Upgrading a network is fun. There are always little nuggets of new experiences when you alter the backbone of a network. Those little surprises that creep up and say, "Hey, did you know about me?" The experience has held true through the upgrading of Pacesetter Adjustment Company's network from Windows 2003 to Windows 2008 R2.

Pacesetter's was an older network. It was installed in 2004 utilizing 4 servers, one primary domain controller, an Exchange server, an application server for the website and web applications, and a remote access server including a VPN. Networks and technology in general age like dogs. One year in human time is like 10 years in technology time. So the Pacesetter network was somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 years old. And just like people, all those years of experience had molded something quite unique. Bizarre permission settings, inexplicable DNS records, and old way of doing things were all challenges that we had to overcome in retiring the older network for the new one.

So what are we looking at now? The total number of servers was dropped from 4 to 2, saving both electricity and complexity. The old Exchange server was decommissioned in favor of Microsoft BPOS's Exchange Online. Pacesetter is in the cloud! The old remote access / VPN server is replaced with an Untangle network gateway that handles the VPN needs. The old Windows 2003 application server is still going strong though we are working on plans to move it off-site to the cloud. And finally the Windows 2003 primary domain controller is replaced by a Windows 2008 R2 domain controller. The transitioned offered its fair share of bumps in the road and my new best friend may very well be DCDiag.exe but there was certainly nothing we couldn't overcome.

In the next couple of weeks we'll be completing the upgrade by installing new Lenovo all-in-one Windows 7 Professional desktops across the company. At the same time, we'll be making the transition to Office 365. Pacesetter's network will be new and shiny and ready to go... and getting older.

Disasters are a fact of life.  Here in Louisiana it's hurricanes that pose the biggest natural risk.  In addition to natural risks, though, there are risks such as fire, flooding from faulty sprinkler systems, or just simple hardware failure.  Want a sobering statistic from the National Archives and Records Administration?  93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster.

So what is the ability to quickly recover from a disaster worth to you?  No, really, tell us what it is worth to you by submiting your answer to our survey! 

There are solutions that can provide rapid recovery, especially from disasters such as hardware (server) failure.  These solutions include an onsite backup server that contains current backups and virtual machines that can be provisioned as a replacement for the failed sever.  Total downtime?  15-20 minutes.  These solutions can be a little pricey but they are certainly worth it.

So what levels of back up are available?  Look below to see different levels of protection and the pros and cons.  Want more information?  Give Strix a call and we will guide in the right direction.

 

Protection Level	Investment	Pros	Cons
None	$0	It's cheap.	If you experience any sort of hardware failure or accidental delete, you're cooked. There is no recovery with no backup
Onsite File Backup	Minimal	The investment is low. Provides at least a little protection in the case of a hardware breakdown or accidentally deleted file.	A disaster that destroys the building where the backup resides will mean you no longer have a backup. If the backup survives, you're still looking at a long and difficult road to recovery. Something like a hard drive failure will mean reinstalling all of the software that was installed on the drive. Just because you have the files does not mean you can simply put the backed up files on a new hard drive and everything will work as before.
Manual Offsite File Backup	Low	The investment is still pretty low. Important files are still retained in the event of a disaster that destroys the hardware.	You're still looking at a long, hard road to recovery because you will need to procure new hardware, reinstall all software, and then replace your important files. Another important factor here is that manually taking the backed up data offsite requires very good discipline by the person performing the backup. If you forget the backup tape or drive and the building is destroyed, so is your backup.
Automatic Offsite File Backup	~$100 / month	The costs are still relatively low and you don't have to rely on the discipline of the person responsible for the backups.	At this point, there are two main drawbacks. One is that it is still only your files that are being backed up. Reinstalling all software after procuring new hardware is still required. The other is that you are going to have to retrieve your files from the back up provider. The files will be accessible via your internet connection so restoring large amounts of data will eat up your available bandwidth and will take significant time.
Automatic Offsite BMR Backup	~$300 / month	Your protection is now solid. Bare Metal Restore (BMR) capability means that after you procure the new hardware, you load the BMR image from your backup and you're back up and running. No need to reinstall your software, it is part of the BMR image.	The costs are not necessarily negligible for a small company. Also, your backup data is still only accessible via your internet connection so your bandwidth will be used up and it will take some time to transfer such a large amount of data.
Hybrid Onsite / Offsite BMR Backup	~$500 / month	This level of protection should leaving you sleeping well at night. Because the backup data is both onsite, your recovery time is pretty fast as long as the onsite backup wasn't destroyed. The longest delay here is in procuring new hardware.	Small business will likely notice this monthly cost. Also, it is still not the top level of protection so if you're going to pay the costs, you might as well try to afford the better protection.
Hybrid Onsite / Offsite BMR Backup With VM Failover	~$750 - $1,000 / month	Short of a complete physical destruction of your hardware, you can be back up within 15-20 minutes. The Virtual Machine (VM) failover allows you to use your onsite backup server as a virtual machine replacement for a failed server. Once you procure new hardware for the failed server, restore from the BMR image and you're as good as new. Most of these services will also provide overnight delivery of a new backup server with all of your existing data. Again, using the VM, you can be back up and running literally overnight.	It's an investment and may be too much for smaller businesses.
***Prices are estimates and can vary significantly depending on amount of data being backed up.

