One of the key issues facing small business IT shops is how to manage the administrator passwords for the systems you manage when you have an employee leave the company. If you change the administrator password, you also have to change the password for services that run as administrator, plus change the passwords of any additional admin accounts that may have been created, and this can take a very long time, especially if you have a large number of servers or a lot of turnover.

With a centrally-managed two-factor authentication solution, the need to change administrator passwords is either significantly reduced or eliminated because you can disable the OTP (one time password) for the departing employee in the central system and lock that user out of the systems you manage.

Some vendors who have solutions for two-factor authentication:

www.cryptocard.com (cryptocard) - bill@cryptocard.com ask for starter kit referred by Dana
www.rsasecurity.com
www.authenex.com
www.securecomputing.com
www.aladdin.com
www.actividentity.com
www.verisign.com (
www.vasco.com (VASCO)
www.passgo.com (Defender)
www.scorpionsoft.com (Anvil)

Dana demoed several implementations of two-factor security on live systems, including a new product from Scorpion Software that adds two-factor authentication to Remote Web Workplace.

One audience question - what about biometrics? Dana pointed out the "gummy bear attack" that gets past fingerprint scanners.

Now for the afternoon activities...

Anne started showing a project proposal template that she uses as a building block (living document) to work with a potential client and discussed the different phases of a CRM implementation. (Note to self and others - CRM implementations are more involved that just installing the software.) She then covered the basics of what it takes to install CRM SBE onto SBS. CRM SBE does integrate well with SBS, because it integrates with many of the components of SBS, but there are some "fun" points dealing with ISA.

Anne followed next with a deep dive into the implementation process. One of the most important phases, if not the most important, is the data migration process. This is taking all the existing data the client has and migrating it into the MS CRM app. One of the key aspects of data migration is data cleansing - making sure that the data you're importing is ready for importing - this is where some of the pain points of the entire project are really evident, because if the client data is not really "clean" this phase can take an extensive amount of time.

Audience question: How do you price data migration? Sit down with the customer to see where they are and try to find out how many records they have. If they have a small number of records, it might make more financial sense to have a temp re-key the records in the system, but a larger number of records might require some outsourcing for custom programming to get all the records imported.

Next, Anne showed some of the different planning templates. These documents have screen shots of each and every piece in the interface that you go over with the client and find out what they need or not in the interface and you can note in the template what changes you need to make. The template also breaks down the structure of the record so you can see what the individual fields are and what the data type is for each field. These templates are available for download from the Partner web site as a ZIP file.

As you're going through configuration, document everything that goes on during the research and deployment phases. Scope creep can really impact the project, but if you sufficiently document every request, at least you have the information that can back up any questions the client may have during the process.

Now on to the next magical session...

Now to get some sleep and try to rest up before tomorrow. No vendor hall, so I'll be able to attend at least a couple of sessions...

Later tonight, I'll have a different activity that I could only take advantage of in Seattle. More on that later...

Now back to the vendor hall to sell books for a bit while getting ready for the Mac talk...

You see, yesterday I spent the day as a vendor, and it was quite a different experience.

This year, Harry agreed to let me sell copies of the SBS 2003 Unleashed book at the conference, specifically at the Community table (booth 108 for those at the show, in the back corner near the food extras). So right after the keynote, during the scheduled 45-minute "market expo" time, I headed back to the community booth, set up the display, and suddenly became "Eriq Neale, Vendor" instead of "Eriq Neale, Speaker and Attendee."

The community booth was a really happening place to start the morning. I'm working the booth along with folks from SMBTN, the SBS MVPs, and the SBS User Group community. Others have placed materials on the community table, including Jeff Middleton (an invite to his Saturday night party at Pub 85), Dana Epp (a discount for his Firewall Dashboard product), and a few other items. We had quite a few reps from SMBTN present to start the vendor time, and Handy Andy, who represents most of the groups represented by the "community" designation, hung out there quite a bit as well. At times, it was rather crowded inside the booth.

My plan was to set up and be available to sell the book during the "vendor time" and then break out with everyone else to attend some of the sessions. There were still a large number of attendees wandering the vendor hall at the start of the next session, however, so I opted to stay in my vendor hat for that session. There was only one presentation of the four being offered that I was sort of interested in, and if I didn't miss it, it wouldn't be the end of the world. And it wasn't.

