THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

The last lecture by Randy Pausch is one of those must watch things of the Internet.

I always love this one quote --

"When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care."

Love that quote.  Needed to reread it again today.

Had to share.

If you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it for a while... watch it again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download

http://www.tomontech.com/2012/05/windows-server-2012-release-candidate-now-available/

One of Windows Server 2012's secret weapons: Hyper-V Replica | ZDNet:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/one-of-windows-server-2012s-secret-weapons-hyper-v-replica/12707

So one of the potential interesting things for SMBs is HyperV replication.  You'd need two HyperV boxes and then a wizard.  Of course we have to test to see if this is possible from a support and licensing standpoint (I'm not holding my breath here), but Interesting huh?

When getting your head around networking in HyperV the first time, I find it helpful if your network cards are different manufacturers.  Now in real life this is nearly impossible as the Quad card on most servers means all 4 are the same name.  That said as others have pointed out, even on a production box you can throw in a more generic network card for the management role so you can more easily know which nic is which.

And do you have iLos or Drac cards too?  Even the HP microserver comes with the ability to purchase a $80 remote access card to the hardware.  This is a card that will let you get to the base hardware even if the OS doesn't boot.

What are the requirements to earn the Microsoft Partner Network Small Business Competency? - Microsoft SMS&P Partner Community Blog - By Eric Ligman - Site Home - MSDN Blogs:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2012/04/26/what-are-the-requirements-to-earn-the-microsoft-partner-network-small-business-competency.aspx

Remember 70-321/323 are some of the new small biz competency exams


FREE Online Certification Prep Training for #Office365 Exams 70-321 and 70-323 - IT Pros ROCK! - Site Home - TechNet Blogs:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2012/05/29/free-online-certification-prep-training-for-office365-exams-70-321-and-70-323.aspx

Microsoft Learning, the Partner teams, and the Microsoft Office team are bringing an exciting opportunity to learn the planning and deployment steps for Office 365 and also prepare you for the new Office 365 certification exams. As organizations recognize the benefits of providing users with anywhere-access to cloud-based email and scheduling, web conferencing, file sharing, collaboration and Office Web Apps at a low predictable monthly cost, demand for certified Office 365 expertise is climbing sharply in both the enterprise and small business space.

Leveraging the popular “Jump Start” virtual classroom approach, two of Microsoft’s most gifted Office 365 experts will lead an accelerated, engaging and demo-rich learning experience designed to teach IT Pros the concepts and technologies covered on Microsoft exam*70-321* <http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-321&Locale=en-us>Deploying Office 365 as well as the prerequisite exam *70-323* <http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-323&Locale=en-us>(Administering Office 365).

This course will be delivered *May 30 – June 1, 2012* from *9:00am – 5:00pm Pacific Time* (Noon - 8PM Eastern Time) via live virtual classroom (online from wherever you are); due to the nature of this virtual classroom environment, hands-on labs will not be available. This is no charge for this virtual training event.

To register, please visit the following link: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=325

Getting ready for the ITpro conference in New Orleans?  I am. 

Nancy sent out this message last week!

For those coming in for the Brain Explosion, you will be able to check in for the conference early.  For all others we will have a registration table outside the St. Charles room starting at 4:00pm on Thursday, June 7.   The welcome reception will begin in the St. Charles ballroom at 6:00pm.

The weather in New Orleans is very hot this time of year so please pack accordingly. During the conference keep in mind that the hotel overcompensates on the air conditioning so while it may be blistering outside, inside the conference room may be a bit chilly. In years past the nightly events would take place outside, but this year is somewhat different. This year, each night will be either entirely indoors or offering a combined indoor and outdoor activity so there's two important things to note:

1. We have reversed the Friday and Saturday night events from normal and what was originally posted for this year. The revision is that the "choose your restaurant night" is going to be Friday this year, so set your reservations accordingly for Friday (not Saturday).

2. Saturday night's party will NOT be a casual night, we are instead having a traditional summer cocktail party and upscale old New Orleans dinner! Ladies are invited to wear a comfortable summer dress, skirts or slacks. Gentleman, please be business casual with a white shirt preferred, but no shorts or jeans for this night. Think of this as a costume party!

