MPECS Inc. Blog

HP MediaSmart Server Power Consumption

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:02:00 +0000

As we go through testing the various components in the home network we are installing, one of the neat things that was noticed:

HP MediaSmart Server
EX485 with Intel Celeron
2x 1TB Drives with folder redundancy
WHS Update 2.5 installed
Total power consumption:
Boot: 35Watts
Idle/Working: 25-30Watts

That is not a whole lot of power being consumed relative to the services provided by the HP for the home network.

Philip

Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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So, How Responsible Are We For Our Client's Networks?

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:17:00 +0000

The last new drive is in and the array is now in rebuild mode. So far, there are no errors coming up.

There is about 3 hours give or take for this rebuild process to complete.

These types of situations really bring home the depth and the weight of our responsibility for our client's livelihoods. If this box dies before the rebuild completes, we are ready to Swing and recover. The Swing could be done before they get in tomorrow morning and thus not cost them anything in lost productivity.

Do we really, and I mean _really_, know the value of our client's business in terms of dollars per hour?

If the hardware quit anytime during business hours or before we had the chance to prepare our disaster recovery plans the costs to our client would have been huge.

It would take us at least an hour or two to fail them over to the second server and sync the data on it from the ShadowProtect backup. There would also be lost time due to their client files that would not be up to speed.

Anyone hazard a guess as to the productivity costs per hour for this 15 seat accounting firm?

How about a thousand dollars per hour? How about two thousand per hour or even more since most of the folks in this firm are CGAs and up?

When this type of situation is at hand, getting to sleep at night can be very difficult. Yes, in this case we are now prepared. But, the possible impact to our client's business is not an easy thing to pass off as superfluous and thus weighs heavy on the back of the mind.

In this day and age where small businesses are totally reliant on their technology we truly do hold our client's livelihoods in our hands.

Philip

RAID Controller Log: Unrecoverable Medium Error – Puncturing Bad Block?!?

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:57:00 +0000

Okay, so this is a new one and lead to a near stoppage of the heart last evening:

The errors in order:

Controller ID: 0 Unrecoverable medium error during rebuild: PD –|—:0 Location 0x26f1640

Controller ID: 0 Puncturing bad block: PD –|—:0 Location 0x26f1640

Controller ID: 0 Puncturing bad block: PD –|—:1 Location 0x26f1640

PD 0 is the last original disk in this server that is giving us headaches. Both PD 1 and PD 2 (there are three hot swap bays in the SR1560SFH Intel Server System) were replaced with new drives.

The original PD 1 had failed during a server firmware including BMC update (previous blog post). The original PD 2, the then global hot spare, was rebuilt into the array with no errors . . . until a consistency check that ran later that afternoon produced some unrecoverable fatal errors.

Last night we dropped original PD 1 out of the configuration, replaced it with a new drive, had the new drive picked up as a hot spare. We then failed out the original hot spare PD 2 now RAID 1 array member assuming that it was the source of the errors we saw in the consistency check yesterday afternoon.

So, the above screenshot was taken after the new PD 1 was being rebuilt into the array with PD 0 as the source. Needless to say the heart definitely skipped a few beats with visions of index $0 running through my head (previous blog post)!

The rebuild did eventually finish successfully though?!?

We will be going back this evening to fail out the bad PD 0 and replace it with a new drive which will then be designated the new hot spare.

Once the PD 2, currently a hot spare, rebuild into the RAID 1 array has finished, Intel indicated to us that we need to run a consistency check. From there, hopefully ShadowProtect will finally give us a backup!

And one more thing, just what does “Puncturing bad block” really mean?

Bing Search: Puncturing bad block

Yields nada.

Google Search: Puncturing bad block

Yields: NEC MegaRAID Storage Manager Manual (PDF)

The suggestion in the above NEC linked document is to take the preventative measure and swap out the indicated drive(s) promptly. :)

It looks as though the RAID controller has found some bad sectors on the PD 0 and puncturing means to set those sectors as off limits on both array members.

