Some of have seen the road to Win7 videos, and those of you that havent WHY NOT? Its a great collection of vids (even if I do say so myself), but on a serious note we have had some great feedback around the content being worthwhile, so if you want a relaxed environment to learn more about Win7 then feel free:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/dd574083.aspx
Get on board!
In case you hadn’t worked out from the title the ‘Road to Windows 7’ videos have finally gone live. James O’Neil and myself cover various aspects of Windows 7 that you guys (Partners, consumers and IT Pros) will be interested in and have a heap of questions about. Link to the videos below (but check out the trailers first :D ). Enjoy
www.technet.com
It wouldn’t have been possible without a number of peoples hard work, so thank you all team for slogging through many hours of editing and footage. Alex Ball, Viral Tarpara, Alan Le Marquand and all the guys at Redmond, not forgetting the film crew…Wow that sounded like an Oscar acceptance speech, well who knows one day ;)
Small Business Server 2008 – Installation, Migration, and Configuration
David Overton
Set up and run your small business server making it deliver big business impact
- Step-by-step guidance through the installation and configuration process with numerous pictures
- Successfully install SBS 2008 into your business, either as a new installation or by migrating from SBS 2003
- Configure hosted web sites for public and secure information exchange using Office Live for Small Business and Office Live Workspaces
- An illustrative book for people with basic technical skills and no SBS background
Where to buy
I have just had a catch up with the GOD of WESS, Mr Nick King, and I have passed on all your feedback so far. So watch this space for some of the answers that I have yet to resolve.
The general feedback so far is a request for live demos, VHDs, and collateral that is relevant for the UK Market :D
I thought I would blog about this as I personally found it quite complex to begin with. The Solutions Pathway is a way of saving money if you are migrating from a previous version of a product in the Windows Essential Server Solutions umbrella to a newer version (see below).
The website: http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/upgrade.aspx
At the bottom click continue, and there is a agreement that needs accepting on the next page. On the page after you will see this:
Once processed you are given the options you can migrate to:
You are then presented with a discounted purchase list for the Product you chose and the relevant and CALs. Below is both SBS 2008 standard (from SBS 2003 standard) and EBS 2008 standard (from SBS 2003 standard):
Please note these prices are current for 03/04/2008 in the UK only and may be subject to change.
Proceed to the checkout and Job done :D
Download IE8 here and really start to have more fun with the internet not to mention how much easier everything is. Web Slices, isolated tabs (one tab crashes and the browser doesn’t die), coloured tabs, and the Accelerators are COOL;
Simply highlight some text and out of box you can carry out any of the above cool one click tasks.
Add any one of the extra downloadable accelerators, for example, tweet with twitter, and it allows one click to open up twitter.com and puts the highlighted text into the tweet box.
I particularly like the ‘Map with Live maps’. Many times I search for a local version of a chain store, or even a takeaway, and I am presented with an address or postcode. This will display a small map of the local area around the highlighted address, or if you click ‘Map with Live Maps’ it will open up a new page with a full map. Cool huh!
Everyone knows it takes 3 days for a new Domain to ‘properly propagate’. So When planning a greenfield install, or any other scenario that would involve you migrating or creating a new domain, this post will hopefully save you the hassle I had.
When setting up the Internet address using the wizard in SBS 2008 you are given 3 providers to choose from. I went with register.com.
3 days earlier I had registered the domain on register.com, so trying to be clever, when it came to the wizard, I could simply select “I already have a domain”, and then “I would like the server to manage the domain for me”.
Great, or so i thought! BE AWARE, the registrar for www.register.com is their “retail division”, whereas domains bought through the wizard have the “Global Partner Network” (GPN) as the registrar. That means the wizard will search for an account with the GPN. If you can see you domain and account at www.my-account-mananger.com then the wizard process will be successful.
If your account details are still at www.register.com you will need to migrate your account to the GPN registrar.
Please note that if you purchased the domain through the wizard the registrar will be the correct one to use, but you will have to wait the allotted 72 hours.
Want to compare 2 windows?
You may or may not know about the dock feature. Simply drag the window to the extreme left or right of the screen and it will dock to half the screen (NO MORE WASTED TIME RESIZING).
However even more simply press:
+ 
OR + ![clip_image001[23]](http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/carpediem/WindowsLiveWriter/Permissiontodock_E30C/clip_image001%5B23%5D_thumb.gif)
Also up and down are maximise and restore. Really handy shortcuts :)
Check this out:
Thanks to Peacer for uploading this to the tube! :) and Great video guys!
Another feature built into win7 is shake. You got a busy desktop?
Shake the window (by clicking on the title bar and moving it rapidly up and down)
Voila - Everything else behind the window minimises. Repeat the process to get everything back :)
Ta dah! Win 7 beta 1 is available! Oh yes! hello to all the things in vista that you thought wouldnt it be awesome if you could.....
Now call me old fashion but one thing that has been phased out over the years are manuals (not that we would ever read it anyway, and thats the reason they stopped wasting half a tree, as if you wanted to read a manual you could go online) However, how do you find out about features in a new OS? Well below I have created a really basic video manual to get ppl up and running to make sure (if you dont have Win 7 yet, you'll go out and try it) and if you do have it you're not missing any of the Cooooool features.
