Don’t forget the Orlando ITPRO Meeting is this Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at the New Horizons on Lee Rd and I4. Since the summer whiner cleaning and ass kicking, the group has really been reinvigorated with presentations on helpdesk software use and implementation for smaller shops, presentation on running an SMB practice by Microsoft’s top SMB brass and coming up this Tuesday: Virtualization. Erik says:

Dale Frohman and I will be presenting virtualization.  At Spiderhost, we use virtualization products for a number of solutions.  For everything from production servers to backup and recovery.  Guys (and girls), this really makes your life easier.  If you haven’t seen it, or don’t know what it is, it’s worth your time!

Erik has stepped up in Orlando big time! If you’re within the hour of Orlando (which pretty much covers, Orlando, Daytona, Tampa, Ocala and Melbourne, you ought to come out and check this out. Come out, enjoy some food and virtualization festivities, explore possible partnerships and profit.

Just another thing I manage to squeeze into this weekends ExchangeDefender feature pack, support for multihomed Exchange (SBS included) servers. But a bit of background first:

Traditional SMB deployment of failover / high availabilty Internet access is a scaled down enterprise approach – get two dedicated T1’s or better from different providers, big Cisco or Juniper router, ASN number along with a dedicated IP allocation, announce both ranges and with BGP4 you’ve got a multihomed, highly available deployment.

The only trouble with the above is that complexity is way beyond the SMB IT skill set and cost is hard to swallow as well. So what a lot of SBSers have turned to are devices that allow multiple broadband connections and provide HA using DNS round robbin and MX weights. With a decent router this type of a solution with bandwidth would cost less than a single T1 and be setup in a day. Tim recommends the Secure Computing & CyberGard products, Erick recommends SonicWall Pro 2040, 3060, 4100, 4060 and 5060.

ExchangeDefender in the mix…

If you look at your ExchangeDefender account configuration it might look a little like this… Nothing interesting there, just type in the IP addresses and you’re ready to go..

But click on the Advanced Settings text and it turns to this:

And as you can tell, its ridiculously simple to setup ExchangeDefender with a multihomed configuration. Insead of providing an IP address to deliver mail to, you can provide a fully qualified domain name (mailserver.yourdomain.com) and you can also provide an extra IP address to route outbound mail through our outbound grid.

What happens on the backend? Well, DNS is looked up at delivery time and the ExchangeDefender delivery agent acts as a real mail server – it gets an MX record list, orders the weights in ascending order and hunts down the list. First available server that answers gets a conversation started and mail delivered. On the flip side, by adding an extra IP address to ExchangeDefender’s outbound network you can turn up high availability and load balancing on your outbound link and let mail go out using both network interfaces.

Now, couple all this with the ExchangeDefender LiveArchive and… frankly… you can pull off 99.999% if you design your network correctly – and we’ll guarantee the 99.999% on the archive.exchangedefender.com so you’re all set.

Caveat

I know what you’re thinking and no, don’t do it: “Sweet, I can now bring over all my dyndns customers!”; Technically, you can. Practically, I wouldn’t do it. Here is why – we cache our DNS lookups. So if you put in a DYNDNS server that has a frequently expiring IP address and your TTL doesn’t match mine.. well.. Just don’t do it.

But in case you have a fairly reliable connection and you don’t need 100% guarantee that the mail will get there, and you absolutely cannot get a business line and you totally have no way of getting a static IP address.. well, you’re still screwed, but we’ll work with you. You can route your mail through your ISPs smarthost (not recommended) or you can route it through our outbound grid (recommended) but you’ll have to use SMTP authentication and relay mail via SMTP-over–SSL. That means modifying your Exchange SMTP configuration and opening a ticket in support.ownwebnow.com to get a username and password for SMTP SSL. But, small price to pay if all you’ve got is dyndns or noip.

Conclusion

I’m listening to you guys…. I thank you for your business and we’re working tirelessly here to keep on addressing all the concers that the SMBs have and we’re making this a winning product. We’re now integrated with Autotask and Connectwise, we now support HA and we offer realtime business continuity, extended archiving, encryption…. and.. well.. nobody else can say that. So thank you for putting up with the v3 troubles, aren’t you glad you stuck around? You can kill your competitors with the ExchangeDefender feature set offer alone! I know I do.