But part of this whole puzzle is the fact that the RAID controller (Intel SRCSASRB with firmware 470) shows a media error level of 0 for both array members and a predictive failure count of 0 for both members!

Hopefully tomorrow we can rest easy with a backup in hand!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

How A Capacitor Is Not Supposed To Look

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:32:00 +0000

This is on an Intel X38BT Extreme series motherboard:

There is something definitely growing on top of the one capacitor down near the video card and just to the right of the memory stick on the right. It is brown and crusty and reminds me of a barnacle.

The system and board happen to be running quite stable as it does run 24x7 with the occasional reboot for an update.

The situation was discovered when showing a client the internal workings of this particular system which just happens to be sitting on my desk.

An RMA request has been placed with Intel for a replacement which we should see tomorrow.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Preparing for the Distinct Possibility of a Server Disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:29:00 +0000

Besides being an awesome method for migrating SBS to SBS on the same or different hardware, Jeff Middleton’s Swing method brings about a whole new way of viewing disasters and disaster recovery situations.

Because of our previous experiences using the Swing method in past recoveries, we are in the process of preparing our OS backup-less server for the possibility of an all-out failure.

As mentioned in our earlier post this morning on the missing backup and the previous post to that we had a hardware hiccup on one of our client’s SBS servers. The hiccup is enough to cause ShadowProtect to not be able to take an image of the OS partition.

So far, despite the RAID controller throwing the fatal error, no NTFS 55 errors have shown up in SBS’s Event Logs. Hopefully this means that the bad section on the drive is in an empty area. We will be flipping out the array members this afternoon and rechecking the consistency to see if the error has disappeared.

Array member number one’s status:

Array member number two’s status:

Note the distinct lack of error counts for both drive’s media as well as a zero for the Predictive Fail Count on both drives. This is indeed a real puzzle.

So, here are a few of the things we are doing to prepare for the possibility of the main SBS crashing:

We have moved the live Exchange private and public stores to the data partition that is being backed up.
We have installed Win2k3 using the SBS media into Hyper-V on the second server and using the Swing method have introduced it as a DC on the network.
We have the previous backup drive with ShadowProtect Images that can be used to restore SBS into Hyper-V thus providing us with a frame of reference for the setup.

It is a little too far out of date to use as a recovery source though . . . maybe.

The second bullet will thus eliminate a step if we need to do a fresh build of the SBS box and re-introduce it back into the network using the Swing method.

We will be that much further ahead for recovery if this happens between the temporary DC and having the existing server recovered on our own lab Hyper-V box for reference.

In this particular case, our client’s second server also has a mirror of their own client data on it. We will be able to mount the ShadowProtect image from the good SBS backup and copy the changed files over using BeyondCompare.

While we are not in an ideal state with this particular server situation, we are in a position to expedite a recovery in short order thus leaving our client with very little down time.

ExchangeDefender will be very helpful in this situation too. If things do go sideways and the stores take a hit, we will have access to our client’s LiveArchive so that they can keep active with their e-mail.

More to come . . . hopefully a happy resolution with the new replacement drives cleaning things up!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

We Know We Are In Trouble When? An Image Based Backup Flaw

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Have a look at this and ask yourself, “What is missing here?”

The bottom two items in the above screenshot were just added the previous evening when this post was written.

The next screenshot of the ShadowProtect console tells us that we have a real problem:

Okay, so, now what is going on with our backups?

We replaced the troublesome Thermaltake USB hard drive enclosure with a new NexStar3 by Vantec since a hard drive size increase was needed anyway.

The BIOS in this particular server was quite out of date so we did the necessary updates to eliminate the warm boot hang when the NexStar3 was plugged into the server and turned on.

The BMC refused to take a proper update. We needed to force recover the BMC firmware though the BMC firmware still choked when we attempted an update to the backplane.

Once we powered up the server after the last BMC recovery attempt one of the drives in the RAID 1 array decided it was no longer a member. We verified in the RAID controller’s BIOS (SRCSASRB) that the hot spare had jumped into the array and began to be rebuilt which it had.

With that confirmed, we booted into the OS. Now, we had also updated the ShadowProtect version to 3.5 before running the BIOS/firmware updates too.

We logged into the RAID Web Console to have a look at what was up there because a pop-up came up indicating a fatal error:

So, where does that leave us?

In a pretty bad position. We shut down the Information Store and copied out the databases and took a System State. The second server on this network is not a DC since that is just too much of a hassle to work with in recovery situations.

The second server does have the Hyper-V role installed and is serving virtual desktops for RWW access.

We have the SBS 2003 R2 ISO as well as the Windows Server 2003 SP1 ISO being downloaded from Microsoft’s site at this moment. Tomorrow morning we will do a test install of one of them and recover the System State backup to make sure that things will recover enough to Swing back to the original server if things go completely sideways.

Our StorageCraft forum post on the ShadowProtect error:

All Partitions But OS Backup Successfully?

So, we have inadvertently discovered another ShadowProtect/image based backup flaw. If the underlying hardware hiccups as is the case here, the backup will not run successfully until that hardware hiccup is fixed or things really go south on us.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Intel BIOS and Firmware Updates in EFI Shell

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:14:00 +0000

When it comes to updating some of the Intel server configurations that we have put together, we use the EFI Shell to update any server related BIOS and firmware.

The update being run on an Intel Server System SR1560SF this evening choked. It turned out to be some bad files on the USB Flash drive.

The benefit to using the EFI Shell was the ability to pull the USB flash drive, update the files on it, and plug it back in without losing connection to the drive.

Once we forced the BMC update to run we had things up to where we wanted them to be and were able to move on.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Intel ICC & TST Edmonton

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:14:00 +0000

Are you at the Intel Channel Conference Edmonton at the Delta (Gateway Blvd) this morning?

I am and am wearing the black Microsoft Geek shirt.

Lots of good info. If you are an Intel Partner then check into whether ICC will be in or near your city and check it out.

Product knowledge is a good thing! :)

Philip

Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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Windows Home Server IE8 Update Hangs?

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:25:00 +0000

In our case, we are just setting up the HP MediaSmart Server and thus running the available updates.

This update run seemingly stalled:

Notice that it is stalled at IE8.

Now, the above screenshot is actually a clipping since the Update Windows Home Server screen covers the entire WHS Console window (it is maximized).

Having seen so many IE8 updates, it was readily apparent as to why things were at a standstill.

But, how do get to the IE8 setup dialogue box?

An old Windows 3.x method: Click on the top left corner of the update window on the Windows icon:

Click Move and hit any arrow key on the keyboard and the updates window should actually window itself to reveal the IE8 dialogue sitting in the background waiting:

While we have come a long way in the Windows world, there are still some threads of Windows Past included in each and every version. :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

HP MediaSmart Server = Neat

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:39:00 +0000

We are setting up a home network for one of our clients.

We are just in the process of setting up the Windows Home Server box by HP.

What a neat little box! It is almost bullet-proof in its set up routines and uses a very easy console for management.

At the SMB Nation Fall conference fellow MVP Kevin Royalty crashed a laptop that was being backed up by a WHS box. He had it restored to a new hard disk in under 2 hours.

That was a pretty killer demo and sold me on installing WHS HP boxes at client sites to backup key workstations.

And ... The HPs do Mac backup and selective restores! The HP Media Vault series coming down the pipe will actually do a full backup and restore of OS X Macs.

They are definitely something to look into.

Philip

Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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Toshiba Tecra S10 – Unknown USB-To-Serial Device USB\Vid+067B&PID_2303

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:31:00 +0000

After downgrading a client’s new Tecra S10 to Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 we ended up with a mysterious device in the Device Manager.

USB\VID_067B&PID_2303\7&2DDF17D&0&2

As it turns out, the device is a Prolific PL-2303 USB to Serial Bridge.

