ryv's blog

Recently I have had three new clients come to our company for IT support. Each one uses MelbourneIT's domain name services - MelbourneIT hosts the domain name, the registry of that name and the web sites. In all three cases I've needed to make changes to DNS records and have been unable to get usernames and passwords for the managed services from MelbourneIT, despite having the authorised users available and requesting the changes themselves. Emails with reset account details have never arrived and after an estimated 3.5 hours on the phone I've given up. We'll set the DNS records up somewhere else and migrate the domain to a new registrar. Poor customer service like this is not unusual in the IT world. Often a client will ask who to use for the domain names, where to host their DNS etc. I've always had very good experiences with Westnet and now with iiNET, reasonable experiences with Telstra on the Business Broadband and associated services and good experiences wi

We take up the exciting adventures in migrating Windows SBS2008 to Windows SBS2011. The day is getting older and the laborious task of migrating Exchange data looms before us. We start by creating new Public Folder stores and configuring them. There is quite a bit of jumping backwards and forwards from the source (old server) to the destination (new server) during this process. Note there is a bit of command line work here – I highly recommend using tab complete where possible. If you haven’t used this before, type the first bit of a command or location and hit the TAB key – it will bring up the first match to those characters. Keep hitting Tab until you get what you want. Typically if it’s a multipart command, I’ll type a few letters, TAB, then a few more letters, another TAB etc until I minimise the number of letters I have to type to the bare minimum. It’s very *nix-y J The mailboxes for the users – fortunately small – are in the process of migrating. Next will be data files

Approaching a major migration can be a very stressful event, especially with a Small Business Server involved in the mix. Migrating one from exiting to new is even more fraught with danger. Over the course of this weekend, we are migrating a Windows SBS2008 server to a brand new Windows SBS2011 box. There is some great documentation from Microsoft about this process and I’d like to share some of the experiences we had. Firstly, it’s critical to assemble and test the new server before anything else. Give yourself enough time to do this. Even a pre-built, delivered by HP/Lenovo/IBM server still needs testing on your part – disk, RAM and CPU at the least. Build your RAID arrays too , have them prepped and ready to go for installation. Also, identify what drivers you will need – particularly RAID controller drivers and network adaptor drivers. If you've got the NIC drivers, then you can download any others you might need. Getting the right documentation is helpful – the Micro

This is a review of the Cisco SRP527 ADSL2+ router as much as it is an overview of my experience with it. For a long time I was a huge fan of the Netgear DG834 series routers - for around $100 you got a router capable of wireless, 5 VPN tunnels, reasonable (but not fantastic) firewall and very reliable. It's only been since Netgear cancelled this excellent series, pushing users to the higher end models for VPN and using other, non-VPN capable routers for home users, that I started casting further afield for a new, reasonably priced VPN capable ADSL2+ router. WiFi wasn't that important - TPlink do a reasonable wireless access point for around $60 that we've deployed very successfully and I don't mind the separation of devices. One of my colleagues heard me bitching about the Netgear changes and suggested I check out the Cisco SRP range of routers. Usually the only Cisco routers I've played with are 800 series ones, or 1900 series - routers that require care and pa