After that session was the lunch break along with more vendor time, and the vendors were offered the option of getting lunch before the lunch rush came through, and I took advantage of that offer. Good thing I did, because once the crowd started through, the vendor hall was a madhouse again. Overall, I had a large number of people come by the table, see the book, and let me know that not only did they have it, but also they found it to be really valuable to them. I also heard from a number of user group members that they had finally received their eval copies within the last month (we've only been trying to get them out to user groups since January, and it finally came together, thanks in great part to Tim Barrett!) What I didn't do, however, was sell a single copy before the start of the afternoon sessions.

Which I also missed. I fully intended to go to Dana's session on security, but at the end of the lunch rush, I was exhausted, so opted to stay at the booth, just because it would be easier. And good thing I did, because that's when the book sales started. During the third session and the following market expo period, I sold several copies to grateful recipients. I was also able to get the majority of the authors in attendance at the show (except Chad Gross - I'll get you tomorrow) to sign the two copies I'm keeping for myself with all the author signatures.

I did break after that to sit in on the MVP panel discussion, which was taped by Tim Barrett and will probably be available for offline viewing later, so I won't dwell on the content here. But in the course of the discussion, a question about Group Policy came up, and we were able to point out that the book has two chapters on Group Policy. I mention that because immediately after the panel discussion, I sold another set of books to people who wanted to read up on GP because they heard about it in the panel discussion.

We packed up the booth right at 7pm and made our way over to Wayne Small's world record server build attempt on SBS R2. Sorry, Wayne, but I was exhausted from a long day of playing vendor, so a group of us cut out before the end and I headed back to the hotel and will crash as soon as I get this entry done.

So it was a very different experience for me this year over last for the first day, and I'm going to change it up a bit tomorrow and get more of the community feel again. But for now, I've got to wrap up and get some shut-eye so I'm rested and ready for my Mac talk tomorrow.

The keynote room, the Kodiak at the MS Conference Center, is pretty full, so attendance for the entire conference looks like it will be pretty good.

Right at 9am, Seattle time, the opening video started, including talking heads from MS buttering up the attendees with the importance of the SBS community members and how MS is working to support the SB community.

Harry made basic introductions about the conference and then introduced Marie Huwe as the keynote speaker, who addressed increasing profitability in the small business segment. Quite frankly, this was a bunch of marketing speak, which makes my eyes go fuzzy, so it's tough for me to say much more than that. She did touch on both Partner Finder and the IAMCP (International Association of Microsoft Certified Professionals). The also touched on the Small Business Plus program which will have some enhancements over the existing Partner Finder product.

The call to action at the end of the keynote:

• Become a Small Business Specialist
• Install Office and Vista betas and take online training
• Expand your network: blogs, user groups, partner forums
• Expand your client base by using one component of the five small business campaigns.

A number of questions were addressed in the panel Q&A, but nothing really groundbreaking.

Getting ready for the broadcast was a bit of an adventure, though. After being up for 22 straight hours (and only getting two hours sleep before that) I was about to crash in the hotel room when I noticed it was a bit warm in the room. I had turned down the AC earlier in the day, but it wasn't anywhere near that temperature. So I placed a quick call to the front desk and they sent someone right up. He got the fan blowing, but the compressor wouldn't come on, so I could either take a new room or let him spend a couple of hours trying to get it working. It was cool enough that I opted to open the balcony window to let the cool night air in and give it a go at that, and the thought of packing up the room and moving right then wasn't very palatable.

Unfortunately, I should have requested a room move right then and there, because it never did cool down and there was (surprisingly) a lot of traffic noise, and so I didn't get much sleep. So, at 5am local time, I called down and requested another room. I got a new room key brought up to me immediately, and I packed up and moved with an hour to spare before hooking up to get online for the broadcast.

At any rate, the show went off without a hitch, and the episode is already available on the archive site and on iTunes as well. Enjoy!

Anyway, I did manage to get a couple of hours of sleep prior to the alarm going off at 3:30am so I could shower and finish packing before the shuttle arrived to pick me up at 4:00am. Don't know why I rushed, he didn't show until 4:15. Seeing as how I thought that would put me at the airport at 5:00 or after, I was worried I might not have enough time.

