If it’s easy, everyone will go for it.

Only a small fraction of people appreciate the benefits that can be realized from complexity and the true power that comes from being able to completely fine tune everything to perfection.

Most people aren’t perfectionists.

Make it simple to use and obtain.

Make it easy to understand.

Make it relate to their problems and frustrations of everything they have seen so far.

Experienced skepticism aside, people appreciate “free” beyond anything else.

. . .

These lessons, which much like any business book are just common sense, are seriously starting to make me reconsider how we manage the sales, distribution and positioning of all our products.

Question being, how quickly can you expect to see ExchangeDefender or Exchange hosting provided for free?

Earlier today I got a question that I feared answering for a long time. I have to be completely honest and admit that I didn’t think it would take this long for someone to ask it, especially considering that most of my blog posts are about the future of IT solution providers. The question is very similar to the scene where the Bob’s ask Tom to describe his job: “What would you say… you do here?”

The question posed to me was:

“With all the stuff that you guys are doing with Shockey Monkey, are you guys giving up on being a security company and moving towards becoming a CRM player?”

No, we are not.

Now, the longer part of that answer is a little more complex. You see, for the better part of the past 20+ years, Microsoft has controlled the world of small business applications. With few small distractions by IBM, Novell, Intuit and even Linux, the world of business computing has been all Microsoft and nothing but Microsoft.

Microsoft was able to extend it’s relevance by abusing it’s monopoly to blackball computer manufacturers, crushing Netscape by giving IE for free, etc. But they were not prepared for the Internet. They were not prepared for mobility.

This has opened the marketplace to the level that Microsoft is no longer a dominant platform – and very soon not even a dominant business software solution. Today Intel bought McAfee. In cash. They could have gotten them for far less in the past. Yet, they decided to go for it now. Why?

Why? Because Microsoft is no longer the defacto platform of the Internet, mobility, search and application. Which means dealing with security outbreaks will become a bigger and bigger business.

Everyone that has been reading my blog has seen what Own Web Now has been up to.

I want us to extend our footprint in security — but I now also have the opportunity to extend our applications.

So the answer to the question of if we’re changing our focus is yes. The “platform” game is pretty much set. I don’t see many people buying servers. Ever again. Yes, I’ve heard about Aurora and I’ve heard about EBS and I’ve heard about WHS. Very impressive. Except it doesn’t sell – because people buy solutions, they don’t buy hardware.

Follow what sells. Everything else is a distraction.

On Friday I actually got into an argument with one of our partners about what is causing an issue with the sudden stop of mail flow from ExchangeDefender. It immediately prompted the “My name is Vlad and I’ll bet you $100 that this will fix it” support policy for anyone that wants to argue with me and consequently, “Vlad is no longer allowed to call partners to help them with technical issues” policy.

There is this new thing in Exchange (new as in it’s been there for 4+ years) called Backpressure. It’s documented here in great detail. In a nutshell:

Exchange 2007 and beyond comes with a self-monitoring system called backpressure that will either temporarily or permanently stop the hub transport role. It monitors memory and drive space. If you start running out of either, Exchange will either temporarily or permanently stop accepting inbound mail.

Here is what it looks like from the outside:

telnet 1.2.3.4 25
Trying 1.2.3.4…
Connected to clientserver (1.2.3.4).
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 clientserver Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:20:28 -0400
ehlo ownwebnow.com
250-clientserver Hello [65.99.255.226]
250-SIZE 10485760
250-PIPELINING
250-DSN
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-STARTTLS
250-AUTH
250-8BITMIME
250-BINARYMIME
250 CHUNKING
mail from: vlad@ownwebnow.com
452 4.3.1 Insufficient system resources

Note: In order to check for inbound mail problems you should be using an SMTP diag. Your Exchange will still be functioning when the backpressure brakes kick in.

If you’re an SBS user, make sure you have at least 2x RAM (or at least 10GB free) disk space free on the volume on which Exchange resides. If that is not immediately possible, turn off backpressure and restart your Exchange Hub Transport services. If you’re not on SBS and have a real Exchange setup with proper separation between your log / db / queue storage separation, make sure you take free space available on the volumes which hold your queues and your transaction logs.

