Where System Builders Talk Shop... : Server

Q&A from Windows Server 2008 Basic Administration using Server Manager webcast

BOBblog — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:37:00 GMT

Below are the follow-up questions & answers from the Thursday, December 13, 2007, webcast “Windows Server 2008 Basic Administration using Server Manager” (http://www.msreadiness.com/CourseDetail.aspx?id=6739). To download the PowerPoint presentation, please visit BOB Wired at: http://oem.microsoft.com/bobwired. Look for BOB Decks: US System Builder Webcast Slide Decks to find a link to a number of BOB Team documents.

Q: If you have a Windows Server 2003 machine do you recommend do an upgrade or a clean install of Windows Server 2008?

A: Both methods are available and supported, so the choice will depend on your specific requirements. As always, backup your data completely before doing either method.

Q: What are forwarded events?

A: Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista can forward events typically viewed in the Event Viewer to one or more machines for centralized management. Please see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/better-together.mspx, particularly in the More Efficient Management section for more info on forwarded events.

Q: Can you get events from Windows Server 2003 R2 or just from Windows Server 2008?

A: Please see http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/f550cac0-5344-41cb-8e89-6e5c932368861033.mspx for information on new management features available with Windows Server 2003 R2.

Q: I tried to join my Windows Server 2008 RC1 box to a Windows SBS 2003 domain using the "ConnectComputer" wizard, which didn't work. I was able to join manually through Server Manager, but will the wizard be updated?

A: I am not currently aware of when an update for the Connect Computer wizard will be made available, but based on a new version being released to support Windows Vista, I believe it is possible that we will see an update for Windows Server 2008 as well.

Q: Does Windows Server 2008 include a pre-configured, Windows SBS-like "server performance report" that can be emailed to network administrators on a daily basis?

A: Because Windows Server 2008 is targeted at a more general audience, there aren’t the same types of pre-configured functionality as with Windows Small Business Server. However, there is a wealth of new monitoring and reporting functionality in the Diagnostics node of the Server Manager console.

Q: Could you get events forwarded from servers on different domains via the internet?

A: Yes, because the mechanism is WinRM, which uses firewall-friendly protocols, that would be possible. For more information, please see http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/newswire/winrm.mspx.

Super Size your Server Sales with Server Source

BOBblog — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 10:19:00 GMT

Want to build a solid base of small business customers who rely on you to keep their networks up and running? The Server Source is here to help! This comprehensive, powerful ONLINE resource guides you through everything you need to both build and grow your server business. Use it to your advantage and unlock the revenue potential of selling services to small business customers. The Server Source covers the 3 parts to a successful Server business: Marketing SBS 2003, Sales and Deployment!

It all starts with successful Marketing. When we talk about Marketing we have to take into consideration whether we are marketing to existing or new customers and then gear the message to the appropriate group.

Tap Into Your Existing Customer Base.

Repeat customers spend 33% more than new customers and cost 1/6 as much as prospecting a new customer. Get your customers thinking about Small Business Server 2003. Leverage our email, direct mail and Web page templates to create awareness and interest.

Generate New Leads.

Ready to grow your business beyond your existing customer base? We provide the tools and resources to help develop a marketing plan and lead generation strategy. Is your marketing optimized for search engines? Are you receiving leads by participating in the Small Business Specialist program? Are you using best practices for Direct Mailings?

The Server Source walks creating your marketing strategy!

Maintain ongoing communication. Once you’ve started the dialogue, keep it going. Call the customer a week after the sale just to see if everything is ok. Don’t try to sell them anything at that time, just follow up to ensure that everything is working correctly and that they are satisfied! This shows them you care and strengthens your relationship.

Use these Server Source tools and tips to accelerate your marketing efforts and move potential customers through the sales cycle.

To make the sale you should get inside the mind of your customers. Understand their pains and potential objections so you can sell the value of Small Business Server 2003 more effectively. Each customer is different so make sure you listen to what they have to say and identify solutions to their individual needs. We identify the most common customer pains but more importantly we offer the solutions. Knowing what the most common pain points are and having that solution available during your initial dialogue is critical to closing the sale.

As with any sale you will come across objections. Anticipating these objects and offering a strategic response is another critical piece in closing that sale.

Here is an example of a customer objection:

Customer Objection	Ways to Respond
I can’t afford new software.	Discuss the cost of security issues with business data, as well as productivity losses and potential customer dissatisfaction when your customer cannot respond to their customers’ needs. Additionally, users of Windows Small Business Server 2003 recouped their total investment, which includes software, hardware, installation, and support, in an average of five months.*

Once you made the sale use the Deployment Checklist to ensure a smooth deployment with no unexpected delays. Are you asking the right questions at the time of the sale?

