Tag: Windows

Small Business Specialist Certification

Came across this interesting video interview with Harry Brelsford. In it he says that his business, SMBNation, is packaging up his Small Business Specialist training material and delivering it as a set curriculum that “anyone” can use to obtain their Small Business Specialist Certification. He cites the examples of high school kids as well as community colleges as the intended targets for this material.

 

Like most technology certifications, it is clear that the Small Business Specialist qualification is now far too common and no longer could effectively be used as a differentiation point for your business. Sure, it is good that the qualification perhaps ensures all Small Business Specialists have a minimum level of qualifications but is that really true? I’m pretty sure, like most other technology qualifications, you can still obtain the certification without knowing anything about Small Business Server.

 

Combine this growing legion of Small Business Specialists with the greater simplicity of SBS 2008, now what is your businesses point of differentiation? Most claims along the lines of “we do it better” or “we fix the mess others leave behind” don’t seem to work. Once an owner has been bitten by a bad technology provider they are going to be pretty gun shy of the next one who comes along, no matter how good they are. In many cases you as the new technology provider is going to be lumbered with the residual poor installation implemented by the previous incumbent. Worse than that, chances are the business owner isn’t going to want to spend much more money “fixing” the problem, simply because they have already shelled out a pretty penny for what they already have. So beware, following some previous IT provider into a business, you may simply end up being the whipping “boy” for an owner is looking to take their previous frustrations out on.

 

As a technology provider you are generally selling status quo. That is, today nothing happened on the server just like yesterday and the day before and the day before and so on. Most customers don’t understand the value of this and therefore get lulled into a concern that they are “paying you for nothing”. Its hard to sell the status quo, especially when you look and sound like everyone else claiming to sell it. So what’s your “secret sauce” (as Harry Brelsford would say) that helps you stand out from the crowd to customers and prospects?

 

You need to help prospects and customers understand the VALUE you bring to their business. If you simply “fix” technology then there are others out there who’ll do it cheaper, quicker and against whom you don’t stand a chance if you fight on their terms. Why do people but something like a Mercedes when a Fiesta basically does the same thing? Understand that and you are well on your way to understanding VALUE in the eyes of the prospect or customer.

Vista. An abject failure? TOTAL B.S.

Microsoft announced announced revenues for their fiscal year of $60 billion! Yes, $60 billion per annum! Also, in the announcement is something interesting about Vista.

 

Revenue growth was primarily driven by continued customer demand for all products, including Windows Vista, which has sold over 180 million licenses since launch

 

Yes, boys an girls, Microsoft has sold 180 million copies of Vista since launch. They must be going onto PC’s somewhere eh? Seems that even though a “lot” of people are bagging Vista and saying they want XP, Vista is still being installed in a lot of places. Does that sorta tell you that a “lot” isn’t really very many at all? Does it also tell you that perhaps the “lot” may have vested interests or are just “whingers”. There can’t be 180 million downgrades to XP either, if that is what you’re thinking. To the “whingers” I say, just get over it. Vista is here to stay, like or not.

iPhone to SBS 2003 success!

As expected, had a referral call today begging to get their iPhone connected up to SBS 2003 to receive emails.

 

After some fiddling, some updating and little bit of configuration we have it all working! Yeah.

 

Even though it is working we are doing some further testing to come up with a procedure for all our customers just so we know exactly what needs to be configured. More on those details once we have completed our testing. There appears to be a couple of gotcha’s but we need to verify our facts first.

 

However, for the time being we have one happy iPhone user. So if you are a reseller I suggest you start gearing up, because sooner or later someone is going to ask you to connect an iPhone to Exchange server (and I saw that the local Optus shop was pretty busy today).

First SBS migration almost complete

I have been testing the SBS 2008 migration process but initially struck some issues during the process. After repeating the process and getting the same results my guess was that it was something to do with ISA 2004 on the source SBS 2003 since I was attempting to migrate SBS 2003 Premium. Don’t ask me why but I reckon that’s what it is.

 

To remove ISA 2004 out of the loop I decided to attempt the same migration but this time from SBS 2003 Standard. I’ve got to say that it has gone flawlessly.

 

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As you can see from the above screen shot I did have some warnings, but when I looked at these all they were was:

 

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because I was running this on an isolated network on under Hyper V it simply meant that SBS 2008 couldn’t get to the Internet to get some updates. Not a big issue.

 

As I said before, the whole process so far of attaching the new server to the domain is a snap since it picks up everything from the answer file you create prior to the migration. There is still a little more to do to complete the migration but I am extremely confident that too will be a snap.

 

I’m documenting Microsoft’s suggested method of companyweb migration after which I’ll also be developing what I reckon is a quick method.

 

Stay tunes.

Video 47 posted

Here’s a video to show you how straight forward the installation of SBS 2008 RC0 is. After just a few click you should have a system up and running.

Can you notice the difference?

For those of you who are long time readers of my blog (shame on you if you’re not!), you’ll know a while back I went through trials and tribulations virtualizing all my CIAOPS machines. Basically, this meant that I could now run the entire infrastructure on a single piece of hardware. I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t a perfect solution but it did save lots of space, kept the power bills down and made management much easier.

 

Then after recent escapades getting SBS 2008 working I was so impressed with Microsoft Hyper-V I thought that migrating my existing virtual machines to Hyper-V would give it a nice boost in performance and again allow me to reduce the total hardware I have to maintain.

 

The first step in the process I figured was simply to transfer the existing virtual PC’s to the new hardware still running Microsoft Virtual PC. Even though the host operating system is Windows 2008 64 bit and “doesn’t” support Microsoft Virtual PC it will run. So the idea was simply transfer the machines to new hardware as a starting point. I duly shut down the virtual PC’s on the original hardware and committed all the changes to hard disk and then copied the images off onto the new hardware.

 

What I found on the new Windows 2008 64 bit host system with Microsoft Virtual PC was that the images did load but once there were two or more images operating they ran really slow. Ok, I thought, if I’m already this far down the track I’ll go Hyper-V. Another great thing about Hyper-V is that they can use existing Microsoft Virtual PC hard disk images, will alleviates the need to re-create the machines from scratch. This is pretty impressive when you consider that the virtual machine images I was going to use had been originally created in a 32 bit application. It’s a nice and easy way to go to 64 bit in my books.

 

I knew the major issue with Hyper-V was going to be the network cards since they would be different from those already installed under Virtual PC. Problem is you can’t add the Hyper-V additions to better support the new environment until you remove the old Virtual PC additions. So I had to fire the machines back up in Virtual PC, remove the Virtual PC additions and then save the virtual PC image back to disk. Now, after restarting the virtual machines in Hyper-V I could install the Hyper-V additions (needs 2 reboots). After that the only thing I needed to do was re-activate the operating system. Migration complete – I love virtualization!

 

Now all the CIAOPS infrastructure (including this Sharepoint blog) is running on a single machine under Hyper-V. Combined with an improved broadband link I think the performance is markedly better. What do you think?

 

The great thing is that I can still use the host same machine for testing virtual SBS 2008 RC0 and at a later stage can do a migration from my existing SBS 2003 R2. I also like the way that Hyper-V allows you to take snapshot backups which is going to be a real bonus when it comes to putting on updates and testing. Rolling back to a previous snap shot is a sinch. I’ve still got plenty to learn about Hyper-V but if you haven’t looked at it I recommend you as I think it is going to be pretty big.

 

Now, I’ll admit that what I have in place probably could be improved even further but on a cost basis I am ecstatic with what I have been able to achieve and the additional flexibility it is going to provide. It also has been very beneficial to get exposure to Hyper-V which I am liking more and more every day. If Hyper-V keeps working this well I am very confident that we’ll be using for most customers in the future, it just makes so much sense on so many levels.

 

Finally, one of the big benefits so far is also that the issues I was having with my Sharepoint blog server seem to have gone away. Maybe it’s just like getting new hardware? All I know is that it runs a hell of lot faster now!

Video 46 posted

So after all the recent dramas of getting SBS 2008 working I decided to celebrate with a new You Tube video. This video is a first look at the new Small Business Server from Microsoft. I quickly run through what’s the same, what’s new and then examine the new SBS management console.

 

Hopefully over time I’ll be posting more videos about SBS 2008 including all the good old things that I have covered in previous videos on SBS 2003 such as creating users and computers. You’ll find the latest video here:

The weather starting getting rough…

The tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, virtual SBS would be lost.

 

So, continuing on with what appears to be my never ending quest to get a virtual SBS 2008 machine working I had finally gotten a 64 bit guest environment working via Windows Server 2008 64 bit and Hyper-V. Phew. During the last episode I had just started installing SBS 2008.

 

Everything was looking good until the installation tells me I don’t have a network card. I check the Windows configuration manager and I do have a network card but the driver won’t start. Now if I had read John’s comment to my previous post I would have been aware that I needed to set up the virtual machine for SBS with a legacy network card. Unfortunately I didn’t do that, I did however find a work around. I mounted the virtual machine additions CD image, updated all the other missing drivers from that CD image, deleted and re-installed the network card from device manager and got it working. I’ll have to remember that legacy card option for the next virtual SBS 2008 server I run up. Thanks for the heads up John.

 

Finally after many trials and tribulations I have SBS 2008 standard installed. Here’s a few initial observations:

 

1. During the installation there aren’t a lot of options. Most of the configuration seems to come after you get SBS running. In that way you just have to let SBS 2008 install the default way. Now it is my understanding that you can provide an answer file to change these default options but it certainly seems “dumbed down”.

 

2. The connect to the Internet wizard is much more router and DHCP aware which is a good thing. The connection to the Internet is now simply connecting to the Internet. Email and remote access is in a different wizard.

 

3. The layout of the SBS console if very different but so far I like it. It is well organized and pretty logical I think. It is going to remove a lot of confusion for “non-IT” types. It is also interesting that it is moving further and further away from the technical to simply point and click. Again, “dumbing down” in my books.

 

I still have a lot more to play with, especially when it comes to Sharepoint on SBS 2008 and I’ll be posting my findings and thoughts in upcoming entries. Now that I have SBS 2008 running what can I do with it? I wonder ….