Need to Know Podcast – Episode 14

The latest episode features Ryan Spillane from Correct Solutions speaking about the processes and challenges of recruitment. We covers areas on what to look for in a good employee, how to find good staff, the interview and induction process.

You can access the podcast directly from:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/2011/01/25/episode-14-ryan-spillane/

as well as view all previous episodes at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com

where you can not only subscribe via mediums such as iTunes but also leave comments and ratings on each episode.

If you are interested in, or know a business that is, sponsoring the show please contact me directly (director@ciaops.com). Also if you would like to appear as a guest or would like to hear from someone specifically again contact me (director@ciaops.com). Finally, if you think the show has provided you with value I’d appreciate any donation you’d care to make. All donations go to helping me improve what is offered (http://www.ciaops.com/donation).

Monthly v-newsletter

I have been doing an email newsletter for 12 months now. You can subscribe via:

http://ciaops.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e641b9327b1cf4c45ad4e593f&id=c851ddf6cf

and view previous editions at:

http://us1.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=e641b9327b1cf4c45ad4e593f&id=c851ddf6cf

but I’m now going to add something extra. Every month I am going to try to add a bit of a video summary of the newsletter so you can get a look at exactly what technologies I talk about in action.

<img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-jW5laqqSluY/UOzUTyAhxjI/AAAAAAAAG4A/LPe2uWP7_CU/video72e583c3a4cf%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('1a72503e-90a6-4bec-8337-635031b4ba9c'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "

http://www.youtube.com/v/fT4L0M4f-ko?hl=en&hd=1“;” alt=””>

CIAOPS January 2011 Newsletter

Having just obtained a new laptop I have been a bit pressed to get it into service for this edition so things might be a little rough around the edges. However, I hope to have all these issues smoothed out shortly and have the video optimized for YouTube viewing.

The aim will be to provide an adjunct to the email newsletter that will actually show you some of the technologies I mention in more detail. I’m also hopefully aiming to add a few ‘extras’ into the video to encourage additional viewers.

So have a look and let me (director@ciaops.com) know what you think and what you’d like to see me cover in future editions.

A new machine

I’ve recently purchased a new laptop after my old one (7 years of dedicated service) lost a portion of the LCD screen. Fear not! It has been moved onto other tasks with an external monitor but I’d though I’d take the opportunity to run your through my setup process for the new beastie.

1. Power the machine on and let it completely finish installing all its software.

2. Reboot the machine to a Storagecraft boot DVD and take an image of the machine before anything further. You can do this before the machine even powers up to Windows but as you’ll see in the next step I’ll create another backup that will allow me to return the device to delivery state.

3. I boot back into the machine and use the manufacturer supplied Recovery Manager to create a set of recovery media. In this case it meant 7 DVD’s. So now I can get it back via an image as well as back to delivery state via the recovery media.

4. I now upgrade the version of Windows from Home Premium to Ultimate to allow all the Windows professional bits needed. I’ll also uninstall all the manufacturer crap that has been installed and make the machine as lean as possible.

5. I then use Truecrypt to do a encrypt all the hard disks on the machine. Sure I could do this with Windows Bit Locker but I believe that encryption should be open source. I don’t trust an algorithm that is proprietary. This now means that if the laptop gets stolen the information on there is safe, even if the disks are removed and inserted into another machine. Be warned, full drive encryption can take a long time to complete but Truecrypt allows you to pause and restart the encryption process at any point.

6. I install the latest version of Office Professional. In this case Office 2010 Professional Plus. I also install SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2007 (which are both free downloads). SharePoint Designer 2010 will only work with the latest version of SharePoint Server. Thus you still need SharePoint Designer 2007 when working with Windows SharePoint Server v3 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS).

7. I do a Windows Update and change the options to check for all Microsoft updates and in future only prompt me when updates are available. I always keep running this until there are no more updates.

8. The machine came with Windows Security Essentials. Most other AV products are just too bloated and cumbersome. I also however also install Malwarebytes (another free download) and scan my system with this manually once a week at least.

9. I now install a swag of utilities including:

Skype – for free conferencing
Evernote – cloud based digital notebooks (even though I also use OneNote backed onto a hosted SharePoint site as well)
Virtualbox – this allows me to create virtual machines with 64 bit guest (i.e. for creating SharePoint 2010 test machines). I was disappointed to find that Windows XP Mode doesn’t allow 64 bit guests so this is what I now use.
Windows XP mode and Virtual PC – again for virtualization and running an virtual XP machine for backwards compatibility if required.
Window Live Essentials – I use the writer for blogging, messenger and a few other apps here. All free to download and very handy.
Audacity – For editing sound files, especially CIAOPS podcasts.
iTunes – Great for music but there are also plenty of great podcast and free training videos on all subjects here.

