Turning the frown upside down

I’m a ‘glass half empty’ kinda guy. Well really I’m a ‘who the hell made this glass twice as big as it needed to be‘ type of guy but for the purposes of this let’s just stick to the half empty metaphor.

Now the other day I was really pissed orf about something (if you will excuse my French, but I was). Now the rational part of my brain was saying – ‘Look this is a total waste of time, there ain’t anything you can do about the situation so just forget it!‘. However the emotional part of my brain was saying ‘Yes I know this is a waste of time but I am still pissed orf and need to vent this‘. A classic power struggle, which in most cases results in my rational mind simply stepping aside until the emotional part cries itself out feeling pissed orf.

For some reason my rational mind just could put up with the wasted energy on this occasion and decided to find a solution. What it came up with was pretty clever. Now we all know we have negative feelings that do no good but we are human beings and that is just the facts but imagine if you could redirect that negative energy into something positive? Let’s say that the next time you get pissed orf instead of dwelling on the fact you redirect that energy into accomplishing or thinking something positive.

I agree that it isn’t going to work every time but I have been giving it a try of late and am impressed with the results. Firstly, redirection gets my mind away from the thing that is pissing me orf and secondly I feel much better actually accomplishing or thinking about something positive. Every time I feel my emotions about a situation rising up again I redirect that energy to something far more rewarding.

Don’t get me wrong, you just can’t flick a switch and redirect the emotion it takes a bit of practice and patience but I can see the benefits even after a short period of time. I know that I am not always going to succeed in my aim but I think it is good a solution to at least try. Firstly, my rational mind can take the negative energy and put it towards something more useful and my emotion mind can vent all that it wants since it is being used for good and not bad.

That’s the theory anyway.

Book Review – Beginning Sharepoint 2007 Administration

Beginning SharePoint 2007 Administration: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Göran Husman

For anyone who is looking for information about administrating Sharepoint (both WSS and MOSS) then this book is a very worthwhile read. Unusually for most Sharepoint books it provides a very good balance between WSS and MOSS as well as covering an extremely wide variety of topics.

The book is easy to read and packed with plenty of examples and ‘how-to’s’. It would also provide a very good reference book that can sit on your shelf for later referral. It covers many topics in a depth that isn’t found in many other books on Sharepoint but is really focused on the professional who’s job it is to install, maintain and support Sharepoint installations.
If you are already working with Sharepoint or planning to then I would commend this book to you. It will get you up to speed very quickly on administrating Sharepoint 2007.

Rating – 8.5 / 10

Awh ma gawd!

Just have a look at what we found when we opened up a prospect’s server recently to take a look:

Notice something outta place? Maybe that hard disk lying on the bottom of the case is a hint? What about the fact that two hard disks actually in the case are disconnected? Now, that’s not all folks. It is an SBS 2003 R2 server with only 1GB of RAM! Apart from SBS 2003 and Anti virus, the server is also running in this 1GB of RAM, a virtual machine that had a linux distro to do the anti-spam (not very well either – hello Intelligent Message Filter).

Strangely enough (well, not really), the old IT person moved interstate and now won’t return any of the client’s phone calls. Strange that eh?

This is the battle we face everyday trying to convince potential customers:

A. All IT companies aren’t trying to rip them off.

B. There is a big difference between IT providers. You get what you pay for basically.

However, I do understand this from a customers point of view. How the hell do they know if an IT person is good or bad? They don’t know IT, that is why they pay someone to do this. It seems today that businesses only understand the difference after they have been burnt! However, it really does give the rest of us that are trying to do the right thing a bad name. Thank goodness that I believe in karma (really nasty payback karma, but karma none the less).

HP ML110G5 Unknown device

Having recently setup a Proliant ML110 G5 Server with Windows 2003 SBS we encountered an unknown device in the Device Manager. The reason for this was that we prefer to blow away the OEM setup and rebuild from scratch. That way we get the server exactly the way we want it. This is a bit of a pain since you need to reload all the drivers manually. Everything seems OK except there is one item in Device Manager with Unknown Device Properties. The details of this item have a Device Instance ID of ACPI\IPI0001\0 and Hardware IDs of ACPI\IPI0001 *IPI0001.

Turns out that this is for the Remote Lights Out board (RILO) even though one isn’t install in the server. Even better, there isn’t a driver listed for the device on the HP drivers page for the ML110G5! Turns out you have to go back to the ML110G4 page where the RILO driver is located. You can also get there directly by clicking here

Boy, they certainly make it hard don’t they?

SharePoint online videos

If you are a Microsoft partner and have a Windows Live Id then you can login and view the following online Sharepoint videos:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 1: Foundations – Session 1: Introducing Windows SharePoint Services https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786628&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 1: Foundations – Session 2: What’s New — Document Management and Collaboration https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786629&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 1 Foundations – Session 3: What’s New — Business Process and Workflow https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786627&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 2 Session 4: Site and Site Collection Administration

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786631&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 2 Session 5: Farm Administration: Maintenance, Optimization and Best Practices DONE https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786632&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 2 Session 6: Authentication, Permissions and Security https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786633&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 3: Customization and Development with Windows SharePoint Services 3 Session 7 https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786636&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 3: Customization and Development Session 8: Customizing Sites and Applications with SharePoint Designer 2007 https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786635&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Series 3: Customization and Development Session 9: Developing Custom Applications using Visual Studio https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1786634&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services Exam 70-631 Prep, Part 1 https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1775029&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services Exam 70-631 Prep, Part 2 https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1775030&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services Exam 70-631 Prep Session 1 (a second series with a different instructor) https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1798707&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services Exam 70-631 Prep Session 2 https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1798743&page=/plc/search.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services Exam 70-631 Prep Session 3 https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?systemid=1798744&page=/plc/search.aspx

Overall they are pretty good and run for about 90 minutes each. Some of the earlier ones I found to be a little disjointed and rather rushed but I suppose they needed to get all the content covered. I think however this illustrates the problem with communicating the value of Sharepoint. far too often people try and show you everything it does rather than just what the viewer want to do.

