Comments about the SBS community

There has been plenty of talk about the whole SBS community lately. Vlad has certainly stirred the pot with some recent posts ( and here ) and to a large amount we have to agree with what he says. Why? Well, it certainly appears to us that the great majority of people in SBS land are takers not givers. There are very small number of regular contributors to the “community” while the rest tend to sit on their duff and simply suck in the information. Given that we all only have a limited time in every day we acknowledge that there is also way too much information out there for any of us to get across but hey the least you could do is say “thank you”.

Case in point. We developed a survey on our Supportweb site that was designed to try to get a feel for some basics of the SBS installs out there. We posted a request for people to complete the survey to our local SBS User Group and we were luck to get 10 responses! We then contacted Susan Bradley who was kind enough to post the survey information on her blog and to date our total number os respondants is 45! C’mon people, only 45 people in the whole SBS world have the time to respnd to a survey? This apathy is mirrored in the offical SBS Community survey, which apparently hasn’t had very many respondants either. It just goes to show to us that the vast majority of the so-call SBS community in fact are takers not givers.

When we used to attend our local SBS user group meetings we found that we were just generally getting pumped for information. How do you do this? Should I install that? How do I go about this? Now, generally we don’t mind helping people at all but of late we found that is all we have been doing and worse still we never received any genuine thanks for our contributions. We are happy to help were we can but we feel it isn’t very smart to keep giving and giving when nothing is forthcoming in return. In that case we are just being stupid by letting ourselves being taken advantage of. Why should we get up and give presentations and provide advice, that in many cases has taken us plenty of hard struggle to learn, to people who simply take it, without thanks or making any contribution in return, and then implement in their business for their own commercial benefit?

So now we look at the so called “community” as a case of “well, how is this going to help our business?”. We continue to develop and post free material for the community (our videos being a case in point) but we are now asking for donations to provide us with some business benefit for our efforts. No doubt we will called all sorts of names for seeking commercial gain but you aren’t required to pay to see the videos, it is a simply way to show us your appreciation of the efforts we have made in providing the material. If support isn’t forthcoming then we’ll look at channelling these efforts into another project that provides us business benefit, because if we don’t we go out of business. Amazingly, when we started creating these videos we got all sorts of people want “free” support on some of the technologies we highlighted. Initially we provided support but after a while (and with very little thanks for for our efforts) we are reverting to the commercial model. If you want “free” support then make a donation to show us that you are not just a taker, because we aren’t willing to continue to be taken advantage of.

Now, there is little doubt that this rant won’t go much further than this blog since we doubt very few people even read it (hi mom), but at least we have made our opinions public and attempted to explain our motives. Of all the information we have is placed on the web, much of it free of charge, it would be nice to now and again get a sincere “thank you” rather than “this content is so basic even my grandmother would have known that”. Fair enough, we are happy to take any form of feedback on what we create but so far that “grandmother” crack has been about the total extent of it.

As we said, we appreciate that there are far more knowledgable people in the “SBS community” providing a far greater range of helpful material but it would be nice once in a while to actually know that someone out there does appreciate what you are providing to the community for “free”.

Support for SBS 2003 without service pack ceasing

Please note that support for SBS 2003 SP 0, also known as SBS 2003 RTM, will be retired on July 10, 2007. For more information see : http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps.

It has now been over 3 years since SBS 2003 first came out so if your product is not current then it is strongly recommended that you upgrade or install SBS SP1.

SBS 2003 Installation Part 5 video

Part 5 in our series of installing Small Business Server 2003 R2 is now on YouTube. Simply click here to view it. This video deals with connecting Small Business Server to the Internet by running the standar Connect to the Internet Wizard. Remember, that will all SBS configuration you should always run the wizard if there is one available.

If you find our videos at all beneficial we ask you to consider supporting us directly by making a donation via http://donation.saturnalliance.com.au. All donations allow us to devote more resources to the content we provide as well as improving its quality.

SBS Backup failure – Error in log 0x800710d8 Gettapemediapoolname failed

So we saw this on an SBS 2003 R2 Premium machine that had been up for a long time. When we did some Googling we came across the following article which we figured would be required, http://www.taznetworks.com/rss/2006/01/sbs-backup-error-code-0x800710d8.html . Simple easy, with just a few server reboots.

When we examined the server more closely we discovered that it had the well known SQL memory issue that SBS seems to suffer from on the MS Firewall service. What happens here is that you see an sqlsever instance consuming a huge amount of RAM. When you look closer at the source of the instance you find it is the ISA 2004 reporting database. You can find more information about the solution to that here but basically you need to run the command line WMSDE tools to limit the amount of memory the WMSDE instance uses (WMSDE is the cut down version of SQL you get for free). So we did that since the server couldn’t be rebooted and low and behold the backup the following day worked!

