Kicking and Screaming I am Bloggin

Well have I got some great news for you.

Too oustanding SBS-MVP’s (and great people also) have joined forces to help make you whole again.

Here is the press release,

Support Services for IT Professionals

Press Release

IT SupPOrt Services for Professionals

Royal Oak, MI, October 3, 2008:  Amy Babinchak and Eriq Neale, MS MVP’s, Authors and Speakers,  have teamed up in a new business venture to provide remote support services to IT professionals. By formalizing and centralizing the remote support services of highly skilled professionals across a wide range of products ThirdTier.net will be the place where IT professionals turn to when they need assistance to resolve that tough problem for their client. Third Tier will also offer SMB focused vendors the solution to the difficult problem of supporting a wide variety of skill sets in the SMB market space, thus making it easier for them to offer their products to small business customers.

·         Central location for IT Professionals to contract experts on a wide variety of technologies to remotely assist in problem resolution.

·         Experts providing vendors the solution to product support in the SMB market space.

This morning I found this GREAT POST on the Diva’s Site. They say plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, so here it goes:

Let’s get out our pencils shall we?

Start with the price tag of SBS 2003.

Add to that the price tag of Windows 2003.

Add to that the price tag of ISA 2006

Add to that the price tag of Outlook 2007 licenses.

Add to that the price tag of SharePoint Designer.

Got all that in your head?

Okay so now think of the price tag of SBS 2008.  Got that?

So now if I told you that between now and October 31 that you can have your customers buy SBS 2003 + Software Assurance, spread the price tag over the next three years (and like who couldn’t like a spread of payments in this economy) and then when SBS 2008 hits the streets you get SBS 2008 plus all those bonus pieces of software I just listed.

There are times that Software Assurance is a very hard sell.  And then there are those times when it REALLY pencils out. 

One of the good things is that SBS 2008 RTM’d today.  It’s finally out.  One of the bad things is that SBS 2008 RTM’d today.  That means the clock is ticking on your ability to lock in this steal of a deal.

One of the best benefits of SBS 2008 is the ability to park whatever stupid line of business software you have (do check it’s supportability on Windows 2008).  Another advantage is that you can run that second server as a 32bit box in case you have funky printers that can’t support 64bit.

But bottom line, check out the attached slide deck.

http://msmvps.com/media/p/1645467.aspx (whoops forgot the link)

Software assurance makes sense, but only until October 31st.  Act now, before the window of opportunity passes you by.

My pal Kevin Weilbacher  SBS-MVP and famous for Song of the Week on the sbs2k yahoo list has just put together a little diddy for MS and Cougar, hop on over to KEVIN’s SITE and listen. A bit of a hint, download the words before you start listening, it is hard to make them out. For those of you who have been around a while some nice nostalgia in the video.

Poor SBS, the new version has only just made RC0 and already it is being torn apart by some pretty well know folks in the community.

It is not surprising that Vlad is not fond of SBS, after-all it is in direct opposition to his business model.  But to see Stuart Crawford come out against it so soon, is really a shocker.

Sure SBS 2008 will not be for everyone, SBS has never been for everyone. This new version is targeted more than ever before at the diy’er, not even the client that has an IT Pro servicing them is really the target customer. Yes the migration from previous versions is going to be somewhat painful, but truth be told, folks on any version of SBS 2003 are not going to be in a big rush to upgrade anyways and folks on earlier versions than 2003 have already proven they are not willing to spend any more money. So we are back to the folks just starting out in a new business, or those who realised they finally need a server and have not yet realised they need an IT Pro to design their network. The target market for SBS 2008 is the guy ( or gal) who goes down to Costco or Best Buy and picks it up, takes it to the office and tries to build a network around it.

Microsoft is cleary going after the number with this build, but that does not mean SBS is not a good fit for a lot of folks, just different folks from in the past.

But it just seems these guys could hold off the SBS Bashing until it at least ships, hey if they are in the neighborhood they can stop by my house for a glass of cool-aid, everyone tells me I have drank too much myself anyways :>)

Ok Gang here is your chance to see all three of us in one place and sit in on some great presentations. Also a great chance to get some of your lingering questions answered.

