StorageCraft snares Microsoft expert as technical services manager

"This is a major coup for us," StorageCraft Asia-Pacific vice-president Richard Giddey said. "Wayne brings with him a wealth of diverse knowledge and is a highly respected industry expert who will be instrumental in helping us to accelerate our expansion in the Asia-Pacific market."

Wayne will be presenting at our brain exploding all day training event in Las Vegas. He’s presenting Hyper-V Mythbusters: Don’t Try This…EVER! I have a feeling that along side the his disk and CPU performance studies that there might be a little bit about disaster recovery and back scenarios. You can register at www.thirdtier.net/store. 

Third Tier is really proud of Wayne, we know just how lucky Storagecraft is to land him. He’s brings a lot more to the table than technical expertise.

—
Connect with us now…
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN

Cliff Galiher SBS, DNS and Exchange guru says…

The mobile landscape has changed. What was in the office, is now in the hands of your clients. They expect it to work and they expect you to make it secure. Mobile devices communicate with Exchange in their own unique way. We’ll take a deep look at how devices communicate with Exchange and get technical about the protocols. This will cover activesync AND autodiscover at a protocol level. Then we’ll walk through the process of setting up different devices and visually tie the steps back to the theory. So now the mobile device works and you understand why it works, how are you going to secure it? Cliff will cover controls IT can have on activesync devices such as remote encryption and remote wipe, how to use and how to configure it.

Join Third Tier in Las Vegas for an all day training on the day prior to SMBNation. See other content details elsewhere in our blog. Thanks to our sponsors, Hewlett Packard, Symform and Storagecraft we are able to keep the cost down to only $50. So head on over to the store and reserve your space for this all-day training session! Seats are limited for this event and we expect to sell out. So register early. http://www.thirdtier.net/store Training takes place October 21st.

Exchange Powershell Essentials and Certificate Handling

If you’ve been working a bit with Exchange 2007, you’ve probably used just enough PowerShell to get by. In this session I’d like to take you further by showing you a few key PowerShell procedures that will make Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 administration and troubleshooting easier. We’re not going to go deep into PowerShell programming, what this session will do is give you some valuable but simple tools to increase your value when working with Exchange. Some of what we’ll cover includes:

- Working with single and multi-name certificates (including a cool new downloadable tool!)

- Refreshing Exchange virtual directories quickly to resolve CAS issues

- Easy quota administration

- Displaying mailbox size information in a user-friendly format

- Quick bulk-creation of users and mailboxes from a simple CSV file

Participants will be emailed a document with copy\pasteable scripts from this session to ensure that you can immediately put this content to use.

Check out the rest of our blog for more content details and don’t forget to register.

After some fussing, rebuilding the RAID array, calling hardware support at Equus (who by the way was wonderful) we finally found something of a solution on the Internet. Apparently what we ran into is pretty common, though the solution that worked for us was not exactly as found by an Internet search.

The problem was that the server was attempting to install the OS onto the USB key (which we needed for the answer file). It was doing this even though, the USB key was not an option to select in the where do you want to install the OS screen in the installer.

The puzzling part for us is that we have done many migrations and never run into this problem before. We have used this exact same server hardware configuration. We have booted with a USB key already plugged in. We have used OEM media. This we think was our first OEM media with SP2 slipstream, but that hardly seems like something that would cause what really appears to be an installer issue. Was it the particular USB key we used? So while we’re stumped on the cause, at least we found a solution.

The Internet search solution was to go into the BIOS and move the USB key in the boot order to the last option. We did that, no dice. Same problem, this solution did not work for us but if you are having this problem it may be worth a try as others report that it does work. Our install absolutely insisted on not installing where we selected and attempting to install to a drive that was not even available as a selection in the installer!

We had to remove the USB key from the server during installation and plug it in at the appropriate time to read the answer file. The appropriate time we selected was immediately following the confirmation that the OS is installing. When your server reboots be sure to again remove the key and wait until the installation resumes before plugging it in. This will allow the installation to start and your migration to succeed.

—–

Need more help with this or some other sticky situation? Click to hire us.
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN

Content? Yes, we have content.

Eriq Neale: Configuring and Using Remote Desktop Services Remote Apps – A Love Story

Dave Shackelford: Things you didn’t know were in Exchange 2007

Cliff Galiher: AutoDiscovery, DNS and ActiveSync in depth. Like seriously deep

Wayne Small: Hyper-V R2, yes is does make a difference. Configuring Disk subsystems and effects on performance

Thanks to our sponsors, Hewlett Packard, Symform and Storagecraft we are able to keep the cost down to only $50. So head on over to the store and reserve your space for this all-day training session! http://www.thirdtier.net/store Training takes place October 21st.

Speakers are our own fabulous staff: Dave Shackelford, Cliff Galiher, Eriq Neale and Wayne Small

Our content has been selected by the guys to reflect the growing concern over compliance, business continuity, manageability and issues surrounding these that our customers are contacting us for help with. Case studies and examples will abound and they guys will show you how to configure the products they will be working with which including Exchange, Sharepoint, Terminal Services and Hyper-V. Expect the sessions to be intense with advanced material. Your brain will be exploding by the end of the day.

I’ll be posting more and more specifics about the content as the event gets closer. Let’s have a look at what Eriq is going to cover first:

Configuring and Using Remote Desktop Services Remote Apps – A Love Story

Many people have heard of Remote Desktop Services Remote Apps (formerly Terminal Server Remote Apps) but either haven’t had an opportunity to implement the solution or just are not sure how to. In this session, Eriq Neale will show how to configure RDS Remote Apps on a Remote Desktop Server and then go over several real-world deployment scenarios. We will also go over how to set up RDS Remote Apps to work with Remote Web Workplace on an SBS Server. Eriq will include case studies on when and why this technology is used.