Before I start I am just going to clarify something....Win 7 isn't JUST cool, its build around the same kernel as Vista, and has security top of the list of important things to take care of...... I'm not sure I'm allowed to say this but I will anyway, if you want a safe Operating system (phone, desktop or server) it will be windows everytime, lets be honest how far up the list of importance is security in Mac OS? Top 3: Cool, Funky, Playful..... still no security. Now Win 7 has all the fun, funky and cool features but is as secure as vista and will continue to be more secure moving ahead!
So here they are:
1. Task tray icons
2. Peek
3. Taskbar and start menu
5. Sidebar and Bit Locker 2 Go
6. IE 8 and networks
7. UAC adjustment
8. Action Centre & Devices
So I got my hands on an Intel Modular Server MFSYS25 and had the initial joyous task of updating all the firmware and BIOS, which to be fair went of without a hitch, except for the fact it was like having a small turbine engine under my desk.
So using 4 blades I set about installing EBS.
1 – RRAS (As any network port here is domain joined to microsoft.corp)
2 – Management
3 – Security
4 – Messaging
You get 4 Disks in the Standard Package which are numbered as above EXCEPT DVD 1 is actually the Preparation Wizard CD!
Couple of things to note so far:
The Preparation CD needs to be run in the environment you are building, which is a little odd for a greenfield install, so you just have to go through the motions so it can detect that there is no existing AD, Exchange, DNS or DHCP etc. Halfway through the planning phase the equivalent of an answerfile is splurted out….. Its a .xml file which needs to go onto a usb key (or the root of server 2 – Management). It is mainly the name and IP addresses of what you want the 3 servers to be, and the scope of the DHCP etc.
Then I simply booted off the EBS DVD 2 on the 2nd Server and by the wonder of technology (and the REALLY great job the EBS team have done) the installation begins, it runs through a detection phase (using the .xml which you will need to point it to) checks the health, and begins installing a plethora of cool stuff. It allows you to use a temporary IP address to install the box which you can either configure manually, OR, use DHCP :)
The wizards are AMAZING. Once that had completed I moved to the next server, Security, and began the install…..no .xml this time, but it allows you to save a .txt of the settings you are about to apply. You go through the whole ‘configuring’ process and at the end you get to install what you have set up, cool huh! Another feature in this install (obviously not in the first) is the Domain join step, you put in the domain, and the administrator credentials and it will do that as part of the install, along with configuring email gateway and remote access.
The final phase, captains log day 2……The messaging server….
This again was all wizard driven with some very diverse options to choose from. Again it gave the join the domain step, and then configure the rest.
I did think the bulk of the install was then complete. I was partially right, I then had a “to do list” generated by the installer which covers things like certificates, external RWW access, installing WSS 3.0, adding license packs, checking firewall rules.
All in all this was a long, but very straight forward process and I have to say was quite exciting to see the intelligent software, that the EBS team have spent ages locked away in dark cupboards building, do its stuff AND work! :) Well done guys
One thing to note, a little gotcha from me using an RRAS setup, was that the EBS DNS boxes needed to have the forwarders added (In my case the IP addresses of the DNS servers on Microsoft.corp) without this EBS wont be able to “see out”. Thanks to Matt McSpirit for pointing this out :)
The install process obviously has many screens, and posting hundreds of screen shots wouldn’t really work, so if you have anything you would specifically like to see, let me know.
Some of you will have seen my presentations and will have also seen the cool add-in that I use.
If you haven’t heard of pptplex go find it:
www.officelabs.com
It will make presentations in powerpoint a whole lot less linear and more interactive! However with a standard presenter mouse the forward and back functions do not work…..So I thought I’d push the boat out!
Get yourself the Microsoft wireless xbox 360 controller usb receiver:
Plug it in and sync up the controller. Then get your hands on xpadder:
www.xpadder.com
Now you can map your controller to normal keyboard/mouse features. This means that you can control your computer AND presentation even in pptplex as long as you are in wireless range AND allows you to still walk around the stage and maintain interest whilst looking very cool with an xbox controller in your hand! :)
PLUS not only that, but you can play all your PC games with a wireless Xbox controller (steering wheel and even guitar, AWESOME huh!?)
This is something that is so easy to deploy and do that I just had to shout about it!
Ok so the problem:
Laptop/PC on site, something horrible and sticky spilt all over it….Hardware destroyed (or really any other scenario that results in a useless piece of tin)….
Data is lost, panic stations worried people, dead lines drawing nearer …..WHAT NOW?
My dad always used to say PPPPP …Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance, but HOW can you prepare?
The solution: Windows Deployment Server (WDS) is a role that can be enabled on Windows Server 2008. In this role you can upload an image of Vista ** (boot.wim and install.wim on the Vista DVD) into the server. This allows a new piece of hardware, lets take a laptop for example, to be connected to the network (wired) and make sure the laptop boots from the network (PXE). This will then get an IP address and then “see” the vista image which you can install from the server. COOL so you now have an OS (you can even add .xml files into the Deployment to auto configure timezones and other install options. The next part is the data, some people are not aware of folder redirection. This does exactly that directs the “My Documents”, “Start Menu”, and “Desktop” to sync onto the server which keeps copies of the files. This can be set to sync at regular intervals or at certain times. With this feature being used, when the OS is installed, you can resync with your redirected folder…..And there you have it, data is back….. There is even a further few cool things that can be used…..With Sharepoint document libraries, documents can be put in sites and therefore can be pulled back down…..Outlook can pull down the email from the server as well, so you wont even lose your emails!!!
HOW COOL IS THAT!
** one thing to note is that with Vista you only need one image no matter how many types of hardware, it is hardware independent (only 1 image to manage). XP needs one image per each different type of hardware.
