Kent Compton : Essential Business Server

EBS has Released to Manufacturing BABY!

Kentc — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

After 3.5 years of development, I am happy to announce that we have released Essential Business Server 2008 to manufacturing (aka RTMed)! I have seen the product come along way in that time and am very proud of the work the team has put into EBS.

I have been meeting with customers these past two weeks (and will be again in the next couple of weeks) and I can say with great certainty that all of our research, planning and customer connections has paid off very well. Although I don’t like hearing about the struggles that IT Administrators have with their IT today, its nice to know that EBS 2008 will help with many of those issues.

EBS 2008 reduces the pain of installation and migration, turns unmonitored environments in managed ones, deploys patches and software, gives the business world-class remote access out of the box, enables the IT Administrator to easily setup Windows SharePoint Services as an intranet, and finally integrates with numerous 3rd party (not in our box) programs.

November 12 is the REAL big day—that’s when the product is officially launched and will be generally available to purchase.

Finally, when your friends ask about Essential Business Server just point them to http://www.microsoft.com/ebs

RC1 is complete, only one more to go!

Kentc — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:53:25 GMT

It was a big day for the product group. We signed off on Windows Essential Business Server release candidate 1 today! It will be available on Connect and the Public Preview will be refreshed very soon.

I can’t wait until we RTM (release to manufacturing) and then EBS is made available broadly so Midsize organization IT Administrators and our partners can experience all of the hard work.

RTM is just around the corner!

Some Seriously Functional Wallpaper Eye Candy

Kentc — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:59:24 GMT

I have been a huge fan of SysInternals long before Microsoft acquired the company a few year ago and rebadged its founders/super talents Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. If you ever get a chance to see/hear Mark in person I highly recommend doing so. His sessions at TechEd, etc. are always among the highest rated and his depth is unbelievable. In addition to Mark and Bryce’s speaking abilities, they have written some of the best utilities for Administrators and Developers (maybe ever!). Hyperbole intended.

One of my favorite, everyday use, Administrator must-have utilities is SysInternals’ BgInfo. BgInfo is a program that simply places data that typically requires lots of typing or clicking on a computer such as the machine’s name, its IP address, its uptime, disk space free, etc. on top of the computer’s background wallpaper. Here is a screen capture from my Essential Business Server’s Management Server:

You can download BgInfo from here (read the EULA) to see for yourself what it does to your computer(s).

Since I love EBS Administrators, I’ve gone a step further and saved my BgInfo configuration/settings file so you to can display the information in the above screenshot on your EBS servers. Download the settings file, a batch file to load the settings file, and exported a Task Scheduler setting file that enables it to run every morning at 6 AM from here (its a Windows Live Skydrive public folder) and place them on a USB flash drive. The bat file is 130K but the other two are ~3K and completely transparent (no malware).

Instructions to configure BgInfo on your EBS servers:

Create a directory named “Background Info” under “%SystemDrive%\Program Files (x86)”
Copy BgInfo.exe, BackgroundInfoRefresh.bat and EBS_Background_Settings.bgi from the flash drive to the aforementioned directory.
Launch BgInfo.exe and choose to Accept/Decline the EULA. Assuming you Accept, then close BgInfo and run BackgroundInfoRefresh.bat You should now see the system’s information in the lower left hand corner of the screen.
Open Task Scheduler (enter Task Scheduler in the start search control after hitting the Start button).
Click Import in the right-hand pane and select “Refresh Background Information.xml” file. Change the time, frequency, etc to your liking and Save
Open the All Users’ Startup folder (“%Systemdrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup”)
Change the account in which the Refresh Background Information scheduled task to someone other than me (unless you want to give me Admin access to your server <grin>).
Create a shortcut to the BackgroundInfoRefresh.bat file to make sure the background information is refreshed each time you or another IT Administrator log in.
Rinse and Repeat on the other two servers.

Enjoy.

Note: The background information will not be visible if you’re using Remote Desktop Connection with “low bandwidth” settings. Make sure your RDC settings (Experience | Desktop Background) are On so you can see this info. Otherwise, its a KVM-only solution.

