Dan Griffin's Blog

My updated MVP profile

2009-10-28T22:12:56Z

Seattle Chamber’s Win 7 launch party

2009-10-20T18:34:51Z

The Seattle Chamber is teaming up with Microsoft to hold a Windows 7 launch party as part of its Technology Thursdays series. The event is this Thursday, October 22. I’ll be there.

More info is here.

New PtoV tool

2009-10-08T00:18:48Z

As in “Physical to Virtual”. This tool from sysinternals uses the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to take a snapshot of running (Windows) machine and turn it into a virtual machine hard disk (VHD - Microsoft’s format for Virtual Server and Hyper-V) file.

Pretty cool. I’ve used Acronis for this previously, which is not free, but has been around a lot longer and correctly handles dicey scenarios like moving production systems off of SCSI disks, etc.

SMB Nation: post-mortem

2009-10-05T18:39:42Z

Having once again safely escaped Vegas, I’m back at the office reflecting on my first experience with the SMB Nation conference. In summary, if you want to connect with the IHVs, ISVs, IT consultants, and trusted advisors in the SMB market, this is the place. It’s not a huge conference - I heard an attendance number around 700 - especially relative to the number of independent IT consultants out there servicing the SMB market, but it’s effective.

Other vendors that have cool products that I haven’t already blogged about:

StorageCraft ShadowProtect - looks to be roughly equivalent to the latest built-in NT Back-up (now known as wbadmin) if you’re running Windows Server 2008 R2. If you’re not, or if you’re using virtualization technologies other than Hyper-V, this product is worth considering, and it has an excellent reputation among the SMB IT community.

SoftLayer - this is a cloud computing infrastructure company. I mention it because they seem to be competing against Amazon/AWS, and in some ways Microsoft and Google. But if you’re looking for more of a hands-on service, you won’t get that directly from the big guys.

BackupAssist - notable because they have marketing material specifically targeting the Hyper-V back-up scenario.

Cloud Services Depot - outsourced help desk. After all, what IT technician has time to answer every end-user question? (Or is that like admitting that all software has bugs?)

SMB Nation - Day 1

2009-10-03T07:18:15Z

Wow - SMB Nation is one of those drink from the fire hose conferences, especially when it comes to good old professional networking.

Had some good vendor conversations today, including with Seattle-based disaster recovery vendor Symform. They’re generating a lot of buzz among the MSP community, as is Zenith Infotech.

It’s good to see that IBM is here promoting Lotus Foundations, although SMB Nation’s roots are in the SBS community, so I’m guessing that Foundations will have an uphill battle selling into this crowd. Still, competition is a great thing, and Notes is a product with a strong history.

Finally, saw an SBS 2003 to 2008 upgrade demo. It was conducted by some IT consultants that clearly really know their stuff, but it’s nevertheless a quite complicated procedure. I can see customers migrating onto 2008 for hardware refresh, although I’d still have to wonder if the software upgrade is worthwhile. Again, it’s pretty complex, and 2003 works so well, I can see 2008 being a hard sell to existing SBS customers.

Also want to shout out to Kortek Solutions and MPECS Inc. - more IT solution providers who really bring the expertise and passion that customers need.

SMB Nation - Day 0

2009-10-02T05:05:16Z

Thanks to Calyptix Security for throwing a pre-conference reception. The Calyptix product offering seems interesting - it’s firewall specifically designed for SBS 2008 deployments. Hope to learn more about it in the next couple of days.

Otherwise, just observing some trends unfolding in the MSP space: opportunities in the form of customers ready to upgrade to Win 7, plus new disaster recovery solutions that promise to be cheaper and easier. And, no surprise here, the continuing push to get customers onto monthly service subscription cycles, rather than up-front deploy and forget.

SMB Nation - Vegas

2009-10-01T19:01:05Z

Heading to a small-biz conference in Vegas. What more is there to say?

Well, for one thing, I’m looking forward to connecting with some of the other MVPs, particularly those on the Small Business Server side (I’m on the Enterprise Security side). And it turns out there will be no shortage of SBS MVPs presenting this weekend! Here’s a shout out:

Can’t wait to meet and greet!

DirectAccess IPD guide

2009-09-15T23:42:24Z

Microsoft’s Infrastructure Planning and Development guide for DirectAccess is now available in Beta form, the intent being to solicit feedback. Having already crossed this bridge myself, I recommend taking this opportunity to read the guide and ask questions if you think you may find yourself tasked with investigating, deploying, or integrating with DirectAccess. It’s a complex, albeit compelling, technology (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it’s a compelling application of several complex technologies).

What is DirectAccess? Well, I won’t be able to do it better justice than this TechNet video. But briefly it’s an always-connected roaming user solution for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

One additional observation, since the developers in the audience may be asking, “I’m not an IT guy; why should I care?” Because developers should be writing their software to (a) operate securely regardless of whether it’s behind a firewall, (b) smoothly transition between connected and disconnected states, and (c) be compatible with IPv6.

Microsoft pushing OEM SBS08 sales

2009-09-11T14:40:05Z

The link is here. Supposedly, you can get new Small Business Server 2008 systems from Dell and HP for $1300, which isn’t bad. Two caveats, though:

Depending on the number of users, and whether you’ll be running Exchange and SharePoint, 4 GB of RAM may not be enough.
What we need is a decision matrix for customers who are, or who should be, considering hosted (i.e. outsourced/offsite) Exchange and SharePoint, as opposed to running everything onsite. I’m a fan of the hosted option, since it reduces the IT support burden that is inevitably borne at least partially by the customer.

Seattle Chamber Smart & Simple Conference

2009-09-09T22:10:28Z

Smart & Simple Strategies for Small Business, presented by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and Microsoft, is taking place next Wednesday. I’ll be there, speaking on the security panel!