Getting into it with Microsoft Azure Cloud Computing

For work I've been playing with Azure a bit - and if you're not aware of what Azure is I'll explain. It is Microsoft's cloud computing offering similar in many ways to Amazon EC. I quite like it - especially because they give little not-for-profits like us $3500 USD of sponsorship to run stuff. It has allowed us to make a few tentative steps into the cloud space and expand our operating horizons.

As a beginner with Azure I wanted to just run up a basic machine and it allowed me to do that pretty easily. The wizards are straightforward and it's a matter of understanding the different terminologies to get to what you want from the system. The basic components of an Azure box are:

• the VM itself
• network interface card
• disk
• network security group
• Public IP address. It looks a bit like this:

The Virtual Machine is set up along a series of different options - you can guess most of them. Number of CPUs, RAM and the system disk plus any data disks. There are plenty of present options and it's pretty neat that you can jump around with them. I initially had a couple of our VM's set a bit high and dropped them down. It required a restart and that was it.

With any virtual machine - particularly in the cloud - it's absolutely CRITICAL to understand how much it will cost per month to run the thing. The CPU/RAM and Disk all have different costs, as do backup solutions and other bits you can add. Most of them only cost you money when the machine is running though. For us, we're looking at running some pretty sizeable Windows Servers but only during business hours (8am to 6pm) Monday to Friday. So 210 hours a month instead of 600+. It is a much cheaper way to do business and worth checking out if your budget is tight.

Back to Azure. Once the machine is up and running, then the management is done by SSH or RDS or whatever you'd normally work from. Console access is available, which for us was really important - I was using SSH Keys for authentication but the Azure side kept changing which was fucking frustrating. Had to keep deleting the old key and then fixing it, and then the auth key wouldn't work. I eventually gave up and went back to good old fashioned usernames/passwords.

Although this isn't ideal, the firewall setup is straight forward and comprehensive. My VMs are not accessible from any network apart from our own (which has made home support a non-event). It protects our assets that little bit more and so it's a good time investment to work on. Here's a tip - if you're using Let's Encrypt to provide you with SSL Certs, then you will periodically need to open Port 80 to the world for that to run the tests against. I say that, knowing full well that on one server it's 100% the case and on another it's not. WTF? I dunno it's weird but anyway, this is the world we live in. I'd show you more of the interface, however there is a too much proprietary stuff there. You can sign up for a free Azure trial though which is pretty great. I recommend doing that to see what you can find. There are free offerings available too which are very useful for evaluating their products.

I have been impressed by Azure over the last 8 months of using it. I find the interfaces to be straightforward and the integration with Office365 to be pretty neat too. Give it a try and see how it compares for you against Amazon or Google Cloud (which is a very different beast indeed).

3 Word Processors compared - Microsoft Word, Apple Pages and Google Docs

In the course of work and university I've been jumping a bit between Word, Pages and Docs for various reasons. I thought it might be useful to compare them. Let's start.

Price

• Google Docs is included either in a free Gmail account or G-Suite. Its available for free on your mobile device with native apps on iOS and Android
• Pages is $30.99 and can be found in the Apple Store. It's included in iOS on the iPhone or iPad
• Word is part of the Microsoft Office Suite. The cheapest of which is Office365 Personal (for Mac) which is $89 inc GST per year (See the Microsoft Office pricing page here). Includes a licence for a single mobile device

On price Docs is the obvious winner. Free to get access to and solid support on mobile devices. 

Usability

All three of these applications are very useable - but which one is *most* usable? Google Docs is a clean, uncluttered interface with relatively few options available:

Simple and uncluttered with everything there and looking like every single other word processor through history.

Pages has a different take on it, and one that can be a bit confusing to begin with.

The sidebar gets added into the mix, and many controls are moved out of the top menu and into here. I don't mind this personally, but I do find on the MacBook that I dislike losing the screen real estate to this menu. It is functional though.

Word has the infamous "ribbon". This is the Office365 version of it:

Since Microsoft changed the menu titles back to being in regular capitals / lower case, the readability of these menus has improved immensely. I remember when the ribbon came out and people loathed it. It just is now and I find it to be quite useful. The drawback for me with Microsoft Word is the sheer number of options available. We are spoiled for choice, control and capabilities and it can be overwhelming at times.

The usability winner is a totally individual choice and I leave it up to you to decide. Personally I like Pages but I'm ok getting around all three.

Functionality

This is a big one to consider. Word has clearly got it all (and most users will touch about 10% of it's capabilities day to day). Pages is likewise heavy on features and Docs comes in last, with its smaller range of functions. I think because Docs is web based then it was forced into more simplistic functionality and Google had to really choose the key word processing capabilities to include.

