Archive for Amy Babinchak
Microsoft Pulls the Plug on EBS
Posted by: | CommentsMicrosoft stunningly pulled the plug on EBS today. It’s a stunning move because the highly anticipated version 2 was near release. Code was complete, TAP (technology access preview) customers were running it in production, TAP customers were recently flown in from around the world for training, and MVP’s received in depth information and training on the new version. The consensus of everyone who had used the new version was that it was a homerun and would live up to the promise made to the mid-market. An excitement was in the air.
Batter up! EBS V2 at bat, bases loaded with companies 25-500 users. Microsoft bean counter pitching. SBS 2010 standing way back in right field picking daisies. EBS is using 2 bats today, one traditional and one interesting new lean bat. Awaiting the pitch. Time out! Here comes Marketing from the sidelines to the pitching mound. It seems the pitcher is refusing to pitch to EBS. EBS is out of the game.
We saw something similar happen with Response Point. Just as V2, chock full of requested features and lesson learned from V1 and a partner community revving up, the Response Point plug got pulled. It makes one wonder if Microsoft has the stomach for marketing building; if they can create a new product and stand behind it long enough for the marketing to develop and the partner community to join in.
It’s a sad day for all involved. My condolences to the development team. You put in so much hard work.
We’re Speaking at SMB Nation East
Posted by: | CommentsThe content is lining up for SMB Nation East and we’re proud to be part of it. Third Tier staff members Amy Babinchak and Eriq Neale will be presenting in separate sessions. Amy is partnered with SBS-MVP Kevin Royalty, together they will talk about how they have implemented a range of new backup solutions for their clients. There’s no one size fits all anymore, so we’ll be trotting out lots of different solutions to show when, where and why we implemented them. Eriq will be a busy guy during his presentation. The world of IT is changing and boy to we have choices. Choices are a good thing, or are they?
GS103: Backup here, backup there, backup everywhere
Speaker: Amy Babinchak, Kevin Royalty 
Agenda
By now everyone knows that backup has changed. We’ve gone from tape backing up data only to the wonderful world of hardware independent image backup and restore. Suddenly the options are endless. We can backup workstations incrementally, a whole server every 15 minutes, we can store them locally, on removable media, send it off-site or all three! But will your client pay for all of this wonderful new backup technology? How do you present it to them? Amy and Kevin will discuss the various technologies and show you what they are doing for their clients and how to sell it.
GS101: Alternative Solutions in the SMB Space
Speaker: Eriq Neale Agenda
“What if SBS isn’t the best solution for my client?” If you’ve been asking yourself this question recently, you may find some answers in this session. Eriq Neale demonstrates two on-premise solutions and other cloud-based services that might be a more viable option for some of your customers, with real-world implementation examples. Is the notion of “one size fits all” still viable in the SMB space? Come learn and decide for yourself!
If you haven’t registered for the conference yet, then now we would be a good time to do so. Your conference fee includes accommodations at the Hyatt! Can’t beat the value. Use the link below to register.
http://www.smbnation.com/Events/SMBNationSpring2010/PricingandRegistration/tabid/288/Default.aspx
Third Tier consultants named Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals
Posted by: | CommentsThird Tier is proud to announce that Amy Babinchak, Eriq Neale and Steve Banks have been honored by Microsoft with the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award for 2010.
Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world expertise in offline and online technical communities. Microsoft MVPs are a highly select group of experts that represents the technical community’s best and brightest, and they share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. For more information on the MVP program, visit http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/.
Amy was awarded for the Essential Business Server category. Her MVP profile can be found at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=EBF7B66B-D1F4-4CE5-A025-A1C147F086DF
Eriq was awarded for the Small Business Server category. His MVP profile can be found at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=92191CEA-3309-4D91-B674-491DB73AA1B6
Steve was awarded for the Small Business Server category. His MVP profile can be found at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=2AF5F8C3-9294-4090-A3DF-90D736D842EF
———-
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals. 