Wireless internet will be available in the conference rooms during the show.

We think it is fabulous that so many of you are bringing your spouses this year.   I have prepared to have the hotel concierge meet with the spouses on Friday morning to discuss options to see the sights of New Orleans.  Spouses should come prepared with questions and will have the option to sign up for various sight-seeing adventures.

If you have not already done so, please send me your travel itinerary.  I will do my best to pair up those that are arriving at the same time.   For those that arrive at times that don’t mesh with others, I will send you transportation options next week.  

Please feel free to contact me at any time regarding any questions you may have about New Orleans or the conference.  You can reach me at 360-440-3598 or nancyw@sbsmigration.com.  If, for some reason, you are unable to reach me, please contact HandyAndy at Andy@SBSmigration.com.

So if you speak french there's two videos on Dell's site about SBS 2011 essentials.

http://media.zdnet.fr/partenaire/dell/article_video.php

You'll have to pardon me as I get back into the swing about blogging on virtualization.  Right now my HyperV test server is in the back of my MINI boot to go back to the office for tomorrow's Fresno user group meeting on Server 2012 topics.  I rebuilt my HyperV over the Memorial day weekend to be based on Windows 8 server so we could have a hands on server and demo box for the meeting tomorrow night.  Yes I do realize that there's another version slated to come out next week (according to the OEM Microsoft web site and other reports) so I may be rebuilding that OS once more. 

One thing of interest I found that I had to use a legacy nic for a Server 2003 box.  So we may have support issues with Server 2003's inside of HyperV 2012 boxes.  We'll have to see what's up with that later on with the RC stuff.

... so one the questions that comes up on various listserves is about putting a SSD drive as the bootable C drive.

I don't know... I have put a SSD into my baby laptop and I guess I'm still old fashioned in that I want a good couple of years burn in and evidence before I'm ready to rip out RAID and redundant drives on servers.  I don't reboot a server that often, so I remain to be convinced if having SSD drives as the C drive is what we should all be doing.  That said my benchmark is a laptop.  An OLD laptop that can't even run Windows 8 so I don't have any real world experience to base my blogging off of, other than just a thought of ...can I see the mean life of those drives in a few years and get back to you?

More reading - http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

http://thecoffeedesk.com/news/index.php/2009/04/26/ssd-in-the-data-center/

http://homeservershow.com/ssd-caching-on-hyper-v.html

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchange2010/thread/8d40910d-277f-4995-9707-36029969a03e/

It's really frustrating to see a forum post where people realize an issue is two years old and Microsoft doesn't appear to want to solve the problem.

Sync Issues folder for Outlook 2010 contains warnings such as "Synchronization of some deletions failed":
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2606009

Another ignore this ...

Watching the bbc iplayer of the Chelsea flower show and thought I might grow myself a new server tonight as well.  I'll still be blogging about HyperVing SBS Essentials, but how about we throw in some forwarding looking stuff by standing up a Beta (NOT TO BE USED IN PRODUCTION) of the Windows server 8 and see how it changed between what we're used to in Server 2008 R2 HyperV.

Just like Chelsea Flower show did a category of "Fresh Gardens" consider this "Fresh Servers" tonight.

Server 8 aka Windows Server 2012 is really fresh and really different.

So fresh and so different that I've yet to figure out where the restart button is.

When you start server 8 aka Windows Server 2012, not only do you go whoa who moved the cheese, you probably go whoa who moved the entire dairy farm.

This is the gui for the datacenter edition and the server manager can not only control the local server but other servers.

We're going to play with this as a HyperV server so for this we're only going to add the one role and one role only.

We go into the role wizard

We select the server we're on (like duh)

We select the role - HyperV

It confirms what is going to be installed

We click next

We don't want to add any other features

It confirms our choices and reminds us we need to make sure we pick a network card.

We pick at least one active card to be our virtual switch.

Ooh this is new... until we start all doing clusters (which I'm still not convinced that mere mortal SMBs can afford server clustering, but we're touch on that in a future blog post)

Why they pick "my docs" for storing stuff is beyond me.  I always change this, preferably to another partition away from the boot one.  This is where you do a 80 gig or so for the boot and then depending on your religion, chop up the rest of the server into chunks that match the vhds you are planning or I've also seen folks not chunk up the rest. 