You Deserve More Than "Good Enough"

Kentc — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:13:20 GMT

When I was an Enterprise Strategist and then Consultant in Microsoft's US Midwest sales district, one of the most frustrating situations I experienced were customers (mainly enterprise: 20K+ desktops, 1000+ servers) who didn't utilize technology to its fullest. I was always troubled by how much untapped IT potential customers had at their disposal. They'd spend $100K on a solution that they already owned. Mea culpa? Its possible they may have not known what they had because I didn't get to meet them until it was too late (and we as a company didn't make it easy enough to discover/utilize).

Windows Server is a great example. There are a multitude of services ("applications" in some ISV's vernacular) in Windows Server that enable it do much more than just the typical workloads such as file, print, and directory. Off the top of my head I can think of: .NET [application engine], IIS [web hosting], terminal services [there's an addt'l fee for the TS CAL], media hosting/streaming, Kerberos realms, desktop management via group policy objects, clustering, network load balancing, and remote routing. Yet, too often and too late, I'd find out my customer had purchased a one-off solution that had little to no synergy with the company's IT strategy or current initiatives (TCO/cost reduction, simplification, manageability, rapid application development, etc.). BTW, even file and directory services can do much, much more. For example, the file service supports Volume Shadow Copy snapshots which make it easy for a user to retrieve their own deleted/changed file(s) and the directory service does highly scalable DNS and LDAP.

A few years ago, Gartner released a study that revealed a typical enterprise customer had ~130 directories. This doesn't surprise me because I've met with lots of customers who have built their own directory service. They didn't necessarily think of it that way--an application needed to be build (yesterday!) and they needed a way to authenticate/authorize the people who needed access to it. Problem was the app created an additional user ID, password, password policy, helpdesk procedure to reset the password policy, security attack vector, etc. If they'd leveraged Active Directory and IIS (SQL can utilize AD too) their users could have seamlessly gotten to the app without doing anything more than clicking a hypertext link or favorite. Who wins in this case? No one except for the software vendor. The developers have to write authentication code (adding time to their schedule if they do it with security best practices in mind), the users have to remember another user ID and/or password, the helpdesk has to one-off support another user ID and/or password and the finance people spend money for what amounts to more complexity. That's a lot of User IDs and passwords! One of the understated benefits of working at Microsoft is having a single password. I only have to remember one password which is great since I have about a 1000 to remember as I browse the 'net.

What does any of this have to do with "good enough"? I'm glad you asked.

Just like their Enterprise brethren, I've found that most Midsize businesses are just scratching the surface when it comes to leveraging technology. For example, of the hundreds of companies we've visited only a handful are able to find the time to truly utilize the power of the Microsoft platform. One company, a construction materials manufacturer we visited in Vancouver, Canada is leveraging the published APIs that Microsoft's server products expose by consuming them in .NET and presenting the results via dynamic web pages in IIS/Active Server Pages. The pages show server uptime, when a user last logged in and on which machine, backup successes/failures, device management and inventory, drive space, etc. I love meeting with customers who are REALLY pushing [our] technology like this. I know that most IT Administrators I've surveyed and visited would love to have that data at their fingertips as well. We love it so much we're putting much of that functionality into EBS (accessible via the Administration Console). :-)

One of the areas I've heard good enough mentioned many times is in reference to open source software. Open source code enthusiasts emphatically believe there is no reason a company should purchase and use Microsoft software (see "Running Only on Open-Source Software". BTW, a small business company named Smartleaf is quoted liberally and their Chief Architect is Robert Thau who just happens to be one of the principal authors of Apache). I believe some open source software is (very) good and useful in the hands of the right people at the right company, but based on my research I don't believe its in the best interests of most companies (especially midsize) to widely adopt it just because the initial software acquisition cost is less. For example, I've visited some companies who are only using Windows Server for basic file (read/write) and directory services (authenticate/authorization). A few of the IT Administrators told me that they thought SAMBA and LDAP might be good enough because they're really not doing anything extravagant. They need to push Windows Server harder where it really begins to add value and reduces operational cost. In the next breath, one said the users were adding "non-company approved" software to their PCs and they were having problems as a result. We discussed locking down the company's PCs using Organization Units (create another OU for the exceptions) and group policy objects (made possible because of the deep integration between Active Directory and the Windows workstation--there are almost 3000 GPOs in Vista and Windows Server 2008*). For one that needed a new application I suggested they build it (or insist it be built) using Visual Studio's (there's even a free version) WebForms (aka ASPX pages) on IIS/.NET That would enable him to more fully utilize his company's existing Windows Server license and CALs for the web pages, application run-time engine and authentication/authorization. Please, please, please stop writing your own plumbing code!

