Vlad “on the road again” and other rants

Posted: 1:31 am
December 14, 2005
Events, Misc, Web 2.0
7 Comments

Mega-rant ahead, thread lightly 🙂 Personal Schedule I'm boarding a plane to Washington DC in a few hours so I'm looking forward to meeting some SBSers up there. Sincerest apologies to my Florida SBS kinfolk, they all scheduled their meetings today and tomorrow so making it to any/all of them was impossible. Pimpin' aint EZ I was very honored to be invited as a guest on Eric Ligman's Small Business Specialist Talk Session webcast. Amy Luby and I had a great time and the recorded webcast is available here so check it out. This was a business-style webcast giving partners an idea the kind of success they can realize from the Small Business Specialist designation. Sorry about the voice quality. Thanks for the lovely sentiments, but no, the mic was not in my mouth. And its not LiveMeeting's fault, when you have all sorts of inputs, different headsets, etc.. it is impossible to level things out. We try to at the SBS Show but it takes so much time and effort that I frankly hope Eric Ligman can spend elsewhere. Besides, this is why we have added Susanne Dansey to our lineup, so we can have some sophistication to our show. We are in final stages of integrating some classical music behind her voice in an effort to sound more like NPR 🙂 Regarding the other comments – yes, I am shameless. I plugged no less than 10 sites during Eric's webcast not only because I'm the SBS pimp but because I believe you NEED to be informed and take advantage of every opportunity. You should know what Microsoft is offering in the way of incentives, what the customer is thinking from Susan Bradley, what the partner in USA is doing, what a partner in UK is doing, who can train you to do it, who can help you with day-to-day, etc. It is NOT easy, this is a profession people. But as to my pimp skills:

Subject: Holler at a player Heard the webcast. Two notes: 1) Step back from the mic. Just because you're in Orlando and he is in Redmond doesn't require you to yell loud enough so he can hear you over the air. Thats why you have a phone! 2) With skills like that you should blow off Google's offer. Move to Las Vegas instead and work the strip for the strippers. Those Mexicans don't have anything on you.

I have wonderful friends, don't I? SBS Show & Depth This kind of started on the feedback forums of the SBS Show #8 announcement regarding how deep we went into the patch management stuff. Philip is a good friend and I don't take his comments as criticism but I'm sure many others are wondering the very same thing so I'll come out and say it yet again. We're an SBS Show. It is about entertainment and about information for those of you that are not 100% technical. If you're in SBS and you are 100% technical you are not going to be very successful because SBS by its nature is more about business than it is about technology. With the exception of perhaps BizTalk, there is no other Microsoft product where you need to be more in tune with the customers business needs than anything else to create an effective deployment that works for your customer. If you're just a wizard jockey thats not good either but you have to have a mix of two. I've spent years supporting Microsoft platforms and meeting partners through many Microsoft roadshows and I can feel the 2×4 coming right behind me – We are NOWHERE NEAR the technical competency we ought to be in the SBS land. How many of you backup? How many of you have a patch strategy? How many of you can honestly sit down and say that you've done everything that you possibly can to secure and assure smooth business operation of SBS? If you're saying "thats me" then tell me how many of your partners and coleagues are not. This is what I looked at for years. Chris and I talked about this at great length and our conversations in private are nothing like those you hear on the SBS Show. We are both MCSE's and CCNA's and we can make you tune out of the SBS Show in a split second if we actually talk about what we do. What you can't hear during the SBS Show is the first 30 minutes of the recording we did with Susan where we kept on back-tracking trying to get her to dumb it down (a lot) because that is not the objective of the SBS Show. So what is? The purpose of the SBS Show is to educate and inform the largest portion of SBS admin users, IT professionals and owners. Most of us are not Small Business Specialists. Most of us don't have IMF or Exchange configured correctly. Most of us have heard of WSUS but do not have it implemented. Most of us consider off-site backups, disaster recovery and business continuity very important things…. but most of us do not practice it. The goal of the SBS Show therefore is to give you an hour or so and get you going immediately. Whatever excuse you have for not doing what we're talking about should be something you can do right after you listen to our show. You're busy, I get it, but you're not going to get less busy with more and more software and customers to support. If you're really technical there is the Inside SBS show by Mark Stanfill. Their show is awesome, it is like a 200-300 level Technet webcast except geared at SBS. Done not by marketing and Death-by-Powerpoint crew but by the people that live and support SBS. One day when we've covered all the essentials we will get more technical, but I know my SBSers. What is the point of explaining group policy, propagation and insides of WSUS if you haven't even installed it? If you're that advanced you're in great hands with Mark, trust me. But I know that most of you are not and Chris, Susanne and I will keep the light on for you. Thats my promise. There are several things I am really good at. Really really good at. At everything else I'm a hack at best. Every now and then I need a solid kick in the ass and I want someone to explain the very basics and once I understand the theory and execution I can figure out the syntax and all the details. Thats what SBS Show is – a giant kick in your ass to get started managing SBS and Small Business IT the right way. I will leave the rest of the commentary to Mr. Chris Rue and my right and honorable friend Susanne Dansey. Orlando IT Pro Still coming off the high from last weeks SQL 2005 Launch. Wow, what an event. Culminis really hooked us up big time, I am writing a little report explain just how/what we did. But going forward, we do have a meeting next week, Thursday, Dec 22, 2005. We will have a massive braindump event going over all the things you can use to manage the Windows Server network better. We'll review the new Windows Server R2, Exchange SP2, MOM, WSUS, baselining, BCM on the server, etc. Basically we'll take turns talking about what we use and how we use it so leave the laptop at home for this one and be ready to share.

