The Essential Business Server Team Blog

EBS releases new wizards to check your environment & plan a network upgrade

We have just released two new components of the EBS server setup and installation process.  We added a first step to setup – a downloadable tool that scans the existing environment looking for the top (91) configuration issues and server health issues that affect successful setup of new server roles.  This was modeled after what our top Customer Service engineers do for Microsoft’s top customers to resolve issues.  Because this will help mid sized business customers (25-300 PC environment) interested in upgrading to EBS as well as small, medium and larger customers considering any upgrade (or just wanting a healthier environment), we have made this tool available for the community to download and run for free.

The EBS Preparation Wizard scans the environment for configuration and health issue in:

· Active Directory

· Windows Server Networking (DNS, Network adapters, ..)

· Exchange

· System Center Essentials

· Windows Server Configuration (current service packs, HD space, …)

Additionally, another tool (in the download package) provides a second step of setup, planning the post installation network configuration.  Many administrators find the deep networking and security concepts and choices exposed only at network upgrades difficult to understand and make.  This tool provides an EBS specific guided wizard with easy to understand diagrams and choices to make informed decisions with confidence.

Both of these tools became available for download today on: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E3906025-00E3-407D-BF5B-99D546021923&displaylang=en

The following review of Essential Business Server includes some screen shots from the two wizards (screen shots starting with "health scan results" through to "plan network settings"):

http://apcmagpro.com/first_look_windows_essentials_business_server_2008.htm

Have fun playing with the wizards and finding out just how solid your environments are :-)

- Eric Watson, EBS Group Program Manager

All the EBS news from Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC)

The Worldwide Partner Conference wrapped up today with 4 days of great info for thousands of Microsoft Partners (mostly VARs & VAPs).  Essential Business Server was demoed and referred to throughout the conference.  For people who weren't able to attend, some of the events were recorded or have web sites.  Here's a quick recap of some of the happenings.

The big news from WPC was that we announced Release Candidate 1 of EBS and demoed it live for the first time publicly.  Several of the talks that included EBS demos were recorded, including:

• A remote access, management and licensing demo in a talk by Microsoft Vice President Mike Risse (SMB Revenue growth and the product roadmap - Click here, mouse over "Keynotes" and select the SMB revenue growth keynote)
• A security and reliability demo in a talk by General Manager Larry Orecklin (Transforming IT through the Core Infrastructure Model - - Click here, mouse over "Keynotes" and select the Transforming IT keynote)

In addition, there was a high interest talk on how to choose which product is right for your company - Small Business Server or Essential Business Server.  If you'd like to see this talk, - Click here, mouse over "breakouts" and select the "SMB Server Platform - Which is right for your customer?")

There were plenty of interesting things to see, including the HP C3000 - a blade system sized perfectly for the mid market.  We showed this off in Mike Risse's keynotes and saw a lot of people wearing HP USB Wristbands (where will they think to put a USB key next ;-) ) with the www.EBSandC3000.com URL on it walking around. 

IBM & Intel were present with us in our booth showing the IBM BladeCenter S and Intel Modular Server which are also designed specifically for mid sized companies and provide ideal platforms for EBS.  Dell also showed how well their mini-rack solution with additional EqualLogic storage runs EBS.

Several of the media and roaming video blogging/video sites were there doing interview on all the news, including Joey Snow from Technet Edge who did this short interview with Joel Sider on some of the EBS announcements.

There was a lot more that happened today that will likely go online soon, but I wanted to get this up there so no one was left out of all the recent happenings.

- Eric Watson, Group Program Manager

PS - a couple more news tidbits have hit the web from WPC 

The following video from VarVid is a great interview of the HP C3000 midsize blade system that I talked about in 3 of my keynotes:  http://www.varvid.com/2008/07/the-hp-c3000-an.html

And there is another short interview with me: http://www.varvid.com/2008/07/eric-watson-fro.html

and a number of writes ups in various online news magazines (here's a quick sampling):

eweek http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Apps/Microsoft-Gears-up-for-Mid-Market-Server-Blitz/

IT Web (TAP customer write up) http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/software/2008/0807030807.asp?A=SBC&S=Servers%20and%20Server-Based%20Computing&O=FPIN

Search Win IT: http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid1_gci1319958,00.html#

Videos from WPC

EBS activities continue at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston this week.  Visit www.VARvid.com to see and hear partners in Houston discuss their thoughts and plans around EBS. For example, a video interview with Ed Correia of Sagacent Technologies is here, and an interview with Oliver Sommer of Trinity Computer (and EBSfaq.com and EBS car fame) is here.

Joel

EBS release coming soon

With our announcement of Release Candidate 1 yesterday, the EBS team is getting close to shipping and getting the product out to market.  There are a number of things that happen in these final stages, so let me give you an inside look at some of those stages and dates.

RTM (Release to Manufacturing)

The first thing that has to happen, of course, is the software has to be ready for worldwide use.  The product team is finishing the last couple things in the product and fixing any issues our TAP (Technical Adoption Program - customers who run our product in production before it is released and give us feedback) or Techbeta participants tell us about.  In the final stages we put our final software to the test in real customer environments - so if you buy it off the shelf, you won't be the first person to try it out.

General Availability

At this stage, the manufacturing team takes the code, burns the disks, prints docs and boxes, and gets the materials to places you normally buy Microsoft server software.  When you can go buy a product in a given market, it is "Generally Available" in that market.  This process can take a few weeks.  At the same time, OEMs are taking the RTM software and adding to their processes so customers can buy machines with the software pre-loaded at General Availability.

Product Launch  

The last stage in releasing a product is general available, is to get the word out.  If a product can be bought, but the people who want to buy it don't know it, it doesn't do a lot of good :-)  At the product launch, you can expect Microsoft and the press to come out with a lot of news about the product.

EBS key dates

This week, we announced that our Essential Business Server product launch will be November 12th.  At that time it will be released (RTM) and Generally available in major markets.  All language and localized versions of EBS will come soon in the following months.  Our goal is to have the product released in all markets as soon as possible.

As the team completes the final work on the product, we will be refining the RTM and General availability dates by market and making more specific announcements about these intermediate details.  For now, the team wanted all of our partners and customers to know more specifically when the product would be out and when Microsoft will be heavily getting the word out.  (Partners have told us they want to make sure they have that date so they can make sure they have educated themselves on EBS and can be ready when customers come asking about the product)

-Eric Watson, Group Program Manager EBS

Live from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston

EBS Release Candidate 1 unveiled - live from WPC

Hot off the presses (and a keynote demo), the EBS team announced the Release Candidate 1 version of EBS at Worldwide Partner Conference here in Houston.  As the Group Program Manager, I had the privilege of being the first to publicly show RC1 bits off to the world in the SMB keynote this morning with Mike Risse. This is microsoft’s biggest gathering of partners each year when we share some of our biggest partner news and information.

Essential Business Server has been in use in production (select companies through our TAP program) for months now, first on Beta 2, then with Release Candidate 0. RC 1 marks a major step toward shipping.

What is new in RC1?

In general an RC1 is about stabilizing the product and ensuring it is ready for a final release. But based on customer and partner feedback, we’ve introduced a few important things you asked for:

1. A rich setup including two stages to make EBS setup and configuration into your environment faster and more predictable. We’ve added a Preparation Wizard (a tool you can run independently from EBS to scan your existing environment to check for over 100 issues that could cause problems during a new installation)

         And we've added a second step, a Planning Wizard (a pre setup tool that allows users to plan out complex network topology and configuration options of their new configuration).

    2.  Sharepoint configuration and admin console integration

         With RC1, sharepoint is integrated into the setup flow.  Optimized for our ability to update, the installation includes a download of an application that sets up WSS to best practices, adds an Add On page into the admin console, and integrates Sharepoint into the Remote Web Workplace single access page.

