Finally we can talk, Storage Server R2 Essentials Announced

Well it has been the best kept secret at Microsoft for years, but this morning they announced Windows Storage Server R2 Essentials, what is it you ask, think Windows Home Server backup functionality capable of joining a domain and you get the basic idea. Yes a lot of you (and me as well) have been begging Microsoft for this product and finally they are delivering it. Code named Breckenridge for the last year or so and now part of the Storage Server Family.

SBS vNext names and dates announced

This morning on the SBS BLOG Microsoft announced the offical names Windows Small Business Server Essentials for what was known as Aurora and Windows Small Business Server Standard for what was referred to as SBSv7, also a Premium add-on that will work for both versions was announced.

Standard should be out before the end of the year and Essentials in the first half of 2011 according to the post. I have been using them in the beta and am really looking forward to being able to roll them out to my clients. It has been a while since we had cool new stuff like this in the SBS Space!

#8 Just in from Microsoft

Just heard I have been awarded the Microsoft MVP for Small Business Server for the eighth year running. I would like to thank all of you that belong to the SMB Community for helping to make it something I enjoy being part of and supporting so much to enable me to qualify for this award repeatedly!

Thanx for your support,
HA

Great News in the Inbox this morning

New SBS 7 RWW or RWA as it’s now known

I know I said it would be a while before I got back to showing you SBS 7, but this new Remote Web Access page is just so cool I could not wait. So here is a peak to whet your appetite. Click the image for a larger view.

Check Out the new RWA page

You can get your own copy at the Connect Website

SBS 7 Install

Well first impression of the SBS 7 install is wow, it is quick. It took under 2 hours which was less time than it took to download it. So give it a try, it takes but a few minutes of your time, only two or three screens of info and it pretty much runs on autopiliot. You can get your own copy at the Connect Website

Wow that was quick!

 More to follow later after I play with it a bit, and if you are in the Triad Area I will be showing some of the new features at the next meeting of the Triad SBS Group.

SBS 7 Public Preview Ready for Download

Seen today on the SBS Team Blog at http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2010/09/21/announcing-the-availability-of-windows-sbs-7-preview.aspx

Begin Quote

I am very pleased to announce that Windows Small Business Server “7” (SBS7) Public Preview is available for download.

Built on Windows Server® 2008 R2, this exciting new edition of the all-in-one solution server for small businesses will include Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 SP1, Microsoft SharePoint® Foundation 2010, and Windows Software Update Services. Small business customers will find significant security and management enhancements over previous versions, as well as much richer features for providing file-and-print, email and Internet services to employees.

Together with Windows SBS code name “Aurora”, available to download here since August the 16th, SBS7 is dedicated to providing small business customers with a highly manageable, low complexity solution to help cut costs, save time and be more efficient. SBS7 offers on premise email and collaboration suite functionalities that Aurora’s customers can add through online services.

SBS7 also offers a great opportunity for small businesses with prior versions to upgrade their servers and to simultaneously take advantage of the advancements in security, reliability, and connectivity technology. For this reason, SBS7 offers enhanced migration tools, extensive pre-migration checks, and prescriptive guidance included in the software.

Furthermore, with SBS7, small businesses gain the freedom to securely access all of their communications from virtually any Web-browser or mobile device — getting more done wherever they are with the integrated Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft Outlook® Web Access (OWA) capabilities.

Customers using SBS7 will also have the opportunity to view, edit, and share Microsoft Office documents online with SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Microsoft Office Web Apps. As the online companion to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel(R), Microsoft PowerPoint(R), and Microsoft OneNote(R), Office Web Apps gives users the freedom to access documents from virtually anywhere.

To learn more about Windows Small Business Server “7”, you can visit our SBS site.

The preview release is available on our Connect site and can be downloaded now. If you haven’t already signed up for the preview, you can visit our Connect site and get signed up. We have also setup a Connect feedback form to capture your reaction to the product, bugs and suggestions as well as a newsgroup where you can discuss the preview with other beta testers.

All the pieces are in place, so don’t wait any longer. Download the preview and start testing with us!

Kevin Kean
General Manager
Windows Home and Small Business Server team

End Quote

SMB Nation Last Minute Content Added

Just in from Harry 

SMB Nation Fall 2010 Hybrids Happen Here!

BEST PRICING EXPIRES IN DAYS!
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Folks weve just added more value to the 8th Annual SMB Nation Fall 2010 conference with amazing new content:
GS108: Independent Deep Dive: SBS 7 and Aurora
GS109: MVP GeekSpeak Panel
GS110 Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My: Making sense of server offerings in the SMB space
BS106: MSP Future Speak A Panel Discussion (Speaker: Joe Panettieri, Josh Peterson, David Schafran, George Sierchio)
BS110: The Greatest Opportunity Health Care IT in 2010/2011

View ALL of the content HERE and see over 30 sessions!

Its a “hybrid world” in SMB IT today! SMB Nation Fall 2010 is where the cloud meets on-premises IT. /span>This 8th annual community confab brings together long-time community members including MVPs with day-to-day computer guys and gals for a three-day weekend of professional development. This is the one conference you should attend to prepare yourself to grow into the next generation of SMB technology to better serve your customers.

Attend over 30+ educational sessions in GeekSpeak, BusinessSpeak, & CloudSpeak tracks to learn about:

What’s in store for 2011?

Health care technology (the time is now deadlines approaching DO NOT MISS OUT ON THIS)

Hybrid sever solutions the reality of today and immediately seize the opportunity

Pivot to cloud computing solutions be an early adopter and profit!

Achieve new, deeper levels of customer intimacy

Next generation sales methodologies new speakers, new thinking, new and improved results

Much MORE from the industry’s TOP SPEAKERS and BEST TRAINERS. You will get to learn directly from over 20 of the industry’s most experienced, influential and well-known experts in the SMB space.

“How To” knowledge you can use the following week to make more money!

To be honest changing times require changed behaviors. Consider this your Executive Pocket MBA weekend to improve yourself and elevate your A game in a hybrid world.

Early Bird & Alumni Rates expire September 15th so do not delay!

Sign-up at www.smbnation.com

See you October 22-24, 2010 in Las Vegas!

PS – Don’t forget our infamous “Hallway 101″ peer-to-peer networking where life-long connections are made and the real knowledge transfer occurs! Think of it as an instant peer group!

PPS – Don’t forget our amazing Pre-Day events from leading experts!

SMB Nation, Inc. 12715 Miller Road NE Suite 202 Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Upcoming Triad SBS Group Meeting

Our Next Meeting is 6:00pm September 7, 2010

Coming up for our September 7th meeting (Happy Birthday Lynne) we will have Jason Martin of Zenith InfoTech. He will be going over their Managed Services with bundled NOC, Business Continuity, and the launch of their new Smart Style Cloud Computing solution. He will be doing a high level short PowerPoint presentation and then would like to lead a open discussion about the changes in the industry with peers and even competitors. Jason feels this is a very necessary exercise to do from time to time. In addition he is hoping to stir some talk about the cloud movement, and our views on where it is going.

Jason and Zenith InfoTech would also like to spring for dinner, so we will be bringing in Pizza and Sodas, so please drop me a note and let me know if you are planning on attending, so I can get a reasonable head count.

Coming up for the October 5th meeting I will be doing a walkthrough of the Aurora install process, you did hear the public beta has been released right? You can signup at http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/beta.aspx

Then on November 2nd we will have a demo of Eriq Neale’s favorite new mail server Kerio, details to follow later.

Good info in the Cyber Slacking post at http://www.gfi.com/blog/control-cyber-slacking/

Keep an eye on the ever growing SBS 2008 Build Doc, we are up to revision 78 now, http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/small-business-server-2008-build-document.aspx

 Upcoming FireStarter Events this year, http://blogs.technet.com/b/yungchou/archive/2010/08/18/2010-technet-firestarter-events.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage Charlotte is the closest offering unfortunately.

Free Windows Server 2008 R2 E-Book Offer http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/training/windowsserver.aspx#offers
Learn about the features of Windows Server 2008 R2 in the areas of virtualization, management, the Web application platform, scalability and reliability, and interoperability with Windows 7. Download Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2, written by industry experts Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker along with the Windows Server team at Microsoft.

Triad SBS Group Meeting Aug 3rd

Our Next Meeting is 6:00pm August 3, 2010

The first ever Windows Home Server MVP Grey Lancaster (Grey was also one of the first batch ofSBS MVPs as well, but recently jumped ship to WHS) will be doing a demonstration of Microsoft Windows Vail (the next version of WHS) and Microsoft Windows Aurora (the recently announced cross-premise SBS family addition) for our August meeting on 8/3/2010. I have seen them both and they have some really cool new features, you will not want to miss this meeting. Especially if you missed WPC!

Make sure to sign up for the betas, details at http://forums.redmondmag.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?tid=7184&pn=1

Keep an eye on the community build doc for SBS 2008, http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/small-business-server-2008-build-document.aspx

Also time permitting I will give you a peak at the new Take Control feature in MAXrm, which gives you the ability to remote into attended or unattended workstations and servers with a couple of clicks of your mouse.

Meeting Space compliments of 

How Long Does It Take To Install SBS 2008

A number of folks have asked me how long it takes to install SBS 2008, well the short answer is an hour and a half. If you are installing from DVD’s it is 90 minutes give or take a couple of minutes. I have done quite a few of them.

But I don’t think that is what they are really asking me. I think they really want to know how long before you have a working system. Well it just happens that I needed to know this as well for an upcoming project I am doing out of town next month. I have not done any real installs of SBS 2008 since the media refresh, so I though some practice was in order. The last couple of weekends I have done 2 dry runs following along the SBS 2008  Community Build Doc to get an idea of the timings of the different components. I thought I would share my rough notes with you from the last run to help in your planning.

By the way all through this post you will see that I use a script to reboot the SBS Server, mine is a quick and dirty little script with no logging. If you would like to use mine at your own risk it is at the end of this article, if you would like something more professional, take a look at Charlie’s Script, you may need to modify it a bit for SBS 2008.

Ready to start 2nd Dry Run SBS 2008 Clean Install, bios flashed, drives cleaned, dvd’s burned

Will use rtm MSDN Key with current media to make sure it fly’s

Start 6:00pm
* 2 physical drives
                Drive 0 500 Gb create partition C: 250 Gb balance unallocated
                Drive 1 700 Gb create partition D: 350 Gb balance unallocated
                Finishes 6:02pm

Expanding Files Finishes @ 6:15pm

Installing features and updates, less than a minute

First reboot starts @ 6:16

Completing installation starts @ 6:18pm

Second reboot starts @ 6:22pm

First Phase finishes @ 6:27pm

 *Clocks and Time Zone 4:36

*Do Not Get Updates

*Configure Networking

*Company Info, Computer Name, Domain Name, Admin Info

*No Forefront for Exchange

Expanding & Installing Files Starts 6:32pm

Finishes and Starts 3rd reboot @ 6:45pm

Reboot @ 7:19pm

Delivers Success Message and Desktop @ 7:24pm

*Requires Admin Input to continue

Grab SP image of C & D

Start To-Do List 8:00pm

Turn off DHCP on Router

Connect to Internet

OK IP Addresses Server 192.168.4.2, Router 192.168.4.1  finish 8:03pm

Ok to feedback

Setup Internet Address 8:04pm

Router Warning manually open ports 25, 80, 443 & 987  finish 8:09

Import DigiCert Trusted Certificate (exported from older build, allow 30 minutes to purchase new one)  finish  8:23

Add 8 Users and configure e-mail finish 9:34pm

Quit for the evening 9:35pm

Start next morning 8:20am

40 updates ready, let them install

Reboot 9:04am w/ha script

Desktop back @ 9:11am

Snap SP image start 9:45am finish 9:54am

Start BPA 10:02am finishes at 10:08am

WSUS finds 3 more updates, install and reboot @ 10:10am w/ha script

Desktop back at 10:18am

Run Fix My Network Wizard @ 10:20am

                Reports missing mappings (not missing)
                Reports DHCP error on IP6, fix, finish 10:30am

Configure Backup start 12:02pm   finish 12:07pm

Install SBS Rollup 4 12:20pm-12:23pm

Add local printer (deskjet 1220c)  and share 12:25pm-12:27pm

Do first batch of BPA fixes, finish 12:40pm reboot

DNS Cache TTL fix

Fix Event ID 10016 & 10017  KB920783

                Note instructions say change location to local server, but actually you have to change to domain
                Finish in 5 minutes

Exchange 2007 SP3  KB 982423 (try doing this after wss next time)

Start decompression 2:10pm

Run Setup from Elevated Prompt @ 2:15pm

Finishes @ 2:57pm

Configure DNS Forwarders

Configure logging, errors and warnings only

5 minutes

Move Data Locations (while folders empty)  Start 1:55pm

                Exchange Server to D: Finish 1:57pm
                SharePoint 3 to D: Finish 1:58pm
                Users Shared Data to D: Finish 1:59pm
                Users Redirected Data to D: Finish 2:00pm
                WSUS to D: Finish 2:0pm

Disable IIS Logging  Finish 2:05pm

Disable License Logging finish 2:08 and reboot w/ ha script

Logon and Desktop Returns @ 2:17pm

Install PDF Icon fix took longer to find than install, actual install is a couple of minutes

Install Office iFilter Pack 2 minutes

Install Adobe iFilter Pack start 2:29pm  finish 2:42

Fix Gather 2436 errors (found it already done) 2:47pm

IIS Reset

Stsadm commands to reindex finish 2:58pm

Install KB 977022 to allow wss sp2, failed twice

Reboot and try once more

Still no joy

Approve optional updates for deployment
                Win internal db x64 kb955706
                Sql 2005 ex SP3 kb955706
                Ws kb981793
                Malicious software x64 kb890830
                Win7 kb981793
                Malicious software kb890830

Did not install yet these optional updates
               WSS SP2
               IE8
               WSUS SP2
               DotNet 3.5 sp1 kb 951847
               Will do these later

Decline optional update

Browser Choice EEA

Break for today 3:54pm

Start again @ 11:45am

Backup from last night is good

BPA to see what is broken, no errors reported just info messages, it will be a good day

4 Updates ready for install, start them going @ noon

                kb981793
                kb955706
                kb955706
                kb890830
                Successfully installed all 4 reboot at 12:17

Logon and desktop returns @ 12:25

Download and install SnagIt finishes @ 12:32

Snag pics of installed updates

Try kb977022 again, fails yet again

Extract the installer to c:\dhc\here and install sts-x-none.msp from there, install succeeds quietly, check app log and it was successful @12:49pm

Install Windows Search, start 12:55  finishes 1:04pm

Install SQL fix for monitoring finishes 1:18

Install Fax HotFix kb973640 finishes 1:24

Reboot before wss 3 sp2

Start WSS3 SP2 @ 2:30pm
2:41 configuration wizard starts, needs input to continue

2:47pm completes and companyweb is functioning

2:49pm au popup  kb970892  want to install let it start, finishes 2:53pm

Reboot before wsus sp2

Start WSUS SP2 @ 3:12pm , remember to not run the configuration wizard at the end

Needs input until it connects to ##SSEE

Cancel wizard and it finishes 3:25pm

Install Report Viewer 2008 SP1, takes a couple of minutes tops.

Reboot @ 3:30 before dotnet kb951847

Cannot find standalone update, go to windows update, get just this one for now at 3:48pm

Finishes @ 3:53 and I rebooted because it was a dotnet

Sync WSUS Catalog, finishes @ 4:06pm

Install IE8 it wants a restart at 4:12pm, say later and use ha script now

Configure IE8 finish @ 4:26

Console working

CompanyWeb working

WU for other updates

Get 11 (84.7Mb) of the 12 updates, dotnet update can wait and go by itself

Finishes @ 4:40 and reboot with ha script

Logon and desktop back @ 4:52

Console working

CompanyWeb working

Snag image of update screen

Good time to break, backup will run @ 5:00pm

2 updates waiting for me this morning, let them start @ 9:59am
                Kb971119 report viewer
                Kb963707 dotnet assistant
               Finished @ 10:01am  no reboot required

Add Firewall policy mods for win7 management, finish 10:15am               

Download Vipre 4.0.4031

Reboot before installing @ 10:37

Logon and desktop back @ 10:47

Add firewall exceptions for Vipre to vista firewall policy 18082 & 18086 both directions, finish 10:51

Install & Configure Sunbelt Vipre
               use add 2005 express instance option
               use internal fqdn for smtp server
               use authentication
               finish @ 11:16am

1 update waiting to be installed, start it @ 11:17am
                Kb970892
                Finished @ 11:19am

Check WU (online) again, 2 available, do them separate 1 is dotnet
                Install PowerShell 2.0 & WinRM 2.0
                Finished @ 11:26 needs reboot,

Logon and desktop back @11:37am

Install dotnet 4.0 kb982671

Finish @ 11:54am

Final Reboot with ha script @ 11:58am

Console working, CompanyWeb Working, Vipre Console Working

Now at this point I have a server ready to support my network, all that remains is to join the workstation and add the data, but that is a story for another day.

I hope you found this helpful and now you won’t get lulled into thinking you can show up Monday morning and be done by lunch time.

Here is the scrip I promised you, use it at your own risk, all I can tell you is it works for me.

Copy the lines below to a text file and save it with a handy name like HAscript.cmd, when you want to use it, right click on it and run as administrator. If you want to schedule it, remember to comment out the pause line.

@Echo Off
Echo Use at your own risk!
Echo .
Echo This Will Restart the Server
Echo .
Echo “<Ctrl> + C to Cancel or”
Pause

net stop msExchangeTransportLogSearch /y

net stop msExchangeTransport /y

net stop msExchangeServiceHost /y

net stop msExchangeSearch /y

net stop msExchangeRepl /y

net stop msExchangeMailSubmission /y

net stop msExchangeMailboxAssistants /y

net stop msExchangeFDS /y

net stop msExchangeAntiSpamUpdate /y

net stop msexchangeadtopology /y

net stop msftesql-exchange /y

net stop msexchangeis /y

net stop msexchangesa /y

net stop iisadmin /y

shutdown /r /t 05

 :End