This is the more Miss America reponse to the unwise entrepreneur take on revisionist history. Ever seen someone on TV that overcame a significant problem, triumphed over their limitations, became successful….? They always, always always respond the same way to this question: “Given the success, would you do it any differently that would still get you to this point?”:

“No! I wouldn’t change a thing. Without my challenges I never would have gotten here”

Bullshit.

First, if you’re saying the above you’re a filthy liar. Moreso, you’re a fool on which the benefit of experience is completely lost. We all have things in the past we regret, we are all human and we make mistakes. And nobody I know that is currently or has previously experienced hardship would want to either continue or look at it as a fond memory. I for example regret having gone to college. I keep my college diplomas on the wall of useless documents to the left of me – and I see them every time I get out of my Aeron chair. Why? Because I always want to be reminded of three little letters.. R..O..I..

Most people have regrets. Most people, however, can admit their mistakes and learn from them, not pretend endlessly like they never happened so there is no reason to weight your options carefully and make good, informed decisions. It matters, don’t follow. Unless you’re a rapper.

Yet another adventure of Captain Obvious, exploring the bullshit people think they are saying when they think they are sharing wisdom. So in the fine series of customer service, vendor-reseller relationships, business direction and more: here is another fine post stating the obvious that doesn’t seem to be apparently obvious to everyone else. Ever heard, or worse yet, said the below:

“If I could do it again I would do it a lot differently”

Bullshit.

If you truly mean it, tho, it states one apparent thing about you: You have ridiculously poor judgement. Pardon me, I need to get as far away from you as possible becuase I am afraid of what you’ll “change” next.

Truth is, most people make fundamentally good, reasoned, decisions given a set of facts. Over time there are more facts, more information, more experience. But thinking back to the last thing you’d want to “change” in the perfect 20/20 vision… given the same set of facts, circumstances, money, etc – would you still change it?

Most people make good and bad decisions, given the facts at hand. If you find yourself doing a lot of revisionist history you either have a lot of spare time or you need to do more due dilligence…

One small step for a nail place…

One big step towards making IT less of a saussagefest.

Way to go ladies!

Since the ExchangeDefender 3.0 and 3.1 releases went smooth as ass on sandpaper and nails, we’ve made quite a few changes to the way its developed, tested, rolled out and managed. So, here is what I was working on today:

New Reports

Or should I say, new new reports. One of the biggest customer complaints has been the lack of the ability to suppress empty quarantines. Basically you would get a Daily and/or Intraday report but it would include all the email addresses even if they had nothing in them. If you have half a dozen email addresses it starts to look ugly, quickly.

One of my pet peeves has been the constant nagging about “customer did not receive report, investigate”

So, below is the new stuff that hopefully makes everyone happy and most importantly, makes the user more productive. First, me: the blue box you see on the right side is the stock advertising spot – as an MSP you can modify this box to say anything you want it to say. Got a yard sale – let your ExchangeDefender customers know it. By default, however, it serves a functional purpose of letting the user know that there are more messages waiting for them, in a much nicer environment that is searchable, intelligent and accessible in realtime – so no waiting for daily or intraday reports if you need something quick.

Now on to the customer complaints – “Stop telling me about SPAM I am not receiving.”

Ok, done. Both the user, the domain administrator and the MSP have the capacity to suppress quarantine reporting if those quarantines are empty. By default, we print quarantines for each email address and say if its empty – but if you change the setting you will only see the quarantines for the email addresses that actually have SPAM or SureSPAM trapped in them.

And the techies… this is going to save a lot of time:

You can now send a daily report to any managed email on your system – on demand. Gets generated within 60 seconds, out in a minute or so more. But… it gets better, scroll down.

Dave Sobel Feature

Dave was one of the first people I showed the beta of ExchangeDefender v3 MSP console. When it launched, Dave took exactly 15 seconds to nuke one of his domains accidentally. I am not sure how he did it, but it was a record nonetheless and I felt like an ass.

So, we now have what is called a Dave Sobel rule in the house. It’s that of validating any irreversible action in the system with a javascript popup. This little function took 8 lines of JavaScript code and took 45 minutes to write – no, I am not kidding, it was an ugly morning. Judy finally put me out of my misery by rewriting (adding 2 parameters to the call) the whole thing and saying “Bitch, now where my pink Inspiron at?’