We needed to download the driver from here:

Prolific PL2303 Driver v10518

Note that the driver we downloaded was released in July of 2009 and is v1.0.5.18.

Once we extracted the zip file we ran the update driver routine from within the device’s properties.

Once properly installed we saw the following in the Device Manager:

Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port (COM4)

One other oddity with this downgrade was the default Realtek audio drivers being knocked out when we set the laptop into its port replicator. We needed to download the latest driver from Toshiba’s Web site for this particular model.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Windows 7 XP Mode – Those VHDs Are Portable!

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:01:00 +0000

We just rebuilt a client’s Lenovo T500 that we had installed Windows 7 RTM and XP Mode RC onto.

Besides the need to start fresh with an RTM version of XP Mode, our client also had us install a 160GB Intel second generation Solid-State Drive.

So, we decided to start with a fresh install of the Windows 7 Enterprise x64 OS and XP Mode.

The main thing to keep in mind when it comes to working with RTM versions of XP Mode and users changing out their hardware is the ability to take that XP Mode VM with them to the new system.

Another reason to keep this in mind is that the previous drive in this case was encrypted with BitLocker. We may have been able to gain access to it if we had a similar T500 series around the shop and the original BitLocker backup key . . . maybe.

Thus, a new consideration when it comes to migrating a user’s profile to a new workstation (workstation setup checklist post) is to get those VHDs.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Windows 7 - Need XP Mode IE7 Available In Win7 Host. How?

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:01:00 +0000

One of the advantages of XP Mode on Windows 7 is the ability to limit the browser version in the XP Mode VM to IE7. Out of the box, the VM actually has IE6 installed, so for some developers that still see a good chunk of IE6 browsers to their site, can make sure to deny any version upgrades to Internet Explorer to keep IE6 available to them.

Okay, so we have our XP Mode VM set up and configured to access the Internet. We have IE7 installed and ready to go. But, there is no Blue E in the list of available XP Mode Applications. In fact, there are no XP Mode applications listed at all!

So, we want that Blue E to appear to our Windows 7 host.

Now, one of the catches to needing that shortcut to appear is the need to manipulate the Start Menu folders. Our user that needs access to IE7 does not need any further access to the XP Mode VM, so we are not allowing them to reside in the Local Administrators group.

The only group they will be in will be the Remote Desktop Users group as they will not be allowed into the VM otherwise. Don't forget, the application virtualization is actually a Terminal Services session! So, if the user needing access to applications in the XP Mode VM is not in at least the Remote Desktop Users group they will not have any access to the VM and its virtualized applications at all.

Now, to get the Blue E to appear as an available XP Mode Application, we need to drag the IE shortcut into the following location:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\

Once the shortcut is under the Programs folders it will appear in the Windows XP Mode Applications folder:

Right click and hold on the IE shortcut and drag it up to the desktop and the user is good to go.

Since we do not want the XP Mode VM to catch the update to IE8 via WSUS we are running the following script on the XP Mode VM to make sure we gain access to all of the available updates:

wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow

We will also download the IE8 Blocker utility and run it on the XP Mode VM to make sure that IE8 does not automatically get installed via WSUS.

Yes, in this case the XP Mode VM is domain joined. It, and the other XP Mode VM that will be used for this purpose as well are in a unique OU under SBSComputers and will have a very specific Group Policy Object settings structure in place to keep them as buttoned up as we can.

The reason for this setup in this particular client's case is due to an online Web facing database they use where the developer has insisted that no IE8 browsers access the application until IE8 has been fully tested. Unfortunately, that will not be until next year due to the lack of funds on their part (non-profit).

The Windows 7 host user will be the user account to be found in the Remote Desktop Users group. They will not have local admin rights on the XP Mode VM with the only task being accomplished being accessing the online Web application via IE7.

Philip Elder

MPECS Inc.

Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Intel Memory Configuration Tool – Relieve That Pain!