Patch Tuesday and other critical matters

Posted: 1:12 am
December 14, 2005
Security
1 Comment

Yup, its the second Tuesday of the month or affectionately called "Microsoft Patchday" and I've been a little swamped so if this is "news" to you it might already be a little too late. Hope you're not one of my fans that browse this site from a server using IE – critical security patch is available but you've got bigger problems than that. Hit up the patches, one way or the other this stuff has to be updated – WU, MU or WSUS, pick your poison and plow through it. And if you want to be better at it please take an hour or so and listen to Susan Bradley patching audio tape. It is the best way to get started doing this. MS05-054: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (905915) Rated: CRITICAL http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS05-054.mspx MS05-055: Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (908523) Rated: IMPORTANT http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS05-055.mspx Other non security patches released today: Update for Windows XP (KB910437) Install this update to prevent or resolve an issue in which Windows Update and Automatic Updates can no longer download updates after an Access Violation error occurs when using the Automatic Updates service. Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB910437) Install this update to prevent or resolve an issue in which Windows Update and Automatic Updates can no longer download updates after an Access Violation error occurs when using the Automatic Updates service. Update for Windows XP (KB908521) Install this update to resolve various issues that can occur when you use remote procedure call (RPC) for client/server communication in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows XP. Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB908521) Install this update to resolve various issues that can occur when you use remote procedure call (RPC) for client/server communication in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows XP. Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB896427) Install this update to resolve an issue in which you cannot view the contents of a subfolder on a network share. This issue becomes apparent after you install Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-011: Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB885250). Update for Windows XP (KB835409) Install this update on Windows XP Service Pack 1 systems to resolve an issue where System Restore may not work correctly or certain services may not function properly after using System Restore on SP1. Updated Malicious Software Removal Tool http://support.microsoft.com/?id=890830

SBS Show #8: Patch Management with Susan Bradley

Posted: 11:52 pm
December 12, 2005
SBS Show
10 Comments

After two weeks in production we're proud to present SBS Show #8 with Susan Bradley, MVP. We tried very, very, very hard to dumb her down and present patching and patch management to the magic "150" level where you're not being ridiculed but also not so over your head that you can't implement her advice. This is the show you pass on to your clients, to your boss, to every single person running Windows. I know there are more people out there like my dad, that see that yellow box and ask me 6 months later whether they should install it. This is the show for them. … and a show for you, the IT consultant. If you've ever seen Susan's blog (http://www.msmvps.com/bradley/) she is big on running things correctly and we've pressed her to explain everything – from patching to security to how she puts together Sam the Server posts. Professional, business and personal – this show has it all. In about a week when we clear out the rss/podcast traffic I will post the show in 128bit quality instead of the "royal flush gang" quality of 40bit. So what are you waiting for? Download SBS Show #8 (Runtime: 1:23:23) http://www.vladville.com/sbsshow/sbsshow-episode8.mp3 Subscribe to SBS Show http://www.vladville.com/sbsshow/podcast.xml Subscribe to SBS Weekly http://www.vladville.com/sbsshow/sbsweekly.xml Susan's links to more info on Patch Management: WSUS, MU and WU oh my (ppt) Microsoft Security Response Center Blog Technet Security Bulletin Center Windows Server Update Services How to do WSUS on SBS Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) .. and if thats not enough, Susan Bradley also writes patch management articles for Windows Secrets.