There is one function that stands Word out from Pages though in these heavy hitters. The ability to have a section in landscape, while the rest of the document is in portrait is not available in Pages (that I could find). Now most people probably won't care about this overly, but for me, if I'm inserting a large landscape graphic or big table it is critical and stupid Pages won't do it. Very frustrating. I've never really tried it in Docs, but a 3 second Google search shows it's not possible. Word wins for this!

All three offerings have Table of Content, header, footer, page numbers, insert stuff blah blah - you get the drift. All the basics and day-to-day stuff is there, and its only the more advanced activities where they are differentiated.

Aesthetics

Which one is the prettiest? A very subjective question of course. It should be noted that Apple have spent a lot of time on fonts and appearance, but so have Google and Microsoft (they just aren't as talked about). This is up to you - but I rank them Pages, Docs, and Word. Word is a bit busy for me - lots going on and when I'm working on an assignment or report I need clarity. Docs is very good for this, but something about the Pages appearance appeals to me.

Things to note about the different applications

Pages is Apple centric - don't bother looking for it on anything that doesn't have the Apple logo. That being said, it integrates very well with iCloud and syncs to your mobile device quite happily. 

Word is starting to become ubiquitous everywhere - Microsoft have released Office365 in a web browser, it's installable and available as an app on most mobile devices. The experience is the same across them all and really is improving.

Google Docs is maturing constantly and more features are being added frequently. For collaboration it is King. See updates and writing by other people in almost real time and easily give various levels of access to documents. For working with colleagues Docs is the best - Pages and Word are not in the same realm.

Cloud Computing Challenges in Regional Australia

Out here in the bush we have a fundamental problem with Cloud Computing. We can’t get to it! Our internet access is 3rd world at best and generally that’s being charitable. Recently I was at one of the incredibly rare Microsoft road shows in this area - we generally do not see any big companies come through here. Our regional population is around the 100,000 mark so we’re a small fish in a big ocean.

The key message being delivered by the Microsoft chaps was Cloud, cloud and more cloud. So the outlook for the presentation was cloudy. Azure, Office365 - all that good stuff. Great for Microsoft - everyone moves to a subscription model, doesn’t need onsite hardware and you pay - continuously - for ever! Some of the stats were interesting. 

Of those taking up a hosted Exchange, very few had taken up Office365. The presenter was surprised by this, but I don’t know why. We have a lot of clients using Office2010 or 2013 who have either purchased it very recently (in the case of 2013) or have specific applications or processes built around the way that Office works. They are not likely to change any time soon - the ROI on their purchase has not yet been achieved. And amazingly, some of these clients don’t want to pay for the software every month.

We have some clients, quite a few sadly, that have sub 10Mbps ADSL2+ connections who are absolutely staying away from cloud anything. All well and good to have their data in someone else’s server, but they can’t get to it! With such a crap internet connection, it’s almost impossible to upload data, let alone pull it back down. The pain for having to move to a different cloud provider - especially if the data has to come back to site first before leaving to the new hosting is going to be considerable. 

The question I didn’t get to ask the Microsoft lads was: “What is Microsoft doing to promote better internet connectivity so we can sell all your cloud stuff?” Such a large company, with fingers in so many pies - get us better internet! 

While it’s true we are Google Apps resellers, and Microsoft Partners and we do have quite a few hundred Office 365 and hosted Exchange subscribers out there, we are severely limited by the ability to provision these services.

Access is not the only challenge we have. Data sovereignty is a major issue for our clients too. They don’t believe that they maintain full control over data sitting on someone else’s servers and, quite understandably, some of our clients are not big fans of that. Truth be told, it’s a fair jump to make for someone. “Let’s put all our gold in someone else’s chest! Screw that!” - this was a message given to me by one of my clients. He viewed his data as gold and didn’t want anyone else to have control and to be fair, it’s the result of his life’s work. 

There have been lots of issues around someone else maintaining and holding client data - privacy, security, accessibility being the big three. Who is held accountable etc are all the questions we are asked many times. Microsoft have not helped their own cause with some of the stuff they’ve done over the years - anticompetitiveness and their major hate on for Linux to name two. Being a massive company that doesn’t pay it’s taxes in Australia and is US owned are more strikes against them for the purposes of this argument and in the minds of many rural business owners. These are hard things to overcome, especially when I’m asked about my own cloud usage.

I live on a farm. Can you guess how great my internet connection is? The pigeon delivering my USB of data each day is pretty fast, but nothing compared to an urban fibre connection. So by necessity my cloud interactions are controlled and largely minimal. There are plenty of business - who are in rural cities - that do not have internet connectivity as reliable or “fast” (I sniggered when I wrote that because its a 3.5Mbps connection on the best of days) as I do. No cloud for them!

Before you go hell for leather selling cloud services to clients, stop for just a moment and consider all the variables beyond what Microsoft is telling you. They want very much for you to be locked in with their model, using their servers and services for ever because then you have to pay for them every month for the rest of eternity. There are other ways and its important to keep those options alive for people. Onsite servers are not dead - not by a long shot. Let me reiterate the main point of this article - we have to provide data to our clients in a secure, reliable and accessible way. Doing so is the important part. How we deliver it is the challenge.