OK Kathy just ran in to tell me there is no time listed, the meeting is from 2:00pm to 6:00pm, and now I know I have at least one reader, you can meet her tomorrow also :>)

Here is the invitation once again from our host Michael Pope,
{ please note after we sent out the first batch of these we heard from Mark that it should not be called a regional meeting, so I have renamed it the Big Meeting :>) }

The January meeting is one that you will definitely want to attend and bring as many other consultants as you know. This will be a DON’T MISS EVENT!!! This will be a joint meeting with both the Triad SBS User Group and the Charlotte SBS User Group so there will be lots of opportunity for networking with your peers! It will be held at the local Microsoft office . In addition to having Mark Crall in from Charlotte to discuss some upcoming changes to the SBSC program along with some other juicy tidbits of information, we will also have two other presentations. The two top dogs of Autotask will be present at the meeting. Bob Godgart, founder and CEO of Autotask, and Bob Vogel, Chief Marketing Officer, will be on-hand to discuss the Managed Services landscape, their products and any other questions you want to throw at them. And if all of that wasn’t enough, we will also have Elliot Curtis direct from Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond to discuss SPLA licensing for us. There has been a number of you interested in this particular licensing program and he will be here to help you understand it. We also may be able to get him to discuss the newest licensing scheme available here in the USA - Open Value Subscription! There are similarities at face value between it and on-site SPLA so it would be good to learn more about these programs. I look forward to seeing all of you there! Thanks! 

Michael

RTP Computer Services, Inc.
105 West NC Highway 54
Suite 265
Durham, NC 27713

Turns out that my IT Pro Groups first meeting in 2008 falls on 1/1/2008 and not only do we have a great dual presentation lined up by Chuck Traywick on Virtualization and Sharepoint 3.0, the one and only Eric Ligman is going to be breaking some important news for us to discuss as well.

Let me share the invitation with you in case you find yourself in North Carolina on the first needing an SMB Fix.

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Kathy & I would like to wish all of you a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year! I hope to see you at our meeting tomorrow to kick off the New Year right, with Geek Speak & Business Tips :>) The date for our next meeting is January 1, 2008
Regular Time 6:00pm
Let’s start the year off right with a good turnout!
Last meeting was December 4, 2007Tomorrow week we have Chuck Traywick driving up to talk to us and he will be presenting on 2 topics, first WSS 3.0 for Small Business and then Virtualization. He just did this presentation in SC and a similar one for the Charlotte SBS group and was very well received by both of them. I just peeked through the slide deck and the reason I think he was so well received was there aren’t many slides, it is mostly demo :>). Chuck is the owner of Infotronics.  They do networking, consulting, and development. They are focused on the SMB segment. Plenty of good reason to take a couple of aspirin and head over to the meeting, ya I know it is the first day of the new year and all that, but hey I didn’t create the calendar, I am just trying to follow it. Fire Mountain Family Steakhouse 1180 S. Main Street, Kernersville, 27284, 336-996-0456 Keep an eye on our website for last minute changes http://www.tsbsg.orgHarry has asked me to ask you to please take his Year End Survey And I have to get in plugs for Jeff, Harry and SMBTN they all have conferences coming up in the next 6 months or so.
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Jeff http://www.conference.sbsmigration.com/
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Harry http://www.smbnation.com/workshops.htm
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SMBTN http://www.smbsummit.com/
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Have a Happy New Years,  but remember to show up tomorrow for our meeting :>)HA 

In case you should start suffering from withdrawls due to lack of SMB Talk, here is a little fix for you from Henry & Me, compliments of Vlad

Yesterday I heard about a brand new joining of the minds in the Big Corporate World. A place where I not only don’t live, but try not to drive through too often. But I had to point out that one of my modern day hero’s is one one of the founding fathers of the BLOG COUNCIL.

He is one of the few and probably the very first one of corporate folks to really get what an MVP and Community are all about. Sure it is an honor to be recognised as an MVP for whatever it is you do well, but it puts you on an island where you really feel alone. The very folks you are all about helping are most times jealous of you and think you are some kind of secretly paid agent for whoever gave you the award. The big corporate guys wish you would just go away because they hate anything that they can’t control completely.

Into this mix throw my hero, a guy who really gets MVP and Community from the inside out. And now reading his blog last night, I hear he has jumped into the pool with both feet to try and help shape the the rest of the corporate world to be more community minded, in a way that works for the benefit of both the big guys and the community.

Well I don’t know where to do it, so let me try it here, I would like to nominate Sean O’Driscoll for MVP of Corporate Community Conscience.

Thank You Sean, and let me be the first to welcome you to the Island,
Your Pal, HandyAndy

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.

So have you been looking for Wayne Small’s new hiding place, it was recently uncovered, take a look at http://blog.sbsfaq.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=2

 And speaking of Wayne and things down under, have you heard yet, Wayne is putting together a conference, details can be found at http://www.smbfocus.com/default.aspx