Outlook Web Access can be used to view or open any file in a shared folder on the servers in an office run by Small Business Server 2008.

Small Business Server 2008 improves many things about remote access to an office network. The main screen for Remote Web Workplace makes it easy to use Outlook Web Access or connect to an office computer, with nothing extraneous to confuse anyone.

Outlook Web Access in Exchange 2007 is so much improved that some people will use it instead of installing Outlook to access their Exchange mailbox. I just discovered another feature which is so good that it will figure prominently when I talk about SBS from now on.

There is a new "Documents" button in the Exchange 2007 version of Outlook Web Access.

Once it is configured, anyone can click on "Open Location" and put in the name of a shared folder in UNC format - \\ServerName\SharedFolder. The window on the right shows the name of the subfolders and files. At any point a location can be added to Favorites by clicking a button at the top. The folder names are shown at the top in a breadcrumb display to make it easy to navigate.

Most office users will be looking for files created in Word, Excel, or Acrobat. Double-clicking on a .DOC, .XLS, or .PDF file launches it in those programs, if they're installed on the remote computer.

Right-clicking on the file name provides the option to view the file in Internet Explorer or send it by email.

Documents cannot be saved directly back to the server - this is only a method to retrieve files.

This is extraordinary! I'm looking forward to introducing my SBS offices to this feature.

TECHNICAL NOTES

This feature is not enabled by default in SBS 2008; it has to be set up by opening Exchange Management Console with administrator privileges and opening Server Configuration / Client Access. Right-click on OWA and click on Properties to see the options for Remote File Servers. I was following the instructions in Eriq Oliver Neale's wonderful new book Windows Small Business Server 2008 Unleashed but found one error. When you click the Allow button, the only allowed entry is the name of the server, not the network path to a shared folder. (And don't use the FQDN for the server unless that's necessary for some reason - the presence of a period in the server name will cause it to conclude that you've designated a FQDN and you'll have to add the domain suffix in the next section of the window.)

There are a huge number of ways to tweak the behavior of various file types to prevent opening something or require the web viewer for something else. The defaults are just fine for small offices. Once I figured out what to put in the Allow dialog, it started working instantly, with the exception of the web viewer for PDF files. That's on the list of things to fix someday.

Labels: network, Office, Outlook, remote, SBS

posted by bruceb at 1/05/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

One glitch in the SBS 2008 migration nagged at me - it didn't make sense that the computers with the individual version of Windows Live OneCare were not reporting in to the SBS 2008 console, which tracks the security status of all the workstations on the network.

This is a sample of the new console for managing workstations in SBS 2008.

A handful of the computers running OneCare were able to get through and the server reported they were secure. I looked in vain for firewall exceptions for ports or services that were different on those.

It took a while to track it down, and in the end it wasn't the firewall after all.

Many things on a Windows Server network are controlled by "group policy," a very extensive set of rules that can be applied from the server to the workstations to control everything from network communications to your browser home page. There are thousands of settings that can be closely controlled with group policy.

Windows Server 2008 and SBS 2008 introduced hundreds of new group policy settings, but the workstations do not recognize them until new Group Policy Client Side Extensions are installed (Microsoft KB 943729). The group policy extensions are available through the Windows Update system but apparently are never offered as anything other than an optional update - ignored by OneCare and apparently ignored by WSUS, the system built into SBS 2008 to keep workstations up to date.

Sure enough, most of the computers had never installed the Group Policy Client Side Extensions. When the update was installed, the SBS 2008 console reflected their secure status about an hour later.

One more thing for the SBS migration checklist!

Labels: computers, domains, network, OneCare, SBS, security

posted by bruceb at 12/08/2008 12:06:00 AM | permalink

Let me leave a few notes behind about some of the glitches during the migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008. I don't have many answers but perhaps it will help someone to know that I'm able to commiserate with them. (Loyal clients - this is not aimed at you and it won't help you get your work done. I'll be back to general interest topics next week!)

As background: I was migrating an SBS 2003 server with a very basic configuration - no ISA, no use of Sharepoint, a single NIC and external firewall, and no particular pre-existing issues.

MIGRATION WIZARD

Microsoft provides a detailed guide to the migration procedure. (Have you noticed that Microsoft's documentation has been getting better and better lately? There's much less ambiguity about what to click next - each step is described in precise and accurate detail.) The guide was great.

SBS 2008 begins a migration when a USB stick with an answer file is inserted in the new server before the SBS 2008 installation starts. Several people have reported that the USB stick has to be present when the server is turned on or SBS 2008 is likely to miss it. After installation, the first and most important item on the SBS 2008 is the "migration wizard" that leads through all the steps required to be successful.

I was about two-thirds of the way through the wizard when I took a break and installed the Server 2008 updates that were waiting. When the server restarted, the migration wizard crashed with a mysterious error that proved impossible to fix. I researched it and got nowhere. I removed a couple of the updates that conceivably might have unsettled something and got nowhere.

The wizard never came back to life. Fortunately most of its steps only lead to help files that describe the process for actually accomplishing each task by going into AD or MMC consoles or the like. I think - I think - I was able to finish the migration and cover the remaining steps without the wizard. There is still room for some surprise glitch - I'm going to cross my fingers when I demote the source server.

MAIL MIGRATION

I expected the mailbox migration to be slow but was still surprised. The Exchange 2003 mailbox store was about 25Gb after I pruned and archived as much as I could from the biggest mailboxes. The mailbox move took just about ten hours.

PUBLIC FOLDERS

I had no luck moving the public folders, and didn't really expect to, given the reports I had read. That may have been the result of a pre-existing glitch on the source server - this server, like several other of my SBS 2003 servers, throws up an error message when I try to do anything to the public folders in Exchange Server Manager. I've researched that one, too; I've removed the SSL requirement from EXADMIN in IIS, and a few other things suggested in other places, to no avail. I exported the public folders to a PST and stored them for now, since public folders were not being actively used and may not need to be implemented at all on the new server.

BACKUP

The most mysterious problem involves the backup system. The firm had been using ShadowProtect to back up to an NAS and two rotated external Maxtor hard drives. The backup built into SBS 2008 looks like it will be just fine but it does not directly back up to an NAS. I connected a Maxtor drive, formatted it, and ran the backup wizard. Hmm. Error message at the very end.

Since the message says "Cannot configure backup schedule," I started trying every scheduling option - once a day, twice a day - as well as swapping in the other (identical) hard drive, and couldn't get anywhere. I couldn't find anything in the logs at all. I got the flavor that it might be caused by the server disliking the external hard drives.

I'd like to talk to the person who thought it would be helpful to write: "If this problem persists, contact the person who provides you with technical support." It made me irritable.