Configuring RDS Remote Apps

Publishing an Application through RDS Remote Apps

Publishing an Application with multiple configuration options through RDS Remote Apps

Publishing an RDS Remote App through Remote Web Workplace

Please make your flights accordingly and plan to join us for a full day of intense training on October 21st.

Shout Out to Hewlett Packard, Symform and Storagecraft. Without awesome vendors that get the small business space and are willing to invest in partner education, this event would not be possible.

—
Connect with us now…
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN

HP has had this product called the DataVault for some time now, but it’s kind of been flying under the radar. Everyone seems to know about Home Server but they don’t realize that HP has taken Microsoft’s Home Server and given it a business twist by boosting the specs and changing the name to make it easier to sell to a small business.

And now we break for a moment of disclosure. While I’ve previously purchased the HP DataVault for clients, recently HP sent me one for testing and that’s what has prompted this blog post.

We bought the DataVault for a small accounting client who had 7 PC’s and a SnapServer whose password they didn’t know when they came to us. Each of these PC’s have multiple versions of Quickbooks and a couple of other accounting packages, but no two PC’s are exactly the same. Each person working there needs certain accounting packages but not others and so that’s how they’ve got the PC’s loaded. Now because they were self IT’ing, each of those packages was also using factory default settings which means that they are saving data to every PC. (RED FLAG!)  Each person was responsible for backing up their stuff. Shared documents were stored on the SnapServer whose admin password they didn’t know.

“How soon before you have 8, 9, or 10 people and computers here?” Never. “Never?” Never.

That’s not unusual. A lot of small businesses are happy and content with the size they are and have no plans to grow. So we could re-organize the whole network, switch over to network controlled applications, centralize data storage, create a domain, yada, yada, yada but this business owner liked things they way they were. They were really only concerned about the SnapServer issue, until we pointed out the rest. They didn’t want a total makeover, they just wanted a solution for the problems at hand. That’s why we chose the DataVault.

The DataVault comes in 1, 2 or 3TB divided on two drives leaving 2 open internal bays, 4 usb ports and a sata port externally. We got it from Amazon for well under $1000.  If you have a massive amount of data there are plenty of ports available with which to add more drive space and because it’s Home Server under the hood, you don’t even have to care what kind of drive you add later.

So the DataVault goes into place, we setup workstation backup (comes with data de-duplication technology so after the first workstation is backed up they don’t take up that much space) and we move the shared folders over. We also setup a couple of people with remote access to their PC’s so they can work those crazy accountant busy season hours from home. A happy ending for everyone! Until…

…disaster struck. (Is this a perfect case study or what?) A system board failed. After troubleshooting we placed a call to HP. HP shipped out a replacement under warranty. Now, if you know something about Home Server, then you know it’s an appliance by design. That is, you don’t install the OS it comes installed and every single one is identical. If you know about the DataVault then you know every single piece of hardware is identical. Holding our breath, we pulled the drives from the dead DataVault and put them into the new DataVault and booted.

Bling! Perfect, nothing had to be reconfigured, no new drivers loaded, no new hardware was detected…it just booted up like nothing happened. A happy ending for all. We do love the DataVault. It fits particular very small clients really well and we have several of them deployed and under management.

But this makes Wayne an even busier guy than usual. He’s a man of many, many hats including: SBSFAQ, Correct Solutions, Microsoft, Kerio, Trend Micro, Third Tier, an author and an MVP. Over here at Third Tier Wayne has taken on EBS and Virtualization projects for clients. Wayne plans to continue doing everything, only maybe a little bit less of each. So Wayne will remain a Third Tier consultant and no doubt our clients will benefit from his insight on Storagecraft and business continuity issues. 

• Don’t know when to use a cross-over cable and when to use straight-thru?
• Fully understand how DNS and DHCP work?
• What’s a CIDR?
• When to segment the network into multiple subnets and when not to

Register now, bring your questions and let’s get the basics down.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/726018419

Get the most out of your AccessEnforcer by investing 60 minutes in online training from the comfort of your own environment.  Join Calyptix Security team members in this live session for a technical review and discussion covering a range of troubleshooting topics.    The program will conclude with a question and answer session (time permitting). Participation in this training session is limited to current customers and authorized Calyptix Partners. The following items will be covered in this session. 

The following items will be covered in this session:

o Overview of networking concepts
o DNS, DHCP, WINS servers and more…
o CIDR Ranges
o Managing Subnets and Multiple LANs
o Implementing Network Segmentation
o Using VLANs with AccessEnforcer
o Questions & Answers

Contact Calyptix Security at 704-971-8986

or info@calyptix.com with any questions.

  Title: "Networking Best Practices"
Date: Tuesday, Aug 31, 2010
Time:12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

• A cloud service. Web portal to manage all of your client’s computers from a single web portal.
• Monitoring and Alerting
• Anti-Virus
• Anti-Malware
• Remote Assistance
• Inventory management
• Updates and patching

OK so, so far it sounds like everyone else’s product. But wait there’s more:

• Upgrade rights to Windows 7 Enterprise
• Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack: Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM), Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS), Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) and Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM)

All of this for $12 per month, per PC. If you don’t want the Desktop Optimization Pack, then it’s $11 a month.

So what do you think? To me it looks like Microsoft is pulling out the stops and creating a very appealing bundle not just a wanna-be. They have really differentiated and are offering something that only Microsoft can offer.

Need more help with this or some other sticky situation? Click to hire us.
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN