The World According to Mitch

Lotus Foundations Server comes to IT Pro Toronto!

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:55:52 GMT

If you are an IT Professional in the Greater Toronto Area then you will not want to miss this event!

http://itprotolotusfoundation.eventbrite.com/

Small business is still big business. Every company needs the ability to do e-mail, create, share and centrally manage documents and files and ensure that all their information is backed up and protected. But no one wants the hassle or expense of dealing with complex IT systems. Lotus Foundations is a family of software appliances that provide the essential software businesses need to focus on running the business, not managing computer systems.

Location:

8200 Warden Avenue, Markham, Ontario

Room: Amphitheatre

Agenda and Presenters:

6:45 PM - 7:15 PM - Food and Drinks

7:15 PM - 7:20 PM - Introductions (why we are here, why you are here)

7:20 PM - 8:40 PM - Product Demonstration

Architectural Overview (and why it's different)
- Getting running in no-time flat
Integrated Base Capabilities and Functionality
- Backup, Network Router, Firewall, FTP, Web Server, File Server, DHCP, etc...
- Integrated Enhanced
- Antivirus, Antispam
- Add-ons and the role of Autonomics and Integration
- Start
- Reach
- 3rd Party

8:40 PM - 9:00 PM - Q & A

Host:

Hiep Vuong leads up the HW Platform Strategy and Development and Technical Business Development for the IBM Lotus Foundations Team. Hiep has extensive background in appliances for the Small Business space having lead up development and operations at both SonicWALL and Net Integration Technologies (acquired by IBM in 2008).

Presenters:

Julie Reed leads the IBM Lotus Foundations engineering team. She has over 25 years experience in the software industry spanning various application server environments and collaboration platforms. Julie came to IBM with the Net Integration Technologies acquisition in 2008.

Larry Menard is a Quality Assurance Team Lead for the IBM Lotus Foundations products. He began his career with IBM in 1979 and has held a wide variety of positions within the company. Prior to joining the Lotus Foundations team, Larry's most recent positions included Quality Assurance and Information Development for the IBM DB2 relational database product.

To register click the following link: http://itprotolotusfoundation.eventbrite.com/ PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR SECURITY REASONS YOU MUST REGISTER OR YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED IN.

See you there!

The IT Professionals Community of Greater Toronto

Using Boot Camp in Windows 7

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:27:03 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

In my last article I described the proper way to install Windows 7 on an Intel-based Mac using Boot Camp. But aside from the complete driver set, what else does Boot Camp offer?

In the Windows Taskbar (see image) you see a lot of the applications that I have running on my PC. Most of them are easily identified – Bluetooth, Send-a-Smile, Outlook 2010, Security Essentials, Live Mesh, Windows Home Server, One Note, Skype, and Magic ISO. However the top-left corner is a black diamond that I don’t have on my other systems. That is because it is the Boot Camp application (version 3.0) which is designed to allow Windows to be installed on Apple hardware. More than just a pretty face, it offers a lot of configuration and control options to the informed.

There are four options when you click on the icon, which are:

About Boot Camp
Boot Camp Help
Boot Camp Control Panel
Restart into Mac OS X

The Control Panel consists of five tabs:

Startup Disk

The Startup Disk tab is where we set the default OS on boot. I prefer to boot into Windows 7 by default, and if I want to boot into Mac OS X I can simply hold down the option key when I boot up.

Also in this tab is the Target Disk Mode, which allows you to connect the computer to another computer using a FireWire cable and use it as a hard disk. Cool :)

Brightness

Self-explanatory, you can set the screen brightness from Dim to Bright.

Remote

For $19.99 at the Apple Store you can buy a relatively simple but high-quality remote control that connects to the computer via infrared receiver. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the remote works in Windows as well, and can be paired from this tab.

Keyboard

Each function key on the Mac has two functions… for example the F1 key is also the reduce brightness key. The second function is selected by first pressing the fn key and then pressing the appropriate key. These sets can be inverted by clicking the checkbox in the Keyboard tab.

Trackpad

There are two things about the Mac that I find maddening; the first is the lack of certain keys central to working in Windows (PgUp, Backspace, etc…). The second is the trackpad, which has no buttons at all, let alone a left- or right-button. Boot Camp makes this second issue slightly more livable… in the Trackpad tab of the Boot Camp Control Panel you can customize the functionality of the multi-touch trackpad (yes, that part is cool!) and the clicking behavior. Unless I am either in bed or on an airplane I still plug in an external mouse, but this is still better than nothing.

I want to be clear… I am a PC and I run Windows 7, even on my MacBook. However knowing how to use Boot Camp does make a good experience that much better. I do boot into OS X from time to time, but knowing the ins and outs of running Windows 7 on my Mac made my life easier!

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

Running Windows 7 on a Mac (Using Boot Camp)

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:37:33 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

If you are reading this article on your Mac, this is an important article for you. Before you start though, I suggest you read my previous article outlining how I got to the point where I, the Mitch you all know and love as a PC running Windows 7, have a MacBook Pro laptop.

Now that you are back from that article, and probably took the opportunity while on my blog to read voraciously all of my articles on the benefits of Windows 7, you are probably ready to jump into Windows 7 head-first. Because of so many of the issues I encountered it is a good thing you are reading this article. Print it out and use it as a kind of ‘how to’ article so that you have an easier time of it than I did.

Before we start I should mention that there are actually three completely technologies that allow you to run Windows on a Mac: Boot Camp, Passport, and VMware Fusion. I selected Boot Camp for three reasons: It is delivered with the operating system and it is free, but more importantly to me it allows Windows to use the complete resources of the hardware, unlike the other two methods which share resources with the Mac OS.

1. Boot into Mac OS X. In the Utilities Folder (under Applications) there is an item called Boot Camp Assistant. Click there!

According to Boot Camp Assistant it will help you install Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista operating systems. Fortunately for us it will work just as well (or better!) with Windows 7, now that the proper update has been released.

2. On the next screen you are given the option to create a Windows partition on your hard drive. By default it is 32 GB, but I chose to split the drive in two so that I would have enough room.

3. Once you have created your partition you can click Start the Windows Installer in the Select Task window.

When you are asked to insert the Windows media and reboot do so, and let Windows install as normal.

4. Once Windows 7 is installed your Mac will default to booting into Windows 7. This, I found, is the natural behaviour of a dual-boot Mac. In order to boot into OS X you actually have to hold down the option key when you boot up.

5. Because Boot Camp had an update that included Windows 7 compatibility you have to download the new version from apple.com (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/application_updates/bootcampsoftwareupdate31forwindows32bit.html). However what they don’t tell you is that:

a. You have to download it in Windows rather than in OS X;

b. It is a 380 MB download; and

c. You still have to install the Boot Camp from the DVD that came with your computer before then applying this update.

6. So now you are in Windows 7. Some of your drivers work, some of them don’t. Insert the disc that came with your Mac; it will recognize that it is running under Windows (despite saying it is a Mac disk… it works J), and start installing the Boot Camp drivers and services.

7. Once this is all done you can then download and install the Windows 7 Update to Boot Camp and then apply it.

BONUS: What happens if I try to skip the original disc steps and just download and install the Boot Camp update?

I’m glad you asked. If you do that then the Windows 7 drivers for the Nvidia video card will install, and you will have a very functional system… but you will not have Boot Camp installed. If you are like the author then you might not know any better, and think that’s the way it is supposed to be until one of your friends asks you about a particular feature which you were ignorant of.

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

The Sad End to a Suite of Unattained Potential

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:24:04 GMT

I was so excited about the product from the minute I heard of it. In January, 2007 Kevin Beares took me into his office and showed me the three servers running a VERY early alpha (read: dogfood) build of what would eventually be called Microsoft Essential Business Server 2008. As he explained the technology I was thrilled… it was what I always hoped would become of SBS, but for mid-market.

I was quite involved in the pre-release of the product, writing courseware, presentations, and labs for both Microsoft and Microsoft Canada. I was, to many in Canada, the public technical face of the product, having presented the product in most of the major markets to partners and potential clients months before the release.

The problem was that when the product did release, there wasn’t as much excitement as everyone had hoped.

EBS was a good first generation product, a very respectable big cousin to Small Business Server, and while there was no doubt there were kinks to be worked out, those would come in the second version. This is not new.

Several months ago, when sales of EBS machines were as close to zero as statistically possible, I was asked what I felt Microsoft could have – or should have done differently. I had two simple answers, one of which was probably bad judgment, but a call that I would have made too, had it been my decision. I will not share that opinion publicly.

The second thing that went wrong with EBS was luck, or at least timing. Unfortunately they had a product that would cost the customer $20,000 minimum between hardware and software, plus likely the same amount in consulting costs, and they launched it a couple of weeks after the world economy crashed – when people were looking to cut costs. No amount of Microsoft Spin would be able to convince the majority of companies who would have benefitted from the product that they should spend the money.

I was so proud a year ago to announce that I was among the inaugural class Microsoft MVPs awarded in Essential Business Server; however you will; notice from my blog that I stopped writing about the product long ago because nobody was interested in what I had to say about it. Thirteen months after that proud day my award category was switched to Windows Desktop Experience (read: Windows 7). I hated to admit it, but I was happier to be one of 250-odd MVPs in a hugely popular technology than I was to be one of (at the time) 9 MVPs in a product with a worldwide install base of fewer than 100.

Still and all I was excited about the upcoming release of EBS vNext. It had great potential, the team listened to those of us who were telling them what was wrong with it. It looked great, and I was even trying to get one of my clients to join the Technology Assessment (TAP) Program because they could eventually have been the big EBS shop when the technology flourished. They decided not to join, and now I am glad they did.

This morning’s announcement saddened me, although it did not surprise me. Like Response Point before it, some technologies are just a hard sell, especially when there are so many alternatives.

Still and all, I want to thank all of the people who were responsible for bringing us EBS – Nick, Kevin, Chuck, Mike, and so many more. You did a great job, but your technology was killed by the times.

Read the official Microsoft statement at http://www.microsoft.com/ebs/en/us/default.aspx.

Good-bye EBS; the few of us know did know you are sorry to see you go.

Mitch Goes Mac!? Nah!

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:52:58 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

My name is Mitch, and I am a PC and I run Windows 7!

This statement will not surprise anyone who knows me. As a Microsoft MVP and trainer I have been quite vocal about Microsoft’s new client operating system, and everything I love about it.

What has utterly shocked a lot of those same people is the fact that my new laptop is not a Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, or Vaio… it’s an Apple; more specifically, it’s a 13” MacBook Pro. When I boot it up, it makes the Apple sound; the back panel of the screen lights up the familiar Apple logo. The number of people who have done a double-take by now (especially since this month I have taught Windows 7 twice and spent a week on Microsoft’s campus for the MVP Summit) probably number in the low hundreds.

‘You finally went over to the Dark Side!’

‘You’ve lost your mind!’

‘You lost a bet!’

I could keep going, but the truth is none of the above; sure, I am a Microsoft MVP, and I spend a lot of time teaching and presenting to Microsoft audiences, but the truth is I am first and foremost an IT Professional and technology enthusiast (read: geek). I am also what some call a ‘super-influencer’. However that is based not on my pretty face (thankfully!) but on my credibility. I have always felt that if I wanted to maintain that credibility as an IT Pro rather than as a Microsoft Evangelist then I had to be open to all technologies, and be able to compare them all authoritatively rather than anecdotally.

I hadn’t really done a lot of work on a Mac since before I went into the army – I was working as a software analyst for the Israeli Ministry of Education and frankly nobody else knew anything at all about the Mac in the corner, so that system became my responsibility. In those heady days of Windows 3.1, Mac OS was far superior to any GUI available on the more popular PCs. Then nearly four years ago, toward the end of the Windows Vista beta program, a friend of mine in Montreal asked me to install that OS on his new Mac Mini; I was so impressed by its performance (in a side by side comparison with my Asus Ferrari 4000 it stood up quite favorably) that I looked into it, and sure enough Apple made excellent hardware that was solid and lacked a lot of the compatibility issues you encounter when the hardware manufacturer uses components (and thus requires drivers) from different manufacturers. Anyone who has challenged me on Mac since then will attest that I love Mac hardware!

Fast forward to January, 2010.

I tried in vain for three weeks to buy a new laptop, and I won’t go into the details of that debacle. I was a bit put off by that experience, and decided to look elsewhere… when I had an idea, based mostly on the prodding and goading from a client of mine (IHYF!). After consulting with and getting approval from the finance department (read: wife) I trekked down to the Apple Store in Square One, and bought a shiny new MacBook Pro.

I want to be clear that although it was and remains my intention to use the MacBook to learn Mac OS, I am still primarily a Windows guy, and so the first thing I did when opening the box was figure out how to install Windows 7 on it. After a lot of hassles and ‘figuring things out’ I got it working and true to my earlier impressions, it is a great Windows machine… although the critics are right that the much lauded battery performance is quite diminished when running Windows, due to the fact that it was likely not Apple’s #1 priority to optimize the drivers to run Windows.

In my next article I will guide you step-by-step through the installation and configuration process, for those of you Mac users who are interested in dipping your feet into the Windows OS!

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

If you’re not sure and don’t feel comfortable…

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:05:36 GMT

As I sit watching Rabbi Wise’s computer upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 I am thinking about a conversation that he and I just had.

Three weeks ago he and I started discussing the benefits of Windows 7 over his currently Windows Vista, and he asked if I thought it was really worth the upgrade. My answer is probably obvious to all… of course! I explained to him my reasons. He told me he had given the computer to his normal ‘computer guy’ to perform the upgrade, and he had it returned a few days later with an explanation that the guy had tried a number of times to perform the upgrade unsuccessfully. I told him I’d give it a go.

Fast-forward to now, the actual OS is installed and the last (and likely longest) step of the upgrade (Transferring files, settings, and programs) is at 62%. Rabbi Wise asked me what I did differently from the other guy, and I told him that honestly I did not do anything special or fancy… I put in the Acer Upgrade DVD and followed the instructions. He looked at me sheepishly and said ‘maybe I should have just tried to do it myself… but I was worried I would screw something up!’ My answer? DON’T DO IT YOURSELF!

Let me be clear… Windows 7 is mind-numbingly simple to install. Upgrades, when they go right, are as simple as a point-and-shoot camera. but some people are not comfortable doing it themselves, and should ask for help… be it from the IT Guy at work, a friend with slightly better computer skills than you, a consultant, or a ‘Nerd-Herd’ type guy (I can’t bring myself to recommending one of them, even for something this simple). It might cost you a few dollars, but that money is well spent if it saves you staring at your screen for the duration of the upgrade wondering (stressing) if you are going to lose all of your data.

Ten years ago the average computer user used a computer for few tasks beyond what was required of them. Their documents were in a folder (which should still always be backed up!) which could usually fit onto a high-density floppy disk, and they didn’t venture out beyond their comfort zone. That has changed; most computer users today have done some degree of customization to their system, downloaded apps and plug-ins, store their music, photos, e-mail, contacts, and much more in their systems. Losing all of this could be – if not disastrous, then certainly painful.

The process of upgrading an operating system may look simple on the surface, but the reality is it is a very complicated series of steps that replaces tens of thousands of files and then must make sure that all of your apps are going to work. Imagine a painting… if I see a painting in a museum I can certainly copy it (well, not me… but someone with a modicum of artistic ability!) pretty easily. However if that painting was on paper and you wanted to lift every drop of paint and reassemble the exact paint onto canvas… that would be tough… easier to just copy it, right? That is why I generally take the jump between OS versions as an opportunity to install fresh (after migrating data using either the User State Migration Tool or the Windows Easy Transfer tool to backup and restore the profile!).

I have on too many occasions changed a tire on my car. It is not something I am comfortable doing, but owing to the simplicity of the task and my mechanical aptitude I am reasonably sure that I can do it successfully. Changing the oil in my car is probably as simple a task… but is something I generally let someone else do because I am simply not comfortable doing it. Adding gasoline or windshield washer fluid? Sure; adding radiator fluid or brake fluid? Call a Pro. That is not to say that I couldn’t do it if I wanted to try, but because it is outside of my comfort zone and sounds pretty important, I let someone else do it. That is why I don’t get upset when family and (a select group of) friends ask me for help with what I perceive to be easy tasks on the computer. Sure they are easy for me, but they probably stress those people out and besides, most of them are grateful enough to at least buy me dinner (lunch? a cup of coffee?) for my troubles.

Microsoft has made the OS so simple to use with Windows 7 that it is easy to forget that what you are looking at is really some 70,000 files working together to make it LOOK simple. If you (or someone you know) are (is) intimidated by seemingly easy tasks don’t be shy… ask for help!

Connecting to Multiple Exchange Servers within Microsoft Office Outlook 2010

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:52:02 GMT

I love Microsoft Office 2010. It’s not that I was not a big fan of the current Office 2007, but I feel that Microsoft has done its job – found ways to improve the new model.

My current ‘favorite’ improvement is with Microsoft Office Outlook. It solves a problem that has caused me inconvenience for years, and although I admit it is likely an issue only for a small minority of users, as one of those users I am glad to see it resolved in v.Next.

In the beginning most computer users had a single e-mail account; the world began to evolve, and soon people would begin having two – one for work and one for personal use. If they were smart they would keep these two account separate, storing messages from each separately. Of course since likely a vast majority of users’ personal accounts were with on-line services such as Hotmail, this was not a problem. For the rest of us, it might have taken a while to find the right path; I remember very foolishly pulling e-mail from both business and personal accounts on the same machine.

When Exchange Server became the prevalent mail server system many of us were introduced to push-type accounts; no longer was it up to the mail client to actively attempt to download mail from the server on a set schedule (as often as every five minutes), rather the mail server and the mail client (at least if you were using Outlook connected to an Exchange Server) would maintain a secure connection, and as soon as mail was received on the server it would immediately be pushed to the client. (This connection method would eventually be vastly improved with the advent of RPC over HTTPS, which allowed the mail client to maintain that connection even when it was not directly connected to the same network as the server)

The only problem some of us had with this system was that some of us maintained accounts on multiple Exchange Servers. The solution was to maintain multiple Outlook Profiles, which could then be configured to the different servers. Although this did indeed resolve the issue, it had its drawbacks – in order to check one Profile you would have to exit from all others. There were ways around this of course; configuring a single Profile connected to one Exchange Server, and then pulling e-mail from other accounts using either IMAP or POP3 was one, but that had the drawback of ‘mixing mail.’ It also did not allow one to leverage the other features of an Exchange Profile, such as Calendars, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes. Another solution would be to connect one account using Outlook Web Access which has gotten better over the versions, but had its own disadvantages as well (you need a persistent connection, for example).

Enter Office Outlook 2010.

I suppose the number of people who have a need to connect to multiple Exchange Servers has increased because beginning with the Technical Preview of Office 2010 we can now connect a single Outlook Profile to multiple Exchange Servers. Don’t worry, you do not lose the ability to create multiple profiles, you are just given a new way of doing business. Here’s how:

Firstly make sure Outlook 2010 is not running. Although the screens are available within Outlook, it will block you from adding an Exchange Server.

1) Within the Windows Control Panel open the Mail option.

2) In the Mail Setup – Outlook window click E-mail Accounts. You should see your already configured Exchange account listed.

3) Click New…

At this point you will be asked to configure your mail account. Do so as if you were configuring it as your first. Once you are done you will see both accounts listed.

You can now open Outlook normally. What you will see in your Navigation Pan is two completely separate – and segregated – Exchange accounts. While you can copy and move information between the two, there is no ‘blind intermingling’ of information between the two; so if you have multiple Exchange Servers configured for different organizations, each organization’s data integrity is ensured.

For contract workers connected to multiple organizations there are a lot of benefits, not the least of which has to do with scheduling. When clicking on the Calendar view in Office I will now see my calendars side by side or, if I choose, I can superimpose one onto the other, so I can see my overall availability, as well as what I have to do for each organization on a given day or week. This functionality is very similar to how Outlook handles Shared Calendars for teams.

Earlier this week my team got an e-mail from from the coordinator of one of the companies that I work with, essentially chastising us for communicating with our clients using alternate e-mail accounts; I understand that their clients are their clients, and they want to be able to manage those communications. Again, if I had to close my main Outlook Profile in order to open my contractor Outlook Profile it would be difficult to maintain fluid communications. By configuring Outlook with multiple Exchange Servers I no longer have that issue. When initiating an e-mail conversation I am given the option of selecting which account I want to send from. When responding to their e-mail it will automatically select the proper account to reply from, although (as shown) I could just as easily change the account with the new account selector in the e-mail window. (This feature was previously available if you had multiple e-mail accounts configured using POP3 or IMAP)

Overall I think this is a huge improvement for the consultant, and allows us to work smarter, not harder.

Starting Out with Windows Server Core

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:29:00 GMT

When Microsoft announced the Server Core functionality of Windows Server 2008 a lot of people got very excited. Server Core is essentially the functionality of a server OS without any of the bloat of either a regular server or workstation OS. There is no graphical user interface (GUI) and it requires much fewer resources than the full installation. You are limited to what roles you can install, but Server Core is perfect for any of the following:

Active Directory (AD)
AD Lightweight Directory Services (LDS)
Hyper-v (virtualization parent)
DHCP Server
DNS Server
File Server
Media Services
Print Server

Of course most of these roles would be best administered using their appropriate MMC (Microsoft Management Console) consoles, but for actually running the services Server Core might be your best bet.

In this article I am going to outline six commands that I feel are required knowledge for anyone starting out with Server Core. In later articles I will discuss enabling and managing roles, but today I will cover the following:

Changing your server name
Changing your IP address (including Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, and DNS Server)
Setting a password
Joining a domain
Activating Windows
Enabling Automatic Updates

When you boot into Server Core (after providing credentials) you are given a Command Prompt… and that’s all. There is no Start menu, no desktop shortcuts; the only indication that you are not in an old MS-DOS system is that the Command Prompt is itself in a window. As such a lot of people do not seem to know where to start; here are a few tips to set you on your way:

1) Change your computer’s name to something manageable. Unlike any other edition of Windows when you first start out the name is assigned automatically, without a choice. It will be something like WIN-CE4SRY8Q. Most admins like their server names to mean something to them, but more importantly there are a few commands where you have to type in the system name in a command line… so change it, for our purposes to Core1:

netdom renamecomputer WIN-CE4SRY8Q /NewName:Core1

Of course after renaming your system you have to reboot, so:

shutdown /r /t 0

Note: The /r switch means you are restarting; the /t 0 cuts the time delay to 0 seconds (otherwise you would have to wait a minute before the reboot).

2) Change your IP settings. If you are satisfied with the default settings (like any version of Windows it will try to obtain an address from a DHCP Server) then you can skip this step. Use the ipconfig command as you would normally to verify these settings. To change them:

netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces.

This will show the relevant information about all Network Interface Cards (NICs). For our purposes the NIC will be called Local Area Connection and have an index of 1.

netsh interface ipv4 set address name="Local Area Connection" source=static address=172.16.0.15 mask=255.255.0.0 gateway=172.16.0.1

This assumes a Class B network where the gateway is at 172.16.0.1. Make sure you know your environment before assigning the wrong information or worse, addresses that are already assigned.

netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name="Local Area Connection" address=172.16.0.10 index=1

Here our primary DNS server is at 172.16.0.10. At this point you should be able to ping other systems on the network by IP address, Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), or NetBIOS name. If you cannot then verify your settings and connections and then try again.

3) Set the password. Of course this should be done according to your corporate policy but make sure you do not forget:

net user administrator *

You will be prompted to enter and re-enter a new password.

4) Join a Domain. Depending on your needs this may not be necessary, but if you must:

netdom join Core1 /domain:swmi.ca /userd:Administrator /passwordd:*

Note that the switch /passwordd has two Ds at the end; this is not a typo, and corresponds to the /userd. We use the asterix for the password because otherwise it is in clear text, and anyone looking over our shoulder could see our password. However if you are alone in a secure room with no hidden cameras you could simply type /passwordd:P@ssw0rd.

5) Activate Windows Server. Remember that your Server Core installation is a full license of Windows Server, and as such must be activated. Once you have an Internet connection:

slmgr.vbs –ato

A successful activation will not return any message following this command, and you will be returned to the prompt.

6) Enable automatic updates. Although Server Core has a much smaller footprint than a full install, patch management is still important. To enable automatic updates:

cscript c:\windows\system32\scregedit.wsf /au 4

The book that is essentially my bible for Windows Server 2008, Windows Server® 2008 Administrator’s Companion by Charlie Russel and Sharon Crawford, goes into more detail about all of these commands and more. Trust me, it is worth the investment!

There are a couple of interesting slogans I have heard used to refer to Server Core… my favourites are Windows without Windows or, playing on the ad campaign for Windows Vista, The Wow Stops Now. Any way you look at it, the flashiest aspect of Server Core is the lack of flash; it is what admins have been looking for, the ultimate bloatware-free server. Try it out and see what it can do for you!

An Interesting Response to a NYTimes Article on Cell Phones

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:18:35 GMT

It seems that Apple is having issues selling phones to New York City, or rather AT&T is not selling their iPhones to New York City on-line (you can still purchase them at brick-and-mortar stores). This article (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/for-new-yorkers-trouble-buying-an-iphone-on-atts-site/) explores a little bit, but the following is a response from AAA in Central Pennsylvania. It sounds like he might either work for AT&T, or else have a similar relationship to them as I do with Microsoft. I am only editing his text for spacing and spelling. I should mention that I am a customer of AT&T and have never had an issue with their network (in New York City or elsewhere), but am not an intensive data user – I usually just pull my e-mail, not videos. -M

I am a partner in a very mobile (as it we go to a variety of job sites each year) specialty systems integration business, and in a year, we all travel to many points within the "lower 48"
Cell phone based technology is our life line, and very often in setting up a site, the land line data lines are not yet in place, let alone the land line telephone lines for our client, so very often we use cell phone based devices to get the projects started.

What we have found from experience is that, like last week's, NYT article spelled out, ATT has a better network. Especially for our business cell phone account, and yes, there are provisioning (provisioning affects how a cell phone device interacts with the cell tower network) differences between residential / consumer / individual cell accounts and business cell accounts.

Now I will point out, that there are some dead spots, in places like when using laptops when riding the DC Metro, or in a back seat of a car in the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, or the NYC Lincoln Tunnel, or when on the NYC MTA, on the Elevated Sections in NYC or even on Amtrak (Boston to DC and Philadelphia to Harrisburg) where ATT does not always seem to work instantly, but that is a transitory event.

Within seconds the problem clears, ether by moving slightly, or waiting until the cell device grabs a new tower. Only in rural New Hampshire do we sometimes have a problem, and that is fixed by leaning on the roof of a parked car and resting the cell phone so the lower edge just touches the roof (greatly increases reception as the "ground plane" of he cell phone internal antenna is improved).

Though I will note, that nearly all cell phone based devices allow for the connection of an external antenna to improve reception and range.

Even in places like when crossing the Woodrow WiIson Bridge, south of DC, where you start out in Maryland, touch the DC and then end up in Virginia, all within less than a mile, ATT keeps the connection.

In terms of equipment, we use iPhones, Motorola Razors, HTC Advantages (paper back book sized cell phone with a 5 inch screen) and all manner of SIM card capable professional equipment (sourced from a variety of eBay based cell equipment vendors) that allows us to connect up regular telephone equipment on one side that, with the magic of the ATT SIM card installed in the device socket, is a cell phone on the other.

Thus we can carry our regular, (plug into the local phone line) credit card machine, fax machine, and even a back up hard wired telephone gear with us at all times, and can easily connect to ATT anywhere we do a project within the lower 48.

We have had the account since cell phones appeared in the 1980's and if there is anything to add, is that both ATT and Verizon started out poorly. But is has been ATT who has improved the most, and especially when ATT dropped analog cell technology.

Add to that improvement in coverage, even in odd ball Texas locations where the cows out number the people, the fact that the ATT technology of the SIM card allows for all manner of extra telephone / communication equipment to become a cell phone device.