There are a lot of question you need to know in order to successfully deploy a server solution. The Server Source walks you through this process.

So at this point we have developed the appropriate marketing strategy, identified the customer pain, provided the solution and finally deployed the right server, now what? Sell managed services for Additional Revenue! When you sell Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, you open the door to significant opportunities to sell value-added services and deepen your customer relationships. Small Business Server 2003 enables remote maintenance.

Services include:

Project-based services

Offered on a one-off basis

Initial deployment and technology refresh projects

Break-fix maintenance

Recurring services

Paid for on an ongoing basis

Prepaid maintenance monitoring services, and managed services.

Here’s an example of how one partner prices its tiered-service offerings:

	TIER 1	TIER 2	TIER 3
	Patches and virus updates, basic server monitoring	Tier 1 plus more frequent monitoring, regular reporting, desktop support, 9-to-5 coverage	Tier 2 plus desktop application and operating system support; 24/7 coverage
Base Fee	$90/month	$450/month	$900/month
Fee per Server	$18/month	$45/month	$45/month
Fee per PC Desktop	$9/month	$27/month	$45/month

Correctly configuring and managing a server solution requires that you have the necessary skill set. Again, this is where the Server Source comes into play! The Server Source walks you through how to accomplish the following along with the corresponding screenshots! I have included the 4 Steps in the build process.

Step 1. Installation.

Understand four time-saving steps for effective SBS 2003 deployment.

Step 2. Server Configuration.

Review our tested server configuration strategies.

Step 3. Workstation Configuration.

Get tips for configuring workstations in an SBS 2003 network.

Step 4. Maintenance.

Understand the best maintenance strategies for Small Business Server 2003.

I hope you see the value in the Server Source. There is so much information on the Microsoft site that it is hard to find a starting point. We put the Server Source together to help you through building your Server Solution from the ground up. We help you with creating your marketing strategy, identify the customer pain, provide the solution for that pain, deploy the right server, and sell managed services for Additional Revenue! That in itself is where most people would stop, but not the BOB team, we also offer complete walk through along with the corresponding screenshots and examples of tiered service offerings! But wait, there is more! On March 8^th I am going to present a webcast on this as well.

Event Date:
3/8/2007

Event Time:
9:00 AM Pacific, USA & Canada (DST) = GMT - 08:00

Take advantage of the resources we have put together in the Server Source and grow your Server Solution business!

The Server Source can be found at:

http://oem.microsoft.com/script/contentpage.aspx?pageid=63

Bob

Q&A from the Active Directory - Disaster Recovery webcast!

BOBblog — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:50:00 GMT

Hello All,

Here is the Q&A for the Active Directory - Disaster Recovery webcast!

Question: What stands for AD?
Answer: Active Directory

Question: What stands for DC and GC?
Answer: Domain Controller and Global Catalog Server

Question: Is there a way to change which attributes are not stripped from a principle when the principle is deleted in 2003?
Answer: yes --but this requires modification to the a class in the Schema which is generally not recommended

Question: can you show steps to disable inbound replication... show the lower in the directory tree
Answer: this will be demonstrated later but here it is: repadmin /options dc_name +DISABLE_INBOUND_REPL

Question: I ran into this scenario: 2 servers, (1) Windows 2000 SP4, (1) Windows 2003 SP1. 2003 server RAID crashed; Reload Win2003 to get server back up enough to run tape restore, run tape restore w/ system state included, rebooted. Now 2003 server cannot access 2000 server using UNC, get "permission denied". Able to access via \\192.168.1.123\sharename. What happened?
Answer: if you can access the share by IP and not by name then that tells me that Kerberos is not working. Look at anything that would cause Kerberos failures such as time sync issues bad machine account password here is a good link for troubleshooting these issues: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/technologies/security/tkerberr.mspx

Question: can the 60 day/ 180 days be increased?
Answer: yes, the change needs to be made on the configuration partition via adsiedit 1. In the Adsiedit tool, expand Configuration DomainControllerName, expand CN=Configuration, DC=ForestRootDomain, expand CN=Services, expand CN=Windows NT, right-click CN=Directory Service, and then click Properties. 2. Click the Attribute tab. 3. In the Select which properties to view list, click Optional. 4. In the Select a property to view list, click TombstoneLifetime. 5. In the Edit Attribute box, type the number of days that you want to set it to, click Set, and then click OK. Just don't decrease the value ---if you set it too low you will run into problem with Lingering Objects

Question: but if it is a fresh 2003 install, then lvr is enabled by default?
Answer: Not until you go into native mode and 2003 forest functional mode, then after that LVR is enabled on new objects or on existing objects when it is mdoified

Question: my forrest is upgraded, how to make my groups LVR?
Answer: You will need to be at Windows Server 2003 Forest functional mode --see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322692

Question: Does the restore process with Windows Backup work the same with Veritas Backup Exec?
Answer: It is very similiar but I would recommend going to their site and walking through their article to ensure nothing has changed. Some screens are different. They do have a published article.