Learn to opeR2ate a computer!

Posted: 10:58 am
December 12, 2005
System Admin
4 Comments

To all my international friends: I'm sorry if you didn't get the title. In USA there is this annoying and patronizing commercial for Video Professor, which is basically a collection of video's and how-to's to get you started operating your computer and are a big joke among IT professionals (it is a gift you give to an admin that just has no clue whatsoever) But the new guides from Microsoft are no joke, even though they employ the same process. You can download these directly from Microsoft and enjoy a few minutes presenting each topic in a "blogcast" format. Basically its a podcast with embedded video and it gives you a demonstration of a few tasks for each technology. The amount of content is huge and if you've never seen these.. they are similar to recorded webcasts except there is no Q&A, it is just a very hands-off, to the point presentation. Check a few out on your own. Here are a few just to give you a taste: # ADD-50 Demo 2: Windows Server 2003 R2 Active Directory Federation Services Claims-Aware Identity Federation # ADD-51 Demo 2: Storage Manager for SANs # ADD-53: Identity Management in Windows Server 2003 R2 Active Directory Federation Services # MGT-22: MOM 2005 – Microsoft Management Packs # EXC-06: Exchange Performance Tuning Download blogcasts.

TS2 content announced for next few months

Posted: 7:09 pm
December 11, 2005
Events
5 Comments

Indy has published the content that will be discussed over the next few months during the TS2 events. If you've never been to one, these are roadshows put together by Microsoft to help you understand Microsoft sales strategies for small business IT consultants. So if you fall in that group, or if you have anything to do with selling Microsoft (whether to the customer or your boss) – you should sign up for one – it free. Here is where you can find more info on TS2. So what are they talking about from January to March?: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, Shared PC Toolkit, and Enhanced Windows Mobilility with Exchange SP2. This will of course be in addition to all the other small business IT shop concenrs: Action Pack, Small Business Specialist, etc. … and on a personal note to those that will ask: "Vlad, should I go?" The answer to that question is almost universally yes if you are in the small business IT segment. I have not made my sentiments towards CRM a big secret, its bloated and overpriced waste of everyones time but Microsoft is betting on it big time. So with the exception of that (which is pretty much an opportunity to cash in your popcorn/coke cupon) it should be a great use of your time. Sign up as soon as it becomes available near you.

Yahoooo, can you hear me now?

Posted: 10:18 am
December 10, 2005
Web 2.0
4 Comments

Big news of the week is that Yahoo is now taking calls, well, its instant messenger to be more precise. For $10 or $25 credit paid up front (calling-card style) your Yahoo! Messenger can now place outbound calls and receive inbound calls from regular POTS (plain old telephone service) lines. This would be bad news for Google chat, but since nobody actually uses that service it only impacts Skype. Skype is only coming out with video chat now, years behind Yahoo. It is also doing that in beta and we all know what that means. Skype on the other hand has had the largest VoIP database for years but its dial-in services have been in beta (broken, bad echo, reverb, static, "Luke, I am your father") voice quality for so long I think I am perhaps the only one still using it. This ought to be an easy sell for Yahoo and little incentive for current Skype users to go to Skype 2.0 once it is actually released. Being first-to-market is the most important, perhaps only second to quality, in the new .com era and Microsoft and Google are such far distant 3rd and 81st place that even Bill Gates wouldn't honor them with the "me too" tag.