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:44:00 +0000

One of the most significant brain busters with Intel’s new Core i7 architecture as well as the new Intel Xeon Processor 3400 Series and 5500 Series architectures is trying to get a straight answer on how to come out with a certain amount of RAM in the system.

This is the Intel Server Board S3420GP Xeon 3400 series memory page out of the product’s technical product specifications manual:

There are more pages both before and after this one that get into how to configure memory for this particular server board without really making things entirely clear.

There is the Intel Server Configurator Tool that will only allow certain RAM part combinations during the configuration process, but it does not tell us why it allows or does not allow us to choose a certain amount of RAM like 24GB for one box.

In comes Intel’s new Memory Configurator Tool:

We are looking to have a Xeon 3400 series server configured with 24GB. This tool will actually show us the how/what/where/why of getting there.

Intel Memory Configuration Tool Download

The tool at least takes some of the guess work out of configuring servers.

The above 24GB configuration request yielded the following result:

It says we can do 6x 4GB Registered DIMMs at 800MHz up top with the bottom right quadrant indicating the DIMMs can be Single, Dual, or Quad Rank when it comes to the memory chips on the DIMMs themselves.

Now, is the tool right?

Well, we will find out in short order since we have an SR1630HGP 1U server system based on the S3420GPLC series server board with six 4GB Kingston quad ranked registered ECC RAM sitting in the shop waiting to be built.

When we run through the Intel Server Configurator Tool and come to the memory configuration portion, we get the following:

The Configurator indicates up to 4x 4GB Registered Quad Rank DIMMs which does not meet our 24GB need. So, we shall see soon enough which one is right.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Intel Virtualization Tech (Intel VT-c) Capable Server NICs

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:19:00 +0000

With solutions built upon virtualization becoming all the more common, it is important to understand how the underlying hardware may or may not work with the chosen hypervisor platform.

Whether putting together a server solution based on Tier 1 or Intel’s server products, it is up to us to be “in the know” when it comes to how the hardware will work or not work for virtualization.

For instance, Intel’s add-in server class NICs have older versions that do not support advanced virtualization capabilities such as Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (Intel VT-c).

The new VT-c enabled NICs enable some task offloading from the CPUs as well as direct hypervisor access to the NIC hardware.

The following screenshot of Intel’s NIC site show clearly which NICs are VT-c enabled and which ones are not:

From Intel’s VT-c site linked above:

To optimize these opportunities, Intel® VT-c provides I/O technologies that optimize virtualized performance:

Enhanced data acceleration across the Intel® multi-core processors platforms

Improved data processing performance across multiple queues on the network controller

Direct VM connectivity and data protection between the VMs

Server hardware is evolving at an extremely fast rate. We are fortunate that Intel has structured their product releases in a Tick-Tock Model thus giving us adoption room around each Tick-Tock cycle.

Otherwise we would be completely inundated and that would be a real problem.

For us, being at the Associate Level in the Intel Reseller Partner Program is also very helpful in providing us with the directions Intel is taking with their products. There are a lot more benefits to becoming a part of the program for us small I.T. shops too.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Practice CS (Creative Solutions) To Discontinue Windows 2000 and SQL 2000 Support With Upcoming 2009.2.0 Release

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:23:00 +0000

In a User Bulletin, Thomson Reuters indicates that Practice CS will no longer support the Windows 2000 OS and SQL 2000 Server (All Editions).

From User Bulletin 4607:

NEW SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

With the next release of Practice CS version 2009.2.0, we will be discontinuing support for Microsoft^® Windows^® 2000 (all editions) and Microsoft SQL Server^™ 2000 (all editions). Practice CS will no longer function on these operating systems. Please see the System Requirements under the Support section of our website at CS.ThomsonReuters.com for additional information on supported operating systems.

While most firms may be fairly current with the desktop operating systems and their backend server setups, there are some that are still running on Windows 2000 era Microsoft products.

Apparently the next update cycle for Practice CS will be in this coming November.

