THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA : smbnation

I'm mad at Harry.

bradley — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 05:24:00 GMT

I'm mad at Harry. Well, I really can't be mad at Harry. I mean with his wife's accident and all I really feel I can't be mad at him but I want to be mad at him. I'll explain why.

I'm kinda annoyed at his "pivot or perish"' stuff and his "SBS was a crutch" he's been sayiing lately.

Case in point this article - http://www.itchannelinsight.com/2012/08/small-business-server/

"According to Harry, many solution providers, while they love Small Business Server, it really has served as a crutch to their business. They have depended on it for such a long time and have been riding the SBS wave. Unfortunately, many are now stuck in a predicament of aging SBS servers and no clear migration path, well no clear path unless you just hand your clients over to Microsoft and potentially reduce your margins greatly."

I don't think Consultants are stuck. I think we have the problem of too many options.

Option one, jump on that cloud bandwagon, hop on hosted Exchange or online email and blend it with either an on-premise server or a hosted server or a full virtualized infrastructure.

Option two, jump on that terminal server bandwagon and stand up terminal server boxes, or multipoint servers and start deploying thin clients.

Option three, determine that your client still wants a fixed price option and spec out a SBS 2011 standard and migrate and this will keep them sitting pretty for about 4 years.

Option four, determine if Windows 2012 Essentials married with hosted exchange or an on-premise Exchange makes the best fit.

The problem as I see it is not that there's no clear migration path, the problem is that there's tons of migration paths, too many in fact.

Yesterday's Godaddy incident - either a security one or a failure in hardware - showcases that as we jump on that cloud bandwagon we have to look for our single points of failure we just put ourselves into. SBS used to get slammed for putting all of our eggs in one basket, Godaddy is that single basket for many of us. So just as we worried about the single point of failure of SBS, we need to be aware of the single points of failure we might be building in our future deployments.

The early bird discount for SMBnation's fall Vegas event is coming up fast. If you want to walk up to Harry, tell him that you want him to give his wife a hug on your behalf, but then tell him - in person - that he's dead wrong - that you aren't planning to perish, but survive and thrive in this post SBS world of ours, you don't have too many days yet to get that discount. - http://fall.smbnation.com/

The early bird expires this Friday.

Patching resources

bradley — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:06:00 GMT

For those at the community session at SMBnation - the resources about WSUS and Patchmanagement I talked about are:

www.patchmanagement.org - a site that hosts two listserves - one for WSUS, the other for general patching.

www.windowssecrets.com - where I write about patching

Looking for password cracking tools from Dana's session

bradley — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:49:00 GMT

Password cracking tools talked about at Dana Epp's SMBNation session.

http://www.oxid.it/cain.html - Cain and Able password cracking tool

http://www.elcomsoft.com/ - password cracking tools

High Rely meeting at SMBnation tonight

bradley — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 17:15:00 GMT

If you are at SMBnation, Darren McBride and Jeff Bowling of High-Rely invites everyone who wants to know more about their Client workstation backup solution to the Janerio Boarcroom at the RIO from 6:30 to 7:30 October 1st.

This is an open meeting for all interested in a really cool client backup device built for SBS boxes.

http://www.high-rely.com/HR3/includes/Smart%20Family/WBA/WBA.php

So your client forgot his Quickbooks password?

bradley — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 08:48:00 GMT

So your client forgot his Quickbooks password? Just remember as you listen to Dana's password session tomorrow today at SMBnation that passwords for Quickbooks are removed from the file by a $39 program at www.lostpassword.com

Yes, $39 will remove a Quickbooks password so you can get back into it.

