KWSupport : SBS2008

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!

WHS Business Opportunities

kwsupport — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:56:00 GMT

If you are a Microsoft Partner, there will be a 5W/50 webinar entitled “Business Opportunities with Windows Home Server – Updated with PowerPack 2 Content” today at noon (EDT) given by Grey Lancaster and Kevin Royalty. If you think WHS is only for homes, then you're still thinking within the box! WHS is a perfect fit with SBS 2003/2008.

IT Pro Tiki Tour - Tampa/Lakeland

kwsupport — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:07:00 GMT

Blain Barton, Microsoft's Southeast IT Pro Evangelist, will be bringing his Spring Tiki Tour to the Tampa area on June 4th, 2009 (6p-9p) at the Polk Community College in Lakeland. Topics include: Moving to the Modern OS Roadmap, Windows Security, and Windows 7. I will be doing the Windows 7 presentation. (Yes, food is included!)

Space is limited. As of Tuesday 5/26, we already have 165 registered. Click here to register and for more information.

Hope to see you there!

Introduction to Windows Server 2008 Foundation

kwsupport — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 04:25:00 GMT

I previously blogged on April 1st about the new entry level Windows Server that Microsoft just released -- Windows Server 2008 Foundation (WSF). Microsoft has now published a new paper called Introduction to Windows Server 2008 Foundation.

WSF is NOT intended to be a "baby" version of SBS. Rather, it is a Windows 2008 Server limited to 15 users. It's designed to be sold into an existing very small business that is currently running a peer-to-peer (workgroup) network. There's no Exchange on it.

Enjoy!

New Entry Level Windows 2008 Server

kwsupport — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:18:00 GMT

Microsoft announced today (April 1, 2009) a new entry level version of Windows 2008 Server - called Foundations. And this ain't no April Fool's joke. It will support a maximum of 15 users. Read more in their press release.

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!

SBS 2008 List of Installation Errors

kwsupport — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:14:00 GMT

Microsoft has published a list of errors that you may encounter when installing SBS2008. They also include suggested resolution(s) and follow-up tasks for each error.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc546065.aspx

Adding additional email addresses in SBS 2008

kwsupport — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:25:00 GMT

Those who have worked with SBS 2000 and SBS 2003 will find that many things are not where you expect them to be in SBS 2008! For example, let's say you want Sally to receive all email addressed to sales@yourdomain.com (in addition to receiving email as sally@yourdomain.com). In prior versions of SBS, you would go to the SBS console, drill down to Users, go to properies for that user and make the change under the Email Addresses tab.

So, how do you do it with SBS 2008? Glad you asked!

Start up the Exchange 2007 management console, and click on Recipient Configuration > Mailbox. Double click on the desired user, click on the E-Mail Addresses tab, and then click on the green plus (+) tab and enter the additionla email address. Voila! Wasn't that easy?

Connect Windows 7 to SBS 2008

kwsupport — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:25:00 GMT

The SBS offical blog site has an excellent post on how to modify SBS 2008 so that a Windows 7 (Beta) workstation can be joined via http://connect. I have just a couple of observations and suggestions on my part:

If you are joining a laptop, be sure to disable your wireless port(s) and join the server using a wired connection!
When modifying the XML files, I found it best to copy the XML file over to the 'My Documents' folder on the server, edit the file there, and then copy/replace it back to the original directory. Obviosuly you would want to make sure you first make a backup copy of the original file (just in case!)

WHS Restore CD and Realtek NIC

kwsupport — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:05:00 GMT

I've been testing out the Windows 7 beta on one of my laptops this week. And following my own best practices, I made sure I installed the WHS connector on it and made several backups during my testing. So, yesterday I tried (unsuccessfully) to join the Win7 laptop to a SBS2008 domain. (Yes, I'm aware of my changes required on SBS 2008 to allow Windows 7 to join the domain via http://connect). But still, it failed.

So, when I got home I wanted to restore my laptop to its state before my attempt to join it to a domain. Talk about wasting valuable time!