10. I install Firebox and Chrome browsers and set Chrome as my default (because it is the fastest). I need all these to test with SharePoint but Chrome is definitely my default browsers these days.

11. Now I install Lastpass which contains all my web site passwords via the cloud. Not only will it automatically fill them in for sites you visit regularly but it will also generate and remember secure passwords for new sites. Thus every new web site I sign up has a unique secure password. If you haven’t looked at Lastpass I recommend you do as it also integrates will all browsers and mobile devices.

12. I’ll install the Delicious browser add ons that allow me to bookmark and share my sites with the world (and any other machine I have via the cloud).

13. Next comes Camtasia Studio which allows me to create my video tutorials and presentations.

14. The Storagecraft desktop edition is install to allow me to take image backups of my whole machine for easy restoration.

15. To keep track of my time on the machine I install the Recuetime and Wakoopa agents.

16. To manage my Twitter feeds I install TwInbox.

17. To allow me to create PDF’s I’ll install PDFCreator.

18. I’ll do a defrag to line everything up that just been installed since hopefully not too much should be shifting around.

19. I’ll reboot and go into the BIOS and enable the password boot option. This means I have to put two passwords in at boot time, the BIOS password the hard disk encryption password. The BIOS password adds to security and allows me to easily shut the machine off if I turned it on by accident. It also allows me to insert a DVD if I need to boot from it rather than simply booting to the hard disk immediately.

20. I also change the boot order in the machine so it boots from the DVD first, which I’ll need if I have to do a recovery.

21. I then run Spinrite in full maintenance mode to check the hard disk and make sure there aren’t any bad sectors lurking about. Generally if a hard disk fails it is going to fail in the first few weeks so using Spinrite allows be to detect this early on the piece before I get too much further. I could do this before I start install all the above software but usually by now I am sick of computers and need a break so I leave Spinrite to do its work. Be warned that depending on the size of your hard disks this could take quite a while.

There still a few more tweaks and installs that I’ll do before I’m 100% complete but that’s the list of all the major stuff before the data even hits the machine.

When it’s all done I do a final Microsoft Update and a Storagecraft image and I’m good to go. Sure it takes a long while to set up but my last machine is still going after 7 years and I would like this one to last even longer, so I’m happy to invest the time up front getting things right.

I’d love to hear what ‘standard’ stuff you install on your machines. Let me know via (director@ciaops.com).

Queensland Flood offer

As part of the effort to assist people in the flood affected areas of Queensland and NSW the CIAOPS is offering a free hosted SharePoint site to any business or organization affected by the floods. A SharePoint site could be used for any number of tasks to assist with collaboration between groups, keeping and updating lists and contacts as well as tracking information. This offer also includes any setup, maintenance and customization required. Such a site can be accessed anywhere that Internet access is available.

To take advantage of this offer simply contact me directly (director@ciaops.com) to arrange. Likewise, if you know of any business or organization that would benefit please also let them know of this offer. Tweet far and tweet wide.

We all keep the people affected by these floods in our minds, remind to keep safe and remind them that like everyone else, we are here to help if needed.

SBS 2003 Companyweb migration – Part 4

This is Part 4 in a series of migrating SharePoint from SBS 2003 to SBS 2011. Series posts are:

Introduction – Overview

Part 1 – Caveats and Considerations

Part 2 – Preparation steps on v2

Part 3 – Upgrading v2 database to WSS v3

Part 4 – Attaching upgraded database to WSS v3

Part 5 – Check WSSv3 for migration to Foundation 2010

Part 6 – Move database to SBS 2011

Part 7 – Post migration steps and considerations

In this part we are going to attach the migrated databases we attached to SQL to our staging Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSS v3).

Adding database to WSS v3

Once the old SharePoint v2 databases have been attached to SQL Server the next step is to connect these databases to WSS v3.

Open a DOS prompt on the WSS v3 server via Start | Run | Cmd. Change directory to c:\program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin and execute the following command to remove the existing WSS v3 database.

stsadm –o deletecontentdb –url http:// -databaseserver -databasename

for example:

stsadm –o deletecontentdb –url http://sharepoint3 -databaseserver VMSBS2003P -databasename WSS_CONTENT

Note, that if you are using the SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition (SSEE##) that installs with the default standalone installation of WSS v3 you do not need to specify the database server. That is, you should leave out the option –databaseserver

Where http://sharepoint3 is the new WSS v3 created during installation of WSS v3, VMSBS2003P is the name of the WSS v3 Windows Server and WSS_CONTENT is the default name of the WSS v3 content database created during installation of WSS v3. If you have made changes from the default during the installation some of these vales will be different for you.

It is important to remember that this process will remove all the existing content from the WSS v3 site.