One of out-of-the-gate visions for Essential Business Server was to expose many of these services to the midsize company's IT Administrator so he/she can consume them to better the business. I think we've done a good job putting some of this functionality into the Administrator's hand but there's a lot more we can do (and will, in future releases). I mentioned the extensibility story in a previous post and I'm excited to say there's more good news on that front. I you'd like to push the EBS' envelop even further (please do!) then I invite you to use the Essential Business Server Software Developer's Kit (SDK) and extend the Administration Console. Make great into outstanding!

*I fully expect the open source community to take advantage of Microsoft's Interoperability pledge and integrate their software work with Microsoft software. If I worked for an open source company I'd make it a high priority for my future versions.

How much do you love EBS?

Kentc — Thu, 22 May 2008 01:22:08 GMT

This much?

Oliver Sommer does. It's his company car!

Virtualizing EBS RC0

Kentc — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:25:55 GMT

The document describing how to virtualize EBS RC0 on Hyper-V has just posted.

I don't expect virtualization to be a mainstream case in most midsize businesses because we have loaded each EBS server already. That said, virtualization is a great way to "kick the tires" without having to find three x64 servers (you just have to find ONE powerful server). I am most interested in what fail-over/backup/recovery scenarios people come up with when Hyper-V and EBS both release to manufacturing.

EBS Documentation on TechNet

Kentc — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:51:45 GMT

I know its not possible for everyone to run EBS RC0 through its paces but if you're like me and good at visualizing (not virtualizing <g>) the written word into near reality then you'll be glad to know that EBS' documentation is now online. The documentation is the real deal--its the same content in its near final form that will be available when EBS RTMs. The EBS Release Candidate Reviewer's Guide is also available.

Enjoy (and let us know via the newsgroup if you find any errors).

EBS' Licensing and Pricing and Public Preview!

Kentc — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:57:00 GMT

We revealed some new Windows Essential Business Server information today. Take a look at:

Want to give EBS a spin? Sign up for the Public Preview here (the red indicates its important <g>). Note: the Hyper-V extensions for running EBS virtualized are in RC0 but please understand you'll need a beefy box (12 - 16 Gb RAM, spindles for each VM, server-class processor). This is because EBS' servers, unlike, say a file server, are fully utilized so you'll be taking a well utilized server and wrapping it in a VM with two other well utilized servers. If you decide to Hyper-V EBS, make sure you select the legacy NIC(s).

Want to talk about your experience with EBS? We want the good, bad and your suggestions for what you feel is missing. Use our Public Newsgroup. Discuss.

The Windows Essential Server Solutions Family

Kentc — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:41:04 GMT

Today, we publicly announced the product family in which Essential Business Server is a part of--Windows Essential Server Solutions--and the new family web site. The Essential Server Solution family also includes Small Business Server and the web site unveils the features and functionality in Small Business Server 2008 for the first time. It also contains a frequently requested "which to choose" page to assist you in deciding which solution is the best fit for your company or client's company.

We also unveiled a the new graphic (see below). IMHO, it does a great job of visually conveying the value of the Essential Server solutions. For those of you lucky enough to attend the Windows Server/Visual Studio/SQL 2008 launch in Los Angeles on February 27th please stop by booth C3 in the Pavilion to get a wickedly cool T-Shirt featuring both of the graphics shown in this post!

Oh, and last but not least the Essential Business Server team now has a blog (although there's no content on it as of today). I may end up posting content to that blog and sunsetting this one. Only time will tell...