Windows 10 - Upgrading Experiences and general first impressions

I've taken the plunge and upgraded my beloved Pavilion dv7 to Windows 10 from 7. I watched with baited breath yesterday to see if anything would happen, after all, I had signed up to get the upgrade and was prepped for it to happen. Nothing happened. I experienced sadness and then I watched my download widget in Rainmeter jump up to 1.5MB/s - our full download speed here. It stayed there for some time and then trailed off. OMG! I thought exultantly that my laptop would then upgrade magically and instantly.... but alas no. Nothing happened again. Anti-climactic was the theme for Windows 10 day. After several hours where I pointedly ignored my laptop and hammered away on the desktop, I patiently waited for something to happen. Around 4pm it did - a new windows popped up and said it was ready. Just a few things to do over 10 seconds, then the install would start. I click on the Go button and waited. It turns out that 10 seconds lasted 14 hours - I went home, slept, came back and the laptop was sitting in the same spot. I killed the upgrade and then a Windows Update "Updating" popped up. The upgrade started again! Oh the excitement! I pointed it out to my fellow IT chaps here in the office. Their response was underwhelming to say the least.... especially as it seemed to stall at 15% - always a bad sign. Thankfully it got going again and my laptop continued to upgrade. Over the course of an hour it completed and now I sit here, typing away in Edge on Google's Blogger. Apart from layout changes and the GUI interface upgrades, it seems a lot like business as usual. The upgrade brought across all my apps, including RainMeter and all the widgets, Chrome and Firefox and all that other stuff as well. I'll play with it over the course of the day and see how it goes. This is a production laptop and I intend to show it off to people so they know what to expect when the upgrade comes through. First up I quite like the new icons and the look of it. The network stuff all looks very similar - there is quite a blend of the Windows 7 functionality and a bit nicer than windows 8 GUI stuff going on. I don't know that I'm loving the Start Menu - perhaps it will grow on me in time. The ads to "Get Office" annoy me - I already have Office 2013! I did have some issues in the preview "Insider" version where scrolling in the Store menu caused it to crash. That seems to have gone away for the moment. I'll keep at it for a while and see how it goes!

Windows 10 trial impressions

As all the world (not literally) knows, the newest version of the Windows Desktop operating system Windows 10 (X?) arrives at the end of the month. I've been playing with it since it's early days and throughout the updates and newer iterations of it my feelings haven't changed much.

I think the overall vision for the UI is missing internal design cohesion. My initial feeling was that they've tried to take elements of the Windows 8 menus, and blend them into the Windows 7 (and previous) familiar menu style. I don't like it. It's gaudy and unpleasant and for straight business work it doesn't speed things up at all.

My other gripe with it has been that under a VMware Player install, it only starts up once every 3 or 4 times. That concerns me. What also concerns me is the dumbing down of the control panel. Accessing the stuff in there isn't for everyone, but the people who do want to get into it need access to the internals of the machine. I can't help but compare it to Mac OS X. The new release of that 10.10.4 is out, and although there aren't huge differences, I've been able to migrate my MacBook Air from 10.8 through to 10.10.4 without any difficulties, or needing to learn a whole new GUI.

My final gripe, and I'll keep this bitch session relatively short, is the move towards subscription model licensing for Windows and Office. I'm happy to pay for an OS, or a piece of software. No worries. I'm not happy to have to pay every year for it. Particularly when I use about 1% of what Office is capable of doing *and* I can get all I want out of Google Apps, plus my email and blog and website etc for $5 / user / month! It's not that I don't want to reward the people who've worked so hard on this, but frankly, they get bugger all of the money I pay anyway. If I'm being forced to use some tarted up version of Windows, it had better be good. Windows 8 was rubbish, and we've successfully avoided upgrading most of our clients and home machines. The way Windows 10 forces itself to be know with a "free" upgrade worries me. We all know how wonderful the first iteration or two of an OS are, and I can only begin to imagine the problems we'll have with Windows 10 when it comes out.

By the end of the month I guess we'll know more!

Restoring Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 - from disaster to victory beer!

Recently during a server upgrade I applied SP3 to Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0. This particular server had seen no love in a long, long time and it needed an absolute slew of updates. Naturally, Sharepoint broke and the site loved by my client was unavailable, as were many other services.

The errors in the Eventlog were varied and painful, with lots of vague references to the apocalypse and the like. Naturally the logs get incredibly dense and I had another issue to contend with along the way - disk corruption. The ntfrs filesystem was reporting corruption and had taken out a chunk of the Sharepoint Wizard's configuration. That obviously had to be fixed first and was very worrisome - especially given I was working on a RAID1 disk.