The perils of being a female geek

bradley — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:43:00 GMT

So I arrive at the Rio hotel and start to unpack ... the technology. The wireless router so that I can make the wired connection a wireless (and btw if you are on a certain floor near a certain room the open wireless with the SSID of "default" is my little travel dlink router), and then the ancient laptop that I've had forrreeeever (and I'll probably install win8 on it just as a proof of concept one of these days), and then the newest geek gear, an android tablet with a mifi device. And I go to check to see if the mifi is charged up and.... shoot I remember I left the charger in the wall at home. No worries, I'll just use the USB connection jack to charge it like I do with my iPhone. I use a retractable iPhone cable on the road so I don't have to pack one more cable and I leave it in my laptop bag. So I go to get the mini usb cable for it... and of course I can find like THREE mini usb cables in all of my geek gear but not the RIGHT mini usb cable. Shoot, says I. Well I'll just have to use the mifi lightly this weekend.

So I start to unpack a bit more and get things like my toothbrush out of my makeup bag. And out of my makeup bag falls the RIGHT mini usb cable for the Verizon mifi device.

Why the RIGHT cable ended up in my makeup bag, I have no clue. I'm going to guess in the heat of packing during the last trip I stuffed in in there, needless to say I'm now back to being a happy female geek with all my cables and cords and stuff and makeup and curling iron, and hot chocolate (yes I travel with bags of Hot chocolate - and good thing too - the Rio makes you pay for the coffee).

Well enough blogging for the night. time to get ready for Harry Brelsford keynote bright and early tomorrow morning.

PreDay sessions at SMBnation

bradley — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 06:42:00 GMT

The early bird sometimes doesn't get the deal. If you already booked your tickets to SMBnation you may want to see if you can push them ahead a bit.

Pre-Day Sessions:
http://fall.smbnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=75&Itemid=128

There's two predays of sessions now AHEAD of SMBnation including some hands on labs.

Categories of cloud computing risks

bradley — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 18:32:00 GMT

Categories of cloud computing risks - great slide to think about from Dave Sobel's session

Control - Many companies and governments are uncomfortable with the idea of their information location on systems they do not control.

Data - Migrating workloads to a shared network and compute infrastructure increases the potential for unauthorized exposure

Reliability - High availablity will be a key concern

Compliance - Compying with SOX HIPAA

Security Management

In Dave Sobel's session

bradley — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 18:08:00 GMT

In Dave Sobel's session on "the cloud" and it's clear that IT folks will have jobs.

In his session he's doing a white board talk about how to design a solution in the cloud.

He's pointing out that new businesses are starting now will start with minimal hardware and techologies. As this firms grow they will grow up used to the hosted scenerio.

It's existing networks that we're struggling with. Talking about some of the decisions one needs to make.

Good use of technology

bradley — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 05:54:00 GMT

That's actually a pretty good use of technology... having the TV in the bathroom... IN the bathroom mirror to be exact

If you aren't in Vegas... you are missing out on...

bradley — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:27:00 GMT

http://twitter.com/WindowsSBS/status/28442916230
#SBS tattoos are still available at the booth! Only MVPs are crazy enough to put them on their heads!

http://yfrog.com/5l8eqj

http://yfrog.com/mshmxaj

http://yfrog.com/i36ibeqj

http://yfrog.com/emoftj

http://yfrog.com/02792jj

and http://twitpic.com/2zw5dx

If you are heading to Vegas and SMBnation.....

bradley — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 01:23:00 GMT

If you are heading to Vegas and SMBnation.....

..don't read this.. http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/10/21/pilot.secrets/index.html?hpt=C2

If you are already in Vegas go and give Harry Brelsford a bad time....

"Pocket MBA for MSPs open house 8PM room 28017 "
http://twitter.com/smbnation/statuses/28358880317

See you in Vegas!

bradley — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:14:00 GMT

http://twitter.com/#search?q=smbnation

Bookmark that. The next few days folks will be heading to and talking about Vegas. I'll be joining the fun Friday night (I had to stick around at the office until then) but I have it on good authority that there's some fun things planned.

There's some special "Vegas" giveaways as well to ensure you have reminders of what you are learning about!

See you in Vegas!

Matt Damon aka Sean Daniel will be in Vegas at SMBnation presenting on Aurora

bradley — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:34:00 GMT

SeanDaniel.com - Home, Small Business Server and Related Technology: I’m headed to SMB Nation, are you?:
http://sbs.seandaniel.com/2010/10/im-headed-to-smb-nation-are-you.html

Matt Damon Sean Daniel will be in Vegas presenting on Aurora at SMBnation. I'm in the process of organizing some "community cards" for the event and I'm putting together the resources for SBS.