Everyone needs to be aware of the BRAC / SCORE event Integrating Social Media: How To Make It Work For Your Business being held on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011.  This event is a continuation of the Social Media series that started in April.  That first event was a huge success with well over 100 attendees.  The panelists were great and really helped the audience understand how Social Media can be used for business growth.  This event will get into more detail about how to actually integrate Social Media in your business. The panelists, Orhan and Victor, are both experts in the field and will undoubtedly provide some great content. 

Click on the link above to register.  Lunch is included but only if you register beforehand.  You can attend even if you don't register but you may not get lunch!  Also, put a comment on this blog to let me know you're coming, I'd love to meet you in person!

We've been working hard to expand our available services at Strix.  We strive to be able to fulfill any IT need you have.  To move closer to acheiving that goal, Strix has entered into a partnership with Ingram Micro, a large scale distributor of all things computer related.  It really seems boundless the products Strix is now able to deliver so we are quite excited with this move.  

That said, we are still working on becoming fluent in all of the products available.  If you have a need, let us know and we will become fluent very quickly for you.  In the meantime, our focus right now is the resale of Lenovo desktops, servers, and laptops.  We chose a special partnership with Lenovo because I believe in their product.  Lenovo purchased IBM's PC business and has continued the tradition of building sturdy PCs that are great for the work environment.  These machines are built with quality parts and can withstand the wear and tear that comes with business use.  Lenovo is the preferred provider for Strix and so we recommend the same to our clients.  

We look forward to expanding our products in the near future.  One thing we'd really like you to look out for is the resale of Jive business communcation services.  Take a look here to see just what Jive is.  Hosted PBXs are the wave of the future and we're excited to surf the wave and helping our clients reach new heights.

Thus far we've discussed what Microsoft BPOS is and why one of our clients, Eagle Environmental, found BPOS to be the solution of choice for them.  Now, I'd like to spend some time discussing how we proceeded through the migration from their POP server to BPOS.  

Eagle's migration took place in three basic steps.  

1. Preparation
2. Email Migration
3. 3. Communicator Installation        

Preparing for a migration to BPOS is extremely important.  If you don't have your "ducks in a row," you will likely run into issues that affect your business operations.  In my opinion, the most important aspect of the preparation is making sure you are in control of your DNS.  SMBs often don't manage their own Domain Name Service (DNS) and such was the case with Eagle.  Utilizing BPOS requires a couple of DNS changes to ensure that email is delivered correctly.  Because having DNS records set up incorrectly will cause email delivery failure, it is vital that the records be changed just before the migration begins.  When you are not in control of your DNS records, you are at the mercy of whomever is in control of the records.  In Eagle's case, their ISP controlled the records and so our first step in preparation was to get control of the DNS.  Completing this process proved exactly why it was so important.  Everything considered, it took about 6 weeks to work with Eagle's ISP and get the DNS control away from them and into our hands.  Now if this was not done before the actual migration, Eagle would've experienced email delivery issues for the whole 6 weeks.  Now if you are in a position where you cannot get control of your DNS, there are some workarounds but ideally, you will be in control.  

The next step in preparation was getting a list of email boxes that will need to be set up.  This is typically just a user list but you must also consider general mailboxes such as info@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com.  In Eagle's case, they had one general email box and a box for an old employee that they still wanted delivery for.    

Finally, just before the actual migration, we made a backup of every users mailbox.  If you host your own Exchange server now and are moving to Exchange online, this step is not necessary.  In Eagle's case, though, they were using a POP server and the only copy of the emails were in the users' mailboxes.  