The very last version of Small Business Server

As most techie types salivate over the imminent release of Small Business Server 2008 I will contend that this will in fact be the last version every produced.

What do small business customers want? Simple. They want access to their “stuff”. What is their stuff I hear you ask. Well, it is probably “stuff” they create as well as “stuff” other people send them. In more technical terms “stuff” they create are documents and “stuff” other people send them is emails. Why do they need a server to access their “stuff”? They don’t. Managing a server for their “stuff” has become way too complicated and way too expensive for most small businesses. They have to firstly buy the equipment, next they have to run it up and get it all working. Next, they have to keep it secure and so and so on. If they can’t do this themselves they pay someone else to do it for them but it still pretty expensive just to access their “stuff”.

Customers don’t care about servers. They also don’t care about software. They just want something that will allow them to do their job – i.e. get access to their “stuff”. It seems that things like servers and software are simply getting in the way of this. I reckon more and more are going to be migrating to “cloud computing” since it all far easier to access their “stuff” here.

Look, Small Business Server (SBS) has been a great product over the years. It really has. It has been an extremely cost effective method of doing much that a small business needs but not any more in my books. Everything that SBS can do is now begin done in the “cloud”. As a customer, why would you ever want to maintain your own mail server? Put it in the “cloud” and let someone else manage the problems of spam a smart operator will say. If you really think about it there isn’t really much that SBS has over “cloud” computing.

Now sure, many clients aren’t comfortable with the the idea of accessing their “stuff” somewhere on the Internet but hey if I tell them that they can do it for half the cost, guess how long it will take most to change their attitude? Half a nano-second I’ll bet! So no customer really cares about SBS and all the technical gee-whiz. If they can find a cheaper and easier way to get their “stuff” they go for it.

The second front on which SBS faces annihilation is from Microsoft. Microsoft seems clearly to moving towards the concept of “medium” rather than “small” business servers with its release of Essential Business Server (EBS) which basically is similar to the current SBS but allows all the software to run on multiple machine (unlike SBS). Why? Businesses that are going to run EBS are bigger and far more likely to spend far more dollars on IT than “small” businesses who buy SBS. For those clients even Microsoft is pitching its own “cloud” computing solution, which is even evident in the upcoming version of SBS 2008. The way I see is that SBS is being “stripped” down and “consumerized” so all it does is simple store “stuff”.

Since it has been 5 years now since the last version of SBS was released (and SBS 2003R2 doesn’t count as a “new” release). I can’t see that in another 5 years we’ll have SBS 2013. I’m sorry, but I think it will be gone. If you are selling and supporting SBS then I reckon your time left to make money with the product is fast dwindling. You have either to move up market with EBS (which will be tough for one man bands) or embrace “cloud computing” (but if everything works right why do customers need you?).

So maybe it is not only the end of SBS as we know it. Maybe it is also the end of the SBS only reseller?

Not that there is anything wrong with that

(stolen from www.vladville.com)

HP ML110G5 hanging on array utility (F8)

So you want to configure the embedded RAID array on a HP ML110G5? Well, first thing you have to do is go into the BIOS (via F10 at boot) and select the Advanced menu. From Advanced menu item select Advanced Chipset Control. Then set the Serial ATA field to Enabled, select SATA Controller Mode Options -> Enhanced field and set the SATA RAID Enable field to Enabled. Press F10 the Yes to save and the server will reboot.

Now as the server is booting you should see a message about the SATA RAID controller and how you must press F8 to configure. Ok when I did that I received the message:

Utility found, Loading wait ….

and the server hung. Bugger! Reset, try again, disconnect some things, try again. Still no luck. Bugger x 2! Ok, the BIOS Build date was 1/11/08 and as it typically turns out there is a later version (2008.04.03 (A) (18 Apr 2008)) that fixes the problem although it doesn’t appear to be noted in the release notes. You can download it from here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=3577708&swItem=MTX-c97c6477ae454b5289fd5a7011&prodNameId=3577715&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=5

So you download the file, unpack the files to you workstation hard disk and run the utility that allows you to create a bootable USB device (anyone know what these things called floppies are? I can’t remember ever seeing one ). Insert that into the server, the server boots to the device, runs some updates, reboots, finishes updating and when I now press F8 at the RAID controller config I can finally get in and configure my drives for RAID.

Generally, it is always a good idea to update all the firmware prior to the installation of any new server. Why? Simple. It’s the first thing the manufacturer is going to ask you to do if there are problems and I’d sure as heck rather do it on a system I’m running up rather than a production server if I can avoid it!