The value of which is not to be underestimated, when coupled with the ATT signal. It is something that Verizon and its technology will not allow, so that means only with ATT technology can you put your 87 year old parent on the family cell account, and yet give them the desk telephone , so they don't have to fuss with a cell phone. (Secret is the box that accepts the ATT SIM card and connects to that old style phone.)

Or how on eBay we picked up unlocked European market netbooks that accepted ATT SIM cards so our entire staff has an instantly connected netbooks. No dongles, no USB plug ins, just turn on and go. Again only with ATT type technology, and certainly not Verizon with CDMA.

So, if your experience is only one tiny little iPhone, and you are not willing to walk down the hall or go to a window, I pity you, as, there are always going to be dead spots with any cell phone, and all you have to do is move.

If you still have a problem, call the carrier and check to see how your account is provisioned, and be prepared to get a business account and pay for it.

Like the days of hard wired phones, certain classes of service get the queue ahead of others which is why business cell accounts, always seem to have better service.

You get what you pay for.

Mitch & Friends Play Guitar Hero!

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:29:53 GMT

At TechEd NorAm 2009 in Los Angeles the Community Corner had an XBox 360 setup to play Guitar Hero… Some buddies and I played a couple of songs. Watch them now!

(I seem to recall we also did Hotel California with me on vocals… be glad that video appears to be lost forever!)

Smart Windows 7 Smartphones!

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:45:25 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

In June of 2009 I wrote an article about a feature of Windows 7 that I loved… but couldn’t at the time confirm would actually make it into the final release of Windows 7. In fact I was unable to find any documentation on it at all, which led me to believe, late one night, that I might have violated a non-disclosure agreement. The article was called Smartphones and Windows 7 – VERY Smart!

Fortunately the feature made it through, and here is how I set it up and access it.

Make sure your phone is properly paired to your computer.
Double-click on the Bluetooth icon in the Windows Notification Area.
Double-click on your Bluetooth Device (Alternately right-click on your device and click Control)
The Bluetooth Phone Operations and Settings window for your device will appear.
Under Phone Operations click the Connect button next to the line ‘Use this computer as a headset or speakerphone for calls on your phone (Model Number).
On the phone you will have to accept the connection attempt.

Once I did all of that my phone rang… complete coincidence of course, but the timing was great. I put on my headset (Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000) and answered the phone… the call came through over the headset.

I know that on the previous post the screen shot showed that I could enter a phone number to dial, hang up, and so on. I suspect this functionality will differ by phone model; I still have my old phone configured and the screen shot is slightly different; having said that the dial-from-computer functionality never worked on the old one – always said ‘not supported by this phone'.

Give this a shot… it is much easier to make calls without having to hold the phone to your ear for hours!

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

A Windows 2008 R2 Haiku!

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:44:29 GMT

I couldn’t believe it. There is actually a contest to write haiku about Windows Server 2008 R2. I used to write poetry, so I gave it a shot. Here are MY entries, based on the two technologies that I use most often:

Virtualize All / Hyper-V is the true path / Green are your servers

Server Core Simple / Command Line saves resources / Your footprint stays low

Think you can do better? Give it a shot at www.r2haiku.com!

eFolder… my first impressions of an automated on-line backup solution

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:34:41 GMT

My files are bulletproof… or at least I think/hope/pray that they are. I have a 60GB file on my laptop that stores my documents (and another 10GB of pictures). For security reasons the partition on which those directories sit is encrypted with BitLocker, so if I lose my laptop my files are safe. Every night my laptop is configured to back up these files (along with the entire laptop) to my Windows Home Server… so as long as I am home I am protected.

Over time I thought of a number of ‘doomsday scenarios’ that worried me, that would leave me somewhat unprotected:

What if there was a fire in my home, and both my laptop and my Windows Home server were destroyed?
What if I was on the road and my laptop was stolen (or corrupted) and I needed access to my files quickly?

Now let me be clear, I use my Live SkyDrive all the time… and Live Mesh for other things. However when i started asking around I learned about a couple of tools that would install on my laptop, backup the files (directories, drives, etc…) that I selected, and then continue to do this automatically on a set schedule. I liked the idea. Their term for this is ‘Cloud Storage’.

I met Jan Spring at a number of events over the last couple of years, and because her company had a good community focus (they sponsored a meeting of user group leaders from around the world recently) I decided to give their product – eFolder – a try. They were more than happy to accommodate me with a trial license (which, I confess, took me ten weeks to getting around to trying).

Once I was registered I received an e-mail from the company with my account number, username, and password. I had to go on-line to change my password right away, because they want to be clear – once you are using their solution only you can use it to either back up or retrieve your files.

The next step was to download their tool – eFolder Backup Manager installed on my Windows 7 x64 laptop without any hassles or arguments. Its install base is just shy of 40MB, not at all intrusive. More importantly to me is that its Windows Process takes nearly zero CPU cycles and less than 6MB of RAM while running, so it does not affect my performance and I can continue to work normally.

I had to configure my account – Remote Server name is provided, and I have the option of backing up to a local server or local disk as well. I had to enter my account credentials, and once that was done I had to create a Pass Phrase that would be my encryption key. It tells you how secure the key is, which is based on the length rather than complexity.

By default it was set to back up my user profile, but as I store my document and picture libraries in non-standard locations I was easily able to add those locations in the Options tab. <a recommendation to them and anyone developing software: update your default locations to interact with Windows 7 libraries, and not only the default file locations>

I set my schedule, keeping in mind that I did not want the ‘Cloud Backup’ to interfere or clash with my Windows Home Server backup. I clicked ‘Backup Now’ to run my initial backup. Of course that takes a long time (and is dependent on how much data compared to how fast your Internet pipe is), but once the initial backup is done it searches for the deltas… in other words it backs up what has changed since the last backup was run.

One of the key features that separates eFolder from many other on-line solutions, and one that will appeal to many of its customers, is their partnership with a Canadian datacentre (in Calgary). The reason this is so critical is because US law states that the Federal Government can, if it perceives a possible threat, legally gain access to any data stored on US soil. If you are worried about this then storing the data in Canada ensures that this cannot happen. I want to be clear that you have to agree during configuration that you will not use their service to break the law, and because I am a law abiding citizen who is not terribly afraid of the government I do not worry about these things. If you are concerned, make sure you tell them you want your data stored in Canada when you register.

A great feature for consultants or resellers to consider is that their partner program will allow you to rebrand their service as your own and resell it. I am not going to play with that, but it can be a real value add for your clients!

Once the backup has completed you can (from within the eFolder Backup Manager) click on Manage Account. This will direct you to their secure on-line portal where you can access their partner center, view a log of your remote backups and disk usage, and see a summary of your account. It tells you when your last successful backup was, and when your service expires. As well it tells you what your disk usage quota is so you do not run out of space inadvertently, or go over. There is also a cool search feature which allows you to search for specific files (or files with specific criteria) in your backup.

To try it out for yourself check them out at http://www.efolder.net/.

A Rebuttal to Windows 7: Seven points of imperfection

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:24:44 GMT

In her recent article ‘Windows 7: Seven points of imperfection’ (posted on IT World Canada, and written for PC World US) Jacqueline Emigh calls out seven deficiencies in Microsoft’s new client operating system. While I understand that columnists have to find a hook to please their editors, I am beginning to find it boring with how far some people are reaching.

The hook here of course is the very common theme of Se7en. I’m sure that if pressed I could write an article outlining seventy-seven things I like about Windows, as easily as I could write an article on seven things I dislike about any version of any operating system on the market. In this article, a rebuttal but certainly not an official one, simply based on my impressions because remember… Windows 7 was my idea!

#1: Windows doesn’t include certain earlier components.

A theme we will probably return to a few times herein, you simply can’t please everyone. One of the biggest complaints against Windows Vista was its footprint… too big. Ms. Emigh acknowledges that all of the components that she called out can be downloaded for free anyways, but if you do install Windows 7 and are used to them being there you may be mystified as to where to find them.

Most of the removed components – including the three mentioned in the article (Messenger, Mail, and Movie Maker) are now Windows Live components, and because of that there are two important benefits. Firstly the same components can be leveraged by users running legacy operating systems, and secondly improvements can be made to the programs – more than simple patches but actual version changes – outside of the band of the OS.

#2: Windows 7 lacks support for older printers and other external devices

Microsoft does not write hardware drivers. if you have a six year old Canon printer that does not have a Windows 7 driver then you should be complaining to Canon. However in any case that I have come across if there was a Windows Vista driver it will work on Windows 7. She also claims that the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit can be more of an issue, but again as long as your hardware provider has a 64-bit driver available you shouldn’t have a problem.

#3: Windows 7 forces you to learn a new UI

I drive a Camry. Last week I rented an Impala, and the week before I rented a Prius. I had to figure out the slightly different controls in each, so I spent three minutes feeling around, figuring out the lights, windshield washers, and radios of each; then I was fine. From Windows Vista to Windows 7 that is precisely how different the UI is; for users who skipped Vista then it may be a little longer… 10 minutes max. I say this because if this is among the biggest complaints that detractors have against Windows 7 then people who are not actively looking for faults should be very pleased!

#4: Windows 7 isn’t impervious to viruses

For ten years I have been telling people that I can build a building that is perfectly secure and impenetrable; all I need are four walls, a roof and a floor of 10-inch steel welded together and I am done. The problem is it is equally secure against those who need access as those who don’t. WIndows 7 is extremely secure, but it is also extremely useable.

A few years ago there was discussion of including anti-virus software in the OS; that was quickly followed by discussions of decimating an eleven billion dollar per year industry. However Microsoft has made available extremely good anti-malware solutions for both home users and corporations, in Microsoft Security Essentials and Forefront Client Security. Either of these – or a healthy dose of common sense – are enough to protect your Windows 7 from harm.

It should be noted that no operating system ever made was impervious to malware; it was simply a matter of the right hacker taking the time to write it.

#5: Installation of Windows 7 can be a real bear, especially in upgrades from XP

Firstly I should mention that Microsoft announced up front that there would be no upgrades from Windows XP to Windows 7; so of course upgrading would be tough. While I feel for the users who skipped Windows 7 only to find they are having problems upgrading I would like to remind them that Windows XP was released in October, 2001… and the fact that there is a way to perform the upgrade, even through workarounds, is a testament to the fact that Microsoft does care about all of its clients.

That being said, my experience with upgrading (which includes both my own and those of hundreds of clients, students, and readers) have not been that bad. The ‘endless reboot cycles’ that she mentions have not materialized for me or for anyone I have spoken to. As for some users being disappointed that they cannot upgrade from XP, there is a simple solution – upgrade your Windows XP system to Windows Vista, and then immediately upgrade your Windows Vista to Windows 7.

No matter whether you are wiping and starting fresh or trying any sort of upgrade it is a good point to mention you should perform your backup first. If you want the cleanest experience, the Windows Easy Transfer tool that is available on the Windows 7 DVD will backup your entire profile to disk, which allows you to wipe your disk clean and start with a truly clean environment.

#6: Windows 7 pricing is both too high and too complex

<There are two issues here, and I will address them individually>

<1>

Quote: ‘With family and business budgets pinched right now, why is Microsoft charging anywhere from about $100 to $300 for an upgrade disk for Windows 7, depending on the version?’

<For the record: Windows 7 Ultimate (Full Package Product) retails for $219.99>

I will now change a couple of words in this sentence to demonstrate my point:

With family and business budgets pinched right now, why is Toyota charging anywhere from about $10,00 to $30,000 to upgrade to a 2010 Camry, depending on the version?

Microsoft is in the business of selling software. Giving you new versions for free would hurt their business model, but it would also give them less incentive to make as good a product as they have. In reply to Mac OS costing less, may I remind you that this is after you have spent thousands of dollars on their hardware plus the OS, which is based on open source.

If people are upset that Microsoft offers cost benefits to people who beta test their software I invite them to spend the year before a product is released testing and troubleshooting and yes, finding bugs; it is not a fun experience, especially since once you find them you have to fill out paperwork on the bugs so they can be documented, tracked, and resolved.

As for Microsoft not advertising that OEM (original equipment manufacturer) software costs less than FPP (full-package product) it is simple; the cost savings for the license are definitely there, but for the privilege you have to purchase new hardware. If you know of anyone who went out last week and bought a brand new HP laptop but had them remove the OS license, then purchased the FPP license of Windows then that person wasted their money. OEM software is less expensive than FPP because Microsoft offloads the support requirements to the OEM; if my HP laptop with a Windows OEM license has a problem then I have to call HP, who are glad to help me with it. If I purchase FPP then I have to call Microsoft.

<2>

I agree that there are a few different editions of Windows 7. There were by the way six SKUs of Windows Vista, six of Windows XP. Depending on what your needs are you should purchase the right one; for example a home user who wants to use Media Center but would never need to join a domain would purchase Windows Home Premium Edition

I would posit that Microsoft has actually simplified their editions in Windows 7. In Windows Vista each edition had some features but not others; in Windows 7 the editions are cumulative – so Windows 7 Business will include all of the features of Windows Home Premium, and will not include any features that are excluded from Windows 7 Ultimate Edition.

If customers are too confused to decide what version they need, there are a number of simple questions that should help them decide:

1. Are you a home user or a business user?

<home: Home Basic or Home Premium>

<home 2>. Do you want the advanced graphics and media player?

<yes: Home Premium, no: Home Basic>

<business 2>. Do you have (or would you like) a volume license agreement with Microsoft? Do you need security features such as BitLocker, or multiple language packs?

<yes: Enterprise, no: Business Edition>

3. Do you want to have every feature of every edition, bar none?

<Windows 7 Ultimate Edition>

So if you ask ‘why don’t they simplify it so that there is only one edition?’ the simple answer is they are not asking people to pay for the features they do not need. My mother does not need to join a domain, run XP Mode, and protect her files using BitLocker to Go. She needs a plain and simple OS, which is what she paid for.

#7: Customer support for Windows 7 is too scanty

Microsoft released their much anticipated new OS on October 22, 2009. I am sure that in the days and weeks that followed their support calls were overloaded. Fortunately for many Microsoft does have a plethora of forums, newsgroups, and white papers that will guide customers through most problems they might encounter. Remember the complaint about beta testers getting rebates? Many of us wrote a lot of those papers, and still more of us man the forums and newsgroups to help out. Most companies not only don’t offer the same level of on-line support for their clients, but also do not have nearly the same ‘Influencer’ base that can offer that level of support on the day that a new product is released. People were asking questions, and we were answering them. Did every question get answered within an hour? No. Did most questions get answered in a reasonable delay? I think so.

‘In early sales, Windows 7 has been beating Vista by a wide margin. But does the company have enough customer support in place to handle the load?’

One of the problems that Ms. Emigh points to is that Microsoft does not have enough employees answering forum posts. This may be true, but if you include all of the influencers, the community members who answered so many of those questions, then the number of people working on this was truly staggering. Yes, it is true that there is no mechanism in the forums and newsgroups to make sure that questions did not fall through the cracks, but to say that the support was scanty is folly.

‘Still, when a user is facing a critical system error, just about nothing in the customer support realm beats the immediacy of a phone call.’

This is a true statement,… and there are premium support calls available through PSS to address issues that cannot wait; however immediacy does not always mean urgency, and more often than not it is worth the end user’s while to wait a few hours rather than paying for a support call.

---

I am the first to admit that Windows 7 is not perfect. Okay, that may not be true, since Jacqueline Emigh beat me to it. However if someone is going to write an article panning it I would suggest that they spend a little more time researching, rather than come up with such reaching real imperfections, and not issues that fall squarely on hardware manufacturers or upgrading an eight year old OS. Even someone like myself, who is on most products quite loyal to Microsoft, and tend to air my grievances directly to the product team and not in public, can come up with seven legitimate problems if I looked hard enough… which is indeed what she seems to be doing.

10 Dumb things you can do to your Cisco Router

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:07:32 GMT

This article came over my RSS feed from Global Knowledge; it is an article from January by David Davis which outlines 10 things you shouldn’t do with your Cisco router. If you were to turn it upside down, it is a really good reminder of ten tips you should always follow with your Cisco router… and with most any computer system!

http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/generic.asp?pageid=2308&country=United+States

Don’t Mess With Juju!

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:22:49 GMT

<Originally posted October, 2006> Earlier today someone referenced this article from my old blog which will, eventually, be migrated over to my new blog. However in the meantime I am reposting it. To be frank the perfect record no longer stands true. –MDG

Don’t Mess With Juju: Even if you are not superstitious it cannot hurt to appease the particular forces of nature!

I do not consider myself to be a superstitious person. I have never worried about breaking mirrors and I remember as a kid intentionally stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. I do not have a lucky number but if I did I would give serious thought to making it thirteen. I do not think I have ever thrown salt over my left shoulder (or right one for that matter) and though I am not a particular fan of cats (allergies) I think the black ones are the sleekest and would gladly let one cross my path.

That being said, there are two routines that I follow religiously when it comes to sitting for certification exams. I do not I will not I cannot change these, and am convinced that if I do I will fail. They are both so hard-wired into my brain that people look at me as if I am nuts.

Firstly, I will not wear a Microsoft shirt the day I am scheduled to sit for an exam. If you have ever met me (at least in the last year) chances are I was wearing a Microsoft shirt; whether it be just Microsoft-branded or a Microsoft Certified Something shirt, I have more of them than most Microsoft employees. I made a business decision that it was a good image as a consultant, so during the week I am almost always wearing logo-ware. Frankly it happens without thinking about it that I wear them on the week-end too; I have a number of clients who are that because they saw me wearing a shirt on the golf course and started talking to me. However if I know I am taking an exam on a given day I will intentionally put on a shirt from the other drawer or side of the closet. I have just always felt that it is tempting fate to flaunt my standing in the community.

The second thing I do is I always have a new package of Jolly Rancher hard candies on the desk. This may sound less weird than eccentric, until I mention that I usually do not even open the package. It is not to eat, but they have to be there. THAT makes it weird. I know it, I accept it, and frankly I do not make any bones about it. It can be argued that I am anal on this matter. An objective observer might think I suffer from OCD. I do not mind, but the bottom line is that I have never passed an exam where I did not have them, and I have never failed an exam where I did.

We all have our routines or patterns we must follow for certain things, and I have learned that these routines are not necessarily transferrable. I recently taught a course in Small Business Server and told the class about my JRs. One of my students met me at my favorite café some weeks later with a long face. He put a package of Jolly Ranchers on the table and said ‘They didn’t help, I still failed.’ I guess the company that makes the candies lost a huge market segment that day with that realization.

In June I was scheduled to take an exam at a strange testing centre. I was not running early by any means but I did show up about 20 minutes before I the scheduled time. I was about to get out of my car when, to my horror, I realized that I had forgotten to stop for Jolly Ranchers. My regular test centre has a convenience store downstairs so I am always good but this centre was new to me, and there was no store in sight. I got back into my car and must have stopped at seven stores, gas stations, whatnot before I found one place that had them. Free retake or not this was an upgrade exam and I was not ready to tempt fate – literally spit in the face of Juju – by changing my routine. I showed up late for the first time in my certification life but I did not care – I had my JRs, and all was right in the world. (To remind me not to tempt fate again Juju did not let me score too well, but well enough to pass.)

Today I sat for an exam that I had very little doubt I would ace. I later joked that my pet fish could have scored a 700 on this exam, and he died on Friday. It did not matter, whatever exam I was writing I am now convinced in the deepest reaches of my being that I need my Juju, so before going up one floor to the testing centre I first went into the basement where the lovely Korean woman knows that when she sees me I am taking an exam. Am I crazy? You can make your own decision about that; the truth is for the USD$125 that each exam costs I do not mind spending the extra $1.25 that the Ranchers cost me if I really believe they help me.

Who knows? Maybe I am out of my mind. Maybe I was just ill-prepared for the few exams I failed. Maybe Juju or Fate or superstition has nothing to do with it. My friend Steph says that it was her undying faith in my intelligence that helped me ace this exam. She says that her faith in me is so strong that it alone will push me over the line from failure into pass if need be… but faith or not she knows that tomorrow when I sit for my exam I will be wearing a golf shirt with no logo, and I will have a brand new pack of Jolly Ranchers on the desk next to me – it has to be a fresh pack because the Juju is drained from the pack to power the exam. Frankly she would probably be disappointed if I didn’t, even if she still takes credit for it.

Of course I go into each exam with the knowledge and belief that the combination of my studying, reviewing, and real world experience are sufficient to pass the exam, but it does not hurt to appease the unknown (and obviously quite particular if peculiar) forces that surround us. I suppose in the end it is not a question of Jolly Ranchers and logos but it is for me. Maybe for you it will be a breakfast of Corn Flakes with whipped cream and a particular pair of running shoes. If you are lucky you do not need anything but if you feel you do – if you think you might just might need that extra something to make it work, then do not feel embarrassed and do not neglect it. After all, even the best of us need all the Juju we can get!

Windows 7 and Family Guy

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:23:29 GMT

The week Windows 7 released Microsoft was slated to sponsor a portion of the Fox TV animated(and rather colourful) show Family Guy. At the last minute they pulled the plug because someone realized that the show did not quite … well frankly it is crude and tasteless. Nonetheless the original clip has made it to YouTube, and here it is!

http://www.youtube.com/user/WindowsVideos

Of course although the sentence is true, I still think my Launch Party video (put together by Sean ‘Energized Funny Guy’ Kearney) is still a better video!

Mitch speaks with Stephen Ibaraki

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:56:36 GMT

I can hardly believe it has been nearly a year since I sat down to speak with Stephen Ibaraki. Stephen is a very well respected professional, a past-president of the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS), Advisor to Chair of Culminis (now GITCA), and a 44-year-veteran of the technology field. Aside from all of that I am proud to call him a friend.

With all of that when Stephen asked me to sit down with him and talk about the industry I gladly got out of bed early in the morning last December to account for the time zones, and spent a good deal of time talking with him. Here is the transcript and podcast:

http://stephenibaraki.com/interviews_general/v19/mitch_garvis_podcast_nb.html

A Brief Discussion of Security with Regard to Resource Over-Commitment in VMware

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:45:10 GMT

There are two schools of thought when it comes to physical memory over-commitment between virtual machines.

The first school of thought is that it is a great way for virtual machines to leverage more memory than the host server actually has. the memory resources available to the Guest OS machines exceed the available resources of the host. So:

Host Server 64 GB RAM

10x VMs 2GB Reservation, 8GB Limit

Memory reserved for powered-on VMs: 16GB RAM

Memory available to each guest OS: 80GB RAM

Obviously our virtual machines cannot access what is not there, but most machines do not use all available resources at any given time; so each VM has 2GB permanently (as long as they are powered-on), and there are 44GB left for the VMs to ‘share’. This is called resource over-commitment, and is enabled by what VMware calls their balloon driver which, I must admit, is pretty cool. Because our guest operating systems would crash if the actual available memory constantly changed, a swap file is created on the data store that is equal to the total available memory minus the memory reservation, and when the VM does not have the physical memory available the swap file stands in its place for all or any part of the memory requirements.

(I should mention that I have severely oversimplified this scenario for the sake of simplicity. I am not including factors such as host resource requirements, priorities, and more; they are irrelevant to the point of the article.)

The second school of thought is that memory over-commitment (which obviously implies physical memory being shared or ‘traded’ between virtual machines) is a great and blaring security hole. For this reason Microsoft’s Hyper-V (including the original and the 2008 R2) do not support over-commitment. So:

Host Server 64 GB RAM

10x VMs Maximum 6.4 GB RAM each

In Hyper-V all allocated memory is protected from the others by virtual buses.

In VMware many workloads present opportunities for sharing memory across virtual machines. For example, several virtual machines may be running instances of the same guest OS, have the same applications or components loaded, or contain common data.

According to one Microsoft virtualization security expert, Microsoft’s position is that by sharing resources there is a potential that hackers could inject code into a driver or common application that would be used by multiple VMs, thus passing the malicious code from the [initially infected] virtual machine into others.

The expert goes on to say that this is all theoretical to this point, because to date there have been no known instances of hackers exploiting this hole in the wild.

The next layer to this issue is that there are applications that allow you to patch VMware guest machines ‘on the fly’ in memory. In other words a hacker who breaches the initial security now has a tool to inject malicious code into running VMs.

I have always said that the level of security of any system should take into account all reasonable threats, with a strong consideration for what the security system is protecting. In other words while both need a firewall, the solution I implement for my mother’s laptop will look nothing like the solution I implement for an enterprise client with sensitive data.

I think that both Microsoft’s Hyper-V and VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure are excellent virtualization solutions. While you can’t beat the price of Hyper-V, I would never tell a client that they should not implement an ESX 4.0 Server because of a hypothetical potential security flaw inherent in over-committing resources.

I will continue to keep my eyes open for this exploit. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that ‘if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door*;’ I do not believe that, and if one were to look at IT security as a baseline the phrase would be ‘Build a better mouse trap, and the world will make a better mouse.’ One of the unfortunate results of improvements in systems security over the years has been how much smarter hackers have become, and I suspect it is only a matter of time before this vulnerability is exploited.

ADDITION

Although memory over-commitment is a great way of maximizing and even extending past your actual available resources, it should be mentioned that even VMware does not recommend that it be used in a production environment. According to a document on their website entitled ‘Performance Tuning Best Practices for ESX Server 3’ (I have not been able to find a similar document for ESX Server 4, but this technology is similar):

Avoid frequent memory reclamation. Make sure the host has more physical memory than the total amount of memory that will be used by ESX plus the sum of the working set sizes that will be used by all the virtual machines running at any one time. (Note: ESX does, however, allow some memory overcommitment without impacting performance by using the memory management mechanisms described in “Resource Management Best Practices” on page 12 [of this document].

One colleague of mine, an employee of Microsoft, concedes that resource overcommitment is a great tool for a test/dev environment, but is adamant that he would not use it in production. I would not disagree with this. However like so many questions in our field the real answer is what I refer to as the Universal Consultants Answer (UCA): It depends.

*This phrase is apparently a misquote; the true quote is ‘If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten path to his house, though it be in the woods’

Wild for Windows 7!

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:23:28 GMT

I have seen a lot of contests recently… some promise cash, others cool prizes. This contest will actually help you to grow your business!

Microsoft Canada has a great contest for IT professionals and implementers. Do you have a story about how Windows 7 is helping you to expand your customer base? Have you developed an innovative Windows 7 application? How about a great customer deployment story? Tell Microsoft about it and you can win… big!

The Wild for Windows 7 contest winner will receive Seven Thousand Dollars (CDN$7,000) in professional marketing services from one of Microsoft’s most trusted marketing agencies. This could include anything from direct marketing campaigns to event planning.

You have to enter by December 11, 2009 so make sure you visit the site (http://www.microsoft.com/canada/partner/windows-7-partner-contest/default.aspx?lang=en-CA&wt.mc_id=can_win7-partnercontest-en_bulletin_sbsc) and sign up. Tell your friends about it too… and don’t forget to let me know that you entered! :)

Windows 7 Comes to the Sarnia Computer Users Group!

Mitch Garvis — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:05:28 GMT

On October 28 I was invited to present a STEP (Springboard Technical Experts Panel) Event for the Sarnia Computer Users Group in Sarnia, Ontario. Steve Syfuhs and I drove out there and had a great time, even though we were in for a surprise! I have to say that this group of retired hobbyists were every bit as knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and interested as many professional groups I have spoken to! Check out their site to see some of the pictures… http://scug.ca/michgarvis1028.html

Windows 7 Launch Event: OAKVILLE ROCKS!

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:58:57 GMT

When Microsoft announced that rather than throwing large launch events in select cities they would enable Influencers to throw ‘House Parties’ there was a lot of ridicule; many said it wouldn’t work, others poked fun and even shot mocumentaries about them. Cameron McKay and I set out to prove that not only COULD they work, but we wanted to set the bar for what one of these parties should look like.

Some of our colleagues across the country (and around the globe) invited people into their homes; others leveraged their pull with local businesses (including Microsoft offices) to make the event look a lot like a user group meeting. We wanted to do something different.