First, I couldn't find my Restore CD. So, I downloaded the WHS Restore CD (PPK1 version) from Microsoft's web site. But, in trying to burn the ISO image, I encountered two bad CD's in a row. Fortunately, the third CD worked. Once I got the CD created, I booted my laptop from it only to find that it could not find my WHS server. Think, Kevin ... I told myself ... it has to be an issue with the NIC driver. Sure enough, a quick Google (errr, Live Search), and I found instructions on how to grab the drivers from the WHS Backup directory, put them onto a USB stick, and then at the appropriate time request the WHS Restore CD to scan for additional drivers.

No good. Still could not see the server. More searches and I discover that other people had encountered the same issue. Common denominator? A Realtek NIC was involved! I went to the Realtek support site, and download the drivers, and put them onto the USB stick. Still no good! More searches all indicated that grabbing the drivers from the Realtek web site should do the trick. So I went back one more time, and for some reason, the files I download this time from the Realtek site were different than the drivers I had downloaded 20 minutes before. (I later discovered that my original search for Realtek drivers had taken me to an outdated web page on their support site).

I dumped the drivers onto the USB stick and voila! --- the WHS Restore CD found my server, and six minutes later I had my laptop restored.

Hope this helps!

-kw

SBS2008 and POP3/IMAP4 Clients

kwsupport — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:38:00 GMT

Enabling SBS 2008 to allow remote users to use their email clients (Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.) or phones to pull down email from the SBS2008 server via POP3 or IMAP4 is just slightly more involved than on SBS 2003. For all the step-by-step details and screen shots, visit the Official SBS Blog site which details these steps in two parts (part 1, part 2).

However, you may find it helpful to view the big picture in 5 easy steps, and I will also highligh several GOTCHAS to watch out for!

Step 1: Enabling the appropriate Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 or POP3 services on the server (Start > Run > Services.msc) should be easy enough. GOTCHA #1: Be sure that you change the startup type to Automatic, and then be sure to actually Start the service!

Step 2: Enabling the required ports again should be easy enough. Port 110-POP3, 995=POP3/SSL, 143=IMAP4, 993=IMAP4/SSL. GOTCHA #2: Remember that you also need to forward port 587 as this is the listener port for SMTP/TLS mail (instead of port 25!).

Step3: From ESM (click Server Configuration > Client Access > POP3 and IMAP4), and modify the X509 certificate under the Authentication tab to point to the proper exterNal FQDN of your server (eg., remote.servername.com).

Step 4: While in ESM, move down to Server Configuration > Hub Transport, and add a new Receive Connector. Name the connector 'Client' (short and simple). GOTCHA #3: Be sure to click on the drop down box and change the intended use of the Receive connector form Custom to Client! You can default through the rest of the prompts.

Step 5: Finally we are done with the server setup. The only thing left is to configure your email client and test things out. GOTCHA #4: When setting up your mail client for POP3 or IMAP4, be sure that you specifcy that the outgoing SMTP connection is to be encrypted, and set the port to 587.

Cheers!

DCOM 10016 Event Error

kwsupport — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:07:00 GMT

After installing SBS 2008, you may begin to see DCOM 10016 event errors being reported in your SBS Monitoring reports as soon as users begin to use Sharepoint/Companyweb. This error is also identified if you run the SBS 2008 Best Practices Analyzer. There have been several posts on how to fix this error, but the instruction always were vague in one specific step.

First, here is the DCOM error as reported in the event log and within the SBS Monitoring report:

Event Source: DCOM Event Id: 10016
Event Details: The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1} to the user NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

And here is the error as reported in the SBS BPA report:
Local activation permission to the IIS WAMREG Admin Service required

To fix this issue, perform the following steps:

* From the SBS console, click Administrative Tools > Component Services
(or, if you prefer: click Run > comexp.msc)
* Expand down Component Services > Computers > My Computer > DCOM Config
* Right click on IIS WAMREG Admin Service, then click Properties
* Click on the Security tab
* Click the Edit... button within the Launch and Activation Permissions section
* Click Add and add the user named: 'Network Service'
(NB: this is the step that confuses people. Most instructions simply tell you to add the appropriate user, but do not make it clear which user to add!)
* Click on the checkbox to Allow (enable) the Local Activation rights option for this user
* Click OK twice, and close Component Services
* Finally reboot the server for good measure and to ensure the change takes effect

Hope this helps!

