Harry B and Phillip Elder SBS Dublin Event
Sunday saw a small number of local SBSC’ers attend a session with Harry Belfast from SMB Nation. Harry made a special trip over to Dublin for the Sunday session after a successful Friday SMB Nation event at the Microsoft UK office.
Joining Harry for the presentation was Phillip Elder via the LiveMeeting from St. Albert, Alberta Canada. Phillip runs one of the most frequently hit SBS blogs and is co-author of the new SBS2008 book from SMB Nation.
After a few minutes of technical difficulty with the mic and speaker setup, we are off an running. Given the presentation was via LiveMeeting, there was still a number of question and answer sessions, tuning the event into a very interactive session. Also given the audience had all installed SBS2008 and worked with SBS in general for a number of years the presentation was somewhat free form.
There was some great conversation on managing users via GPO and specifically on the ability to assign printers through Group Policy and some of the issues that might be encountered given SBS is x64 when using X86 clients. Phillip recommends the site www.gpanswers.com for all GPO relates inquires.
The biggest conversation of the night centered around the lack of ISA in SBS 2008 and what alternatives are available. Everyone in Dublin was using a hardware based firewall like Checkpoint, Cisco, etc but Phillip and Harry presented some information on Untangle, an open source software based firewall. The solution provides SPAM, virus and intrusion protection through a subscription service.
As the meeting drew to a close, Phillip was asked his favorite part of SBS 2008 and Phillip was quick in his response. He likes the ability to custom configure the RWW to include weblinks and a link to the Terminal Services Gateway. RWW and TS Gateway are the best features of SBS2008.
This event happened as a result of the invitation to Harry from David Houston with the Ireland SBS User Group. I encourage anyone with an interest in SBS to join the user group, come out to some of the events and even make a presentation on a topic.
There is even an event happening tonight as a great first step!
SBS Ireland Leinster Event
11th December 5.30pm to 8.30pm
Remote Monitoring tools.
Presenting - Hound Dog, N-Able, and Microsoft System Center Essentials.
Places are limited for this event, so please register early.
To register click the link and login:
http://www.sbsireland.com/Events/tabid/55/ModuleID/514/ItemID/37/mctl/EventDetails/Default.aspx?selecteddate=12/11/2008