You now need to add the migrated SharePoint v2 databases that you have previously attached to SQL Server to the new WSS v3 site. The addcontentdb process will allow you to do this and automatically upgrade your SharePoint v2 data into WSS v3. Execute the following command to add the existing old SharePoint database to the new WSS v3 site.

stsadm –o addcontentdb –url http:// -databaseserver -databasename

for example:

stsadm –o addcontentdb –url http://sharepoint3 -databaseserver VMSBS2003P -databasename STS_VMSBS2003p_1

Note, that if you are using the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition (SSEE##) that installs with the default standalone installation of WSS v3 you do not need to specify the database server. That is you should leave out the option –databaseserver

The upgrade process will vary on the size of the content databases and speed of your hardware. Eventually, you should receive a message telling you that the process completed successfully.

Once the process is complete, open the default WSS v3 site (typically just the http://server_name) on the WSS v3 staging server and confirm that the data is present and correct. You should see data from from your SBS 2003 Companyweb but now in a WSS v3 format.

In the next part we’ll commence the process to migrate to SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Need to Know Podcast – Episode 13

The latest episode features Lee Hickin from Microsoft Australia speaking about the upcoming
release of the latest version of Microsoft’s Online offering – Office365 in depth. Lee talks about some of the more technical aspects of the product and what resellers should be doing to prepare.

You can access the podcast directly from:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/2011/01/11/episode-13-lee-hickin/

as well as view all previous episodes at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com

where you can not only subscribe via mediums such as iTunes but also leave comments and ratings on each episode.

SBS 2003 Companyweb migration – Part 3

This is Part 3 in a series of migrating SharePoint from SBS 2003 to SBS 2011. Series posts are:

Introduction – Overview

Part 1 – Caveats and Considerations

Part 2 – Preparation steps on v2

Part 3 – Upgrading v2 database to WSS v3

Part 4 – Attaching upgraded database to WSS v3

Part 5 – Check WSSv3 for migration to Foundation 2010

Part 6 – Move database to SBS 2011

Part 7 – Post migration steps and considerations

In this part we are going to attach the SharePoint v2 databases we copied across from SBS 2003 to the version of SQL that comes with a standard installation of Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSS v3).

Part of the migration process of Companyweb from SBS 2003 to SBS 2011 involves migrating to WSS v3 (and eventually to SharePoint Foundation 2010). This means you will have to install WSS v3 somewhere as a staging server. I am not to concerned about this here, as long as you have it running with the default setup you will be able to follow along. However, if was me, I’d be using a Virtual Machine of some form as my staging server for WSS v3 but I am not going to cover any of that. I am going to assume that you already have WSS v3 running in a default installation somewhere.

We need to get the Companyweb databases we copied from SBS 2003 attached to the version of SQL on our WSS v3 server. By default, the WSS v3 databases are stored on the system partition (C: drive) of the server and no graphical management tools are installed. It is however possible to manipulate the databases using the command line but a free graphical management tool is available from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c243a5ae-4bd1-4e3d-94b8-5a0f62bf7796&DisplayLang=en

It is strongly recommended that you install this application on your server to make working with the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Embedded Edition (SSEE) easier.

Once the management studio has been installed on the server it can be accessed via Start | All Programs | SQL Server Management Studio Express.

Once the management studio is running you will need to connect to the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Embedded Edition (SSEE). To do so use the following string in the server name field:

\\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query

Once the management console has connected you should see an interface similar to that of other SQL 2005 server installations. The databases are located under the database folder.

By default the location of the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Embedded Edition (SSEE) data on the WSS v3 server will be:

c:\windows\sysmsi\ssee\mssql.2005\mssql\data

and this cannot be changed during the installation process. In many cases, as the data held in the databases grows it may cause problems because typically C: is the Windows system partition.

Unlike Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition the Embedded Edition does not have a limitation on the size of a database, while the non-embedded edition has a maximum database limit of 4GB.

Attaching databases using SQL 2005

Locate the Database folder under the Server name.

Right mouse click the Database folder and select Attach from menu that is displayed.

Press the Add button to locate the SharePoint v2 database that you previously copied.

Navigate to the location on the disk in which you saved the copy of the original SharePoint v2 database. Select the MDF file (here STS_SERVER_1.mdf) and press the OK button.

Check that all the information now displayed is correct and when complete press the OK button to continue.

SQL Server 2005 will now attach the database. You should see the word Executing displayed in the lower left of the screen during this process.

When the process is complete, if you now examine all the databases listed under the Databases folders you should see your SharePoint v2 database (in this case STS_VMSBS2003P_1). Note, that you will also see the WSS v3 database (in this case WSS_content) that was installed during the setup of WSS v3. If you have not already taken note of what the WSS v3 database is you should do it now for later reference.

The next post will cover how to connect this migrated databases to WSS v3.