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Archive for June 2012

Office 365 First Birthday!

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 29 2012

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Office 365, Microsoft’s subscription-based solution for hosted email and office productivity tools celebrated it’s official Office 365 First Birthday on June 28, 2012. However, Office 365 is just the latest iteration of hosted services from Microsoft.

As far back as 2003 Microsoft was exploring the opportunities for hosted Exchange. By 2007 they had started rolling out hosted Exchange, and in late 2008 they officially announced BPOS.

I have several customers that have already transitioned to Office 365, or are exploring this as a viable alternative to an on-premise Exchange.

Happy birthday, Office 365!

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Categories : Exchange, Office 365
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Managing for Success 2012

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 29 2012

I worked with Karl Palachuk two weeks ago at Microsoft’s TechEd technology conference in Orlando. He and I were both facilitators at TechEd’s Birds of a Feather sessions during the week.

This past week (Jun 26-28) Karl did something very interesting – he put together a three day, 18 hour online conference titled “Managing for Success 2012”. I was very impressed with the speakers chosen, the range and depth of information presented, the professionalism with each presentation, and most importantly – the fact that they stayed on time!

Kudos to Karl for a job well done!

SMB Online Conference

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Categories : Conferences, SBS, SMB
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Verizon Fios Quantum Upgrade

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 29 2012

Verizon recently rolled out Fios Quantum here in the Tampa Bay area. I went to their web site this week just to check out their prices. Guess what? I was surprised to find out that I could upgrade from my current 35/35 plan to 75/35 at no additional cost! What’s not to like about that?

So I did, and here are my first results this morning.

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It was all done over the Internet and the change happened magically during the night. Now, where’s that movie I’ve been wanting to download?

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Categories : News
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Reindex WSUS DB?

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 26 2012

If you read the Summary Notes associated with the WSUS Update KB 2720211, you will see that it recommends using the WSUS Cleanup Wizard and to re-index the WSUS DB.

Running the WSUS Cleanup wizard is something that I do with all my SBS servers — either manually, or via a scheduled task (see Eriq Neale’s blog post on this subject).

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However, I was unaware of any need to re-index the WSUS database.

I asked some of my fellow SBS MVPs to see if this is something they do, and several responded that they, too, were not aware of any need to re-index the WSUS database, and had never run it.

The steps to re-index the WSUS DB can be found in this Technet article.

YMMV!

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Categories : SBS, WSUS

Be Careful with WSUS Updates!

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 25 2012

Updating SBS servers used to be a fairly simple and straightforward thing, especially as it comes with WSUS (Windows Serve Update Services).

My practice when installing SBS is to disable WSUS from automatically installing any updates. That allows me to decide which updates should be installed, and when. More importantly, it allows me to skip certain updates.

I have also made it a habit to install any .Net updates separately from all other updates. And if there are more than one .Net update to be installed, I install them one at a time. I have since extended that to other server apps managed by WSUS, such as Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint.

But what do you do if there is an update to WSUS itself, and that update breaks WSUS?

That’s exactly what happened when KB 2720211 was released earlier this month (June 8th, 2012). Soon afterwards, we started getting reports of this  patch failing to install, leaving WSUS in a broken state.

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Microsoft released a blog post on June 20th addressing common issues with installing KB 2720211 and how to fix them. Please read the post closely, and especially heed the advice to perform basic health checks of your WSUS server, such as running the WSUS Cleanup Wizard!

This reinforces the need to remind yourself of your process as to how you install patches. Mine include:

  • Make sure you have a good backup of your server before proceeding
  • If possible, reboot the server before installing major updates, such as service packs or rollups
  • There’s no reason to be the first kid on the block to install certain updates. I regularly will wait a week or two after major updates or patches have been released, and monitor the SBS Official Blog site and the Microsoft SBS Forum to see if any issues have been tracked.
  • Install security patches first.
  • Install server apps, such as .Net, Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL, WSUS separately from all other updates, and install such updates one at a time.
  • When all updates have been applied, I reboot the server and then check the event logs for any issues.
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Categories : News, SBS

HP MicroServer AddIn Cards

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 23 2012

The HP MicroServer is a great little unit to use for development/testing purposes. I have one on my workbench with 8gb of memory with Hyper-V. It allows to test out new versions of Workstation software, WHS, SBS and Multipoint.

Note that the HP MicroServer comes with built-in Raid-0/Raid-1 support.

The server has slots for two half-size cards.

The inner slot (the one closer to the on-board NIC) can only be used for the HP MicroServer Remote Access Card (RAC), which is sort of like a basic version of the HP ILO card for servers, and provides remote (virtual) KVM.

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The second slot (the one closer to the outer edge of the box) can be used for other purposes, such as a low profile PCIe X16 Graphic Add-in card.