Question: How do I check system state is current?
Answer: repadmin.exe /showbackup dc_name Check out this informative post on that command: http://blogs.msdn.com/brettsh/archive/2006/02/09/528708.aspx

To watch the on-demand webcast, please visit: http://www.msusapartnerreadiness.com/WS_abstract.asp?eid=15004864

Thanks,

BoB

Q&A from the Disk Recovery Webcast

BOBblog — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:22:00 GMT

Hello all,

Here is the Q&A from the Disk Recovery webcast. We are also in the process of re-recording it due to some sound issues we had.

Question: Does disk probe work on SATA drives the same as an ordinary EIDE hard drive?
Answer: Yes

Question: where can we get disk probe? Does it come with windows xp?
Answer: Diskprobe is part of the support tools for Windows 2000 and diskprobe 2 comes with Windows 2003

Question: does diskprobe work from the recovery console?
Answer: No it only works from within the OS.

Question: Does this work on RAID Controllers with the correct drivers
Answer: Yes. Any drive that is mounted in the OS can be loaded into disk probe.

Question: How is this application used when the drive will not boot? Do you use a bootable cd? Serial cable from another box?
Answer: Good question! Since the tool has to be run from within the OS you would have to either slave the drive to another system or copy the MBR or MBS with a tool that MS can help you with if you open a support call or the easiest method is explained later in this presentation and you can make a boot floppy to boot the server. If there is a problem with the MBR or BS the boot floppy will circumvent that and boot the server for you. Again this is explained later in the presentation.

Question: I had a situation where a client overwrote their MBR with another OS... fortunately, I found it had an MBR recovery option, but what if it didn't? They had XP Home on their system BUT no XP Home CD to recover the MBR. They did have XP Pro CD. Can XP Pro CD be used to recover XP Home MBR? Do service packs need to be reapplied after recovering MBR from a non-service packed CD?
Answer: The MBR code can be rewritten from the Recovery Console with the FixMBR command. No the MBR is not updated with service packs.

Question: Can I use diskprobe to examine a bad disk drive (as a secondary disk) that will not boot up
Answer: You can use dskprobe to view any sector or group of sectors on any disk that is mounted in your OS. So yes if you slaved a non-bootable disk onto a bootable machine then you can use dskprobe to view and edit that drive.

Question: can disk probe work with XP & Vista & can we download it for that?
Answer: Yes dskprobe works on all versions of Windows. It should be included in the support tools and those can be found on microsoft.com.

Question: yes, but can you use a xp pro cd recovery console on a xp home drive?
Answer: yes you can use an xp pro recovery console to access the file system of any version of Windows from NT4 and later.

Question: Would it be good practice to create an updated Boot Floppy on a regular basis?
Answer: I would just create it as you need it. The files on the disk don't really need to be updated; however, I will say this, later versions of the OS have ntldr boot files that offer additional funcionality. For instance the F8 options in Windows XPsp2 and Windows 2003sp1 give you the option to turn off the autoreboot feature that you didn't have before. With that being said you can create a boot floppy with the ntldr and ntdetect.com from those versions of the OS and you would be fine to boot to any NT server or client.

Question: Is there a way to recover a system with bad sectors on the HD?
Answer: Yes, chkdsk checks for bad sectors. However, there are cases where the corruption is such that some files are not recoverable and chkdsk removes those orphaned files out of the Master File Table. In that case you would need a data recovery service to help with that.

Question: how frequently must you create a Boot Floppy or in other words what events require updatign the boot floppy? program removal? every patch tuesday? ...etc
Answer: The boot files that are put on the disk are updated with additonal functionality occasionally with later OS versions or service packs but you could use the Windows 2000 boot files to boot a Windows 2003 server because the boot process hasn't changed since NT4......until Vista where the boot process actually changes a bit.

Question: why would there be multiple 80h?
Answer: manually editing or 3rd party tools can mark a second partition as actve without removing the previous entry. It does sometimes happen.

Question: can a xp pro cd fixmbr work on nt4 or later or just xp, and are home & pro CDs interchangable for this purpose?
Answer: It will work on all versions of NT\2000\XP\2003. The code is a bit more robust for the MBR and BS in XP than it was in NT 4 so we can, for example, access the kernal file past the 8.7GB limit that we had in NT 4 but it still does the same basic process. In short you get more functionality with the later code but it doesn't cause the NT4 boot process to break. That's why we can install Windows 2000 as a second OS on the same drive as Windows NT4 and still boot to both.

