KWSupport : SBS2003

Why Small Businesses use Windows SBS?

kwsupport — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:41:00 GMT

Microsoft's Small Business Server (SBS) has been a mainstay of my business for 8 years, and it is what I propose and install for my clients. If you are interested in using SBS for your small business, be sure to read the following blog post entitled: Why Small Businesses Use Windows Small Business Server?

WHS & SBS: Approved for Backups

kwsupport — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:54:00 GMT

For more than a year I have been promoting the use of Windows Home Server as a local backup solution in a Small Business Server (SBS2003/SBS2008) environment (per these two blogs: blog1 , blog2). I already have WHS installed at most of my SBS customer sites.

It now seems as if Microsoft is now willing to say "Yes" -- that using WHS to backup your workstations and servers is a viable and supported scenario! Read more on Microsoft's Technet site.

SBS without Exchange?

kwsupport — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:12:00 GMT

I hear it all the time ... my customer wants an SBS server, but they don't want to use Exchange. I don't know about you, but the only reason I can think of why either the customer or the IT consultant would suggest not using Exchange is because they've never used it themselves, and therefore are scared that it's too difficult to install or manage. I have installed SBS servers for almost 9 years. I barely know how to spell Exchange, yet I find Exchange very easy to manage.

But, if you still need convincing, here is a short list of 8 reasons why you should consider using Exchange features with your SBS server.

Group calendering
Shared public folders
Centralized storage and management of all emails
Easy recovery of deleted emails
Email archiving
Centralized scanning of email for spam/viruses BEFORE they reach the user's inbox
Access to email remotely via OWA
Access to email via ActiveSync for cellphones and PDA's

Remember, if each user is using a POP3 account via Outlook, then those emails are generally only being stored on the user's computer, and therefore they are probably NOT being backed up. With Exchange, the emails are being stored on the server as well as being cached onto the user's workstation. Sbs and Exchange make a great team!

Cheers!

SMB Nation 2009 - Alumni Early Bird

kwsupport — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:36:00 GMT

Are you planning to go to SMB Nation in Las Vegas this year? If so, and you've attended a past SMB Nation conference, the special "Alumni" registration fee of $499 ends on July 31, 2009. That's a 50% discount off the regular $999 registration fee. Conference dates are Oct 2-4, 2009. See you in Vegas!

Free Utility for Exchange Custom Filter

kwsupport — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:18:00 GMT

I've blogged previously about Exchange 2003 IMF (Intelligent Message Filter). One of the somewhat hidden features of Exchange 2003 and IMF is the ability to implement a custom weighting feature via an XML file. This feature first came out in IMF v2. MsExchange.org has a good article on how to implement the custom weighting feature of IMF.

However, there has always been a small issue with using the custom weighting feature -- the custom XML file that you create has to be put inside a specific subfolder. The problem is that when Microsoft releases an update to IMF, the installation process creates a new sub folder automatically. However, the XML file is NOT autoimatically copied to the new folder.

What to do? Until recently, one had to remember to manually copy your XML file from the old folder to the new folder.

But now, Oliver Sommer (SBS/EBS MVP from Germany) has developed a free utility (Exchange Custom Weighting Feature XML Updater) that installs on your your server (works great with SBS 2003) and automatically copies your custom XML file to the new folder whenever a new IMF update has been installed. I've been personally running various beta and early versions of this utility successfully for more than a year.

Give it a try.

And if you like it, even though Oliver is offering the utiity for free, you may want to give him a small donation via PayPal. And while you are at his site, check out his Wake on Lan for SBS 2003 RWW utility!

Cheers!

SBS, WHS and Backup Software

kwsupport — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:32:00 GMT

One of my mottos has always been: "You cannot have enough backup!". So, I am always investigating and testing backup software. When Microsoft first releasd Windows Home Server (WHS), I knew that this was a product I would be testing. Well, tonight, it saved my bacon!