del.icio.us, y.ah.oo and why I love it

Posted: 9:27 am
December 10, 2005
Web 2.0
6 Comments

I recently wrote about my recent discovery of a two year old site, del.icio.us which provides a mix of distributed bookmarking and social networking. At first I was quite fascinated with finding what others considered important enough to bookmark but I have since found so many uses for it, both practical and philosophical. Here are a few things about me that I know are common for most of us. We don't spend our entire day in front of a single computer. We don't always belong to a Windows domain with document redirection. We all think that bookmarking as-is in both IE and Firefox is a terrible exercise in how to poorly organize information. We all read web content in the AP newswire style – you've got the first paragraph to tell me why I should read the rest – if you lose me there I scroll down the page and scan for what I came for and if I have to roll my mice twice its quicker to just click back and try another site. No, I am not lazy, I just have things to do and your poorly written site is wasting my time. Enter del.icio.us – why do we bookmark at all? Because what we are looking at is a good source of information we either will need to refer to in the future or do not have the time to fully consider at the moment. So you hit CTRL+D and one of two things happen: If you're a good organizer you spend more than a few seconds trying to find the category to put it in…. or you're like 99.99999% of people – hit enter and let it fall where it may. While this is great for efficiency purposes, it makes it nearly impossible to locate later. Furthermore, which computer did you bookmark it on? Home? Work? Pocket PC? Email? Oh, now I remember I searched Google for… the monuments of inefficiency. So here is my story. I'm setting up a new laptop (media center) and I needed to get some stuff. Now, I could have gone to my desktop to dig up the Firefox bookmarks.html file, but instead I just logged in to my account at del.icio.us and had all my bookmarks there live. While I was installing VNC I found another similar project – bookmarked it! The question came up – url, descriptions, notes, tags. Url and description are prefilled by the url and title, but in a few seconds I just typed vnc so when I need to track this down I can just login to my del.icio.us account and search for vnc. No folders to create, nothing to scroll through to see if I already had the vnc folder.. Just set it and forget it. And when my buddies ask me for links to VNC stuff I can just point them to my del.icio.us account and let them search there for vnc. There you go for social and distributed! And its no surprise that Yahoo purchased del.icio.us to be added to the other social projects in Flickr and Upcoming.org – this gives Yahoo a big edge on Google and even bigger one on Microsoft as the Internet becomes a more social, connected place. For the longest time companies like Yahoo and Excite (are they even around anymore) have tried to force people into communities with fairly little success. But by giving the world the ability to search, connect and categorize information on their own terms – without joining, signing up or belonging.. the information is becoming a lot more connected and distributed. P.S. As a side note to Bob and Stefan at Microsoft's social networking crew – take a note from these widely popular social sites Yahoo has acquired… notice a little pattern on ease of use and accessibility?… no downloads, no plugins, no sidebars, nothing to install to search and use. Its one thing if you're counting on the Microsoft desktop monopoly to distribute the OPML-o-meter but I doubt you'll get a wide adoption the good idea you have if you don't make it burdenless and accessible. Don't make this another "good idea, poor implementation" dodo bird that goes the way of Microsoft Bob.

December Orlando IT Pro news

Posted: 11:36 pm
December 9, 2005
Events, IT Culture
Comments Off on December Orlando IT Pro news

Wow we had a great event at the Microsoft SQL/Visual Studio/Biztalk launch yesterday. The table for the meeting was graciously given to us by Culminis and I sincerely hope Microsoft watched. We were easilly the most popular table at the event and have collected hundreds of business cards, distributed over 1,500 pieces of candy, 1,500 flyers for Orlando IT Pro and connected IT professionals with groups from Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Pensacola, Tampa as well as our home here in Orlando. We distributed 10 copies of 180-day SBS trial and the event was overall a huge success in my humble opinion. What I hope the Microsoft representatives noticed was the power of having IT Pros connecting with other IT Pro's. Yes, ask the experts is a very nice one-off idea which is about as useful as showing Microsoft Dynamics to a bunch of programmers and system administrators (read: catastropic lack of judgement, demonstration of business-centric content to engineers and architects) – it might get some interest and start the ball rolling but user groups not only contribute to the education, nurturing and growth of professionals that deploy and design the software that interfaces with Microsoft technologies – they become an extension of Microsoft's support staff. Orlando IT Pro has hosted 6 Microsoft speakers over its one year existance. Total cost to Microsoft for venue, food, marketing and event coordination – $0. Now, do entertain me, how much does a single Microsoft Dynamics event cost Microsoft? 🙂