Blogging live from Houston at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference,

- Eric Watson, EBS Group Program Manager

SCE SMLs

Windows Essential Business Server supports up to 30 System Center Essentials 2007 (SCE) Server Management Licenses (SMLs), the maximum number of SCE SMLs permitted by the SCE software.  SCE SMLs are included with the purchase of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS):

·         12 SCE SMLs with EBS Standard Edition

·         15 SCE SMLs with EBS Premium Edition

A SCE SML is not required for the operating system environment hosting SCE.  Additional SCE SMLs may be purchased for managing additional operating system environments in the EBS domain without exceeding maximum of 30 SMLs.

-Chris Grillone

The Messaging Server

The Messaging Server is the third server installed as part of a core Windows Essential Business Server 2008 deployment. Its duties include messaging and collaboration for the Windows Essential Business Server 2008 solution. For network infrastructure redundancy, the Messaging Server also acts as an additional domain controller for the domain. It also acts as a second DNS server.

Our customers told us over and over again that email is king.  Here you see an isolated mail environment and it's supporting services.

Primary Messaging Server Services

· Active Directory Domain Services – Provides central authentication and authorization services. The Messaging Server is a secondary domain controller within the Windows Essential Business Server 2008 domain;

· Domain Name Services (DNS) – Provides the foundation for Active Directory Domain Services and translates host names to IP address for network access. The Messaging Server acts as a secondary DNS server on your Windows Essential Business Server 2008 network;

· Exchange Server 2007 Client Access Role – Handles all client connections whether they come from an application, such as a Mobile Device, Web Browser, Outlook 2003 or 2007, or any other MAPI, POP3, or IMAP4 client;

· Exchange Server 2007 Hub Transport Role – Responsible for all internal Exchange Server 2007 mail flow. Forwards external e-mail to the Security Server’s Edge Transport role for processing;

· Exchange Server 2007 Mailbox Role – Primarily responsible for maintaining all Exchange Server 2007 databases;

· Forefront Security for Exchange Server – Helps provide comprehensive layered protection against viruses, worms, and spam for the Exchange Server messaging environment;

· Network Policy and Access Services – Defines and enforce policies for network access authentication, authorization, and client health;

· Terminal Services Gateway – Allows authorized remote users to connect to resources on an internal corporate or private network from virtually any Internet-connected device; and

Web Services (Internet Information Services) – Web server providing services for Outlook Web Access, Outlook Anywhere, Remote Web Workplace, and Unified Messaging.

As previously mentioned on the Security Server is the Exchange Edge role and Forefront Threat Management Gateway which perform the staging of the mail environment to provide a more secure messaging infrastructure.

Also it's worth mentioning how all of these services are managed as part of the Unified Administration of Essential Business Server.  Watch this space as we're planning to dive into much more detail on this soon.

Customer Experience Improvement Program in EBS

This is a continuation of a previous post where I spoke about the role of Windows Error Reporting (WER) in Essential Business Server (EBS).

Today, I'll be discussing Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) in EBS.  Before working at Microsoft,  I never really understood what this meant.  Various Microsoft applications ask for everyone's participation during setup or later in the program.

A cursory examination of the legalese text sounds somewhat ominous.  "Send data to Microsoft? No way!" probably answer many users.  I hope that by the end of this post, you will understand exactly what kind of data we are collecting, and why we are collecting it.

Why do we want to collect data?

First of all, why do we have this program, and why do we want this data?

At Microsoft, we try our best to determine which features and UI design would best suit user needs.  We perform usability studies, conduct other research, and take in customer feedback.  However, the best feedback we can get on our products is from the actual users.

Have you ever hit an error dialog box that could have been avoided if only the UI were designed differently?  Have you ever wished you could tell the developers which features you use the most, and which ones you avoid because they are troublesome to use? That is why the CEIP program was developed at Microsoft and why we use it in EBS.

The Customer Experience Improvement Program (a mouth-full) is exactly what the name implies;  It's a program to improve our products (or "customer experience" as they call it) by collecting anonymous data about how our products are used by actual people.  We try to collect data (the kind of data is described later on) that helps us answer specific questions (called "Business Questions") that we can use to improve the next version of the product.