ShadowProtect claims that the current version will back up SBS 2008 servers. With any luck I'll be able to install that and never know the answer to this one.

PHONE PASSCODES

This isn't a glitch, just something to warn your users about. By default, Exchange 2007 enforces a new passcode requirement on Windows Mobile phones (and iPhones) syncing with the server. Users are forced to set up a four-digit password that will be tapped in every time the phone is used. I'm sympathetic to all the reasons that this is an important security measure, but I'm also sympathetic to the desire to keep my job and not be fired by the attorneys who began flipping out immediately. It's possible to turn the requirement off in Exchange Management Console / Organization Configuration / Client Access / Windows SBS Mobile Mailbox Policy, which then allows it to be turned off on the phones. The iPhone balked and refuses to relax, even after the policy was changed, which apparently is a known glitch.

SERVER CERTIFICATE

I was determined to allow my users to continue to use the familiar URL for remote access, even though it didn't match the naming scheme preferred by SBS 2008. The email domain is www.bigfirm.com, say, and my users have been reaching RWW at www.bigfirmnet.com for years. I have a GoDaddy SSL certificate for www.bigfirmnet.com and heck, I just like it. Plus I've got migrations coming up where I know it will be difficult to work with the web hosting company to set up a subdomain and MX records for the primary domain name.

The Internet address wizard insists on getting the primary address and only allowing RWW to be reached at the same address with a prefix - remote.bigfirm.com or something like it. I had to work around that by lying to the wizard that the primary domain name was bigfirmnet.com, which (in Advanced Settings) would then let www.bigfirmnet.com be the remote access address.

When that was in place, then I could set the primary email addresses back to @bigfirm.com in Exchange Manager / Organization / Hub Transport / Email address policies / Windows SBS Email Address Policy.

ONECARE

Windows Live OneCare has been a trusted friend but it does make me a little crazy sometimes. SBS 2008 expects to get feedback from each workstation about its security status and apparently OneCare isn't set up to let that happen. So far I haven't found the firewall port or other hack that will let the workstations report in, so they're all showing in the server console as "unknown." I can't even find a definitive statement that it's possible or impossible with the standalone version of OneCare. I'm not going to install OneCare for Server so I may just not get good feedback in the console until we switch to Trend Micro. I was hoping to procrastinate on that - everyone has been used to OneCare for a long time - but change happens.

DRIVE MAPPING

Drive mapping is supposed to be accomplished in Group Policy now. I was comforted that other people online said they had trouble with it, because I couldn't make a mapped drive appear on a workstation no matter what I did in Group Policy. After a fruitless half hour of researching and trying things, I put the nice simple logon script in the folder and assigned it to everybody. I feel kind of crude, but it works.

SHARED PRINTERS

Another little headache - it was easy to install 64-bit drivers for network printers and share them from the server. At least, it was easy once I stopped clicking on the "Add printer" button and getting an "Access denied" message when it tried to set up a TCP/IP port. Right-click in the Printers folder and click on Run As Administrator / Add printer - ah, that's intuitive! Sheesh.

Out at the first workstation, I was reminded forcibly that there were no 32-bit drivers around, so I downloaded the corresponding 32-bit drivers for a few of the printers (a couple of HP Laserjets and a Toshiba copier) and went to add them on the server using Additional Drivers on the Sharing tab. The server thought that was a terrible idea - it never agreed that the 32-bit drivers corresponded with the 64-bit drivers. (I read somewhere that it was known problem with some HP drivers but I had the same epxerience with the Toshiba drivers.) So I parked the 32-bit drivers where I could get to them, went back to the workstation, and browsed to the 32-bit drivers when the workstation tried to connect to the shared printer and rejected the 64-bit drivers. Nope! The workstation also didn't agree that it was a match. It was the closest match, trust me - these were the identical 32-bit and 64-bit drivers for the same model running the same PCL level.

Fortunately, we already had reason to be running a Windows XP virtual machine on the second server with Hyper-V. I've shared all the printers from there and I bet it's rock solid.

A migration is a complex project! I think it went smoothly. These are the kind of glitches that happen constantly, every day at every level. Some of them will happen to me the next time, others will come up that are brand new. It's the nature of IT today. With luck I'll bring good instincts and a lot of experience and use them both the next time I come to your office!

Labels: computers, domains, mail, Microsoft, mobile, network, OneCare, printers, SBS, security, software

posted by bruceb at 12/05/2008 12:09:00 AM | permalink

More notes on the new release of Small Business Server 2008.

Small businesses have more options than ever before as they grow to 5-10 people and begin to think about adding a server or two. Some businesses will be able to reduce costs by using a hosted mail service and only using a server onsite to share files and printers to a small group. But that won't be right for all businesses - SBS 2008 has across-the-board improvements in an already impressive product and it will still be the right choice for many offices looking to step up to a new level of technology as they grow, as well as for offices ready to migrate from an old server that's ready to retire.

Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 was the first polished release of a complex suite of products tied together with various wizards and limitations designed to make it easier to manage. It combined Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, and Sharepoint, plus ISA Server (a complex firewall manager) and SQL Server for LOB database applications.

One of the best features in SBS 2003 was a management console that brought together virtually every administrative tool that an IT person might need, from a variety of places - Microsoft Management Consoles for various network services (DNS, DHCP, Active Directory, Group Policy), Exchange System Manager, IIS, and more, plus specialized screens for easy access to all the housekeeping necessary for users, computers, monitoring, and other tasks.

The new management console in SBS 2008 does not cover as many services as the SBS 2003 console. Instead, SBS 2008 requires far more use of the individual administrative tools built into Windows Server 2008. The SBS Console is, however, deceptively simple - it was the center of most of my setup chores and will cover 95% of the day-to-day network administration.

The redesigned consoles for Server Manager and Exchange Management Console aren't as visually pretty but they've been extensively reorganized to make them easier to use.

Make no mistake, though: although I keep talking about how easy it all is, the reality is that Small Business Server has never been easy enough for a non-technical person to set it up correctly. The IT world is getting more complex and SBS 2008 reflects that - I had to visit some very deep places indeed to accomplish a pretty straightforward migration.

Labels: Microsoft, network, SBS

posted by bruceb at 12/02/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

I spent the weekend migrating a 20-person law firm to new servers running Microsoft Small Business Server 2008. If I did my job right, the first impression on Monday morning will be that very little has changed - folders with firm documents will open up, Outlook will show mailboxes full of mail, and people will get to work. (Crossing fingers. Knocking on wood.)

In the next few weeks I'll tell you about some of the things that have made a very positive impression so far. Without making a big deal about it, Microsoft has developed a consistent look for many of its screens for administrators, just like the ribbon bars that first appeared in Office 2007 and are now being used for many Microsoft programs. It's a clean, intuitive layout.

