Month: October 2004

This information comes from the Microsoft “Securing your SBS2003 Network” document, which can be found at: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/f/1/1f15a874-f696-4992-b5ad-b1e7b258de1c/SecuringSBSnetwork.doc Services and TCP Port Numbers Service TCP Port Number Inbound Access Recommendations E-mail 25 Allow if you are using Exchange to receive Internet e-mail. Web server 80 (required for HTTP requests for your site) and 443 (required for HTTPS requests using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which secures communications from your server and a Web browser) Allow if users on the Internet need to access specific Web-site services on your server. Web-site services that use port 80 and/or port 443 include the following: -Microsoft® … Continue reading SBS2003 – Required Ports

With Halloween just around the corner, I will avoid the lure of doing a song about goblins and witches. Lord, knows, we have enough virus and worms to deal with. OTOH, it was back in 1984, just 20 years ago, that several significant events happened in the computer world – the Apple Macintosh and the IBM PC AT were introduced (who can forget the famouse Apple Mac commercial during the Super Bowl), DOS 3.0 was released, the 3.5″ floppy made its first appearance, Dell Corp was founded, as wellas probably the first public warning about computer viruses.Musically, the Pointer Sisters … Continue reading 2004-10-30 “Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band”

Two things to note: First, Dave points out that: there have been a number of posts for help with W32Time errors in SBS 2003.  It appears that two KBs on these issues were released this week.  The first one seems to directly address the problems I’ve seen posted (and seen on my server), and the second references a packet filter for NTP that is incorrectly created by the CEICW. Here are the links:1. Time synchronization may not succeed when you try to synchronize with a non-Windows NTP server in Windows Server 2003http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;8754242. The server cannot synchronize with an external time source after you run  the Configure … Continue reading Dealing with W32 Time errors in SBS2003

DonDinCT asked this great question on the NG: “When I generate a certificate for my server during installation, does it only work for the default web site ?  Do I need to create a seperate certificate for each web site that I add ?” And John gave this equally great response: The certificate is automatically added to the companyweb and default web sites. You can manually add it to others if you would like. If you want to add the existing one: Right click on the site and go to properties Go to security tab Click the server certificate button … Continue reading Generating web cert for other sites on the server

The following info came from the SBS Product team on the best way to change the password on the Administrator account: To change the password, however, you can use any of the methods that any user would use to change their own password, plus some others. For example:1. When logged in as Administrator, press Ctrl-Alt-Del, click the “Change > Password” button, and change the password.— or —2. Open Active Directory Users and Computers, find the Administrator object, right-click on it and select “Reset Password.”Note that option 1 is preferred, as option 2 forces the password to be reset, which can cause the account … Continue reading How to change Administrator password

Remember, removing a computer from the Domain not only permits you to rename the machine, you destroy all machine-specific configurations you made so may have to be re-configured manually.– Remove workstation from Domain– Remove machine account using SBServer Server Management– Verify no record exists for that name in DHCP– Verify no record exists for that name in DNS– Change machine name– Rejoin Domain

The details can be found here (thanks to the M&M queens!)http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?PageContentID=10&tabid=174I’ve skinnied their instruction down just for quick reading:: 1. Download & Install IMF – go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C1B08F7B-8CAF-4147-B074-8C9C8F277071&displaylang=en In ESM, go to Global Settings, right click Message Delivery, Properties, tab Intelligent Message Filtering, and configure your various thresholds. Example: set gateway treshold to 5, blocking messages to Archive and SCL rating to 2. Then all email with an SCL rating equal or greater than 5 will be Archived. All email with an SCL rating greater than 2, will be moved to the user’s Junk E-mail folder. You will want to experiment with the treshold settings.  Note: every … Continue reading Installing IMF and displaying SCL rating

There are many questions in the NG about what to tell your ISP in order to have email forwarded to your SBS server. Here’s a sample Q&A: Q: I followed the SBS 2003 setup suggestion, and my internal domain name is called abc.local. I have also registered an Internet domain name xyz.com. I’m now ready to move from external POP3 accounts to an internally hosted Exchange mailboxes. The domain folks are ready to reconfigure the MX record, and they want to know the “name of the server” and it’s static IP address. If the server name is “bubba”, do I tell them to use bubba.abc.local or … Continue reading How to setup your MX record

[This was posted in the public NG on 10/23/2004 by Jeff] I have information on Swing Migration that I can send out to you if you want to visit www.SBSmigration.com to request it.Swing Migration is a method for upgrade/migration that I’ve recently documented and created as a complete project package called a Swing It!! Kit. It’s a set of documentation that walks you through an entire process to move the entire configuration identity from the old SBS to a new SBS or Windows server.You get a clean server installation, but the same domain name, same server name, same AD, same … Continue reading Overview on Jeff’s Swing Migration

Often in life, as well as with dealing with computers and customers, things don’t always turn out the way we expect them to. And, we’re often surprised to see how the simple things in life may lead to the best solution. SBS was one of the surprises for me. When I first started working as a consultant, I went looking for a product to fit the needs of the type of customers I wanted to target. What a surprise it was to find SBS. I mention this because there have been several recent posts from “new” SBS’ers who cannot believe … Continue reading 2004-10-23 “Rainbow Connection”