Case 1: Infrequent Email Delays

Exchange clients who typically only complain about email delays during business hours, or have sporadic email delay issues are likely dealing with a low memory issue. As the server gets more and more abuse throughout the day, it is likely to exhaust all available memory and Exchange backpressure stops processing inbound mail temporarily.

When it does so, the senders are greeted with the 4.5.2 4.3.1 Insufficient System Resources error message above. The message isn’t bounced / returned, the sending mail server will attempt the delivery again in the next few minutes (depending on configuration, server software, etc). ExchangeDefender is set to pound your server every 1 minute.

Case 2: Frequent & Persistent Email Delays

This is related to the backpressure being triggered by low disk storage availability. Start nuking stuff. At best, you’ve just downloaded too much stuff and you’re physically out of space until you delete it. All mail flow will stop until you address the issue.

The more exotic event, in which you have something that temporarily stores data on your server that also holds your queues and transaction logs, find whoever hired you and have them hold your head in the toilet while they persistently flush and slam the toilet seat on your neck until you stop convulsing. Since that’s technically murder, you might have to do this on your own, make sure to put a heavy weight on a toilet seat.

The more exotic event is particularly frustrating because the delays are compounded. We had a partner whose client used the same volume for his backup jobs as well as for Exchange. At the end of the day he’d exhaust nearly all the server space, thereby shutting down Exchange – once the backups were moved to the external device the space was available again and the inbound mail resumed. Another had clients rendering software run on the server, which had a 10GB rendering scratch allocation on C:\. I’ll give you one guess where the queues were. See the toilet seat fix recommended above.

What about compounding? Well, if you have resource issues and are a heavy user of email, inbound mail itself will cause delays. There are only so many messages that Exchange hub transport can route at once so a sudden surge of mail can trigger delays all by itself.

In a nutshell

1. Don’t keep your queues and logs on the same drive.

2. If you can’t comply with #1, make sure you have a ton of ram and hard drive space.

3. Make sure to check out  Exchange 2007 Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/01/15/432207.aspx

4. If you are an MSP, and aren’t monitoring the free hard drive space on your servers if it dips below 10GB (again, Vlad’s toilet seat fix is highly recommended) at least monitor MSExchangeTransport EventId 15002.

5. For temporary relief only, turn off backpressure.

Today I’ll be joining Karl on his Cloud Services Podcast to talk a little about what has really made us successful at Own Web Now through the years. If all goes according to plan, we’ll talk a little more about the technology than business (because the business side of this is remarkably simple) when it comes to the cloud.

Here are a few concepts that are slightly more difficult to visualize so I will outline them here:

LiveArchive – Everything fails. Every time you read something covering the cloud you will undoubtedly read about stuff going down. That’s a given, there is no amount of marketing fluff that can cover it up. However, this is a problem that we solve with technology.

Each ExchangeDefender subscriber is enrolled in LiveArchive, an Exchange 2010 powered failover system that is always on. Because we scan all inbound and all outbound mail, we create a seamless copy of the message that gets delivered to our Exchange 2010 infrastructure spread across our data centers. This way when there is an emergency maintenance or downtime or a scheduled maintenance window smack in the middle of your critical business event, you can just open up a browser and open Outlook Web App from any PC or any mobile phone (yes, Microsoft has made OWA seamless across devices in 2010, no more “light” versions)

You can read more about it at ExchangeDefender LiveArchive. This feature is a part of our ExchangeDefender product, so it doesn’t matter if you have your own Exchange server or any other mail server for that matter – it will work.

Split MX Migration – There are a ton of ways to migrate between Exchange deployments – and nearly all of them suck. The Microsoft method will upload the mail from your Exchange server but once you setup your BPOS profile, it will download all that mail right back down. Other providers have different methods, all of which fail in one way or another – some only sync mail and forget about the calendars and contacts, others do it one way, some have a time restriction. Let’s face it, Exchange is an enterprise product that was not designed to be portable.

