Tag: Windows

10 critical things you should know about Small Business Server

We have just released an extensive report detailing 10 critical things you should know about Small Business Server.

The report was developed from the most common questions we are asked about networking with Small Business Server and doesn’t just contain information about software. The report will provide relevant information about what hardware to buy as well what other considerations you need to make when thinking about networking. If you want a reliable and flexible Small Business Server network then you need to have this report.

This report also contains many resources (webs sites, books, etc) that can be used to gather more information about networking with Small Business Server.

For more information about how to obtain the report click here or email robert@saturnalliance.com.au.

Offline Microsoft Updates

Now many years ago I used to like WSUS. That is was when I ran it on a server separate from my Small Business server. When Microsoft incorporated WSUS into SBS2003R2 that’s when my relationship with WSUS turned sour. Personally I found WSUS on SBS caused all sorts of problems from failing to update correctly to downloading content that was not requested and finally being impossible to uninstall once it is on the system. So, bottom line, I no longer install WSUS on SBS2003R2. Typically, we use Shavlik to apply updates to all our networks for so many reasons which I am not going to go into here (maybe a later post if enough people out there ask me).
Problem was, when we get a new machine in that needs to be run up, typically, it is missing heaps (last count 94 for XP Pro) of updates. So we’d get the PC working, connect to the Internet and then do all the updates, reboot do ’em again and so on and so on until the system is fully patched. Also, when you go out to new client and check their machines, typically updates haven’t been done for a long, long while and the only solution is to fire up Windows Update and download from the Internet. This can be a really painful experience, especially if they have lots of out of date machines and a slow Internet connection. Sigh.
That is now a thing of the past since I have discovered Heise Security DIY service pack. simply download the latest version of the software (which is a whole swag of clever scripts), expand into a directory on a machine and then run the update program. when run you’ll be asked what downloads you desire :
Select your desired Windows Updates

also select you Office updates

ensure you have the option selected to create an ISO image and hit the Start button. The program will then go off and download all the selected updates (even service packs if you selected that). It will obviously take a while the first time it runs as it has to download a lot of updates for all packages selected.
Once the download process is complete it will create a separate ISO image for all the products you selected like so :

Here you can see I have Office 2003, office 2007, Office 2000, Office XP, Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP and more! Burn the ISO’s to media and now you have your own offline update library.
Now simply pop the CD/DVD into a machine which you want to update and run the installer program (which auto launches as well). Simply select the desired options :

and press the Start button. The installer will firstly determine what updates need to be apply and then start applying and rebooting automatically if you selected that option. So now you can walk away from the machine while it continues to do all its updates – MAGIC.
I tried this out on a new original XP Home system OEM installation without Service Pack 1. I popped the Windows XP DVD into the drive, selected the reboot option (it gives you a warning that this may not work all the time) and pressed Start. The installer dutifully installed Windows XP Service Pack 2, rebooted, installed more updates, rebooted and so on till completion. At the end of the process I have a full patches XP System that I only had to attend once and didn’t have to expose to the Internet before it was updated.
Best of all with this offline updater is the fact that when you run it again it downloads any new updates that Microsoft has brought out and adds it to a new ISO image it creates. So, I’ll be running this after every patch Tuesday to create a new set of offline update CD’s that are going to save me HOURS and HOURS both in house and on client sites.

No longer called Cougar

Ok, so Microsoft has finally gotten around to making SBS 2008 a real product. It even now has its own web site :

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/essential/sbs/default.mspx

Still digesting exactly what all the information means but I thought this was interesting :

It has the following components as standard

  • Windows Server 2008 x64
  • Exchange 2007
  • Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  • Windows Live OneCare for Server <<– **
  • Subscription to Forefront Security for Exchange Server Small Business Edition <<– **
  • Integration with Office Live Small Business <<– **
  • Enhancements to mobile and remote working tools and management

So Microsoft is trying to make SBS 2008 an all encompassing product eh? I wonder how the people at Trend feel now they are getting cut out?