With the above information in hand and backups of the mailboxes, we were ready to move forward to the email migration from Eagle's POP server to Exchange Online.    

The first step was to purchase the licensing through Eagle's Microsoft Customer Portal (this requires a Windows Live ID so if you don't have one already, you will need to get one).  Once the licenses are bought, we opened Eagle's Administration Portal and added the users who needed mailboxes.  

The next step was to make the DNS changes as discussed above.  The DNS changes tell the computers along the internet how they should route incoming email.  Since Eagle's email would not be going to the Microsoft hosted Exchange server instead of their ISP's POP server, we had to let the internet know.    

After completing the DNS changes, we began the long process of uploading the backed up mailboxes on the users' computers to the new Exchange Online mailboxes.  WARNING!!! The upload process can take a LONG time.  Eagle had some users with mailbox sizes of several gigabytes.  They connect to the internet via a T1 line and with all of the data being uploaded from the users mailboxes, the pipes got quite backed up.  We knew this would be an issue so we started the process during a long weekend.  If you don't have a long weekend to work with, be sure you utilize as much down time as you can as the process may take a couple of days depending on your mailbox sizes and internet bandwidth.  

During this process, we first loaded the Microsoft Single Sign-on application onto the user's machine, updated the settings for Outlook to tell it how to connect to the hosted Exchange server (this can be done automatically by the Single Sign-on application which creates a new Outlook profile or manually which retains the existing profile), and used Outlook to import the mailbox backup.  Oh, and we waited... and waited... and waited... while the mailboxes were uploaded.  

The final phase was to configure users' smartphones to connect to Exchange Online and finally, to add Office Communicator to the user's machines and allow the Single Sign-on application to configure it.  We did the Communicator part several days after the mailbox upload as it seemed a good idea to make sure everyone's emails were functioning properly and all the user's were adjusted to the change.    

Overall the process of migrating Eagle Environmental to Microsoft BPOS went very well.  We hit a few hiccups along the way but there was nothing that was not easily overcome.  Eagle didn't experience any significant downtime and everyone has accepted the changes enthusiastically.  

Our last post focused on the Exchange Online aspect of Eagle Environmental's migration to Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).  I want to discuss in more detail the actual process we followed to accomplish that move, but first, let me finish explaining just how Eagle is using the rest of BPOS.  There were two other aspects of BPOS that Eagle was really excited to use, SharePoint Online and Office Communicator Online.  So today, we will focus on those two products.  

As I mentioned before, Eagle's business model creates a need for remote users.  One of the difficulties they faced was collaboration on documents used for presentations and production.  Their approach was to have remote users connect via a VPN back to their home network.  While the solution worked most of the time, they often found that users would be in a position where they did not have access to the VPN client.  Even with VPN connectivity, users often experienced difficulty knowing who changed what, when.  To solve this issue, Eagle is now using SharePoint online to share documents and track editing of documents.  A site was created on Eagle's SharePoint Online portal using a document management template.  Now, users simply log on to the SharePoint portal, access the site, and work on the documents.  Other users of a document can also now see if the document is being worked on by another user, if / when it was changed, and who changed it.  Ultimately, they are now more coordinated in their document management tasks, saving them effort, which saves time, which saves money.  

Another area Eagle struggled was in simple communication between employees.  If a user was working in another office offsite, it could prove difficult to send quick messages to them.  Emails may not be checked, cell phones may not be turned on, and shouting loudly was disruptive to the other employees and suffered very limited range.  No problem for BPOS.  With Office Communicator Online, have an instant messaging solution at their fingertips that avoids many of the downsides of traditional instant messaging programs.  Unlike Yahoo and MSN Messenger, Office Communicator Online is geared toward inter-company communication.  There are no distractions or temptations from instant messages from people outside of the company.  The communications are secure and the program integrates with Office Outlook to provide quick, easy access to instant messaging.  To add a little sugar on top, Office Communicator allows PC to PC calls and video chatting.  Overall, Office Communicator is a great product and Eagle Environmental is loving that they can more quickly and easily communicate with each other, even if they are not in the same office.  

Our next post will focus on the actual migration process.  We completed the migration in three action-packed phases, so be sure to check back soon to see just how we brought Eagle Environmental into a more collaborative world.  

Well we've certainly been busy over the last several weeks here at Strix Louisiana.  We are developing two separate custom web applications, both for use in the insurance industry.  We've assisted a couple of other clients with the development of IT policies and procedures for compliance needs. And we've had the "honor" of producing hundreds of 1099's originating from three different custom data systems for another client.  Great Times!  But what I really want to focus on today is what we did for Eagle Environmental, an environmental engineering firm here in Baton Rouge. 