We reserved Artisano’s Bakery Cafe in Oakville; they would cater hors d’oeuvres and deserts and we supplied drink tickets to everyone. At 4pm we starting setting up… five machines in all running Windows 7, a VERY powerful hi-def wide screen projector, a few KVM switch boxes, and a really powerful set of desktop speakers with sub-woofer. Thankfully the duct tape kept the wires down, and nobody got hurt!

We had five computers set up and running… two relatively new ones (my production laptop and my netbook – these would be for demos and PowerPoint respectively), a two year old laptop for people to play with, as well as what we called the Clunker Corner… machines that were previously thought to be ready for the junk heap, but that Windows 7 runs nicely on! One of those machines acted as the sound system, the other was another demo box for people to try out… and they did, in droves!

In total we had 52 guests show up. Most were local to the west end of the GTA but we also had a few people take the train from downtown, Scarborough, and Oshawa; we even had a couple of out-of-towners – from Montreal and Chicago!

The kit that Microsoft supplied included a jigsaw puzzle; As I set up the computers my beautiful wife Theresa put the puzzle together, and I had an idea; why not use the puzzle as a fundraiser? We sold pieces of the puzzle; for $2 each people could choose their piece and write their name on the back; the pieces then went into a wicker basket (borrowed from the restaurant). Not only did the puzzle pieces sell out, but one very generous attendee asked for 50 pieces. Rather than giving him the individual pieces I thanked him for his generosity and gave him two of our 15 prize bags. All in all we raised $250 for the Meadow Green Academy Gymnasium Fund! For the winners we handed out prize bags containing Windows 7 Ultimate (NFR) licenses, pens, stickers, and more.

People started coming in at 6:30 but we kicked off the formal presentation at 7:15. For the next hour Cam and I demonstrated many of the cool new features of Windows 7, ranging from the GUI and Aero Peek, new Windows key combinations, and more, BitLocker to Go, Location-aware devices, security (including the much improved UAC!), Windows XP Mode, and much more. As the saying goes, a good time was had by all.

After the official presentation someone asked if it was really an easier and faster install than Windows Vista and XP; I could have explained to him that it was but I decided to show him instead, popping my USB Deployment Stick into the 2-year-old laptop and redeploying Windows 7, Microsoft Security Essentials, and Microsoft Office 2007 from scratch in about 20 minutes. Everyone was amazed!

In the ‘Fireplace Corner’ we set up a video camera so that our team (Steve Syfuhs and Sean Kearney) could interview the attendees about the party, Windows 7, and asked them about what they hoped to see in Windows 7 (or what their experience was already) and what they were excited about; a few of the popular answers to that were XP Mode and BitLocker to Go, along with the faster interface and GUI functionality.

In case you missed it – or if you would like to reminisce about the great evening, our camera team had the video cameras rolling the whole evening. Sean ‘Friday Funny’ Kearney took all of that footage and did an incredible job compiling the event video, which you can see here!

I would like to take a moment to thank all of the people who made this event happen: First and foremost my beautiful wife Theresa, without whom I am not allowed to do anything! Despite being seven months pregnant she helped with the set-up, brought our son down for dinner, then took him to Tae Kwon Do and then back, where my boy was amazed that his dad really is a public speaker (every time I had tried to help him with that aspect of schoolwork he refused… I suspect that might change now!). My partner in crime, Cameron McKay, who joined in making it an incredible evening, and also picked up half of the bill (don’t forget that we paid for the food and drinks out of our own pockets!). Sean Kearney and Steve Syfuhs not only helped with setting up and breaking down, but also were our cameramen and videographers throughout the evening. Additionally Sean went above and beyond by taking the video footage and creating the incredible video you see here! Also I have to thank Sue and the crew at Artisano’s who not only make a mean pizza (PEPERONI!!) but went out of their way to make everything just right for the night. From Microsoft (and Microsoft Canada!) I want to thank Stephen Rose (STEP… absolute genius!) and the whole STEP program, Mark R. who showed me a few W7 tricks early on, Rob Gellar who contributed some of the prizes, Simran Chaudhry and the MVP Crew (LJUPCO!!), the DPE guys (Rodney came but Rick and Damir helped as ‘advisors’). I am probably forgetting a bunch of people because when an event goes this well and this smoothly there are so many people behind it. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CAME! Without them Cam, Sean, Steve, and I would have had a lot of celery and cookies!

What to do with a busted laptop?

Mitch Garvis — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:57:53 GMT

My wife’s 17” HP Pavillion laptop broke; when I say that it broke I do not mean that the OS crashed or that the hard disk was defective, or even that the motherboard fried, which are all legitimate reasons for computers to stop working. It seems that a couple of people liked to carry the open laptop from place to place by the screen, and eventually the hinge broke. The screen still works, the system itself is great, but it neither closes nor opens properly, and to top that off much of the plastic frame is broken and bits of wire and electronics are exposed where they should not be. Add to the damage caused by humans there is also damage done by dogs… Gingit at one point decided to learn to type, and when she got bored ATE the F3, F7, and T keys. _ry _yping a le__er wihou_ _he le__er _ and you will unders_and my frus_ration.

We looked into getting the damage fixed but the quotes were over $500… not worth it for a three year old laptop that is one of 5 laptops and 13 computers in the house. It has been sitting on a shelf in my office for months.

As I prepare for my Windows 7 Launch Party (http://www.houseparty.com/party/175335) this week I am planning all sorts of demos… Media Center, Deployment, and more. As I planned it out I realized I did not particularly want to use any of my primary machines lying around… although I can do a pretty good job of securing them I really don’t want just anyone playing with them; I plan to mingle and do not want to spend my time (or assign people to) watching my laptops for funny business. So I looked on the shelf to seek alternatives. I decided to spin up the HP and see how it worked… and of course it worked flawlessly.

I popped in the USB key that I created in my last article (Creating a Multi-OS Installation USB Key) and booted from it – I knew I had already moved all data off the disused laptop – and installed Windows 7 x64 Ultimate. Fifteen minutes later the only error message I received was that the Microsoft Security Essentials could not be installed because I had only included the x86 installation file… everything else worked flawlessly!

So what do we do with a busted laptop? It is certainly not worth paying to fix… but is it worth throwing out? Absolutely not.

The first question I asked myself is if the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts? Simply put, if I were to cannibalize it would the components be worth more to me than the unit as a whole? As the system itself is functioning perfectly (including the screen) the quick answer is no… the interchangeable components are just too inexpensive these days for them to be worth more separately.

So what is the real damage? The computer works fine, the screen is great, it is simply the hinge that is unusable. Thus the only part that does not work is the portability! What was once a portable laptop is now destined to be a stationary desktop. I should mention that if the screen was NOT working this would still be a good solution, only I would need an external monitor for it to work.

Next came the question of the keyboard… It made me think for a few minutes because I actually had a few options, now that I knew that the system would be stationary… I could add an external keyboard to it of course, but there are also a number of systems that do not require a keyboard… servers! I would never make a busted up laptop a full production server, but what about a test environment? A Terminal Server? A Home Server? I even briefly considered, knowing that it is how it started its life converting it into a Media Center PC to run my TV! All viable options, but as my wife and I just bought a PVR, and because I have a really good server already, that it was destined to become a desktop PC.

So I now have an extra demo unit for the launch party. But what should I do with it after the launch?

I do not spend a lot of time there but I actually do have an office… desk and all! The only thing I do not have there is a computer, because I always come and go with my laptop. Starting this week that will not be the case; I will install the former laptop there, set up remote access, a keyboard and mouse, and for about $60 in hardware I will have a perfectly functioning – though not necessarily pretty – desktop computer. I laugh not because of my ingenuity, but because no fewer than five people and charitable organizations refused it as a donation saying they didn’t want junk. What they call junk I now call a very reliable high-performance Windows 7 machine!

Creating a Multi-OS Installation USB Key

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:14:23 GMT

Back when I was a computer support technician I used to carry a binder of CDs and DVDs, including (but certainly not limited to!) every version and edition of Windows client and server. This came in handy every time I replaced a hard drive because I could reinstall the OS without having to take it in to the lab.

Fast forward to 2009.

Earlier this year I wrote in an article that Tim Mintner and I created a USB key from which we could install several different versions of the Windows operating system. I know a lot of techs who liked the idea, so in this article I will explain how to do it.

My Tools

For the purpose of this article I will use my Windows 7 laptop, the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, and a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16GB USB key that I borrowed brom Bradley Bird at TechEd and never returned (thanks Brad!).

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010

Although I usually install the MDT on a server I installed it on my laptop to demonstrate that a server is supported but is not required. My laptop is running the 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Ultimate so I downloaded the x64 version of MDT 2010… but there is a 32-bit version as well which works the same way.

MDT is one of those tools that is relatively small (9.76MB) and can be downloaded in seconds. One of the requirements for the MDT however is the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) which in its current iteration weighs in at 1.7GB. Make sure you have it ready when you want to start!

Once you have installed the MDT 2010 and the Windows AIK you have to create a Deployment Share. Being the imaginative guy that I am I called mine MDT Deployment Share. I linked it to the local directory D:\Deployment, and assigned it the UNC path of \\MDG-E6500\Deployment$. Even though it will never be a network deployment server it is necessary to assign a share, which by default and best practice should be an administrative share.

Now that my deployment share has been created I need to import my Operating System files.

Click on Operating Systems in the navigation bar.
In the Actions pane click Import Operating System. The Import Operating System Wizard will launch.
In the OS Type window ensure that Full set of source files is selected and click Next.
In the Source window click Browse and navigate to the directory where your OS is located. Normally this will be the root of your DVD drive; if you use .ISO files like me then mount the file (I use MagicISO) and then navigate to the root of the virtual DVD, and click OK. Back in the Source window click Next.
The wizard should automatically identify the OS version and edition; in the Destination window ensure the Destination directory name is appropriate (i.e.: Windows 7 x64) and click Next.
In the Summary window make sure that the details are correct, and click Next.

Once the import process is complete you should have a number of different OS editions in your MDT. That is because the .WIM file contains multiple editions. Although you can delete some of them for the sake of organization (I generally delete all of the Home editions for business deployment points) it is not necessary.

You have to repeat the above steps for all of the operating systems that you want to deploy. In the end you might have a list that looks like this:

Next you should import any applications that you install often:

right-click Applications under the deployment share in the navigation bar and click New Application. The New Application Wizard will open.
In the Application Type window select Application with source files and click Next.
In the Details window enter the appropriate information and click Next.
In the Sources window click Browse and navigate to the directory where your OS is located. Normally this will be the root of your DVD drive but it can also be the directory where the installation files are stored, and click OK. Back in the Source window click Next.
In the Destination window ensure that the name is correct (it is based on the information you specified in the Details window) and click Next.
In the Command Details window the Working directory should already be populated; for the Command line you should enter the command that you would use to install the application, including command-line switches. So you could either type setup.exe, or get fancier and enter setup.exe /adminfile Custom2.msp. When you are satisfied click Next.
On the Summary page ensure the details are correct and click Next to import the files.

When you are done importing your applications they will all be listed in the Applications list.

Now you might want to import Packages and Out-of-Box drivers, but that I will save for another time. Let’s move forward and create our task sequences.

A Task Sequence is a list of commands that must be performed by the deployment point. These are the instruction sets that make our deployment work.

In the navigation pane click on Task Sequences.
In the Actions pane click New Task Sequence. This will launch the New Task Sequence Wizard.
In the General Settings window enter a Task Sequence ID(3 unique characters) and a Task Sequence Name that you will recognize and understand. You can also enter comments if you wish. Click Next.
In the Select Template window select Standard Client Task Sequence from the drop-down list and click Next.
In the Select OS window choose the OS that you would like this TS to deploy. Only one OS version and edition can be installed by a single task sequence. Click Next.
In the Specify Product Key window ensure that Do not specify a product key at this time is selected and click Next. This will ensure that you are prompted for a unique key every time you deploy.
In the OS Settings window you must enter a name and organization name; if all of your deployment will be for you then use your own name, but some people may want to use more generic names like ‘IT Department’. Click Next.
In the Admin Password screen you should specify the local administrator password, although you have the option of selecting Do not specify an Administrator password at this time. Click Next.
On the Summary screen ensure the information is correct and click Next to create it.

You will have to repeat these steps for each OS that you would want to deploy from your USB key. In the end it might look like this:

Next you have to update your deployment share. In the navigation pane right-click on your deployment share and click Update Deployment Share. In the Options window for a first-time share you would leave the default; click Next. The Deployment Share will populate and you are in business! (This is actually a very time consuming step… expect to wait!)

Once your Deployment Share is updated all that is left is to create the media files. The wizard will create two sets of files (the files themselves and an ISO of the files), each one roughly equivalent to the total size of everything you have created – i.e.: really big. My first attempt exceeded not only my 16GB USB key, but also the free space on my hard drive! Remember that if your files come to 9GB then you need at least 18GB free on the Media Path drive.

Under your Deployment Share in the navigation pane expand Advanced Configuration and click Media.
In the Actions pane click New Media to launch the New Media Wizard.
In the General Settings window enter a Media path. The path must be an empty directory. Click Next.
In the Summary window make sure that all of your details are correct and then click Next to create the files.

Once the files have been created on your hard disk you can copy them to a bootable USB key. To create a bootable key follow the instructions I wrote in the article Bootable USB Media for Windows 7.

Conclusion

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 makes deployment simple. In this article I have essentially held your hand through the process of creating a USB deployment point… but that is only part of the magic of the MDT. Now that you have worked with it through this article you can expand on that and create network deployment points, capture existing images using MDT, and much more. Take what I have given you and run with it, and you too can be a deployment guru!

Meadow Green Academy: A Case Study of a Modern OS Deployment, Part 1

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:23:01 GMT

If a tool is cumbersome, unwieldy, inefficient, and difficult to use, would you use it? Would you look forward to the experience? Neither would I; so when at the end of last year my son’s Grade 5 homeroom teacher told me that the computers in the school were unreasonably slow, extremely cluttered, and that the students did not look forward to using them, I wanted to see for myself how bad they really were.

The school I’m describing is a small private school in Mississauga called Meadow Green Academy. Class sizes range from 12-20 students with one campus location for students in grades 4-8 and another campus for Junior Kindergarten – grade 3 about 7 kilometres away. The upper school has approximately seventy-five students, a staff of maybe ten teachers, and a handful of administration staff. With fewer than ninety bodies it is reasonable that their computer lab should consist of twenty workstations and a server.

Four years ago the school made an investment in its computers – a server running Windows Server 2003 that is both domain controller and file server, as well as brand new workstations running Windows XP. At the time, the 512MB of RAM in both the workstations and server were quite sufficient. In fact as they were still running Windows XP the specs as I saw them should have run reasonably well. However it would not be the first time computers that were supposed to perform well did not, so I decided to investigate further.

My first thought was a DNS issue; Nine years ago I administered a network where user logon took 10-15 minutes – unreasonable by any measure – and when the Domain Naming Service on the server was properly configured and the workstation network settings were tweaked that logon time dropped to under a minute. I started to doubt this as the cause when local operations (such as loading applications) took unreasonable time as well.

Because all twenty computers presented identical symptoms, I expected the cause would have been central but I was wrong and understood why reasonably quickly. Twenty identical computers with identical symptoms began to make sense when I discovered that none of them had been managed or monitored on an ongoing basis, and considering each was used similarly over an extended period of time it made sense that they were sluggish beyond comfort.

· The hard drives were all full, by which I do not mean reasonably full but rather the free space on each was counted in kilobytes;

· Although some of the systems did have Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, most did not. (Service Pack 3 had been released over a year earlier.)

· Although there was a centralized anti-virus solution in place it was not regularly monitored, and there were a number of infections of different sorts discovered in thirteen of the workstations.

I asked for a meeting with the school’s administration and laid out my findings. There is an old adage saying that the shoemaker’s children go barefoot. I don’t make shoes… but I know a thing or two about information technology. I asked if I could offer my help as a concerned parent, and went to work.

Although I spend most of my time writing and teaching, I am still a reasonably successful IT Professional; I have two principles that I live by when taking on projects:

1. Measure twice, cut once; and

2. If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.

The first of these sayings originates in carpentry; simply put, a good measure of proper planning can save time, money, stress, and headaches. I knew that before I purchased a license or memory chip, cleaned out a machine, patched an operating system, I had to know what materials I had; based on that I could determine what we could do, and what we would need. I first heard the second philosophy from the owner of a security company where I used to work. By profession he was an accountant, and he said it at an otherwise boring and uneventful management meeting. I did not appreciate it until later.

This article is the first part of a series that will take the valiant IT department of Meadow Green Academy from zero to hero over the course of a summer. For the users – students and teachers alike – it is a true Cinderella story. It Is also a textbook case of transitioning the IT of a small business – possibly a small business just like yours, certainly with some of the same pains and needs as any small business – from a cost center, break-fix model to a rational, managed model that makes it a strategic asset to the organization.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that because it is a school it is somehow unique; it is unique, of course, because every small business is, but it also has users who produce work – ranging from reports, schedules, documents and spreadsheets to homework and class assignments. There is a boss that is at the same time responsible for all these users, but also responsible both to them and to their clients (parents). They have standards that have to be met, and, like you, want to get home to their families. Like most of us they want to use their computers as a means to an end, and not be hindered by them. They also want to learn the latest technology and not be stuck in the 90s with yesterday’s technology.

Over the course of the series, I will explain the goals we set, the hurdles we encountered, the opportunities we discovered, and the headaches we endured. I’m going to let you in on a secret right now; I know how the story ends, and it ends well. I will discuss many of the tools involved behind the scenes, as well as the operating systems (Windows 7) and applications that would be installed using those tools. I will even try to give you a glimpse into the discussions we had in trying to choose these tools.

The series is more about the process used than it is about Windows 7, although Windows 7 was the impetus for taking on the project. In the end, it is about how the right technology can help us all to work smarter and not harder with the minimum hardware purchases, the right consultant, and the right attitudes.

This is the story of how Meadow Green Academy became the first school in Canada to run completely on Windows 7, and how it has benefited them.

Creating a new Domain Forest on Server Core

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:04:27 GMT

This article explains how to install a new domain forest on Windows Server Core, or in the Windows Server CLI (Command Line Interpreter). I will not discuss any other option for RODCs, existing domains, child domains, and so on… there are a plethora of articles out there that describe those already.

It astounded me the first (several) times I tried to create a new domain using Windows Server Core installations as my first domain controller in the forest. There are, I should mention, copious articles on creating additional DCs in an existing domain, but I have not come across too many (any?) that explained creating the FIRST… i.e.: creating the forest FOR the trees :)

This evening Steve Syfuhs and I sat down and attempted to do just that. Actually our original intentions had very little to do with that, but as we discovered along the way we would have two choices:

Create a new physical server with Windows Server 2008 FULL install, create a new domain on GUI mode, join our Server Core machine to that domain, promote it to Domain Controller, transfer all Operations Master Roles to the Server Core machine, and continue on; or
Figure out once and for all how to create our domain in Server Core.

I should point out that between us we read several dozen articles (including some written by some very reputable IT Pros) that CLAIMED that it was possible, but none that elaborated.

So we started clawing our way through the tidbits we gleaned from various sources and came up with the following unattend file that did the job:

[DCInstall]
InstallDNS=yes
NewDomain=forest
NewDomainDNSName=swmi.ca
DomainNetBiosName=SWMI
SiteName=Default-First-Site-Name
ReplicaOrNewDomain=domain
ForestLevel=3
DomainLevel=3
DatabasePath="%systemroot%\ntds"
LogPath="%systemroot%\ntds"
RebootOnCompletion=yes
SYSVOLPath="%systemroot%\sysvol"
SafeModeAdminPassword=Pa$$w0rd

Now: Once the file was created we put it in the root of C: on the server core machine, and typed the following command:

dcpromo /unattend:c:\unattend.txt

The next user interaction was (after a reboot) a logon prompt for the SWMI\Administrator account.

I hope this helps the next group of IT Pros trying to claw their way through the process… Creating AD Forests and Domains is something I have done a thousand times but always in GUI mode; from now on I can do it either way… and so can you!

An Open Letter to the EBS Community From an Administrator

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:21:02 GMT

Although I spend a lot of my ‘MVP time’ talking about other technologies the product that I am actually awarded in is Essential Business Server, a product that I have believed in strongly since the day it was announced. The following is the text of an e-mail sent by the IT Professional at a company that uses it and loves it.

For those of you who have been following my posts, I just wanted to check in and let you know that EBS has been in production for almost two months now and has been working great and great to work with and, right now, is really saving my butt. The growth of our agency is simply amazing and I can't see how I could accommodate it all without EBS. I am now the single IT staff person for an non-profit organization with 150+ staff and 130+ computers at 17 sites in 3 counties. It seems nearly impossible to manage, but EBS is helping to make it possible. I'm about to implement our first site-to-site VPN and hoping to get TS thin clients integrated in the near future (anyone who wants to offer me free advice on this, you input would be most welcome). My main limitation right now is money, bandwidth and some time to think; but I am working on all that. Thanks largely to Microsoft's charity donation program, I have been able to do all of this while working with a severely limited budget. Our region is in an extreme economic downturn and we are seeing greater need than ever, and we have been able to expand to meet the need thanks, in large part, to EBS.

So, here’s a big shout-out to everyone who has helped me to implement this server system for our organization. I’m an accidental-tech turned career tech and I didn’t have the opportunity to get any real training or work with a partner for this project, and I really appreciate the time people took to help me with critical decisions, implementation and troubleshooting advice. I don't know how I would have done it without your help. Keep up the great work.

Michael Hensley
Systems Administrator,

Neighbor Impact (Redmond, Oregon)

Letters like this make me smile because it not only confirms to me that EBS is the right solution for a mid-sized organization without needing a large IT staff. It also shows the value of community for recommendations and support in times of need!

To learn more about Neighbor Impact or to make a donation to this worthwhile cause visit them on the web at

www.neighborimpact.org.

Why small businesses use Windows Small Business Server

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:18:32 GMT

If you are a small business owner or consultant you must read this article! http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2009/09/10/why-small-businesses-use-windows-small-business-server.aspx

The Sad Plight of Joel Tenenbaum

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:00:11 GMT

I want to start this article by stating that I do feel sorry for Joel… but I have no sympathy for him.

If you are unfamiliar with the case, here is the article written by none other than Joel Tenenbaum about his case: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jul/27/filesharing-music-industry.

To summarize: Mr. Tenenbaum downloaded music using one of the myriad file sharing programs that create peer-to-peer networks across the Internet, and allow you to download music (or videos, documents, and software) without paying for it. This is, of course, illegal, and tantamount to walking into a music store and stealing CDs and DVDs… with the exception that on-line you are much less likely to get caught.

I want to be clear, in this article I am not taking anything for granted; I am not assuming anything, filling in blanks, or making accusations. If I state that Mr. Tenenbaum stole that is because that information is written in his article. In the header of his article he does not say ‘I am accused of…’ he says ‘I shared music.’ Where I am speculating, I will call that out.

I first became familiar with this case because it was in the Toronto Star yesterday. I read the article with interest because I have heard for years of people being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, but had never heard of one first hand. I suppose before I realized the true nature of the crime I was guilty of downloading music from time to time, and suppose that this could just as easily have been me as him.

Actually that is not true… Had my parents received a letter from the RIAA telling me that I had been caught and to settle it after they chewed me out at full volume they would have told me to take my attorney’s advice and to make the best settlement possible. Let’s assume that as I am not a teenager living under my parents’ roof the letter would have come to me, and I would have immediately contacted my attorney (my father in this case) who would likely have chewed me out at full volume, asked me if I had done it, and then told me to make the best settlement possible. Somewhere in there he probably would have called me a *** and told me I should have known better.

Four years ago (when Joel’s parents got the first letter) I was not in the best financial shape – mostly unemployed and going through a divorce, most of my expendable income at the time went to… well, food and rent. I would have had to negotiate the best terms possible, and then borrowed the money.

Joel did not do this… although he claims he did try to settle for $500, which at least shows good intent. However the RIAA did not accept this settlement offer; <speculation> they may have wanted to make an example, or to show that there were real consequences for pirating music. Five Hundred Dollars may be a significant amount to a college student, but it is not a punishment for breaking the law… at least not one that the RIAA was willing to accept. They, being the injured party, have that right.

The article spends a lot of time portraying this as a David versus Goliath conflict, which might be a little more believable if in this case the David had not been raiding the camp of the Goliath and contributing to billions of dollars of losses. He laments the fact that the RIAA has a tremendous legal team; should we feel bad about that? If I had over the course of fifty years grown a business worth billions and then a new technology allowed people to steal from me nearly unchecked then I would throw whatever resources I had against the perpetrators in a (mostly vain) attempt to stop them.

Since the advent of music piracy over the Internet (I know piracy predates the Internet, but doubt that the RIAA was losing real market share to people dubbing cassettes) I have heard the recording industry portrayed as the evil giant out to make money. Isn’t that what industry is about? ‘They charge too much';’ or ‘music is the public domain!’ or such. I agree that music is not cheap to purchase… but nor is it cheap to make. When recording artists demand huge contracts for their product then they are no longer creating art for art’s sake, they are producing a product that happens to be creative. However that does not change the fact that they still own their material, and we as consumers have the option to NOT buy them. We can listen to them on our favorite radio station, we can go to clubs and bars and dance to them; we can even often listen to them on-line. But stealing them should not even be a consideration.

Of course since music is not necessarily something you can touch let’s put the same argument into a different context, but with very similar intent:

I love cars. However cars are much more expensive than they used to be… I can’t afford a car now, but still want one, so I am going to steal one. I also have friends who like cars so I am going to steal one today, give it to my friend tonight, and steal a new one tomorrow… and am going to continue doing this until I get caught, at which point instead of taking responsibility I am going to stand up for every man and show the car companies that they cannot push us around.

Does that sound absurd? Exaggerated? The only difference is that because a car is physical you can only steal it once… Steal a song once and you can replicate that to hundreds or thousands of people who suddenly don’t have to buy it.

So the Recording Industry Association of America, representing recording artists, starts suing people. Apparently (according to the article) there have been 40,000 people contacted, most of whom settled. <supposition> The ones the RIAA are going after are likely some of the biggest offenders… if I steal (sorry… download and then share) a hundred songs then I am probably not even on their radar. However people I know… people I speak to merrily boast that they have downloaded tens of thousands of songs at no cost to them! I was sitting at a cafe speaking with a professional consultant on Monday who said ‘yeah I am glad my daughter downloads all of her music because it gets so expensive to buy it!’ I was in shock.

It happens for software too by the way… people look at me and say ‘yeah I download all of my software… but don’t worry, I paid for my operating system.’ They assume that because of my affiliation to Microsoft that I care about pirating Microsoft’s product, but would gladly condone stealing from Adobe. ‘But software is so expensive! Do you know how much Microsoft Office costs?’ Yes I do… and you have alternatives… if you are a student or only use it for personal use purchase the Home and Student Edition at a fraction of the cost. You don’t get all of the applications you get in Office Pro, but you probably don’t need Access or InfoPath. If that is still too expensive for your tastes then there are Shareware and Freeware applications that do just about everything that commercial applications do. ‘But they are not as good and don’t have all of the features!’ If you want the best bread you have to pay the best baker.

So Joel is in court… I believe today is Day 3. His article, like the lawsuit, is meant to shock us. ‘How it feels to be sued for 4.5 Million Dollars.’ I am sure it feels terrible… however chances are if it goes to judgment the judge would not grant the whole amount, and if they did then he likely could never pay it all anyways. Of course, if past acts and lack of remorse are any indication then he might just steal it.

My opinion on this case is clear but that does not mean that I do not feel sorry for him, and by all means invite you to feel sorry for him too… but do not for one minute make the mistake of seeing him as the victim here; he perpetrated a criminal act, and was unlucky enough to do it against a very large organization with both the will and the means to pursue it vehemently… the RIAA may look like the Goliath here, but they are the victim in this case… the wronged party seeking justice.