My own SBS 2003 server that has been running for years experienced a serious hard drive failure. Fortunately I do use Raid-5 disk configuration. So I shut down the server, replaced the drive, fired up the server to rebuild the Raid, and then rebooted. But apparently something else was amiss, as Windows would not boot up properly, reporting a failure or corruption with Active Directory. After trying a couple of other options unsuccessfully, I decided to see if WHS would get me back online.

Yes, I use WHS as my backup software of choice for backing up my SBS 2003 server! (P.S. The WHS Team has an informative article here).

So, I pulled out my WHS Restore CD and booted my server off the CD. However, it did not load a driver for my NIC card. No problem, as I knew the drill: go to another workstation, fire up the WHS Console, view the backup directory for the computer in question (my SBS server), and copy the contents of the WHS Drivers for Recovery folder to a USB thumb drive, and rename the folder to DRIVERS. I then took the thumb drive back to the server, where the WHS restore screen has a convenient button to install additional drivers. An hour later my server was back online and operational!

Lessons learned? There are lots of vendors offering backup software solutions for the Windows marketplace. I have used Acronis, ShadowProtect, and others. These are all good products. But WHS is a real winner for me, and for many of my small business customers. I have WHS installed and backing up both SBS 2003 and SBS 2008 servers, plus serveral peer-to-peer networks. It just works! It has even recovered a Windows 7 Beta laptop for me!

Now, someone may say that offsite (or remote online) backups are required, and I would not argue that point at all. Remember: I believe in multiple levels of backup solutions. But for the small business and home environments, WHS is an excellent backup software solution.

Cheers!

Windows Mobile and DST

kwsupport — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:41:00 GMT

I can't believe it's 2009 and we still have issues with DST and calendar items! Several of us just discovered (here on Feb-10-2009) that an event we are entering for August 2009 in Outlook 2007 is showing up an hour earlier on our WM6.1 phones. I've downloaded the latest WM/DST patch and installed it on my WM6.1 phone, but appointments are still showing up an hour earlier. I tried rebooting the phone, but no change. AFAIK, Outlook and my Exchange/SBS 2003 box are up to snuff with patches.

Very frustrating ...

Calyptix and SBS

kwsupport — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:36:00 GMT

I've been install Calyptix AccessEnforcer units recently in several SBS shops, both SBS 2003 and SBS 2008. The AE is a fully featured network security appliance, and comes in various models to fit different size organizations. What I like about Calyptix is its single price --- no extra costs for end user licenses or to enable various features. It interfaces nicely with Active Directory for user level filtering and email quarantine. I plan to do more posts in the future on implementing SBS and Calyptix together.

ThirdTier Press Release

kwsupport — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:53:00 GMT

Two great friends and fellow MVP's - Amy Babinchak and Eriq Neale - have combined forces to start ThirdTier, a new business venture providing support to the IT professionals in the SMB marketplace. Here is their press release:

Eriq Neale and I have launched a new company today. It’s called Third Tier. The company formalizes the remote support services that we have both been offering from some time. We will be adding subject matter experts to cover a wide variety of software in use today at the SMB.

Support Services for IT Professionals

Press Release

Contact: Amy Babinchak

Phone: (248) 890-1794

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 3, 2008

IT Support Services for Professionals

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

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

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

Uninstalling ISA 2004 from SBS 2003

kwsupport — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:19:00 GMT

As you may know, SBS 2008 will be released on Nov 12, 2008. Migrating from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 will require some work and planning. For sites running SBS 2003 Premium with ISA 2004, you have some additional prep work. You will need to uninstall ISA 2004 and disable or remove your 2nd NIC prior to starting your migration from SBS2003 to SBS2008. But, this is not as daunting of a task as you may think. In fact, I just did it this weekend on my own internal SBS 2003 production server.