Get Support 
Blog 
Twitter 
Facebook 
LinkedIN
Exchange 2007 Back Pressure Stops Incoming Mail Delivery
Posted by: | CommentsThere are several reasons why due to back pressure that your incoming email might stop. I ran into one of them today on my very own SBS 2008 server. How embarrassing…so I thought I would blog about it.
In the morning when I got up and checked my email I was shocked to see only 3 new emails instead of the usually 30+. I wiped the blur from my eyes and noticed that all three email were from my own internal network. I first checked the usual suspects. Is my Internet up? Did my IP address change? Is my MX record still there? Is my firewall working correctly? Yes, yes, yes and yes. Time to look at the event logs and the Exchange server. Exchange server says my stores are mounted and Outlook says so too.
The event log had a story to tell. Fortunately for me the event log on this server is very clean otherwise I could have easily overlooked the error message that led me to the solution because it only occurs one time. It’s Event ID 15006 Source MSExchangeTransport.
The Microsoft Exchange Transport service is rejecting message submissions because the available disk space has dropped below the configured threshold.
Resource utilization of the following resources exceed the normal level:
Queue database logging disk space ("C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\data\Queue\") = 97% [Medium] [Normal=95% Medium=97% High=99%]
Physical memory load = 92% [limit is 94% before message dehydration occurs.]Back pressure caused the following components to be disabled:
Inbound mail submission from the Internet
Mail submission from the Pickup directory
Mail submission from the Replay directoryThe following resources are in the normal state:
Queue database and disk space ("C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\data\Queue\mail.que") = 96% [Normal] [Normal=95% Medium=97% High=99%]
Version buckets = 0 [Normal] [Normal=80 Medium=120 High=200]
Private bytes = 3% [Normal] [Normal=71% Medium=73% High=75%]
As you can see the message is pretty detailed and tell you exactly what the problem is, except be sure to read the whole thing. At the top is says that transport service has stopped and is rejecting message submissions because the available disk space has dropped below the configure threshold. While it’s true the disk space was an issue it wasn’t enough to create the stop. Physical memory load was the problem. And the solution was, as Eriq pointed out in a earlier blog post and screencast, to reduce the amount of memory that Sharepoint and Monitoring databases are allowed to use on the server.
Read Eriq’s blog post here: http://www.thirdtier.net/2009/08/setting-the-maximum-memory-usage-on-the-sharepoint-database/
And what his screencast demonstrating the procedure here: http://www.thirdtier.net/screencasts/limit-sharepoint-database-memory-usage/
Note that after applying the fix, I had to restart the Exchange Transport service to get my incoming to start flowing again.
—
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals. Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN
Complications from an SBS 2008 Migration
Posted by: | CommentsWe ran across an interesting complication during an SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration. We run extensive checks on our SBS 2003 servers before performing migrations and this has always served us well. You may have even heard me talk on the various tasks we undertake and tests that we run. In this case we had a local client with an SBS 2003 server that we did not install. Further the previous hardware had failed causing the server to shutdown abruptly over and over again and we had imaged this SBS 2003 server onto new hardware about a year prior. Everything seemed fine with it though and the previous year had gone smoothly with this server.
We fully patched it. We defragmented the Exchange database. We ran the BPA. We updated the NIC drivers. We fixed up a journal wrap problem. We ran dcdiag to test DNS-AD integration. We ran gpupdate. We ran repadmin to test AD sync. We ran the BPA again and it told us that the server held none of the FSMO roles. !***!&*($&#*(&$*!!!!! Yikes. We verified all of them in the GUI. We verified all them using command prompt tools and it came back as holding all of the FSMO roles. Still the BPA persisted in claiming that it did not, so we postponed the migration while we gathered our thoughts. After consulting with everyone we could think of that was an expert in AD, it was concluded that if the AD itself knew that the server held the roles and all of the usual tests came back good that the BPA must be on drugs. The migration was scheduled.