Confirm

Install

..install

Get promoted to reboot.

...and then figure out that you can't figure out how to reboot.... uh where's the charms/shut down button on a server?

I ended up doing taskbar/run cmd and did a shutdown /r.... but surely there's an easier way I missed?

(P.S. yes I'm using a UK proxy service to view the iPlayer programs as you can't see them unless you or your computer, or the iPlayer thinks your computer is in the UK)

One of my pet peeves about how some of the decisions are being made on Windows 8 is something I'm calling "coding via telemetry data".  Check out the Windows 8 engineering blog and the cite via their CEIP data how many of their customers are doing thus and so.

Well every night I see this in my event logs.

EVENT # 48405 EVENT LOG Application EVENT TYPE Error OPCODE Info SOURCE Microsoft-Windows-CEIP EVENT ID 1008 COMPUTERNAME   DATE / TIME   5/25/2012 11:23:42 PM MESSAGE A problem prevented Customer Experience Improvement Program data from being sent to Microsoft, (Error 80004005).

So tonight I decided to figure out why I'm not part of those telemetry numbers....

And found this:

A problem prevented Customer Experience Improvement Program data from being sent to Microsoft:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproinstall/thread/95931a6a-2edc-40be-af96-1c05fe1ef1e6

I love the answer... ignore it or disable it..

Interestingly enough... when you drill into the event log as per:

Event ID 1008 — CEIP Upload:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd349464(v=WS.10).aspx

It looks like it really did complete.

So maybe I am being counted after all?

Before we begin to install a virtual SBS Essentials, one has to determine what you want to do as far as planning for disk space.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2012/05/23/how-to-use-full-disk-for-the-o-s-install-in-small-business-server-2011-essentials.aspx

While you can follow the SBS blog for the how to use a config file to set the drive sizes,  you can also use Robert Pearman's GUI scripting tool http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/SBS-2011-Essentials-Answer-5bfc015a to set the configuration.

That's the hard drive space used after about 22 computers, several with archived backups, along with two stored backups for computers that are now removed from the office.... When I did the very first backup of each computer, it was about 1T for the whole shebang.  The total of the drives that are being backed up is about 2T worth of stuff (on my box a bunch of ISOs that probably don't need to back up.  So it's about a 50% reduction of the drive space of the computers being backed up.

You can't choose less than 60 gigs for the OS drive.  Then determine what your data drive is.  But be careful about the 2T brick wall.  Not that long ago Terrabytes were considered insanely huge.  Now we think a Terrabyte is normal.  There's an issue when you have a drive greater than 2T on a Windows backup... Windows Backup has a 2T limit.  A good discussion is here:  http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/2212-backup-limitations-a-counterpoint/  Chunk down your data so that you can get it backed up.

We're revisting this post: http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2012/05/23/empty-cn-servers-container-causing-issues-with-public-folders-on-small-business-server-2011.aspx

Instead of ADSIEDIT -- use this instead: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ADSI-Edit-Exchange-Mail-da735c16

Dear.. person posting on oDesk with a project to "install Active Directory on SBS Essentials'

Active Directory Installation on SBS 2011 Essentials - Networking & Information Systems Jobs - oDesk:
https://www.odesk.com/jobs/~~cb9d901c17a7c6f1?source=rss

You have a domain already.  It's already installed.   If you paid even one penny to anyone to "install Active Directory" on SBS Essentials you paid one penny too much.  Now there is a domain name wizard to park the external domain, but you already named your internal domain and that box already became a domain controller during the install process.

What confuses many is that under the group policies there are no default policies.  So they think they have a box that can't support AD.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It not only already is a domain controller, it HAS to be a domain controller.

So again Mr. oDesk person, if you paid one single penny to anyone who said they installed it, you paid too much.

We'll get back to my blog posts on HyperV... in the meantime I wanted to call this post out

Empty ‘CN=Servers’ Container Causing Issues with Public Folders on Small Business Server 2011 - The Official SBS Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2012/05/17/empty-cn-servers-container-causing-issues-with-public-folders-on-small-business-server-2011.aspx

If you migrate from SBS 2003 to SBS 2011 and never mail enable your public folders, you'd probably never know that you needed to do one more step.  As of about two BPA updates ago, this is now included as a BPA flagged item.  Many who migrated and then got the bpa installed wondered what they did wrong.