Question: Can you recommend any books on this topic?
Answer: I like the Windows Internal books by Soloman and Rusinovich

Question: When is The Backup Boot sector created. Does it change over time?
Answer: Good question. The backup boot sector is created when the boot sector is created. The boot sector is created when a partition is created. No, it does not change after it is created unless that partition is resized.

Question: Does it matter if you run fixmbr or fixboot in recovery console? Does the order matter - will one mess up something else?
Answer: FixMBR and FixBoot only run in the RC and they are independent of each other so the order doesn't matter.

To watch the webcast, please visit http://www.msusapartnerreadiness.com/WS_abstract.asp?eid=15005003

Thanks,

BoB

WebCast - Exchange 2007, what's new and why should a system builder care?

BOBblog — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:05:00 GMT

Have a need for speed? No/ or a low budget for a 3rd party disclaimer, antispam, or antivirus applications! No Problem, Exchange 2007 has it all! Ever desire centralized administration for multiple Exchange servers…..and I do mean multiple! Receive an attachment but don't have the application on the computer to open it with…..c’mon that never happens right! Forgot to setup that OOF feature before you went on that 3 weeks’ vacation? Could this be the end of email as we know it? Now I know you are saying "hey BOB, Exchange is not even offered in the SB channel so why do I care?" Well we are going to answer those question and more in the next BOB technical discussion …sign up now!

Event Date:
1/18/2007

Event Time:
9:00 AM Pacific, USA & Canada (DST) = GMT - 08:00

http://www.msreadiness.com/WS_abstract.asp?eid=15005015

BoB

BoB's Thursday webcasts - AD Restore and the new Physx Processor

BOBblog — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:13:00 GMT

Hey y'all (using my best Texan accent),

Don't forget about our two webcast tomorrow! In the first webcast we will walk through Active Directory Disaster Recovery (User/Group restore) in a multi DC environment. An hour later we will cover Windows Vista and the new Physx Processor for gaming machines! I installed my Physx Processor, downloaded Cell Factor for FREE and LOVE IT! Come see what I am talking about!

REGISTER NOW!

Active Directory Disaster Recovery

Event Date:
12/7/2006

Event Time:
11-Noon CST

http://www.msreadiness.com/WS_abstract.asp?eid=15004864

SB: The Gaming Niche

Event Date:
12/7/2006

Event Time:
1-2pm CST

http://www.msreadiness.com/WS_abstract.asp?eid=15004904

BoB!

Active Directory Disaster Recovery Webcast!

BOBblog — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:02:00 GMT

The BOB team brings you a special guest this week! Justin Turner is one of our Product Support Escalation Engineers and specializes in Active Directory. During this webcast we are going to walk through the proper way to restore Active Directory in a multi domain environment! Its more than just restoring system state. We will discuss the ins – and –outs of the restore process and we will be there to answer any questions you may have. This is a more advanced discussion and basic knowledge of Active Directory is recommended! Don’t let another restore take longer than it should. Sign up now!

http://www.msreadiness.com/WS_abstract.asp?eid=15004864

Event Date:
12/7/2006

Event Time:
9:00 AM Pacific, USA & Canada (DST) = GMT - 08:00

Duration:
60 minutes

Windows memory limitations

BOBblog — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:32:00 GMT

Have you ever wondered what the max physical limitations are for memory in our Windows products? Want to know if its changing in Vista? Look no more!

Physical memory limits	32-bit Windows	64-bit Windows
Windows XP Starter Edition	128 MB	N/A
Windows XP	4 GB	128 GB
Windows Server 2003, Web Edition	2 GB	N/A
Windows Storage Server 2003	4 GB	N/A
Windows Storage Server 2003, Enterprise Edition	8 GB	N/A
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition	4 GB	16 GB
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition SP1	4 GB	32 GB
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition	32 GB (16 GB with 4GT RAM Tuning)	64 GB
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition SP1	64 GB (16 GB with 4GT RAM Tuning)	1 TB
Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition	128 GB (16 GB with 4GT RAM Tuning)	512 GB
Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition SP1	128 GB (16 GB with 4GT RAM Tuning)	1 TB
Windows Vista	4 GB	128 GB
Windows Server "Longhorn"	4 GB	32 GB
Windows Server "Longhorn", Enterprise Edition	64 GB	1 TB
Windows Server "Longhorn", Datacenter Edition	128 GB (64 GB with 4GT RAM Tuning)	1 TB

Jaisson Mailloux

National SB Technology Specialist

US SB Technology Team (aka BOB)