Finally…

And I do mean…. fiiiiiiiiiiiinally. There are gonna be some fans in the House of Vlad next week:

Yep, you’re seeing that right – thats ExchangeDefender integrated into AutoTask! You can actually get the LiveLink right now, huge thanks to Steve Noel of AutoTask for hooking this up and to Kevin Baylor for specing it and pushing to get it done.

There are some other exciting things coming and I just wanted to show you how this thing is progressing. Next week the new ExchangeDefender web site launches too, along with the new Shockey Monkey and the public beta of Thieving Weasel… Crank that shocky stick baby, code monkey is on fire!

Happy Programmers Day.

It’s 256th day of the year and I spent all day coding.

I also lost my voice and took 45 minutes to write an 8 line JavaScript… but hey, it’s just programmers day, not good programmers day. So hug your developer! At least its a day for a real profession, unlike the administrative assistant day where we take a moment to appreciate college education and count our blessings that we’re not useless in every facet of modern business life.

P.S. Last comment written to draw ire from the crowd that attacked Karl. I find it hard to believe that none of those useless people read this blog enough to slam me, after all, I’ve met some of you and… man…. 3 + 4 = ice cream if you know what I mean (courtesy: Mark S.)

… is ignorance.

Really, it is. And to be frank, it took me a long time to come to terms that the cause for most pain points I saw in my career and my business was directly related to the shit I had no control over. So why in the world did I let those things bother me so much, why did I allow my day to be consumed or ruined by things that I had no chance in hell of affecting… likely at the cost of the things I actually could work on to directly improve myself, my partners, my customers, etc? Caring? Stupid? It’s too hard to call.

For example, and you can quickly scroll through more than two years of posts here:

I’ve been reporting MAPS piracy since we’ve been a Microsoft Partner, not a stitch of progress for years (until maybe a year ago). Microsoft Licensing has sucked as long as we’ve been offering it. MCSE, MCSA and MCP credentials have been allowed to dilute to the point of being worth less than the paper they were printed on. And don’t get me started on the lack of release quality, testing and not to mention the apparent non-existance of performance tuning.

And that’s just Microsoft! You don’t want to see what choice words I have for Bell South, T-Mobile, HTC, Dell, HP, DHL, US Postal Service, airlines and all the other external parties that caused me grief over the years. I had to deal with them. I did not have to let them affect the way I went about things.

For me, 2007 has been all about letting go of things that I had no chance in hell of affecting. I hope you can take the same advice and apply it yourself. You have customers and clients, right? Think about spending time with them and on them, instead of being a martyr for the greater good of mankind. Think about focusing on your craft, your business, your profession and the things you have direct control over. Let go, let go, let go of the negatives done by third parties because you can do far more good when you focus your time on what you produce.

As you lower your expecations and unrealistic notions that you can actually affect someone to the point that they will change, you will start to feel much better about the changes that actually take place. For example, I’m extatic about the fact that businesses can no longer obtain MAPS if they don’t pass a test confirming they are an IT shop. Perfect? No. But it didn’t cost me any time and its good news coming my way. It feels better than a victory and it took a lot less effort (well, none).

There is constantly this nagging discussion in the background to define who we are, take advantage of who we are to influence someone or something to act in some way, get a definitive stand on something.. in the end ending up a pointless debate leading to no decision, no action and no execution.

So whatever is pissing you off, whoever is crumbling your paper, whichever external factor you “hope, wish, need” to change.. just ignore it and take some of that time, capacity and passion and think of a way to pour it into something that you can actually point at and say “I know it ain’t perfect, but I think this makes things a lot better”

Or sit on your ass and wallow in misery about how life ain’t fair. Your call. I’d rather be happy.

Over at You Had Me At EHLO, Cathy has published the updated documentation links for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1. There is a lot of new stuff coming, and the new features address pretty much all the issues that clients have raised and will let us roll out Exchange 2007 where we previously faced resistance or felt we ought to hold off on an upgrade.

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 Documentation

I got to spend a lot of time at TechEd with Cathy and with a few folks from the documentation team, they have really outdone themselves when it comes to documenting this product.