The whole press release is here :

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-20EBFamilyPR.mspx

I’ll write some more when I’ve had time to digest all this new info.

Vista Service Pack 1 – Who cares?

The big buzz is the apparent release of Vista Service Pack 1 but I say who cares? Not me that’s for sure. I do run Vista on my business workstation but I’m in no hurry to download and install it. I’ll let some other idiot download it and stuff up their machine before I do it.

Look, as far as I’m concerned Vista has been a total waste of time. No client we have wants it, most clients specifically tell us ‘don’t give me that F*&^ING Vista’ and personally I tend to agree. Vista is SLOW, it consumes so many systems resources that you need at least 2GB of RAM to make it work with any application, the interface is all different and heaps of important things are now in different locations. By and large it is a pain.

It was even more of a pain until I disabled the Aero interface and all the advanced features so it would run quickly. Now my desktop looks as boring as Windows 2000 and it still isn’t even as quick. So without the Aero interface why the hell would you buy Vista unless you had do? I expect after Service Pack 1 is released Microsoft is going to make it harder to obtain XP since for many Service Pack 1 is the theoretical point at which they install Microsoft software.

So if you look at it pragmatically, if you have Vista (sucker) then I’d wait and see what other people find with Service Pack 1 because I’m sure it is going to cause some issues and let me tell you that you don’t want to be the first to experience that pain. If you have Windows XP (lucky) then I’d say hang onto it with all your might because it is probably the fastest “supported” Operating system Microsoft currently has.

So whether you have Vista or XP I’d just get on with what you’re doing and let Vista Service Pack 1 wreck someone else’s system.

Restoring Exchange 2003 video

In celebration of reaching 50,000 views of the YouTube videos I have created and uploaded a new video (number 39) that shows the basics of Exchange 2003 restoration. Firstly, you’ll see how to create a ‘dial-tone’ Exchange database, which is basically an empty mail database that allows Exchange to run and allows users to get on with sending and receiving emails. The video also covers how to a complete restoration of Exchange server.

You can view the video by clicking here or going to the Videos – Links section of the Supportweb web site.

When you watch the video you’ll probably notice more zooming and panning shots. I think that I now understand how to do all this now but probably need some more time to get it smooth but overall it should be a little easier to follow exactly what I’m showing. The new version of Camtasia certainly has some great features and hopefully I’ll soon be able to implement the complete range to bring you a more professional output. I have also “optimised” this video for 320×200 which apparently is what displays best in YouTube. I’ll  have to go back and do some comparisons to know for sure.

Another interesting issue is that it is becoming harder and harder to get the videos into the the YouTube restriction of only 10 minutes. I am finding that I have to cut more and more out (which is easy with Camtasia admittedly) but if the result seems a little choppy that is why. However, hopefully I think the overall quality is improving but as always I’m open to feedback on how to improve what I create.

So sit back and enjoy video 39.

One virtualization too many

Being so chuffed at converting all my physical machines to virtual machines I decided that maybe it was time to look at Virtual Server 2005 R2 as an option.

The good thing about Virtual Server 2005 is that it can use Virtual PC images directly which saves any messy conversions. The bad things are one – it has to go onto a Windows Server box (Virtual PC can go on Windows XP or Server) and it also needs IIS for its management console. It certainly does provide some additional flexibility but to my way of thinking makes things more complicated that I really wanted but hey I’ll give it a go.

So I copied the existing virtual PC hard disk across from the original XP host machine, configured a new virtual PC in Virtual Server 2005 and bang the image was up and running. Wow, that was easy I thought. Maybe Virtual Server is the way to go? Everything seemed to be going along swimmingly until I began to notice a number of unexpected reboots of the newly created virtual PC. Then I started to get errors about disk corruptions and messages saying the virtual PC hard disk was locked and therefore the virtual PC wouldn’t start.

