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  • So what is new and exciting (such as easier admin) in IIS7 (IIS in Vista and Longhorn), find out here

    The .NET Show: IIS 7.0 Scott Guthrie and Bill Staples provide some details on what IIS 7.0 is, describe new features, and demo how much easier IIS 7.0 is to use and administer. 100k - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2f497db8-06fb-4d30-a00b-abfed571fe9c&DisplayLang=en 300k - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09f5aefa-b5d2-4568-8edd-50b39912f0da&DisplayLang=en Mobile - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1c6878d1-bebb-4e63-ad89-6768c9881fb8&DisplayLang=en ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 4 2006

  • Upgrading SQL 2000 and MSDE 2000 to SQL 2005 - in SBS R2 - this could be the sharepoint or WSUS database

    Upgrading MSDE 2000 to SQL Server 2005 Express This white paper discusses the new SQL Server 2005 Express Edition features that are important to MSDE users. It covers how to upgrade your existing MSDE installation to SQL Server 2005 Express and presents criteria to help you decide when to upgrade your MSDE installation to other editions of SQL Server 2005. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/msde2sqlexpress.mspx SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Handbook Preparing for a SQL Server 2005 upgrade involves understanding some basic principles that will help you make appropriate decisions and ensure your success. Each SQL Server 2005 component has a unique architecture and life cycle—the two primary areas that will affect your upgrade path. Some SQL Server 2005 components build on a solid foundation to augment, optimize, and stabilize existing functionality. Microsoft has performed extensive, under-the-hood rework of other features to give SQL Server the horsepower and programmability features that your applications...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 4 2006

  • SQL 2005 updates - SP1 - worth having for the new management console

    SQL 2005 only seems like it poped out the door a week ago and already we have SP1. Having said that, it arrived in November 2005 and there were a couple of things that people wanted, but we could not ship in time. One was a management console for the repalcement to the free MSDE - this is now part of SP1. Details on how to impletment SP1 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/sp1.mspx . The press release with all the details is located at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/apr06/04-19SQLExpands06PR.mspx , but the key points are: SP1 delivers on this vision in the following ways: SP1 delivers production-ready Database Mirroring functionality for continuous availability. This complements the existing Always On Technologies in SQL Server 2005 such as failover clustering, database snapshots, snapshot isolation and log shipping. Since launch, Database Mirroring has been extensively tested by Microsoft and its thriving customer community to help ensure that it provides the high availability necessary...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 4 2006

  • July SQL Webcasts

    SQL 2005 Webcasts and Virtual Labs SQL Server 2005 is data management and analysis software that delivers enhanced security, availability, and scalability to mission-critical data applications—while making them easier to develop, deploy, and manage. Choose from a wide range of live and on-demand webcasts. Or take part in a virtual lab, which allows you to cut your teeth on the new platform by experimenting with its different capabilities. http://www.microsoft.com/sql/eval/webcast.mspx?wt.mc_id=sql.ad.01037 Free SQL Server 2005 Training Whether you are interested in database administration, database development, or business intelligence, you can access the E-Learning topic you want, when you want it, and learn at your own pace. Each lesson includes hands-on virtual labs and offline functionality. In addition, you may consider taking a free Microsoft Skills Assessment to help you meet your Microsoft SQL Server 2005 training goals. You'll receive a learning roadmap with additional skills resources including instructor...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jul 7 2006
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  • Reading and storing everyone's e-mail and why I am glad I work for a small business

    I just saw this article at Wired and realised one of the benefits of working for a smaller organisation - this is not me I'm talking about, but you. One of the worrying quotes was: The survey gathered responses concerning e-mail security from 406 companies in the United States and the United Kingdom with more than 1,000 employees. In both regions, 38 percent of respondents said they employed staff to read or otherwise analyze outbound e-mail . In the United States, 44 percent of companies with more than 20,000 employees said they hire workers to snoop on workers' e-mail. Wow, not just the US, but the UK too. Now, should your customer be in the business where they do need to analyze mail, then of course SBS can help - for details on how to set it up, go have a look at the forum entry - http://uksbsguy.com/forums/thread/334.aspx for the answer - simple and effective. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 4 2006

  • Draft release of my web log analyser tool (using IIS Log files)

    People have asked for my tools I use to produce my site statistics, so I have released a draft cut. It should all work. To get the best out of it you need a $20 subscription to http://www.maxmind.com/app/web_services_guide#city and MapPoint , but otherwise it works - without both these it is fully functional, but no maps. The source can be found at http://uksbsguy.com/files/11/files/entry735.aspx and the exes at http://uksbsguy.com/files/11/files/entry736.aspx . ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 4 2006

  • Bad links now fixed

    Sooo many of you clicked the links in the posts from the last two days, but got an OWA screen that I had to go back and edit about 16 posts. All fixed now - thanks to Rob for pointing it out. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 4 2006