So it would seem that not only is the backup error 0x800710d8 potentially related to a corrupt RSM database but it is dependent on the memory in use on your server. So before you go recreating your RSM database try seeing whether your server maybe consuming an inordinate amount of RAM. If it is try throttling some of the SQL instances as detailed above or like most things, maybe a simple reboot to free up memory again will do the job.

Advanced Virtual PC video

We have posted a new video that cover some of the more advanced features of Microsoft Virtual PC. We cover features such as virtual machine additions, virtual hard disk compacting as well as creating differencing virtual hard disks. You’ll find the video by clicking here. As always we welcome any feedback or suggestions you may have for us about our video creations as we are always trying to develop material that is beneficial to people.

How to Master the Art of Selling

This book by Tom Hopkins proved to be very eye opening for someone who really isn’t a “sales” person. I think most people who are not “sales” people don’t hold “sales” people in high regard ( in some cases for very good reasons ). This book show you how anyone can master the art.

It isn’t filled with tricks, it is instead filled with some very thoughtful insight into creating successful sales processes. The first thing that struck me was the authors insistance that sales be a disciplined art where you thoroughly practice what you are offering and how you are going to offer it long before you are ever faced with a customer. As we all know most successful business people already have this approach in other areas of business, why shouldn’t it apply to sales ?

The book also shows how most sales people threaten the customer rather than making them feel comfortable. Ever walk into a shop and find yourself jumped by an eager sales person asking if they “Can help with anything ?”. As the book shows, a much better way to approach this is to say something like this to the customer ,“If you have any questions I’ll be right over here to help you”. Subtle, but it can make all the difference as I recently found out when I went shopping and was constantly jumped by eager ( who appear aggressive ) sales people asking “if they can help me”.

Another insite that the book provided me was the fact to actually ask for referrals. Too many times we expect our clients, even our best ones, to be constantly referring us new business. Problem is they are usually too busy to even think about it. If instead we ask them, then chances are they’ll know someone immediately, if not then at least it has been placed at the front of their minds. As the books says, you have to ask and ask on a regular basis.

In summary this is a great book for anyone. Why ? Because we all sell in some shape or form. You may not think so but chances are when you sometimes even have to sell family and friends on your ideas, so don’t think selling is just limited to business. I was generally very impressed with the way the books makes a comprehensive coverage of the selling process and what you need to be a “champion” ( as the books defines ). The author strives to take you from an ordinary sales person to be one of the select few who are truely successful and happy selling.

Rating = 9 out of 10

See http://www.tomhopkins.com for more details about the author.

Thick Face Black Heart

This book by Chin-Ning Chu touts itself as being able to help you suceed in life and work using the ancient wisdom of the East. Chin-Ning says that Thick face is a shield that when developed gives you the ability to put aside the negativity of others and exceed beyond the limitations that others impose on you. Black Heart is a method to develop a ruthless side that allows you to succeed where others fail.

The book incorporates a many ideas from two of my favourite strategy books ( both from the East ) – Sun Tzu, The Art of War and Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings. It is amazing to look at size of both of these books ( a maybe not even 100 pages ) when compared to strategy writings from the West ( which are 100’s if not 1,000’s of pages ). The biggest difference is probably the fact the Eastern philosophy speaks about ‘The Way’ ( or do in Japanese ). This means that whatever you do must become part of your everyday life. So if you study strategy then you must learn and apply its teaching in every aspect of your life. If you don’t then you are no following “The Way”.

I found the point about negative traits most interesting. Most “traditional” self improvement courses, books, etc always seem to focus n your negative points. For example helping you manage your time better or organizing your time better. Chin-Ning speaks of embracing these negative and learning how to use them. Sure you need to work at improving them but don’t waste all your time and energy on just that. You must forget that you have positive advantages in your being and you need to use these to move forward and not be held back by trying to eliminate your negatives constantly. This concept is a very interesting twist on “traditional” self help topics.

A good example is something like the “Postitive aspects of procrastination”. Basically Chin-Ning is saying that we should take time to just think and not do anything else. If we sometimes rush into things then they turn out badly. The concept of the Black Heart is interesting. Basically it means that you need to have the ability to “be mean” to get what you want. Chin-Ning is not advocating being evil but sometimes you do need to look after number one. It also means being a bit coy ( deceptive ) in your dealing with others, which she says Eastern culture thrive.

After reading the book I had an interesting business conversation during the week where the other party basically spilled the beans on their life when there was no need to do that. I was somwhat shocked at the conversation because I didn’t expect this subject matter in a “business” conversation, however from the book I did see how people in business are far too willing to ceed others information that potentially can be used against them and they do it almost willingly.

All in all I found the book and excellent read and discovered that it stirred a generally deeper level of thought that I have had after reading other books. I would definately add this book to my top 10 list of “business must reads”.

Rating = 9.5 out of 10

You’ll find more info about Chin-Ning Chu at her web site http://www.strategic.org