Hmmm…what is the problem here? Thinking, thinking. Ah ha, noticed that most of the issues seemed to happen at the top of the hour. This was also was the time that our Shadowprotect was running creating image backups of our host machine hard disk. So it appears that Virtual Server 2005 machines don’t like imaging software like Shadowprotect. My guess would be that this is because the virtual PC hosted by Virtual Server 2005 has no idea that an image is being taken and doesn’t invoke Volume Shadow Copy. Thus the virtual server hard disk (apart from being HUGE) doesn’t get ‘frozen’ by VSS and thus issues arise. Just my guess mind you.

So in the end I shut down the Virtual Server 2005 image, copied the virtual PC hard disk back to the original XP machine, fired up Virtual PC on the original XP Machine and then launched the original virtual PC (with the updated virtual hard disk – no other changes made). Guess what? It just powered up without any issues! Clearly another benefit of using Microsoft virtual technology (ie virtual hard disk inter-changeability).

So in my experience it appears that if you have Shadowprotect (or any other imaging disk software for that matter I suspect) and you are running virtual machines (again my guess is you’ll see this whether you use Virtual PC, Virtual Server or VMWare) then you are going to have problems, that may lead to all sorts of virtual PC reboots and possible disk corruption. As I said I am not exactly sure of the specific cause but I am in the process of speaking to Storagecraft (the makers of Shadowprotect) about the issues.

You have been warned.

I found another 512MB in my HP server

Every time I install a HP with SBS I always install 4GB of RAM. Why? Well, simply put this is the limit of SBS 2003 (since it run Windows Server 2003 Standard edition) and memory is so cheap these days. In some systems (SBS Standard) sure it is probably an overkill but you never know, so 4GB it is. Problem is with HP servers you never get access to the whole 4GB of RAM. Usually about 512MB goes missing.

Missing where you ask? Well, I understood that it has to do with the motherboard and memory reserved for PCX controllers (and what not) that is never really used anyway so it just get wasted. I always accepted that as fact since I generally didn’t have much time to muck about on clients systems. However, after recently virtualizing all my server onto a single HP server with exactly 4GB of RAM I decided that I wanted to know where that lost memory actually went to, since the more RAM I have on my server the more RAM I can give my virtual machines.

So after doing some poking around I found the following link that talks about the missing memory. Now, it appears to access the memory above 4GB of RAM in Windows systems that support it (ie Windows Server Enterprise and Datacenter) you need to add the /PAE switch to the boot.ini. What does the /PAE switch do? Well, here’s a link from Microsoft that explains the function of the /PAE option.

So, because my HP server is running Windows 2003 Enterprise and has exactly 4GB of RAM I decided I had nothing to lose by giving it a go. Guess what? After the reboot I now had exactly 4GB of RAM! That’s at least 512MB more than what I had prior to adding the /PAE switch.

Hmmm…upon reading the HP link a little closer and doing some more poking about it appears that the /PAE option maybe valid on HP systems with exactly 4GB of RAM even if they are running Windows 2003 Server Standard (ie SBS 2003). Now, not having a 4GB SBS 2003 HP server to test this on I need to find a (non-production) system that I can test this on to see if it does in fact give back the 512MB consumed on SBS 2003 systems with 4GB of RAM installed.

So, if you have a HP server running SBS 2003 with exactly 4GB of RAM it may be worthwhile adding the /PAE switch to the boot.ini to see if you recover the “lost” 512MB of RAM. It shouldn’t work on SBS 2003 but it may do because it has something to do with HP machines specifically. Like I said, I haven’t actually tried this on a HP system running SBS but it certainly worked on a HP server running Windows Enterprise Server.

If someone out there wants to test the /PAE switch and let me know if it does recover the RAM I’d be grateful but in the meantime I’ll just have to bide my time until we get a new SBS order so I can test it for myself.