  • top sixteen lies of a ceo

    I was reading Guy Kawasakiblog entry on the top lies of CEOs and I realised how many of them applied to those "high flying" small business owner managers in a scaled down way, What I partcularly liked what the "what we wished they actually said" section: “I don’t know.” “Thank you.” “Do what’s right.” “It’s my fault.” How many times would a small business specialists life been saved if this was what they actually said to us instead of (perhaps the 17th lie) "I did nothing to it, it just started going wrong... I was not even here when it happened." And of course, that is probably what was said when this all started! ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, Jul 6 2006

  • UK Managing Director Leaves the UK bound for Microsoft Corp - welcome to Gordon Frazer from South Africa

    Today we had a bit of a kick of for FY07 (Financial Year 07 in Microsoft) and a review of FY 06. We had a healthy year with excellent growth (this is no way a prediction of the MS Company results) and we also did a bit of sweeping a few things out. It has been speculated for a little while that Alistair Baker would be moving on and today we had it confirmed. As of 31st July, the new MD of MS UK will be Gordon Frazer from the South African Sub. He did seem like a very positive and fired up person, so I think this will be nothing but goodness, as will having another Brit in the power halls at MS in the States. For the press release, have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/press/content/presscentre/releases/2006/07/PR03662.mspx ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jul 7 2006

  • The Information Worker Center aka office podcast place - lots of info on all office 2007 products and technologies

    While browsing the web today I came across this place (The IW Center) which describes itself as "TheIWCenter.Com is a site created and managed by me, Shawn Murray. I happen to work for Microsoft as a Solution Specialist focused on information worker products like Microsoft Office, Sharepoint Portal Server, Live Communications Server, etc. I maintain this site in my spare time and it is not officially associated with my job or Microsoft Corporation. As such, the content and opinions on this site are mine, not necessarily those of Microsoft Corporation. Here you will find webcasts, news and other content on Microsoft's information worker products. These include Office, Sharepoint, Live Meeting, Groove and many others." Sounds pretty interesting I thought, so digging a bit deeper, this site has some great content. I recommend browsing around the site, but some items I thought you might find useful: Office Professional 2007 Prodcast - Mark Alexieff, Product Manager Excel 2007 Prodcast - Michael Worosz, Product Manager...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, Jul 10 2006

  • Want training for Windows SharePoint Services V3 - well it has started

    I saw this and thought people might be interested to see that we have various items of training available. The item on the webpage that caught my eye was: Introduction to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Virtual Lab Implementing and Administering Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Virtual Lab If you are considering running extra WSS sites for your customers, then this is something to consider for the future. While SBS wizards may not support Office 2007, you might choose to upgrade the Companyweb site anyway, so this is important information. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sun, Jul 9 2006

  • So you intend on loading WSS V3 somewhere - read this first

    Just pop along to http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/05/30/607260.aspx and read the WSS information. Simple David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sat, Jul 8 2006

  • Do you wish you could see what you were looking for in documents, mails etc - now you can as search and find are improved

    You may have noticed that enabling people to find the right piece of information has become a bit of a religious event within Microsoft. Search tools to date include LookOut Windows Desktop Search aka WDS MSN Search Live Search Vista However things have continued to improve with these engined and Office 2007. For example, you can be inside Outlook, type a word in the search bar and within a fraction of a second have returned to you all the mails, calendar items or contacts that have that word in. You can even type something like "from:David received:last week" and get the mails from me that I sent last week. One nice featrue is that a nice yellow highlighter pen will show you where in the mail etc the magical words are, so finding them becomes easier. Obviously the new search engine in Vista / WDS will find documents searching the content itself. I then saw this post, saying that the same process can be delivered from inside a document , so highlighting all the nice words you were looking for - makes...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 11 2006

  • What will Vista look like if you don't have an ace graphics card (ala many machines bought over the last 3 years with less than 64MB graphics RAM)

    I saw this over at the Windows Vista blogs and realised that the original graphics for people withotu higher end graphics were really not up to scratch. Looking at the site, you can even see a nice example of "glass" and the new standard theme side by side. hurray! ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sat, Jul 8 2006

  • Making vista more secure using PatchGuard and Address Space Location Randomisation

    For those really, really into making a system secure you will know that if a system is compromised, if done well, then the machine is owned by someone else. However, that does not mean that you can't make it hard for someone to "do it well". Today I was reading about PatchGuard that will make all this much easier. Amongst other things, it includes the ability to remove the ability to predict where a key piece of information will be in kernel memory. This is how things like Blaster worked - they could predict where key information was. This technology would skupper the route used by Blaster. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, Jul 10 2006

  • Off to Partner Conference in Boston - see you blogging from there

    Hello, just a quick note to say that I am due to fly today @ 11am to Boston for the Partner Conference - if you are going then I will see you there, if not, you can read about it here. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sun, Jul 9 2006

  • Virtualising SBS 2003 - the low down

    This question was asked internally and I thought the information was worth sharing, so thanks to Mark Stanfill for providing the answer: SBS 2003 is supported in virtual environments. The only unsupported component is ISA 2004, which (for rather obvious reasons) is not supported on Virtual Server (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897614/ ). Exchange also has a number of hardware and software requirements that need to be very carefully weighed against a hardware solution. For the complete rundown, see these articles: Support policy for Exchange Server 2003 running on hardware virtualization software http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;[LN];320220 Microsoft Virtual Server support policy http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;[LN];897613 Running Domain Controllers in Virtual Server 2005 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=64DB845D-F7A3-4209-8ED2-E261A117FC6B&displaylang=en Virtual Server Technical Overview White Paper http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, Jul 13 2006
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  • Summary of Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) just before I leave

    so, I have about 5 mins to write this, so it will be short & sweet. From the Small Business pre-day: event was sold out people told us licensing was still not up to scratch, but Eric Ligman's lessthancoffee.com site was very useful Much of the information for people was how to run a small business as it 1) enables us all to understand what is going on in the minds of our customers and 2) since many SBSC members are small businesses, hopefully gives them some ideas on how to be more successful as a business The Sloan Brothers were the highlight for me in advice ( http://startupnation.com ) - they said Got for 10% of the Watermelon, not 90% of the grape - this basically meant get funding and help to grow your business - keeping ownership of your business is more than just the number of shares - it is being there, so even if other people own 90% of the equity, you are still in charge. Outsource non-core skills Hitch your wagon to a star - eg Microsoft, but also someone local who will recommend you - so you get...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jul 14 2006

  • Microsoft and Xensource work together to ensure cross-platform simplicity in new virtual world

    Howdy folks, Just saw this over at the Xensource web site . It basically says that Microsoft and Xensource – organization leading the Xen Linux based virtualization tools – have extended their working agreements. A few months ago Xensource licensed Microsoft's VHD (virtual hard disk) format and now this has been further enhanced so that Xen will work with the Hypervisor that will ship for Longhorn Server. This means that if you need to run Windows and Linux, the virtualization technology underneath will actually work for you as opposed to against you. Another step towards MS and Linux interop. We already now support Linux guests on Virtual Server!! A bit more about Virtualization and Xen can be found at http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/2006/07/18/microsoft-and-xen-sitting-in-a-tree/ Ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 18 2006
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  • Web site layout changes – temporary while site is upgraded

    I have just updated the site to a beta of the next version of Community Server which means the nice theme I normally use has stopped working. I will look at why next week, so again we are back to the "old" style of interface. Ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 18 2006

  • Microsoft provides a guide as to what benefits are available to partners

    This is a great little tool . It enables partners of all levels (Registered, SBSC, Certified and Gold) to see clearly the benefits they can get.
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 18 2006

  • Power cuts due to the weather

    Folks, while the server is on a UPS now, the internet conenction seems to be more sensative to the lighting and thunder outside :-) Hopefully the server will not be down too often. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sat, Jul 22 2006
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  • Finding device drivers for Windows systems

    Every so often someone asks me how to get device "xxx" working. Obviously the 1st stage to this is to finding the right device driver. Sometimes this can be hard to track down - one thing to look for is the hardare ID from device manager. The ID is made up of the bus type, vendor, major and minor ids. You can do a search for the vendor ID on the internet and once you have that, try their site for a device driver. This is sometimes a long winded process, but normally yields results. One alternative that I spotted today to this was the Microsoft Technet site for drivers . This site has both Microsoft controlled and non-affiliated sites that can help with the device driver searching. When Vista comes along, searching for device drivers will be an even bigger goal of the Update function that ships in the box. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sat, Jul 22 2006

  • Would you like addresses and contacts in Outlook to have access to great Live Local Maps?

    Just spotted this one on the download list. If you want to get map information directly in outlook, visit the Microsoft mapping service (local.live.com) to download the outlook tool . According to the site this tool enables you to map your appointment and meeting locations directly from within Microsoft® Office Outlook®. Get driving directions, print detailed maps, find optimized trip routes, and estimate travel times. Receive reminders based on the estimated travel time. Even save details to view when you’re offline. It also allows you to send Outlook appointment location details to others—even those without the add-in. Finally you can quickly locate restaurants, hotels, coffee shops, gas stations and other points of interest near your meeting location and map the best route. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sat, Jul 22 2006

  • Great Training on Small Business+

    Small Business+ has been seen as something that might be scary for a few partners - is Microsoft trying to take away the very business that most partners are searching for? This is interesting as I was talking to one partner last week who said that the types of questions that SB+ sought to answer were the ones that when they charged the customer for the support, customer got upset. The reason for this was that when a customer phones up and asks a question that takes just 5 minutes to resolve, how do you bill them - per the 5 minutes, by the quarter of an hour. If you try to track all of these, you end up in a admin mess and often a costly one at that. Since the original concern, not much in the way of bad press has aired, so I can only assume this was not the killer many had assumed. Also add to the fact that we are working on how to give a pre-selected partner contact details to the customer means that this can become a support service for both the partner and customer rather than a burden to the partner. Now...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, Jul 24 2006
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