SBS Show #15 – Managed Services with Mobitech

Posted: 9:39 am
March 22, 2006
SBS Show
16 Comments

SBS Show #15 on Managed Services is the most anticipated SBS Show episode ever – we taped four shows after we decided to go back and redo #15 to give this important topic the fair attention it deserves. Joining us are Amy, Chad and Steve and they talk about all aspects of managed services that have made Mobitech successful. You've seen these folks share details of their business and process in the newsgroups before but you've never seen it to this extent. 2+ hours of recording, you will want to set some time aside, break out a pen and a paper and listen attentively. There are no show notes for this one, we simply asked everything we could think of and the scope and length of answers will surprise you. If you are not thrilled with this show I will give you your money back! When you are done listening to this show sign up for the MobilizeSMB tour which is coming to a city near you. The event is completely free and will give you a chance to discuss managed services and strategies with the Mobitech team in person. Seating is limited so register today. For more on managed services software and concepts please Scharag this wiki. Download the SBS Show #15 http://www.vladville.com/sbsshow/sbsshow-episode15.mp3

Developer worlds collide: Atlas & CentOS

Posted: 10:14 pm
March 21, 2006
Microsoft, Programming, System Admin
2 Comments

While the two are not similar in any perceptive way I feel these announcements mark a day on which two closet technologies really matured. First Microsoft releases Atlas, an IDE for AJAX web based applications and CentOS releases a stable Enterprise Linux distribution backed by the community. First on CentOS While not the first or the new Enterprise Linux project by any means, CentOS made a major step today with finalized 4.3 release. You see, for years there was no such thing as a stable Linux distribution. It was always in flux living on the whim of individual package maintainers. Many opted to put together their own by compiling the OS and tools from the ground up with Gentoo or trusting Debian's stable yet technologically obsolete distribution. Then RedHat sunk in a lot of money into a commercial distribution of Linux that is backed by a vendor with standards and support for at least five years. Then Whitebox Enterprise Linux and CentOS started a community initiative of recompiling Redhat Enterprise Linux and offering it for free. Today marks a day on which the CentOS distribution is not just stable and reliable as it has been for quite some time, but also widely supported by plenty of mirrors and multiple architectures. Community is the key here, it eliminates any political or legal restrictions on packages that are available. So if you are looking for a free and stable development platform… you don't have to look any further. Microsoft releases AJAX This was covered with a lot of excitement during PDC last year and has now launched over at Mix 06 where Microsoft is pledging its committment to web services. Good for them, really. Now look up. Story on Linux. Story on Windows. If a something like this was posted two years ago the person writing it would get skewered and burned by both camps. Truth of the matter is both audiences have matured by leaps and bounds. Microsoft no longer looks at Linux and other technologies as trash and is very accepting of the platforms their customers choose to develop applications on. If you've seen R2 you will have to agree that the Interop possibilities are just amazing. Likewise, I know a lot of people that will jump for joy for a streamlined interface for Ajax development. Until now you were almost forced into notepad, textpad and nano of the world to make javascript mods and test them in a browser. A mature tool to streamline development and testing will not just lead to more code, it will lead to better code because it is now easier to keep track of whats going on. This is why Microsoft is so respected by developers (a heck of a lot more than it is respected by us sysadmins) — they really make the job a lot easier with their tools and are very accepting of new ways of doing things. It's a good day, a very peaceful united day in the cyberspace. 🙂

The more things Vista, the more they Longhorn the same

Posted: 7:27 pm
March 21, 2006
IT Culture, Microsoft, OS
6 Comments

So the name changed but not the products cronic delays: Vista Launch Delayed I'm happy to see this and I'm sure everyone who has alpha/beta tested Vista so far will agree it needed a lot more time to be the next Microsoft platform. Not sure about it n eeding only "a few more weeks" though, they must have 5x as many Indians/Chinese working on it as I imagine. The product looks amazing but the performance piece is simply not there and there are simply too many issues with it that I have personally been bugging and I have not even made it to the server-side yet. Wonder what this does for the server lineup? Not sure yet but almost certainly a delay there as well. The server piece for its part looks a whole lot more stable than the Workstation component and it pretty much must. So strap on and wait about another year for the official Vista launch. Update: Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year… Lots of emails asking me about the cause for the delays. Honestly, I do not know the reason. I can speculate however from being on the beta team. The amount of feedback and scenario voting on the February CTP is simply insane. I think Microsoft is stepping back.. looking at the scenario and bug report and opting to really deliver a rock solid release from the ground up. Thats my guess, others would be integration of the new file system perhaps? 🙂 Ah, wishful thinking 😉

