[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Justin Crosby and Wayne McIntyre]
Today we are going to discuss an SBS "house cleaning" tip. If you have been running SBS 2003/2008 for awhile you may be using a lot of disk space to store old IIS logs. This is especially true if your clients are heavy OWA, ActiveSync, RPC over HTTP, or SharePoint users. A recent customer of mine had files dating back to 2004 and was using almost 2 Gigabytes of hard drive space to store these old logs.
To reclaim this space all you need to do is to delete the old IIS log files. Please be sure to back them up before deleting, just in case you need the logs in the future. I usually try to keep a week’s worth of logs and delete everything older than that. The logs will be in folders underneath C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\ in SBS 2003 and C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles in SBS 2008 by default. Additionally there is a Remote Web Workplace log stored in SBS 2008 in the following location which can grow rather large C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\WebWorkplace. If your log files are not stored in the default location, you can run the below command to determine the log file directory configured in IIS.
Note: It is inadvisable to search your hard drive(s) for *.log and delete all that you find. Many programs actively use information stored in .log files, such as Exchange, and deleting the file may cause issues including potential data loss.
During the first two days of the SMB Summit this April, some of the contributors to this blog will be speaking about Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008.
We will provide a first taste of the upcoming products from our unique point of view. We’ll discuss the product from a technical perspective. We will also provide insight into possible problems you may run into and how to effectively resolve or work around them.
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These questions and many more will be covered in detail at SMB Summit. What you don’t know can put you out of business so learn from partners who are at the top of their game. You'll leave with a concrete action plan to grow and improve your bottom line!
April 18-21, 2008 Omni Mandalay Hotel at Las Colinas 221 East Las Colinas Blvd. Irving, TX 75039
The fourth annual SMB SummitTM Conference is the one investment you should make for your company to get the strategic business and technical knowledge, plus build valuable peer relationships with other successful partners and vendors. Partners will get first hand information and knowledge on new products and services that supplement your customers' solution. It is a 4 day conference with the first 2 days focused on Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server. It is mix of technical content and business content.
The conference director, Mike Iem, and several speakers will be having a Webcast on Feb 27th at 9:00am PST to go over the conference, talk about some content and answer your questions. We will also give out a Discount Code during the live meeting.
We have the Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server development team, Microsoft PSS, and MVPs presenting the latest technical and sales related content for this new software.
Don't miss this -- it will be the first deep readiness opportunity for Small Business Server 2008/Essential Business Server!
Note: The third-party web sites and conferences that are discussed in this post are managed by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the information or guarantees given or provided by them.
[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Justin Crosby]
The software license terms for Windows SBS enforce a limitation that permits the presence of only one Windows SBS server in the domain. However, there is a grace period where you can have a second SBS server in “join domain” type migration scenarios. This grace period is 7 days. In some situations, this grace period may not be long enough to properly complete the migration.
This software update extends the allowable grace period for the supported scenarios from 7 days to 21 days. Please plan accordingly, aim to complete your migration within 7 days and only use this update for situations where it is needed. Remember, if you hit the 21 day limit there is nothing that can be done to extend the limit any further.
Important: We strongly recommend that you complete all migration tasks before you demote the Windows SBS domain controller to a member server. Once you demote the Windows SBS domain controller to a member server, the grace period is reset back to 7 days or whatever is left from the 21 days (whichever is less).
The update is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=64903D3C-3264-418D-9199-2963A599E268
The KB is available at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;943494
For more information on migrating Windows Small Business Server 2003 to new hardware please see: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServerSolutions/SBS/en/library/62e2094e-ad4e-4227-b20e-97a716ed7c861033.mspx
[Today's post comes to us courtesy of David Copeland]
The SBS 2003 Best Practices Analyzer configuration file has been updated with new rules. There are approximately 100 new rules and many pre-existing rules have been improved based on your feedback.
If you have the BPA set to automatically check for updates then you should see the screen below and simply need to click on the Download the latest updates link.
To check to see if you have the latest configuration file go to Start>All Programs>SBS Best Practices Analyzer, then click on the About the Best Practices Analyzer link. The updated configuration file version is 2.1.18.0.
If you still have the old version (2.1.4.0), click on the Updates and Customer Feedback link. Then click on the Check for Updates Now link.
Some of the new rules include:
Note: Please remember if you see the error that Windows SBS 2003 Service Pack 1 not installed that SBS 2003 SP1 is made up of 5 parts (Windows, Exchange, Windows SharePoint Services service packs, XP SP2 update, and the SBS 2003 service pack itself). If you are getting this error then you may have Windows Service Pack 2 installed but would appear the SBS 2003 SP1 itself is still not installed. For more information see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=50694.
Today Microsoft is announcing the Windows Essential Server Solutions family of products. The family includes Windows Small Business Server 2008, formerly known as code name "Cougar" and Windows Essential Business Server 2008, formerly known as code name "Centro".
Windows Small Business Server 2008 is built upon Windows Server 2008 and includes:
SBS 2008 Premium also includes SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 to run on a second server.
Windows Essential Business Server 2008 is built upon Windows Server 2008 and includes:
Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Premium Edition includes SQL Server 2008 technology.
Please note that Windows Small Business Server 2008 is designed for organizations with up to 50 users, but will support organizations with up to 75 users. Both Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008 are designed to run on 64-bit hardware.
For more information please see the official press release at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-20EBFamilyPR.mspx.
WSUS 3.0 SP1 is now located at the Microsoft Download Center. To download and to obtain installation instructions, please visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F87B4C5E-4161-48AF-9FF8-A96993C688DF&displaylang=en
For more information, check out the WSUS Product Team blog
http://blogs.technet.com/wsus/