Here are some of the Business Questions we might try to answer about our EBS Admin Console:

• What kinds of video resolutions do customers run at?
  • How many customers really run at the minimum resolution that we design the admin console for (800x600)?
  • How many customers use wide-screen resolutions?
  • What's the predominant video resolution used?
  • To what size do customers resize the Admin Console Window?  How many maximize the window?
• How are customers using our product?
  • Do they use the Admin Console to add new users?
  • Which pages do they use most?  Which Wizards?
  • Which tasks do they run on each page?
• What kinds of users are using our product?
  • Does more than one Administrator use the admin console at the same time?
  • Is EBS being used with many servers?  Or just our 3 servers?
  • Is EBS being used with how many users?

Knowing how our product is used helps us update the next release to meet the needs of real customers.

What kinds of data do we collect?

We collect many types of data, but it basically boils down to a few basic kinds:

• Counters:  We count how many times something occurs.  How many servers are in the environment, etc.
• Flags:  Has a specific error occurred?  Did the user cancel a wizard before completing?  DHCP in EBS enabled, or is the user using a different server/router?
• Discrete Data:  Which of the 10 options did the customer pick?
• Strings: Not used very often as there isn't much data that isn't private.  See below.

Every piece of data that we collect needs to go through a stringent process here at Microsoft to check that the data we are collecting is anonymous and non-confidential.  For example, getting string data approved is very difficult. You have to show that it will never contain personal information, a high bar – so we usually choose other ways to help us make product decisions to improve the product.

For example, say we wanted to know if we made the user name text box big enough in our New User Wizard.  Instead of collecting the usernames, which is personal information, we could collect the lengths of user names entered.

Here are some examples of data we might typically collect from a component in EBS, such as the New User Wizard.  (These might not be the exact measurements we collect, but they are measures typical of the ones we make in EBS.)

• Time Metrics
  • How long did the user take to run the New User Wizard from start to finish?
• Failure Metrics
  • What errors did the user encounter when using the New User Wizard?
• Usage Metrics
  • How often does a user run the New User Wizard?

What do we do with the data?

This was somewhat addressed above, but there are a lot of things we can do with this data.

• Frequency of feature use
  • If a feature is being used heavily, we devote more resources to improving and/or expanding the feature. 
  • If a feature is rarely used, then we either improve the feature so that it is used more, or consider cut future work on it if it looks like no one finds it useful.
  • I've been told that the Office team used their feature frequency data to help decide which/where items should be placed on the Office 2007 ribbons.
• "Pain Points"
• Where are users getting errors dialogs and/or prompts?  Knowing where the "pain points" are helps us retool the UI in future releases so that user errors are more easily avoided.

How can you participate in CEIP?

I hope that by now you realize how useful it is to participate in CEIP.  This is one of the easiest ways to give us meaningful feedback about our product (see our privacy policy for which products in EBS are configured) while requiring just about no effort on your part - just opt-in!

In EBS, there are 2 places where you can configure your participation:

First, there is the setup page:

This is the best place to opt-in because then we can gather information about what your setup experience was like, any errors and, possibly, retries you experienced when setting up our product.

After setup, you can configure this setting in the Admin Console:

If you didn't opt-in in setup, you can still start at any time.  We really appreciate the feedback from those that choose to participate!  By participating, you are helping us improve the software you use every day - improving it in the way that helps you the most.

If you have any questions or comments about the Customer Experience Improvement Program or Windows Error Reporting, please leave comments below, and I'll try to respond in a timely manner.

The Security Server

The Security Server is the second server installed in a Windows Essential Business Server 2008 deployment. It integrates with the existing Management Server and it is automatically configured for the typical needs of a <300 seat business. The Security Server offers stateful and stateless firewall protection, higher-layer protocol filtering on all traffic, and spam and malware protection for e-mail.

Primary Security Server Services

· Exchange Server 2007 Edge Transport Role – Performs multiple messaging functions including anti-spam and message hygiene, in addition to receiving all incoming e-mail and forwarding all outgoing e-mail;

· Forefront Threat Management Gateway, Medium Business Edition – (The next-generation of ISA server) Provides firewall services such as traffic filtering, and web antivirus protection for the Windows Essential Business Server 2008 solution;

· Web Services (Internet Information Services) – Web server providing services for Forefront Threat Management Gateway reporting.

When we did our research and spoke to our customers it became clear that there was a specific need for a layer of isolation between the outside world and the internal network.  The Security Server is designed to fulfill the edge role as part of the all up defense in depth approach across the EBS environment.  Think of the Security Server as the first port of call before passing any data into your protected network.

While we're on the subject of security it's worth while highlighting some more areas EBS excels in.

· Unified View of Security in EBS Administration Console –  a single view of overall security status, desktop update status, e-mail antivirus signatures, and firewall settings from a single console;

· Protection of Critical Services – internal servers are isolated behind a robust enterprise-quality firewall, providing greater control over how people may access your network;

· E-mail Security Features – EBS scans your e-mail for viruses, worms, and malicious software. E-mail is processed prior to reaching the intended recipient’s mailbox via the Exchange Edge role hosted on the Security server.  This is done using Forefront Security for Exchange, which is installed on the messaging server.  The Security server is able to manage anti-spam, IP allow lists, and domain filtering;

· Comprehensive Reporting – You can gather information about security status and Internet usage, from receiving alerts when suspicious activity occurs to reports on how company employees are using the Internet.

· Remote Web Workplace (Remote Web Workplace) – Windows Essential Business Server 2008 provides employees with remote browser-based access to e-mail, files and folders on the network, and desktop PCs from any Internet-enabled PC;

· Pre-configured Perimeter Access - Windows Essential Business Server 2008 automatically enables secure publishing for Outlook® Web Access, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, and Outlook Anywhere (formerly know as RPC/HTTPS);

· Pre-configured Management Access - Windows Essential Business Server 2008 automatically enables secure remote access to the Management Server, via the Terminal Services Gateway which is installed on the messaging server.

Finally it's worth mentioning that the Security Server is domain joined.  This enables management and monitoring of the Security Server from a single EBS Administration Console. Forefront Threat Management Gateway can also now work as the secure bridge to the trusted environment, meaning there is no requirement to synchronize directories outside of the firewall

EBS Podcast with Steven VanRoekel on Microsoft-Watch.com

Check out a recent Podcast with Steven VanRoekel the director of Windows Server Solutions.  He talks with Joe Wilcox about the challenges midsize businesses face, and how Essential Business Server builds directly from our customers feedback.

A great Podcast and definitely worth the 30 minutes to listen to.

You can listen to it here

The Management Server

Part of evaluating Windows Essential Business Server 2008 is about understanding how it all fits together.  As you hopefully know by now Essential Business Server 2008 runs on three Servers.  Today we’re going to cover what is actually installed on the management server and explain a little about its purpose.

The Management Server is the workhorse of the Windows Essential Business Server 2008 solution and is the first server installed during deployment. It hosts the Administration Console which is the management center for most Windows Essential Business Server 2008 administration tasks. The Management Server also provides the majority of the core infrastructure services for Windows Essential Business Server 2008. This includes Active Directory Certificate Services (AD-CS), Active Directory Domain Services (AD-DS), Domain Name System (DNS), and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).

In a Windows Essential Business Server 2008 solution, the Management Server is vital to helping ensure the overall health and security. It includes Microsoft System Center Essentials (SCE) 2007 for monitoring and reporting on connected devices. The Management Server also includes Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to help ensure your Windows-based server and desktop computers are always up-to-date. SCE also enables the updating of 3rd party applications as well.

Primary Management Server Services

· Active Directory Domain Services – Provides central authentication and authorization services. The Management Server holds most Active Directory Domain Services roles;

· Active Directory Certificate Services – Manages X.509 certificates for protocols such as S/MIME and Secure Socket Layers (SSL);

· Domain Name System (DNS) – Provides the foundation for Active Directory Domain Services and translates host names to IP addresses for network access;

· Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) – Service used by computers on a network to obtain IP addresses and other parameters, such as the default gateway, subnet mask, and IP addresses of DNS servers from a DHCP server;

· Print Services – Provides sharing and management for printing and imaging devices;

· System Center Essentials 2007 – Offers proactive monitoring for Windows-based computers, applications, and devices. Provides update management, software deployment, hardware and software inventorying, and comprehensive reporting;

· SQL Server Express 2005 – Data repository for Systems Center Essentials 2007;

· Terminal Services – Allows administrators to remotely access the server;

· Web Services (Internet Information Services) – Web server providing services for System Center Essentials 2007 reporting and Windows Update Services;

· Licensing – Enables management and compliance reporting for Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Client Access Licenses; and

· Windows Essential Business Server Administration Console – (The CROWN jewel of the EBS experience, we’re going to cover that more in later blog posts) offers insight into an organization’s overall health, security, and operational status. The console is also extensible, providing the ability for other Microsoft products or third-party providers to add management capabilities to the Administration Console’s interface.

There are some other noteworthy elements.  First up, with the power of Terminal Services Remote App, you’re able to access the administration console from any machine, albeit another server, or even you RDP client enabled client PC.  Also in some configurations, you can manage SharePoint, AV, and Backup Services from Microsoft and other 3^rd party vendors thought the console’s extensible UI.

All of this is deployed to best practice around specific considerations, such as security, manageability and performance.  One of the goals around creating each of these role servers is to increase your server density, whilst taking a considered view on what is the right technical configuration for a site with under 300 desktops.

EBS VLOG Demo – Adding a new user

Starting from today we’re introducing a series of short VLOGs to get you familiar with Essential Business Server 2008.  We like to refer to them as Demo Slices.

First up the add new user wizard.  We learnt a lot in our research about how a typical midsize organization worked and as you’re probably not surprised, getting consistent user accounts created was a real problem for a lot of organizations.  There was too much complexity to what we felt should be a unified task. 

Enter the add new user wizard – one of the few wizards in EBS (we like to think we connect and unify administration, hence very few wizards but more on that another post).

The goals of this wizard are;

• Provide a consistent experience for creating new users
• Give access to common variables that may change from user to user
• Allow for quick repetitive provisioning within groups and common settings
• Simply manage and assign licensing
• Show real-time progress

Window Error Reporting in EBS

My name is Michael Goulding and I'm a Software Design Engineer on the Essential Business Server team.  I'd like to explain what the WER (Windows Error Reporting) and CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program) components of EBS are, and how they can benefit you, the users of EBS.

Today, I'll talk about WER.

WER stands for Windows Error Reporting.  This is the Windows service that activates when a program crashes (or hangs).  If you have opted in to WER, then the crash information is automatically sent to Microsoft, and a query is made to see if a solution has been posted.  The data sent does not contain any private or specific customer information.

If there is a solution, it is presented to the user.  This is a very helpful because it saves the user from having to find the solution manually.  When a solution is presented to you, often there is a link directly to the update on the software manufacturer's website where I can download the patch for their software.

If you have not opted in to automatically send data, then you are asked if you would like to send the data and check for solutions.

When the data is sent Microsoft, the information is sorted into "buckets" depending on the application that crashed.  Microsoft product teams monitor their buckets and investigate the cause of the crash given the limited data sent automatically. Third parties also have the option of viewing and responding to Windows Error Reports free of charge. 

This is an awesome tool that we wish more companies outside of Microsoft would leverage.  Our team has already fixed a few obscure crash bugs in Beta 2 that weren't caught by our test team's test matrix.  We'll have a blog entry later talking about the work that goes into testing our product.

The data that is automatically sent is very general, with no PII (Personal Identifiable Information) in them, usually just a stack trace, etc.  Even then, each developer agrees to only have the crash data on their computer for as long as it takes to analyze the data.

If you do opt-in in Setup, or later through the Admin Console, we configure each of the EBS servers to automatically send error reports (we also configure some of partner products that have their own error reporting settings as well. See our Privacy Policy for more details.)

If you choose not to opt-in, each server will prompt you to send information if you ever encounter a crash on one of the servers.  However, since you are probably not logging in to each of servers on a regular basis, and crashes happen rarely, you might not see the prompts to upload the crash data and this valuable diagnostic data will not be sent.

We strongly encourage everyone to take advantage of the Error Reporting feature by opting in during setup to help Microsoft and other companies improve their software by sending in your error reports.  EBS makes it easy for you to do so, and the benefits are many. 

The EBS Configuration Store

Earlier this week we blogged about the mmsutils.exe /changeip feature for changing IP addresses on your servers.  We gave an example of what was actually happening when you updated the IP address and we mentioned some changes to the Configuration Store. 

What is the Configuration Store you ask?

As you know EBS is a Solution product.  In order to do all of the integration we bring the environmental settings together and create a partition inside Active Directory which we store all of the configuration data to.  What this means is that all of the important setup and recovery data is replicated, backed up and managed as part of your Active Directory environment.   Each Server can add to and read this information, we also use this information for recovery scenarios, server upgrades and replacements.

There are of course other uses for such a configuration store outside of just the EBS deployment and management infrastructure.  As a developer or infrastructure consultant you can begin to query and add to this configuration store, enabling you to automate or simplify your deployment process.  All you need to do is query AD.

One way to view this is to export the configuration by using the same mmsutils.exe command except this time you need to run it with the /export switch.  This will export the configuration store into an .xml file.  Once you have this file you’re able to quickly review the environmental config.  If you’re really interested you can check it out directly by using ADSIedit.  WARNING!  Changing things via ADSIedit can *really* break your infrastructure.

1. Using ADSIEdit connect to the configuration partition

2. Expand the MmsConfiguration.  Here you can see all of the elements that make up the configuration store

3. Select “Properties” on the node of interest and double click “keywords”

4. Here is the EBS Configuration data

There you have it. One of the unique features of EBS that enables you to easily predict your environments configuration and then programmatically investigate and execute decisions.

Hidden goodness - a unique tool to change IP addresses across products

So you've set up your EBS environment and now you want to change the public facing interface on your Security Server.  Perhaps you've removed your old firewall or you simply have had an environment change.  As you can probably guess it's not such a trivial task to do manually.  So in the spirit of making our solution easier and more flexible, as well as giving you more options for how you migrate from your old environment we created a command line tool mmsutils.exe.

Here's the walk through.

1. Sign in to the Security Server using your Domain Admin Credentials
2. Open cmd.exe
3. Set you current directory to be the EBS program directory in my case this was cd "\program files\Windows Essential Business Server"\
4. Next type mmsutils.exe /changeip and hit enter
   • You should see the screen below
   • 
5. Once you hit next the wizard will scan the network settings and check it has the right access to make the changes
6. Select your External adapter click next
7. Enter the new address and click next
   • 
8. Once you hit change you'll see the progress window below it shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
9. Next you should see the screen below and you're done
   • 

Now you might be wondering what actually happens when you run this wizard.  Here's the breakdown.

1. We call Server and change the IP address, subnet mask and GW (potentially DHCP)
2. We make updates to he EBS Configuration Store
   • EBS CS changes if DHCP enabled are
     • Clear ExternalNIC/NICIPAddress
     • Clear ExternalNIC/Mask
     • Clear ExternalNIC/ExternalGateway
     • Set ExternalNIC/DHCPOrStatic = DHCP
   • EBS CS changes if DHCP disabled are
     • Set ExternalNIC/NicIPAddress
     • Set ExternalNIC/Mask
     • Set ExternalNIC/ExternalGateway
     • Set ExternalNIC/DHCPOrStatic = Static