http://community.crn.com/groups/smb-channel-voice/blog/2009/11/11/cost-cutting-what-are-the-wrong-things-to-cut

Please check it out and contribute to the discussion.

Consider for a moment how most good SMB IT Professionals work with the end users.  Most of us are the clients trusted business advisor. The clients look to us not to buy a specific product, but for a solution from someone they trust.  When we go to a client with a solution and it’s cost, we are telling them that this solution will solve their business problem (whatever that might be).  When vendors offer steep discounts and they tell the client about it, it effectively cheapens the relationship all round.  It makes the client WANT to bargain with us for “a better price”.  It’s telling the client that “my price is not my price” when in fact we should be putting the right price on the table to start with and going forwards from there.

No – sorry – I don’t discount my price.  I only offer alternatives that vary the price which may include reducing the services or products I supply as part of the solution.  When vendors realise this and come to understand just how we work, then I suspect we will all will win, the clients, the resellers AND the vendor.

So vendors… we don’t really care what the “special of the month” is.  Not unless we happen to need it right now to solve a clients business problems.  We don’t care about YOUR sales targets. We care about providing the right solution for the client at the right price.

Have a think please.  If you disagree with me then please tell me what you think about this.  Is discounting at a vendor level a good thing or a bad thing?

Now I’ve not had a chance to try this new support just yet, but have been using BackupAssist both personally and in our clients networks now for many years, I’m confident in the quality that Linus and his team have produced.  Give it a go – it helps us retain tape as a viable backup media for our clients networks.

It sat there asking me to logon… I did but I’ve never set a password for it.  Ok – not good…. I’m sure I didn’t set a password during install.  Anyway a little bit of googling gave me the answer.  The default Administrator password for Windows Storage Server 2008 is wSS2008!

091112 – An Introduction to SharePoint

Topics covered:

- What is SharePoint.

- Why use SharePoint.

- Versions of SharePoint.

- Basic operation of a SharePoint site.

Presenter: Robert Crane

Date: Thursday 12^th of November 2009

Time : 10.00am (Sydney, Australia time)

Duration: 30 minutes

Cost: Free

Level: 1 (Basic)

Prerequisites: None

Details

This webinar will help you to understand what SharePoint is and how it can be used in a business environment. It will provide you with a basic understanding of SharePoint technologies and the versions that are currently available.

Registration:      To register send an email to director@ciaops.com.

Comments

This will the first in a complete series about SharePoint.

A while back now, IBM launched a competing product to the SBS product line called Lotus Foundations Server. Now this week they have announced an open beta for v1.2 of their product and I’m going to go sign up for it. I’m keen to see if they will accept me first of all, and then second, I’m keen to see what all the fuss is about.  Is Lotus Foundations Server really a product that my clients could use, and if so what level of knowledge will I need to support it for their business environments? Would it be worth changing my business model away from a Microsoft centric platform and investing time in learning something new?  These are all questions that need to be considered in the quest to serve our customers better.

If you want to find out more about this then please check out this post here and sign up yourself.  If you get in please let me know – I’d be keen to understand more about the product.

Ok – two choices – my entire server from back or try out the MS repair guides.  I decided to follow the MS repair guide for SBS 2008 and in particular the link for repairing WSUS installation.

I followed the steps given in the article and used the repair DVD (DVD#2) to reinstall WSUS.  I issued the command to start the WSUS installation and it quickly returned to the command line and then NOTHING happened on screen for a period of time. I was beginning to suspect the command had failed until I looked at task manager and was able to see MSIEXEC was busy doing something.  I figure that it was just taking its time and left it be for now.  The only way you know the install is complete is if you watch for the MSIEXEC to disappear from the task list. Once it had installed I deviated from the

In my original installation I had used the SBS wizards to relocate the WSUS from the C: drive to my F: drive.  I ran the wizard to do this again and it moved over nicely.

Given I had a backup copy of the database I figured I’d try to restore it over the top of the existing database.  To do that I had to stop a few services first.

Stop the Update Services service.

Stop World Wide Web Publishing Service

I ran the SQL Server Management Studio Express (SQL SMSE) tool from the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 program group as ADMINISTRATOR and told it to connect to \\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query using Windows Authentication.

I then right clicked on the SUSDB inside the SQL SMSE and selected Tasks, then Restore Database, then from file. I then selected to restore from File and located the SUSDB.bak file. I then went to Options tab and selected “Overwrite the existing database” and then press Ok to start the restore.  It took 10 minutes to do the restore on my server but this might be as it’s an older server.

Once restored, I then started the Update Service and the World Wide Web Publishing Service once more.

I went into the WSUS console and found everything back the way it was before the upgrade. I checked the SBS 2008 console and found it too was working once more with the Updates section correctly reporting everything I needed.

Now – I’ve not attempted the upgrade to WSUS 3.0 SP2 again just yet – I’ll leave that for the moment and review the logs to see what might have caused it to fail.

In 2006, at TechEd Australia, the SBS MVPs got the opportunity to present a day full of SBS session. This session is about SBS 2003 R2 and in particular the Exchange component of the server. Henry delves deep inside Exchange and gives practical tips on how you can avoid problems. Learn from the man who has done many Exchange recoveries in the past and don’t make the same mistakes that others have.

Duration: 1 hour

1. CIO Wiggins

2. Windows 7

3. “The IT guys are going to like this”

Check it out it’s a load of fun. http://www.youtube.com/user/Win7FilmFest