Advanced Mobility and Stalking with WM5

Posted: 8:19 am
March 21, 2006
Mobility
4 Comments

So in an attempt on shaking the stupid off I figured I should post a few resources on mobility that I use as a resource every day. For example, if you're creating a reliable and redundant messaging platform with Exchange 2003 for a larger organization there are good odds you will not find a wizard. The SBS Mobility will not help there. First, there is an awesome document on deploying mobile messaging over at Jason Langridge's blog. Start there. It is the only document out there that goes in great detail on MSFP. That will get your Exchange talking to your phone in more ways than one. Second, this mobility stuff is new (to Microsoft at least) so there is a lot of undocumented behavior in devices and ActiveSync that only developers can see. Microsoft is trying. In addition to the central mobility blog from the Windows Mobile Team, there is also a documentation leaf blog. When you are ready to really dig into Windows Mobile and all it involves you pretty much have to deal with developers. Start with Marcus Perryman, bookmark the MSDN Mobility Library, sign up and live on xda-developers forums and do the improbable task of not crippling your system with the WM5 emulator and dev kit. If there is one thing, one thing, you should del.icio.us out of this whole post its the Channel9 Mobility Wiki. But I don't like to read… Now I know there are a lot of you out there that just cannot read a whitepaper. Something about lots of words and scribbles on white paper without pictures is just not appealing. No need to despair, you can always resort to stalking. You sort of have two options here. You can stalk Peter Galagher who is the mobility expert on the SBS PSS team but he is a pretty tall guy and might kick your ass. The more attractive (sorry Peter) alternative is in Vanitha Prabhakaran who is on the Exchange PSS team. If you're in Europe there are always mamaich and Tuatra from xda-developers.com. So there you go, for developers and stalkers, those are some resources to mobility. Hope it helps.

More Java Problems for APC

Posted: 8:51 am
March 20, 2006
Security
2 Comments

It seems like problems with APC are going to come back to the masses yet again. Remember last year? Well, it looks like strange things are afoot at the Java ranch again. Patch away. This kind of goes a long way toward showing you that appliances are not bullet proof. Sure they may not suffer from the same problems Microsoft operating systems do but they are still written by underpaid programmers and they still need to be managed. Patch away 🙂 APC Security Advisory for PowerChute Business Edition 7.x & PowerChute Network Shutdown 2.2.x Java Runtime Environment Unsigned Applet Privilege EscalationA problem exists with multiple versions of Sun's Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that may allow an unsigned applet to escalate its privileges. PowerChute Business Edition and PowerChute Network Shutdown may install a vulnerable JRE. For PowerChute Business Edition 7.x Users: Download and apply the JRE update patch to all machines running the PCBEagent or server. Official Announcement

MobilizeSMB Hits the Road

Posted: 1:47 am
March 20, 2006
Events
7 Comments

Amy Luby's roadshow, MobilizeSMB, is hitting the road. Best site, ever mostly because Amy is a client and its hosted here at own 🙂 Amy, Chad and Steve were on the SBS Show #15 (will air tomorrow) and they blew the roof off the thing. Solid two hours of recording the material. Amy is very popular for being very straight forward about what she does and if you like the SBS Show you will like this event. I give you my word. Mobilize SMB©: Taking the SMB Community to the Next Level Coming to a city near you! This half day workshop will provide the information and support you need as an SMB IT solution provider to help you build a solid SMB Managed Services Business Model. What are the pitfalls to avoid? How do I pay my technicians under this model? How do I know how many technicians I need in this new model? What are the stages in moving into a Managed Service Model? How will this affect my vendor relationships? How do I measure, and why does it matter what my technician utilization rates are? How do I sell managed services? How do I construct my service level agreements? Who wants these services? What or who is my competition and how are they doing managed services? Are there any vendors out there that understand my business? What tools are available? What skills do I need? June 5 Chicago, IL To register click here June 7 Detroit, MI To register click here June 9 Cincinnati, OH To register click here June 12 Louisville, KY To register click here June 14 Atlanta, GA To register click here June 20 Tampa, FL To register click here I will of course be at the one in Tampa. Look forward to seeing you out at this event!