'Assistance' for the IT Administrator

Kentc — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:26:02 GMT

One of my favorite features in Essential Business Server is one that simply lets the IT Administrator help his/her users without having to leave his/her desk. You might be saying, "well duh, Remote Assistance has been a feature in Windows client since the XP version", I've met with lots of Administrators who don't use it because the user either has to initiate the request or find some somewhat buried information in order for the Admin to initiate RA. As a result, they typically use other 3rd party tools (not mentioned here for fear of a corporate flogging <g>), Remote Desktop which unfortunately completely takes over the KVM so the user cannot see what they're doing, or <gasp> they get up and walk to the user's desk/computer!

Essential Business Server makes the need for those needless workarounds (although some are at least "aerobic") go by the wayside. In essence, Essential Business Server leverages a Group Policy Object change (see image) that System Center Essentials makes and leverages its own Computer and Devices page (again, see image). The combination of the two Essential Business Server features let the IT Administrator connect to the user's PC from his/her own computer (at work or at home) while letting the see what they're doing. Since (typically) >50% of the IT Administrator's day is spent helping the users this feature should really help them get more done especially if the users are remote.


Starting Remote Assistance from EBS' Administration Console		Remote Assistance GPO

Preparing the PCs for Remote Assistance

The best way to prepare your company's computers to utilize Remote Assistance in Essential Business Server is to name them something associated with the user (where appropriate). This can be a non-trivial change because as you know Netbios requirements stipulate that each computer name must be unique. That's why its not uncommon to see all kinds of crazy names for PCs none of which make the names even remotely easy to determine who actually is using the computer (my favorite: the NIC's MAC address). Inside of Microsoft because we have hundreds of thousands of computers, most users (but not all) name their PC Username-ComputerType (e.g. KentcLaptop) or some similar combination. I recommend that you do this too because doing so will make it really easy for you to look up the user's PC name from the Computers and Devices list when they call you on the phone. It also lets you know which computer has a file locked right before you kill its connection to the server so you can call them. Confession: I used to do this with MS Mail in order to start a server backup. Unfortunately, back then there was simply no way to give the user on PC "HQ-NF-12032" a head's up that they might just want to send that email they've been working on for an hour before we terminated their connection. Good times, good times. <g>

Essential Business Server video shot at IT Forum is now online

Kentc — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:11:45 GMT

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, we had a session on Essential Business Server at the IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain during November 2007. Recently, the TechNet team posted the video of that Essential Business Server session so you can see what was discussed even though you couldn't make it to Europe. Enjoy!

Windows Essential Business Server Plays Well with Others

Kentc — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 02:45:29 GMT

One area that I'm especially proud of in Essential Business Server is how the product accommodates and enhances other products from ISVs (independent software vendors) and other Microsoft product groups whose products are not in the box. "Extensibility" was was largely driven by the effort and passion of senior program manager extraordinaire, Israel Hilerio and developers Rafael Dowling (Lead), Ryan Elliot, and Olga Volgin who built it.

Embracing and enabling developers has always been a strength of Microsoft's and I think the extensibility of Essential Business Server is a great example of us helping empower Midsize companies' IT Administrators. Of course, extensibility wouldn't be worth much if there were no one developing add-ins to take advantage of the feature but fortunately, that is definitely not the case. When we announced Essential Business Server at the IT Forum in Barcelona, we listed (and demoed a few of) the ISVs that had built add-ins for the product but that news wasn't widely picked up by the various trade publications. The ISVs that we announced were Citrix, Symantec, McAfee, CA, Trend Micro, Full Armor and Quest. Our own product groups also stepped up. The products for SharePoint, Data Protection Manager and Dynamics also build Essential Business Server Administration Console add-ins. I love the fact that the list of products that can be administrated from within the Administration Console are largely the leading companies that Midsize companies are using. We are fortunate to be in a rare win-win-win (customer/Microsoft/ISV) situation!

