Beatrice Mulzer SBS Webcast – June 29

Webcast Title: “Welcome to Wednesdays on the Web with TS2: System Builder Sneak Peek – SBS and ISA 2004”
Date: 6/29/2005
Time: 1:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

SBS Consultant and Hands-on-Lab instructor Beatrice Mulzer will talk about how to Up-sell Small Business Server Premium w/SP1 to your clients. She will show you where the true ISA-value-add for small business lies, and how to build a Service Business around the ISA features.

– ISA 2004 features
– Creating access policy rules
– ISA Monitoring and Reporting
– VPN, DMZ, server publishing and the links translator
– ISA and SBS2003 “you should never put ISA on a production server” (really?)
– What’s in it for the SMB (small-medium business)

Registration URL: http://www.msreadiness.com/eventregister.asp?eid=2405

Harry Brelsford SBS SP1 Webcast – June 22

Webcast Title: “Welcome to Wednesdays on the Web with TS2: SB: A look at SBS SP1 with the famous Harry Brelsford of SMBnation.com”
Date: 6/22/2005
Time: 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

International SBS author Harry Brelsford joins us live from Dublin, Ireland, where he is on tour with his popular one-day SMB Nation Summit workshop tour www.smbnation.com. Harry will speak towards the acceptance of Windows Small Business Server 2003 (SBS) Service Pack 1 (SP1) approximately one month after its commercial release.
Specifically:
– SBS Sp1 Components
– Tales from the trenches – worldwide war stories regarding SBS Sp1 deployments.
– Small-medium business (SMB) consulting opportunities surrounding the SP1
– Historical look back at legacy SBS service packs (SBS 2000, etc.) and how the SBS 2003 SP1 is different
– ISA Server 2004
– Question and answers

Registration URL: http://www.msreadiness.com/eventregister.asp?eid=2385

Elvis Has Left The Building

Originally I was just going to post this as a boring blog, but it’s time for a rant.

Yesterday I was happy as a clam – SBS Service Pack 1 went live, and I was staring down the barrel of a 3-day weekend. So like a good little geek I went to Microsoft’s website to download SP1.

And while the website site was getting hammered with SBSers downloading the service pack, I decided to surf over and purchase the CD too. Now, why would I buy the CD AND download the service pack? Well, because the ‘premium’ goodies are only available on the CD – not on the download site. So I get my little yellow sticker out with my product key, and my credit card and type all my info in. Everything takes, confirmation e-mail, life is good, for a while.

Skip ahead to today. I just got an e-mail regarding the CD order I placed yesterday for SBS SP1 stating that it is “backordered”. Come on fellas!! We’ve only been waiting since 2004 for a service pack and they’re backordered after less than 24 hours??? For crying out loud, throw another cakebox of blank CDs on the burner Microsoft! Heck, if AOL has enough CDs out there that people are building lighted thrones for their living rooms from them… I mean, well, you know what I mean. You guys can pump out enough CDs for TechNet, Action Pack and MSDN combined to sink an aircraft carrier!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. AOL had ‘forever’ to burn their CDs and Microsoft had little/no time to burn theirs. I get it. But hey, my point is why even ADVERTISE the CD purchase if you KNOW you don’t have enough CDs? Just so people can jump through all their registration hoops and pay their $5.30 to find out that they’re gone? Doh! Next time, how about if you don’t put that web page up until enough CDs are ready? Dig? How many CDs? You guys are smart, you can figure this out… __ number of copies of SBS Premium sold X percentage of people who would like their SBS server patched = # of CDs you need.

All right. I got that out of my system. I feel much better now. And yes, I DID download it already. So there! Nyeah 😛

SBS 2003 Service Pack 1 Is Here!

In case you’ve been in a cave or standing in line for Star Wars Episode III, you’ve probably heard that SBS Service Pack 1 is available for download now. Woo-hoo!!

Download URL:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/downloads/sp1/default.mspx

But before you get too excited (the excitement does dim a bit about half-way through the 205MB download) read on a bit. The download site was pegged yesterday, but it’s moving nicely today at around 210 KB/Sec speeds pretty consistently. Or if you’d rather purchase SP1 on a CD, you can buy it at the link above for $5.00USD plus sales tax (free ground shipping).

You need to test SP1 before you deploy it to your client networks. First, this is a 1.0 release of the service pack (scarry) and second, SBS SP1 CANNOT be uninstalled. So if you feel like running out there and bolting this thing onto a production network, be prepared to start looking for the backup tapes if something goes wrong.

Here is a link to the Release Notes. READ THESE!:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=022677CC-F5AC-4BFB-9AD0-454E89CB98BB&displaylang=en

Windows Server 2003 R2 Beta

The next version of the Windows Server operating system, Windows Server 2003 R2, is available as beta software as part of a Customer Preview Program.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/default.mspx

Windows Server 2003 R2 builds on the award-winning Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) to make it easier and more cost effective to extend connectivity and to control identities, locations, data, and applications throughout and beyond your organization.

The beta software is available as a download in both x86 (180-day trial) and x64 (360-day trial) versions. This software should only be used in a test environment.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/R2/trial/default.mspx

Windows XP Update Supports Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2)

Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) is the latest standards-based wireless solution from the IEEE 802.11i standard. It also contains Wireless Provisioning Services (WPS) Information Element support. This update applies to XP Home, Pro, MCE & Tablet.

URL: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=662bb74d-e7c1-48d6-95ee-1459234f4483&displaylang=en

Additional WPS information:
Overview of the Wireless Provisioning Services technology in Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 and in x64-based versions of Windows Server 2003
(890156) – Describes an overview of the Wireless Provisioning Services (WPS) technology with Windows Server 2003. Provides instructions to download the Deploying Wireless Provisioning Services (WPS) Technology document for more information.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;890156

TechNet Support WebCast: Introduction to the Wireless Provisioning Services
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837445

Expert Zone Support WebCast: Wireless Home Networking and Windows XP Service Pack 2(887287) – Explains how to use Windows XP SP2 to locate and connect to wireless networks. Discusses how to use some of the new features in Windows XP SP2 for Wi-Fi 802.11 home networking. Discusses some of the changes in Windows XP SP2.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;887287