SMB BS Epiphany

Posted: 3:21 pm
March 19, 2006
IT Culture, SMB
36 Comments

Yup, straight out of the IBM commercial. I was speaking with Bob Belon and Beatrice Mulzer around 1 AM last night (all three of us were working at the time on a Saturday night) and my Jimminy Cricket came on to give me a long deserved three-way bitchslap about trying to preach to ignorant people why they should be more professional as engineers and businessmen. Point taken, I'm done. As much as I believe that deep down inside everyone strives to be better and have a long-term philosophy for both their business and their customers that is simply not the case. I've been seriously depressed by the outright ignorance of many SMB IT consultants but until yesterday I just figured they were just never pointed in the right direction. Here are the idiotic quotes that piss me off to no end:

"I don't have time to read books, I'm too busy with real work!" "I'm on my way to the client, can you brief me on the basics?" "I've been in this business for a long time, nobody ever threatens me." "My customers will not buy that, they value me too much." "My customers are my friends, they even have a table set for me." "I am a high level strategic advisor, not a support monkey." "Dell/Microsoft/Google are not a threat, their support blows." "I don't want to call PSS, I'm probably just missing something easy so I'll spend next 12 hours to fix it myself." "I never want to be more than a single proprietor" "My customers do not see me as a vendor, I'm a trusted advisor"

Mind you these are the same folks that light a torch on fire the moment their freebies get even remotely stepped on by Microsoft. They are the first ones to storm the gates, migrate to Linux, recommend OpenOffice.org and vote with their feet. Meanwhile I'm the guy training these folks, I'm sponsoring community projects out of my own pocket and I'm pissing off my friends at Microsoft by representing the problems of this bunch? Chris is right, I am insane. No more. From this day forward I am done with the lowest common denominator of IT unemployment. I have my own monkeys to wrangle and train and I'd rather speak to real IT professionals and serious business owners than the supposed IT strategists that can't see the future past the stuff that is slamming them in the face.

More Exchange solutions on Vladville Wiki

Posted: 10:37 am
March 18, 2006
Exchange, Vladville
3 Comments

I've added a few more articles for commonly answered questions in the Microsoft Exchange 2003 newsgroup. They are linked in. How do I change how my name appears on messages I send out through Exchange? How do I deliver Exchange email to an external mail account? How can I customize the size of my OWA Scratch pad? SMTP Protocol / IMF Event Error 7514 with error code 0x800004002 Which features do I get with Windows Mobile 5 MSFP? How do I configure Outlook 2003 & Exchange 2003 for password protected SMTP relay? As a side note, William Lefkovics has a link to a few E12 webcasts that have aired so far. They are extensive (1:30 each) so if you're in the mood check them out.

E12 Virgin Install, Plunge method

Posted: 7:47 pm
March 17, 2006
E12
7 Comments

WARNING: This is my initial plunge into E12 Beta 1. This is not a final product, this is not a review of E12 and all of this is a lie. While pretty much everyone is out getting drunk, yours truly, the Exchange MVP remained home on a Friday afternoon working on the internal E12 deployment. Oooooh my god is this thing f'n awesome. For the first deployment I wanted to be as close to what an average "Exchange" system administrator does so I plowed through the install program without reading any documentation, release notes or prompts it threw back at me. I just kept on hitting next and OK to install. While this is not a very true representation of an average environment Exchange admins have (in that my Active Directory was properly configured and stable) I think I have gone far enough to the point of even getting into OWA. I have to say (sip of Koolade) that the Exchange 12 team did an incredible job. I say this with absolutely no sarcasm implied or intended: Illiterate and semi-literate admins will only be able to hurt themselves. By default Beta1 does not create any connectors or bindings whatsoever. In order to recieve email you have to drop to the new Exchange Management Shell (cute name for Monad/MSH) and create it by yourself. Documentation is awesome. Not only does it link back and forth in a relevant way but it also includes code examples, snippets, ability to search and send feedback. As for the features… wow. I am not allowed to comment on specific stuff due to the beta and the NDA but suffice to say it looks unreal. The marketing is interesting too, it ties into the new scheme you may see on live.com or Windows Mobile or at least that is my impression.

Bad Employee Treatment at Microsoft

Posted: 8:33 pm
March 16, 2006
IT Business, Microsoft
2 Comments

This one is for all my friends at Microsoft that haven't killed me (yet): The bitchslap of the week award goes to Bill Gates commenting on the $100 computer:

""If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type" Gates said."

Cranking the computer while you type? Talk about dissing your employee of the month!