We took a backup. We took an image. We mounted the image onto our virtual server. We started and finished the migration. We migrated the mailboxes, moved the data and generally progressed through the to do list smoothly. Then we noticed the event log in the SBS 2003 server. It said that a recent DC Promo was unable to complete and AD replication was halted until it finished. Sure enough when we tried to add a user as a test, the user did not sync between the servers. AD was not replicating. Testing AD pointed to a problem with the objects in the Computer OU and DNS-AD integration tests said that it was unable to find the PDC. It claimed records were missing that were not missing. Rather than turn back to an SBS 2003 server that no one was able to determine why the BPA said didn’t hold the FSMO roles, we decided our options were to press forward to try to fix the AD or create a new domain. Since everything was working, from the user perspective, we decided we had a bit of time to work on fixing AD before our 21 day migration period was up. Work began.
Moving forward with the migration we got to the point were we decided to uninstall Exchange 2003 and attempt a demotion of the SBS 2003 server. The uninstall of Exchange 2003 went along fine. However when we tried to demote the SBS 2003 server it informed us it thought it was the last replication of DNS in active directory. Hard stop.
To troubleshoot Active Directory we checked schema version on both the server and found it was set to 44. Good but we needed them to replicate with each other. So, we deleted the connection objects on both of the servers. Went into DSSITE on both servers and told it to check replication topology. Waited for some time and we got the connection object back. We forced replication and it was successful! Problem solved.
We thought, problem solved. Shortly thereafter we got a call from the client, Outlook was reporting Disconnected. A look at Exchange 2007 showed that all of the mailboxes were gone! But the good news was that the mailbox store was still the right size so we knew that they were in there. We just needed to connect to them. Exchange Command shell: get-mailboxdatabase |clean-mailboxdatabase to have all disconnect mailboxes show up in the Console then in the console, go to disconnectted mailbox, right click each mailbox and choose connect. Do this for each users mailbox and another problem solved.
Are we done yet? No, yet another issue reared it’s ugly head. Users with large mailboxes were getting a message that their mailbox was too big and they were blocked from sending or receiving email. <sigh> Look at the Mailbox size limitation in the SBS Console and it still held our settings to allows for larger mailboxes for the Standard User Role. Reapply the role. No change. Back into the Exchange Management Console we go. Here we set the mailbox size for the users directly.
No further problems have presented themselves so we believe that we have successfully migrated an SBS 2003 with AD problems over to SBS 2008. Overall it was a good learning experience for the technician involved and now we know that the BPA is never on drugs. Apparently it knows things about AD that AD doesn’t even know about itself.
—
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals. Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN
Unable to use Out Of Office or AutoDiscover
Posted by: | CommentsWe had an interesting issue the other day. After an upgrade to Exchange 2007 and Office 2007 users reported that they were unable to create an Out Of Office message. When attempting to do so, Outlook would claim that the Exchange server was unavailable. It was a real mystery since the Exchange server was available; they were sending and receiving email just fine. A further clue presented itself when we found that this issue only effected users on the Terminal Server. Users working from Desktop computers did not experience this problem.
During our investigation of the problem we noticed that on the terminal server Outlook was also unable to resolve the autodiscover record while on the desktops they were. We weren’t sure of the link between these two clues but pushed forward to resolve the autodiscover issue. We verified that all of the autodiscover records were correct.
We resorted to Internet research and found 1 conversation thread where someone noted that autodiscover was unable to resolve when you have a proxy server and the browser is not configured to exempt the internal domain from the proxy. This was indeed the problem. This business did run a proxy server. The browser in the terminal server did not have the exemption for the local domain, while the desktop browsers did because they were being autoconfigured by a local firewall client. Once this entry was made, Out Of Office and Autodiscover worked.
So, the solution to why users are unable to use Out Of Office in Outlook 2007 is that the Internal domain is not listed in Internet Explorer as exempt from proxy.
—
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals. Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN
Q&A from Behind the SBS 2008 Wizards
Posted by: | CommentsQuestion: hey are you using voip with this presentation?
Answer: yes, no dial in number
Question: Could you go ofer your support fees and offerings?
Answer: Our fees are $175 per hour, charged in half hour increments. Projects are negotiated between the consultant and you. We definitely let you know how much time something is going to take.
Question: What is the roadmap for SBS 2008 "R2"?
Answer: No roadmap has been published yet, other than to say that there will be another version coming. That’s all we know at this point.
Question: Is there an issue with setting up SBS2008 in the lab using a different IP/subnet/dns, configureing everything then take to client and change IP/subnet/dns?
Answer: That will work. You’ll need to change the IP. Run the connect to the Internet wizard once on site. I’d then run the fix my network wizard to make sure everything is running properly for good measure.
Question: Can you distribute this presentation?
Answer: Yes, it will be available at www.thirdtier.net/store
Question: What about sbs on ip’s other than the default 192. range like 172.?
Answer: It won’t find the router. But that’s OK. If it doesn’t find your router you will be given the opportunity to enter your router address manually. then the wizard will continue
Question: Steve you could be a little more happy 
Answer: I think he’s nervous
Question: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer\Networking\ “InternetConnectionCheckRootDnsServer” REG_SZ
Answer: This is the registry key that Steve mentioned during the presentation.
Question: I still love him
Answer: 
Question: We see it
Answer: thanks! Slow getting to it but we finally did
Question: Is Steve saying that SBS2008 has the capbility to modiify and configure your DNS records at the Registrar level?
Answer: Yes that’s what he is saying. Certain registrars have been selelcted as partners for that function. The wizard will provide a list of those.
Question: Can see anything except the slide show….
Answer: we’re back
Question: what is port 987 for?
Answer: Port 987 is the SSL port that Sharepoint (companyweb) gets published on. If you choose to publish it your users can access Sharepoint from the Internet.
Question: will these slides be available for download?
Answer: The whole presentation will be available at www.thirdtier.net/store
Question: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/
Answer: This is the URL that will create an SPF file for you.
Question: What about ports 1723, 3389 and 4125? Are they still used in 2008
Answer: 1723 is used if you want to support incoming VPN connections on PPTP. 3389 is remote desktop access direct to the server. This is not recommended. You should use RWW. In 2003 port 4125 was never necessary. This was the port that RWW used internally. RWW only uses 443 now.
Question: Just Bing "SPF Wizard"
Answer: BING!
Question: that is a way cool tool!
Answer: The SPF record creator is a cool tool. But remember the Internet Address Wizard will run it for you too. SBS makes it even cooler.
Question: Does it handle using third party filtering? Reflexions?
Answer: Yes, it does. You can specify the relexion servers in the SPF tool.
Question: true if you have sbs2008. But for the clients still running sbs2003 this will really help. Cuz you know that some of them dont have this setup right.
Answer: Yep. Any non-SBS 2008 machine can really benefit from that tool and you can use it for any network
Question: can you use the spf record creator to create spf for prior versions>
Answer: Yes, it is not SBS specific. The tool will work for any network. The recorc itself does not reside on the server, it resides with your DNS provider.
Question: what about a isa 2006 in front and configuring vpn?
Answer: Do what Steve suggests. In addition on the ISA server, publish PPTP to the SBS server.
Question: Can you redirect the smarthost to say port 567 (ATT requires this)
Answer: Checking on it right now while Amy continues. Should have an answer in a moment.
Question: thought that pictures would automatically follow the my documents folder..
Answer: Only if in XP. In Vista and Win7 they are broken out on their own now (unless you want to keep them in your My Docs).
Question: can you talk about the migrate user wizard? Or have you discussed in one of your previous presentations?
Answer: Wasn’t on the list for today, but we can get it on the list.
Question: Steve do you think the small business segment is conscious about energy savings?
Answer: Yes, we have a construction company that started powering off their desktops at night. They saw a considerable cost savings per month. So now we have them leave the machines on once a week so we can update over night.
Question: Thank you for the information. It was great to know
Answer: Welcome!
Question: Does running the bpa for ip changes include if the isp has changed the address; not just changing the internal server ip?
Answer: No you would handle that at the edge, your firewall or router device.
Question: is there some way to limit what computers folder redirection is used on. For instance, Some users may occasionally need to log onto someone elses PC and you dont necessaryly want all their folders copied down to that PC. I have some accounts where 5 or more people have loged onto a pc and when a user logs in or out it syncs folder for everyone and takes a long time.
Answer: Chad has been working on this with a client over the past week. I don’t think they have an answer yet.
Question: check out Reflexion’s pdf this will help on the port question http://www.reflexion.net/docs/basic_exchange_setup_guide.pdf
Answer: Thanks
Question: woll4rww: http://dnn.sbstools.de/
Answer: Thanks! THis is the link for the Wake on Lan for RWW add-in
Question: user state migration tool better: mdop 2010 saw this yesterday at microsoft demo takes ALL settings from all users not just the one selected
Answer: This is the tool in Vista that will migration your user settings to the new profile
Question: is there a list of all the wizards in sbs2008?
Answer: No list that we are aware of
Question: Thanks great show when will the slides be up at www. thirdtier.net/store (as in paying for it?)
Answer: They are free in the store. It should be up sometime tomorrow.
Question: in mgration mode there is a migrate user wizard
Answer: We’ll do a blog post
Question: Thank you Amy and Steve. Great meeting today.
Answer: We’ll do a blog post
Question: Whats athe address for your blogpost?
Answer: www.thirdtier.net/blog is our blog
Question: Good Job!!
Answer: thanks
Question: thanks again, see you next time.
Answer: thanks
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
Get Support 
Blog 
Twitter 
Facebook 
LinkedINThird Thursday Webinar: Behind the SBS Wizards
Posted by: | CommentsWhat is actually happening when you use one of the wizards in SBS? Reality is that wizards are nothing more than scripts that were written by the development team. But knowing what they are doing is important information that will aid you in becoming an SBS expert.
Steve Banks, SBS MVP and new Third Tier consultant will join Amy in this presentation. It will be Steve’s debut! We’ll tackle as many of the wizards as we have time for in this session.
Please plan to join us on October 15th at Noon eastern time.
When: Thursday, Oct 15, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Scheduled to Occur: Once
Duration: 1:00
Amy Babinchak has invited you to attend an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=MSCQN6&role=attend&pw=Cgb%2B%23W9Qq
Meeting time: Oct 15, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Add to my Outlook Calendar:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/meetingICS?id=MSCQN6&role=attend&pw=Cgb%2B%23W9Qq&i=i.ics
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedINAdding IPv6 to DNS
Posted by: | CommentsThis weekend I noticed that NSLOOKUP on my SBS 2008 server is no longer able to return the local DNS server name. Maybe it’s just semantics because otherwise NSLOOKUP seems to work fine, just was bothering me. Having noticed that it is using the IPv6 address for NSLOOKUP resolution I knew right away what the problem was – there’s no IPv6 information in my DNS. Specifically NSLOOKUP uses the PTR record.
Here’s how to resolve that problem:
At this point we’re just using a LinkLocal IP address. All LinkLocal addresses start with the prefix fe80:: Which in ipv4 speak is like the 169.254…addressing. It doesn’t go anywhere, it is just for internal use.
- Create an IPv.6 AAAA host record in the .local zone
2. Create an IPv.6 reverse lookup zone for fe80::\64
3. Create a ptr record for the IPv6 address of the server. To do this use the browse option in the new PTR record window
Now NSLookup will know the name of the local DNS server.
—
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN
Presentation: Understanding Social Media
Posted by: | Comments<This is not an official Third Tier event.>
In this presentation, I will not be demonstrating how to use Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan pages, LinkedIn and Blogs but rather I will show how other businesses are using social media and provide a general introduction to the terminology and the technology. Hopefully in a manner that is not geeky but rather easily understood.
I have allocated an hour for this event. My discussion will not take up the entire time. There will be time available at the end for Q&A.
When: Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Scheduled to Occur: Once
Duration: 1:00
Amy Babinchak has invited you to present an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b
Meeting time: Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
When: Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Scheduled to Occur: Once
Duration: 1:00
Amy Babinchak has invited you to present an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b
Meeting time: Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Add to my Outlook Calendar:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/meetingICS?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b&i=i.ics
—
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
Get Support Blog Twitter Facebook LinkedIN