Normally, because the database needs an upgrade when you apply SP3, if it doesn't start straight up you can run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard to repair it. Failing that, you can disconnect the farm, fix the database issues and then re-run the wizard and connect back to the farm. With the disk issues and also with the failure of the systems admin to fully apply all the updates none of this was working - in fact the Wizard was failing spectacularly.

This is where things got to from my notes:

• Ran the config wizard and told it to disconnect from the server farm per MS documentation
• re-ran config wizard - it is now reporting that IIS is not working properly.
• have looked in to this - suggestion is that a compatibility mode setting has not been applied. Unable to apply this in Windows Server 2003.
• have run a repair on WSS 3.0 - this requires a reboot
• many many ASP.NET 2.blah errors. All non-descriptive and very dense to understand without being a .NET programmer.

So we were right up that fabled creek without a paddle. I finished patching the system, which sorted out the issues with ASP.NET. I still had no connectivity to SharePoint so I ran through some more updates and managed to partially get the SharePoint Admin site up. I was still getting all sorts of errors and came across a post that suggested I change the ASP.NET version of the Admin site to 2.0.whatever. You can get to this via the IIS management tool, right click on the website, go to ASP.NET and edit the configuration, altering it to the version you want. I did this and it made no difference, but after restarting IIS the admin site came up. Awesome sauce. There were also a few permission changes I needed to make - the Network Service account had somehow lost access to the content database.

I had a backup of the all the WSS databases, and the databases themselves were actually running on the server still. What I didn't realise and what I hope you, gentle reader, can take from this, is that the restore was far easier than I thought. I removed SharePoint from IIS, and created a new web application. I also created a new site collection and new database. From here I went to Content Databases and added in the old content database but I still couldn't get the right site to come up. In fact, the old content DB and the new one conflicted and I had no access to anything. What I should have done was this (all through the WSS Central Administration Site)

• create a web application
• in Content Databases add the old content database - you may have to use the stsadm command to do it which is:
• stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://server -databasename WSS_Content (which is the default name)
• Check under Site Collection List - you should see your old website application there
• restart IIS and check the site.

Where I had a lot of pain was that I didn't realise the old site was held within the WSS_Content database and I didn't need to add a new site or create a new site collection. How remarkably painful is all I can say. I hope in future that it'll be a bit easier during upgrades.

Reducing the winsxs folder - why it won't happen until Microsoft change Windows Updates

Recently I, along with thousands of other system administrators, have been swearing more than usual. If you're one of these people, you know why - the winsxs folder starts to use huge amounts of space on your hard disk. If you've gone by Microsoft recommended practice and created a 50GB C drive, then you also know how quickly this screws you.

Is there a way to reduce this folder? If you apply a Service Pack and go through the mechanism to apply it without chance of uninstalling it then you'll grab a little space back, but as you apply more updates, patches and new drivers the winsxs (or Windows side by side folder) will continue to grow. Theoretically it allows you to roll back if something goes wrong with some component of the operating system. In real life though, this isn't really done - we can just reinstall the busted component or whatever.

The system that controls the winsxs folder is tied to Windows Updates - and as we all know in Windows Vista, 7, 8, Server 2008, 2008R2 and 2012 Windows Updates can be hit and miss. Updates failing to apply, updates taking forever to apply or the ever annoying "Shutdown and install updates" that drags on forever. Vastly different to Windows XP of course.

Most often the fix is to replace the disk, or expand your hard disk size but this is frustrating and annoying. It's also expensive for our clients. Unfortunately it seems to be the best way to solve this issue - there is no short term fix or even any hint from Microsoft this will be solved.

I recommend that for new servers, a 100GB C drive is configured to give you breathing time until Microsoft finally manage to solve this issue. If you know better - hit the comments.

Adventures with migrating Windows SBS2008 to Windows SBS2011 - Part 2

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 and shares. We expect this to take the bulk of the time for the process. Note that the public folders suggested waiting 24 hours for them to complete the migration (No way!). This particular site has no data in the public folders so we can safely blow past this part.

The exchange migration was relatively straightforward and simple for us – not a lot of data and all over in about 30 minutes. On to the file migration and starting with the UserShares I was pleased to see that the command used was Robocopy. As you’d know from this blog I really like robocopy and its venerable cousin xcopy. Those applications have been great tools in my arsenal. We also set up the second partition – all the line-of-business data will go in here and we’ve got around 70GB of data to transfer for that. The robocopy transfer of the UserShares folder ran at about 500MB / minute so we’re looking at about 140 minutes for the big data transfer. We thought we’d get a bit of a jump on a few other bits of the migration – namely WSUS but the source server was running flat out keeping up with its new brother’s demands, so that was a no-go. Much of the migration of Fax, internal website and a few other features we were able to skip as this organisation doesn't use them. We’re at 9.25 hours so far and making good time (touch wood).

We RDP’d into the old server – turns out the console was misbehaving and started cleaning up WSUS. This process took 10 minutes by itself. Then it was time to set it up to migrate to the new server. The data copy was still proceeding and the log file was over 6MB in size already. We reviewed WSUS and decided to stop the migration – we’ll download it afresh and configure it only for the existing machines, cleaning up lots of other stuff in the meantime.

Creating a spreadsheet for all the share permissions is a handy thing to do. If you've got a lot of folders, with complex permissions I find this to be a good way to keep them all straight. It’s also a good opportunity to review Security Group membership and how these groups are applied to folders.  Robocopy with the switches the documentation suggests /COPY:SOU brings across all your ACL information so security is pretty easy to get going.

We’re up to the finish of the migration. We need to demote the old server, remove Exchange and a few other tasks. It’s a bit scary – this is the end stage. Luckily we still have the backup in case things go pear shaped. Here we go.

Removing Exchange 2007 from the old server proved challenging. There was a few difficult moments, an early “Who’s your daddy!” cry, then some silent weeping and finally success. I won’t bore you with details – sufficient to say it’s a bit of a process but our Google-Fu was up to it. The actual process of removing Exchange was surprisingly slow too – the files took a long time to delete. Not sure why – they aren't that big, and yet, 15 minutes after it started deleting them, it’s still going.  Once this process finished, we removed A/D Certificate services and then demoted the server. Rebooted and remove from network. Apparently we should now be done with the old server.

Uh Oh! It turns out that the users’ roaming profiles weren't properly copied across! Oh Noes! Powered up the dirty old server and started copying data across to a USB memory stick. Although it’s only 5GB the files are all little and so the copy time is suggesting 1 hour 20 minutes (!) I think this is uncool and my colleague agrees. Fortunately this does give us time to try and fix another issue that’s cropped up – the desktop PCs haven’t updated where they are supposed to get the redirected folders (Desktop and Start Menu) from. They’re still looking at the old server. So, with more swearing – as it is now 6:30PM and we've been at this since 8am this morning – we tackled the next issue. The desktop PCs registry’s suggest they are looking in the right place but the folder redirection still fails (it’s looking at the wrong place still so the issue of having no data there isn't yet a big one). Running gpupdate /force hasn't seemed to fix it yet. We’ll update the files, then try again – especially because the RedirectedFolders is empty – we had copied that data across so not sure what happened there.

This is a longer than anticipated process – the 5 or so GB of data is all very small files and so takes ages to copy across – more than an hour to copy it off, and only about 20 minutes to copy back in.

We found that the desktops were continuously looking in the wrong place – they were using the old server’s name in the UNC. Rather than update a million shortcuts on desktops and keep fighting the desktops I added a CNAME in the DNS to point the old server name back to the new server. Everything started working! We did find a multitude of strange, legacy shares that required recreation, so try to get all this down on paper before you get started. By this time we’d been at it for 15 hours each and we were starting to get a bit pissy. Thankfully Outlook and most other apps continued to work – we didn't need to create new profiles or anything.

We found that Exchange also had no outgoing connector to send email out. Internal email worked fine and the server was receiving mail but we couldn't spam, uh, I mean email, anyone. There was no Hub Transport Send Connector created. We got this going and suddenly the queued mail we had sudden flowed through. It was quite spectacular really – we’d sent a *lot* of test emails J

It was at this stage we made the executive decision that all the major boxes had been ticked and the network was operational. We had allotted 16 hours for each of us and we came in at 15.5 hours. Not too bad at all. We’ll no doubt have some problems on Monday but for now we’ll knock off and collapse at home. I hope some of this information is informative or at least entertaining. Here’s hoping your migration goes as well or better.

Adventures with migrating Windows SBS2008 to Windows SBS2011 - Part 1

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 Microsoft Migration documents are very thorough (and long – 60+ pages) but are pretty well step-by-step. A very large USB drive is also handy and a laptop with internet connectivity is always a must.

We ran through the initial stages, getting the 2008 server patched up to the levels required for the migration. Then a backup of the C drive – we’ll migrate data via the network later. This reduced our backup from 250GB+ to under 90GB, which took a little over 30 minutes to complete. Then, the SBS2011 disk went into the old server and the migration prep tool was run. We created an Answer File (needed for the new server) and called it a night – it was a Friday after all and around 8pm.

Next morning – installation of the new server started. Drivers for the RAID controller and NIC were needed pretty quickly. When you run the installation it gets run in Attended Migration Mode – the migration process gives you 3 weeks to complete the migration, with the possibility of having two domain controllers on the network at once. After this time, the initial server stops working and that’s that. We experienced a BSOD trying to get the network card drivers to work – ouch! Here’s hoping it recovers back to the same point in the installation…. And it more or less did, except the server doesn't have the option to install a network card driver like it did. Two options only – Test Network Connection and “How to troubleshoot network issues” which opens the Help documentation. There’s nowhere to install a driver or configured the NIC. Hitting cancel shut the server down. Uh oh. We’ll crank that mofo up again and see what happens. Remember too, the network adaptor's IP has been pre-configured via the Answer File – this actually worked.

