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Body: Yup – that’s right.  This is the last call for anyone that has not yet picked up their SBS 2003 SP1/ISA 2004 Media Kits.  December 31, 2007 is the end date for Microsoft to supply these and if you have not yet ordered your kit then you need to do it NOW! For more details on how to get your copy of the media, see this link from the official SBS blog http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2007/05/25/upgrading-existing-microsoft-windows-small-business-server-2003-sbs-installations-to-sbs-2003-sp1.aspx  Don’t say you were not warned! Category: SBS 2003 Published: 1/12/2007 11:08 AM

SBS 2003 R2 is in beta now and the Premium Edition contains SQL 2005 Workgroup Edition which is nice.  It will give forward looking customers the chance to get all the great features of SQL 2005… that is once their application vendor supports it.  What do they do in the meantime if they need SQL 2000 then?  Well – based on the information on the MS website, they can do one of two things… Option 1http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003/sbs/evaluation/faq/sql2005.mspx  suggests that they downgrade their SQL to SQL 2000 Standard Edition (I guess they have not figured out fulfilment just yet) Q. What do … Continue reading SBS2003 R2 SQL 2000 and SQL 2005 Downgrade Rights

Today we had an interesting issue on a client site – the client runs SBS 2003 – they sent out an email blast to 60 of THEIR customers but they mistakenly put everyone in the cc line instead of the bcc line.  What then happened was a deluge of emails that bounced back to them and continues even now.  Our IT team immediately checked out our clients SBS server and could not see a problem, until we realised that the mail was coming from one of their customers servers.  We investigated and the based ont he MX records, it gave … Continue reading Patching – needs to be even simpler please Microsoft

My wife and I have been planning to redecorate our formal lounge / dining room – we don’t use it for these functions, but instead we’re using it as a home office / library.  Now we want to add another function to it and at the same time redecorate.  With our kids getting older now, we decided that we want to use this as a parents retreat / home cinema.  So I’ve been shopping this weekend to get some of the components.  I won’t bore you with the hassles we are about to go through with ripping up the carpet … Continue reading Media Centre PC for home – LCD TV selection.

I’ve just returned from a quick trip to Darwin – my first visit there.  Man was it hot… we landed at 10:35pm at night and it was still 30c outside and sticky.  I was asked to be involved with Microsoft in presenting to the reseller community in Darwin about SBS – do a summary of the 2 hour network build and also present my spin on Dean Calverts excellent session on how he builds his business around SBS 2003 and a session on mobility around SBS 2003.  What I learned going over Deans presentation was that we do many things … Continue reading Darwin Special MS Partner / End User Presentation

In scenes reminiscent of the space shuttle launch, the SBS Dev team this morning had their release meeting for the Beta of SBS2003 Service Pack 1.  The managers from the Dev/Test/Program management team and the user education managers Lead program managers were all asked to signify their signoff of the release of this beta as they went around the room responding “Go“ when asked about their specific teams focus areas. Incorporating Windows 2003 Service Pack 1, Exchange 2003 Service Pack 1, various other hotfixes and security patches, this represents the first major release of code for SBS since it’s launch … Continue reading “Redmond, we have a green light on SBS2003 Service Pack 1 Beta”

OK – yesterday was one of those days that I’d like to do over again.  It started with a very late night before when I went to the airport to pickup my in-laws and their flight was delayed a few hours – ultimately I got home in the early hours of the morning and therefore had little sleep.  My first appointment was an 8am visit with one of my long term clients and went well – planning for a 170 location VPN solution, VLAN’s in the head office and cool stuff like that.  I got into the office around 10am and … Continue reading When is a virus not a virus???

Ok – my preference for installations of SBS2003 is to do a totally fresh installation.  However there are times when this is not possible due to budget contraints or time limitations.  I’ve had two such customer scenarios this week that needed to have the inplace done, one for budget reasons, and the other for time constraints.  So we’ve used the inplace upgrade method.  Before using the in place upgrade method I’d considered a few things. 1. Did I install SBS2000 on this system? I look at this as I want to ensure that it’s a system that I’ve controlled for … Continue reading SBS2000 to 2003 Upgrades – a few considerations…