February, 2009

Using a POP connector when migrating to from POP to Exchange

When focussing on the SMB (Small-Medium Business) market I find that alot of companies don’t yet have their own Exchange servers and are still using POP mail. With the age of virtual servers upon us it is easier then ever to sell them on Exchange when you are already selling them a physical server and Windows enterprise license.

Best practice I have found when doing the migration is to use a POP connector on your Exchange server. This allows for a gradual migration and eliminates any lost email during the time when you are changing over the MX records.

Microsoft includes a free POP connector with Windows Server 2003 SBS and yet for some unknown reason doesn’t include one with the real version of Exchange. Still, using SBS is in fact it’s own punishment so it’s not a huge loss.

I recommend the Exchange Connector product by Quantum Software Solutions. It’s really straight forward to use and very customizable. You get a 30 day free trial, which is all you need if you are only using it for migration purposes, though I think it is well worth paying for if you think you are going to use it on a ongoing basis.

Here is the link

 http://www.quantumsoftware.com.au/

HP ProLiant is Highest Performing Server in Latest VMmark Comparison

HP ProLiant is Highest Performing Server in Latest VMmark Comparison

Check out the results here:
http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html

The HP servers scored the highest performance results when running VMware in comparison to multiple other vendors including Dell and IBM. Certainly some food for thought when purchasing your next physical server.

BES - Email not syncing properly

I have been troubleshooting a BES issue with a user whose email isn’t syncing properly. Some email sync’s fine and others not at all. I found this useful article that explains it really well.

 http://www.bbhub.com/2007/01/08/bes-admi…

Migrating DNS records

I am really tired of the way some people handle DNS record changes. It’s like people (even people in the IT industry) don’t seem to realize that changes are not instant. It takes on average between 24-48 hours for any record changes to propagate across the Internet and yet you have DNS cowboys trying to cut-over records and then wonder why names aren’t resolving, or mail isn’t flowing.

Best rule of thumb I have seen is maneuver your record change in a way that for that 24-48 hour period either record will work, if you can’t do that at least make your change on Friday before you head to the pub and make sure everyone knows that things may not work properly during the weekend.

The Primary drawback of IT Consulting

Here’s the drawback, wait for it, if you don’t use it then it doesn’t work. Now this seems obvious but it seems like there are certain people out there who employ IT consultants to provide all the IT support for them but then make IT related changes without discussing it with us. Then they get shocked when it blows up on them. Here was your clue, we are IT Consultants so perhaps consulting with us about IT stuff might somewhat make sense.

HP cutting wages

You can read the full story here:

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/19/…

However I just wanted to add my two cents to this story. I think bad quarterly earning reports are to be expected for most hardware vendors at this point. The truth is that HP really needs to diversify their business a bit into the service industry.  From what I understand the industry magic number is 30/70. Thirty percent service revenue and 70 percent sales. Now obviously HP understands this and that’s why they bought EDS, however rather than cutting employee pay which will pretty much guarantee they will loose some of their best people, they should really focus on some heavy lay-offs on the EDS side and then amalgamate the business.

Corrupt roaming profile

Normally when you come upon this error it is caused by the roaming profile path being wrong or the user nto having the proper permissions but I have found in a couple of cases it can be caused by a corrupted roaming profile.. In these cases I have found that I have to wipe out the roaming profile directory , specify a new roaming profile path, log in to let windows create the folder and then transfer the old data back in to it.

Toshiba to buy up Fujitsu’s HDD business

Here is an article about this:

 http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/02…

In times of economic difficulties this is both normal and reassuring, the strong start gobbling up the weak.  Kudo’s to Toshiba for not only being able to weather the hard times but have the strength to expand their business as the companies around them are declining.

Intel set to release it’s 32 nm chips by the end of 2009

Intel must be pretty confident because they are moving up there release date on their new line of 32 nm chips to end of this year. This is great news for everybody, ok well everybody except AMD who is still pushing to release there 32 nm chip sometime in 2010 by the most recent update that I have seen.

I recall when AMD first stormed onto the market offering a strong alternative (with very attractive pricing) to Intel, hell I remember buying a K6-2. Since then the fight between AMD and Intel has seen both sides alternating for the dominant position, that is until the release of the core 2 duo. Since that point Intel has been firmly in charge of the market and with AMD lagging behind on the release of the 32 nm chips this looks like it won’t change anytime soon.

Missing seperate icon for personal mail on a blackberry after it is wiped and re-activated

I have encountered this issue recently with users missing the seperate icon for their personal mail (gmail, yahoo mail etc ..) after there blackberries have been wiped and all of their mail is going into there message folder.

After doing some investigation I found that this issue is caused by a problem with IT policy on the BES sever. On your BES, open your IT policy go into the section called “service exclusivity policy group” and make sure all the options are set to default. After that resend the IT policy and service books to the effected blackberry users and have them restart and this should resolve the issue.