The current version is 2009.1.3:

Also, among the fixes coming down the pipe in that update will be one for client contacts integrated into Exchange Public Folders that are not seemingly synchronizing properly. This was the reason we were calling support in the first place.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate OEM-OEI and Retail Part Numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:03:00 +0000

We do have occasion to order the OEM product, but it is not too often anymore.

Windows 7 Professional:

1 Pack Win7 Pro x86 OEM: FQC-00730
1 Pack Win7 Pro x64 OEM: FQC-00765
3 Pack Win7 Pro x86 OEM: FQC-01166
3 Pack Win7 Pro x64 OEM: FQC-01197

Windows 7 Ultimate:

1 Pack Win7 Ult x86 OEM: GLC-00701
1 Pack Win7 Ult x64 OEM: GLC-00736
3 Pack Win7 Ult x86 OEM: GLC-00863
3 Pack Win7 Ult x64 OEM: GLC-00894

Note that only Fully Packaged Product, that is Retail, gives us both the x86 and x64 versions of the OS.

Windows 7 FPP (Retail)

Windows 7 Professional FPP: FQC-00133
Windows 7 Ultimate FPP: GLC-00181

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Windows 7 - Windows XP Mode Direct Download Link

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:49:00 +0000

For some strange reason we cannot seem to get the download started for the RTM version of Windows 7’s Windows XP Mode.

Here are the direct download links:

The download page is here:

Windows Virtual PC

While Windows XP Mode will certainly deal with the issue of needing to run legacy applications on or under Windows 7, it is far from the best answer.

We have had a need to implement XP Mode for our accounting firm clients due to the need to run a lot of applications that are just not coded for the Windows Vista/7 platform.

As a result, we have some first-hand experience. We will leave those experiences for another post. Suffice it to say that XP Mode will work, but it may not be a very satisfactory solution in the long run.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Steve Ballmer’s Windows 7 Launch Event Keynote

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:21:00 +0000

Didn’t catch this morning’s Windows 7 Launch keynote by Steve Ballmer?

Windows 7 Launch Event On-Demand Keynote

Mr. Ballmer gets introduced by Kylie who is the little girl in one of the I’m A PC ads.

It is a really good all around presentation on Windows 7 along with demonstrations of the various Windows 7 features with various PC and PC Component products.

The keynote runs at 54 minutes, so keep that in mind when it comes to checking it out.

YouTube: Kylie’s I’m A PC Ad

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Yes, Cisco Now Has SMB Focused Products!

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:50:00 +0000

How many of us have had to compete with other providers quoting with Cisco products in the SMB space?

Probably not a lot.

That will change as Cisco had their engineers team up with Linksys engineers to collaborate on an entirely new GUI driving line of products priced to sell into the SMB market.

Become a Cisco Partner

In a conversation with a prospective client where we were talking about a Small Business Server 2008 solution, they had some information on a few different firewall products.

When we mentioned that Cisco had some new SMB focused and priced products they really perked up.

Now, what business owner or manager has not heard of Cisco and their products?

Once through the initial Cisco Partner registration process, click into the Profile Manager then the Addition Access link:

Click on the Cisco Channel Partner or Authorized Reseller link to begin the process of registering the company in the Cisco Partner program itself.

Note that it will helpful to have the company DUNS number ahead of time:

The process itself is a bit cumbersome, but once through it, we will have our Cisco Partner ID that will unlock access to Cisco products at the distribution level (Canadian Distribution Shown):

The Distributor Locator will give results for specific geographic locations.

Our interest in Cisco started when a Cisco representative at the SMB Nation Fall Conference sat at our table to lunch with us. Kim M. Dunlay did an awesome job of talking to us about Cisco’s new SMB line of products.

Every one of us at that table, and there were 8-10, pretty much bypassed the Cisco booth because of our assumptions about Cisco’s products and price points being out of reach for the typical SMB.

After our discussions, and Kim referring one of the Cisco engineers to chat with me about some specifics for the new SMB product lines, it became pretty clear that we needed to examine their new SMB products very closely.

The principle reason why?

