Kicking and Screaming I am Bloggin

The 2007 SMB Security Summit is begin held on November 23rd in Sydney Australia. It is being hosted by Trend Micro and SBSFAQ. Some of the world’s foremost experts in securing small business networks will be speaking at this event.

2007 SMB Security Summit Featuring some of the worlds most respected SMB Security experts, this event focuses on how we as SMB IT Resellers, Understand a customers security requirements, design solutions to respond to those threats, and sell and implement the end solution. SBSfaq.com in conjunction with Trend Micro are hosting this free community event in Sydney on November 23, 2007.

Raimund Genes - Trend MicroWelcome note. What are the latest security threats? What other issues are facing the security industry?

Dana Epp / Susan Bradley Security from a customers perspective. What are they looking for? What do they not know to look for? What about their responsibilities? What is risk analysis for security solutions?

Ryan Spillane / Dean Calvert Security from an SMB IT Resellers perspective. How can we solve customer problems for security solutions? How can we provide security solutions to our customers? How can we make a business from this? Tips and tricks from those doing it for real.

Wayne Small / Dana Epp Security from a technical implementation perspective. How do we implement these solutions? What options are available for the SMB IT reseller? How to audit the solution?

Eriq Neale / Amy Babinchak Supporting customers remotely. How can we support customers across the city, country, the world. Tips and tricks from those doing it for security solutions.

Brian Corrigan Open discussion / interview lead by Chief Editor of Australian Reseller News - Brian Corrigan. Brian will ask the hard questions that you may not have yet thought of from our panel of guests.

When
November 23rd, 20078:30am to 5:30pm

Where
The Menzies Hotel2-14 Carrington Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

Cost
FREE

Sign up here: http://events.sbsfaq.com/2007SMBSS.aspx

Let me share a little story about a dirty little secret I have recently stumbled across.It just goes to confirm what Vlad is trying to convince you to do and why he is blowing up his Dallas NOC.

I just built a new server for one of my client’s in the bay area and I will be installing it right after SMB Nation. Always liking to be prepared I decided to do a trial run at the migration of the old server to the new server. Actually more of a image and restore than a migration. I was not overly concerned about the process, I have done it on other systems. I just wanted a dry run to have the steps fresh in my mind, it has been a couple of months since I did one. I had an image from my last trip out to the Bay Area, so I created some arrays on the new server and partitioned them. I booted up my StorageCraft ShadowProtect CD and low and behold, there were no drives showing up from either array. I hit the load driver link, it said it loaded successfully, but still no drives. I have seen this before, no problem, I will just use legacy mode.  Well same problem, the driver loads but no drives show up.

I contact StorageCraft thinking I have found a bug they should no about. That’s when I am told that it is a know issue with WinPE, well it seems it is known to the imaging vendors, but not to us mere mortals. Seems Microsoft is also well aware of it, but no one seems to be doing anything about it. When MS does their WHQL testing they only test for Windows installation, not WinPE. There is a guy named Bart who has instructions on how to build a different version of PE, he says it is legal, MS says it isn’t and has tried to stop him, I don’t know the current status of the legal battle. I do know that if you follow Bart’s instructions you can build a PE that boot’s with new drivers, so if Bart can do it why can’t MS?Anyways had I have just blindly followed my plan, sand shipped the server and waited until I got there to do the image, I would have been one very unhappy HA, I would have one very unhappy client while I spent days trying to get him back online. As it is now I had time to rethink my process ands try another option. Remember in Jeff’s DR presentation last year in NOLA, where he says it is not enough to have a DR Plan, you need many options? Well this is just another example of that comment. The best DR plan is a clam mind and a bunch of options you are familiar with, because you have tried them under non-stressed conditions.

What is my new plan you ask, well it is something I have done before, stick a mass storage card I know will work with the software I want to use, in the old server before I do the image. In this case it will be the RocketRaid 2320 because I have already proven it will show up when booted to StorageCraft’s WinPE and using the load driver option in ShadowProtect.I tried to save the client a few bucks and use the Intel Embedded Raid, I should have listened to my own advice, always use a plug in card, it makes your arrays portable.

A number of folks are looking to use IMAP to connect to thier SBS Servers probably because of the iPhones hitting the streets.

Eriq Neale and Tim Barret have just posted and easy to follow How-To Article on Mariëtte’s SmallBiz Server Fourm. Take a look.

I find myself giving this little tip to someone every couple of months so I thought I would stick it up here. If you have recently added a USB Drive to backup to and find your server gets stuck when you try to reboot, you can almost always solve this by repartitioning the USB drive as an “Extended Partition”, that way the system knows to not even consider it when it enumerates the boot devices.

Note: when you repartition the drive you will lose any data currently on it, so if there is stuff you care about on it copy it off somewhere else first.

To repartition the drive, right click on it in Drive Manager and click “Delete Partition”
Then right click again and click “Create Partition” on the next menu click “Extended Partition” and adjust the size or leave the defualt to use the entire drive.
Now right click once more and choose “Create Logical Drive” at that point you can adjust the size or just leave the default to use the entire partition.

Hi SBS Team, this morning I was once again looking up the allocated memory setting from one of your GREAT POSTS and it occurred to me you were not even telling people to use the SBS Console you built for us.

Instead of

1.  Click START -> Run -> mmc

2.  Click File -> Add/Remove snap-in in MMC

3.  Add health monitor and click ok back to the main screen.

Why not just expand Monitoring and Reporting in the SBS Console

Click Change Alert Notifications

And double click on Allocated Memory on the Performance Counters tab?

What is the old saying if you build it they will use it, but not if you don’t tell them about it :>)

Hey Larry,

 I just read your blog post and I realized you weren’t following my CRM Express how to, I thought you were aware of it or I would have pointed it out to you earlier today, when you were asking the error you were getting. 

My bad, I owe ya one.