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.

Backup fails after bare-metal restore (SBS 2008)

kwsupport — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:44:00 GMT

I had a situation today where I had to reformat & reconfigure the raid drives for an SBS 2008 server. That part went fine, and doing a bare-metal restore of the server from the scheduled SBS 2008 daily USB backup went flawlessly. After we brought the server back online, I attempted to do a new full backup, but the backup failed with the following error: Creation of the shared protection point timed out. Unknown error (0x81000101)

A quick Internet search found KB 956136 ("If calls to VSS management interface API's are made..."). Now, the title of this KB article may not sound like it is applicable to any problems with performing a backup. But the details of the article includes this statement:

For example, assume that you perform a Bare Metal Restore (BMR) for a Windows Small Business Server (Windows SBS) 2008-based system. Then, you use Windows Server Backup (WSB) to perform a backup operation after the BMR operation. In this situation, the first attempt fails and generates the following error message: Creation of the shared protection point timed out. Unknown error (0x81000101)

Sounds like my situation! And sure enough, running the backup later in the day worked perfectly. Hope this helps someone!

SBS20008 Migration Documents

kwsupport — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:15:00 GMT

For those of you who may have missed it ... new documentation for migrating to SBS 2008 is now available for viewing or download. This covers both SBS 2003 to SBS 2008, and SBS 2008 to SBS2008 scenarios.

Online Technet versions:
Migrate SBS2003 to SBS2008
Migrate SBS2008 to SBS2008
All SBS2008 Technet articles

Downloadable versions:
Migrating SBS2003 to SBS2008 (Word Doc - 77 pages)
Migrating SBS2008 to new hardware (Word doc - 58 pages)
SBS Migration & Setup (CHM file)

Happy migration!
-kw

SBS 2008 and Sharepoint Log file

kwsupport — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:04:00 GMT

If using SBS 2008, one of the things you want to do is to install and run the SBS 2008 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) on a regular basis. At my first SBS 2008 installation, BPA recenlty reported that my Sharepoint log file was larger than 1gb in size. Strange, I thought, since this customer had not even started using sharepoint. Beyond that, BPA did not offer any suggestions for resolving this issue.

So, here are the instructions (from the SBS BPA team) on what to do:

Step 1: start up command prompt in administrator mode. You do this by clicking on Start, then right clicking on Command Prompt, then clicking 'run as Administrator'

Step 2: From the command prompt:
1. Type: sqlcmd –E –S \\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query and press Enter
2. From the 1> prompt, type: select name from sys.databases and press Enter
3. From the 2> prompt, type: go and press Enter
This will display a list of all databases know to SQL server. One of them will look something like this:
SharePoint_Config_29c26fca….

Step 3: Now, with the actual name of the Sharepoint database, you will want to enter the following commands, replacing dbname with the actual name of the Sharepoint database. Be sure to leave the brackets [ ], parens ( ), and _log, as noted:

1> BACKUP LOG [dbname] WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
2> Go
1> Use [dbname]
2> Go
1> DBCC SHRINKFILE([dbname_log],2)
2> Go
1> Exit

For example, if your Sharepoint database was named SharePoint_Config_12345, then you would type in:

1> BACKUP LOG [SharePoint_Config_12345] WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
2> Go
1> Use [SharePoint_Config_12345]
2> Go
1> DBCC SHRINKFILE([SharePoint_Config_12345_log],2)
2> Go
1> Exit

Hope this helps!

Uninstalling Live OneCare from SBS 2008

kwsupport — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:40:00 GMT

When SBS 2008 was first released, it included a 120 day trial of both Live OneCare (Server) and Forefront Security for Exchange (FSE). Since then, Microsoft has announced they would be dropping support for Live OneCare. When installing SBS 2008, you are asked whether you wanted to install the 120 day trial of these two products. If you did select to install them, and now wish to uninstall them, the process is very easy.

From the SBS console, click on Control Panel > Programs and Features. Click to highlight Live OneCare and then click Uninstall. The uninstall process is very straightforward, and no rebooting of the server is required to uninstall Live OneCare.