The first improvement that will really be noticeable at the law firm will be when the attorneys connect remotely to the new server. Here's a screen that will be familiar to many of you - the first screen that appears when an Small Business Server 2003 user goes to the web site for remote access. It's not bad, except that the only choice that anybody ever clicks on is Remote Web Workplace. All the rest of the words and choices are superfluous.

This is the same screen in Small Business Server 2008.

After logging on, these are the choices in SBS 2003.

There's nothing wrong with that, but again, only two things matter - access to Outlook, and remote access to an office computer. The rest rarely matters to anyone trying to get their work done. Here's the same screen in SBS 2008.

The same design choices carry through to all the screens that I will see as the administrator. There are a lot of new places for me to look for things and a lot of new things to learn, but the design changes will hopefully make it easier to absorb.

Labels: Microsoft, network, SBS

posted by bruceb at 12/01/2008 01:35:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 will be released on November 12. Veterans of SBS 2003 are finding many things to like in the new version; I'll have more to say about it in the next few weeks. Here's an early look at the features and changes in SBS 2008.

At about the same time, Windows Live OneCare will be upgraded to version 3. If you already use OneCare, the new version will presumably be sent to you automatically, it will restart your computer, and it will cause enough glitches that I'll be busy on the phone for a few days. I don't have any details about the new version yet but I'll keep you posted about what to expect.

(Loyal OneCare users - I've spent some time in the last few days with the latest security suites from Symantec/Norton, ZoneAlarm, and TrendMicro. Trust me - OneCare is the very model of decorum and politeness and looks angelic by comparison.)

The big news for Windows Live OneCare is the addition of Windows Live OneCare for Server, which will be included with SBS 2008 as an optional choice for security. The new server product will provide simple virus and malware protection, which in itself is a welcome addition for small businesses.

But apparently it will also allow up to 25 workstations to be managed centrally and covered by a single OneCare license, which is good news indeed! I've needed better monitoring and management for my clients' computers. It also allows the data on the workstations to be backed up centrally, which might be sufficient to protect the Outlook .PST archives that are piling up everywhere. Here's some info about the new server product.

Pricing is pretty reasonable:

• OneCare for server only: $189.95/year
• OneCare for server plus a "site license" (apparently up to 25 workstations): $399.95/year.

There is a big caveat, though - OneCare for Server will only work with SBS 2008. I can't install it on my clients' existing SBS 2003 networks.

In my mind, this is a big selling point for an upgrade to SBS 2008 as we replace aging SBS 2003 servers!

Labels: domains, network, OneCare, SBS, security

posted by bruceb at 10/23/2008 12:37:00 AM | permalink

HP has been creating devices for years to bring Windows Media Center to the living room. There are two new Vista Media Center Extenders being marketed under the "MediaSmart" name that have some very interesting features. The HP MediaSmart Connect is sitting in my living room doing exactly what I was hoping.

The previous living room occupant was HP's Z558 Digital Entertainment Center, a computer running Windows XP Media Center in a box with a full complement of inputs and outputs for audio and video. It was fairly quirky to set up - getting the display to fill the screen took long experimentation, for example, and it wasn't very good at finding media stored on a different computer. It worked for several years but it always ran hot, which eventually doomed it - the proprietary video card died once from overheating and was almost impossible to replace, and the fans have lately been getting louder and louder until they became an unbearable distraction.

There are several new Vista Extenders on the market which overlap in their primary purpose, to bring Vista Media Center to the TV from another computer in the home. HP has developed an HD TV with the MediaSmart technology built into the guts of the TV - an interesting idea that would make setup much more simple if you need a new TV, but it requires a firm belief that the technology running a Vista Media Center Extender will last as long as the TV. I don't know if I would make that bet.

The HP MediaSmart Connect stood out for me, though, when I read some favorable reviews. It's a small box, 8 1/2 inches square and less than two inches tall, and completely silent. It has the right outputs to connect to my TV and audio receiver - HDMI, component video, and analog and digital audio. It has built-in wireless networking but I have a network cable running to the living room so I never had to find out if the wireless connection would be jerky or slow, a frequent complaint. HP is reportedly going to lower the price in the next week, giving it a list price of $299 and a likely street price of $249. (Gadgets like this require exactly the same calculation as software: if you get the wrong thing, it doesn't matter if it was cheap; if you get the right thing, the price is almost irrelevant in the long run.)

The remote control bristles with buttons, since there are just too many functions for it to be simple, but at least the remote is sturdy and solid in the hand, which is not always true of the competitors.

The Vista Media Center experience is satisfying but it would be more or less the same with any Extender. What sets the MediaSmart Connector apart is the proprietary software added by HP.

HP has built an interface that includes seamless access to Vista Media Center in its entirety - but there's also an attractive, simple interface that provides access to photos, music and videos that runs completely apart from Vista Media Center. HP provides optional software to run on the home computers that delivers the photos, music and videos to the MediaSmart Connect. Browsing photos with Vista Media Center is quite nice, for example - thumbnails, the ability to browse by tag or folder name, etc. - but some people will prefer to browse the same photos with HP's software, shown at left. Both views are available at any time.

HP then gave its box one more ability that was important to me: the HP MediaSmart Connect is able to connect to other software running on a home computer in addition to the program supplied by HP. It can display lists of media from any standard UPNP or DLNA server.

That means the HP MediaConnect can display music, photos or video sent around the network by a wide variety of programs, including some of the ones I mentioned yesterday. In my case, that means it connected immediately to the UPNP server built into J River Media Center, the program I depend on to keep my embarrassingly large music library organized. I've spent hours sorting my music by genre and creating playlists and smartlists, and in just a few minutes, there were those playlists on the TV, ready to be played at the click of a button. I started playing one ("Audio -- Recently Imported -- Two Months -- shuffle") and wiped a tear from my eye, because I had never been able to go back and forth elegantly between Windows Media Center and J River Media Center before.

That probably isn't important to you. There are a hundred reasons why this works for me and might not work for you. Maybe you'd be frustrated that the experience is not troublefree - I can't see cover art for music albums, I've wrestled with video formats (that story comes later), and the interface is sometimes a little slow, for example. You might be fiercely interested in streaming high-definition video or 5.1 surround sound, which I can't tell you about because I don't care.

The good parts far outweigh any negatives in our living room. Vista Media Center has a tremendous program guide for live and recorded television that I can reach with a single click of a button. I can browse through thumbnails and start a slide show of last month's family photos. I can play my video and music collection. All of those things are handled by an interface that's easy to navigate from the couch with a single remote control. That's good stuff!