Strix has been doing custom database development for Eagle for sometime but recently, we've become more involved in their IT strategy and support.  So where was Eagle hurting? Because of the nature of their work, Eagle employees spend significant time away from the office.  Their remote nature often made communication and collaboration difficult between employees.  It also caused issues in email synchronization because Eagle was using a POP mail server provided by their internet service provider (ISP). So, though many of the employees had smart phones that could connect to the POP server, they were each having to spend extra time syncing Outlook on their desktop to their phones.  And because when Outlook was running, it would remove emails from the POP server when it received the mail, employees were not always able to get the messages on their phone. So what did we do?

Eagle’s situation was a perfect fit for Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).  Microsoft’s BPOS offering includes:

• Exchange Online
• SharePoint Online
• Office Communicator Online
• Office Live Meeting

For the email issue, what BPOS allowed us to do with Eagle is to set up an Online Exchange server so that all smart phones, workstations, laptops, etc. could have the employees’ mailboxes synced no matter what media was being used.  Now, this level of connectivity could have been accomplished with an onsite Exchange server too, but what makes Exchange Online so attractive is that the Exchange server is hosted by Microsoft.  Microsoft, therefore, provides for you the hardware, software, setup and configuration, backup, and redundancy that can typically only be afforded by companies the size of Microsoft. 

Eagle is now running more efficiently with their adoption of BPOS.  I’ve just talked about Exchange Online in this post but soon I’ll go into more detail about how Eagle is using the rest of the BPOS and the process of transitioning over.  So keep an eye out for future posts, I’ll have them to you soon.>

I'm excited to be kicking off the Strix Louisiana blog!  For those of you unfamiliar with Strix, we are an IT services company offering services ranging from Managed IT Services to Custom Application Development.  It is our goal to simply provide top-of-the-line IT services to SMBs that typically cannot afford comprehensive IT support.  The blog is going to be used to let everyone know what is going here at Strix and to hopefully give people ideas that they can use in their own organization.  

But enough with introduction, let's get into some meat.

The strongest push right now for Strix is our Manged IT Services.  Utilizing Level Platforms' Managed Workplace 2011, we are able to remotely monitor and manage a company's IT assets.  Managed Workplace is an extremely powerful program that not only provides detailed asset management information but also alert us when any network device experiences operational issues.  With the alerts received, we are able to investigate and remedy the issue, usually before our client even knows there is a problem.  Managed Workplace helps Strix keep its clients from experiencing unnecessary downtime and identifies areas that can be improved to increase employee production.

Along with Managed Workplace, Strix is also advising clients to use an Untangle Firewall Server.  Untangle is a comprehensive network security appliance that monitors all incoming and outgoing network traffic and offers a wide variety of security for that traffic.  The tools on an Untangle server include firewall, ad-ware protection, malware protection, web-content filtering, bandwidth monitoring, reporting and much more.  Best of all Untangle provides this protection without slowing down your network connection.

For today, we'll end with a quick description of another product that Strix helps its client implement and maintain.  That product is Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).  Microsoft's BPOS includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communicator, and Office Live Meeting.  All of these are hosted in a Microsoft data center that provides enterprise level security and backup.  To put BPOS in a perhaps more recognizable term, it is "The Cloud."  What you get with BPOS is email, inter-company collaboration and communication, and web video conferencing all without having to buy one bit of hardware.  All of the hardware is handled by Microsoft so you don't have to worry about servers, installations, updates, etc., etc.  It's an exciting product that I advise all of my clients to adopt.

Overall, we use a variety of tools to accomplish customer satisfaction but ultimately it comes down to the wealth and knowledge Strix provides that keeps your company's IT running smoothly and efficiently.  What really sets Strix apart, though, is we make a strong, concerted effort to understand your business processes.  Ultimately, we are not only able to support your current IT situation, but also shape your IT so that it empowers your company.  At Strix, we believe that IT is more than a tool you use to accomplish your business goals.  We believe that proper utilization of technology becomes an integral part of your business process, allowing you to do more faster and cheaper than you ever could before.

We look forward to providing more information in the near future about how we are utilizing the tools listed above to make SMBs better companies overall.  We'll be discussing not only what we're doing but why we're doing it too.  So check back often to see what's going on!