I suspect that this case will become one for the books… Joel was fortunate enough to get pro-bono help from professors at the Harvard School of Law. I suspect that with them on one side of the table and the RIAA’s high powered attorneys on the other it will make for interesting (in one sense… let’s be clear that no court case has ever been riveting to watch except on TV) litigation but in the end I suspect it will still come down to the fact that Joel stole and enabled others to steal from the record companies. the settlement or judgment will likely be a fraction of what is being sought (that’s how it works). If Joel were to write a book I can’t see it being much more interesting than the article, and anyways the RIAA would probably sue for proceeds. If there is a confidentiality clause we may never know what the real figures are. However I hope that it finally convinces people that ‘sharing’ is stealing… as serious as walking into a store and taking it.

Get off your soapbox!

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:34:05 GMT

If you either post or watch videos on-line then you know YouTube… but how about SoapBox? A couple of years ago MSN started a competing service to YouTube which I have found very convenient. I don’t use it often – I have posted precisely six videos on-line, and four of them were shot (and posted) the same day (they are all linked to from my blog or Facebook page).

I posted them on Soapbox instead of YouTube… but not because of loyalty to Microsoft. I did it for convenience; when I click on Publish in Live Writer (the application I use to write and post blog articles) it asked me ‘Do you want to store these videos on Soapbox? I did.

Yesterday I got the following e-mail (in 18 languages!):

Attention Soapbox Users,

MSN will no longer offer Soapbox, the user generated video service within MSN Video, as of August 31, 2009. Beginning on July 29, you will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox. People who have uploaded videos to Soapbox will have until August 31, 2009 to download them. Please make sure you download your videos by this date if you would like to keep them. We will have a notice running in the Soapbox service to remind you to download your videos. It is our goal that you download and keep all of the videos you uploaded that are important to you. Online video is a key part of the MSN experience and we will continue to offer a rich experience on MSN Video. We will also continue to invest in delivering great customer experiences, while keeping a keen eye on our business objectives during this tough economic climate. Thank you for your support of MSN Video. More details and download instructions are available at: http://video.msn.com/shutdown.html

Thank you for using Soapbox.

The MSN Video Team

I came to the video world late in the game… My first digital camera took lousy video and it wasn’t until the end of 2007 that I bought a decent one. I record video sparingly and am far from an expert; however I found that recording any videos – from ‘I’m a PC’ commercials to my wedding ceremony to my tae kwon do belt tests - can produce large files that are unruly. It was only when I realized what a great job Camtasia Studio (www.techsmith.com) does of editing down those files – including resolution, bit rate, and cutting off bits at either end, not to mention great editing functionality – that I really said ‘Ok, I can now start working with videos. Between Facebook and Soapbox I suppose there are now about a dozen videos of mine on-line.

I am not saddened that Soapbox is shutting down… possibly slightly inconvenienced, but not as much as if I had dozens or hundred of videos. I guess I will have to find another service that I can use to smoothly integrate videos into blog articles though, and that will take a little research.

Thanks for they time Soapbox… and thanks for the ample notice for me to take action!

What’s in Your laptop bag?

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:53:40 GMT

I have noticed of late a trend… a plethora of articles listing the contents of one’s laptop bag. Far be it from me to miss a writing bandwagon, so here it goes!

Laptop Bag: Firstly I should mention that I switch laptop bags with boring frequency; at present I have the Ogio VP Messenger which was a present… yes, it is branded Windows 7. However the reason I am so fond of it is because it is TSA-friendly; the main laptop pouch folds out for airport screening. You can check it out at http://www.ogio.com/product.php?product=637. It is probably my third or fourth Ogio laptop bag, and I am on my second Ogio golf bag (I gave the first to my father). They make a great product!

Laptop #1: My primary laptop is a Dell Latitude 6500, and as you can probably imagine it is pretty tricked out… 8GB RAM, 250GB hard disk, and so on. As it is my primary workstation I needed to be sure that it would do anything I needed… fast. http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop_latitude_e6500?c=ca&cs=cabsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

Laptop #2: I usually carry my netbook in the same bag; A Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with 2 GB RAM and a 64GB Solid State Drive. I like being able to pull that out and work on a plane, in a cafe, or wherever I might not need the full system. It also supports Bluetooth so I can tether my phone to it for Internet connectivity where there is none. It has its own neoprene case… the side pocket is replete with USB keys of sizes from 1 GB to 16GB.

Power: Back to the laptop bag proper, I have two power supplies – one for the E6500 and one for the netbook. I wish they were the same but alas… no. When I am traveling on car trips I also carry with me the car charger kit for the E6500; on a recent journey from Toronto to Montreal this paid off when my project manager called me and asked for urgent modifications to a series of documents; I sat in the parking lot of a Rest Area, plugged the laptop into the lighter plug, tethered my cell phone for connectivity, and worked for three hours. If this kit were 90W instead of 60W I would carry it exclusively… but it is not powerful enough to charge the laptop while using it, and it is relatively heavy so it is often left in the car. (I do have a spare 6-cell battery for my laptop which I would take if I knew I was going to be unable to charge for extended periods, such as on older aircraft)

Because power jacks are often sparse I took to carrying my own power bar with me, and was delighted to find the Monster Outlets To Go Power Strip with USB (http://www.monstercable.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=4646). It is compact and folds into itself, has three 3-prong jacks, plus a USB port for charging my phone.

Speaking of power I never leave North America without a universal prong adapter… I found myself coming back from Asia on an Air France A340 from Paris which supported neither the North American jacks that I am comfortable with, nor the asian jack which I had gotten used to over the previous month. Rather than watch their bad movies for the duration I purchased the World Travel Adapter (SWA1.1) by Swiss Travel Products (http://swisstravelproducts.com/index.php?site=productview&product_id=3) from the on-board duty free shop, and have been very happy with it – in several countries.

Mice: I have two mice in my laptop bag… an Arc Mouse (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=112) which is what I use most of the time, and a wireless notebook presenter mouse (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=085). I love the Arc Mouse, and only wish it were Bluetooth capable. I also prefer the black one to the red, but Gingit ate it… sigh.

External Hard Drives: Depending on where I am going I usually have between 1 and 5 portable USB hard drives in the bag, plus a mini-USB cable or three. Right now I have four drives in the bag for different purposes. The mini USB cable also serves to charge my phone when I am on the road.

Networking: Two years ago I came across a Linksys Wireless-G Travel Router which I understand is no longer available; it comes in handy for several purposes, whether I am in a hotel room with a single Ethernet jack, a conference room where I want to share Internet, and a dozen other ‘I never would have thought of that!’ moments.

Headset: No frequent air traveler wants to be without noise eliminating headsets… I smiled when I read David Pogue’s article ‘What’s in Pogue’s Travel Bag? Literally.’ in the New York Times recently (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/technology/personaltech/25pogue-email.html?_r=1). We agree on the Panasonic RP-HC500, which I picked up at Fry’s in Kirkland, Washington about two years ago… I have never looked back! Unlike David though I carry mine anywhere… you never know when you will find yourself working in a cafe with higher than average noise levels! (I used to carry the Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000 headset & microphone, but decided it was extraneous, with a built-in microphone on the computer)

I should mention that I also carry a cute little speaker which I connect to my laptop for presentations requiring sound, or for my Zune when I don’t need the privacy. The ShoX mini speaker (http://shoxmini.com/) really does provide great sound quality!

Camera: My digital camera (Canon Digital IXUS 96015) is usually in the bag in its own case with an extra SD card… I remember getting to Hong Kong and realizing I didn’t have a camera; it was one of the best investments I have made, having since taken nearly 6,000 photos and 100 videos, many of which have found their way into articles here.

And then… Every professional presenter likely has them, or should – a package of lozenges. They have saved me on a number of occasions – most recently in Bracknell, England where I showed up but my voice didn’t!

A couple of extraneous cables (RJ-45, one proprietary cable for my secondary cell phone), pens, post-its, business cards, and a few stickers to give away. All in all my bag weighs in at about 25lbs, which is probably more than I would carry if I were taking the bus or walking… but as it is usually from the car to the office, or else attached to a suitcase on wheels, I don’t mind. My netbook case is less than 4lbs and is easier to grab and go when I don’t want to lug the whole thing… also when I am not traveling many of these pieces stay on my desk.

It is easy to get carried away and carry more than you need; it is equally easy to shed items that may not seem immediately necessary, but turn out to be indispensable. My experience has helped me to balance what stays and what goes, and when… as long as I am willing to lug it, who would argue with me? :)

We’re Moving… and it’s not July 1st!

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:26:57 GMT

The World According to Mitch did not start out as a blog, but as e-mail blasts. When I decided to blog I started The President’s Blog at www.mitpro.ca. However when I stepped down as leader of that group in January, 2007 I needed to find a new home for it. For two years mitchgarvis.com hosted The World According to Mitch. Now as that server is retiring I have the opportunity to move to my new location… www.garvis.ca.

The content is being ported over from the old home, slowly… but it should be done within the week. I have done my best to set up the RSS feed so that if you are a subscriber then you will not experience any interruptions.

I hope you like the new look… and expect a few more changes coming soon, thanks to the great folks at Telligent… the makers of Community Server, and the new Telligent Community 5.0, which should grace our site shortly. I fell in love with the platform three years ago (Community Server 2007) and now, four versions later, keep loving the improvements!

As for the theme, I will keep playing until I find one that I like; if you know me you know that I am more about substance… just look at my wardrobe!

Another new feature in Outlook 2010

The World According to Mitch — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:47:56 GMT

I am sure you (like me) spend a lot of time in e-mail threads. Occasionally it can be embarrassing if you are not up to date. As I was composing an e-mail to a colleague a few minutes ago I noticed the following warning bar across the top...(read more)

Microsoft Office 2010 – Coming soon!

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:15:00 GMT

Since May I have been telling people that they would have to wait for details of the new Microsoft Office 2010 applications coming down the pipe. Yesterday the veil was lifted, as the beta program was made available to a wider audience. With that I would like to share some of my favorite improvements in Office 2010.

BackStage

In Office 2007 we were introduced to the Ribbon Toolbar, as well as the Office Pearl which replaced a great number of menus. The BackStage in Office 2010 is the new iteration of the Office Pearl; Click on the Office button in the top-left corner of your window and the back-stage appears, allowing us a host of tools to configure both your document and application. As this screen shot from my Outlook shows our top-level choices include account settings, automatic replies, mailbox clean-up, manage rules and alerts, and because Outlook 2010 is designed to work with Exchange 2010 including Unified Messaging, we can manage our voice mail from here, should you have that configured. We also find all of the options we traditionally found in the Office Pearl (or previously in the File Menu), such as Open, Save, Print, and Options.

One of the greatest complaints I have heard about Outlook has always been performance… depending on a number of factors (including but not limited to the size of your mailbox/profile) it could be relatively slow, taking at times anywhere from 20 seconds to over a minute to connect to my Exchange Server. That has certainly not been the case with Outlook 2010, connecting in under five seconds every time I load it up!

Speaking of loading it up, the Splash Screen on Office 2010 programs have the familiar minimize and close icons in the top corner, which can be helpful in some cases.

64-Bit… Welcome to the Future!

In Barcelona in 2006 Bill Gates announced that the future of Microsoft was 64-bit. The problem as many of us saw it was that most – if not all – of our applications (especially on the desktop) were still 32-bit, and the subsequent release of Office 2007 as a 32-bit application did not change that. Many of us hopped on the x64 bandwidth early on, and most of us found our way back to the more comfortable x86 operating system, at least for the time being. The announcement that Office 2010 would be released in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions offered hope… and in this writer’s experience the 64-bit version delivers on the performance, while the 32-bit version still shows great improvements over its predecessor. (My 32-bit Dell Inspiron Mini 9 has a Windows Experience Rating of 1.5 and still performs admirably).

Customize your Ribbon Toolbars!

I point out that the now familiar (and hopefully comfortable) Ribbon Toolbar has been expanded across the Office suite, including to Outlook. As was the case in Word and Excel three years ago it took me a little while to get used to it, but now that I have been using it for a few months I am definitely loathe to return to legacy menus.

I want to be clear that this is not something that I plan to do… For years applications have offered the ability to customize menus, but I have generally found that the toolbars are very intuitive as delivered; also I tend to uninstall and re-install, reformat, and redeploy on a very frequent basis, and even if I could export and re-import my custom toolbars every time I do that (yes you can! Woot!), I doubt that I would ever bother. However the ability to do that does give me as a deployment guy ideas about standardizing Just the Fact, Jack toolbars across departments and organizations!

Reviewing in PowerPoint

As a writer I spend a lot of time editing – and more importantly having others submit comments for me to edit – my own documents, as well as those from others. As such I spend a lot of time in the Review screen in Word, and have always been disturbed by the limitations of same in PowerPoint. While there are still some functions that I do not see in PowerPoint 2010 I am extremely excited by the improvements.

While on the subject of PowerPoint I should mention that I am not a big fan of fancy transitions in my own slides… however I have looked at some of the new transition options available in PowerPoint 2010 and am very impressed. I still doubt I will use them much…

Office on the Web

This is one of the features that I have not yet gotten my hands on, but am nevertheless extremely excited about. Having used Outlook Web Access for years, I am looking forward to trying Word and Excel in the same fashion. There will be, I am told, three ways that users can access this functionality:

Consumers will be able to access the tools via their Live accounts (there are apparently over 500 Million of us with Live accounts… wow!)
Enterprises can offer employees their own applications from their own SharePoint sites; and
Web providers will be able to offer customers the applications.

The one issue that I am not (and seldom am) clear on is how licensing for these tools will be set up, but with Google apps growing in popularity look for terms to be extremely competitive.

Open Document Compatibility

Recently I helped a friend install her new PC, and when I pointed out that her Office 2007 Home and Student Edition allowed her to install the application suite on up to three PCs, she told me she was considering installing OpenOffice instead; that is the suite that her company uses, so many of her documents were in that file format; she did not want to have to convert them all. As I much prefer Microsoft Office (and not simply to toe the line) I was pleased to see support for the Open file formats in Office 2010… load and save your .ODT files seamlessly.

Conclusion – Two Months On

I have been using parts of Office 2010 since mid-May. As with any pre-release version there were some bugs that have frustrated me, but overall I have been extremely pleased with what I have seen. I have been an Office user since Office 95, and am glad to see real improvements version over version… I have not seen any component that I feel is a step backwards. Look forward to hearing more about the steps forward as I continue to dive into the applications!

RunAs Radio – Mitch Discusses Virtual Machine Manager

The World According to Mitch — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:23:25 GMT

I can hardly believe that it has been nearly two years since my last interview with RunAs Radio… but when I sat down a few weeks with Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes I checked their Past Shows list, and sure enough the last show aired in October, 2007...(read more)

Coffee and Code in Oakville

The World According to Mitch — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:23:40 GMT

Yesterday morning I was sitting in Artisano’s Bakery and Café in Oakville (as I am now) and twitted as much. Barry, a fellow Oakvillain whom I met in Seattle when I was living in Montreal replied that it was a great place, and would I be there in...(read more)

What happened to my computer’s rating in Windows 7?

The World According to Mitch — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:54:03 GMT

I got a frantic call from a friend this morning. ‘I installed Windows 7 last night; When I checked my System Rating the Windows Experience Index was 5.9, and now it’s only 4.1! Why is my system slower?’ This is not the first time I...(read more)

Bootable USB media for Windows 7

The World According to Mitch — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:58:35 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918 . My first computer had a cassette drive; my next had two 5.25” floppy disk drives (which cost nearly as much as the computer). Going forward...(read more)

Smartphones and Windows 7… VERY smart!

The World According to Mitch — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:06:05 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918 . I moved into my new office this week. I have a desk, a chair, a plethora of computer equipment, and a entire bookshelf. What I don’t...(read more)

How do YOU want to be supported?

The World According to Mitch — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:54:01 GMT

Over the past six years I have had the honour of leading and participating in two major Canadian IT Pro user groups; I have spoken at scores of user groups across the country and around the world, and have been in touch with so many of the user group...(read more)

A sad day in the toy industry…

The World According to Mitch — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:10:52 GMT

Firstly let me be clear: I have absolutely nothing against Toys ‘R’ Us. I have no hidden agenda, no miserable experience, and no repressed memories (at least none that I know of!). I have very fond memories of the Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square...(read more)

The Quiet Demise of Truly Incredible Technology

The World According to Mitch — Mon, 25 May 2009 23:22:35 GMT

Of all of the innovative technologies I came face to face with at TechEd last month the most incredible of them all was a gentleman in a wheelchair. It wasn’t just any wheelchair of course… it was (I would later learn) an iBOT… a wheelchair designed to...(read more)

Windows 7 Beta Beware :)

The World According to Mitch — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:27:16 GMT

I hope by now most of you are running Windows 7. I think it is important that IT Pros are up to speed before the actual product release! However if you are running the beta 2 release – that is Build 7000 it is time for you to upgrade! ...(read more)

Aliens have taken over my body!

The World According to Mitch — Sun, 24 May 2009 13:56:08 GMT

This is the first of many entries in this blog focused primarily on the fact the WE ARE PREGNANT!!! It will also be a general blog about the Garvis household from my perspective. To see Mitch’s perspective you just have to go see...(read more)

Test

The World According to Mitch — Sun, 24 May 2009 02:13:00 GMT

This is a test only!...(read more)

Preparing for the new laptops!

The World According to Mitch — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:52:36 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918 . A lot of people cannot understand how IT Professionals and enthusiasts can get excited about some things. I ordered my new laptops last week;...(read more)

Springboard Buddies at TechEd

The World According to Mitch — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:47:25 GMT

Justin Rodino, Cem Erdal Ozkaya, and Daniel Nerenberg cornered me on the last day of TechEd with a video camera… I look like a dentist froze my face but trust me I was having a good time because they are all great guys! http://www.227volts.com/...(read more)

Kai Axford is Coming to Town!

The World According to Mitch — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:11:24 GMT

If you do not live in the Greater Toronto Area, or say between here and Niagara, this is probably not for you. However if you can get to Oakville next Tuesday and are interested in IT then this session is for you! **Special Event** Seminar with...(read more)

XP Compatibility Mode in Windows 7

The World According to Mitch — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:44:58 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918 . of all of the legitimate reasons I have heard why people and organizations have not upgraded to Windows Vista application compatibility has been...(read more)

Knock Knock… Who’s there? Office 2010!

The World According to Mitch — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:42:34 GMT

One of the reasons I like attending conferences like TechEd is that very often attendees get news first… either by design or occasionally by accident. An example of the latter, I learned last night, is that one presenter accidentally showed off...(read more)

User Account Control in Windows 7

The World According to Mitch — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:27:00 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918 . User Account Control (UAC) has been one of the big complaints about Windows Vista. It certainly was the butt of one of the cutest ‘I’m a Mac’ commercials...(read more)

Windows 7… Catch It!

The World According to Mitch — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:24:18 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918 . I was wondering out loud today if you were ready for Windows 7. Yes, you… and don’t look around because WE BOTH know who you are. You are an IT Professional...(read more)

Picking my new laptop

The World According to Mitch — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:48:15 GMT

Over the past few weeks I have started shopping for my new laptop… and am still open to suggestions, although I am looking for something fairly specific in that I need a lot of power, but do not want to lug around a 10lb system (I travel a bit). This...(read more)

The next generation of Windows is here. Join the conversation…

The World According to Mitch — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:23:47 GMT

Take a behind- the-scenes look at the next generation of Windows at www.TalkingaboutWindows.com , a video blog offering IT professionals genuine insight on Windows 7 from the Microsoft engineers who helped build the product. Listen as engineers talk about...(read more)

Are you a Mac or a PC?

The World According to Mitch — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:03:19 GMT

I have long believed that a computer is a tool that should do what you need it to do. The whole Mac versus PC debate is interesting in that if you step back someone who has never used a either will have to learn one of them, and frankly both are...(read more)

A Reply to a Trainer Who Knows His Students Cheat

The World According to Mitch — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:48:56 GMT

I am a member of a private community of Microsoft Certified Trainers on a well known networking site. In the last couple of days one of my colleagues complained that his students were passing their exams by using Brain Dumps, and that these tools...(read more)

We’re ALL a PC!

The World According to Mitch — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 02:05:43 GMT

During the 2009 MVP Global Summit we recorded a video of the lot of us – fifteen hundred MVPS! – proclaiming that we are PCs. Of course they recorded it, and here it is… the booming voice that you hear in the second run through is Steve Ballmer...(read more)

What’s New Pussycat?

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:50:00 GMT

As I sit in the MCT Summit this week I am blown away by what’s coming down the pipe. These are the things that I will be focusing on in the next little while:

Virtualization

Of course I have been talking about Hyper-V for over a year now… and System Center Virtual Machine Manager is the cat’s meow. Hyper-V version 2 is now in beta, and a lot of the improvements are going to blow you away. More on that soon.

Windows Server 2008 R2

I was not a fan of Windows NT 4 Server, but have really liked each release of Server since. The improvement curve will continue upwards in Server 2008 R2… PowerShell is getting better, but the Active Directory Recycle Bin is going to be a real life saver for a lot of people… I’ve never actually erased an entire Organizational Unit by accident, but I know people who have… this is going to be nice!

Windows 7

I have been using Windows Vista since before it was called Vista. I am one of those people who loves it, and have never looked back. I know there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me, and for those of you who are waiting with bated breath for the new version, the wait will not be long now. Stay tuned!

More and Better

I wish I could tell you right now about everything we are discussing this week, but the reality is I am trying to listen to Joey Snow right now as I type… pretty tough to do both. Besides, there’s no NDA for this week so we’re not actually learning anything NEW and unreleased. That’s going to wait until next month… but believe me, there’s a lot coming out from Microsoft this year that will make us all happier… let’s talk more about that soon!

A Violinist in the Metro

Mitch Garvis — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:26:00 GMT

I came across this piece in the 180 Systems Blog (www.180systemsblog.com) this evening and found it fascinating. Please feel free to visit them for more insightful pieces. -M

A man sat at a subway station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle-aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and, without stopping, continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3-year-old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced their kids to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most renowned musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theatre in Boston where the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the Metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experiment could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Your Certification Journey Starts With a Single Step

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Sunday morning I woke up to find a foot of snow in my driveway; time to break out the shovel! I dressed up warm (the thermometer read -9°C / 19°F), grabbed my shovel, and opened the garage door… and was flummoxed. Where should I start? There was a wall of snow all along both sides of the garage that was equally deep right to the foot of the driveway, some thirty-five feet away. I stood there for a minute and weighed my options, and then I put the shovel to the snow and scooped up my first shovelful.

Thirty minutes later I had cleared off the top third of one side of the driveway… I honestly never thought I would get that far! Although the end was not quite near, I could certainly see how far I had come.

I drew a parallel between that progress and my IT certifications; I thought back to the first time I really looked into it, and realized that it was not as simple as saying I would take a few courses and pass a few tests, I had to plan out a course of action, and the starting point was oftentimes as complicated as the material I had to learn; which course should I take first? What study materials and methods should I use? When would I be ready to pass my first exams? It was so nerve-wracking I occasionally thought about giving up… and it was nearly eighteen months before I would pass my first exam.

Sure, certifications are complex… it would likely be simpler if it was a linear path from start to finish, but that is simply not the way it works. You have to really know what you are doing before you set out, and frankly that can be a daunting challenge, one that I am sure has prevented many people from setting out.

What should you do first? You have to decide what it is you want your certifications for; if you want to be a developer or an IT Pro… and a dozen other decisions. My advice? put your shovel to the snow and scoop up your first shovelful; If you are not simply thinking of changing careers but have been working in IT for a while then chances are you know what you are comfortable with; look to see what certifications are available. You might be comfortable with the desktop operating system, so a logical ‘first shovel’ may be one of the desktop OS exams – TS: Configuring Windows Vista (70-620), or even the Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (MCDST) exams (70-271 & 70-272). They may or may not have much to do with what you want to eventually do, but they are a good way of learning what certifications are about.

The public newsgroups are replete with certification advice, and you can have your questions answered by passionate people who are either where you are or were once. If you want to invest in classroom learning then most training centres will have sales consultants who can answer a lot of your questions as well. If you are leaning towards e-learning then many of the IT vendors (Microsoft, Cisco, Novell, etc…) will offer some sort of e-learning options that are worth exploring.

The point is that after a while you will discover what is right for you, what works and what doesn’t, and when you wake up one day you will realize that you may not yet be a Microsoft Certified Master, but you do have a couple of exams under your belt!

My driveway is clean today, but it is going to snow again this week and I am going to have to pick up my shovel again; just like that, certifications is something that is ongoing rather than a journey to an end. The first certifications I achieved are now obsolete, but that doesn’t matter because I have replaced them with more relevant ones now. However if I had not started when I did… when would I have?

When will you?

Get All the Facts

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:30:00 GMT

On Sunday I was shoveling my driveway, and quite enjoying myself. I had decided ahead of time to only do one side of it that day, and finish it Monday or Tuesday.

As I stood at the base of the driveway admiring my work someone came up to me and said ‘It looks like you didn’t plan that out very well!’ I asked what he meant, and he pointed out that I had shoveled the right side of the driveway, but (as displayed) my car was parked in the garage on the left side.

I looked… and from where he was standing I could understand his criticism. I reached into my pocket and clicked the remote control which opened the right side garage door, exposing our main family vehicle. The gentleman was a bit embarrassed, and apologized for the remark, complimented the job, and continued on his way.

The encounter made me think of so many discussions I have had in the past; some people are quick to criticize accomplishments without having all the facts. It is important to remember that we may see what is in front of us, but not necessarily all of the relevant facts.

A client called me frantically several months ago following a conversation that she had with a colleague. She wanted to know why it was that I had not implemented a backup solution for their desktop PCs and Outlook PST files; her colleague had criticized me for my short-sightedness and recommended that she speak with ‘her IT guy’ who would do a much better job for her. Of course because that colleague did not know that I had implemented a complete backup solution on the server and redirected all desktop folders to Network Shares she could not know that backing up the actual workstations would be redundant. She did not have all of the facts, and that is an easy way to come to the wrong conclusions.

Someone once said that the more someone talks the less they know; I do not know if that is true, but it is certainly easier to learn by listening than by talking… the more facts you have the better informed you will be when you do speak.

January in Ontario… My shovel runneth over

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:19:00 GMT

It happened again… over a three day period nearly a foot of fresh snow fell on Oakville. As I usually do I ignored it for a bit until it got too bad for my car to drive through, but this morning I decided to get out there and clear it. I actually discovered in December how much I actually enjoy this task… one that I had never really had before this year.

You may have read my article ‘I’m an IT Pro and Welcome to Winter’ (Posted Sunday, December 21, 2008) which included videos of me doing my thing. It was the first intense exercise I have done in some time, and I got a feeling of satisfaction that you cannot get from watching someone else do it for you.

So Sunday morning I bundled up nice and warm (It was gorgeous and sunny… and -9°C / 15°F outside) and grabbed my shovel. I actually have several implements that I could have chosen, including a very efficient push-scoop that can move a lot more snow with a lot less effort, but I opted for the same red plastic shovel that features in the videos from December. I started at the top of the driveway, and decided to only do half of it (we have a two car garage so a two car driveway, but are currently only using the single car).

There is a man who lives in our circle who gets by on doing ‘menial labour’ for the neighbourhood. Last year we paid him every time there was a snow storm to shovel the driveway. After I had been shovelling for about ten minutes he came by and asked if I wanted him to take over, and would only charge me fifteen dollars for the entire job. I thanked him, but told him that I was doing fine on my own, and wished him well. He’s a nice guy and we chatted for a few minutes, and then I put my earphones back on and continued.

Several minutes later one of my neighbours came by and asked if I wanted to borrow his snow blower to save time. He had seen the videos on my blog, and figured I could save a lot of time and effort by ‘automating the task.’ I declined, and then as we were chatting he noticed in my garage a contraption parked between the cars. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ He was referring to my snow blower, which I recently paid to make sure it was well tuned. He was perplexed, but it is very simple.

I mentioned that I discovered that I enjoyed shovelling the driveway. Part of that is because it needs to be done, and is part of taking care of one’s home. This is my first year as a homeowner, and it is fulfilling to put your back into maintaining it. However there is much more to it than that.