With ExchangeDefender, we have a seamless delivery protocol called Split MX Migration. You point your domains MX record at one of our ExchangeDefender servers and we simultaneously deliver mail to your old system and to the new Exchange 2010 mailboxes in our data centers. This way you don’t “lose” mail between the time you start the migration or decide to export mail… which leads me to the next component

PST Seeding – If you have a lot of users, you have a lot of mail. Uploading tons and tons of mail over a DSL or Cable connection found at most small businesses can take hours or days. It’s much easier to just dump it to a USB drive and overnight to us. What’s even more impressive is that our import speed on the server side is 7x faster than the Outlook MAPI/RPC. Can’t beat that.

Split Domains – With ExchangeDefender, you get the enterprise product. But not everyone needs an enterprise product. Or more importantly, not everyone is willing to pay for it. Well, we have two options.

For partners who have clients that need to control their costs, we can split the domain between Exchange and POP3/IMAP/Webmail/SSL hosting. The mailboxes on Exchange cost more (10 times more) than the regular mailboxes due to Microsoft licensing fees and the hardware requirements – but if the users aren’t going to be using SharePoint, Public Folders or shared calendars, should they be paying 10x more? Probably not. So we can fix that problem with Split Domains.

Some partners are washing their hands of the email infrastructure all together. We can help there too. In August of 2010, one of our partners will be launching a new Exchange 2010 offering focused on the consumer space (think Google Apps experience in self service and self management) at a far, far, far lower rate than even the BPOS. More details on that later though

FailPOP – Finally, as everything fails, sometimes ExchangeDefender LiveArchive isn’t the best solution. We’ve been involved in a ton of disaster scenarios with our partners and sometimes connectivity is an issue.

FailPOP is a built-in ExchangeDefender process that allows us to stand up a secure POP3 infrastructure in place of your existing server if you know you’ll be down for a while. This way mobile phones and laptops can be configured with a more permanent server on the Internet that allows for free collaboration without being tied to an Internet connection.

If you have any questions, please forward them to vlad@vladville.com. If you have a technical question as an Own Web Now partner, please use https://support.ownwebnow.com. If you’re not one, go to http://www.ownwebnow.com/partners and check us out.

Finally, register for Karl’s podcast http://dld.bz/k94T and listen to it free (in about ten minutes) or buy a subscription and listen to it anywhere anytime.

I recently got a challenge to build a solution that could be price comparable to what cloud storage services charge, except with the performance being key.

The challenge: You can’t build a $3 Exchange 2010 Mailbox!

Vlad: “Sure I can! Just not one you’d ever want to put data on.”

So I set out to prove myself wrong and create a PoC (proof of concept) redundant system that could do random read/writes in the very high double digit MB/Sec, possibly even triple digits. Mission accomplished, here is how I did it:

Storage Server Contents

Below is a list of components, all available as a retail package (ie, 3 year warranty when it explodes) all accessible to everyone. Due to the pricing constraints I’ve had to make some significant sacrifices (particularly with the consumer-level drives, processor and motherboard) but mostly in the areas where I wish I had server-grade components but could not justify the cost differential based on performance.

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8GHz

G.SKILL 4 GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

Gigabyte GA-G31 MicroATX Intel Motherboard

SuperMicro CSE-825TQ 2U Rackmount Server Case

8x HITACHI Deskstar 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

areca ARC-1220 PCIe x8 SATA II RAID

So to sum it up: 8x 2 TB hard drives ($149), Intel C2D Processor ($124), 4 GB DDR2 Memory ($93), Intel G31 Motherboard ($47), 2U Server Chasis with Rails ($339) and a RAID 6 SATA Controller ($454) all for the grand total of $2,249 or approximately $0.16 cents / gigabyte.

In RAID5 configuration this system delivers 14 TB of space at a bottom line cost of $0.16/GB. The overall system draws almost 2 AMPs and takes up 2U with included rack rails. It took roughly 30 minutes to put together the whole thing, most of the time having gone to taking 3.5” plastic fillers from hotswap trays.

Opinions

Before I show you the actual performance thats relevant to Exchange 2010 servers, do you have any recommendations,  suggestions or questions? Anything I could have further skimped on?

I considered Western Digital Green series, since they were significantly cheaper, but they run at 5400 RPMs and I had serious concerns about their ability to withstand a beatdown of an Exchange mailbox role. I didn’t consider any other RAID controllers and software RAID is a bit out of the question considering that every time we tried software RAID in a high performance server the motherboard melted down – also without battery in high performance situations things tend to smoke. What I wish I could find is a more efficient power supply that didn’t cost thousands of dollars.