All of this requires a computer in the house doing the work, and some hard experience to discover which formats work and which don't work. I'll tell you more later about how I'm handling those things.

Labels: audio, hardware, network, photos, software, video, Vista

posted by bruceb at 9/19/2008 12:59:00 AM | permalink

Since the market for living room computers never developed, Microsoft decided to focus on "extenders," a different way to deliver media to your television.

Huge numbers of people already have a computer in the house running Windows Vista Home Premium, holding photos and music. An "extender" is a small box for the living room that connects to the computer over a wireless or wired connection to display the photos on the television and play music on the living room speakers. If the computer is set up for it, the extender can also handle all the TV programming and record TV shows like a Tivo. It works exclusively with a remote control - no keyboard or mouse! - and looks great from across the room. Here are some cute animations from Microsoft about how it works.

Extenders are not a new concept, and Microsoft is not the only company offering products that work this way. Apple TV is a box that streams music and video from your computer's copy of iTunes to the living room, hemmed in by Apple's fairly restrictive selection of supported formats and features. There is a rich selection of third party software and hardware that will send streams out onto a home network - Twonky, Tversity, music devices from Roku Soundbridge and Sonos, and much more. Tivo supplies software to send photos and music to the Tivo in the living room. Do-it-yourselfers and gadget freaks and technical types are having a wonderful time squabbling about the pros and cons of various setups.

Microsoft gets more attention in the mainstream because the technology it has chosen is elegant and because, well, because it's Microsoft, I guess. Media Center Extenders are based on a simple concept. The small living room box connects to the computer over the home network and displays the Vista Media Center interface, exactly as if it was running directly on the computer. Under the hood is a specialized version of Remote Desktop, which many businesspeople use to connect to their office computers from home.

All the work is done on the computer, but the computer can stay in the room suited for it. Multiple extenders can be connected to the same computer, and the computer can be used normally while it's sending media to the other rooms. The physical connections to the television for audio and video can be difficult but mating the computer with the extender is pretty straightforward.

Some people already have this technology without knowing it, because an XBox 360 can be a Media Center Extender. Chances are the XBox 360 is already on the home network to get updates and play online, so the only setup involves a bit of fumbling to bring a new blade to life in the XBox dashboard, full of photos and music. Microsoft recently announced that the XBox 360 dashboard would be completely overhauled to make it look like Media Center.

In addition to the XBox 360, there was a first generation of extenders from Linksys and others for Windows XP Media Center Edition, but they were slow and cranky and became obsolete when Microsoft rewrote everything for Vista. A new generation of extenders are now being introduced with some attractive features.

I don't have an XBox 360 - noisy things that fail a lot. (If you're interested, a good article appeared a few days ago about the XBox 360's sad history of hardware problems.) Instead, I'll tell you tomorrow about HP's MediaSmart Connect, which is the best of the extenders on the market now.

Labels: Apple, audio, hardware, Microsoft, network, photos, software, video, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/18/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Tough week! Here are the kind of things that fill my days. And bear in mind, these are all stories about software and services that I love dearly - this is the good stuff, these are what I recommend because they're better than the rest!

Client with hosted Exchange mailbox at 1and1.com. Mailbox doesn't connect this morning, so no incoming or outgoing mail. Try it from a different computer, try Outlook Web Access - nothing works. Call tech support in India and get through without delay. "Very sorry! That server is down. The experts are working on it." Any idea when it will come back? "No, I'm sorry. But the experts are working on it." It's been down a day and a half now, still no word.

Putting Jungle Disk on a Windows Home Server for online backups. The process to sign up for Amazon's online storage system is not completely straightforward but I've done it before, I know about the "Access Key ID" and the "Secret Access Key," so I'm in business in short order, except the Jungle Disk software delivers an error message, error 403, "NotSignedUp." There are a few dozen lines of gibberish in the detailed error message but it's clear that Amazon doesn't think the service is set up correctly yet. Log in to the Amazon Web Services portal and there's a message about problems with payment for the account - payment that was set up on an Amazon credit card. Hmm. Spent half an hour wrestling with payment options, putting in one good credit card after another and getting more error messages about payment problems, and just about gave up - I was actually drafting the note to the client about the failure when Amazon showed the service was working just fine, thanks, even though I hadn't actually changed anything for a while. Jungle Disk started doing a backup. What was that about?

Setting up Live Mesh to transfer large files between people working in several locations. Installed it on the client's desktop and laptop, created a folder, it started syncing all over the place, everything was automatic and swell, great stuff! Set up Windows Live IDs for three employees, shared a Live Mesh folder with employee number 1, went to that employee's computer and clicked on the invitation to Live Mesh that appeared promptly in the mailbox. Web site pops up inviting me to "Connect," then "Sign In," then displays a message that Live Mesh is only available in the US and they're happy to put me on a waiting list when it's offered in my country. I looked around. It looked a lot like the US where I was standing. I poked around in the Live Mesh forums and found a suggestion that the Windows Live ID account information needed to be updated with the correct country information so I went over there and found it was completely hosed - no matter how many times I picked "United States" and clicked Apply, the front page would stubbornly complain that no country had been chosen. I could change it to the Virgin Islands - that worked fine! It was only the US that it ignored. I dropped it, wrote off the hour that had been spent fussing with it, went back a couple of hours later, and everything worked right away, Live Mesh installed immediately, no issues at all.

Client with a SonicWall firewall/router and a Small Business Server that hadn't been set up to use Remote Web Workplace or the other features that make SBS so lovable. There were a few odd networking settings on the SonicWall but nothing alarming. I set up port forwarding on the ports that make SBS do its tricks (80, 443, 4125) and bang! the network went down, all Internet traffic stopped, the workstations couldn't connect to the server, couldn't browse or ping anywhere. Spent an hour and a half backing out of anything that I might conceivably have touched, nearly gave a credit card number to SonicWall tech support, when it came back up. Two days later I set up port forwarding in what I swear was exactly the same way and it works like a charm. I still don't have any idea what that was about, but it scared the hell out of me.

Tried to buy licenses online for StorageCraft's remarkable backup program, ShadowProtect. Everything went perfectly, right up until the final "Finish" button when I was told that the billing address for the credit card didn't match the information on file at the bank. Just for fun, I tried three different credit cards at two different addresses - all of them plausible choices, not trying to pull anything. Same message each time. (Just for fun, I logged in to my bank's web site and confirmed that there were six or eight "pending" charges showing on the various cards. They went away eventually.) Couple of days later, went back and the transaction went through immediately. (And this story doesn't really count, because after I dropped them a note that night, the company immediately put me in touch with a reseller who would have sold me the licenses, then had one of the company's business manager follow up with a phone call to make sure the problem was resolved. Nice folks, great software, great support.)

Set up Netgear Rangemax USB wireless adapters on three workstations. Windows XP doesn't have any builtin drivers so the CD is required, and the CD doesn't have the drivers stored separately - the Netgear software has to be installed, which of course demands to take over control of the wireless settings from the perfectly adequate Windows XP wireless controls. The next morning, no one can get online, all the networking is mucked up, I have to travel onsite and get the stupid Netgear software to stop popping up with its incomprehensible dials and control panels and graphs. I couldn't find any way to get the Netgear software to hand control back to Windows - that required removing and reinstalling the software to get the startup dialog to appear again so I could check the box telling the Netgear software to get out of the way. Once I did that, the connections were immediately rock solid.

And so it goes. This is the good guys, the cream of the crop - I've also had battles with spyware and rootkits and the rest. Some weeks are more tiring than others. Back to the news soon, I promise!

Labels: backup, computers, file_sharing, hardware, Home_Server, mail, network, SBS, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/21/2008 01:15:00 AM | permalink

Let me tell you a scary story.

When we plan our backups, the idea is to have a duplicate copy of our data on something separate from where it is normally stored and used. In theory, it is unlikely that both sources will fail simultaneously.

Even very small businesses would be devastated by a loss of data or an extended network outage. On Monday I had a simultaneous failure of a server and the primary backup device. We were dealing with the potential loss of a lot of data and a long outage indeed.

The firm will live on because there was a secondary backup device.

The moral of the story is: if your data is business critical, pay attention to your backups and use more than one device to hold them.

Fortunately the call this Monday morning does not happen frequently. The server running Small Business Server 2003 in a small law office was not responding.

• The firm's Internet connection runs through a second network card in the server, so no one had Internet access. (That used to be the preferred way to set up Small Business Server. The proliferation of inexpensive firewall devices has changed that and SBS 2008 will not support that setup; instead it will assume that small businesses have a SonicWall or Snapgear firewall/router or something like it.)
• Firm documents were completely inaccessible. Individual My Documents folders could be opened (they're stored on the server but a local copy is stored on the individual workstations using "Offline Files") but they're rarely used - everything important is in the shared "Company" folder.
• Outlook is running in cached mode so all copies could be opened, but of course no mail could be sent or received.
• Specialized programs run from the server were unavailable - Abacus, Timeslips.

A very bad thing.

The server is aging and a little underpowered, running on a single IDE hard drive. The symptoms made me think that the hard drive had failed. I got a replacement and stood ready to restore the server from the backup image.

I could not open the file folder where the backups were stored.

The primary backup device was a Buffalo Terastation Pro II, less than a year old. I've set up several of them, I use one myself - 1Gb network attached storage, with four 250Gb hard drives running in a RAID5 array, meaning if any one of the hard drives fails, the box continues working with no interruption other than a beep to remind you to change the bad drive.

I hooked up my notebook, set the IP address within the range being used by the Terastation - and I couldn't open the file folder on the Terastation.

I opened Internet Explorer and got a login screen to the Terastation's web interface but it would not finish loading the main screen so I could use any of the Terastation's built-in tools.

The next two hours were spent trying to talk to the Terastation - confirming IP addresses, checking firewall settings, hooking the Terastation up to my office network in case it wanted a working DHCP or WINS server, trying to do soft resets, pulling various combinations of the hard drives, and a lot of other things. At the end of that time it threw up a "Kernel error" message on its little LCD screen and nothing I did gave me any hope that it would recover. Sure, I'll call Buffalo for warranty support tomorrow but that wasn't going to help a law office that was completely down.

We had also been doing backups to external hard drives on Thursday night, and swapping between two external USB hard drives every Friday.

I was able to use the external hard drive to restore the server to life as of Thursday night at midnight. Documents created or edited on Friday are lost but Outlook is completely up to date - all changes on Friday were synced from the offline copies, and Exchange Defender delivered all mail that arrived while the server was down.

Do you appreciate why I was sweating? If we hadn't had that second backup device, we'd have been left staring at each other with nothing to do but sharpen knives - seppuku in my case, murder in my client's case.

I've got some Small Business Server clients that are not currently using two different backup devices. I'll be contacting them to urge them to buy more external hard drives or an NAS or whatever will provide extra redundancy.

If you've got a single external hard drive for your computer, get another one and rotate them.

If you're backing up onto CDs, buy an external hard drive and start using it for backups - and occasionally keep backing up onto the CDs!

Look into online backups, but also use a local device.

Backup backup backup! I hate losing data!

My guess is that the hard drives in the Terastation are just fine and the failure is deeper in the hardware. (The Terastation was working at least until Friday night. There was no indication of a power surge or something else that took out both the server and the Terastation. This is a very weird coincidence.) A Google search turns up lots of complaints about the Terastation. I take that with a grain of salt because every device has generated a score of complaints that could be turned up in a Google search.

There is a part of this story that is full of magic and light and goodness. The software used by this client is StorageCraft ShadowProtect, and it is just swell. I'll tell you about it someday.

Labels: backup, computers, hardware, network, SBS

posted by bruceb at 8/05/2008 01:40:00 AM | permalink

Windows Search 4 was released last month as an upgrade to Windows Search 3.01 (Windows XP) and the built-in search capability in Windows Vista. It is an important upgrade for every Windows user; it will be pushed through the Windows Update system soon. Here's more information about Windows Search 4.

For the first time, Windows Search 4 can be installed on servers running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Home Server. This gives businesses an important new tool for finding information but there is one new trick to learn.

Many offices with Small Business Server have almost all important business files in a shared folder on the server, which is mapped to a drive letter and is universally referred to by its letter - "The file is stored on the N: drive." Normal people in small businesses don't have to be aware that the file is really in something like \\sbsserver\Company.

When the server is running Windows Search 4, it compiles an index of the business files. When a user with Windows Search 4 searches for something in the shared folder on the server, the server does the work of searching its index and providing the results. The search is completed nearly instantly and it is consistent for all users.

(The underlying technology is referred to as "remote query" or "remote index discovery." A computer with Windows Search 4 responds to a search query from a remote computer by consulting its own index and sending the search results. This works between any computers with Windows Search 4, not just searches on a server - a Vista computer can do a remote query on a shared folder on another Vista computer, etc.)

This is a significant improvement over Windows Search 3.01, which required each individual computer to compile an index of the files on the server. That created a lot of network traffic and search results were uneven - there was always a question of whether an individual computer's index was up to date or complete.

Note the requirement for this to work: Windows Search 4 must be installed on the server and on the workstations. As far as I know, the only way to tell if it has been installed is to look in Add/Remove Programs.

Putting this to use requires a simple technique for searches.

HOW TO USE WINDOWS SEARCH

SEARCHING OUTLOOK AND FILES ON YOUR COMPUTER

Use the toolbar by the clock (Windows XP) or the search bar above the Start button (Vista) to search files stored on your own computer and everything in Outlook.

SEARCHING FILES ON THE SERVER - WINDOWS XP

Open the folder with the business files. (Example: open My Computer and click on the N: drive.)

Click the Search button and do the search from Windows Search on the left.

SEARCHING FILES ON THE SERVER - VISTA

Open the folder with the business files. (Example: open Computer and click on the N: drive.)

Use the Search bar in the upper right corner of the window.

As far as I know, there is no way to do a single search that covers Outlook and files in a shared folder.

Now go find something interesting!

Labels: network, Outlook, SBS, search, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 7/28/2008 01:43:00 AM | permalink

[Originally posted March 13, 2007]

From Max Barry's marvelous book Company, about corporate life in the weeks after the computer network goes dead:

"Two weeks ago the network went down; soon after Senior Management assured the company it would have the problem fixed within a few days; now everyone is realizing it is never going to happen. Work-arounds are springing up everywhere you look, like new grass after rain. In the absence of e-mail, employees are discovering the art of speaking into phones. They are realizing that discussions that previously required three days and six e-mails can, with phones, be settled in minutes. Spam and computer viruses, both of which IT claimed were unsolvable problems, have vanished. The plague of e-mail jokes, funny at first and then not, has been eliminated. The pressure to forward chain letters under threat of personal catastrophe has lifted. In-boxes no longer fill with desperate sales pitches from co-workers trying to shift their cars, or kittens.

"To transfer documents from one location to another, workers tighten their shoelaces and stretch their legs. People pass each other in the corridors, papers in hand, exchanging happy greetings. Their brains dizzy from unexpected exercise, they stop to chat and laugh. No one realized there were so many people in Zephyr. Until now, you never saw them. Until now, most people arrived at work, planted their buttocks in a chair, and the twain didn't part until five thirty. Now the corridors are like maternity ward waiting rooms, filled with excited voices and good cheer. Lower-back pain is clearing up. Color is rising. Workers find each other more physically attractive. And nobody receives suspicious looks for leaving the department anymore, not so long as they're clutching a sheaf of papers.

"Network - what was that thing ever good for? The workers shake their heads in amazement. Good riddance! Zephyr Holdings may not be the world's greatest employer, the workers agree; it may have a sadistic Human Resources and an incompetent Senior Management; the company's purpose may be a complete mystery and the CEO an out-of-touch eccentric whom no one has seen in person - all this may be true, but at least it doesn't have a network."

Labels: humor, network

posted by bruceb at 6/28/2008 12:34:00 AM | permalink

You probably have a router or firewall device on your network - the little box that your DSL or cable modem plugs into. Make sure you've changed the default password on the router!

Virtually every router is designed to display a control panel when you put in its IP address. When you set up the router, it probably asked you to change the default password. It's a chore that needed to be done; you should double-check your records to be sure.

You can check for yourself. Click on Start / Run, type in CMD and hit Enter. In the black window, type in

ipconfig

and hit Enter. Make a note of the Default Gateway - something like 192.168.1.1, right?

Then open Internet Explorer and type that address in:

http://192.168.1.1 (or whatever your gateway address is)

You'll be prompted for a login name and password. If it's your network, you should know what that is! Here's two common defaults:

• Linksys: user name blank, password admin
• Netgear: user name admin, password password

Naturally, it's easy to find lists of default passwords for hundreds of routers.

This comes to mind because the researchers found a new twist in some malware recently: if you run the malware by an ill-advised click on a popup window on the Internet, the malware tries to log into the router using a memorized list of default user name and password combinations. If it's successful, the malware changes the router's DNS configuration so all your Internet traffic is passed through the bad guys' network. Here's a Washington Post blog about the exploit.

I haven't run into this in the real world, and you might be protected against it - the malware won't get a chance to run on a system with up to date security software. But it's a precaution that deserves a couple of minutes of attention - just one more way for inventive bad guys to make life difficult.

[Note to my clients: if I set up your network or your router, I took care of this. Go back to work.]

Labels: hardware, network, security

posted by bruceb at 6/26/2008 02:02:00 AM | permalink

Let me give you a simplified overview of printer terms, then offer a tip that might save a few seconds someday. (This is basic stuff. If you can tell where I'm leaving things out, then this isn't for you.)

LOCAL PRINTER 

A local printer is connected to your computer with a USB cable.

• Installation: almost always, the software for a local USB printer is installed before the USB cable is attached to the computer - insert the CD or download and run the installation software for the printer before hooking it up.

NETWORK PRINTER 

This term has become ambiguous.

When you're looking at printers in the store, the term network printer means the printer is connected to the network with a CAT5 network cable; it does not use a USB cable and it is not connected directly to any computer. 

• Installation: almost always, connect the printer with a CAT5 cable to a router or switch and turn it on, then insert the printer CD in each computer. The installation software finds the printer on the network automatically.

When you're working in Windows, the term network printer is also used to refer to a shared printer - the printer is connected to another computer on the network with a USB cable, and shared so other computers can use it.

• Connecting to the shared printer from another computer: Windows XP and Vista both have wizards to add a network computer in the Printers folder, but there's another way that is frequently faster and less quirky. You'll need to know the name of the computer sharing the printer. (Click on Start, right-click on Computer, and click on Properties.)

• At your computer, click on Start / Computer and type in two backslashes followed by the name of the computer sharing the printer, like this:

• Hit Enter. If the other computer is set up correctly for sharing, you'll see the shared printer, probably along with some shared folders.
• Right-click on the printer and click Connect. You should be set up to print to the shared printer in just a few seconds. Often I find that works more reliably than using the wizards.

Labels: computers, network, printers, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 6/25/2008 12:33:00 AM | permalink

Vista's firewall is significantly beefed up from the firewall in Windows XP - it monitors outgoing traffic, it's able to adjust easily when a computer is moved from one network to another, and the settings are easier to find in Vista's Network and Sharing Center.

Firewalls have become far more important on individual computers as our lifestyles change. Many home users and most business users are behind a firewall when they sit at a computer in the home or office - the router or wireless access point controlling the Internet connection is acting as a simple but effective firewall. With the explosive growth in notebook computers, there's a lot of information on computers that are outside the edge of the network, away from the home or office, exposed to networks and Internet connections that are not necessarily trustworthy.

When a Vista computer connects to a network for the first time - an unfamiliar wireless network or a cable plugged in at a new location - Vista inquires whether the network is Home, Work, or Public.

If you are connecting directly to the Internet or in a location where you will not access any other nearby computers, choose Public. Vista will make your computer invisible on the network; it will turn off file and printer sharing; and it will lock down various services.

On the other hand, if you are safely behind a router or another firewall and you will be communicating with other computers - sharing files or using a shared printer, for example - choose Home or Work.

I found myself wondering - what is the difference between Home and Work? What different services and features would be enabled in one but not the other?

According to this article, they're identical. No difference at all. That leaves the interesting question of why they're presented as separate choices - but don't worry about that, just pick one when it's appropriate.

(If you're detail-minded, you should know that a computer joining a company domain won't be asked about network location. There's an additional set of policies for a domain and the Vista computer automatically adopts them.)

I see notebooks frequently that have multiple network connections - a Verizon/Sprint connection, say, along with an 802.11 connection and a network cable. I've learned from experience that Vista examines all available network connections and chooses the most restrictive firewall policy. If there is any Public connection anywhere on a network, the Vista computers are going to lock themselves down. I've added that to my troubleshooting when I can't print to a shared printer or reach a shared folder.

Labels: Internet, mobile, network, security, Vista, wireless

posted by bruceb at 5/07/2008 01:18:00 AM | permalink

If you have a wireless notebook, there's yet another way the bad guys can get past your defenses.

When you connect to a wireless access point, normally you're in "infrastructure" mode. Network traffic to all the computers using the wireless network passes through a wireless access point. In a public place - an airport or hotel, say - you can reasonably hope the access point has some built-in security to keep each connected computer separated from each other.

Windows computers are also able to connect directly to each other wirelessly in "ad hoc" mode - no access point required. I can imagine sophisticated arguments about what that might enable people to do but here in the real world I've never ever seen anyone use that capability.

A computer in ad hoc mode is broadcasting a wireless SSID, a name that other nearby computers can see and connect to. Once the second computer joins the ad hoc network, it also broadcasts that name - and might continue to do that even after it gets to a different location. (Windows is designed to remember those settings by default. It's a feature, not a bug.)

If one of the computers in the ad hoc network also has an Internet connection, all the connected computers can use that Internet connection to get to the outside world.

Enter the bad guys. You flip open your notebook at the airport and see a wireless network named "Free Public Wi-Fi" or "Free Internet" or "US Airways Free WiFi" or something else tempting; you highlight it and click Connect, and you're able to get online. Great!

Unknowingly, you have joined an ad hoc network and every bit of data to and from your computer is going through the bad guy's computer at the next table. Your login names and passwords, your email messages, your online accounts - the bad guy is logging it all, analyzing it, and preparing to clean out your bank accounts and mortgage your house. If you've set up your computer for file sharing, he's rummaging through your files. If your security isn't up to date, he's installing software to send spam or let him control your computer at his leisure later.

This isn't a new problem but a recent study found that 10% of all the wireless users it scanned across all airports were broadcasting at least one of these viral SSIDs, and in some airports, the percentage was much higher. I've seen "Free Public Wi-Fi" in downtown Santa Rosa - maybe a bad guy, maybe a laptop user who didn't know his computer was broadcasting the fake name.

PREVENTION

Don't connect to ad hoc networks.

In Windows XP, the icon for an ad hoc network is different than a conventional wireless network, and it's described as a "computer-to-computer network."

In Windows Vista, the only indication of an ad hoc network is the appearance of the icon!

There are settings in Windows to prevent your computer from suggesting ad hoc networks at all. In Windows XP, advanced wireless network settings include the screen below, which can be set to force connections only to access point networks.

If you've done a lot of traveling and used wireless networks freely on the road, you may want to visit your computer's list of recognized wireless networks and clean out anything unfamiliar - especially a suspicious name like "Free Airport WiFi" or anything else on the list in this article.

There are more details in this article about how this works and steps to take to prevent being a victim.

And here's a scary story where a traveler learned that it was possible to access anything in any folder on his computer - from two rows away on an airplane.

I'll tell you more about how your security works and what you need to know, but as always, your best defense is your common sense. Don't click on anything without thinking long and hard - especially anything free! Be careful out there!

Labels: broadband, computers, Internet, mobile, network, security, wireless

posted by bruceb at 5/06/2008 12:23:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft has updated its Remote Desktop software for Macs, allowing them to connect to a computer running Windows XP Professional or Vista Business and control the Windows computer just as if sitting in front of it.

Remote Desktop has been so thoroughly optimized on Windows computers that menus pop up and down, windows appear and disappear at virtually full speed, sounds are played, until it's easy to forget that the computer under control is in a different office (or across the world). I won't be using the Mac software but it is also reasonably mature at this point; Mac users can hope for a similar experience.

For most people, however, Remote Desktop does not work over the Internet. It's possible to configure a firewall to forward port 3389 to a computer and control it with Remote Desktop but it's difficult to set up and it's not secure.

Businesses running Small Business Server can use Remote Desktop over the Internet because SBS does a special trick - it sets up a web page with an ActiveX control that can start a Remote Desktop session on office computers. SBS users can use Remote Desktop to control their office computer from any PC running Internet Explorer, anywhere in the world.

Mac users cannot take advantage of that SBS function - and as far as I know, the new Remote Desktop software for Macs does not change that. People with Macs at home that want to work remotely with an office PC should look at LogMeIn, which has software that runs on both PCs and Macs.

So the Remote Desktop software for Macs is really only useful for computers in the same network - using a Mac to work remotely on a PC across the room or down the hall in the same home or office. That's useful but not quite as exciting as it looks at first.

Labels: Apple, computers, Microsoft, network, remote, SBS

posted by bruceb at 4/11/2008 12:14:00 AM | permalink

Network Attached Storage devices ("NAS") are starting to appear regularly at small businesses. An NAS device is a small box with one or more hard drives and a simple operating system that can add huge amounts of storage space on a network just by plugging them in. They're frequently designed with multiple hard drives that can use RAID drive management to hold data very safely, but without the expense or maintenance required for a Windows-based server.

This article is a useful primer on network attached storage. Every computer user should start to become familiar with this technology!

"As the name indicates, NAS devices connect directly to a computer network, rather than to an individual PC. Therefore, the files they contain can be made available to anyone on the network that needs them. Unlike a PC, NAS devices don?t use monitors or keyboards. Instead, you configure a NAS device using a Web browser such as Internet Explorer. From there you can do things like set up folders for employees to store files in, as well as create user names and passwords to control who is allowed to have access to those files.

"NAS devices can be an option for any size business because they come in a variety of sizes, prices and storage capacities. Depending on the features and amount of storage provided, the cost of a NAS device can be quite inexpensive--as little as $200--or as much as several thousand dollars. Although some NAS devices can be physically large, models designed for small businesses can be easily tucked away almost anywhere. Most are smaller than an average PC and many take up barely more space than a hardcover novel."

More expensive NAS devices will have four or more hard drives in a RAID 5 array, which allows the device to be completely functional and keep the data safe even if an individual hard drive fails. Some of them integrate with Active Directory running in a Windows domain (including a domain run by Small Business Server) so that the NAS device knows the names of users and can enforce different levels of access to shared folders.

They have quirks, of course. I've gotten several Buffalo Terastation Pro II devices to store backup archives for my SBS clients; on Sunday all of them refused to allow the backup program to store files, with an "access denied" message. Headscratching, memories of the setup process - ah! This weekend was the original date for Daylight Savings Time to go into effect; the Terastations mistakenly set their clocks forward one hour. When the time on the Terastations doesn't match the rest of the network, the Terastations won't recognize the credentials of domain users. Why? I've stopped asking that question. None of the quirks we face with our computers make any sense. When I set the Terastations' time correctly, everything went back to normal.

Labels: backup, computers, domains, hardware, network, SBS

posted by bruceb at 4/09/2008 11:38:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft released a preview of Windows Search 4 today, an update to the Windows Desktop Search program that is built into Windows Vista and can be installed separately on Windows XP. The search programs index everything on your computer that matters - the full text of your documents, the tags on your photos and music files, every word of every item in Outlook - and do lightning fast searches for anything, as fast as you can type in the letters of a search term. I've written frequently about Windows Desktop Search - here are some posts with more information and links.

This is the first public release of Windows Search 4. Microsoft's Knowledge Base article has detailed information and download links with no indication that this is anything other than a finished product. (04/01: The KB article was quickly edited to describe this as a preview.) The Vista team blog, on the other hand, describes this as a "preview," suggesting that we should all watch for a while until it is polished into a finished product. I'm going to begin testing right away.

Let's assume it does what they claim. As always, we may come back to that later.

It is designed to upgrade prior versions automatically. Theoretically Windows Search 4 can be installed freely on Windows XP or Vista computers and it will deal appropriately with earlier versions of WDS. Windows Search 4 includes the ability to search network shares, which previously required a confusing addin.

Most of the claims for Windows Search 4 are unexciting. They fixed bugs, improved performance, and it will handle things gracefully if there are errors in the index. Swell.

But there is one new feature that has the potential to make my small business clients laugh and sing. If this works as promised, it is a huge leap forward in the technology available to small businesses.

Currently Windows Desktop Search 3.01 is installed on my clients' PCs. Each copy of WDS 3.01 is installed and configured separately. When documents are stored on a server or in a central location on one of the PCs, each workstation has to be set up to search that network share and each workstation maintains its own index of each network share. That has an impact on network traffic and it introduces individual points of failure - each computer might have its index become corrupted or have missing files or a host of other problems.

Now imagine that Windows Search 4 is running on all your business desktop computers - and it's running on your Small Business Server, which is now one of the supported platforms. That means the server has an index of all of your business documents and PDFs and images.

Remote Index Discovery allows the search indexes to talk to each other. When you search a network computer, the network computer consults its own index and hands over the search results. That's quicker and requires less resources, it improves consistency in searching for everyone in the office, and it significantly reduces the chance of error.

I'll be experimenting and watching reports closely. I may want to roll this out in some of my clients' offices soon.

Labels: Microsoft, network, Outlook, SBS, search, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 3/28/2008 03:44:00 AM | permalink

The products developed using Microsoft's Windows Home Server software do a number of extremely useful things - backups, remote access, file and photo sharing, and file storage - using a very smart mixture of new and old technology.  Here are some notes about Windows Home Server from last year.

Unfortunately, a bug has been identified the causes data on the server to be corrupted in rare circumstances.  It affects a very small number of people and only occurs under very specific conditions, and it has been very difficult for the Windows Home Server team to track down.  But the effect is potentially devastating - especially to WHS' reputation - because a server that cannot be trusted to save files is useless. Here's an FAQ about the bug, and here's Microsoft's Knowledge Base article about it.

More details are emerging about the data corruption bug.  Apparently the fix will require a significant retooling of one of Home Server's core components, so the team predicts that the fix will not be available until June.  AnandTech just wrote a detailed explanation based on the available information and some informed guesswork, sympathizing with the difficult problem faced by the team but also noting the sad reality of the effect on WHS' reputation:

"The media will eat this up (and we?re just as guilty) and this will tarnish the product?s name for the rest of its life; customers don?t need to understand an issue to understand that a product is imperfect and that they should stay away from it. Yet data corruption is a serious issue that isn?t acceptable and can?t be ignored.

"Perhaps the worst bit however is that as an OEM-only product, Microsoft is not exerting any real control over what the OEMs do about the issue until the corruption problem is fixed. As of right now retailers are still selling OEM servers with 2+ drives (making them susceptible to the bug) and computer enthusiast retailers are still selling the OS itself, all with no notice about this bug. WHS is a good product where plenty of functionality can still be used even with the presence of the bug (e.g. backups) but we have serious problems with it still being offered for sale given these problems. WHS is already heavily tarnished due to this bug, there?s no (okay, some) shame in cutting one's losses and halting all sales of the OS until the bug is fixed, even if it won?t affect most users.

"Ultimately it?s a damn shame to see something like this happen, no one is going to be a winner. Windows Home Server will be fixed, but only after a lot of grief for the developers and a lot of concern for server owners. Thankfully current server owners can take steps to prevent the corruption issue entirely, but at a cost of functionality, and we don?t doubt some people will still feel insecure about their data even after taking those steps. For the time being WHS is dead in the water. It?s a promising product that is not suitable for further sale given the potential severity of the bug. It also undermines a great deal of confidence in Microsoft that will take some time to recover."

Do not buy a Windows Home Server device until this is resolved. When it's resolved, go back to Windows Home Server with enthusiasm; this should not detract from its features or diminish its potential.

If you own a Windows Home Server device:

1. This does not affect backups.
2. This does not affect remote access or file/photo sharing.
3. This does not affect single-drive devices.
4. This does not affect word processing files stored on the server.

If, however, you are streaming media from the server or routinely moving very large files on and off it while other file operations are in progress, you should look very closely at the support bulletins about this problem.

Labels: backup, computers, hardware, Home_Server, Microsoft, network, remote

posted by bruceb at 3/17/2008 12:28:00 AM | permalink

Although the technology is widespread and mature, 802.11 wireless networking is confusing for many people - and frustrating for nearly everyone. It hasn