Of course it is great exercise… I used to be in great shape, and am upset that I have allowed that to falter. Walking the dogs is great, but shovelling really gives you a much more complete workout… Even now I feel my shoulder and arm muscles, in addition to my legs!

I find shovelling very relaxing. It allows me to be alone with my task… and my music. It also allows me to get a lot of fresh air; the task took no less than ninety minutes, and all along I was out in the sun, getting exercise, and of course enjoying the solitude of my music. It is therapeutic.

Perhaps the best part of the task is finishing… at 1:15 I came into the house and Theresa heated up a bowl of her mulligatawny… there is nothing better on a cold day than a hot bowl of soup, but you cannot really appreciate it in quite the same way if you didn’t spend the time outside earning it! If I wasn’t on a diet I would say that a cup of hot chocolate or even a big bowl of creamy clam chowder was what the doctor called for, but Theresa made the soup from scratch, and it was as satisfying as it was warming.

I will spend Monday at home working… but sometime during the day I will take the time to shovel the other half of the driveway. It is completely unnecessary of course – we are happy as a single-car family; but the feeling of accomplishment coupled with the exercise make the left side of the driveway too tempting to resist!

A Quick Guide to Phinding Phishing

Mitch Garvis — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:23:00 GMT

The following message appeared in my Junk Mail box today. (These are only the first few lines… it looked complete and quite official)

From: paypal.support@520838.com

Security Center Advisory!

PayPal is constantly working to ensure security by screening accounts daily in our system. We recently reviewed your account, and we need you to verify information to help us provide you with secure service. Until we can collect this information, your access to sensitive account features will be limited or terminated. We would like to restore your access as soon as possible, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Why is my account access limited?
Your account access has been limited for the following reason(s):

· February 27, 2008: We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third party. Because protecting the security of your account is our primary concern, we have placed limited access to sensitive PayPal account features. We understand that this may be an inconvenience but please understand that this temporary limitation is for your protection.

Click Here to Remove Account Limitations (http://62.57.72.20/blocks/19483.paypal.com/webscr_cmd_login-run.php?%3c-*-%3ez%5b3,$0%20dAN%5b=iz%5b3|As0,d%3c-*-%3e)

It went on to include warnings about security, never sharing your password, protecting your account, and so on. It looks, on the surface, to have come from PayPal. Of course it also includes a convenient link to change you password, and will remind you again that for security reasons, you must enter your account name and existing password to proceed. Gotcha!

This is a relatively common scheme called phishing. A play on the word fishing, phishing schemes send out millions of e-mails that in almost every way look like they came from eBay, Paypal, or your financial institution. They show up in your e-mail with a warning that you need to stay safe, starting with changing your password immediately. Of course they include a convenient click-here link which takes you to the login page. You enter your credentials and you are done… literally. What you have done is given a bogus site your real credentials to the real financial institution, which they will use to take your money and ruin your good name.

Microsoft has gone to great lengths over the years to protect its users from these schemes, but because they are inexpensive and simple to operate they keep coming. Users who use the latest and greatest operating system and e-mail client from Microsoft and keep them properly patched are less at-risk than those who do not… as stated in the first line this e-mail showed up in my Junk Mail folder, and in order to even see the graphics (let alone click on a link) I had to proactively move the message to a safe location, and mark it as safe. That is because different components of my network – starting with my mail server but including Windows Vista (with Internet Explorer 8.0 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007) are regularly patched with phishing definitions. These definitions do their best to keep up with the various cutting-edge methods of treachery used in these scams. However a user on an older, un-patched OS using an older mail client will not have the same security… and will usually not know it.

When you are unsure of an e-mail, the first rule is DO NOT click on anything. Do not even download the graphics if your mail client allows for that option. If you are absolutely convinced that your account has been compromised then rather than clicking within the message, open an Internet Explorer browser and type in the URL of your site manually. That is the surest way to know that you are where you belong.

Here are a couple of tips you can look for to be 100% sure that someone is trying to scam you:

E-mail from any institution that you regularly do business with will end with their domain name, so PayPal will be from @paypal.com… never paypal@<anything else>.com
Legitimate URLs (Universal Resource Locators) – or web addresses – follow simple rules; it is only what follows the domain name that can look like gibberish. The click-through link included in this message is designed to look like it comes from 19483.paypal.com… it is right there in bold; of course, this is hidden from you within the Link itself – you are meant to simply click on the words Remove Account Limitations which will open the Internet browser. So in the address bar of that Internet browser look at the address… the site name is what is found between the http:// and the first forward slash (/). So in the address above the site is located at 62.57.72.20… an IP address. No legitimate business in the world – certainly no reputable one – uses IP addresses in their sites in place of domain names.

Of course all of that is interesting technically, but from a social engineering point of view there are several telltale signs within the message that prove its illegitimacy:

Neither my name nor my account is in the e-mail anywhere. Legitimate e-mail from proper sites will generally be addressed to me: Dear Mr. Garvis, and so on;
In much the same way, legitimate e-mail will usually be signed by a person.
According to the e-mail my account was compromised on February 27, 2008. If it was a legitimate threat it would not come ten months late.
Financial sites do not limit access… they block it until you change your password.

In November I got a call from my bank informing me that my bank card might have been compromised, and asked me to go into the nearest bank at my convenience to have the card replaced. They cancelled the card on the spot of course, and they called me (slightly early on a Saturday morning if I recall) apologizing for the inconvenience. I found this a bit inconvenient, but quite secure. Had they sent me an e-mail I would have been immediately suspicious, and would have called anyways. Notice that this e-mail does not have a phone number to call.

Phishing is scary because of its prevalence and anonymity. Although it is a simple crime to avoid (imagine muggers asking you to click here before they stole your wallet!) it is also astoundingly easy to get caught… simply lower your guard for a minute and they have you. If you suspect that you have been targeted, you should contact the legitimate institution immediately; if you fall victim to a scheme then your first step is to contact your local law enforcement agency who will guide you… although because of the international nature of these crimes it might be years before you ever see progress – if ever.

The Three Fingered Salute Explained

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:43:00 GMT

The Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination has been a piece of computer trivia and lore for years… it really is the most famous ‘Easter Egg’ of all time. Here is an interesting video of the father of the feature (Dave Bradley) explaining its origins.

http://www.flixxy.com/computer-history-ctrl-alt-del.htm

Microsoft Dog Food (NOT what you think)

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:19:00 GMT

I just got an e-mail from the Microsoft Company Store confirming they were shipping my recent order... which I read as this:

‘We wanted to inform you that your most recent order of DOG TREATS is en route.’

This week’s ‘Gingit’ toll:

1 pair leather shoes (mine…)
1 Xbox 360 wireless controller
1 Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse (for those keeping score her THIRD)
The latest Macleans magazine
A chequebook (the last one I had)
1 Lego helicopter (not mine)
1 EA Sports game (Aaron’s)

Sigh...

Day Job versus Independent Consultant: Which is right for you?

Mitch Garvis — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:39:00 GMT

I was looking for an e-mail from years ago when I came across this letter I wrote to the Senior Editor (Careers) for TechRepublic.com nearly six years ago. Although the circumstances hardly apply to me anymore it may be interesting for IT Professionals just starting out, weighing the pros and cons of leaving their cozy and safe day jobs for the wild world of independence… or combining both!

It should be noted that I wrote this letter six weeks before leaving my day job; I did not have any certifications yet (I would get my first within two months). The economic climate was probably much safer then than now, so that was not a concern at the time. As well in Canada I was safe if I got sick – socialized Medicare and such.

I have spent the past three years as the M.I.S. Director of a local security company. Along the way I made a lot of good contacts, and people started (as they will) seeking free advice. From time to time 'they' would ask for help with a problem, and if I could accommodate them without interfering with my day job, I would. The occasional jobs started to supplement my income nicely, and I was exposed to a lot of systems and software that I had either forgotten or would not otherwise have been exposed to.

Well one of these clients was so pleased with my work that they mentioned me to a colleague of theirs, who happened to be a long-lost friend from high school. Ron and I had grown into computers together, and now he ran a computer consulting firm. We met up again at a party, and he asked me if I would be interested in doing some sub-contracting. We discussed it the next week and he gave me the name of a client whose company ran a small local area network. Before I could even meet the client, she called and asked if I could do a favour by visiting a client of theirs whose computerized cash registers were down.

I fixed up the client's client's problem by eliminating the virus from their system, and all of a sudden what had once been an occasional after-work job had turned into an every-lunch and every-evening job. I had established a steady client base of small businesses who were frustrated by a long string of consultants and technicians who charged big bucks but were either unqualified, unreliable, hard-to-reach, or dishonest. After listening to what each had to say, I examined who I was: I was certainly qualified and definitely honest. So by making sure I was reliable and easy to get in touch with I could probably make some good extra spending money.

Though I still have my day job, I am billing on average fifteen hours per week. My clients are extremely happy, and I am earning more money consulting than I do at my day job. I know that many of my clients would be very happy to see me quit my day job to be more available, and that is in the long term plan. I am also studying for a number of certifications, which will open even more doors to companies who may be sitting on the fence about hiring someone like myself.

My two greatest concerns about going at it as an independent were that clients would not want to pay for my services, or worse that the clients would not be knocking on my door. However most business owners and managers that I have come across are not afraid to pay the hefty hourly rates that I charge, if that is what it takes to know that their systems will be working, and if they go down that I will be straight with them about what it will take to get them up again. As long as I maintain my reputation and good name by offering those four points - qualified, reliable, accessible, and honest - I would be in good shape.

In a day and age when anyone can print up business cards and call themselves a computer consultant, businesspeople have to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. I tell my clients that there are consultants who charge twenty dollars per hour - and are worth every penny of it, and there are consultants who charge one hundred and twenty dollars per hour - and are worth every penny of it. When your business relies on its computers to work right this time and every time, which do you think is your best bet to get you there?

Oh What a Night!

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:24:00 GMT

New Years Eve… December 31st, 2008. We left our hotel at 1pm and did not stop having an incredible time for over twelve hours! I started to blog when we came home last night, but it was a lost cause. It is now New Years Day, and I have a lot to remember from last night.

We had tickets to see Jersey Boys, which was by far the best of the shows that we have seen this trip. The star of the show – Dominic Scaglione Jr. – had an incredible voice, and was a really nice guy… he and his entourage happened to walk into the bar where Theresa and I were sitting after the show, and spent a few minutes talking to us. We had already gotten a picture of him with Theresa, but took this opportunity to get an autograph.

Drinks were at the bar in Gallagher's, across the street on 52nd Street West. Max was pouring the drinks, and he did not seem to be measuring his pours. Around 6:00 I asked for a table, and we had an excellent steak dinner… not Berns’ or Moishe’s, but definitely a great steak!

We walked along 8th Avenue to 42nd Street where we had concert tickets… what a madhouse! Theresa and I made sure to stick together, and with a little effort we got to the 42nd Street Checkpoint in one piece. We showed our tickets to no fewer than three NYPD cops, and then got to B.B. King’s. We were all bundled up because we figured we would have to wait in line outside, but as luck would have it they were letting people wait in the bar, where we met a really nice couple from Tennessee. Tom and Charlene were the nicest people, on their first vacation in several years and loving New York City.

When they started letting people into the lounge we were near the front of the line, and got a great table… and the drinks kept coming. All I can say is it is a good thing that we were not driving!

Chuck Berry was incredible… at his age (he has to be seventy years old!) he isn’t duck-walking anymore, but he sure has the voice, and can play the guitar like nobody’s business! He played all of our favourite songs, and then some… Maybelline, Oh Carol, My Ding-a-Ling (an interesting audience participation sing-a-long!), and Sweet Sixteen. Leading into midnight he brought a couple of girls from the audience on stage, and broke into Johnny B. Goode… WOW! He really knows how to make people move!

Somehow for the last couple of songs Charlene ended up on stage with Chuck and the band… and she did not disappoint the drunken entourage that she left behind! Just look at her in this picture, dancing with the man himself. Theresa stayed behind, and Tom and I were just taking as many pictures as we could, while dancing along.

Sadly the show had to come to an end, as all good things must. As we made our way to the door Theresa opined that it was definitely her greatest New Years Eve ever… and I spent a minute trying to think of a better one. I have spent them with friends, I have spent them with family… I spent two in the army. None that I can think of can hold a candle to what we did last night (sorry Brad… at least you got your award!). Great shows, great food, great people, and the woman I love. What more could a man ask for? I hope you all had a great time too… and wish you and yours the best for an incredible 2009!

New York City – End of Day 2

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:22:00 GMT

Actually it was our first full day in the city to be sure… but that’s just a technicality. We drove in yesterday – after sitting in traffic waiting for the Lincoln Tunnel for two full hours; boy are we glad that we drive a hybrid! It took another 45 minutes to get to the hotel at 45th and 7th Avenue – we were able to park the car, and plan to leave it thusly until we leave!

Once we were here though… all of the stress of travel dissipated in the quaintness of our modern European-style hotel. I have been in a lot of hotel rooms and can honestly say that this one (Room Mate Grace) is unique. It has everything we need, and is extremely efficient in its design. We cleaned up and hit the town!

Theresa and I love the theatre, although we understood that Broadway was dark on Sundays and Mondays. We quickly discovered that we were wrong, and walked to the new TKTS in Times Square to see what we could get… forget about it! The line was ridiculous, and we decided to just go to the box office. The first show Theresa really wanted to see was Mamma Mia, and who am I to say no? We made reservations at a little Chinese joint next to the Winter Garden Theatre, and lucked out with seats in the Orchestra :) The show was good… I do not love the music, but everything else about it was excellent.

This morning wee decided to walk to Macy’s… a ten block walk would give us some exercise, and lord knows I need it! Theresa needed a couple of things, and a friend recommended that we eat at the Cellar at Macy’s… and he has not yet led me wrong.

For some reason everywhere we have gone – with the exception of TKTS – we have magically avoided any significant waiting. We walked into the Cellar and were seated right away… 12:45pm, Monday between Christmas and New Years, in the largest department store in the world. When we finished our very agreeable lunch there were no fewer than thirty people lined up waiting for our table!

From the cellar we rode the escalator up to the top – ten floors up – only to discover that what we were looking for was on the balcony over the first floor. No matter, it was an adventure… not our first and likely not our last of the day!!

Theresa is there to keep me in line when I tell cashiers that the <fill in the blank> that we are buying was on a shelf marked 50% Off… and she did it again today, only to find out (much to hers and the cashier’s amazement) that this time I was telling the truth! There really are bargains to be had after Christmas… even at Macy’s!

We walked back from 34th Street to the movie theatre on 42nd. It was a beautiful warm day and we really enjoyed the walk. We saw a movie to kill a couple of hours, and then came back to the hotel.

We decided that lunch was such a success that we would try Jay’s second restaurant recommendation – the Carnegie Deli. We took a bicycle-powered rickshaw along Avenue of the Americas driven by a young man from West Africa… what a hoot! I had never done that before, and aside from being much easier to manoeuvre through traffic, it was also a lot of fun!

Carnegie’s is certainly not Schwartz’s but it was good… and holy Hanna do they put a lot on your plate! As Jay suggested we shared a sandwich and a knish, and were FULL! The place itself was a great experience that everyone should try at least once… though I sympathize with your arteries if you go overboard.

Walking back we realized that not all theatres are dark on Mondays anymore… we couldn’t get tickets for Jersey Boys for a reasonable amount, and Wicked was sold out. The third theatre we came across was the Ambassador which had Chicago playing. I walked up to the box office and the teller liked me… Again he had Orchestra seats (second row!) but only charged me the lowest Balcony rates. Who says you can’t get anything for a smile and a kind word!?

Chicago was a great show. I had seen the movie, but Theresa knew nothing but the name. At intermission she admitted to me that she was enjoying it more than Mamma Mia… even though the seats were not as comfortable… though I promised Eagle One that I would not complain!

We walked back to the hotel and realized what a full day it had been. We took some pictures as we walked along Broadway into Times Square, and got back to the room in time for us to realize how tired we were. Tomorrow is another day, and Theresa and I cannot wait to see what it has in store for us… who knows? We might even get to see Jersey Boys!

Outlook Rules – STOP!

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:26:00 GMT

I cannot remember exactly when I started using Microsoft Office Outlook over the free Outlook Express product, but I do remember preferring it over OE, at least when I got used to it… and when I really started using it.

I do remember that when I installed my original Small Business Server 2003 server at home – with Exchange Server 2003 included and integral to that experience – I was an independent consultant, and spent several hours (days?) collating the information I had in several sources – Outlook Express, PDA, and especially my DayTimer – into Outlook. That meant that every appointment going forward, every contact, every e-mail, and every task would be in Outlook, and has been ever since (probably mid-2003).

So all of a sudden I had this single repository of information where everything went… and quickly understood the concept of drinking from a fire hose. At first dozens and eventually hundreds of e-mails would come in every day.

When I discovered Outlook Rules I fell in love, and have been using them ever since. Admittedly I do not use them to their fullest extent… mostly to just sort e-mail into folders (and I have nearly a hundred of those, if not more).

At some point I noticed that a lot of e-mails would fall under a number of rules… for example, I have a rule that any e-mail from someone whose address includes the text @microsoft.com is sorted into a file called Microsoft; however I also have several rules for people or groups at Microsoft… so an e-mail from Richard Claus would be delivered to two locations. Never mind that this would take extra storage space, it would also look like I have two (or often THREE) unread messages for a single message.

There is a simple solution for that… there is a rule called ‘Stop Processing More Rules’. On the Select Actions window you can select Move it to the specified folder, which will do just that. However you can select multiple actions here, and the Stop Processing More Rules action will do just that, rather than letting the engine process the next rule… thus preventing other rules from being applied to it.

Of course you may ask why isn’t this the default action for all rules? I did mention that I, like most of the people in the world who use Outlook, do not use it to its fullest extent. However there are rules that apply only within Outlook, and cannot be ported over to Exchange Server, such as assign it to a category. By applying this action to a rule it is automatically converted to a ‘Client Only’ rule, and will be removed from the Exchange Server. If a user only checks his e-mail from the single Microsoft Office Outlook client where the rule is configured then there is no problem… but imagine a user who uses Outlook Web Access as well as Outlook Mobile Access… rules would not be processed on the fly, and the whole benefit to the organization would be lost. Instead of doing that, we can create two rules… one that files the incoming e-mail into the proper folder (Server-side rule), and then one that assigns a category to the same e-mail (client-side rule). The e-mail would be filed properly on the fly, and as soon as the user connected to his Outlook client it would then be categorized.

Bill Jowett of Exclaimer Inc. (http://www.exclaimer.com) has given me a sneak preview of a new product that they are currently beta-testing a new product that will extend the functionality of Outlook (beyond what their current Exclaimer Mail Utilities offering does, which only works with a back-end Exchange Server) with some great new features. As their previous offering used a powerful rules engine as the core back-end tool, I look forward to seeing what the new Outlook product will offer… but for now the standard Outlook rules does what I need, and with a little ingenuity helps me to keep my mailbox clean! He will be presenting his session ‘Outlook 2007: What’s NOT in the Box’ tomorrow evening (Tuesday, December 9th, 2008) at the IT Professionals Community of Greater Toronto where he will be demonstrating the new tool… come on out and get a sneak peak before it is actually launched!

What a long, strange trip it’s been!

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:48:00 GMT

I can hardly believe that it has been four years since a brash and outspoken yet passionate young man volunteered to help build a user group for IT Pros in Montreal. After two years at the helm of the Montreal IT Professionals Community (affectionately known as MITPro) I left partly to make way for new blood, partly because I was embarking upon a new career path… one that would take me away from Montreal, initially for extended periods of time and within the year permanently.

Within months of settling in Mississauga I was asked again to volunteer, and nearly a year ago a group of passionate IT Pros sat down to form the IT Professionals Community of Greater Toronto. Our ‘launch’ was at the Server/SQL 2008 launch event in March, where we told everyone about our first event that we held on March 18th… and while we had a temporary ‘placeholder site’ on the web, we were planning big things for our site, and the passionate group of volunteers planned for that site to be up in time for the April event.

April turned to May, spring into summer and eventually autumn until today, five days until the winter solstice. The delays were plenty and I am responsible for all of them… from hardware to software and back, until we finally found the combination that worked for us. It took nearly ten months to get this site up, and I am reminded of the old saying about the shoemaker’s children.

Over the coming weeks you will likely see a number of huge changes to the site because what you see is not the result of months of design efforts, rather of several days but based on an incredible platform – Telligent’s Community Server. If you are looking for a portal engine I highly recommend it… I have been using their previous version for my personal site for over a year, and love the new one even more.

Speaking of blogging, if you are a member of our community and you’d like to start, drop us a line… we’d be glad to host your blog for you!

See you soon!

Community – Every Opportunity an Opportunity

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:37:00 GMT

You never know who you are going to meet at a user group meeting.

Last Tuesday evening the IT Professionals Community of Greater Toronto hosted its monthly event at the University of Toronto. It was great to see so many new faces at the meeting, and I was happy to meet most of them. I count as friends quite a few people I met at such events in Montreal, and now in Toronto.

On Wednesday or Thursday I received an e-mail from one of the new members inviting me for a cup of coffee. We met this afternoon, and spent nearly two hours chatting about a myriad of topics, from community to business, to industry trends and family and much more. He was surprised that I was willing to meet so readily, and to spend so much time. The truth is you never know who you are going to meet, and frankly isn’t that what community is about?

I have become over the past few years a bit of a magnet; people seem to want to meet me, and it is usually my pleasure to meet them. I never know if that person will become a friend, partner, client, or associate… but we live in the same space – we are both IT Professionals, and both live in the Greater Toronto Area. There was a time when this was not my attitude – it was first important to know what someone could do for me before I would spend time with them. I cannot begin to imagine what opportunities I missed out on because of this, and I am glad that I have evolved since then.

The point is you never know who you are meeting, and taking the time to find out can often pay dividends. In the case of the gentleman I met with following last week’s meeting, I was able to offer him a few words of advice for his practice, and might even be able to send some business his way. He told me he was interested in certification exams, so I was able to get him a couple of books from the prize closet that will help him on his way. He in turn bought me a cup of coffee… and reminded me why I love being involved in the community – it’s not about me… it’s about us.

Of course, there is a time and a place to put community aside… we all have to make a living after all. A fellow Microsoft Certified Trainer was complaining to me that a colleague had accepted a teaching gig for less than he had, and that undercutting each other would only devalue the program. While that may to a certain extent be true, we have to remember – especially independent contractors – that we are in a business, and have to make a living… fifteen percent less is better than zero after all. Unless we were to band together – ALL of us – and for a Parity Committee then we have to be competitive.

It took a long time for me to reconcile that a user group – or more precisely community of IT Professionals – is a group of people who are by definition in direct competition with each other. However just because we compete does not mean that we do not have something to offer one another. I have had community members without a great deal of technical support call me in to help him with a deep technical issue… I have called on colleagues with different areas of expertise for help (I certainly don’t do dev work, or much in SQL for example). Often it would just be an issue that a project or job was too large in scope for a single person, and a few of us would collaborate on the same project.

I do not know many IT Pros who are lone wolves; it is not that they do not exist – they exist in droves – but those lone wolves do not come out to the events, do not mingle with their peers. I wish them all well, but who do they call when they need a hand? I have heard of many consultants who never go on vacation because they cannot leave their clients unsupported; community members can ‘watch each others’ backs’ – so for example my clients would be supported without the threat of losing them.

I have learned over time that as good as I may be, WE is always better… although it is important to know who we are partnering with. User groups are great places to meet a lot of people, and some of them are going to be good fits but some of them might not be. We have to know who we are dealing with because in some cases those people will be representing us – you should take your time getting to know someone before trusting them with your clients – you have to trust not only that they will not steal them, but that they would represent you professionally.

I look forward to watching the GTA community grow and thrive not because of the Board of Directors, but because of you. Tell us your stories about how community works for you!

Tech Support’s Revenge

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:32:00 GMT

This is an oldie but a goodie… thanks to my man in Dallas Larry Lentz for reminding me of it!

Tech Support: "Sir, something has burned within your power supply."

Customer: "I bet that there is some command that I can put into the AUTOEXEC.BAT that will take care of this."

Tech Support: "There is nothing that software can do to help you with this problem."

Customer: "I know that there is something that I can put in...some command...maybe it should go into the CONFIG.SYS."

Minutes later:

Tech Support: "Ok, I am not supposed to tell anyone this but there is a hidden command in some versions of DOS that you can use. I want you to edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT and add the last line as C:\DOS\NOSMOKE.EXE and reboot your computer."

Pause.

Customer: "It is still smoking."

Tech Support: "I guess you'll need to call Microsoft and ask them for a patch for the NOSMOKE.EXE."

Four hours later, he calls back.

Tech Support: "Hello sir, how is your computer?"

Customer: "I called Microsoft and they said that my power supply is incompatible with their NOSMOKE.EXE and that I need to get a new one. I was wondering when I can have that done?"

EBS Deployment Scripts

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:41:00 GMT

Over the past few weeks I have been in front of a number of audiences discussing Essential Business Server. As promised, here are the scripts I discussed to create your WindowsPE to deploy the OS portion of the EBS servers over the network:

call copype.cmd amd64 C:\winpe

imagex /mountrw C:\winpe\winpe.wim 1 C:\winpe\mount

peimg /inf=C:\drivers\nic\amd64\*.inf C:\winpe\mount\windows

peimg /prep C:\winpe\mount\Windows /f

imagex /unmount /commit C:\winpe\mount

copy C:\winpe\winpe.wim C:\winpe\ISO\sources\boot.wim

oscdimg -n -bC:\winpe\etfsboot.com C:\winpe\ISO C:\winpe\winpe.iso

Here is the script to create your bootable USB key:

Diskpart

                Sel disk 2

                Clean

                Cre part pri

                Active

                Assign

                Format fs=ntfs quick

Copy the content from the .ISO image to the USB stick

I should point out that these are NOT my scripts… To the best of my ability they can be traced to a presentation by Michael Nytrom and Greg Starks at TechEd. I am indebted to both of them for helping to pave the way!

Stupid Mistakes: Why we should always pay attention!

Mitch Garvis — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:29:00 GMT

In September I gave a lecture at the Toronto IT Professionals Community on different deployment technologies available to small and medium business – specifically Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 4.1, Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK), and Windows Deployment Services (Windows DS). Essentially I was showing them how easy it is to create and maintain a deployment infrastructure to deploy their desktops and applications without having to purchase additional software. I had verified that the venue had a stable Internet connection, and was simply going to log into my server at home for all of my demos.

The day of the presentation I had a very simple schedule. After dropping Theresa and Aaron off I would come home, do a complete run-through of my demos, then reset them all so that they would be ready that evening. I would then have a leisurely lunch and spend the afternoon relaxing before driving into Toronto around 4pm.

One of the demos involved creating a ‘Gold Image’ in a virtual machine based on Windows Vista… install the OS and any patches, applications, anti-virus, and policies. I would then run the System Preparation Tool (SysPrep.exe) in that machine to generalize the image, strip the Security Identifiers (SIDs), so that it could then be captured into Windows DS and deployed to multiple systems.

The phone rang as I was getting this demo ready. It was a call that was not very important, but it was deep enough that I should have stopped what I was doing until the call was over. I always tell my son to pay attention to what he does, and simply put I should have followed my own advice.

The SysPrep.exe tool looks the same in every current version of Windows. it sits in the same directory (<systemdrive>\Windows\System32\SysPrep). It gives you the same warning, and then does the same thing. If it didn’t I might have noticed that I was not running it from the virtual Vista box, but rather from the physical Server 2008 box. It did not take me more than a second to realize what I had just done… and how much damage I had caused.

For those of you who are not familiar with the System Preparation Tool, it essentially takes your installed operating system and reverts it into a not-yet-installed operating system… it strips licenses, security identifiers, and any other globally unique IDs… so when you boot into it you are starting from what is called the Out-of-Box-Experience (OOBE)… and go through setup essentially from scratch.

I was fortunate in that most of my workload – including anything that I was doing for various client projects – was being done in virtual machines which were untouched… but needless to say I did not get to have my leisurely lunch and relaxing afternoon that day.

By the time the server was installed, patched, updated, tweaked, and accessible externally it was 4:30 and I was late… I would get to the venue on time, not forty-five minutes early. Most unfortunately I did not have opportunity to do the complete run-through of all of my demos, so I was working without a net. Most of them worked fortunately, but it could easily have gone either way.

In my old life we were always told that it is better to lose a minute in life than our life in a minute, and they were right… take the extra time to do things right, and focus!

Going Green

Mitch Garvis — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:04:00 GMT

Theresa and I bought a new car recently. It's Green. To be specific, it is actually a colour called Aloe Green Metallic, which to me sounds like a pretentious way of saying it's green.

The car was actually available in one of seven colours, but it did not really matter, because no matter what colour we chose (Desert Sand Mica... Barcelona Red Metallic... SHEESH!) the car would still be green.

We decided to buy a hybrid, or to be more more specific, we went to the dealership to look at hybrid cars with the intention that if we could do so without too much of an increase in our monthly expenses we would do it, and we did.

Don't get me wrong... I am not a conservationist, but I am very practical; with the price of gas being what it is (when we bought the car it was $1.30/litre… now it is down to $.90/litre), we can either decide to drive less (not a viable option with our lifestyle, as well as where we live) or we can look for a more fuel efficient car.

Our car is not the only change we have made recently as a nod to the green movement. As an independent IT consultant, trainer, and courseware designer I need several servers running at any given time; this week it is Essential Business Server 2008 (three servers), last week it was a complete deployment infrastructure (including Active Directory, System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Operations Manager, and Microsoft Deployment Toolkit – three servers plus three workstations), and a few weeks before that it was migrating from an SBS 2003 Premium infrastructure to an EBS 2008 Premium infrastructure (six servers, three workstations). Of course I do not need to keep all of these configurations when I was finished, so all I really need is six servers and a few desktop computers and I’m set.

Of course, there are a couple of issues to consider here:

Six servers with the minimum requirements for these projects would be prohibitively expensive;
None of the servers in question would ever utilize more than 15% of their resources, but they were necessary nonetheless;
Nine machines would increase my monthly electricity bill by $200/month; and
I do not have a home office big enough to store these all if it was the best way.

There was a green solution to this conundrum: a single server that is powerful enough to virtualize all of these servers simultaneously. It is not widely appreciated that most servers do not use all of their resources… especially in a smaller environment without excessive use. Moore’s Law promised us that processing power would skyrocket, and indeed it has… well past the basic needs of most individuals. A result of this is that there are huge numbers of computers and servers whose CPU are never taxed beyond 15%. Of course we can’t purchase 20% of a CPU… but we can share the resources between servers.

The server that I decided on is a HP ProLiant DL585 G2, with four dual-core CPUs, sixteen gigabytes of RAM and six high-speed SAS hard disks - admittedly more machine than any individual server I would ever have purchased for my home… and is the single most expensive piece of equipment in the house. It consumes more electricity than any other item (including our central air conditioner). It generates enough heat to make a noticeable difference in the room where it resides… and it is loud. Having stated all of that it is also the smartest purchase I have made in years. With all of the resources that it does consume, it is less by far than the six machines I would have needed to do the same work… as much as 75% less electricity; it generates 20% of the heat that those servers would have; it takes much less space than a physical server farm would have; and as far as return on investment (ROI) the eight CPU cores average between 40 and 80% usage at any given time (when running hot). It has more hard drives than any server I would have bought… and yet they are all being used (efficiently).

Admittedly it is bigger than any server I would have bought (My old PowerEdge 4300 was bigger and if not heavier then close) for myself, but it still took less materials to make than what I would have bought… and when the time comes (years from now) to dispose of it, aside from the fact that so much of it is recyclable, it would take up much less space in a landfill than would six machines.

I’ll say it again… I am not an environmentalist, but there are times when going green just makes sense… cars and servers are just two examples where I saved money while being planet-friendly. How about you?

Installing EBS: A Diary

Mitch Garvis — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:16:00 GMT

So now that I have a day or two to play (and need it up already!), I decided to start installing my Essential Business Server environment today. This is not my first kick at this can (I have installed eight or nine previous iterations in either beta or RTM Escrow) so I know there are a number of challenges that I can run into. I am going to diary the entire process from soup to nuts, and hopefully help you avoid some potential stumbling blocks.

Diagram 1: Physical Hardware

The first thing I should call out is my environment. The Physical Hardware diagram is the layout of the devices that I have to contend with. In the grand scheme of things it is an extremely simple layout with fewer devices than an average EBS environment would have. Nevertheless because I wanted to implement the network properly, I still took the time to plan things out.

The Network Plan diagram shows the relevant portion of the new network infrastructure. All of the EBS servers are virtualized within the MDG-Server box. I want to remind you at this point that this EBS network is essentially supporting a single user; For a production network I do NOT recommend virtualizing the three servers in a single box; one of the disadvantages of housing all servers in a single box is that, like with Windows Small Business Server (SBS), you have a single point of failure (SPF) – if your hardware goes down (and even the best servers are prone to do so) so does your entire network. I have known businesses running SBS on the best servers that were brought down by a defective fan.

Diagram 2: Network plan

I give my virtual machines domain names that start with v- so that should my organization grow I will still be able to easily tell which machines are physical and which are virtual. As well I decide to switch to a Class-B address design for the internal network – the connection between the Internet router and the Security Server will keep their Class C addresses. My reasons for this are because eventually I will add a virtual SBS box for demonstrations, and the different addressing will be easier to distinguish. Remember that this is not a scenario that is licensed for production use, and my SBS box will remain completely segregated from the network. I am leaving my physical server on the external address range because I still want to be able to log on remotely using Remote Desktop directly to that box, and not to the EBS infrastructure (which I can still access remotely using Remote Web Workplace (RWW), or by logging onto the parent partition and then accessing the Hyper-V Manager.

A New Error…

I have installed Windows in its various incarnations literally thousands of times without exaggerating. This is the first time that I have ever gotten a warning (when selecting the volume to install to) that Windows requires a system volume on the partition to install. I got a warning, then a STOP error. Weird, and it happened on both the Management and Messaging systems (for those of you who thought I wrote sequentially without going back). The solution is to create a new volume on the Un-partitioned space before proceeding. I do this for both the C and D drives… I don’t know why. The EBS Installation will (when selecting the Data store) give us the option of opening the Drive Management tool to create that partition when the time comes.

EBS Preparation & Planning Wizards

On the parent partition I ran the EBS Preparation Wizard and then the EBS Planning Tool – I was not joining EBS to an existing Active Directory infrastructure, so I could run this from anywhere. These two wizards (on disk 1 of EBS) must be run prior to deploying your EBS infrastructure, and they make sense – they make us think about the questions we might otherwise forget. The wizards create an XML file called PlanningWizardData.xml which is saved to your Documents folder, and can then be copied to a USB key to be imported into the EBS installation process. The problem is if you are installing to a new virtual machine you can’t simply plug in a USB key. Here is my workaround for that problem:

Store the data on the parent partition;
Before starting the virtual Management Server add a second NIC to it, and configure it on the same network as your parent partition;
After the operating system has installed and the Management Server Installation prompts you for the file:
1. Press F10 to temporarily break out of the installation process into a Command Prompt window;
2. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and set a password;
3. From the Command Prompt window run explorer.exe;
4. Create a new directory in the C drive, and share it;
5. (From the parent partition) navigate to the share on the Management Server (\\172.16.0.10\<sharename>) and authenticate with Administrator and the password you set;
6. Copy the file PlanningWizardData.xml from the parent to the share;
7. (From the child partition) reset the Administrator password to <blank>; and
8. Exit all windows except the EBS Management Server Installation.
Navigate to the directory where the file was and select PlanningWizardData.xml.

The Management Server will take quite some time to install – it is creating a domain, installing System Center Essentials (SCE), and other other important tasks. Plan from start to finish two hours for the Management Server. If you want to save a little time you can kick off the deployment of the OS for the Security Server; you can’t install the EBS components, but you can get a head start here.

So once you see the Continue Installation screen in Management Server Installation you can proceed with the Security Server Installation. As you can see on the screen shot the EBS installation process gives you a lot of visual feedback… in a very nice ‘graphical progress bar’ we see each step, and the ‘Good job, boy!’ Green as I have taken to calling it. You should have seen screens like this in the Preparation and Planning Wizards as well.

My security server – the only one with a single hard disk, though again not the recommended setting – has multiple NICs… one connected to my Internal network (which is not bound to a physical network interface in the parent server) with a Class B address, and one connected to my External network (bound to the NIC that connects to the physical router) with a Class C address. For some reason both of them got addresses from the Management Server’s DHCP Server, so both had Class B addresses. In Hyper-V I opened the settings for the Security Server, disconnected the External adapter; I was then able to distinguish and select the Internal NIC in the setup process. I then reconnected the (virtual) external NIC and continued without incident.

The Security Server Installation rechecks the environment, and if you haven’t disconnected anything in the process it should return a bunch of ‘Good job, boy!’ Green check marks. It reboots several times during the configuration – domain joining and all that rot – and then asks you to confirm the network addresses you will be using.

Because the security server is the first one on my network that will be ‘hot’ – externally facing – I am always careful to allow it to download and install security and critical updates right away. You really should do this for all three servers, but Security is the first point of contact.

It will reboot on its own of course… several times at this point. if you did kick off the Messaging Server deployment then you should wait until prompted by the Security Server before continuing with that server’s installation.

I just noticed one Update Failed message on the Security Server. It is for Microsoft Silverlight, an important update certainly on Vista or even server workstations, but not for the headless security server on EBS. I will not try to go back and remedy that one.

Once my Security Server is done I get my ‘Good job, boy!’ Green screen, and go right on to my Messaging server. Historically this is the one that I have had the most issues with… some having to do with settings, one or two because of ‘beta bugs’ and a plethora caused by environmental factors – Active Directory restrictions and such. In the Hyper-V machine settings I remembered to uncheck the ‘Time synchronization’ in the Integration Services set… I have spoken with people who say that this should not be an issue and I agree, but it always has been for me, and frankly I am bored with dealing with it.

Once you have told the Messaging Server the domain name and password you cannot just walk away… Once it checks and then joins the domain it will ask for more interaction… After the Domain Join is complete it will check the environment, including DNS and Exchange pre-requisites, then ask you IP Address information, and before you press GO on the actual installation you can (as with the other servers) save your Server Configuration file, which I always do. From there calculate about 90 minutes that it will work without you.

I got my ldifde.exe error again… the one that I blogged about recently. It is strange because I do NOT have another domain controller running – I was careful to take my SBS box off-line (read: OFF) before going ahead. I will try the same fix (disconnecting the external NIC on the Security Server) and see if that works…

The problem with this particular error is it can take up to half an hour to materialize, all the while I am waiting patiently. As it happens I know that this fix did not work, because if it had the progress bar would have moved… even a little, slowly. Once it does crash, I move on to my next possible mitigation – switching the (internal) virtual network to a private virtual network. If it doesn’t work I have another half an hour to consider what to try next.

After the third failure I decided that tweaking it might not be enough, and that it might actually need a kick. I restarted the Messaging Server installation from scratch – wiped the partitions and literally started from zero. It seems to have worked, because for the first time the progress bar on the Exchange Server Installation line is moving quite nicely… slow, but steady.

Once the Messaging Server Installation is done (and gives us one more ‘Good Boy!’ green mark) we go back to our Management Server to continue with the Guided Configuration and Migration Tasks. From here on in the Management server is where we will spend most of our time, not only during the Installation process but for the life of our servers. The Guided Configuration and Migration Tasks list is essentially a checklist that takes you from zero to production environment; some of the tasks you are forced to do (Tasks 1, 2, & 3 are Install the Management Server, Install the Security Server, and Install the Messaging Server). Some are informational (i.e.: Migrate DNS), and some are wizard-driven tasks that once completed can be marked as done. Each task will have an estimated time commitment (Management Server being the longest at 2.5 hours). Of course these are estimates based on best-case scenarios, and do not account for two hour delays in the Messaging Server installation due to FSMO issues, Time Synchronization, or intermittent network issues, all of which are issues that I have encountered along the way.

Most of the tasks are important for a production server, but for my purposes they are unnecessary. I do not have multiple sites, I don’t have a SAN, and (at least for the time being) I am not publishing any web sites that are not pre-configured. I do decide to let EBS manage my DHCP Server for me, which involves a number of steps:

Verify the DHCP scope in the EBS Management server;
Disable the DHCP service in my DLink router;
(Because I am working in a virtual environment) bind my virtual Internal network to a second physical network adapter in my server that is attached to my wireless router.

The rest are tasks that you should pay close attention to, but I am not going to discuss because they are as straightforward as they are different on each network. All told, including the installation of SharePoint on my Management Server, I probably spent nine hours installing my EBS environment. I wish you luck with yours, and look forward to hearing your stories!

Windows Home Server - How did I ever live without it?

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:51:00 GMT

In January last year I was introduced to a new product: Codename Q Server, or what would eventually become Windows Home Server. I joined the beta program, discussed it with other MVPs, but never got around to installing it. Well last week I did, and I am kicking myself for not having done so earlier.

Like many IT Professionals (and hobbyists) I have a rather extensive infrastructure of servers and workstations that I am responsible for at home, and at times it has seemed that the shoemaker's children really did go barefoot - although my data was always backed up (probably once per week) the same could never be said for my fiancé or son. In total there are four workstations in the house - my laptop, Theresa's laptop, the family PC and the Media Centre PC. Because I am always building and rebuilding networks it did not seem to make a lot of sense to join them to a domain for centralized administration (although I did try that once with less than stellar results). I had a spare PC sitting around that I used to use as my desktop - in the days when I still had a desktop.

A few weeks ago in conjunction with the infrastructure contest I ran I decided to take that idle PC and install Windows Home Server (WHS) onto it. It had a single 80 gigabyte SATA hard drive in it, which I replaced with a 150GB SATA drive. I installed WHS without changing any of the defaults. I created accounts for each family member - although this was not really necessary. I then installed the WHS Connector onto my laptop to see how it felt... and frankly it felt pretty good; simple to use, easy to understand, and basically what I call PhD (Press here, Dummy!) Computing. I kicked off a backup of my PC with three mouse clicks.

Once I was comfortable that it was not going to blow up I added Theresa's laptop, and kicked off a backup. At this point I noticed that I was going to need more hard disk capacity in the WHS box, if only because all of our machines had so much different information in them, and for four PCs with a total of 600GB of hard disks, it was not an unreasonable expectation. That being said, the way WHS backs up the PCs under its control is incredibly efficient - if the same file exists on multiple PCs in multiple places it only backs up the file once. Imagine you have a fifty megabyte video on four PCs that no longer needs 200MB to back up, but 50MB!

I added a 500GB drive to the home server, and it immediately asked me if I wanted to add it to the WHS storage capacity (warning me that all data would be lost). I did just that, and the drive disappeared... and the capacity of my home server increased by 500GB. The WHS Console now showed that I had two Storage Hard Drives (that made up the WHS capacity) and two Non-Storage Hard Drives – in this case two external USB drives that were temporary.

Within a few minutes all of four computers had the WHS Connector installed (no reboot required – just install the connector from \\WHS\Software and away you go!), and were backing up their entire systems. At the end of the day the WHS Computers and Backup tab showed the name of each computer, the description, the operating system and the status of their last back up (successful in all cases). It also shows (with a slight greying) the PCs that are not currently on or connected to the network.

The next thing I decided to do was to play with the Shared Folders. By default there are Five (Music, Photos, Public, Software, and Videos), as well as one for each user created. I took all of my music and added it into the appropriate share, and suddenly instead of my being able to listen to my music on my PC, I could access my entire library from any PC… as could anyone else with access to that share (by default everyone). I then did the same with my photos, and surprised Theresa when she looked at the Media Centre PC – the screen saver was no longer Windows Vista, it was our memories. Videos came next, and this includes videos of the family but also some movies I recorded at one point. The Shared Folder tab let me know exactly how much each took, and the Shared Folders screen also let me know how much of my entire drive (or drives) were taken up by Shared Folders. You can of course add additional shared folders as you like, and grant (or deny) users permissions as you see fit.

WHS does much more than just shared storage and backups – it offers home users features such as Remote Web Workplace (RWW) and a way to host your own websites, but because I have my Essential Business Server working I do not need the same features again. However as a huge long-time proponent of the benefits of RWW I can hardly stress enough how great a feature this is – previously you needed a full install of SBS to have this functionality – now it is available with WHS, the least expensive server solution Microsoft offers.

As if to stress just how simple WHS is to install, use, and maintain there is a book available for it – a children’s book – called 'Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?’ that literally explains to a three-year-old what a server is, and why it is there.

I am hooked on the product, but why shouldn’t I be… I’ll never have to touch it again! :)

Technorati Tags: Home Server,SBS,Windows Home Server,Mitch Garvis,Server at Home

A Gotcha to Installing EBS in an Existing Environment

Mitch Garvis — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:01:00 GMT

I encountered a problem this week-end that baffled me for a while… Here is the infrastructure, the problem, and the solution.

This network diagram is a rough sketch of the relevant portions of the network. At present I have a server (HP DL585 G2) working as my virtualization parent, with my Windows Small Business Server 2008 (SBS) running in a child machine. This SBS box is very new to the environment, and will likely soon be used to record migrating from SBS 2008 to EBS 2008… but for now it does its thing.

I was given a clean server (HP DL385 G5) and tasked with creating a virtual Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (EBS) infrastructure for demonstration purposes at an upcoming event. I installed the server with Windows Server 2008 (x64) Enterprise Edition with all of the necessary patches, installed the Hyper-V role, making sure that I patched Hyper-V as well (KB950050).

This was probably the twentieth time I have gone about installing EBS since I joined that beta program, and although there are a lot of ‘gotchas’ I am fairly adept at avoiding most of them. Both the Management Server and Messaging Server have multiple virtual hard drives (each running on its own drive); I had pre-created two virtual networks (SWMI_Int and SWMI_Ext). The EBS Security Server had two virtual NICs… one connected to each network, while the Management and Messaging Servers were connected to the Internal network.

I was fairly certain that I had followed the ‘measure twice, cut once’ rule to the best of my ability, and the installation was going very smoothly. I ran the EBS Preparation and Planning Wizards, and the installation of the Management Server and Security Server went smoothly… but in my experience they always do, and it is the Messaging Server that causes the most issues. Sure enough…

The first problem I encountered was an Intermittent Network Issue.. during the Domain Configuration pass. This was not the first time I had seen this happen, and the Retry button allowed me to continue without doing any maintenance.

The Exchange Server Installation pass failed, and also offered a Retry option… but to no avail. The message told me to look in the C:\ExchangeSetupLogs directory for guidance. The relevant portion of the log file (always the last few lines :)) are listed below:

[10/25/2008 10:24:07 PM] [2] Running <C:\Windows\system32\ldifde,exe> with arguments <-i –s “vSWMI-Msg.swmi.local” –f “C:\Program Files\Windows Essential Business Server\Bin\EXCHSVR80\Setup\ServerRoles\Common\Setup\Data\PostWindows2003_Schema0.ldf” –j “C:\Users\Administrator.swmi\AppData\Local\Temp” –c “<SchemaContainerDN>” “CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=swmi,DC=local”>.

[10/25/2008 10:24:39 PM] [2] Process C:\Windows\system32\ldifde.exe has finished with exit code 8206.

[10/25/2008 10:24:39 PM] [2] [ERROR] Unexpected Error

[10/25/2008 10:24:39 PM] [2] An error occurred when executing ‘ldifde.exe’ to import schema file ‘C:\Program Files\Windows Essential Business Server\Bin\EXCHSVR80\Setup\ServerRoles\Common\Setup\Data\PostWindows2003_schema0.ldf’. Error code: 8206. More details can be found in the error file ‘C:\Users\Administrator.SWMI\AppData\Local\Temp.ldif.err’.

I followed the clues to the ldif.err file, which was much more succinct:

Entry DN: CN=ms-Exch-Access-Control-Map,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=swmi,DC=local

Add error on entry starting on line 1: Busy

The server side error is: 0x21a2 The FSMO role ownership could not be verified because its directory partition has not replicated successfully with at least one replication partner.

The extended server error is:

000021A2: SvcErr: DSID-030A0AF2, problem 5001 (BUSY), data 0

An error has occurred in the program

If the FSMO (Flexible Single Master Operation) role ownership could not be verified there was a problem with a domain controller… but the DC was installed from scratch in a pristine environment less than ten hours earlier, and had not been altered. I pressed Retry knowing it wouldn’t work, and went up to bed.

In the morning I was greeted by the same error in the same spot… why weren’t my FSMO roles verifiable? More importantly, what was different from the last time I installed EBS in September? I was working off the same source files on the same platform… the only additions to my infrastructure were the SBS 2008 server, and my Windows Home Server (WHS).

WHS is not an Active Directory server, so it wouldn’t have anything to do with FSMO roles. The Small Business Server, on the other hand, is… and what the two (SBS and EBS) have in common is that they both MUST hold all five FSMO roles on their primary server… and failing to do so not only is a licensing breach, it will also cause any number of unexpected errors.

Could it be that simple? I configured the settings of the EBS Security Server’s external NIC… the one that was on the same subnet as my SBS box. Lo and behold, when I pressed Retry the installation continued without any issues.

Technorati Tags: EBS,Essential Business Server,Mitch Garvis

…And the Leaves That are Green Turn to Brown

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:57:00 GMT

I am sitting in William's Coffee Pub in Oakville (my home town, outside of Toronto) watching the leaves blow the last of the leaves from the trees. It is barely above the freezing point, and I am beginning to wonder (as I tend to do this time of year) what quirk of fate brought my grandfathers both to Canada... wondering if it wouldn't have made more sense for them to settle in Myrtle Beach.

The shift from summer (as it were this year) and winter in Canada is a harsh one, and I wonder if the beautiful though often blustery autumns that we enjoy are not G-d's compensation for that... the last three weeks have given us a symphony of colours hard to imagine any other time - during summer the greens are so lush that we can hardly fathom they could end, and in winter the cold and bleak are so harsh that you try to remember if it was ever any other way.

School children mourn the end of summer on the first day of class but that is not really when summer ends; I cannot imagine shedding a tear for the end of winter, and the transition from spring to summer is (in Canada) an imperceptible one where it just seems to be a little warmer and a little drier (again, not this year). But the end of autumn is a sad one indeed... and despite what science might tell us it is not on the equinox in December, but really it is the first frost on the ground, the first time the radio warns that it is going to dip below freezing not overnight but while we are out and about. It is when the last coloured leaf hits the ground, and the bare trees look like they could never possibly have hosted the fall foliage.

Last night Theresa came running into the room telling me it might snow; it did not, but the fact that the weather forecast said that it might brought a little sadness. We told Aaron (our son) that there will be no more Crocs without socks this year; Jacob (puppy) woke me in the middle of the night to go out, but when we god to the door he changed his mind... too windy, too chilly.

Autumn is a hard time of the year to plan for... you simply don’t know what it will offer. Theresa and I got married last week-end, and rather than the outdoor wedding we were thinking about we decided to get married indoors... trading possible beauty for guaranteed comfort. As it turned out the day was glorious and everyone wondered why we did not marry under the gold and red leaves of the apricot tree in our back yard; as nice as it would have been I can imagine the complaints if it had been five degrees colder, windy, and drizzly. You just never know what this season will offer on any given day, and betting on a weather forecast seven days in advance is never the safest bet. If you are wondering, it was still a glorious affair that was enjoyed by all.

Seasons are so important to us that they have been woven into our language as adjectives and similes – the winter of our discontent, spring fling, summer love. Autumn has two names used interchangeably… Fall. Sure, we fall in love… but we also fall down, fall from grace, fall on hard times. Years ago I participated in a student film project called ‘The Fall’ which was about falling leaves, falling down… and falling out of love. It was sad…

As one who has fallen out of love before I know that as hard as it was to imagine, love will come again… so it is that as I look at the bare trees outside the window I know it is impossible to believe now, and it will get cold and depressing first, but spring will come again, and I know that as it does we will wonder how we ever were depressed about the coming winter.

Technorati Tags: Seasons,Ramblings,Mitch Garvis,Canada

The SWMI Story

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:41:00 GMT

Formatting a computer is so easy that anyone can do it. Maintaining a secure, well-managed infrastructure is not; it requires not only someone who understands computers, but a good deal of common sense. The goal of SWMI.CA is to educate people on the best ways to do this, whether they use a single computer with a wireless router at home, if they manage tens of thousands of systems in a corporate environment, or virtually anyone in between.

Secure: There is not a single aspect of IT that is the silver bullet for a secure environment; consider aspects such as intrusion prevention, protection from malware, data theft and sniffing as just a number of considerations for a secure environment. Do not think that since you installed a router that also has a firewall you are necessarily secure.

Well-Managed: The old truism states that if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. Imagine you are the manager of a company ultimately responsible for production, hiring and firing, payroll, accounts payable and accounts receivable. How could you possibly manage efficiently without knowing how many employees you have, or how many of your product you make in a given time frame? What about costs? You wouldn't know how many of your product must be sold - and for how much - for your company to be profitable. IT is the same way. It is vital that as a systems manager you have the right tools to know what you have and what is going on at any given time. If servers go down will it be more efficient to wait for people to start complaining, or would you be better off knowing as soon as the server indicates that it is about to fail?

Infrastructure: Many of us do not consider that just like an architect your IT infrastructure should be planned out in advance before the first nail is driven (note: you should not use nails on your computers!). Ask questions like 'What do I want to do with my systems?' 'Do I have the proper tools to achieve my goals?' and 'How do I leverage the tools that I have (or that I need to acquire) to achieve my goals in a secure, well-managed way?' based on those questions and answers, plan out your environment on paper before going ahead. Get a second opinion to make sure you didn't miss anything important. Then build the infrastructure that you will be able to manage and maintain securely going forward.

Maintaining a secure, well-managed infrastructure is not rocket science… but it is a science and not, as some claim, an art. If you are an IT professional then take pride in your work and make sure it gets done properly. If you are an end user then remember the next time you turn on your computer and it not only works as it should, but has not been compromised then thank your IT pro!

A Secure, Well-Managed Disaster Zone

Mitch Garvis — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 18:24:00 GMT

I owe a great debt to Microsoft Canada (Damir!) and Hewlett Packard Canada (Laurie!) who came through to supply me with a server for my last two projects. If you happen to find yourself in the market for a server for a small to mid-sized company I cannot think of a better product than the HP ProLiant DL-585 G2 that I have been using since May. It truly is everything that I could ever ask for in a server, and has been running my virtual environment flawlessly and without so much as a hiccup.

Let me give you a little bit of information on this machine - that I have often described as the server G-d would buy if he were running a mid-sized corporation. It is a 4U rack-mounted server with hot plug redundant power supplies. Forgetting the basic configuration, the model that I have been working with has four dual-core 2.8GHz AMD Opteron CPUs, sixteen gigabytes of RAM, and six hot plug high-speed SAS (serial attached SCSI) drives (2x 72 GB for the system drive, 4x individual 146 GB drives for storage and virtual machines - all 15,000 rpm). It has a fibre channel host bus adapter, dual gigabit NICs, and HP's server management package which I have come to love - Integrated Lights Out 2 (iLO 2) Standard Management.

In a word, this server rocks. It would fit in perfectly in any company's data centre. Having said all of that, I do not necessarily recommend it for your home office to sit under (or on top of) your desk, as I have had it for the past few months. There are a number of reasons for this.

The server is not quiet. If you are a long-time reader of my blog (back to the days when it resided on www.mitpro.ca) you may have read about the Hovercraft, my old PowerEdge 4300 server which sat on the floor of my apartment in Ville St-Laurent and ran my mail server (see http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2007/06/27/the-dell-hovercraft-is-officially-retired.aspx). We called it the hovercraft because it was loud. Well, this server is louder; initially it scared the puppies, though the entire family has grown used to its sounds from behind the closed door of my office. For several weeks I continued to work in the office despite the noise, but eventually realized that laptops and wifi routers allowed me to escape the constant headaches.
The server generates heat. I do not mean it kicks the thermostat by a degree or two; I mean that if the central heating goes out in the winter we can all sit comfortably in a room with this server going... as long as we brought ear plugs. Occasionally during the summer Theresa would turn the air conditioner to max... I understand that she just does not like the heat. Whenever it got too chilly for me I would just go down to my office and warm up for a bit. Not to say that my office is not air conditioned... but the server wins!
The server is not light. The ProLiant DL-585 G2 is a lot of things, but it has never been accused of being portable. The configuration that I described above weighs just shy of one hundred and fifty pounds. When I picked it up it took two of us to carry it to my car, and when I got it home I had to remove the central processing unit (40 lbs) and carry it into the house in two parts. I do not recommend putting it on your desk without doing some serious weight-capacity testing first.
The server is not small. 19" wide by 26.5" deep by 6.94" tall (48.3cm x 67.3 cm x 17.6 cm) is a perfect size for a server room... if it had four legs three people could comfortably sit at it for afternoon tea. In a word, it is BIG.

Back in May I actually brought the server with me to Montreal. I drove, not because I couldn't write off the airfare, but because Air Canada laughed at me when I suggested I wanted to bring a 150lbs delicate oversized piece of carry-on luggage. As I drove down the 401 it occurred to me that my Toyota Matrix had more computing power in it than the entire space program that launched the first few space shuttles, and likely more CPU cycles than the entire world did when Ronald Reagan was elected president. The concierge at both hotels I stayed at were not entirely sure that I was not secretly playing a practical joke on them, and looked around for hidden cameras. Needless to say they both expected (and received) sizeable tips for helping me to and from my rooms!

Over the past few years I have professed to anyone who would listen the need for a secure, well managed infrastructure. Part of that should be a clean environment, and I am afraid that I have fallen quite short of that goal. Several months ago I posted about how Theresa and I cleaned out our office together (http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2008/02/04/an-organized-office-and-the-journey-into-the-unknown.aspx). I took a picture at the time of what my desk looked like (see left). Unfortunately the past few months my desk area has not looked exactly like that, what with the server and all (see right). I took the picture this morning before removing the server, which thanks to months of air purification and cleaning (after adopting out our cats) has now been re-homed to the basement, where it will probably spend the rest of its life.

Now that I have a little bit of time (between contracts) I am going to spend a few days rebuilding my network environment... I look forward to taking the time to plan both the physical and virtual environment to my liking... a project that I am looking forward to tackling that will let me get back to being a system administrator for a bit! I'm sure that when that project is done I will be proud to blog about how my home network is organized... until then, have a great week-end!

More comments from a converted Vista enthusiast

Mitch Garvis — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:20:00 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

In a previous post (http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2008/05/05/windows-vista-comments-from-a-converted-enthusiast.aspx) I told you about the manager of the local Starbucks, a computer enthusiast whom I helped get going on Windows Vista and Microsoft Office. This afternoon I got an e-mail from him that I wanted to share with you. Not a word has been edited, and it was unsolicited.

<begin e-mail>

It’s been a while since I’ve seen you around, but that’s ok. You’ve helped me out a great deal and I wanted to say thank you again. Also, I know you are always looking for feedback so that is the other reason for my email.

I have just recently purchased a laptop and of course I wanted Windows Vista on it. Over the months while running the OS I have found it to be incredibly reliable and very responsive. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about the OS, mostly due to the OS being installed on computers which are either too old, or the user bought a new one that didn’t meet the world’s new standards. These new standards are not entirely a bad thing either; newer standards continue to offer us more possibilities and more quality. When I purchased my new laptop I made sure it was made of quality parts, such as the CPU having a 1066MHz fsb and a large cache, the memory clocked at 800mhz (a little bit above standard 667), the motherboard fsb clocked at 1066Mhz, and so forth. Although, you can definitely run Windows Vista very smoothly with lower clock speeds, as long as the parts are all in sync and work well together.

Windows Vista has given me more reliability when I needed it and is a hardened OS when it comes to protection. It gives me more detailed critical information so I can properly manage my computer by knowing what’s going on all of the time. Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 has also made my life incredibly more organized and less stressful. I’m able to organize all of the huge loads of information from a wide area of sources all in one application. It has made my work much more effective and has proven to be much more action oriented so I can make the impacts I need in my business more often and in a timely manner.

<end e-mail>

It is always nice to hear positive feedback from people I helped get started with Vista. I know there are plenty more, and I will gladly post your comments. If you are not yet working on Vista then, as always, tell me why and you might win a copy for yourself!

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

Yet Another Internet Scam...

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:52:00 GMT

The original e-mail arrived in French... not entirely normal to begin with, although not unheard of. The original text is attached below. The title translated to 'FW: Free Computer (Verified)! At first I figured someone was forwarding a Craig's List post to me... people are giving away Pentium machines all the time. Not so...

A quick translation of the text (which was forwarded through eight or nine people before it got to me) is:

"Ericsson is giving away free laptops to counter Nokia who is doing the same. Ericsson hopes to improve its popularity. Because of this Ericsson is giving away its new portable WAP. All you have to do is forward this e-mail to 8 people. In approximately two weeks you will receive an Ericsson T18. If you forward it to 20 people or more you will also receive an Ericsson R320. However it is important that you also send your e-mail to Anna Swelunq at Ericsson. Important: It's not a scam... it works! So do yourself a favour and give yourself one of these laptops!"

So let's evaluate the e-mail and see how many things just don't make sense:

Nobody gives away free laptops willy-nilly. If they did then I could have saved a lot of money on this one. Granted there are occasions when companies do give them away to select groups, but it is rare and never based on 'send this to 8 people.'
Nokia makes cell phones and not laptops.
Ericsson is an extremely popular company. They do not need to improve their popularity. Incidentally like Nokia they do not make laptops.
A WAP is a wireless access point, not a model of laptop.
Nobody is sending you anything for forwarding anything to 8, 20, or 60,000,000 people.
The Ericsson T18 and R320 are both models of cell phones (not surprising, as Ericsson makes cell phones!). Incidentally both are extremely old models that have long since been discontinued.
Any time someone tells you This is not a scam! then it likely is.

I asked Anna Swelunq of Ericsson for a comment on this scheme. I received the following answer:

"Sorry, this mail server does not recognize that e-mail address."

So let's review this one more time for the cheap seats: Stop forwarding e-mail to your entire contact list in the hopes of getting something for nothing! You will get nothing but responses from people on your contact list asking you to stop sending them garbage!

For a better of understanding of why these e-mails (like chain letters of old) are started, please read this article from my archives: http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2006/08/21/virus-hoaxes.aspx

</Mitch stepping down from his soap box>

----

FW: Ordi gratuit(Vérifié) !

Bonjour à tous,

La société 'Éricsson' distribue gratuitement des ordinateurs portables ceci dans le but de contrer Nokia qui a fait de même.

Éricsson souhaite ainsi augmenter sa popularité.

Pour cette raison Éricsson distribue gratuitement le nouveau portable WAP.

Tout ce qu'il faut faire c'est envoyer ce mail à 8 de vos connaissances.

Dans environ deux semaines vous recevrez un Ericsson T18.

Si le message est envoyer à 20 personnes ou plus vous allez même recevoir un Éricsson R320.

Important: il faut envoyer une copie de votre e-mail à: anna.swelunq@Ericsson.com

Important: ce n'est pas un canular ça fonctionne!

Alors faites vous plaisir en vous offrant l'un de ces portables!

Un autre canular sur l'Internet...

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:47:00 GMT

Je ne reçois pas souvent des courriels en français, mais des fois, alors je l'ai regardé prudemment. Le titre parlé d'un ordi gratuit, et le texte lisait:

« Bonjour à tous, La société 'Éricsson' distribue gratuitement des ordinateurs portables ceci dans le but de contrer Nokia qui a fait de même. Éricsson souhaite ainsi augmenter sa popularité. Pour cette raison Éricsson distribue gratuitement le nouveau portable WAP. Tout ce qu'il faut faire c'est envoyer ce mail à 8 de vos connaissances. Dans environ deux semaines vous recevrez un Ericsson T18. Si le message est envoyer à 20 personnes ou plus vous allez même recevoir un Éricsson R320. Important: il faut envoyer une copie de votre e-mail à: anna.swelunq@Ericsson.com. Important: ce n'est pas un canular ça fonctionne! Alors faites vous plaisir en vous offrant l'un de ces portables! »

Parmi les problèmes avec le courriel:

1. Personne ne donne librement des ordinateurs portatifs a n'importe qui. S'ils faisaient alors je pourrais avoir épargné beaucoup d'argent sur celui-ci. Accordé il y a des occasions quand les compagnies les donnent aux groupes choisis, mais ces cas sont rare et non jamais basé sur « envoyez ceci à 8 personnes. »

2. Nokia fait des téléphones et non des ordis.

3. Ericsson est une compagnie extrêmement populaire. Ils n'ont pas besoin d'améliorer leur popularité. Aussi, comme Nokia, ils ne fabriquent pas des ordis.

4. Un WAP est un point d'accès sans fil, pas un modèle d'ordinateur.

5. Personne ne vous envoie rien pour avoir expédier quelque chose à 8, 20, ou 60.000.000 de vos amis.

6. Les modèles Ericsson T18 et R320 sont deux modèles des téléphones (non étonnants, comme Ericsson fait des téléphones !). Aussi tous les deux sont des modèles extrêmement vieux qui depuis longtemps ont été discontinués.

7. Quand quelqu'un vous dit ce n'est pas une escroquerie ! alors elle est probablement exactement ca.

J'ai demandé à Anna Swelunq d'Ericsson un commentaire sur cet arrangement. J'ai reçu la réponse suivante :

« Désolé, ce serveur de courriel n'identifie pas cet adresse. »

Arrêtez l'expédition des courriels à votre liste des contactes entière dans les espoirs d'obtenir quelque chose gratuitement ! Vous n'obtiendrez rien sauf certaines réponses te demander de cesser de leur envoyer des ordures !

Pour un meilleur compréhension pourquoi ces courriels sont commencés, lisez s.v.p. cet article de mes archives : http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2006/08/21/virus-hoaxes.aspx

Greatness

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:06:00 GMT

In the past year I have become a father to my fiancé's ten year old son Aaron. I had previously never had any experience as a father, and certainly no real exposure to ten year old boys. It has been a challenge that I have been struggling with, and I can only hope that with time I will improve as a Dad.

Monday was a beautiful day, and while Aaron was sitting on the front lawn I decided to get out the basketball and shoot some hoops. As always I was hoping that he would join me, and suspected that he would for a few minutes and then lose interest; it is not that I have no faith in him, rather that I have great faith in his consistency.

As he sat on the lawn and watched me make some and miss some, he said 'I wish I could find something that I was really great at.' I started to think about that, and tried to remember something that I was great at the first - or second or third or fourth time I did it. I couldn't come up with anything.

As much as I wish it were not so, the reality is I am not and have never been a natural athlete; if it is ever in one's genes then it was not in mine. I happen to have loved playing sports as a kid, and when I put my mind to it I became good at a lot of sports, and at one point or another I played organized hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball, and track-and-field. The greatest individual accomplishment of my high school athletic career was Most Improved Player on the basketball team. I was good and got better by spending lunch hours, after school, week-ends, free periods, and holidays practicing... not for a few minutes at a time, but literally hours and hours on end.

I tried to explain this to my boy, who looks at me and sees me excel at any number of activities. It is not easy. The reality is that while some people may have a natural inclination to things - whether it be athletics, academics, art, or music, nobody is actually great at it the first time out. It takes practice, dedication, more practice, good teachers (coaches, role models, etc...), more practice, aptitude, coordination, and still more practice. We seldom learn anything when we do something right, so we have to make mistakes - a lot of them. We have to do things wrong and make slight changes and then eventually do things right... and then repeat a thousand times.

What is required to achieve greatness? dedication. Frankly I have inherited from my parents the hope that my boy will be dedicated primarily to his academic endeavors before athletic ones. However because of the love I have had of sports over the course of my life I admit that I would not be unhappy if he did develop a love of sports... and you can be sure that even if he rode the bench I would be out there for at least a couple of his games cheering like a proud dad!

I do not think the search for greatness is a question of finding something you are great at... it is about finding something that you would like to be great at and then giving it all you've got. I have wanted to be great at a lot of things over the years and although I have probably not succeeded, I have gotten to be pretty good at many of them. For basketball, baseball, golf, and singing that has always been enough for me to really enjoy doing them. For some of them the journey continues (I try to golf as often as I can), and for others I will have to live with the memories... and in those I seem to get better at them every year!

The Mojave Experiment

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:39:00 GMT

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

I have spent the past two years telling people how much I love Microsoft Windows Vista; it is not because Microsoft pays me to do so (they do not), but because I truly believe it is the best operating system on the market for desktop (and laptop... and tablet... and media center) PC users. It has often been an uphill battle, but not been because of the technology; there are several reasons for it, and any time I speak to a group about Vista I like to ask why they have such negative feelings about Vista. The answers are not surprising because I hear the same ones every time I ask the question, in no particular order:

Not stable / crashes
Too expensive to consider
Requires too much new hardware
Drivers not available
Software is not compatible
People tell me it is a lousy operating system.

The last reason is probably the most damaging one. We all know how powerful word of mouth advertising can be, but it goes both ways; negative word of mouth can damage even the best product. However we also know that you cannot always believe everything you hear. (I have found Windows Vista to be far and away more stable than Windows XP (or any previous operating system) ever was, even after two service packs (I never installed SP3) and countless patches.)

The problem with word of mouth is that you have to know the whole story; I do not know who the people are who are talking bad about Vista, but the affect has been real. When Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) addressed the MVP Summit attendees in April he referred to Vista as 'a work in progress' but not because the technology is not stable, rather because the adoption rate is lower than expectations.

(I suspect that Microsoft bit itself in the gluteus maximus when it released the beta 2 release of Vista to such a wide audience. Although the pre-release versions (right through RC1) were solid and a good way to get familiarized with the product, the code had not been cleaned up, and it was still clunky. Literally millions of pre-release time-bomb copies were distributed and downloaded, possibly without everyone understanding the purpose of beta versions.)

So are you one of the people who have not upgraded to Vista 'because of what I heard...?' If you are I would like to introduce you to the Mojave Experiment. Microsoft conducted interviews with people just like you... some XP users, some Mac and Linux users. They asked the people to rate Windows Vista (the average score was 4.4). They then showed them the 'next version of Windows' codename Mojave. Most of the people were impressed by the features, stability, and power of Mojave. When they were asked to rate Mojave following the demo the average score was 8.5. How surprised do you think they were to find out that Mojave is Windows Vista?

That's right, Microsoft did the old switcheroo... they showed the skeptical Vista but called it something else, taking their preconceived notions out of the equation. It was a hit. Most of these interviews were videotaped so we can see their reactions. You can see many of them at http://www.mojaveexperiment.com.

It is too bad that the sampling was only 140 people... because from my experience there are going to be a lot of people who will see this site who will dismiss it as a sham... but if they had been in the room they would have been convinced.

Are you one of them? Let's have a conversation and see what preconceived notions you have. Maybe I can convince you to try Vista as well! Who knows? I might even give you a copy to try... but for that to happen you have to post a comment to one of my Springboard articles telling me what those preconceived notions are, and what is preventing you from switching.

For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.

The Vasa - learn from History!

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:44:00 GMT

In 1625 King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden ordered his shipyards to build (among others) a mighty fighting ship called the Vasa. He gave very specific instructions for what he wanted in this ship, how he wanted it outfitted, and made it clear that it should be the mightiest ship on the seas, and it was... sixty-four guns on two gundecks, it was truly the mightiest ship ever to come out of the Stockholm shipyard... for about twenty minutes.

On August 10, 1968 the Vasa set sail for its maiden voyage with huge fanfare. Foreign diplomats were invited to watch from the shore as a demonstration of Swedish splendor... as well as a not-too-subtle reminder of the might of the Swedish Navy. The Vasa, just out of port, fired a salute... the powerful recoil from the cannons started the top-heavy ship heeling. With not nearly enough ballast to keep the ship upright, it heeled from port to starboard, and as water poured into the gun ports the fate of the mighty ship was sealed... less than twenty minutes into her maiden voyage the Vasa went to the bottom of the sea.

Of course King Gustavus Adolphus angrily write that the disaster happened because of "imprudence and negligence" and that the guilty parties had to be punished. The captain (Sofring Hanosson) was arrested and charged. I am not a sailor, but I am pretty sure that a boat lost at sea can often be the fault of the captain, but a boat lost in harbour before its sails are unfurled is likely an engineering defect.

The king had told his engineers (led by master shipbuilder Henrik Hybertsson) what he wanted. The engineers, rather than running the math and telling the king that his demands were impossible, delivered what the king wanted. In effect the ship was lost years before she set sail because the professionals were too sheepish to tell the executive why his demands were unreasonable.

---

I thought of the Vasa today because a colleague who works in IT Management for a medium-sized firm told me that he suspected that his IT Professionals - the certified experts whose job it is to build and maintain the company's IT infrastructure - were listening to what the CIO wants, and rather than going back to him to say why his demands are unreasonable they are simply going ahead to fulfill the requests.

There are people in the world whose job title is 'Computer Operator'. These people are given instructions and carry them out, plain and simple. There is no room for debate, they are told to enter data so they enter data. If we as IT Professionals are going to live up to that term - not simply fill the role of Geek that many of us (hopefully) jokingly use - then we have to be professionals... and we have to act as professionals. When an executive tells us that they want something, it is our responsibility to determine if the request might be based on buzz-words, partial information, or bad advice given freely by someone who likely does not have a complete understanding of the technology.

<Fictitious Executive> Mitch, last week at the football game I was sitting with a colleague who is a business owner who tells me that centralizing information in servers is too costly with too little return on investment, while they cost a fortune to hire people to maintain; I trust him, so please discontinue using file servers and make sure that everyone maintains their files on their personal computers.

The above quote is absolutely ridiculous, but at the same time part of it might be accurate. The information that we are missing is that the 'business owner' runs a second-hand book store, has a single computer that is shared by himself and his wife. A server would likely be an unnecessary expense that would cost a fortune to maintain. As accurate as the statement might be for our bookstore owner is how ludicrous it is for an organization with five thousand employees with a full-time IT staff of ninety. If our executive tells this to an IT manager it would be an offense bordering on criminal for that manager to agree. He can handle it in any number of ways (the correct way as I see it is to calmly explain to the executive the issue of scale, and how small business needs are different from large organizations, and go from there) but the way he should not handle it is to do it.

I once had a boss who would come into my office and tell me about an idea he had, and asked me to go ahead and do it... whatever it was. Some of the suggestions had merit (we should outsource our mail servers because for our fifteen employees it is too much to manage an Exchange 2000 infrastructure) and others less so (if we paint all of our computers red like Ferraris they should go faster... or file security is stupid... everyone in the office should be able to open any file they want!). I was not as savvy as I am today, and likely would have made fun of him for some of the sillier ideas, while simply ignoring the edicts on the ones that were plain dumb. If he forgot about the idea then I was fine to ignore them, but if he remembered and noticed that I did not do as told then I could get in trouble. I suspect that I would have gotten much farther ahead had I explained to him in a calm and reasonable tone why some of his ideas, while sounding good, did not make technological sense. An example of this is the file security; we were a security company! There were things that we did that by definition had to be compartmentalized, such as government bids, salaries, and such. (for the record I made up the one about the red computers... sorry Isaac!)

My father is an attorney, and his clients see him as a trusted advisor. That is why he is so valuable to them; that is why they see him as an asset and not as an expense. IT Professionals need to take every opportunity to prove to their companies (or clients) that they are strategic assets; trusted advisors, and not simply people who press the buttons they are told to press. That is how we are not only going to make ourselves valuable, but change the opinions of those who think we are expendable.

Our profession will always have its share of hobbyist wannabe's who learn a little bit about computers and print out business cards, figuring they can make a living charging $25/hour. Because of them, and because of the stigma that our profession has, we have to work doubly hard to prove our value. Hopefully we will succeed, and with emerging industry certifications that will be recognized internationally I expect that in ten years there will be few if any IT Professionals who call themselves geeks... I know I have never heard my father refer to himself as a shyster.

(In 1961 the Vasa was discovered at the bottom of Stockholm's harbour, and was raised. It has been restored to within degrees of its original splendor, and is housed in its own museum in Stockholm. If you ever find yourself in Sweden it is certainly worth a visit!)

My Famous Pooch!

Mitch Garvis — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:22:00 GMT

I am so proud of Gingit... Yesterday she attained immortality! At 8 months old she has vaulted to the Number Five spot (worldwide!) on the auspicious site... http://www.thingsmydogate.com.

To see her story, please click http://www.thingsmydogate.com/gingit.html!

Sigh... at least some good came of all that loss!

Of Mice and Puppies...

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:24:00 GMT

This is my mouse... from the day I got it in March of 2007 I fell in love with it, because despite the (slightly ridiculous) price tag it was not only the most comfortable mouse I've used in a long time, but it also had the added bonus of being a presenter mouse, with the controls for PowerPoint and a laser pointer on the bottom.

This is my mouse after it has been discovered by my six month old puppy Gingit in an unguarded moment. Not only has it lost its shape, but it also has those cute little teeth marks along the top and side... as well the dog slobber has rendered the electronics useless.

It's a good thing she is so cute...

DNS: A flaw in the root of all evil?

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:39:00 GMT

The entire world runs on DNS.

While that is not true, the Internet does, and without it the entire infrastructure would screech to a deafening halt. In short, DNS (or Domain Naming System) is the directory service that lets us use friendly(ish) names to remember sites, such as garvis.ca/blogs, rather than having to remember http://209.97.218.133/mitchgarvis/blogs. The best analogy is a phone book where we can look up Mitch Garvis which will then produce a phone number that corresponds to my name. (This is the Forward Lookup... a Reverse Lookup would be like a Red Book where you could look up the phone number and find the name that corresponds to it).

While there are plenty of companies that provide DNS servers and services, DNS itself is not a product, rather it is a protocol on which providers build.

While the majority of people do not understand the first thing about DNS, they unknowingly benefit from it every day, and most of us have been doing so to a greater or lesser degree since the mid-nineties. It is a basic infrastructure service like plumbing or phones that we likely do not think about very often... so imagine how shaken you would be to find out that one of those had an inherent security flaw that could compromise entire segments of one of those... say, take over every phone number in an area code.

Such a vulnerability apparently was found earlier this year by Dan Kaminsky. Quite responsibly he did not keep it to himself, but he also did not make it public. Instead he contacted organizations such as Microsoft and the Computer Emergency Response Team (a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security), and in March a group of engineers from the major DNS vendors met to coordinate a response.

Today that response was announced, and patches have been released simultaneously for computers by all of these vendors. Chances are you are using a version of Windows or Mac OS that will automatically download the patch, but server administrators should make sure that their servers are compliant.

According to Securosis.com (which has been a major source of my information on this issue): "There is absolutely no reason to panic; there is no evidence of current malicious activity using this flaw, but it is important everyone follow their vendor’s guidelines to protect themselves and their organizations."

DNS is a system of distributed databases that contain the information about sites on the Internet, as well as resources within corporate networks. It was invented in 1983 by Dr. Paul Mockapetris, who published RFCs 882 and 883 while at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California. Prior to DNS there was a single table on a single host that handled address translations for the entire ARPAnet (the precursor to today's Internet).

Unified Messaging (UX perspective) - COOL!!

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:48:00 GMT

I had a conversation with my Exchange Server last night.

Microsoft has been talking about Unified Messaging for a couple of years now, and I have been interested in it since the outset but because I do not always have the infrastructure (or the time) to do a lot of the things I would like to do, this (among myriad others) has fallen by the wayside.

My own mail domain is actually managed by an online hosting provider that has recently enabled Unified Communications... and the other day they sent me an e-mail telling me that I could now set up my voice mail to forward to their server.

With only a few steps it was done. I forwarded my US cell phone to the number they provided, and was off to the races.

The cool features I got to play with last night:

Voice Mail from my Inbox: I left myself a voice mail (at 1:30am there aren't too many other people to talk to... even the puppies were asleep). Within seconds I received an e-mail not only telling me I had a voice message... but it allowed me to play it right from my Inbox.
Listen to my e-mail: I called in an after entering my secure code I was able to not only listen to my voice mail, but could navigate my Inbox and have the pleasant female voice read my e-mails to me. I could then reply and go on to the next one. Really cool!
Hear my calendar: I saw a video last year that was a take-off of The Devil Wears Prada (a movie I have not seen but I am assured the characters are spot on). In it the Administrative Assistant uses all sorts of features that look like magic, including talking to her Calendar and telling it that she will bee ten minutes late for a meeting (the pleasant female voice then assures her that 'she' would notify all meeting attendees). I always thought it was cool, but did not realize how easy it was to do... I did not actually reschedule meetings, but I did get to hear how busy my day would be today.
All the normal Voice Mail options...: Of course I was able to change my pin, record my name, change my OGM (I opted to use the pleasant female voice rather than my own). These are all features we expect to be able to do with voice mail... but with Exchange?

So far the only drawback I have found to the setup has nothing to do with Exchange... my server is hosted in the United States, so my (Canadian) Rogers cell phone does not seem to support forwarding calls internationally. So while I am in Canada I will have to continue to not receive my e-mail in my Inbox... but since my bigger issue has always been that I rarely carry my US cell phone around when I am in Canada, this is a great solution to that dilemma... I use UM for that phone, and will no longer have to check my 'seventeen voice messages' every time I cross the border.

Steps I had to take:

Before I could get it working, even after I forwarded my phone to the proper number, I had to make sure that Exchange knew what phone number to accept calls from. That was a simple matter of finding the Voice Mail tab in Outlook Properties (I actually did it using the Outlook Web Access but I suspect you can do it from the Outlook 2007 client as well).

Once that was done I was literally off to the races. It really was set up so that anyone could do it. It spoke to me in plain English and asked me to do the same. I do not know about other languages, though I suspect someone has thought of that.

My favorite Arthur C. Clarke quote is: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." When I was a kid I used to wonder at Michael Knight (actually David Hasselhoff) speaking with his car. It was of course science fiction, but the concept of speaking with a computer amazed me. We have advanced to the point that while I cannot actually have an intelligent conversation like K.I.T.T., but we are certainly further along than I would have suspected twenty-five years ago... or even ten. Unified Messaging truly does bring magic to our Inbox.

Isn't technology amazing?

The end of a long day...

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:33:00 GMT

I tend to work a lot of late hours. I am not entirely sure why, but it probably has to do with the fact that there are fewer distractions about at midnight than there are at noon. The phone doesn't ring, there's really nowhere to go. I can sit at my computer and work.

It was not too long ago that at the end of those long nights I would get into bed with either a glass of single-malt scotch or a cup of Earl Grey tea, turn on the TV and watch whatever was on (or a movie, or something I had recorded) for a while, wind down, and go to sleep.

It is not quite a year that my life took a turn. For those who have not been keeping track I am now engaged and living with my fiancé, her (our!) son, and three dogs. For those of you who know me outside the home you will know what a softie I am for my family, or as I like to refer to them, my sixteen favourite legs. At home, at least among the bipeds, I do not always appear so soft.

As I was walking away from the computer tonight I walked into the living room and saw Bailey (the Wheaton Terrier) sprawled out on the floor. He saw me, got up, gave me a quick opportunity to pet him, and then hopped up onto his couch (don't start with me...) and went back to sleep.

I walked up the stairs and stuck my head into Aaron's room (our ten year old son). He was fast asleep, which made me happy because only a couple of hours ago he called out to us, and when I went up to his room he told me he was scared and could not sleep. All that is forgotten and all is well for Aaron and Patches (stuffed dog... we have three real ones, he still likes Patches).

I step into our bedroom and from the glint of light I see that Theresa - I have a lot of loves in this house, but only one partner - is sound asleep. She had a tough week-end; Friday she finished her class in Deep River and we drove home... she only drove for the first two hours but was still in the car for four more. Saturday we ran errands all day and Sunday - after singing in her choir - she drove down to Ohio to her parents' place. It's a seven hour drive, and she didn't hit the road much before 5:30 so she didn't get in until LATE.

The reason she drove to Ohio was because Aaron had been with grandma and grandpa and we had to get him back. My work just did not let me be out of contact for two more days so she went on her own, and this morning before heading north with Aaron they first drove 90 minutes south to see her sister and the new baby. They then left and drove the entire way home - Aaron couldn't share the driving of course - and got in around 9:45 this evening. She stayed with me while I had a bite and then went off to bed... exhausted and rightly so.

With her on the bed were two more figures... Jacob (our Boston Terrier/Beagle cross) was sprawled on my side of the bed with his head on the pillow. When I came down to work he came with me for a bit, but even at eleven p.m. I could see the fatigue in his face. He went up after half an hour, and because of his obvious love for me takes my place when I am not there... including the head on my pillow. It is truly adorable to see.

Gingit - our five month old Basset Hound/Pug cross - seems to alternate between the foot of the bed, the top of the bed (either between us, on my pillow, or behind Theresa's head), and under the bed (she is the only resident who can comfortably crawl under there and discovered the first time she stole Jacob's steak bone that it was a really good place to be safe). At 1:20am she was at the foot of the bed, and seems to have forgiven us that we rearranged the furniture this week-end... it was hilarious to see poor little Gingit realize that she had miscalculated the foot of the bed yesterday, and try as she might to hold onto the sheets slid off the foot of the bed as if in slow motion. I can see now that there are six good inches between her and the end now, and like no other dog I have seen is actually lying on her back asleep.

My sixteen favourite legs are all comfortably asleep, and having made the rounds to check in on them I went back down to make sure the hatches were all secure, and then to take a few minutes... I have been doing a lot of technical writing of late, but little mention of how much I love and appreciate my family.

It was long overdue.

Recording video into Windows from your analog device

Mitch Garvis — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:26:00 GMT

...So my brother-in-law, like most people I know, assumes that when it comes to computers I will know the answer. This led to my learning something new this week.

The question: ‘I have an analog camcorder with which we have documented our lives over the past eight years. We recently purchased a Media Center PC (HP Media Center PC, m8200n) and we would like to use that to record our video tapes into digital format so that we can share them and keep them longer. How do we do this?’

Of course it sounds simple, and when I looked at the PC and the camera they both had all of the right connectors, so this should be another five minutes and done solution. I forget that my brother-in-law actually is a rocket scientist, and if it were that simple he probably would have figured it out without my feeble help.

Let’s skip what I tried that did NOT work and move onto what did. What you will need is simple:

A PC with a Composite Video connector
The proper cable to connect the Audio/Video jack on the camera to the Composite Video Connector. (For bonus points you will need an audio in connector on the computer)
An Infrared remote control receiver with the IR wire plugged in
Windows Vista Home Premium (or Windows Vista Ultimate... either will have the Windows Media Center).

**PLEASE NOTE** If like me you use Windows Media Center to control your television the following procedures will wipe out your settings. Make sure you can recover from that before going forward.

Out of the box WMC does not allow you to record from an analog device, and you really do have to fool it into working. What I have done for Grant and his family, who use their Media Center PC as a desktop and not as a TV, is to configure Media Center to receive the TV feed (or so it thinks) from the Composite Video (the yellow RCA jack). Of course this is not entirely normal behaviour for Media Center, so you do have to fool it into doing what you want.

In Windows Media Center navigate to Tasks -> Settings -> Set Up TV Signal
When asked assure it that you do have a set top box.
Connect your camcorder (VHS/other analog device) to the computer. Remember that Composite Video will not transmit audio, and you will have to connect that separately (usually a white or red RCA jack or, for bonus STEREO, both).
Select the input that shows your video (for us it was Composite 2)... these procedures should work for SVGA as well, or if you are connecting your VCR to the cable jack)
Tell it you do not have a remote for your set-top box.
Select Two Digits, and that you just enter the channel number.
Since you do not have a set top box the brand is irrelevant... I chose 3M.
Select C0033
Using your keyboard enter a two-digit channel (say 05) and press Enter. When asked confirm that the channel changed correctly.
Confirm that there is no digital antenna connected.
Return to the Media Center Main Menu

**PLEASE NOTE** You must have your remote control receiver plugged in and the IR wire connected to both configure Media Center's TV settings and any time you use the procedures to record or watch video from your analog device. <note to the dev team at Microsoft: this is an unnecessary pain!>

**SUGGESTION** Media Center allows you to select the recording quality of your video, selecting from BEST to GOOD, and depending on your selection the bit rate and file size will be affected. Since most of your VHS or Super-8 tapes would fit in the FAIR to LOUSY quality range there is no benefit to recording them in the BEST or VERY GOOD qualities... select the lowest possible to save a lot of hard disk space (80 Meg on a 3 minute file... nearly two gigabytes on an hour of video)

The box is now configured, and you should be able to go ahead and watch/record from your analog device. However Media Center THINKS that your analog device is actually live television, so that is what you are going to watch. (It will not matter what channel it thinks it is watching... ignore that)

To Watch: From the main menu navigate to TV -> Live TV. The screen will be black until you press Play on your device (there will be channel information at the bottom... it is irrelevant).

To Record: before pressing play on your analog device press the Record button in the Media Center controls. The Record Screen will come up asking you time and date to record... ignore that, but you should take this opportunity to change the title of the video from 'Untitled Recording' to 'Elise's Confirmation Video'. Once you have named your video (and ensured the video quality) press Record on the Media Center, and then Play on your analog device.

Remember that unlike digital video you actually have to let it run, so recording a one hour video will take you one hour, and so on. Unless you want to get into editing these videos later on you should make sure you are ready to press Stop when the video ends.

Saving your videos for all time

We all know that analog video tape degrades over time, and that digital does not. Windows Media Center allows you to natively burn your videos (they will be stored under Recorded TV) to DVD. This will convert them to DVD format, which will allow you to watch them in any regular DVD player. However if you want to edit them in the future it would be worth your while to save the digital file, a .dvr-ms file, which is natively readable by Windows Movie Maker which can then be used to convert it to the file format of your choice.

Have fun and remember... any of those embarrassing videos <Mitch being discrete> of you or your kids will be on the hard drive when you either sell your computer, or take it into the shop for service. If you don't want anyone to see them, either encrypt them or better yet wipe them off that drive after moving them to an external hard drive or DVD!

Getting Past iastor.sys Errors in Vista Deployment with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:01:00 GMT

They say that when you cannot do, teach. I am not entirely fond of this particular expression, chiefly because I am primarily a teacher in my profession. I do tend to 'eat my own dog food' and work with the tools that I instruct on though, which is why at the moment I have, for the first time in a while, a very large and powerful (and loud!) Hewlett Packard ProLiant DL-585 G2 server sitting in my office. I like to joke that if G-d had a server at home, this is what he would have.

So because I was going to be doing some work for Microsoft on desktop & server deployment this week I decided to go back and create a new deployment server using the new Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008 and Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK). As I have written in the past this is nothing new to me, and I did not expect to encounter any issues. The only difference was I had been using Microsoft's Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007, the predecessor to the current version. I spent most of last year teaching this technology, I did countless user group presentations on it; I was not expecting any surprises.

I imported my source files for the OS and the Applications, and I even imported the Dell-specific driver files from the CDs they provided.

Because I was doing this all in the parent OS on my server which at the time was hosting several virtual child OSes I could not reboot the system, so rather than implement a Lab Deployment Point I created a Media Deployment Point; I burned the ISO file to a DVD and then booted into it. After a minute or two I got the following error message on a Stop Screen:

File: \Windows\system32\DRIVERS\iastor.sys Status: 0xc000035a Info: Windows
failed to load because a critical system driver is missing, or corrupt.

I tried the same DVD on a different machine and received the same error, and then on the off chance it was the disc I created a new DVD. Same issue.

IASTOR.SYS is an Intel SATA driver which should by all rights be included in Windows Vista.* In fact it is, otherwise it would be impossible to install Vista out of the box. Unfortunately for some aspects of deployment the driver that was delivered with Vista is not sufficient, and you have to download (and then extract and then import into WinPE) a newer version of the driver.

Behind the scenes someone at Microsoft's deployment team told me that the Intel SATA drivers were a royal pain, and that because the WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) team had signed off on the driver Intel refused to fix it. Hopefully based on this article there will be enough backlash towards Intel and convince them to fix it.

So in short, here is what you are going to have to do:

Download the IntelSATA drivers from Intel. You will likely have to download the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.
Extract these files by executing the IMSM with the proper command line switch (iata82_enu.exe -a). The following files will be extracted to the directory C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel Matrix Storage Manager\winall.
1. iaahci.cat
2. iaahci.inf
3. iastor.cat
4. iastor.inf
5. iastor.sys
6. txtsetup.oem
Import these drivers into your MDT Distribution Share as an Out-of-Box Driver.

The Out-of-Box Drivers should now include two new drivers called:

Intel hdc iaAHCI.inf 8.2.0.1001 (or later); and
Intel SCSIAdapter iaStor.inf 8.2.0.1001 (or later).

At this point you can recreate your ISO file (by clicking on your Deployment Point and clicking Update). At this point you should be able to continue your deployment without any further issues.

*While searching the Internet I found a number of newsgroup and forum posts surmising the Vista does not need a SATA driver; in reality Windows needs a driver for everything piece of hardware; many of these drivers are so basic that we do not realize they are there.

A backup hiccup!

Mitch Garvis — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:58:00 GMT

For the past few months I have been using Windows Home Server (WHS) to backup my workstations at home… two laptops, one desktop workstation and my Media Center PC. The WHS box has 650 GB of hard disk space, about half of which is dedicated to file storage, and the other half is for backup storage. It does a great job of it too… I know that all of my PCs are safe!

I also have a server at home. It runs my production infrastructure in a virtual environment (three Essential Business Server 2008 servers), as well as several other VMs – mostly machines I use as tests (Server Core, Server 2003 R2, etc…). It also holds my ISO store for all of the source disks I need from time to time. All told it has six hard disks which, in its current configuration, combines for about 750 GB of storage space, which is probably 60% used. For both the parent partition and the virtual machines I have a completely separate backup strategy in place.

A few weeks ago I was at a client demonstrating a number of technologies, and they asked to see WHS in action. I didn’t really have a presentation deck for them, but I did have a connection to my home network so I was able to demonstrate it for them. I showed them a lot of the functionalities, and then in order to show them how easy it was to connect a new machine, I installed the WHS connector onto my server. Wow, that was easy!

At the end of that presentation my client had a ton of questions, after which they took me for lunch and then golfing, following which they rushed me to the airport to catch an evening flight.

I never uninstalled the WHS client from my server.

When i got home the next day I plugged my laptop in… I had been away for a week, and I wanted to run a backup. Unfortunately when I clicked the WHS icon in my Vista’s Notification Area it was red… never a good sign. The message was that I had completely run out of storage space on the WHS server, and that I should add more drives.

It did not take long to figure out the issue was the 400GB of information that the server was trying to back up. I uninstalled the WHS Connector from the server, and then from the server removed its stored backups. The WHS Icon turned from Red to Yellow immediately (the warning was that my laptop had not been backed up in 9 days), and I was able to perform the backup (which turns the icon blue).

The moral of the story: Make sure you have enough storage space for your backups… but only join the machines you want backed up to your WHS network!

Essential Business Server - Tell me more!

Mitch Garvis — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:51:00 GMT

(Note: It has been brought to my attention that I inadvertently named this article the same thing I had named a previous article. As such I am renaming this article, four hours after the original publication time. Thanks for understanding. -M)

For the past several years I have been a huge proponent of Microsoft Small Business Server. I really believe that it is the ideal server solution for most small business networks. I cannot count how many businesses and consultants I have turned onto the product, but am confident it is not a small number.

I have always considered an important part of being a friend the ability to recognize ones faults and accept them; Small Business Server certainly does have a number of faults or shortcomings that would not be an issue for most small businesses, but for some would give them reason to hesitate and possibly avoid SBS. Among these are:

Several server applications that were meant to run separately are running on the same box;
That single box is a major single point of failure, wherein any minor component or intrusion could grind an organization to a halt;
Because the current version of SBS is based on the x86 (32-bit) version of Server 2003 it is limited to 4 Gigabytes of RAM - sufficient for basic operations but can get tight if the organization needs to run applications on SQL Server in the Premium Edition. (note: Small Business Server 2008, due to to release to manufacturing in the second half of 2008, will be built on the x64 version of Server 2008)
(also in the Premium Edition) Microsoft Internet Security & Acceleration (ISA) Server is necessarily installed on the same box as Active Directory Directory Services. While the real degree of vulnerability of this configuration may be debatable what is clear is that this is contrary to both Microsoft and industry best practices for security.

When I first saw Essential Business Server in January, 2007 (Mitch: 'Hey Kevin what are those servers in the corner?' Kevin: 'Those are my Centro boxes. You're going to like Centro!') my first reaction was that it was too good to be true; in effect EBS addresses all of the actual issues people have raised against SBS. (It should be noted that there are a plethora of issues that have been raised that are myths, fallacies, and fabrications... EBS does address many of these as well!) In a nutshell, Essential Business Server:

Is built across three physical servers, distributing roles, segregating server applications, and offering redundancy;
includes Microsoft System Center Essentials (SCE), which is essentially the best features of two enterprise System Center products (Configuration Manager & Operations Manager) pared down and packaged for businesses with fewer than thirty servers and five hundred workstations. Among other functions SCE monitors the EBS network and generates reports based on the Operations Manager model. Because of that the EBS reports are not custom XML documents created against SBS wizards, but are rich in-depth reports that are identical in scope to what enterprise admins see;
- SCE uses the same Management Packs (MPs) for the individual components that were designed for Operations Manager, and because these can be deployed beyond the basic three server EBS configuration the centralized monitoring in EBS can be easily extended to all servers, workstations, and applications within an organization;
The EBS Management Console is easily extendible (not by me, but by anyone who can code or script their way out of a paper bag) to offer a customized experience to individual organizations, while maintaining sufficient familiarity so that any IT Pro with a basic familiarity with EBS can step in and manage it.

As well, because EBS is a product of the Essential Server Solutions team (the same folks who brought you SBS, the letter K, and the number 3) it offers an ideal balance between the enterprise and the small business. Many of the features that have been key to SBS are included, like:

Unified installation experience simplified for the entire offering across the three servers;
Centralized management console
Most administrative tasks are wizard-driven
Remote Web Workplace (RWW) offers users the best remote experience going.

I have been working with EBS for several months (thanks to the good folks who were kind enough to provide the hardware) in a number of environments, but most recently (and comfortably) in a virtualized Hyper-V environment, which has allowed me to leverage technologies such as snapshots when I am playing around in the sensitive bits, and then recover quickly when I pooch things. It also allows me to quickly adjust the allocated resources nearly on the fly when needed.

I have demonstrated EBS to a lot of IT Pros over the past six months, and I recognize that the number of businesses that would really benefit from EBS is much lower than those who will stick to SBS, but what interests me is that there are a lot of small business IT consultants who do not seem interested in broadening their horizons - as well as their solutions offerings and earning potentials - to this line. They have each given me different reasons, which all seem reasonable. Among them:

The investment in three servers to run it in-house in order to become familiar with it is a real obstacle;
They do not see the earning potential of taking on a smaller number of EBS clients as opposed to a greater number of SBS clients;
They are afraid that the learning curve for them to familiarize themselves with the needs of a three-server solution with up to three hundred clients is too steep.

I am not going to lie: the jump from SBS to EBS is going to be easier for IT Pros who came out of the enterprise world than it will be for those who graduated to SBS from individual computers and small workgroups. However I would urge any SBS consultant to invest the time to read up on EBS, and even invest in three low-end machines to install it on. These machines can be repurposed after a few weeks, but before dismissing it get your hands on it. Even if (for now) it is just another technology that you will have had your hands on, one day one of your clients, contacts, or colleagues will ask you if you have experience in it, and the ability to (honestly) answer yes may be the gateway to a whole new level of clients and technologies.

In a future article I will cover (in more depth) the differences between SBS and EBS, and some of the reasons why a smaller organization might opt for the EBS technology. For now I hope that some of you are going to head over to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/evalcenter/cc184869.aspx to download the public preview, and see what it's all about.

Can vs. Should

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:34:00 GMT

There is a big difference between things that can be done as opposed to what should be done.

I have discussed virtualization in great detail of late because of how interesting it is to the average IT Professional. Windows Server Virtualization, or Hyper-V, is a server role in Windows Server 2008; presently it is still in beta, but it is coming soon, and has been available to the general public since Windows Server 2008 released a few months ago.

In the second half of 2008 Microsoft will release Windows Small Business Server 2008; it is built on the Windows Server 2008 platform and as such includes all of that platform's roles and features including Hyper-V. For any number of reasons SBS clients and consultants should be very happy about this.

Hyper-V in Windows Server Standard has a fairly simple licensing model in much the same way that hieroglyphics are simple. Add to that a number of the licensing requirements of Small Business Server - simple in and of themselves - things get murky. Some of the relevant points:

The primary SBS server (Server 1) must by definition be the primary domain controller.
With Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition you have the right to install a parent operating system and then virtualize a single instance of Windows Server 2008 within Hyper-V as a child OS, on the condition that the only role and purpose of the parent OS is to host and manage the child OS.
SBS 2008 Premium Edition will include a second license of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition to be installed on a second physical server.

I am going to go through a number of scenarios that came up today and then do my best to explain my point.

Can we install the primary Windows Server 2008 SBS license on a server and install the Hyper-V role, and then install the same license into a Hyper-V environment to be managed by the parent?
Can we purchase SBS Premium Edition and install the second license on a server, configure Hyper-V, and then install the first license in a child OS?

There are several other combinations that were discussed and I started to ask myself the question... just because some of these combinations can be done, does it mean it should be done?

I have given these a lot of thought and I asked if even though some of these options are possible, would they be recommended? The truth is that for many scenarios it will be a lot simpler to purchase a license for Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition - or even the Microsoft Hyper-V Server which was recently announced and is due to release later this year.

Although many people - SBS consultants included - like to play with the system in order to save a few dollars, the time spent trying to figure out and configure these unsupported configurations will often cost more than purchasing the actual license (the Hyper-V Server is going to sell for about $28).

We so often discuss the K.I.S.S. Principle (Keep it Simple, Stupid!) but then go out of our way to overcomplicate our lives to save a few dollars. I understand that SBS is a platform that is by definition going to be attractive to companies trying to save money... but save it where it matters. Purchase the licenses that will simplify your business for the long term rather than saving a few sous (which will not really be a saving in the end).

I am interested in hearing how many SBS clients will install in a Hyper-V environment. There are some great advantages to it... but do it wisely!

A Simple Explanation of Microsoft Essential Business Server

Mitch Garvis — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:25:00 GMT

So what is Essential Business Server (EBS)? In simple terms EBS is a complete corporate network for mid-sized companies in a box, or rather in three or four boxes depending on the version. Let me explain:

In the beginning there was the PC. And of course Microsoft looked up at the PC and said it was good, but did not really do very much. And Microsoft laboured and toiled and created DOS... and DOS was good.

And on the second day Microsoft created Windows. The second day was a very long and tiring day that involved great struggles between Redmond, Washington and Armonk, New York. The struggles would take a long time to resolve, and in the end two brothers emerged, OS/2 which would take many years to come into its own before fading away; and the younger brother would be named Windows. Windows would also take time to emerge, but its potential was limited only by the genius of its creators, who one day knew that it would indeed rule the world.

And on the third day Microsoft created Windows Server, a network operating system (NOS), is the backbone of most corporate networks. Since Server 2000 it has allowed companies to build forests and domains based on the Active Directory (AD) infrastructure. Included with Windows Server were roles and features such as DNS, DHCP, IIS, and Terminal Services, not to mention file and print sharing services.

For companies that live in a vacuum there really is little more needed for a perfect network. Unfortunately most companies need features such as the Internet (which requires a proxy, firewall, and Internet sharing), e-mail (which requires a mail server), corporate portals, databases, and more... all of these features require different servers, all of which need to be secured and protected...

So on the fourth day Microsoft created Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA), and although ISA Server would require some tweaking over time, it was essentially good. With network protection they could then introduce Exchange Server, which would not only allow e-mail but also shared contacts and calendars, Public Folders, tasks, and such. And the industry looked at it, and it was good.

And on the fifty day Microsoft created SQL Server, a database server running the mighty structured query language to make things faster and better... and based on that SharePoint Server was introduced as the Internet portal platform which would take advantage of the best technologies of IIS and SQL Server. And the industry looked at it, and it was good.

And then on the sixth day Microsoft released management tools that would allow all of the existing technologies to be monitored and maintained. The System Center product line would take many disjoint tools and bring th em together; and for smaller organizations the features of these tools would be brought together into a single product called System Center Essentials.

On the seventh day (Microsoft does not rest!) the cries were great; security was hardly manageable and unattainable without third-party tools. And Microsoft heard the cries, and their answer was called Forefront Security for Exchange. The mail server would now be protected.

These server products are not inexpensive, and license management for them all has been referred to alternately as a joke and a curse. For each server you need a license. For each server product you need a license, plus a license of the NOS. For some (but not all!) of these servers and server products you need Client Access Licenses (CALs). Of course some of those CALs will be User CALs while others should be Device CALs, and let's not get into per server CALs. It is enough to employ a specialist in most organizations; for organizations large enough to have issues but too small to employ a specialist it can drive the person responsible to drink.

In 1996 (about Day 4) Microsoft decided to package many of these products together and offer a simplified low-cost solution for small businesses. Over the years the definition of small business has grown (it currently sits at 75 computers). Small Business Server was a single-server and single-license solution (CALs are simplified too!) that offered smaller businesses the tools to compete with their larger competitors using the same tools. All of the required server tools which were previously installed on separate hardware were consolidated on a single box (E pluribus unum). SBS has had its fair share of detractors, many with ridiculous claims but some with legitimate shortcomings which were not an issue for most smaller businesses. However one of these persistent claims has been that the various server software packages were not designed to coexist on a single server.

...So several years later Microsoft undertook to create a solution for both those concerned, and for enterprises which have outgrown the single box.

Essential Business Server is not only a solution for businesses who have outgrown the seventy-five CAL limit of Small Business Server; that may have been the original driver behind the product, but it addresses many of the arguments that some have had against SBS since the beginning.

Like its older cousin SBS, there will be two editions of EBS.

Microsoft Essential Business Server (Standard Edition)

The entry-level EBS package consists of:

Windows Server 2008
Exchange Server 2007
Forefront Security for Exchange
System Center Essentials
Internet Security and Acceleration Server

These five packages are installed on three separate x64 servers. It includes three licenses for Windows Server 2008 (Standard), which is installed at the base operating system for each server.

The first server (Management Server) controls the network (DNS, DHCP, etc...) and the Active Directory Domain Services. As well, Microsoft System Center Essentials is installed on the Management Server.

The second server (Messaging Server) works in conjunction with the first server to control the Active Directory Domain Services. In addition Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Forefront Client Security for Exchange Server are installed on the Messaging Server.

The third server (Security Server) has a second Exchange Server 2007 installed, as well as Internet Security and Acceleration Server. It acts as both a firewall and a proxy server, and is the only server connected to the outside world, controlling and security the traffic between the intranet and the Internet.

Microsoft Essential Business Server (Premium Edition)

The Premium Edition of EBS includes all of the architecture of the Standard Edition, but includes a fourth license for Windows Server 2008, as well as Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition. These install on a fourth server (Database Server) and will shoulder the burden of most database-type applications, either out of the box or custom.

One of the advantages for Microsoft, a company with a great history of having their private beta applications and operating systems released into the wild for the 'just because we can' community, is that the hardware requirements (which are quite reasonable for companies building their infrastructure) lean towards the ridiculous for the hobbyist hacker. Even at the MVP Summit deep-dive last year there were cries of 'Who the hell has three x64 systems lying around to test it on?' I would suspect that for that reason and more unlike SBS of late the serious EBSers (did I just coin that term?) will have a real opportunity to show others their first glimpses of the package. I had that opportunity recently at the Toronto Heroes Happen {Here} Launch event. Really cool.

Keep tuning in for more news on EBS as it happens...

Essential Business Server: Coming soon to a mid-sized company near you!

Mitch Garvis — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:14:00 GMT

For years I have been saying that Small Business Server was the best solution for small businesses that did not have huge IT budgets; it allowed them to take advantage of the same enterprise-level tools such as Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, and SharePoint Server without having to purchase several servers with tens of thousands of dollars of software, not to mention a full-time IT department.

Several people and groups have challenged me with 'what if' scenarios intent on debunking the applicability of SBS to their specific business network scenario, and I have always been glad to address these challenges because most of them were based on myths. The truth is that to date I have not heard of any scenario where SBS could not be deployed in a small business as the backbone infrastructure, with one exception: The Hard Ceiling.

of course I am referring to the two great licensing limitations of SBS:

You can only have a single SBS server in your network environment; and
You were limited to (on SBS 2003) seventy-five CALs (Client Access Licenses). Once you hit that ceiling you had to transition off SBS onto the enterprise packages.

Of course the first limitation is also a myth; although it is a true enough statement, that does not mean that you are limited to having a single server, rather that only one of them - the primary Domain Controller that hosted all operation master roles (commonly referred to as FSMO, or Flexible Single Master Operation roles) - could be running SBS. You could add as many servers (up to ____) to your network, they just could not hold the operation master roles.

The second limitation is real. If your company grew past seventy-five users (let's not get into the device CALs versus user CALs discussion) you had no choice but to leave the safety and comfort of the SBS world.

The allure of SBS was (and continues to be) not only the power of the tools offered, plus the fact that they could all be run from a single box (My first SBS which I ran from home for two years ran very reliably on an IBM Pentium III workstation with 1GB RAM)... but also the fact that everything was configured and managed by very intuitive wizards and tools. Creating a user was a single process which would include all permissions for everything from Exchange to SQL to SharePoint Services. Transitioning beyond SBS meant leaving those wizards - and the revered Remote Web Workplace - behind.

Enter Essential Business Server.

A year ago I saw Windows Server Codename: Centro for the first time and fell in love. It was the solution for mid-market companies up to 250 computers, and it was in a word everything that SBS was not. Not only did it break the seventy-five user limit, but it also addressed most (if not all) of the actual and perceived limitations of SBS... while maintaining the cohesiveness of the single package.

We could easily steal for SBS the motto from the US Dollar Bill, E pluribus unum - from many, one. That is because SBS integrates a number of servers that in the enterprise are generally separate and hosts them all on a single server. The Standard Edition of Essential Business Server installs on three independent servers: the Management server, the Security server, and the Messaging server. (the Premium Edition of EBS adds a fourth for the Database server).

Now that Microsoft has lifted much of the veil of secrecy from both EBS and the next release of SBS (Windows Small Business Server 2008, formerly codename Cougar) you will find that I have a lot to say about both of these products. I see four distinct groups to whom this series of articles should be of interest:

IT Professionals with an eye toward small and mid-sized businesses;
Small Business IT Professionals who have been working with SBS;
Small business owners or managers who need to make informed decisions about their IT and do not necessarily want to pay for consultants; and
People interested in becoming IT professionals.

While I am not promising to answer all of your questions, I do hope to introduce both products to you so that when they do release to manufacturing (RTM) there will be not only a proper and comprehensive understanding of the products (and often of the reasons behind certain decisions and the like), but also a complete library of information that will be available, from an interested and connected (and mostly objective) IT Professional who does not actually work for Microsoft.

Strap yourselves in... because here we go!

Host Server	64 GB RAM
10x VMs	2GB Reservation, 8GB Limit
Memory reserved for powered-on VMs:	16GB RAM
Memory available to each guest OS:	80GB RAM