontbridge / Microsoft - The advantage here is that it can be purchased via Microsoft licensing with everything else.

Converting files

Sometimes we need to convert a file into another format and we don't have a handy program to do this easily.

This is where http://www.zamzar.com comes in. You can do things like convert PDF to a Word document for instance which is handy if you want to edit it. It also make a good answer to when someone asks you how they can easily edit a PDF without buying or downloading something.

SSL Certificates on SBS

Once upon a time the idea of commercial SSL certificates was seen as overkill for use with OWA on SBS and/or activesync. These days however the prices are coming down, customers are utilising these features more and SBS 2008 is not far off.

Anyway I have found a good source for these in Australia.
http://www.eway.com.au/SSL/SSL.aspx

If you are in the US then you may as well just use GoDaddy certs.

There are some good guides out there on how to install these but if you can't find them let me know and I will post some URLs.

How we view our customers

I saw a good post on how we view our customers.

http://sbsc.techcareteam.com/archives/193#comment-1256

This is also similar to a post I saw the other day on another blog

http://carpe-diem.typepad.com/ms_partners/2008/03/how-do-we-stop.html

This I guess is one of those controversial topics. On one side of the scale you have your one-man IT consultants where they are selling their skills as an expert in the field - since its the one person they can get to know their customers business well. The problem is if they get sick/sick-of-it, go on holiday or just plain get a job as an employee of a company then they in effect leave the customer in the lurch. On the other side of the spectrum you have massive corporations which are effectively like a machine that utilises software, hardware, infrastructure, policy and human resources to produce goods and/or services.

One end IS a human the other end UTILISES humans :)

So where I am going with all this is there is room for both - The SBSC logo is a good thing as it shows that someone has at least gone to the trouble of studding and sitting some exams ect to re-assure both their customers and themselves that they at least can meet a standard.

We are also seeing companies (even large ones) starting to focus back on better service to customers by splitting into smaller teams, having surveys and reviews to make sure teams are doing the right thing and implementing tools to help staff track what they are doing and achieve goals.

So my message is keep the SBSC but remember why you are there.

Other windows based UC solutions.

I was chatting with other IT consultant and he is looking at this solution until such a time as Response Point is released in Australia. This solution looks quite good as it integrates with AD, is windows based ect.

http://www.objectworld.com/products/benefits.aspx

Dell updates CD/DVD

Let me tell you guys about the Dell updates DVD.

Problem: You have a whole bunch of servers you look after - they are probably all from the same manufacturer however are different models, OS versions ect.

This is where the updates DVD comes in. You just download it, burn it to a DVD, mount it using your favourite ISO mounter or extract it using say izarc. Then just run the launcher and it scans the system for updates and does it all in one hit!!.

The great thing is it does both driver and firmware updates and you just download the one DVD and it does all models going back as far as five years. Note that it does not do the really low-end models designed for SOHO but all of the "proper" Poweredge gear starting from say the 8xx series up (EG PE 820) it does.

Here is the latest one http://ftp.dell.com/sysman/OM_5.4.0_SUU_A02.ISO

You can just go to /sysman at ftp.dell.com via http or ftp (ftp is usually a bit faster) and grab the latest version. You can also go to search drivers and downloads, put in the model of your server and go to systems management and there will be a link there to the latest version.

Note to Dell - keep up the great work. Its nice being able to buy gear customised to suit what you want - eg choice of AMD or Intel CPU, Hard drive size and type, ram size ect. And then manage it using these tools.

Response Point video

I just watched a great response point video.
http://sbsummit.origindigital.net/public/20070322_5_a/index_1.html

It demo's the system and explains how it all works. This is probably the best demo I have seen so far.

Also I have had some more info on when this will be released globally - the answer is probably with the next release as Microsoft is showing this system to partners outside the US as part of their summits.

It is still early days when it comes to VoIP/UC/OCS ect. For instance to setup a fully functional OCS system using OCS compliant hardware (ie handsets that were designed specifically to work with OCS) .

OCS

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 - I went and did a three day jumpstart course on this the other day. The instructor was Dan Pracny-strass who worked for DDLS. Anyway I really enjoyed the course - it was only a small class which meant I could ask more questions :)

IMHO OCS will be big - but it will take a while to build up steam. The main problems are that it needs a LOT of servers and they don't recommend sharing roles - so an entry level solution is six servers. The whole thing ran ok in VM's for the lab and we have experimented with this kind of setup (using virtual machines) for a businesses that wanted this product but could not justify so many servers.

One of the main things I liked was the RTaudio and RT video codecs - whilst the fact they had used proprietary codecs could generally be considered a negative this was made up for by how well they worked. The part that I liked most was how it was both secure and adaptive to low bandwith or bad connections but could scale up the other way to give better audio if there is a lot of bandwith. The idea is instead of spending a whole lot of money on implementing QoS and Wan links you can just use normal internet connections and the codec is secure and adapts its bit rate to suit the conditions.

The ideal scenario of course is the communicator to communicator calls.

Welcome to Andrews SBS , Webs and RP Blog

Hi guys

I am a IT consultant who mainly works in the SMB space (small and mid size businesses). I love all things related to computers, electronics and datacomms.

The idea behind this blog is to share some ideas, tips ect in regards to this dynamic industry. The SMB space is interesting, challenging and also difficult as it breaks a lot of the rules of enterprise computing. To be good in this sector you need to understand and be proficient in enterprise computing but also have people skills and be able to work within budgets.

2008 is shaping up to be an interesting year since we have a whole lot of goodies from our favourite vendors including Microsoft. My HOT TOPICS - and part of the reason for this blog is SBS 2008 and its new big brother WEBS (Windows Essential Business Server). Being a datacomms guy from way back I am also interested in OCS and have been using it at work. However in the SMB space I think Response Point could be just the ticket as they cherry pick the best parts of OCS and jam it into one box so it can fit into a small business.