Blog History:
1.0 Original blog
1.1 Information on uninstalling the Firewall client from workstations has been expanded and moved to Step 2 in the process.
1.2 Add Step 12 to address issues with self-signed cert and remote access (RWW, ActivySync, etc.)
1.3 Add information in Step 2 on uninstalling ISA Firewall client "quietly".
1.4 Add information on Trend Micro/other 3rd party software

Some preliminary notes before we begin:

Note 1. With ISA 2004 we use two NIC's. I refer to the 1st NIC as the External NIC, that is, the one connected to the router. This NIC uses the IP range of the router. Let's assume that IP range is 192.168.1.x.

Note 2. I refer to the 2nd NIC as the Internal NIC, that is, the one connected to the switch/hub for your internal LAN. A separate IP range is used for this second NIC. I generally use a 10.0.0.x range, while others may use 192.168.16.x or something else.

Note 3. The process I describe will result in using the external 1st NIC as our only NIC and disabling or eventually removing the 2nd NIC. This means that all of our internal workstations, WAP's and network printers will be be assigned IP addresses using the IP range of the first NIC.

Note 4. Finally, after disabling the 2nd NIC, we will need to move around some cables between your serverm your switch and your router.

Uninstalling ISA 2004:

1. As always, make sure you have a full backup of your SBS2003 server. An image backup is best (IMHO). After backing up, reboot your server and make sure there's no event errors you need to address before proceeding.

2. While the server is backing up, this would be a good time to go around and uninstall the Microsoft ISA Firewall Client from each workstation.
- If you only have a small number of workstations, you can uninstall the Firewall client via Add/Remove Programs on each workstation.
- However, you can also do this via a command line that you could place in a batch file and run from each workstation. Thuis will uninstall ISA Firewall Client "quietly". See the Microsoft Technet article for more information.
- Some people have reported that you may issues with uninstalling the Firewall Client if you wait until after you uninstall ISA itself.
- Also, it has been reported that if several users log onto the same workstation, uninstalling the Firewall client does not clear the proxy settings in IE for the additional users.

3. Uninstall ISA 2004 from Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. NOTE: if you are not able to uninstall ISA, see the Troubleshooting remarks at the end.

4. Towards the end of the uninstall process, you will be automatically prompted to run the CEICW wizard. As you step through the CEICW (Connect to Internet Wizard), I suggest using all the default options provided. This will configure your server to still use both NIC cards, and configure the Microsoft Firewall. You may be wondering why we don't configure CEICW right away to only use one NIC. Call me old fashion, but I like doing one thing at a time. In this case, we will uninstall ISA and make sure the server is working and then proceed to remove the second NIC.

5. After uninstalling ISA 2004 and reconfiguring CEICW you should be prompted to reboot the server. Even if you are not, you should reboot the server, and verify the server is functioning properly.

6. After rebooting the server, rerun CEICW. From the Broadband connection screen, you will want to select the 'My Server uses a local router' option instead of the 'Direct broadband' option, in order to tell the wizard you want to use only one NIC card. Be sure to have your ISP's DNS IP addresses availble to enter when requested. You will get a pop-up box along the way warning you that you are using one NIC, and therefore the SBS firewall cannot be configured. Click to proceed.

7. Once CEICW has been reconfigured, you can disable the 2nd NIC and then reconfigure your network setup. First take the cable that's currently plugged into your server's first NIC, and plug it into an available slot on your internal LAN switch. Then move the cable that's plugged into your server's 2nd NIC and plug it into the 1st NIC. What we now have is that all of your workstations and server are still plugged into the switch, and the switch is connected to the router.

Alternatively, if your router has an unused additional LAN port, you could have left the setup with your 1st NIC alone, and simply unplug the cable from the 2nd NIC into the available port on your router.

8. You are now ready to reboot your server one more time.

9. After the server comes up, be sure to review and change your Network Bindings configuration on your server. Go to My Network Places > View Network Connections Connections, then click Advanced > Advanced Settings. Make sure your 1st NIC is listed fiirstingm and that it has File & Printer Sharing and Client for Microsoft Networks binding enabled. Remove those bindings for your 2nd NIC, which is now disabled.