Tonight I got tired of finding my bookmark for the SBS partner forums and so I parked a domain.

http://www.sbspartnerforum.info/ goes (or rather soon will go) directly to the SBS partner forums.

http://www.sbsforum.info goes to the SBS public forums.

We still say Sean looks like Matt Damon...

Last chance for discounts

bradley — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:37:00 GMT

Last chance for those that are SMBnation alumni to get in on the alumni rates closes tomorrow on 9/15. Also the early bird rates close tomorrow as well.

If you are a member of a usergroup there is a special 10% off the fee as well. If you are a member of a user group and have not gotten your 10% promotion code, ping me and I'll give you the code for the discount.

Just added today was more info about the tech tracks including sessions on Aurora, SBSv7. Those of us that have beta tested SBS v7 and Aurora will have buttons on with the "Ask me about Aurora" and "Ask me about SBS v7" at the conference.

Hope to see you there!

http://www.regonline.com/smbnation_2010_fall_conference

Super Geek and SBS MVP Leaves Exchange for Kerio Connect

bradley — Wed, 05 May 2010 00:51:00 GMT

Super Geek and SBS MVP Leaves Exchange for Kerio Connect > SMB Nation - 
Source For Small Business Specialists:
http://www.smbnation.com/Home/tabid/36/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/164/Super_Geek_and_SBS_MVP_Leaves_Exchange_for_Kerio_Connect.aspx

So for those who asked or inquired for a little more information, Harry has more info from Eriq on Kerio.

Are you in the SBSC advisory session or in Jennifer's marketing session?

bradley — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:15:00 GMT

Are you in the SBSC advisory session or in Jennifer's marketing session?

If you are are you in the SBSC townhall?

US SBSC Advisory Board: FY10 Topics

TPAM/dTPAM reorganization
MPN Changes/Requirements
The fate of the SBSC logo
PinPoint
MDF Programs
BPOS/Volume Licesning
MAPS
SBSC Recruitment

"It's easier to learn technical information about how to deploy software than it is to figure out licesning"

Or are you in the Social Marketing session with Jennifer?

http://technologytherapy.com/blog/going-social-and-doing-it-right/

On Change

bradley — Sat, 01 May 2010 21:39:00 GMT

http://msmvps.com/blogs/onq/archive/2010/05/01/on-change.aspx

"Yesterday (April 30, 2010), I announced in my SMB Nation session entitled "Alternative Solutions in the SMB Space" that my primary company, EON Consulting, has stopped running Exchange for our corporate e-mail. Back on April 5, we migrated our e-mail data out of Exchange into a server running Kerio Connect. After the successful transition of e-mail services, we are now continuing on a path to migrate our business off of SBS 2008 onto Server 2008 R2 Standard with Kerio.

Is this a bit of hypocrisy coming from the guy who's authored two books about Small Business Server and has his MVP designation for the product? No, and I'll tell you why.".... more on the blog......

Mark versus Jennifer

bradley — Sat, 01 May 2010 21:32:00 GMT

8:00AM-9:30AM

BS109

SBSC Program Town Hall Meeting

Robert Cioffi, Michael Klein, Kevin Royalty, Mark Crall

8:00AM-9:30AM

BS111

Marketing in a 2.0 World

Jennifer Shaheen

http://techtherapy.tv/video/do-i-need-social-media-on-my-website/

Oh man does this look like a horrible decision to make. Sunday morning on day 3 is bad enough, but to put Mark Crall against Jennifer Shaheen

Don't forget the SBSC wine event tonight but you'll have to decide if you want SBSC townhall or Marketing in a 2.0 world tomorrow morning.

Looks to be too really good sessions back to back.

The Jersey girls and guys at SMBnation

bradley — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:44:00 GMT

The Jersey boys

Harry and the "Jersey guys and gals"