If you have a Microsoft SkyDrive account, you can increase your maximum storage capacity from 7GB to 25GB for free. Just go to your SkyDrive account and click on ‘Manage Storage’.
If you do not have a SkyDrive account, create one for free, and it’s possible that you too can upgrade your storage from 7GB to 25GB.
I cannot say for certain, but I believe this free upgrade will be available through the month of April.
The cloud, the cloud, the cloud. That’s what everyone is (supposedly) talking about. It seems as if every hardware or software company is jumping on the “the cloud or bust” bandwagon.
It was only a few years ago when the key word in every technical presentation was “paradigm” or “paradigm shift”. Now it’s “the cloud”!
Get 50 people in the same room and you will probably get 50 different interpretations of what the cloud is, whether you need it or can afford it.
My fellow MVP, Tim Barrett, has written a great article with his take on some of the statistics being used to convince everyone that “it’s all about the cloud”.
Wow! I was just informed that I was selected as one of the top 150 Small & Medium Business (SMB) Channel Influencers, an award given out by SMB Nation. The winners come from around the globe, from Australia to the United States, from Europe and Asia to South America! Congratulations to all 150 winners.
A three-part process determined this year’s list of SMB 150 influencers. The competition began with an open nominating process, followed by the SMB IT community voting on the nominees at www.smb150.com. In addition to the community vote, a panel of industry experts judged each nominee based on a variety of relevant areas. The community vote accounted for 40% of each nominee’s overall rating, with the expert panel’s decision contributing the remaining 60%.
I have alerted my customers several times in the past few months to be on guard against fake emails. These fake emails appear to come from your bank, from the IRS, from PayPal, from FedEx, or one of your credit cards.
Generally these emails are telling you that a payment you just made is being processed. Here’s an example of one I received today.
One way to tell if it’s a fake email is to hover your mouse over one of the links. The popup window should display the “real” location of where it will take you if you click on the link.
Two things in the example below:
(1) You would think that an email from Paypal would be taking you to a PayPal.com web site, but not in this case! Take a close look – it’s taking me to a website “air-maxes-shop.com”.
(2) the URL displayed in the box is not even using an https protected address, but an unprotected http site.
So, please be vigilant! The best suggestion I can make is that if you cannot tell if the email is real or fake, then do NOT click on any links within the email. You can always call the company (IRS, FedEx, Bank, etc.) and speak to someone to clarify if this is a real or fake email.
Yes, Microsoft is pushing out several security fixes and updates for both servers and workstations.
I configure the SBS servers I support so that new patches and fixes are NOT applied automatically. The same holds true for most workstations. Why? I like to be able to test out patches and updates on my lab systems prior to releasing them onto production servers. The SBS Server Console has a built in GUI interface to the WSUS server, allowing you to control and manage when and which updates should be installed.
Go to the Microsoft Security page/u> for details and a video overview of this month’s updates.
To all my business clients, friends and family:
I saw the cardiologist on Tuesday, and they did both an EKG and a cardiac ultrasound. It actually took them longer to hook up all the cords for the EKG than actually running the test!
I received good news when they called me today with the results of my ejection fraction (EF), which is a measurement of how well the heart is pumping. Keep in mind that the EF for a normal heart is 55% to 70%.
In September when I was in the hospital, my EF was at 20%. By November it had only gone up to a whopping 25%. In January, as I was able to start walking, it moved up to 35%. And now in April it’s up to 45%! They told me from the outset that this would be a 6-12 month process to get my heart pumping within the normal range. I suppose that as with most goals in life, the last mile is always the hardest. So, if it took me 7 months to get from 20% to 45%, it may take me another 3-6 months to get it up to 55%.
Thanks for the prayers!
KW
I was honored two years ago to have been selected as one of the top 150 SMB (small/medium business) professionals in the inaugural 2010 event.
I am thrilled to say that I have been nominated for the 2012 version of this event.
I would be pleased if you would take a moment to vote for me. Click on the link below to go to my nomination page, then click on the blue VOTE button immediately to the left of my name. Thanks!
http://smb150.com/story.php?title=kevin-weilbacher
Voting for this year’s event continues through Friday April 6, 2012. You may vote more than once, but only every 24 hours. Voting is tracked by public IP Address, which means you could vote for me at work, and then vote for me again at home.
The following two commands are recommended per this article for disabling SMB2 on Vista, Windows 7, SBS 2008.
sc config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi
sc config mrxsmb20 start= disabled
(Please note that there is a space immediately after the = sign in both commands!)
If you have several Windows 7 workstations, then check out this article for pushing out the above commands via PowerShell.
Update Rollup 2 for Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard was released today (March 27, 2012).
This rollup addresses 5 specfic issues that are documented in the Microsoft KB 2660819 article.
There is no requirement to install SBS 2011 Rollup 1 first, as this new release contains all the updates from the prior Rollup 1.
Are you running a Small Business Server (SBS) or a Windows Home Server (WHS)? If so, chances are you have forwarded port 443 (SSL) on your router or firewall to point to your server in order to utilize the Remote Web Workplace (Access) feature of these servers. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) requires certain standards to be in place if you are processing credit card information. One of those standards is that SSLv2 is deemed unacceptable, and you will fail a PCI scan if its enabled.
Disabling SSLv2 requires a simple registry edit. I have tested this with both SBS and WHS. Copy and paste the following lines into a empty text file, and aftersaving it, rename the text file to use a .reg suffix (e.g. disable-sslv2.reg).