Update: Specifically, what I’m after is if anyone out there knows how to get similar performance at a similar price/GB. Are there better controller, drives and motherboard choices?

I get this question all the time so here it is, the mythical SMTP headers.

1. Right click anywhere in the ribbon and select Customize Quick Access Toolbar. The Quick Access Toolbar are the commands immediately next to the Outlook icon in your upper left hand corner, right above the File Ribbon.

2. Select Quick Access Toolbar. Under Choose commands from select Commands Not in the Ribbon. Locate Message Options and click Add.

3. You will see the new icon in your QAT, click it for SMTP headers:

Enjoy.

What a fantastic few days it has been playing a host to the cloud of MSP providers the ConnectWise and HTG conferences have brought to Orlando. I have three quick thoughts I have to share with you all, but given the extent of NDAs and confidentiality agreements I have to be a bit vague:

1. Thank you all for coming to Orlando. Having spent most of the time in hotels and on the road (vs. my new house) I am truly glad that I can drive ten minutes back to Windermere and just sink into my own bed.

2. It’s tough out there for a pimp. Most of the owners and managers I’ve been talking to are not doing well. As a matter of fact, a few percentage points of growth seem to be good news. Sales of hardware are down. Adoption of managed services is down. Overall climate seems to be decidedly down. People are making money but they want more. That’s capitalism.

3. Our new pitch of “cloud direct” is going well. The “ExchangeDefender 75 Cent Cut Throat Special” has been amazingly received by everyone I’ve talked to and the market share we will gain on the back of this is amazing. We are really going all out here because even a blind man sees the end of this tunnel: everything shall soon be free. That’s not good news for people that had hoped to make money selling software but the true definition of a business success is in the amount of the profits it generates, not how it goes about doing so (within law and reason of course).

The conversations I’ve had today, even with the rabid fans of other products, makes it clear that business people make business decisions. They don’t buy it on personal intangibles over how much they like the guy, we’re not Hannah Montana fans running around with glitter in our hair – bottom line is.. well.. what contributes to that bottom line. Profits.

And as I said in the previous post – game on folks. This isn’t the IT sector of the 90’s or 2000’s, fighting for every dollar and every penny is going to get harder. It’s your call whether you’re going to do it, or watch from the sidelines as others take it all over. Not sure what you’re going to be doing but I’m not stopping. Google isn’t stopping. Microsoft isn’t stopping. Yahoo isn’t stopping. Opportunity is yours for the taking.

One thing I heard the most this week: “Well, I’d love to work with you on that” when talking about the direct model. Looks like all the partner feedback built something good, eh? We’ll be at CW and HTG all week, track me or Shannon down and find out what it means for you.

Recently Sprint started offering Palm Pre device, touting a revolutionary new WebOS and integration with social networking. Initially, this device was described by it’s funding partners as an iPhone Killer and has certainly attracted it’s fair amount of attention for it’s very cool feature set. But how about using it in business, with Exchange?

The Setup

Click here for Sprint Interactive Setup Guides. Sprint also offers a very handy interactive setup for Exchange, just click on each step and it will highlight the part to click on. (Exchange Setup). For ExchangeDefender purposes:

1. Tap the Email icon on the Quick Launch.

2. Note: If you have already set up an email account and want to add another one, tap the Email applications menu > Preferences & Accounts > Scroll Down > Add an Account, before following these instructions.

Enter in the your Microsoft Exchange email. For this example, press J to prompt one to fill in.