Well, for starters, there is NO traffic going to the airport at 4:15am, so we made the trip in 30 minutes. Second, I did figure out that only insane people take 6:30am fights to Seattle (via Denver) from DFW, and we're fewer in number than the general population might otherwise acknowledge. So, by 5am, I'm not only at the airport, I've already gone through security and have taken a seat to wait for the next 1.5 hours to start boarding. And while I used to be a big fan of Soledad O'Brien, seeing her spout the same tripe that insists on being called news these days every half hour for the next 90 minutes was enought to put me in a really foul mood.

Fortunately, the flight was better, both legs actually. Somehow, I was the only person on the flight from DFW to Denver that was continuing on to Seattle, and while I was expecting to just wait on the plane, I got asked three different times if I'd be more comfortable leaving the plane and waiting in the lobby. Since I knew the next leg was completely full, and I hate waiting in lines in general, I passed.

Got into Seattle with no difficulty, found my obnoxious green bag with no difficulty, and found my step-brother in his blue Cooper Mini with no difficulty. Got to the hotel, checked in, and immediately took a nap.

Now that I'm back up and awake, I can honestly say that this is one of the nicer places I've stayed in my recent travels. I don't think I'll mind the location for the next 6 nights.

Plan for tonight is to have dinner with my stepbrother and his wife and kid, and I think we're heading down to the piers (i've got a hankering for Red Robin - yumm), then come back to the hotel and hook up with my MVP buddies and other assorted attendees who will be in town tonight. But I can't stay up too late, as I have to get ready for the live eOnCall broadcast tomorrow morning at 8am local time (that's still 10am Central).

Now to find some munchies to hold me over until dinner...

1. I'm staying longer.
2. I'm presenting this year.

Yep, I really haven't had time to really shout it from the mountaintops, but the Mac in SBS presentation is going to see the light of day in Redmond this year, and what an interesting story there is behind that. But I won't shed light on that until after the presentation is done.

Also, I'll be selling copies of the SBS 2003 Unleashed book for anyone who hasn't picked up a copy yet. And signing copies for those who want that done, too. Several of the authors who contributed to the book will be at the conference: Amy Babinchak, Tim Barrett, Susan Bradley, Henry Craven, Chad Gross, and Anne Stanton. Others may be in attendance, I just don't know for sure. i'm sure those who are there won't mind signing copies, either, but you will have to at least ask nicely.

So, starting after I get to the hotel and wake up from my flight tomorrow, the SMB Nation coverage begins. Until then, I have a lot of packing to do...

But occasionally, there's the little slipup with the big impact. Yesterday saw another one of those, and while I was tangentially impacted, it really didn't hit me personally very hard. But those it did hit, it hit hard. You see, because of a mixup in a virus scanning search string, the product from a certain anti-virus vendor started identifying a core Windows system file as infected and quarrantined the file. Oops.

Now don't get me wrong, I admire anti-virus vendors and the work that they do. They often times have a thankless job. It's amazing that they are able to create search strings for virus program patterns that will really only find the virus code in a file and not (usually) mis-identify a regular, uninfected program as a problem. Given all the different programs and files that can be present on any given computer at any given time, it's amazing that there aren't more false positives than there are.

Still, this is one that really should have been caught before it got out the door. I would think that if you are testing updates to a program, one of the basic things you would check is to make sure that it didn't break the OS it was running on. I have not done much software development recently, but back in the day, I wrote code for a Linux-based system, and we used a few scripts to configure certain file areas on the system. One of the first things I tested was to make sure the file system changes we made wouldn't render the system unbootable. Seems fairly basic to me. And maybe this company did do some level of testing, but somehow it still strikes me as odd that this wouldn't have been found in a thorough testing environment.

And this is not the only company that has released software that rendered systems unbootable. At least one other anti-virus vendor released a virus engine update that wreaked havoc. An uninterruptible power supply vendor had a program that, when not updated in a timely fashion, would keep a system from booting normally. And a certain operating system supplier has been guilty of releasing updates to its own code that had drastic unexpected results. It happens. Really, it does, and fortunately it doesn't happen more often than we see it happen.

Let me wrap up by saying that I'm really glad that this particular situation didn't happen close to Patch Tuesday. I can only imagine what would have happened if people went to install updates, rebooted, and found that their systems didn't come back up. The Microsoft phone lines would have been ringing off the hook, and a lot of people would have been chasing down the wrong road. This is actually a perfect example of why I always restart a server before installing security updates. If there's a problem with the server coming up before installing the updates, there very likely would have been problems with it coming up after the updates installed. And where would I have focused my ire, I mean, troubleshooting efforts? Right, at Microsoft. It would be easy to blame the patches for causing the no boot situation. If this had happened a couple of weeks ago, MS would have been crucified by thousands of callers blaming the security updates, and lots of time and energy would have been wasted looking in the wrong place for the cause.

Just goes to show that you should take any server reboot seriously. I always make sure that, before I reboot any server (mine or a client's) that I have the time to go onsite if a problem should present itself. It's very easy to become lax towards server reboots because, most of the time, they work exactly as they should. But in the case of some people yesterday who rebooted with their guard down, they had a bit of a rude awakening. Hopefully, the worst is over for now for this particular incident. Who knows where the next one will come from...

Then two announcements caught my attention. The first came from Apple, introducing a public beta of a software known as Boot Camp. The second came from a company I had previously not heard of called Parallels, announcing a solution that would allow you to run non-Mac operating systems in a virtual environment on Intel-based Macs.

Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued, and I started my research. That, combined with several queries from my mixed environment clients, prompted me to acquire an Intel-based Mac and do my own research. What follows are my initial observations of the solutions.

I went through the Mac setup out of the box, and it followed the same setup process as my other Mac Mini that I purchased last year. The OS X 10.4 setup runs just the same on the Intel hardware - there were no extra or different steps I had to follow because of the Intel setup. In fact, the system seemed to run a little faster through setup than my last Mac Mini did. (No, I haven't done any actual performance testing between the two boxes, just a "feel" thing based on my use of the original Mini for over a year.)

I then went and registered for the 30-day trial of Parallels Workstation for Intel-based Macs. I have not, and probably will not, install and test Boot Camp, and here are the reasons why:

1. Boot Camp is a multi-boot solution, not a virtualization solution. This means that if you want to run a Windows application, you have to reboot the workstation and bring it up in Windows. Conversely, if you're running the Windows side of the Mac and need to run a Mac application, you have to reboot into Mac mode to get there. My experience with multi-boot solutions is that you're spending more time rebooting between the two (or more) platforms than you are actually working, because you're often not in the "right" side when you need to run a piece from the other side. However, if you only ever want to run Windows on your Intel-based Mac, then Boot Camp is the tool for you.
   
2. Boot Camp works best with multiple partitions, so that your Mac data is on one partition and your Windows data is on the other. My Mini has a single partition, and right now I'm not interested in repartitioning/rebuilding so that I can have a clean separation of data. Yes, you can use a single partition for installing Windows through Boot Camp, but if you want to quickly remove everything related to Windows (because of a failed install, want to wipe out and start over, whatever) it's harder to do with everything installed on the single Mac partition.
   
3. If you do not install Windows correctly while booted in Boot Camp, you can wipe out everything on the hard disk, forcing you to rebuild the entire Mac from the recovery DVDs. I'm just not ready to make that leap quite yet.

I really wanted to take a look at Parallels workstation for a couple of reasons. The biggest is that Microsoft Virtual PC for Macintosh will not run on the Intel-based Mac. To be honest, I've been less than impressed with Virtual PC for Mac since Microsoft bought it from Connectix, but it's really been the only option thus far. The chances that Microsoft will try to develop a build of VPC for Mac that will run on the Intel chipset are, in my opinion, pretty slim. The other reason I was interested in Parallels was the price point: $49.99 for a single license. You can, in fact, pre-order the Mac version before the final release for $39.99, which is even more attractive than the list price of $129.99 for VPC for Mac. In both cases, you will need a legit license of Windows to install with the product. Microsoft does offer versions of Virtual PC for Macintosh that are bundled with an OS, but it costs more, and still doesn't run on the Intel-based Macs.

So I downloaded the 30-day trial of Parallels and went through the setup process. I've used a number of virtualized interfaces before, including Microsoft's Virtual PC (for PCs as well as Macintosh), Microsoft's Virtual Server, VMWare, and a few older solutions that are no longer available, and I will say that the installation for Parallels Workstation, like just about any other Mac software install, was simple and straightforward. In about two minutes, I had the software installed and ready to go.

Given that most people who are Mac fanatics are probably going to go straight into the install process without reading any documentation whatsoever, I decided to do the same. There's a nice PDF that comes with the Parallels install that I have yet to open. So I launched the application and got started. I went through the new Virtual Machine (VM) wizard, selected the OS I would be installing, set the path to the virtual hard disk file, and upped the RAM allocation from 256MB to 512MB. Again, it seems that Parallels missed the mark with the default RAM allocation for Windows XP, but MS says you can run XP in 128MB, so 256MB must be nice. Given that this is virtualized and probably will be slower because of it, I didn't want lack of RAM to add to the performance issues. Hence the increase to 512MB. I inserted the XP install CD and started the install process.

Twenty minutes later, I had a fully-installed XP workstation that had already been activated over the internet. No funky drivers needed for the install, no special configuration needed. And as I started downloading security updates from MS, I noticed that the performance of the XP box is pretty peppy. In fact, it actually seems a little faster than the Dell Optiplex GX260 I'm using as my PC workstation.

I did a few quick and unscientific benchmarks on the box after I got the security updates installed, and the performance of the XP in Mac is really, really good. I compared an OWA connection to my mail server in IE with Parallels versus Virtual PC on my old Mac Mini, and the difference is night and day. In fact, testing OWA against my Dell workstation showed that the Dell is slower than the VM on the Mac.

So far, I'm very impressed with what I've seen. Next, I'll be loading my regular software suite and seeing how it performs under that load. But right now I'm thinking that my desired situation, having one box on my desk running both Mac and Windows applications instead of having a dedicated Mac and a dedicated PC, is going to work very nicely. I can sure stand to get rid of the clutter of multiple keyboards and mice on my desk, too.

Entourage.

Susan Bradley has put up several posts in her blog about the difficulty we've seen in the SBS community with getting our hands on the Entourage installer media if we're not purchasing an Open LIcesnse media kit for SBS. I've been doing Open LIcense media for most of my installs to make sure that I get the Entourage install media, but also because I'm just that way. Retail media does not include the Entourage installer, but you can acquire the media directly from Microsoft, at least according to Susan. I've honestly not tried, but I've not had a situation where I've needed to try.

Until recentely.

This afternoon, I got a call from my new Dell software sales guy (I've been fortunate enough to have the same hardware sales rep for almost two years) who wanted to introduce himself to me. What better way to break him in than to dump this in his lap?

So I explained the situation to him so he could understand what was going on, and he immediately escalated within his team (not surprising and not a problem for me - I fully expected this). He actually got his escalation counterpart on the phone and I went through the explanation again, this time providing them with the MS part number for the retail Entourage CD media so they could look it up.

After a brief delay, I was informed that Dell does not provide a media set with an Entourage installer for their SBS OEM installs.

I've already started a query within my MS channels on this, but I've found yet another reason I will never, ever, purchase a new server for myself or for a client with an OEM installation. This just moved from the category of "well, I'll very likely never do this" to "if hell hasn't frozen over."

Updates as they become available...

Right?

Apparently not. One vendor has an installer that simply dies if any other MSDE databases are installed on the box. The installer assumes that there are no other instances (or will be no other instances) so it only checks to see if some of the key components are installed on the box and then aborts the install if they are. Geez! You've never, EVER, had a client want to install your product on a box where another database lives? And you've been in business how long? And you call this version 7?

Only slightly less excusable is a second vendor who, until recently, played well with others. I've done a couple dozen installs of their product on SBS servers (raise your hand if you know how many MSDE databases SBS installs by default - hint: it's more than one) with no issues, but they updated their installer and now it apparently fails to recognize which MSDE slot to try and install into. They've at least got a workaround, but good grief, what happened to quality control and testing?

So to all you database developers out there, please, please, please, please figure out how to correctly install a named instance of your MSDE database on a server, even if there are no other MSDE instances present. It's very short-sighted to assume that you're producing the only MSDE database in the world and can short-cut the detection process during an installation. Your customers and your partners will be very, very happy.

Disaster recovery and disaster preparations are linked. Disasters don't always happen suddenly - they usually happen slowly and over a long time. Jeff related his experience of relocating his wife's company from New Orleans to Texas in response to Hurricane Katrina. He set up a set of slides for the group to discuss if there was interest in the room. These are the topics that were discussed: