steve :: Third Tier

Author Archive for steve

Jan
17

History repeats itself. Install this hotfix if you run AV on SBS 2011

by steve

Slow Network Performance on SBS 2011

I can't believe we are having a re-run of two years ago, but if you have deployed SBS 2011, you need to run this hotfix if you are running antivirus software on your Small Business Server. Go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2493361/ to get it. For some reason unknown to me, the Windows Server Team felt that something released in Server 2008 SP2 wasn't important to put back into Server 2008 R2. I'm glad I have low blood pressure normally, because it just raised a few notches when I found this out.

Categories : SBS 2011

Dec
8

PSSBS & HP get together for a Geek-Fest afternoon in Seattle!

by steve

If you are in the Seattle area, check out and attend the PSSBS & HP SBS Geek-Fest this Thursday, 12/9/2010 at Symform in Seattle. 4-6PM. http://bit.ly/gqyWpo

Categories : SBS 2011

Nov
13

TechEd North America is looking for content from you!

by steve

Planning for Tech·Ed North America 2011 has begun! TechEd will take place in Atlanta, GA on May 16-19, 2011, with Pre-Conference sessions occurring on May 15.

Key content is sourced via Community groups and is an important component of the event’s success. So please forward this invitation as soon as possible to your members so that people can submit breakout session proposals before the tight December 9, 2010 deadline.

Steps for submitting a proposal:

Go to: https://northamerica.msteched.com/CFT
Enter RSVP Code: CODE*8925
Complete all the fields and submit the proposal/s.

When returning to the Call for Content site, use the e-mail address and password you entered when creating your Call for Content profile.

Breakout Sessions

Breakout Sessions are the primary vehicle for delivering content to Tech·Ed attendees. These are lecture-style, 75-minute presentations that are held in rooms seating anywhere from 200-1,200 people. Speakers take 60 minutes to instruct, walk through product demos and show PowerPoint slides, with 10-15 minutes reserved for Q&A. The PowerPoint files are collected 2 weeks in advance of the event and published for attendees both before and after the event. Breakout sessions are recorded and are also available after the event at Tech·Ed Online.

Event Information

Tech·Ed is Microsoft's premiere global conference designed to provide developers and IT professionals with the technical education, product information and community resources they need to design, develop, manage, secure, and mobilize state-of-the-art software solutions for a connected enterprise. Content focuses on Microsoft’s current and soon-to-released products, technologies and services.

Last year, roughly 70% of Tech·Ed attendees were IT professionals with the majority being Infrastructure Managers (48%) and IT Managers (28%). They were interested in the best ways to plan, design, deploy, manage and secure connected enterprise systems. The remaining attendees were Developers -- programmers (41%), architects (28%), designers (20%), and developer managers (12%) -- who wanted to dive deeper into the latest enterprise development solutions using Microsoft's developer tools, frameworks, and platforms.

Review of Proposals, Selection and Notification

· Session selection is based on a review of all proposals to determine which meet the needs of the audience, align with the Track focus, and fulfill the messaging requirements of the product groups.

· Session selection notification will be sent via e-mail by March 2011.

If you have questions about TechEd, contact TEspkr@microsoft.com.

Thank you for your continued support of TechEd. We look forward to seeing you again in 2011! GITCA will be there in the Community Zone and running the BOF sessions in conjunction with our INETA colleagues.

GITCA Global Board

Categories : Uncategorized

Nov
12

1st patch for Worry-Free Business Security 7.0 released today by Trend Micro

by steve

Trend Micro issued the 1st critical patch today (November 12, 2010) for WFBS 7. The download path is:
http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/patches/WFBS_70_WIN_EN_CriticalPatch_B1347.exe
You can also browse to it via the Trend Micro Download Center at http://downloadcenter.trendmicro.com/

Issue: The performance of some Worry-Free Business Security 7.0 servers may slow down after a few weeks.
Solution: Critical patch 1347 updates the "OfcService.exe" file of the Security Server releases unused resources to enhance system performance.

According to Trend Micro, a new patch release notification email will be sent to associated administrator accounts, and a pop-up message will appear in the Worry Free Business Security Management Console next week.

Categories : Uncategorized

Oct
21

October 21, 2010 PSSBS Meeting

by steve

Simplifying High Availability and Virtualization

For those in the Seattle area who are not attending SMB Nation this weekend and Third Tier's Pre-day event in Las Vegas, the Puget Sound Small Business Server User Group October meeting will include a presentation by VM6 Software, a provider of an ‘all in one’ software solution that virtualizes storage, servers and desktops all at the same time, on a single server, without the complexity and costs.

By leveraging Microsoft Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and using any x86-64 servers, VM6 VMex creates a completely virtualized IT infrastructure with the simplest high availability solution in less than three hours without requiring the purchase of a complex SAN. It also comes with its own clustering technology and management console.

VM6 Software is the perfect solution for IT environments that:

• Have less than 50 servers per site

• Have virtualized or have a project to migrate to a virtualized environment

• Require high availability for planned or unplanned downtime

• Have challenges justifying the cost of a SAN

Join us for a presentation that will demonstrate how VM6 VMex can:

· Optimize the capacity utilization of your IT infrastructure

· Simplify and improve IT service availability for small IT environments

· Eliminate the need for shared storage (SAN)

John Cloutier (VM6 Software Technical Evangelist) and Bruce Smith (Microsoft Alliance Manager and Business Development) will be presenting.

VM6 will be providing pizza for the group, and Microsoft will be providing the room and drinks. Will be at our usual location, at Microsoft’s Lincoln Square offices in downtown Bellevue (700 Bellevue Way NE - Lincoln Square, Bellevue, WA 98004).

Park in the Lincoln Square garage and meet at the elevators on the first floor by 6 PM to head up to the meeting (take a ticket when you enter the garage, but parking will be free for the evening).

Meeting will be from 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM.

Categories : Hyper-V

Oct
19

Microsoft RSS Feeds for Top Issues and Recently Published KB articles

by steve

Microsoft has put together a "landing page" for their RSS feeds. Feeds will be covering the top customer issues and resolutions. Great idea and worthy of checking out and monitoring.

Categories : Uncategorized

Oct
12

Missing your Microsoft Document Imaging in Office 2010?

by steve

If you have been using Microsoft's Office Document Imaging and are wondering where it went in Office 2010, you're not alone. Microsoft has dropped it as of Office 2010, but there is a workaround to install it in Office 2010 by using the Office 2007 version of it. KB with the information is at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982760. If you're still wondering what we're talking about after checking out the Wikipedia article, here's a description of MODI from Microsoft's site.

For those who don't want to click there, here are the directions from KB982760 to run the 2007 version of MODI (as of the date of this Blog post):

How to use MODI in 2007 Office together with Office 2010

To use MODI in 2007 together with Office 2010, use one of the following methods:

If you do not have 2007 Office system installed on a computer that has Office 2010 installed, you can install only MODI from the 2007 Office system setup. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Start the 2007 Office setup process.
2. Click Customize.
3. On the Installation Options tab, select Not Available for all items except for the items under Microsoft Office Document Imaging, and then click Install Now.
4. Click Close.
If you perform a standard upgrade to Office 2010 from 2007 Office, MODI will be removed together with 2007 Office. Therefore, to keep MODI you have to keep the 2007 Office installation. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Start the Office 2010 setup process.
2. Click to select the I accept the terms of this agreement check box, and then click Continue.
3. Click Customize.
4. On the Upgrade tab, click the Keep all previous versions option, and then click Install Now.
5. Click Close.

Categories : Uncategorized

Oct
11

Microsoft Online Services Health Dashboard

by steve

Great news from the Microsoft BPOS Team, especially for those of us in North America who have seemed to end up with the bulk of the "growing pains" of Microsoft's Business Productivity Suite. There is now a "health" dashboard (must have a BPOS account to login and view it) available at the following URLs that will give you a current day and past week's status of all BPOS services. If you click on the links, it gives you some status details.

Americas (NOAM)
https://health.noam.microsoftonline.com/

Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA)
https://health.emea.microsoftonline.com/

Asia-Pacific (APAC)
https://health.apac.microsoftonline.com/

This new tool is in addition to the RSS feeds also provided by the BPOS team: https://rss.microsoftonline.com/

Categories : BPOS

Sep
21

Trend Micro WFBS – Excessive Policy Violation Detected Notification

by steve

Users of Trend Micro Worry Free Business Security Standard and Advanced (SP1 and SP2) ran into a bit of a surprise over the last 24 hours or so. If you are getting messages of
"Unauthorized changes blocked" for the TMBSRV.exe process (Unauthorized changes blocked! Client/Server Security Agent has blocked the following programs to protect your computer. To unblock the programs, contact your administrator), then you need to run the hotfix provided this afternoon (9/21/2010) from Trend Micro:

Details are at http://esupport.trendmicro.com/4/Behavior-Monitoring-blocks-the-TMBMSRVexe-process.aspx.
To address the problem, please apply Critical Patch Build 3221. You can download it from the following links.
• Critical Patch Build 3221 for Worry-Free Business Security Standard/Advanced 6.0 SP1 or SP2
• Readme

A workaround that appears to be working according to Kevin Royalty is:

Disabling Behavior Monitoring in the Trend console, then updating the client machines either by update now or let them auto update. Turn Behavior Monitoring back on after they have updated.

http://community.trendmicro.com/t5/Business-Security-Forum/Mass-Policy-Violations-from-TMBMSRV-exe/td-p/14038/page/8

Categories : Uncategorized

Sep
16

What’s all this about Windows Intune?

by steve

Come find out tonight as Paul Bourgeau, the lead for Microsoft's Windows Intune project (www.windowsintune.com) will be speaking with the Puget Sound Small Business Server (PSSBS) group, followed by a general group discussion.

6 PM at Microsoft's Lincoln Square offices in Bellevue, WA. We'll be serving up pizza tonight, so bring $5 to help cover the cost. Soft drinks, juice, and coffee (and the room) will be provided by Microsoft.

Our meetings are the third Thursday of each month and are held at Microsoft’s Lincoln Square offices in downtown Bellevue (700 Bellevue Way NE - Lincoln Square, Bellevue, WA 98004).
Park in the Lincoln Square garage and meet at the elevators on the first floor by 6 PM to head up to the meeting (take a ticket when you enter the garage, but parking will be free for the evening).
Meeting times are 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM.

Check out PSSBS online at our various hangouts:

http://www.pssbs.org

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pssbs/join

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2145158

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=103175053982

Categories : Uncategorized