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It was yesterday (3rd February 2011) announced by Microsoft that the SBS2011 Essentials Release Candidate is available for download!

This is the first opportunity for anyone interested in SBS 2011 Essentials to get their hands on a copy of the server OS for trial purposes before the official product is released. This 25 users (maximum), cloud based system is fundamentally different from any other version of SBS that has gone before in that advanced features such as Email, SharePoint and AV are provided using cloud services.

This stripped down version is priced for small businesses allowing them to only pay for the features they need and nothing they don’t.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, use the links below to download a copy or alternatively subscribe to our blog for regular updates.

 

 

Here are some helpful links:

1. Official SBS 2011 Download page

2. SBS 2011 Official YouTube channel – contains helpful tutorial videos

3. Microsoft’s Official SBS website

A few months back I blogged about Microsoft’s new Small Business Server (SBS) codenamed Aurora and SBS7. (Blog post here)

Since then, the development of this Operating System has been relentless. Including a name change to Windows Small Business Server 2011, a simplified user interface and interaction with cloud based services.

 

Official SBS Website http://www.microsoft.com/sbs

 

Features of SBS 2011:

• Simplified IT Management
• Automatic daily backup of client machines and servers
• Access Business Information from Virtually Anywhere, Anytime
• Built-in Document Collaboration
• Designed and Priced for Small Businesses

Despite going through some changes, SBS 2011 still remains available in two editions:

Standard – supports up to 75 users

This, like previous versions of SBS is an entirely on premise solution including Email, File and Print features.

 

Essentials – supports up to 25 users

This edition contains a minimal number of inbuilt feature and relies on cloud based offerings to provide functionality such as email eg Exchange Hosted Services.

 

For more information see the Official SBS Website at www.microsoft.com/sbs

Ground-breaking two-socket server delivers outstanding performance, memory and storage

I have just finished a course on the x3690 X5 and to say it changes how 2 way processors delivers performance would be an understatement.

The x3690 X5 is a 2U platform with 16 drive bays SAS, or 24 1.8” SAS SSD drives. Combined with a staggering 1TB of memory capacity delivers Datacentre computing to medium size business.

IBM have released their fifth-generation X-Architecture (eX5) technology that helps the x3690 X5 to achieve four socket performance in a two socket Intel processor Xeon platform.  

The x3690 X5 can handle 12% more database transactions per minute than standard two socket servers, doesn’t sound much, but when you compare the cost of a four processor server with four database processor licenses; therefore 12% transaction per minute increase is a lot.

 

Memory Mezzanine

16-DIMM Internal Memory Expansion module can be installed to increase the DIMM slots available by16-DIMM; thus giving you 32 DIMMS within the x3690 X5 server.

 

MAX5

Connecting a MAX 5 memory module to the x3690 X5 system (three MAX5 modules are supported), adds 16-DIMM additional memory slots.  The MAX5 is connected to the server via the QIP ports and using the IBM cable kit. Additional MAX5 memory module trays are connected together using a MAX5 cable kit.  The QIP architecture delivers an impressive 6.4 GT/s between the MAX5 modules and the x3690 X5. 

Virtualising

If you are virtualising your existing environment, then the x3690 X5 can support more VM’s than any other two socket servers.  This is due to the high memory capacity and accelerated CPU performance delivered by IBM’s fifth generation X-Architecture technology. 

The following IBM YouTube has Andreas Groth, IBM Virtualisation Architect and Matt McSpirit, Microsoft Partner Technology Advisor.

Highlights:

• Achieve four-socket performance at a two-socket investment
• Grow to meet changing workload demands with superb memory expansion
• Own and operate your systems with less complexity and cost
• Get peace of mind with enterprise-class reliability and availability.

 

 

More Information:

Delivering database services or looking to virtualise? then you should be looking at the   IBM x3690 X5.

The IDC published a white paper entitled ‘The Value of Memory-Dense Servers: IBM’s System x MAX5 for its eX5 Server Family’ sponsored by IBM.

Visit IBM System x for more product information.

Gardner Systems is a major advocate of companies developing a business continuity plan. Many see such a plan as a different name for the familiar concept of an IT disaster recovery strategy. The two are of course inextricably linked but are fundamentally different.

An IT disaster recovery plan aims at just that – planning the ability to recover IT from a catastrophic failure, or a more likely a threatening event. IT premises being destroyed by fire is usually catastrophic for anyone, but the inability to access the same premises for even a limited time is also threatening and needs a contingency plan.

Enterprises are however realising that these days their business is usually entirely dependent upon their critical data, when in the past IT was often just an adjunct to the business process. Given sufficient planning, the IT process can now function from pretty well anywhere and play a big part in your business continuity plan.

Gardner Systems has joined the Liverpool Business Continuity Forum. This forum of Liverpool Businesses now has regular meetings of up to one hundred city enterprises. The Forum was launched by Steve Lambert of Liverpool City Council and now has an influential Advisory Board chaired by Neil Scales of Merseytravel. The Forum presents on all continuity issues, including security, health, weather and of course IT.

We hosted and provided speakers for the LBCMF event of 23^rd November and this month our MD Frank Coward joined the inaugural Advisory Board.

As part of our commitment to the challenge of business continuity on Merseyside, we are currently offering free consultation to interested parties. This has led to a number of local enterprises taking advantage of our hosted and back-up services.

A recent survey of SMEs by Symantec, has found 5%, around 240,000 UK firms, are not taking any steps to backup data and are leaving themselves exposed to risks of data loss and downtime. This is bad enough, but how many of the remaining companies have actually tested their back-ups? Gardner found one company diligently using a cleaning tape as a back-up! Funny until it happens to you………

In a major new business initiative Gardner Systems is collaborating with City Safe and Liverpool Vision to offer greater security to businesses in the historic Baltic Triangle area of the Liverpool Waterfront.

This area of the city is a very interesting area comprising a well-defined district of original waterfront buildings off Jamaica Street. It is now home to an eclectic group of ambitious businesses occupying a fascinating range of different types of buildings. This can however bring its’ own challenges as entrepreneurs try to offer increasing services levels from properties which please the eye but can be difficult to sustain.

 

 

IP camera systems have offered these businesses a level of collaboration and versatility not open to them from conventional CCTV. In a ground-breaking project, Gardner is deploying IP cameras in ways which offer users secure remote access, versatility and date stamped images to help guard these enterprises still further.

An initial ten businesses have selected internal and external camera solutions which offer the ability for them to collaborate and develop an enhanced neighbourhood watch scheme upon demand.

How appropriate that some very forward looking companies based in one of Liverpool’s historic areas are embracing the very latest in digital technology to transform their business security.

There has been a lot of talk since the start of the year on Cloud / Hosted services but no-one really explaining what it is or why it’s important. And trust me, it is important !

Welcome to Bootcamp

Lesson 1 – cloud and hosted services are the same thing, just called different things by different people.

Lesson 2- cloud computing is a concept

Lesson 3 – there are different types of clouds

 

Talking Clouds

The concept of cloud computing is simple, it looks at computing from a functional perspective and not that of the system builder or Administrator. For example cloud computing says “I want the ability to send email without paying for a server” or “I want the ability to backup my data without worrying about changing tapes”.

Most people aren’t concerned with how their services work, instead they are more concerned with the quality of service they receive. Cloud is all about consuming the facilities you need when you want, where you want and receiving a consistent service managed by someone else. This is provided via an Internet connection to the hosting company.

Nowadays, you can have a wide range of services provided to you via the Internet including:

• Office applications (word processing etc)
• Email
• Data Backup
• AntiVirus Protection and Systems Management
• Collaboration software
• Everything you need really.

So why is cloud important?

From a business perspective, less management and guaranteed levels of service for fixed monthly fees. With only paying what you need at the time you need it, businesses can reduce their costs dramatically.

Going forward, all major technology vendors including NetApp, IBM, Google, Microsoft have recognised cloud computing. Microsoft’s has even based its latest planned server OS for SME’s (SBS Aurora – blog post here) on cloud services to provide its core functionality – a big gamble? At the moment, possibly, cloud is new an misunderstood. In 3 years time when this OS is released, not at all because at that point cloud will be a well known platform.

This week I have been preparing for an OS upgrade at a customers site. Currently they are running Small Business Server 2003 (SBS) but are upgrading to SBS2008. This led me to the SBS website and to my surprise, the new version of SBS was available to download as a Beta OS (excellent!).

So, SBS2008 has been around for 2 years now, as with other versions of SBS before, it is suitable for up to 75 users and contains the following:

1. MS Exchange Server
2. SharePoint site for collaboration
3. Remote Web Workplace
4. File and Print sharing

In short, all the things that businesses need to get going licensed as one product, installed on one server.

 

So, what does the new SBS contain I hear you ask….well, in short, nothing much. But, it is radically different from other versions of SBS previously released and contains 2 versions.

 

SBS7 (codename)

This version of the new SBS is an on premise solution, it runs on a single server and contains the usual MS Exchange, SharePoint, File and Print etc. This is likely to only contain product updated from previous versions of SBS. [more details here]

 

SBS Aurora (codename)

Now this is cool! With all the talk of cloud computing Microsoft have included it in the core functionality of this product. This does not contain MS Exchange, SharePoint or CRM out of the box but can provide them by consuming Microsoft’s BPOS services.

No worrying about backing up your Exchange, because Microsoft do it for you.

No worrying about losing emails if your server crashes, because Microsoft do it for you.

Great!

This product will reduce the outgoing cost for Small Businesses by allowing them to pay only for the services (Email, SharePoint, CRM) they need on a monthly basis whilst allowing Administrators to manage the system as if it is inhouse. [more details here]

 

We expect this to be a great product which will provide everything that an SME requires, nothing that it doesn’t. Watch this space!

We don’t normally have guest bloggers on our site, but when we saw this piece that our friend over at Microsoft, Matt McSpirit had written, it was to good for us not to blatantly plagiarise!

We do a lot of work here with NetApp as a storage vendor and Microsoft as a solution vendor and over the last 18 months or so, we have seen the increased integration and development of NetApp’s value to the Microsoft virtualisation stack, we have seen some good success with our clients and have been involved in some excellent projects with them using these technologies.

However nice to see it backed by someone with Matt’s experience and someone who has no vested interest in NetApp storage above and beyond any other storage vendor, in fact in his role, he has to be agnostic.

Anyway enjoy the post… if you do want to know more about Matt or Microsoft’s virtualisation solutions then click here to check out his excellent BLOG

 

so here’s Matt’s BLOG, word for word…

I’ve been a big fan of NetApp technologies for ages, and I’ve worked closely with people like Steve Winfield, and Pete Mason, to produce a number of videos showcasing some of the collaborative work that’s gone on between Microsoft and NetApp, resulting in products like SnapManager for Hyper-V, SnapDrive 6.2 and more.  We’ve got some fantastic joint wins on the platform now too, at both small, and large customers, so it’s all good from that perspective.

I’m currently building out my team’s internal demo infrastructure, which currently consists of 1 Dell T605, with Hyper-V R2, and a number of System Center technologies virtualised on top, along with a cluster of 2 Dell R710’s, hooked up to a NetApp FAS3050c.  Now this FAS3050c isn’t the latest model, and it doesn’t have the most capacity in the world (my DS14 Disk shelf gives me around 570GB of usable space) but then it was kindly donated to me by NetApp, who were replacing some of their older kit, with newer kit for our Microsoft Technology Center, in Reading, UK.  The great thing for me is, I can still have the latest version of OnTap, it’ll work with the latest and greatest versions of SnapDrive, and SnapManager for Hyper-V, and it still gives me all the features I need, like the snapshotting, thin provisioning, and best of all, deduplication.  I’ll be honest with you right now.  I love dedupe.  I think it’s fantastically clever, streamlined, and because it’s at the block-level, rather than the file level, it’ll even dedupe stuff that you think, on the surface, has no chance of being deduped.  Crazy stuff.  Let me explain more.

Firstly, for those of you not sure what deduplication with NetApp is, and how it works, there’s a great explanation over at the Dr DeDupe blog.

As I said, my cluster environment is 2 Nodes, and to that cluster, I’m presenting 4 LUNs of storage, which in my NetApp environment, are in 4 separate Volumes.  You don’t have to do it like this, and who knows, maybe I’ll change it in the future, but right now, this is how it is:

As you can see, I’ve got a dedicated LUN for my witness disk, (I’m using Node and Disk Majority for my 2-node cluster), and 3 LUNs presented to the cluster, which have been selected to be Cluster Shared Volumes.  They aren’t huge, 100GB each for two of them, and a 25GB CSV that will hold the swap files of my key VMs (Each host only has 12GB RAM, so having 25GB for SWAP VHD’s is fine!)  You’ll see from the image above, that currently, I’m using around 51% of my CSV2.  It’s currently got a 40GB (ish) Fixed VHD with WS2008 R2 inside, but at the same time, CSV2 also has another Dynamic VHD, with Windows 7 x86 inside it, currently expanded to around 8GB.  Total consumption of that CSV is 51GB:

So, that means I’ll lose 51GB on my SAN, right?  Wrong!  We’re actually using a grand total of 17.5GB!

If we go over to NetApp System Manager, and take a look at this particular volume, you can see for yourself:

Just think about this for a minute.  Due to the fact that this is block-level deduplication, we can look inside the contents of the VHD files etc, and see where the blocks match, and deduplicate them, so in this case, we’ve saved a grand total of 37.62GB, which amounts to 60%.  Obviously Windows still thinks it’s using 51GB, even though, under the covers, the SAN hasn’t lost that space.  This is where Thin Provisioning starts to help, as you can make Windows think it has more storage available to it.

This use of deduplication hasn’t just been used on my CSV’s.  Oh no.  I’ve used it on the Witness disk, where, even though the whole volume is only 1GB, and the consumption was 50MB for the quorum information, deduplication still managed to save me 10mb, which is 20%.  What about my other savings?  Well, on my SCVMM Library, where I’m storing a couple of VHDs, but also some ISO files, I’ve saved a total of 15%, and on my actual backup store, being used by Data Protection Manager 2010, to protect Hyper-V and SQL so far, I’m saving just under 39GB, which equates to 58%.  These savings are real, and are enabling me to get even greater levels of consolidation on my SAN than I would have normally.  Brilliant stuff NetApp.

Now I just need to get ApplianceWatch PRO working…

Recently here at Gardners there has been a lot of work going on with the people from  Axis Communications. Axis are the worlds largest producer of IP cameras.

Normally when mentioned that the camera is connected to a computer network people tend to think of webcams, small, basic devices that connect to your computer used for chatting with your friends. This simply isn’t the case, with the advancement of camera technology picture definition has been vastly improved and impressive features added including::

• High Definition
• Thermal imaging
• Infra-Red imaging
• Facial recognition
• Automatic Number Plate Recognition
• PIR sensing
• LED lighting
• Motion detection

As these cameras are Ethernet based they can be easily incorporated into your existing network infrastructure to allow easier manageability, scalability, reliability and flexibility. Images can be backed up to a data store on your network or using Gardners service offerings, backup the images to us also ensuring that you always have a copy of your images.

Pilot Scheme

We have recently begun our trial scheme for our Axis offerings. During the past couple of weeks we have been contacted by some of the North-West’s largest companies interested in this technology and are piloting the cameras with them.

If you wish to get involved with this free of charge trial scheme, we have a range of IP cameras available suitable for any purpose. If you are considering replacing your current security cameras, installing new ones, or are simply interested in the technology and want to trial some IP cameras please just let me know.

Email: jasonf@gardsys.co.uk

Twitter: @enrjfitz

Phone: 0151 220 5552

 

Hi all, first blog post in a while (sorry!).

Just to remind all of you that were hot on the heels of downloading and installing Windows 7 RC (build 7100) – your time is almost up. Starting on 1st March 2010 users with this RC release will experience their machine shutting down every 2hrs, messages warning that the copy of Windows is not genuine.

On June 1, 2010, if you are still on the Windows 7 RC, your license will expire and the non-genuine experience will be triggered. Your wallpaper will be removed and "This copy of Windows is not genuine" will be displayed in the lower right corner of your desktop, above the taskbar. Starting on February 15, 2010, Windows 7 RC should actually start giving daily prompts to remind you about the expiration, but just in case two weeks’ notice isn’t enough, we’re letting you know a month in advance.

If you have enjoyed using Windows 7, upgrade to it! It’s brilliant!

Upgrade sooner rather than later to avoid issues in the future.