Nothing actually. 

Me, I'd personally like it if there was some better gui way of doing this because as a card carrying SBSer, I can count the number of times I've been into ADSIedit on one hand.

Bottom line if you run the bpa on your sbs 2011 and it freaks out over an empty server container, don't freak out, you didn't do anything wrong and your migration is still just fine.

If you are still seeing these updates get offered up over and over again...

and you are running Windows XP or Server 2003 sp2

...and you have "download but do not install" as your windows update settings

Try this - you'll need to reset your Windowsupdate settings.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058 Use that fixit to reset it.

The underlying issue was a Microsoft update detection problem with http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2656353.  This update supercedes (takes the place of) KB2518864, KB2633880 and KB2572073.  When KB2656353 was removed from the update servers to get ready for a rerelease, it caused an issue where these three old .net's got reoffered. 

For those with automatic updates enabled, you got .net's over and over again but could go to the yellow icon, click on it, and get rid of the faulty detection.  For anyone with "download but do not install", you have the patches stuck in your software distribution folder.

So here's what I'm recommending, use the fixit in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058 to reset your software distribution folder.

Let me know if that works.

That didn't work.  Try this:

Method 10: Empty the software distribution folder

1. Click Start, click Run, type services.msc, and then click OK.
   
   Note On a Windows Vista-based computer, click Start, type services.msc in the Start Search box, right-click services.msc, and then click Run as administrator.
2. In the Services (Local) pane, right-click Automatic Updates, and then click Stop.
3. Minimize the Services (local) window.
4. Select all the contents of the Windows distribution folder, and then delete them.
   
   Note By default, the Windows distribution folder is located in the drive:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder. In this location, drive is a placeholder for the drive where Windows is installed.
5. Make sure that the Windows distribution folder is empty, and then maximize the Services (local) window.
6. In the Services (Local) pane, right-click Automatic Updates, and then click Start.
7. Restart the computer, and then run Windows Update again.

So I had a server at home with these three updates still being offered.  I clicked on the yellow icon to attempt to install them.  I got this window, I clicked close and the yellow icon went away and I'm no longer being offered these updates.

If you see differently holler, as I can't repro anymore getting these updates.

MS12-016: Description of the security update for the .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: February 14, 2012:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2633880
MS11-044: Description of the security update for the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 on Windows XP Service Pack 3 and on Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2: June 14, 2011:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2518864
MS11-078: Description of the security update for the .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: October 11, 2011:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2572073

Seeing these being offered up tonight on a Server 2003 and on XP on unmanaged,  or Automatic updates enabled machines.

Hang loose until someone in Redmond wakes up and fixes Microsoft update.

It is reported that it will be fixed sometime after 10 a.m pacific.  It appears that MS12-035 will be rereleased and this is what is causing our momentary blip in detection.

Edit:  Now fixed, and the Microsoft securty bulletin alert indicates that some of these updates got a detection change.

********************************************************************
Title: Microsoft Security Bulletin Minor Revisions
Issued: May 22, 2012
********************************************************************

Summary
=======
The following bulletins have undergone a minor revision increment.
Please see the appropriate bulletin for more details.


   * MS11-100 - Critical
   * MS12-034 - Critical
   * MS12-035 - Critical
   * MS12-MAY


Bulletin Information:
=====================

* MS11-100 - Critical

   -http://technet.microsoft.com/security/bulletin/MS11-100
   - Reason for Revision: V1.5 (May 22, 2012): Added entry to the
     update FAQ to announce a detection change for KB2656352 for
     Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 to correct an
     installation issue. This is a detection change only. There were
     no changes to the security update files. Customers who have
     already successfully updated their systems do not need to take
     any action.
   - Originally posted: December 29, 2011
   - Updated: May 22, 2012
   - Bulletin Severity Rating: Critical
   - Version: 1.5

* MS12-034 - Critical

   -http://technet.microsoft.com/security/bulletin/MS12-034
   - Reason for Revision: V1.2 (May 22, 2012): Added an entry to
     the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Related to This Security
     Update section to explain this revision.
   - Originally posted: May 8, 2012
   - Updated: May 22, 2012
   - Bulletin Severity Rating: Critical
   - Version: 1.2

* MS12-035 - Critical

   -http://technet.microsoft.com/security/bulletin/MS12-035
   - Reason for Revision: V2.1 (May 22, 2012): Added entry to the
     update FAQ to announce a detection change for KB2604092 for
     Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 and KB2604110 for
     Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 2 to correct an
     installation issue. This is a detection change only. There were
     no changes to the security update files. Customers who have
     already successfully updated their systems do not need to take
     any action.
   - Originally posted: May 8, 2012
   - Updated: May 22, 2012
   - Bulletin Severity Rating: Critical
   - Version: 2.1

MSDN Blogs:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-windows-8-for-multiple-monitors.aspx

Data collected through the Windows Feedback Program indicates that approximately 14% of desktop PCs and approximately 5% of laptop PCs have run with multiple monitors.

Steven honey, 100% of the users in this office have multiple monitors and if I hear that you are coding through telemetry one more time... I may scream.

That is currently one of the weak points of Windows 8 - the multiple monitor experience.  Glad to know that you you are listening to some feedback.

So here's one best practice that I for sure follow... I ignore the ability to do snapshots in anything other than my Test HyperV.  On my real production, snapshots are to be ignored.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tips-for-optimizing-hyper-v/726

Primarily in my mind for the fact that making a snapshot of a DC isn't wise as it could lead to tombstone issues where if you roll back you could be going back in your AD history unknowingly, and then secondly ...now granted by TestHyperV is an overgrown Frys desktop, but it nails that servers performance when it snaps an image.

So just plan on having a normal backup for your HyperV child and not taking snapshots.

Viorel  in the comments says..."So what about NUMA settings Susan? And Processor core allocation? There is a good opportunity to use Hyper-V Server 8 (2012) for better performance ( >4 core) and NUMA management.

For management purpose I suggest to use add-in (cheap) netcard - onboard cards are server grade and can be more usefull for VM. "

Keep in mind that my personal experience with virtualization... I am talking about one server with two, maybe three, maybe four virtual machines on it.  And I don't think that  NUMA settings really make a huge difference for this size of deployments.  If you guys have tests and benchmarks on small servers,  by all means post them, but most of the NUMA articles I see are server farm discussions and I've not see benchmarks and tests for small servers. 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh750394.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/winserverperformance/archive/2009/12/10/numa-node-balancing.aspx

I think the better idea is to have a good enough machine that you aren't having to squeeze out that last bit of performance. 

For a SBS standard, you give it all cores that are exposed in the virtual interface.  For any other computer, I have personally found that when I put in a small virtual workstation, it worked better with two cpus than one.  Again, think about what cpu you'd be physically buying for the workload.  In the servers that I have running HyperV, the CPU load honestly isn't pulling that much.

I wouldn't recommend HyperV Server 2012 on a client machine.  It's a beta.  Play with it, learn about it, but it's still a work in progress at this time.

http://www.vadapt.com/2011/05/performance-recommendations-for-virtualizing-anything-with-vmware-vsphere-4/

And I'm not a fan of overcommitting ram or resources.  Again, these servers that I'm talking about are typically in a single firm, not in a server farm.  I think if you go down the path of squeezing every last performance out of a server, I think that's asking for trouble in small businesses.  You want room for growth and expansion.

So bottom line I let the box handle the NUMA settings and don't mess with tweaking. 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/04/05/windows-server-8-beta-hyper-v-amp-scale-up-virtual-machines-part-1.aspx

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tips-for-optimizing-hyper-v/726

http://workinghardinit.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/virtualization-with-hyper-v-the-numa-tax-is-not-just-about-dynamic-memory/

Granted you have to understand my HyperV mindset.  In my HyperV world, it's the SBS that is the head cheese and everyone else is secondary.  If you have a SQL server that you want to tweak because there's some app that is written poorly and needs some TLC, well you might want to play around with those settings.

Bottom line I can't give best practices here because I personally haven't done enough testing to know what a best practice for SBS would be.

This one I think you'll have to do some tests yourself.