The server rebooted and now it wants to activate because the activation period has expired. How the hell did we get to there? OK, we've chosen to enter the activation code (cause we haven’t put any codes in yet). We got to that and now we’re back at the same screen about the server being unable to proceed because it doesn't have a network connection. A three finger salute (CTRL/ALT/DEL) allowed us to access Task Manager and get to the Device Manager from there. Remember how I mentioned it would be great to have the right drivers handy? We thought we had the right ones, but alas, they were not. After hunting around and testing several different drivers, still no luck. I’m sure there’s more on the HP website and there is… let’s try some others!

While that process was going on, I looked into some details about Windows SBS 2011. From the Microsoft OEM site:

“Designed and priced especially for small businesses with up to 75 users, Windows SBS 2011 Standard is a complete solution designed for customers who want enterprise-class technologies in an affordable, all-in-one suite.

Built on Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows SBS 2011 Standard includes Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, and Windows Software Update Services.

Windows SBS 2011 Standard is a great opportunity for small businesses with prior versions of Windows SBS to upgrade their servers and to simultaneously take advantage of the advancements in security, reliability, and connectivity technology.”

Interesting indeed. SBS2011 is the last SBS. Windows 2012 Essentials doesn’t include Exchange and therefore becomes very pricy for small operations. Bring on Google Apps for that. At any rate, we've now downloaded the HP ProLiant Support Pack and installing it – 33 minutes to complete! Once this finished all the hardware driver issues were resolved and the server continued on its merry installation way. Sadly the Server Activation issue cropped up again and suggested we were victims of software counterfeiting – oh noes! Attempts to resolve this ended up in another reboot – which is usually OK but it does take a while. After restart we found the DNS wasn’t working – we adjusted it to use the ISP DNS and the server rebooted again, without much in the way of a by-your-leave. With the server live again the installation/migration continued.

The latest reboot resulted in the migration continuing and the Windows Activation windows popping up – this type the Activate Online was successful and the migration tool continued to expand and install files. 30 minutes until it finishes!

So it turns out 30 minutes was conservative. An hour on and the process was still running. We had time for coffees, pies and sandwiches. Hopefully it will finish soon…. During the interminable time while it does the migration, we noted that DHCP had stopped working  on the network. This was being delivered via the SBS2008 server and shouldn't have been affected. We restarted the service and DHCP was restored. We’re not sure why that failed.

OK so it was more like 90 minutes than 30 minutes. The server rebooted – hopefully because it’s supposed to and Windows is starting again. Sadly the process is still continuing after the reboot and the internets tells us it could do it 2 or 3 times!

After two hours the expand and install files process completed. It is now time to run the Migration Wizard, starting with File locations. This includes Exchange files and data files. We went through and used the default locations, then detected the network. It picked all this stuff up correctly and the exciting journey continued </sarcasm>.  We’ll take up the migration in the next blog post – where we begin with migrating Exchange data.

Exchange 2007 Send As from a different domain

Imagine this scenario, it may be one you've come across:

• the organisation you're working for / consulting to has a single Exchange Server (be it standalone or part of SBS)
• You have it receiving multiple domains e.g. example1.com and example2.com
• Users would like to send from name@example1.com and from name@example2.com

Exchange does not support this without either adding an additional mailbox for example2.com to each user's Exchange account or implementing some expensive third party software. 

There is an easier way to do this and it has two separate parts to it: creating a relay for example2.com via the Exchange server, and setting up a dummy POP3/SMTP client in outlook to send as the second domain using the "From" drop down in the create email window in Outlook.

Part 1 - Setting up an additional SMTP Relay to avoid the dreaded 550 5.7.1 Unable to Relay

The Exchange server won't necessarily allow mail from a different domain to be relayed through it to the outside world. In Exchange 2007 you don't add a an extra SMTP relay, you have to add a New Receive Connector (because the server is receiving the mail to then send it on). 

Firstly add an IP address to your Network adaptor - don't try to re-use the existing IP address, this will over complicate things. Simply add an extra address - increment your existing address by one, or find a free one. This will be the outgoing SMTP server address we set up later in Outlook so note it down.

Open the Exchange Management Console and go to Server Configuration. Hit Hub Transport and choose "New Receive Connector"

Name it, and choose Custom as the intended use for the Receive Connector. Hit Next and on the Local Network Settings page, click the Add button and type in your new IP Address. Leave the port at 25 - most mail programs don't like this to be messed with.

Remove the "All Available" Local Network address and hit Next again.

The next window should be the Remote Network Settings window - use this to control which addresses can relay through the server. Ensure you put in a range that is meaningful and allows for some security. If you put in too large a range, or do 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 you have created an Open Relay and spammers love these - probably not the best plan to do that. Pick your DHCP range or something similar to lock it down to.

Choose Next and on the Summary screen click New to create the connector. OK so now we need to alter the permissions.

On the properties page of the new Connector (right click and choose Properties), choose the Permissions Groups tab and select the checkbox next to "Exchange Servers" and hit Apply.

Go to the Authentication tab and select the checkbox next to "Externally Secured (for example, with IPsec)", and hit Apply and OK.

Now we can relay through our server.

Part 2: Configure a Dummy Outlook Account to get access to the extra "From" option in Outlook

Open Outlook on your desktop and go to Options, then Accounts and create a new POP account.

Put in the User's name, their email address and then for the POP3 Server address put in a dummy address pop.local for example. Put the IP address you configured above in to the SMTP server and click finish. The Test button won't work - the POP account will fail every time. Because we have only a single mailbox with multiple addresses assigned to it in Exchange, we don't have to worry about where emails sent to example2.com land - the Exchange server will automatically put them in the correct folder.

Open Tools again, Options and go to the Send/Receive section and disable "Receive email items" from our new dummy account. Restart Outlook. 

Now when you open an email to send to someone, you'll see the "From" button beside the sender's address at the top and you can select your example2.com account.

I hope you find this useful - I've cobbled it together from two separate issues that ended up being interrelated.

Review: Office 2010 - First Blush

So, blessed as I am with a Microsoft Technet subscription I downloaded the Office 2010 beta and installed it over the Office 2007 installation I had. There were several things I noticed straight up. The big icon in the top left corner of the software is gone and replaced with a file tab that has all the options previously hidden under the big button. Outlook is substantially changed and I like the changes, with one small exception thus far. The black theme that I liked very much in Office 2007 makes it look sort of busy and isn't quite what I expected. I guess that it will get better in the full release to come (or at least I hope so).

The ribbon being used in Outlook is a welcome change. I didn't like the way it was in Outlook 2007 - after all, why have a new look if it doesn't get spread around all the programs in a suite? I've always liked the functionality of the ribbon, despite the dislike it has engendered in some circles. I dread the teaching of it's usage to my clients, but we'll see how it goes. Overall I think the direction Microsoft has taken Office is a good one. I'm a big proponent of OpenOffice but I find the interface clunky and unpleasant. Microsoft's Office is better in terms of the interface. To be honest, I don't have a lot of time to screw around with desktop software, but I do like the changes to Office and screwing around with it is interesting. The interface changes are smooth and look good.

I'll write an update once I've spent a couple more weeks and keep an eye on things as they develop. All in all, I currently like Office 2010!

Windows 7 RC - ongoing thoughts

I've been playing with 7 for a few weeks now and I have to say, I'm both impressed and annoyed by it! Odd in a way, but here is the reason for such a strange dichotomy. It's notably faster than Vista and handles pretty well. The crappy PC I'm testing it on runs smoothly and is usable for my daily tasks which is terrific. It has given the box a new lease on life and the only cost has been an upgraded video card. The driver support so far has been good and everything works.

Now for the bad - I recently joined the system to my Windows Server 2008 based domain and the log on time - from boot to three finger salute and login blew out enormously. I checked a variety of things that it might have been - often I find that DNS issues cause slow downs here, but my DHCP assigned IP addresses use my 2008 server as their primary DNS server so it isn't that. The system is on a gig network, and both server and client have gig networking cards in it. At first I thought it was only initial log in problems, but I have now come to realise that it does it *every* time. As I started a deeper investigation the hard disk that the system resided on failed which throws yet another variable into the mix. I'm yet to add the system back to the domain.

After the re-install (which has worked flawlessly) the system has run very smoothly and I'm very happy with it. I look forward to further updates for Windows 7 - particularly flash which doesn't seem to work. Software I'm using successfully with it includes Microsoft Office 2007, latest Firefox and Chrome and Adobe Reader. The interface is quite nice - I have the Aero effects on my crappy PC still handles it pretty well. Turning them off does give a noticeable speed increase. I look forward to putting it onto a more powerful system and seeing what it can really do.

Review: Windows Server 2008 Small Business Server

Recently I've had the requirement to install and configure Windows Server 2008 SBS. Previously I've deployed 2003 SBS in varying settings and found it to be quite a nice little product. In more recent times though, I've gone the more segmented path of Windows Server 2003 plus Exchange 2003 separately and found that to be quite effective. For a small operation, however, SBS provides many features that are very helpful to the operator who isn't necessarily skilled in IT, nor has a great deal of time to set things up and play with them. Being a Sys Admin with the inclination and the time to play with it, here are some of my thoughts regarding SBS2008.

The management system for accounts and the like is very nicely set up for the none technical user. An application with common tasks is easily available and allows for configuration of most casual system changes to be made. I refer primarily to user and group (both distribution and security) creation, file and folder shares and backup configuration/testing. SBS2008, like it's predecessor has some nice daily reports that can be emailed to the Administrator or to a designated person and contain excellent information to keep an eye on the system. For example, this includes disk usage, backup status and the like. Very nice.

SBS2008 likes to take control of the network - it offers to be the gateway, DNS, DHCP, mail and file server all in one. I had problems with this on my network - I already *have* a gateway, DNS, and DHCP servers and it didn't play nicely together at all. In fact, the installation failed and I had to restart it again from scratch. This time I was a bit smarter and had the server plugged into a dummy switch. Once the initial install was passed, I added a virtual interface to my gateway and set the SBS server to point at it. This time it was happy, but by gum it wasn't the first time around. It automatically assigned itself the .2 IP address on the network (i.e. 192.168.0.2) and off it went from there. It did talk successfully to the gateway and once I reconfigured squid and my firewall, network traffic flowed as one would expect it to.

Something I learned from SBS 2008 is that you cannot set up mail addresses etc from within Active Directory, as you can in Server 2003 (not SBS) with Exchange. Also, security and distribution groups all had to be set up from the SBS system application. Not realising this, I created groups and used the Exchange Systems Manager to set up the email accounts and groups. These did not appear in the SBS system application. Oops! I'll have to revisit it and see if it's found them or not. Something else I learned - the HP ML350 I installed SBS2008 on is a very nice machine, but the HP setup disks - which cater for nearly every *other* version of Server 2008 - do not cater for SBS 2008. Damn! All those drivers and tools had to be installed after the fact - SBS2008 just would not work with the HP boot CD. Disappointing, but the ML350 was released before SBS2008, so you can't have everything I guess. That being said, the ML350 is quite a nice bit of kit indeed and highly configurable and affordable too. This one had a simple RAID1 mirror and everything ran flawlessly - as you would definitely hope it to in this particular setting.

Overall, I was impressed with SBS2008 and if needed I would happily deploy it elsewhere. I imagine that as one becomes more familiar with it, the ease of installation and configuration would certainly increase - I felt a bit confused at times and had to rely on trusty Google to get me through. At the very least, the problems I encountered were well documented by others. I must say though, the initial problem I had with the installation of the server failing was one that had been noted on the Microsoft webpages but no solution had been offered. If your SBS 2008 install fails - make sure it is the only thing on the network when you do the install - no other servers should be present if you want it to go smoothly. By all means migrate your AD stuff later, or even better (given that it is for Small Businesses) create a fresh new directory and build it in a pristine state for roll out. Also to be noted - it requires a minimum of 60GB of hard disk space for the C drive and a minimum of 4GB of RAM (!). Lucky RAM is cheap :-)

Waiting for Windows 7

OK, so we're starting to see some peeks at Windows 7. Check this out at ars technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081028-first-look-at-windows-7.html The first screen shots of Windows 7. I'm not particularly interested in it at the moment, I'm more interested in the whole "What do I do with my 8 year old Windows XP now?"

There are several options and as a Sys Admin I get more than a few questions about what to do as Windows XP ages gracefully into oblivion. Obviously the wonderful Windows Vista is an option, as is the various distributions provided by the gifted GNU/Linux community. With Windows 7 slated for a late 2009 (probably 2010) release should users be holding out for it as their hardware ages and their PC's become due for renewal? And for businesses that have laboriously got themselves into a nice 3 year PC replacement cycle, what do they go for?

Honestly at this point I'd point them at Novell's Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. There is no way I'd suggest Windows Vista at this point. It is such a massive resource hog, plays poorly with legacy applications and just seems to be a slapped together and rushed out the door operating system. It should be noted I run Vista on several machines, and have a couple of machines out there with regular users running Vista and honestly, they give me no positive feedback on it. On the other hand, I've put Ubuntu and OpenSuSE on people's desktops and they have really liked them - especially on older machines where the processor is only a P4 with a 1GB of RAM.

So the question really is - wait for Windows 7 and hope for the best OR deploy Vista to the desktop? It's not a nice question at all. I'll admit to feeling burnt by Vista - sure it has some nice features but by crikey it can be frustrating to get it going in the right direction at times. I've rarely had issues with the various Linux dizzies I've installed and Windows XP, for all it's faults, has been a good OS from both a systems view and a users view. Obviously security is paramount with XP, but at least it works - and it works on a lower hardware spec than Vista. With the economy going spastic and the Australian dollar declining versus the US Dollar (and how does that happen when the greenback is in such turmoil with obvious poor management and leadership???) PCs are getting more expensive again. Boo hiss.

If Windows 7 requires even more grunt than Vista I see it being out of reach for a lot of users for at least a year past it's release date. As to Vista I'm going to try and pretend it never happened and keep it out of the workplaces I'm involved in. What are you going to do?