SBS Weekly – SBS Show #9 is out

Posted: 10:57 pm
December 7, 2005
SBS Show
5 Comments

Ok, so we have finally picked the name for the SBS Show mid-week updates. Thank you for the feedback and suggestions, we did pick SBS Weekly which was suggested by one of the anonymous cowards on this very blog. The SBS Weekly show will run about 20 minutes to make it convenient for you to listen to it the same (or the very next) day and get the most up-to-date information in the SBS world. I know its hard to come by an hour or more to sit down and listen to the SBS Show we produce on the weekends, and believe me, we wouldn't dream cutting the weekend subjects down. I have been editing down the show with Susan Bradley for three days and I have a hard time taking out stuff – thank you for your patience with this one, it is really a gem. Now on to the SBS Weekly (SBS Show #9). We talked about: – Announcement of SBS 2003 R2. Even called Guy Haycock, Sr. Product Manager for SBS to get the details on just what expanded CALs were and if it was possible to split SBS components onto multiple servers with R2. – Discussion about Mozilla 1.5 and why you should really try it out. – New viruses and worms in the wild spreading through IM and how you can protect yourself from the next onslaught of Sober. – Risks involved in deploying Blackberry ES and potential blackout due to patent disputes. – New laws requiring VARs to handle proper disposal of PCs they sell in UK … and a few other things. Please let us know how you like the new format. Direct download of SBS Weekly (SBS Show #9, mp3) Podcast xml feed for your aggregator Look for the SBS Show #8 with Susan Bradley tomorrow night. If you got Friday afternoon open make sure you check out or sister show Inside SBS by the SBS PSS crew, they will be covering ISA..

R2 is born, SBS in final trimester

Posted: 3:40 pm
December 6, 2005
IT Business, Microsoft
4 Comments

So its the R2 day at Microsoft. Some products are going gold, others are up as evalutation versions (snag a 180 day copy of Virtual Server 2005 R2). Windows Server 2003 R2 is being released today so the R2 of SBS will naturally follow in about 60-90 days. For everything you always wanted to know about Windows Server R2 here is the link. Here are a few notes on R2 and SBS courtesy of Steven Bink: Q. What is Windows Small Business Server 2003 Release 2 (R2)? A. Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 will be an update release to Windows Small Business Server 2003 with SP1, providing new features and functionalities. Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 will offer increased productivity and functionality by adding automated patch and update management, increasing mailbox limits to 75 GB and adding SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition for Premium Edition customers. Q. When will Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 become available? A. The Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 update will be offered 60-90 days after the availability of Windows Server 2003 R2. Windows Server 2003 R2 is scheduled to release TODAY!! Q. Why will Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 become available later than Windows Server 2003 R2? A. Windows Small Business Server 2003 is an integrated product that includes advancements and improvements in Windows Server 2003 R2. Because of this, Windows Server 2003 R2 delivery to market must happen first. Microsoft is working to ensure that Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 is well integrated for customers. Q. How will existing customers obtain Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2? Will it be available for free download? A. Like Windows Server 2003 R2, customers will need to have purchased Software Assurance to obtain Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2, or they will need to purchase a new server license. Unlike Windows Server 2003 R2, a low-cost option for Windows Small Business Server customers (any version including 4.0, 4.5, 2000, and 2003) will be available to upgrade to Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2. Customers tell us that Software Assurance is not commonly purchased with Windows Small Business Server so we continue to make low-cost version upgrade SKUs available. Q. How much will Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 cost to upgrade? A. Specific pricing details are not available at this time. Update: Susan Bradley just wrote in to let me know that the SBS FAQ has been updated to say the following: Q. What about the next release of Windows Small Business Server, R2? A. Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2, the next release of SBS which promises increased productivity and functionality, will be available in 32-bit only, and will be available shortly after the availability of Windows Server 2003 R2. SBS 2003 R2 is expected to release mid 2006. Here is another hint to that mid-2006 date from the press release:

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 (SBS 2003 R2) is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2006. SBS 2003 R2 will help small businesses improve their productivity by providing automated, networkwide patch and update management, increased mailbox limits, SQL Server™ 2005 Workgroup Edition technology for SBS 2003 R2 Premium Edition customers, and expanded client access license rights for access to additional Microsoft Exchange 2003 and SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition servers in the SBS 2003 R2 network. As part of a Technology Guarantee program, beginning March 1, 2006, for a limited time customers who purchase SBS 2003 from an original equipment manufacturer or a system builder will have the opportunity to obtain SBS 2003 R2 for a nominal shipping and handling fee, once the product is released.

So it looks like you won't see SBS 2003 R2 until mid 2006 but if you purchase SBS after March 1, 2006 you'll get free upgrade to R2. If you are among people considering that purchase without Software Assurance you're a darn fool, SBS Longhorn is due in 2007.