10. If you have network devices that were assigned static internal IP addresses (such as network printers or wireless access points), you will need to go in and reconfigure DHCP and adjust your DHCP range accordingly, and then go to each network device and reconfigure their new IP address.

11. Go around and reboot each workstation or network device, and verify that they all communicate back to the server. Check IE settings to ensure that proxy settings have been turned off.

12. Check remote access (RWW, OWA, ActiveSync for cell phones), especially if you are using a self-signed SBS cert. You may need to reload the new cert on laptops and cell phones. If you are stillhaving issues conencting remotely, check IIS on your server. It may have generated a new (second) 'Default Web Site'. Stopping the new one, and starting up the old one will restart remote access.

13. Review and reconfigure any 3rd party software on your server to not use a proxy server. For example, with TrendMicro, you would go to Preferences > Global Setings to turn off proxy server.

ISA 2004 UninstallTroubleshooting:

If you run into problems when uninstalling ISA Server 2004, don't fear. Kevin Royalty offers the following steps:

1. Install and run Microsoft's Windows Installer Cleanup Utility on your SBS server and then reboot your server
2. Reinstall ISA 2004 from the SBS 2003 Premium CD.
3. Note: if you used to have ISA 2000 on this server, you may get an error. You can click OK, and then NO to continue to install ISA 2004 from the SBS SP1 disk 3.
4. Reboot
5. Uninstall ISA 2004
6. you may now return to Step 3 and continue with my instructions.

Hope this helps!
-kw

Windows Search 4 (WS4)

kwsupport — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:22:00 GMT

I never thought I would find myself recommending the Windows Desktop Search utility to anyone. But, perhaps with version 4, they finally are getting it right! The prior version (Windows Desktop Search 3) is now named Windows Search 4. And this is from someone who used the Lookout product for years- that is until Microsoft bought the product, and tried to turn it into MSN Search. I then switched to Lookeen when I moved over to Vista and Office 2007 last year.

I've been running WS4 on my Vista SP1 box for all of 24 hours, but already I can say the improvement over the prior Microsoft versions is noticeable - meaning faster. To give it a fair shake, I completely uninstalled Lookeen from the system. I cannot say yet whether it's as good as Lookeen (or Lookout). So, stay tuned for further updates.

-kw

More on my TrendMicro WFBS Update

kwsupport — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:19:00 GMT

I upgraded my Trend CSM 3.6 to their new Worry-Fress Business Security (WFBS) Advance 5.0 solution for SBS, and like the hero from the movie The Rocketeer, I can say, "I like it!". Without even digging into all the new features, I can say that the spam filtering is much improved, and the Trend console seems snappier and more responsive. The console interface otherwise is the same as before, except with a fresh, up-to-date look to it.

On the new feature side, they have a new 'location awareness' settings for laptops that move around inside and outside the office that I want to try on my laptop. This version also supports Windows Home Server.

The inplace upgrade went very smooth. I simply downloaded and installed WFBS Advance right over my current CSM 3.6 setup. One word of caution: I was installing this via an RDP connection to my SBS server, and perhaps three times during the installation process, it will appear that your RDP connection has been disconnected. Don't do anything - it will resume on its own.

Cheers!
-kw

Trend Micro renames/enhances CSM

kwsupport — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:48:00 GMT

For those of you using Trend Micro's Clent Server Messaging (CSM) suite for your SBS servers, you should know that Trend Micro on June 2, 2008 recently rebranded the CSM product to "Worry-Free Business Security Advanced (WFBS)" and released version 5.0.

If you are using CSM 3.5/3.6 and are under maintenance, you can upgrade to WFBS Advanced at no charge.. Upgrading to WFBS will preserve all your current CSM configuration parameters. Click here for instructions from Trend Micro on how to upgrade to WFBS. To download the WFBS Advance installation file (768MB), click here.

I'll post back after I've installed it on my test server.

-kw

SBS Community Survey

kwsupport — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:34:00 GMT

OK, folks, please take 3 minutes and respond to Microsoft's 3rd annual SBS Community Survey. This survey is all about the SBS community, where you find your support, what blogs you find useful, etc. Kevin Beares, who is doing this survey, has done a tremendous work in promoting and supporting SBS through the community, the MVP and the partner channels.

So, go ahead and click the link ... it will only take 3 minutes and I promise, it won't hurt!

And thanks!

USB Drives and Slow Server

kwsupport — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:19:00 GMT

I know that there are plenty of posts that deal with issues related to external USB drives on servers, such as problems when rebooting the server, or the server acting strange when a USB drive is not removed properly. But until today, I had not encountered any of these scenarios.

Situation was that the server was slow to log on, and clicking on 'My Computer' took several minutes before it would display the full list of server drives. My first attempt to resolve the issue was to uninstall the A/V, but that did nothing. I then tried rebooting the server, but to no avail.

Finally, I noticed that there should have been two external USB hard drives attached that the customer uses for rotating real time backups. These were assigned as drives L: and M:, but M: did not show any drive attached. So, I clicked on the handy-dandy green check icon to safely remove the missing USB driver, and voila!, everything started working.

Hope this helps someone down the road!

-kw

XP SP3 and MCE

kwsupport — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:52:00 GMT

As many know, Windows XP MCE by default does not allow you to join it to a domain. Variations of the infamous "Banana Hack" are available to allow MCE systems to join a domain. I posted about my experience here. What the banana hack does is to change the 'IsLegacyMCE' register key from '0' to '1'.

With XP SP3 set to release in a few days, I tried installing the XP SP3 RC2 to my babana-hacked XP MCE computer. The result was that after installing SP3, my computer went into a constant reboot loop. I was able to boot into Safe Mode, and uninstall SP3, and then the computer booted up normally.

Before uninstalling SP3, I did check the 'IsLegacyMCE' registery setting, and it was still set to '1' - which means that installing SP3 does not overwrite that reg key. However, something else in SP3 is certainly stomping over the ability to let MCE join a domain.

So, at this point, XP SP3 is out for my MCE computers.

-kw

No Telnet on Vista

kwsupport — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:30:00 GMT

This is for all you IT support people ... no, I don't have to use the 'telnet' command often, but when I do, I expect it to be there! So, lo and behold, I have an emergency issue with a client's SBS/Exchange server today, and I find that I cannot do a simple 'telnet' from my Vista workstation.

Why? Microsoft decided that it was a necessary tool to be installed by default.

To solve this problem, go to Control Panel, then Programs, then under Program and Features select Turn Windows Features On/Off, then scroll down and click to select the Telnet Client.

Hope this helps!

EBS Blog Site Up

kwsupport — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:23:00 GMT

The Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) Team Blog site is now up and running.

What is EBS, you ask? Here are some possible answers:

1. EBS is SBS on steroids
2. EBS is SBS split across 3 or more servers
3. EBS is designed for a company with 25-250 users
4. EBS is all of the above
5. EBS is something else than the above

Check out the blog site, and see if you selected the right answer.

SBS2008 coming your way!

kwsupport — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:12:00 GMT

[Edited link]

At long last Microsoft officially announced today (20-Feb-2008) the Windows Essential Server Solutions, which includes Windows Small Business Server 2008 (for up to 50 users), and Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (for up to 250 users).

Xobni and Outlook

kwsupport — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:06:00 GMT

I just came across a new product, currently in beta, that turns Outlook into a "social networking tool". Not only does it give you lightning fast email searches, but it brings a wealth of information that I certainly did not think possible, much less needed. Email analytics, extract phone numbers from emails, threaded conversations, quick attachment discovery, and on, and on, and on.

They say a picture is wroth a thousand words ... so check it out here: http://www.xobni.com/learnmore/

-kw