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Categories : Servers, WHS
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Erroneous BPA EWS Warning for SBS 2011

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 22 2012

If you are running a SBS 2011 server, after upgrading Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) with UR3,  you may see the following warning message:

The /EWS virtual directories maxRequestLength doesn’t match the get-transportconfig MaxSendSize

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This warning is NOT applicable to SBS 2011, and should be ignored!

To ignore this warning and prevent it from showing up again in the future, simply click on the “Exclude this Result” button that is displayed in the BPA for this warning.

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However, if you have already performed the resolution steps as recommended in the BPA, just repeat the steps and reset the maxRequestLength to 2097151 (which is 2GB).

For more information, please read the associated blog post on this subject at Microsoft’s Windows Server Essentials and Small Business Server Blog.

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Categories : SBS
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Customize SBS Alerts

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 22 2012

The engineers from the SBS support team developed a nifty little tool called SBSAlertsCleanup that allows you to manage and filter unwanted event alerts for the SBS 2008/SBS 2011 monitoring reports. More information and a link to download the utility is available on the SBS Official Blog site.

Just a few additional comments and an example on using the utility.

After downloading and unzipping the utility, the instructions tell you to unblock the file. If you’re like me, I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. It’s as simple as right-clicking on the file ‘SBSAlertsCleanup.ps1’, then click Properties, and then click Unblock down in the lower right corner of the Properties box.

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To startup Powershell, you will need to open up the Command prompt window using ‘Run as’ an administrator. After the command prompt window opens, simply type Powershell and press enter.

You will then install the utility from the Powershell prompt. Use the CD command to change to the directory where you unzipped the utility, and then run the following command: .\sbsalertscleanup.ps1 –action install

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To see what events are already excluded, type: .\sbscleanupwizard.ps1 –action listexclusions

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To add an event to be excluded, you will first obtain a list of current reported events, identify the associated ID for the event you wish to excluded, and then exclude it.

To see a current list of all events, type: .\sbscleanupwizard.ps1 –action listevents

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To exclude a specific event, type: .\sbscleanupwizard.ps1 –action addexclusion –id XXXXX
(where XXXXX is the numeric ID associated with the event you wish to exclude)

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Categories : SBS

Windows Phone Dilemma

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 20 2012

I have been using an Apple iPhone for the past 3 years, and for the most part have enjoyed using it. The iPhone replaced my older Windows Mobile 6 phone. I switched to the iPhone as many of my customers had iPhones and I wanted to be able to support them.

In the past year, several of my customers have purchased Android phones. I have had good success with the Android phones, the biggest issue being  its interface with Microsoft’s Exchange server. But, we have that all working now.

Windows Phone 7.5

Soon after the first of the year, I started talking with people who had switched over to the Windows 7 phone (code name Mango) – such as the Samsung Focus or the Nokia Lumia. In fact the raves were so great, I had all but convinced myself that I would switch to the Nokia Lumia 900 as soon as my two year agreement with my iPhone was up.

Windows Phone 8

Well my two year period ended this month. So today I went to the AT&T web site to purchase the phone. I literally came within seconds of clicking on the final “Are you sure you want to buy this phone?” button, when, for some unknown reason, I decided to cancel my purchase and told myself to wait until I was back at my office.

Well, this evening as I’m checking my email, I read that Microsoft officially announced their new Windows Phone 8, to be available later this year.

That’s great, or so I thought – I’ll get the Nokia Lumia 900 now, and then upgrade to Windows Phone 8 when it’s released.

WRONG!!!!

According to Microsoft’s Windows Phone Team Blog, current Windows 7 phones will NOT be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8. To appease those who may have just bought a Nokia Lumia phone, Microsoft did say that they would provide a software update for Windows 7 users that will give them the Windows Phone 8 Start screen.

A line from a popular song says it best: That don’t impress me much.

I suspect I’ll just hang onto my iPhone 4 until such time as Windows Phone 8 is available and I can buy a phone that supports it.

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Categories : News

TechEd 2012 Thoughts

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 15 2012

A008 (Large)s a Microsoft MVP for Small Business Servers and a Small/Medium Business (SMB) I.T. consultant, the conferences, seminars and user groups that I routinely attend or speak at are usually geared for the SBS/SMB marketplace. And that’s all great!

So to have an opportunity to attend and work at Microsoft’s TechEd North America conference (7,000+ attendees) this week was a huge thrill and honor for me.

002 (Large)I had a chance to meet, interact and speak with I.T. professionals  representing everything from large financial and commercial companies to colleges and universities.

The convention floor was jammed pack with vendors and presenters. I have done my share of “manning a booth” at conferences but this was amazing.

I understand that it took 3 weeks to set up the hundreds (if not thousands) of workstations that were available for use.

I was asked to facilitate two of the TechEd’s Birds of a Feather sessions. The first was on Advanced Architecture for Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, and the second was on Windows Multipoint Server Deployment.

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Categories : Conferences, Multipoint, News, Sharepoint
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