The Cisco name sells itself. It will take very little convincing on our part to provide a Cisco SMB focused firewall appliance that has the necessary features our clients need at a competitive cost.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Apple MacBook Pro - Simplicity And Elegance In Packaging

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:41:00 +0000

When I first received the MacBook Pro from Vlad, the first thing that impressed me about the package was the Apple branded high quality bag with a rather large slip cord that the MacBook's box came in.

So, the initial impression of the entire packaging was one of elegance.

Once the box was out of the bag, it was not difficult to see that a lot of thought went into the presentation of the MacBook's external packaging.

As much as we may not want to admit it, first impressions can make or break a deal, can really make or break our experiences with a product, or even make or break our initial contact with a prospect.

And, I must admit that Apple has really hit this one out of the park!

Upon opening up the box, the MacBook was laying in a cove of sorts with a black tab wrapped over it that had Designed by Apple in California in white lettering. The box itself being white in colour left no hint of brown cardboard anywhere.

Wow!

Pull up on the tab and the MacBook Pro gets lifted up enough to grab and pull out of the box. The unit itself along with the A/C adapter had a clear plastic wrap around them as protection. The wrap ends had resealable non-stick strips holding them down. So no there was no sticky mess to deal with.

Now, the kicker: The plastic wrap had a distinctive pattern and way about how it was wrapped around the MacBook Pro and the adapter. The pattern reminded me of the days when folks used to take care to wrap a package in the heavy brown paper with the folds just so and the corners buttoned down in a very symmetrical way. Think hospital corners in the sheets here.

Once the MacBook Pro was out of the box and I was able to have a closer look at the unit I was very impressed with its simplicity and elegance. The design of the MacBook is very clean and crisp with every line and curve having a purpose.

There is a very good reason why Mac users identify with their Mac and have a fairly strong attachment to it. It all starts with the unpacking experience. And it truly is an experience.

But then reality came home to roost:

As great as the whole unpacking experience and first impression was, the reality is that our systems, whether Mac or PC, are very complicated machines that sometimes don't behave as we would expect them too.

Not to worry though, I am still very impressed with the MacBook Pro. Apple has done an amazing job putting together a product that folks can get very excited about.

And, they are learning that users need Exchange integration to actually get some work done! ;)

Posted with MarsEdit that does support uploading to Blogger's Picasa Web Albums natively. Now hopefully the use of DIV tags instead of P tags makes the paragraphs look cleaner than the last post. MarsEdit gets the nod as editor of choice for us on the MacBook Pro!

Philip Elder

MPECS Inc.

Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

160GB Intel SSD Gen 2 Performance = WOW!

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:04:00 +0000

There have been a few blog posts here on the new second generation Intel Solid-State drives (post category search) lately.

A while back, we put together a box for a client that included an EVGA nVidia based motherboard (EVGA category search). We have had quite the odyssey with this particular system.

The Raptors have consistently broken the RAID 10 array we created via the onboard RAID setup. There has been no rhyme or reason to the array breaking. We even replaced the entire drive set with brand new drives hoping that it would be fixed. No joy there.

Each time the box visited the shop we made sure to update the BIOS on the motherboard and we were still hit with broken arrays.

So, we removed three of the four Raptors leaving the one behind for storage.

We installed a single Intel X25-M 160GB second generation SSD.

We then installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 retail in 12 minutes using our OCZ ATV Turbo as the source.

Both the SSD and Windows 7 Ultimate retail were provided to our client at no cost along with the labour to install all of their needed applications. We needed to make sure that we made things right.

The scary thing is that the single Intel SSD boots the entire Windows 7 Ultimate OS from start to finish in about 15 seconds! 15 Seconds!!!

Original blog post on the system configuration.

We define a completed boot as having the ability to click on the Start Button and open any program in the recent list or pinned there.

Even a set of four VelociRaptors configured in a RAID 10 array can’t touch that and they are fast too!

Since installing an Intel 80GB SSD in the Netbook, and soon the Tecra will be getting a 160GB version, bumping out the spindle for an SSD has been an easy sell to our clients.

They can see the visible excitement in me when I am demonstrating a full OS boot in 20 seconds on a Netbook with Windows 7 Pro and an SSD for a drive. Then the application performance for opening them as well as flipping around between open windows and more is pretty impressive on a Netbook.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Excel 2008 Mac Excel 2007 PC Version Weirdness

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:03:00 +0000

Probably the one biggest hiccup that happens when working on the same Excel 2007 native (XLSX) spreadsheet at one point on the MacBook Pro and then on the PC is a mysterious margin change.

We have a number of fairly complicated quotation sheets that we have built in Excel on the PC.

When we set up the quote on the PC, then go in and tweak it later on via the MacBook Pro, the MacBook refuses to PDF or print the spreadsheet in the same manner as the PC.

For some really strange reason, the Mac will shift the right margin to the left by two columns (1 Pt each) and thus refuses to print the page out as we would expect.

Here is a screen clip of one of our quote sheets in Print Preview mode on a PC:

Note the fact that there is a border on the right hand side one column to the right of the Amount column. In the above screen clip, the Mac would actually clip off the column to the left of the bold boundary as well as the Amount column.

Go back to the PC though, and we will see the above properly formatted printout in the same worksheet after working on it with the MacBook Pro.

The other bit of weirdness that happens is the intermittent disabling of the auto-calculate feature in the Excel spreadsheet.

While working on this evening’s quote the sheet was mysteriously not updating any changes made. It took a few seconds and a settings check to figure out that the auto-calculate was turned off. This was after the quote was worked on while on the MacBook Pro.

When it comes to a multi-platform setup where both Macs and PCs are used to collaborate on projects, it is a really good idea to be familiar with these types of hiccups between platforms.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Hug the ones you love!

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:15:00 +0000

Monique was in a bad accident this afternoon.

Fortunately, the Caravan took the brunt of it and she is okay.

It could have turned out a lot differently.

It sure gave me the need to pause and realize the value I place on her and the kid's presence in my life!

Hug the ones you love because we just never know. :)

Philip

Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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Adobe Acrobat 9.x Pro Trial – PDF Printing Fail

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Elder SBS MVP) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:13:00 +0000

While we are waiting for our Acrobat Standard licensing order to go through for some new workstations here, we installed the trial version of Acrobat 9.x Professional via a download from Adobe’s site.

While there are other products out there to use for generating and working with PDF documents, some are even free, we prefer to run with Acrobat Standard for basic PDF generation and modification needs.

Yes, Acrobat, and any product that works with active data PDFs, has had their fair share of vulnerabilities lately, but now that they are getting a lot of attention from the bad guys they sure are cleaning up their code! Hopefully this realization transfers the need to keep their code tight to the new codebase for Acrobat version 10.x.

We choose Acrobat Standard because the product just works. We have tried to work with others out there, but they all have their quirks and hiccups to get working on a buttoned down network like ours.

A mandatory credentialed Windows Vista/7 UAC setup via Group Policy on our network is probably the one biggest killer for some of the PDF products we have tried.

The one catch with running Acrobat 9.x Standard or Professional on a 64bit OS is to run the product update after installing to get the PDF Printer to show up.

Anyway, back to the trial version:

We generate a lot of PDF documents from the various software products we use. We are virtually paperless in many aspects of our business. While some software products have a PDF generator built in such as QuickBooks (rarely works), others do not. So we need a dedicated PDF generation solution.

With the trial version we are able to generate one or two PDF documents via the PDF Printer before the above message comes up and prevents us from generating anymore PDF documents.

So, we need to log off and then back on again, as the activation prompt does not want to come back even though something was blocking the PDF generation.

This is a very frustrating situation for us as the trail version is supposed to work just as a normal version would for the full thirty day period. But, it activation nags every time we log on and open Acrobat Pro and does not seemingly make the PDF Printer work as expected once the nag screen has been acknowledged.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer