[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Michael Leworthy from Windows Server Marketing]
Today I am pleased to announce the Release of the Windows Server Solutions Phone Connector for Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (aka Integrating Windows Phone 7 with your SBS 2011 Essentials Server).
The Windows Server Solutions Phone Connector add-in enables you to connect to your home, business, or storage server by using your Windows Phone 7 phone. This document provides help for the integration of Windows Phone 7 into Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.
After completing the integration of your Windows Phone 7 phone into a SBS 2011 Essentials server, you can use your phone to perform remote server management tasks (such as view alerts, manage users, and start and stop backups).
The Phone connecter requires both a server sided add-in which you can download from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=214671 , and a Windows Phone 7 Application which can be downloaded through the market place on your phone or via your PC when you have your phone linked to the Zune client via http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=214673&clcid=0x409.
For further information you can access the Windows 7 Phone Connector help site on TechNet at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh319881.aspx
[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Enrico Toro, Senior Product Manager from Windows Server Marketing]
“With Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, we can deliver inspection results instantly so that customers can expedite engine repairs, resume flights, and save thousands of pounds” says Wyn Davies, Owner and Director of Aeroresponse, a UK customer that has just begun using Windows Small Business Server (SBS) Essentials. SBS Essentials is for customers like Wyn, and we were excited to announce the general availability of this product last week.
Today, around the world, there are millions of small businesses with less than 25 users that have not yet deployed a server in their network because they consider a traditional server too costly, too complex to manage, too big and unwieldy for their needs. These business would greatly benefit from a server that can:
Windows SBS 2011 Essentials was created for those businesses. At a very affordable price, SBS Essentials can be similar to the price of a good quality desktop. Small Businesses can now get a server that fulfills all their needs and much more. Everything has been simplified so that is it easier to use and manage and licensing is simple as well with no CAL’s necessary.
For these reasons, we believe SBS 2011 Essentials is a great product for all partners that want to enter the first server market, work with new customers, and grow with them. As a platform, SBS Essentials allows OEM’s from large multinational companies like Acer, Dell, IBM and HP, to the smallest system builders, to help small businesses adopt commercial grade hardware. It also helps distributors expand sales in new markets; helps ISV’s to create and sell line of business applications and newly created cloud solutions, and offers our large network of committed VAR’s/ VAP’s and SI’s new opportunities to provide high quality services from server deployment, training, support, and solution customization, to customers that previously would not be interested in a server solution.
We will talk more in detail about these opportunities Wednesday, July 13th during WPC breakout session SMB04 “Opportunity in the Ecosystem: How Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials Works “Better Together” with Microsoft and Partner Solutions to Meet Customer Needs”
Participants at this session will have the opportunity to see how Essentials working together with Windows 7 Pro and Office 365 can offer our partners the opportunity to increase their software, hardware and services sales. You will learn the experience of an SBS deployment directly from an IT Pro’s mouth and you’ll have the opportunity to see firsthand how cloud applications developed by our partners interact with SBS Essentials to extend its functionality (and cover important customers’ needs) in the cloud:
[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Justin Crosby from Commercial Technical Support]
Today’s post will cover all the services that are installed by default on the SBS 2011 family of products. You can use this post to determine what the default state of each service is. 3rd party programs, updates, and configuration changes can all effect the status of services on your install. If you notice a discrepancy between this list and the SBS install you are troubleshooting, do not automatically change the service to match the default. It should be examined and determined why it is non-standard and then decide if it needs to be changed back to default.
[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Chris Puckett, John Bay and Damian Leibaschoff from Commercial Technical Support]
First Part: SBS 2011 Standard Migrations – Keys to Success Second Part: SBS 2011 Standard Migrations – Keys to Success – Part 2: The Setup Phase
This is the third post of this series and covers common issues that you might encounter after completing the SBS setup. Furthermore, it covers common failures for which you can recover from or identify the root cause to prevent them in the future.
If you think you want to disable IPv6 in SBS 2011 Standard, or any Vista/Windows 2008/Windows7/Windows 2008 R2 product for that matter, you must do so in the registry. Unchecking IPv6 in the properties of the NIC will cause you grief. For more information on how to do this, read here.
Link to the Migration Wizard TechNet Documents for SBS 2003 to SBS 2011 Standard. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg563798.aspx
Link to the Migration Wizard TechNet Documents for SBS 2008 to SBS 2011 Standard. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg615497.aspx
If you are migrating from a non-SBS source, you will have to follow the migration document steps manually without the migration wizard.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2009/06/21/sbs-migrations-troubleshooting-moving-public-folder-replicas.aspx If you are migrating from SBS 2008 and you had previously migrated from SBS 2003 or had Exchange 2003 in the organization, please check the following post as replication might not work until the legacy servers container is removed: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2010/05/05/3409916.aspx Please note that this can also cause issues with Mail Enabled Public Folders after a successful migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2011 Standard. The same resolution should be applied after completing the next step (remove the last legacy exchange server from an organization).
Before you are ready to demote and remove the source SBS 2003 server from the network, make sure you follow the steps to Remove the Last Legacy Exchange Server from an Organization BEFORE you uninstall Exchange 2003 from the SBS 2003 server. The steps are located here.
Before you are ready to demote and remove the source SBS 2008 server from the network, make sure you follow the steps to Uninstall Exchange Server 2007 BEFORE you remove the SBS 2008 server. The steps are located here.
Including: Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=C3202CE6-4056-4059-8A1B-3A9B77CDFDDA
And the following Post-Sp1 hotfix: 2401588 Remote procedure call service crashes on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2401588
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg563794.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg563807.aspx
Windows SBS 2011 Standard Known Post Installation Event Log Errors and Warnings http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2483007
It is important to note that most failures are fatal, there are a few scenarios where the SBS setup can be manually completed or resumed. Most setup failures will have a directly correlation with an existing condition on the source domain and if common, should be covered in our previous blog posts on this series. If your failure is not documented here, you will have to restore the source server from backup, correct/isolate the source of the failure, and re-start the process.
Catalog of setup errors:Catalog of Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard Error Messages http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg508783.aspx
For help troubleshooting other setup failures, please check the following post (most sections are relevant to SBS 2011 Std): http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2010/08/03/the-ultimate-guide-to-sbs-2008-setup-failures.aspx
First Part: SBS 2011 Standard Migrations – Keys to Success This is the second post of the series. During the actual setup of the SBS 2011 Standard server you may encounter a number of situations that can be prevented or addressed on the fly. This post tries to cover them and provide viable options to allow the setup to continue.
If you are already experiencing a setup failure, please check the post-setup with failures section in our third post of this series for further troubleshooting information first.
The SBS setup will try to disable them automatically but it might not work on all cases, so ideally disable them from the BIOS before starting the process.
From now until the SBS 2011 Standard migration setup is complete, do not make any changes on the network. This is not a good time to be doing any of the following:
· Changing passwords · Installing Software · Removing Domain Controllers · Changing out the network hardware · Restoring servers · Rebooting domain controllers · Re-wiring the network
You may get an error "Verify that the Source Server Name is Correct" while trying to install SBS into an existing domain http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2506841
· Check for Time Mismatch (Date, Time and Time Zone) on both source and new server. · Verify that there are no firewalls or other endpoint protection solutions on the source server, remove them if present.· Check the Credentials being used.
Most Common Cause: The new server makes a WMI connection back to the source server to verify that the source tool has been successfully run. Resolution Summary: You can use the steps in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article to troubleshoot the issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2612862
Active Directory replication is taking longer than expected. You can choose whether to continue waiting.
If you choose not to wait, the migration may fail. Unless you are sure that replication is working correctly, it is recommended that you continue waiting.
Do you want to wait for the replication to finish? (Yes/No)
Most Common Cause: You will only get this dialog after the SBS setup has waited for 25 minutes and the new server has not been able to properly contact the source DC to initialize the file replication service (FRS), this is preventing the new server from becoming a domain controller. Clicking No on this dialog will almost certainly mean a failed setup. The source server is most likely in journal wrap or having FRS issues. Resolution Summary: You can use the steps in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article to troubleshoot the issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2612832
Third Part: SBS 2011 Standard Migration – Keys to Success – Part 3: Post Setup and Common Failures
Today we are happy to share the news that three months after its release to manufacturing and 12 months after its initial announcement at WPC 2010, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials is now available through all channels. Our customers will able to purchase a copy of the server through Volume Licensing, Retail, and from most of our OEM partners, with more offers and OEM products becoming available in the next few months.
David Troeger, Product Marketing Manager of Dell’s Enterprise Product Group says “In Microsoft’s SBS 2011 Essentials, small businesses will find a great combination of value and functionality which perfectly complements Dell’s ability to provide a complete solution of hardware, software and services to our customers. With a single point of management for Cloud applications, SBS 2011 Essentials provides big IT power with minimal IT resources.”
Thousands of customers around the world have already started to discover the benefits of SBS 2011 Essentials. Ed Nemeth, Business Manager of Hyperbaric Oxygen Clinic of Sacramento says “We almost don’t notice that it’s there. Windows Small Business Server Essentials is doing its job and enabling us to do ours. We haven’t had any problems; the server just works.”
Ed’s words well summarize the value that we want to provide to those millions of small businesses that still do not have a server. A machine that simplifies their life, makes their network more secure, their data safer, and can cost as little as a good desktop computer: a server truly for everyone.
Maciek Szcześniak, Director SMB Global Strategy and Business Development, Hewlett Packard also agrees, “With SBS Essentials 2011, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft are providing small businesses with simple solutions that enable them to level the playing field and operate their company with similar technology as larger organizations without the added complexity and cost of managing an intricate IT infrastructure.”
We want to help more businesses feel like Brian Woltz, Owner and Physiotherapist of Parkway Physiotherapy. In his words “now, all our PCs are password-protected, all documents are encrypted, and all files are automatically backed up nightly. Our business is much better protected than it was before”. For this reason we designed a server OS that, in the words of Ron Demedash Systems Analyst of Catoptric Resources, “is so easy to use that business people can take care of it themselves.”
Together with our partners and the rest of Microsoft, we are continuing to deliver more products and functionality to SBS 2011 Essentials. Many ISV’s are supporting this new product and making sure that their Windows Server applications work well with it. For instance Derek De Vette of Diskeeper Corporation, the company that won Redmond Magazine: 5 Star Award says “For an out-of-the-gate small business solution, Microsoft nailed it with SBS Essentials 2011. It seamlessly integrates into online services like e-mail and line of business apps—but doesn’t skimp at all on the enterprise-class technologies needed for data backup and restore, remote access, file and printer sharing or quick connection to the cloud.”
People will love Essentials’ ability to interact with applications in the cloud. Last week we disclosed how Essentials works together with Office 365, but there are many more partners that are working to integrate their cloud offerings with SBS Essentials. Partners like Trend Micro’s Global Product Marketing Manager Greg Boyle, who says “we are excited to be one of the first SaaS providers to enable seamless integration between Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and a hosted service. With Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Services SBS 2011 Essentials users can protect all their Windows based desktops, laptops and servers. The integration with the SBS dashboard allows users to maintain central control of security settings and reporting from the server but offload the security server maintenance to the cloud. This gives them more time to focus on productive & profitable tasks and frees up the server so it can perform at its peak.”
Many more solutions for cloud back up, hosted email integration, online productivity are already on the market or will be available soon.
Next week we will continue celebrating SBS Essentials general availability with our partners at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference. If you are there, please visit our or our partners’ booths to see the product first hand, and, if you are not at WPC, keep on following us on this blog and on our Facebook and twitter pages to receive SBS Essentials news firsthand.
Finally, we would like to thank all the people involved into every phase of this project and in particular the partners, customers without whose collaboration all this would not have been possible and remind you that this is just the beginning of a long, successful journey.