3. Tap the Password field and type in the corresponding password. Here, press 0 to prompt one to fill in.

4. Tap Sign In.

5. Tap the MAIL TYPE field then tap Exchange (EAS).

6. Verify the information in the other fields and change the info as needed based on the information you obtained from your email provider or system administrator. Server names are either donald or daisy or scrooge or huey or duey or … In support.ownwebnow.com click on Service Manager > Exchange Hosting and click on the Info tag for any of the accounts you require information for. You will need the full server name as well as the domain name (which is the OWN NT domain name, not your fully qualified domain name like yourcompany.com)

7. Once the information is complete, tap Sign In.

8. Once setup is complete, you can exit the application by first pressing the Center button.

9. Click the animated arrow to simulate throwing the card off the top of the screen, to close the application.

The Security Gotcha

There are several factors you need to consider when deploying Palm Pre in business with Exchange. Namely, the Exchange Remote Device Wipe feature is not present at the moment so you will not be able to wipe the device from your Exchange Outlook Web Access. There is an alternative however, Palm Pre supports SMS wipe:

“Enhance security by remotely erasing data from your device if it gets lost or stolen without the need for IT support regardless of what email system you are using.”

Disclaimer: “Remote erase deletes all data from your phone including files stored using USB drive mode. Remote erase command sent via SMS and must be received by activated phone within 24 hours. Wireless coverage area only. Requires data services at additional cost.”

The SMS message must be received by the device within 24 hours in order to wipe the device. If someone steals your device, powers it down for at least 24 hours, you will not be able to remotely wipe it.

This restriction may cause you to consider storing sensitive data on your device and is a good cause for establishing other security policies like a complex device password, keeping a limited amount of data on the phone, etc.

Other Exchange Security Considerations and Exchange requirements

Palm Pre does not support ActiveSync Security policies, so if you have a firmly defined security policy in Exchange before allowing ActiveSync (such as PIN requirements) you will have to set those manually on the device before attempting the first sync. From Palm:

“Palm understands that some business customers need support for specific Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) policies. We are working to develop support for EAS PIN and password enforcement, as well as EAS remote wipe, for webOS and hope to announce these new features within the next 60 days. We will deliver the features through our over-the-air update system, which Palm has already started using to bring new updates to Pre users as they become available. Until then, Palm Pre customers can enable a PIN or password directly on a device, and can also remotely wipe a device via a Palm profile. Palm profiles can be managed by Pre users at palmws.com.”

As of firmware 1.0.3, Palm Pre can connect to an Exchange server without using SSL. This is an optional upgrade so if your server does not have SSL support installed you will have to either install a certificate or upgrade to this firmware:

Note: None of the ExchangeDefender servers allow plain text / non-SSL connections. All connections require encryption.

Special gotcha for SBS 2003 users and the SSL Certificate issue: If you use the self-signed certificate automatically generated by CEICW, Palm Pre will attempt to connect to the CN for the .internal host, not the public domain name.

Furthermore, advanced EAS functionality started with Exchange 2003 SP2 so to get the most out of your device you will need to upgrade. The build number for Exchange 2003 SP2 is 7638.2

Conclusion

While Palm Pre supports Exchange to an extent, it is primarily designed as a consumer device and currently does not support the basic security policies required for safe business use. While HTML email, push mail and Exchange sync will work, make sure you consider the security tradeoffs.

Needless to say, the consumer appeal of webOS and Palm Pre will make Palm Pre show up in corporate world just as the iPhone did. Start preparing your network and educating your users now.

At one point last year the DSBL blacklist, quite popular in it’s hayday, lost it’s entire database in a RAID system crash. The name servers kept on answering requests in the meantime. Yesterday, this activity stopped.

This means that if you still use the DSBL, you might be delaying or bouncing your inbound mail. Check your servers and make sure the DSBL is not listed. In short, everything with *.dsbl.org must go.

Note: We have not / do not use DSBL in ExchangeDefender so if you are with us, you were not affected.

Sorry for the last minute notice, I tried to surprise my wife by coming back home a week early and she reads the blog.

I’m going to miss all’y'all a ton. I had every plan to be there and even Sir Richard Bronson didn’t give me my money back (although Alaskan gave me like 90% of the ticket back).

I’ve been on the road pimping and basically traveling like a forty year old junkie. I took to the road with antibiotics and cough syrup laced with narcotics. I like to call that the good old times. Then I got the stomach bug. Bright side: lost 5lb. Downside: when everything you eat makes you instantly religious and you can’t even stand up because you don’t know in which direction you’re about to fall… not really good times. And I don’t trust you fers not to wake up in a ditch

So I’m missing out on the Microsoft fun and really one of a kind of an event in the MVP Summit. Have a great time folks!