Exam results

Yeah! I passed the Microsoft Exam 70-169 – Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard, Configuring and here’s my badge to prove it!

I wonder whether they’ll be having a separate one for SBS 2011 Essentials? I would assume they’ll be having them for Office365 (although there was none for BPOS to my knowledge)? I need to get around to doing the SharePoint 2010 exams as well so always plenty more qualifications to work towards. Never hurts to keep your skills updated.

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).

Me and virtualization

I have been an avid user of virtualization for many years. Initially I started out with Virtual PC on the desktop to accommodate all the operating systems I had to support. These days I use Hyper-V to run both production and test machines. In this post I want to mention a very specific use I have and how I recently benefited from the machine being virtual.

Apart from all the technology I run a business day to day. This means I have to do my accounts and pay tax. I have done this via electronic submission for many years. As soon as I was given the opportunity by the Tax Department to use electronic submission I did and over the years I have had very little problem. The one major problem came about when I had to shift the software to a new machine. The issue had more to do with obtaining new digital certificates than it did changing hardware. However, none the less it was painful.

After that experience I decided to virtualize the machine. Why? Firstly, it meant that I could fairly easily transport the machine between host hardware systems without needing to reinstall. It meant that I could minimize what software I had on the machine (effectively just the electronic submission software). It meant that I could run it up as needed, make my submission to the tax office, update the machine, take a snapshot, back up the machine and then have it ready for next time. If I ever had issues during a submission I could easily rollback to the last snapshot and start afresh.

Now times move on and once again I was faced with an update to the electronic submission software. I installed it but was having issues updating it via the Internet. Because the machine was virtualized I could test just about every aspect of the machine without fear of ‘losing’ anything. After exhausting my meagre brain I contacted the nice people at the tax office technical support area for assistance. They got me to do all sorts of things to no avail. Again, because I had a virtual machine I could try any request they threw at me and return the machine to the original clean state. Another very handy aspect of virtual technology is that I could ‘freeze’ the machine in any state. This means when they called I could quickly have the machine running without the need to physically boot it up in exactly the same state I left it in.

After finally getting to level 3 support I was given a solution that works just fine. So now I have updated my virtual machine, taken a snapshot and shut it down ready for when I have to actually do my submission.

The take-aways? If you haven’t played with virtualization then you really should, on the desktop and the server. Rather than piling everything on a single desktop PC have a think about creating a ‘clean’ virtual machine that you use for specific tasks (maybe internet banking?). I think virtualization is great solution to some of life’s little ‘incompatibilities’!

For a better SBS 7

I’ve now submitted some suggestions of what could be done to SBS 7 to improve it before it releases. Here’s what I think is are worthwhile inclusions:

1. Automatically install the TIFF iFilter. Windows Server 2008 R2 includes the ability to add TIFF iFilter as a feature. Even though it is not enabled by default I reckon it should be simply because SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed. Why? Well, and iFilter lets you index the content in file files for which that iFilter is designed for. Thus, an iFilter for TIFF files means they can be indexed and searched by SharePoint 2010. So many documents are scanned using the TIFF file types (e.g. faxes) and if they end up in SharePoint (which makes the most sense for them generally) you’d want them indexed? I reckon so, that’s why I recommended it.

2. Include Search Server Express 2010. This is a biggie I believe. Search Server Express 2010 is a free download from Microsoft that is built on SharePoint technology that allow you to not only index SharePoint information but information from Exchange public folders, web sites and NETWORK SHARES. This means that with Search Server 2010 installed on SBS 7 all the user information stores in shares could be index and made SEARCHABLE through SharePoint! That also includes the ability to search information within documents that have been configured with an iFilter (see point 1 above). How many businesses have an internal search server? Not many, here’s an opportunity, I believe, to give businesses functionality they really need to help them find the information in their network.

There has also been plenty of discussion around including Office Web Apps in some version of SBS, which I certainly agree with. Interestingly in my testing I am finding that I am unable to install Office Web Apps and Search Server Express 2010 together. I am still trying to resolve the issue in case I have over looked something simple and I’ll report here soon about what I find.

Microsoft Migration doc updated

As expected, Microsoft has rectified the issue with the SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008 migration document as detailed in this blog post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sbsdocsteam/archive/2010/09/09/major-correction-to-quot-guide-to-migrating-from-wss-to-wsf-on-sbs-08-quot.aspx

As the post notes the article on the web page will be updated in the next week or so but the downloadable doc at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2dc66a0f-f840-4b29-93d3-13db70c85cba&;;displayLang=en

has been updated. So those who want to complete the process should now be able to do so.

Still a few additional items I’ll post about shortly.

SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008 – Step 10

As noted in a previous blog post I think that step 10 in the Microsoft process of migrating to SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008 is incorrect:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff959273%28WS.10%29.aspx

So here’s what I think Step 10 should show (including pictures):

Step 10 – Connect the ShareWebDb database to SQL Server 2008 (CIAOPS versions)

The old WSS v3 database now needs to be attached to the new SQL Server for management. You will need to have the SQL Management Studio open (as an administrator) to complete these tasks.

Navigate to the Database folder for the SQLEXPRESS tree. Right mouse click on the Database folder in the SQL Server (in this case SQL Express 2008 R2 denoted as SQLEXPRESS at the top of the object explorer window) and select Attach.

You will now see the Attach Database window like show below:

Press the Add button.

(in the screen shot above the database shown is called WSS_Content but in the standard SBS 2008 case it will be called ShareWebDb)

Navigate to the location of the old WSS v3 database. In the default case this will be c:\windows\sysmsi\ssee\MSSQL.2005\MSSQL\data and the database will be called sharewebdb. Select the database and press the OK button to continue.

You should now see the database and log file listed in the lower window. Press the OK button to attach these databases.

You should now see the word Executing appear in the lower left of the window. When complete you should be returned to the object explorer window where you should see the database now listed under the SQL Express databases folder.

From there you should be able to continue on with Step 11 of the standard Microsoft process.

I’ll detail some other things about this process soon.

This information can from? My SharePoint Operations Guide that I’d recommend if you are needing to this sort of stuff.

Sync and Mesh

I have been using Microsoft Live Mesh for a long while and really liked it. The major downside was the fact the when it sync’ed information to the cloud it didn’t do it to Microsoft Skydrive. The plan seems to be to phase out Live Mesh in favour of Windows Live Sync that will save to the Skydrive but there are still issues.

The main issue for me is the ability to add files to the Skydrive storage area via the web like you could in Mesh. I’ll show you what I mean:

Here is screen shot from a folder that I’m syncing using Windows Live Sync on Skydrive. There ain’t anywhere I can see that I can add files to this folder via the web interface.

whereas in Mesh as you can see below I can upload a file using the web interface and have it replicated to all the devices connected to my Mesh.

What makes this even more of a pain is the Windows Live Sync beta (i.e. the next version of Livve Sync) isn’t supported on Windows XP or Windows Mobile! So the only way I can sync files between all machines at the moment and add via the web is via Live Mesh. The current non-beta version of Windows Live Sync does however support Windows XP. However as you will see on the Mesh web site:

It’s now going to be called Windows Live Mesh 2011 and this seems to be based more on Live Sync than Mesh unfortunately.

I certainly hope when they do make up their minds, release one product and that it will:

– be available on Windows XP.
– provide storage in Skydrive.
– provide the ability to save files via the web interface.
– provide more than 2GB of storage (5GB is coming soon but can we get the ability to store up to the limit of Skydrive which is 25GB please?).
– ability to upload files of greater than 50MB.
– ability to have Live Sync folders as an integrated part of Skydrive rather than something separate. At the moment I can’t copy from the Skydrive sync’ed folders to my normal Skydrive folders, so it kinda isn’t any different from stand alone storage like what Mesh current is now is it?