One of the key tenants that we decided early on for the Administration Console was that the Administrator's day-to-day tasks would be mostly addressed in "our" console but we'd also intelligently "fall-through" to the native consoles for all of the included products. For example, the Administrator can see if a service in Exchange isn't performing as expected from within the Administration Console but if he/she wants to fix it he/she would click on the Messaging Server link and be taken directly to the Exchange Management Console. The same concept is being followed for extensibility. The extensibility add-ins enable let the Administrator do the day-to-day tasks like checking on whether an overnight backup was successful but if you needed to restore a server you'd be guided to the native console of the backup/restore product you were using.

There are lots of ISVs who are interested in or are already doing add-ins but we're keeping their names close to the vest. At some point, we'll have an SDK on MSDN so stayed tune.

If you'd like to see Israel explain Essential Business Server's extensibility click here. [Fast forward to 24:16]

The following screen shots illustrate the types of administrative tasks are possible. Thee screen captures below are only MOCK-UPs. The add-ins that will eventually ship will not necessarily have any resemblance or functionality that you see in the mock-ups.

[Click on the images below to see a larger version]


SharePoint Add-in		Adding a new site to SharePoint


A few example apps in Citrix Access Essentials add-in		Data Protection Manager add-in


CA's ArcServe add-in

Thank you San Diego and Chicago!

Kentc — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 04:04:04 GMT

A number development team members and myself recently went to visit [potential] Essential Business Server customers in San Diego and Chicago. Visiting the latter is always an enjoyable trip [despite the temperature <g>] because I lived in Chicago for a number of years and its always great to go "home". All of the visits were tremendously beneficial and I want to thank Joe, Lynn, Daniel, Mike, CJ, Barry, Dale, Clayton, Ellen, Alex, Tony, Matt, Stephen, Tim, Will, Mike, Terry, Chris, Faisal, Bill, Richard, Bryce, David and Elvin for letting us get a glimpse at what their IT looks like. Thank you!

Happy Holidays!

Windows Server "Centro" has a New Name

Kentc — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:11:52 GMT

I'm happy to announce that my product, after being called Windows Server code name "Centro" for over two years, finally has a name--Windows Essential Business Server!

Essential Business Server will be in Beta 2 in the next couple of months and as a daily dogfooder I have to say the code is coming along nicely.

I'll be at IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain next week so if you're in the neighborhood please stop by our booth, so I can chat you up and show you what Essential Business Server will do for Midsize Businesses.

I know I've been clandestine for quite a few months on exactly what is in Essential Business Server so I'm happy to finally reveal that today. As I'd mentioned in previous blogs, we've worked hard to combine our latest, greatest products into an integrated server infrastructure solution designed specifically for the unique needs of IT Administrators in Midsize Businesses.

There will be two versions: Standard and Premium. The Standard Edition includes Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, Forefront Security for Exchange Server, System Center Essentials, and ISA Server code name "Nitrogen". The Premium Edition includes everything in the Standard Edition plus SQL Server 2008. Essential Business Server will have a single Client Access License (user and/or device) for all included products and those CALs will be managed on the licensing tab/page in the Essential Business Server Administration Console.

Here are some functional highlights:

Integrated Security

Many defense-in-depth multi-level security features with integrated security workloads
Pre-configured and optimized protection from common threats
Integrated and automated setup limiting vulnerabilities during and arising from installation
Centralized security feature management with a consolidated view of your security state across your systems – integrating both Microsoft and third-party applications
More automated patching and update processes make it easier for you to keep systems up
and running

Less Complexity, More Control

A centralized administration console enables you to proactively manage your customers’ IT
environment from a single location while leveraging the included product's consoles for advanced tasks
The integrated setup reduces installation steps to ~5 hours!
A single server license and Client Access License for all included products greatly simplifies licensing

Predictable Platform, Designed for Midsize Businesses

Architected for extensibility to easily “plug in” other applications
Remote Web Workplace, an out-of-the-box feature, enables IT to easily set up secure
remote access
More efficient to manage, maintain, and control, and more affordable to own than
stand-alone products

We are on a path to ship Essential Business Server in the 2H of 2008.

You can read more about this announcement from our group's director at Microsoft PressPass. RSS this blog to learn when you can participate in our public beta. BTW, click on each images to see our sexy UI!

Cheers