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Migrating to Small Business Server 2008

This is an account of my experiences in a fairly convoluted migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008.

Background

In our environment we have a Small Business Server 2003 running on a fairly beefy quad-core Xeon system and an additional Domain Controller running Server 2003 Standard. With the release of SBS 2008 and its system requirements coupled with potentially available hardware, our migration path was clear: the existing SBS 2003 hardware was the best choice.

Planning

Given the constraints of moving from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 on the same hardware (i.e. no upgrade option), the best approach was to virtualise SBS 2003 and run it on VMware Server hosted on the Server 2003 DC while the migration was in progress.

After researching some of the possibilities for running SBS 2008, Server 2008 with the Hyper-V role installed was chosen to host a SBS 2008 virtual machine. Hyper-V Server was considered but due to the need to use software RAID on the host and lack of a local interface made it a non-starter.

Implementation

VMware Converter was installed on the Server 2003 DC and a Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion was performed of the SBS 2003 machine. Once complete the physical computer was shutdown and the P2V instance was imported into VMware Server 2 which was installed on the additional DC also.

When the SBS 2003 VM was brought online, some minor glitches needed resolved. Running the Connect to the Internet wizard solved most of the issues.

To prepare the destination hardware, Server 2008 Standard was installed on the old physical server and the Hyper-V role configured. A virtual machine was configured and SBS 2008 installed on it using the migration mode answer file as outlined in the SBS migration document.

The above document was followed to perform the entire migration procedure. User shares were migrated, WSS2 companyweb was imported into the new internal website, our existing SSL certificate was moved, as were Exchange mailboxes and public folders.

Conclusion

Moving the existing SharePoint internal website to the new internal website was a fairly involved procedure, yet still a welcome one allowing us to move our site to WSS3.

The legwork involved in getting Exchange migrated was also somewhat frustrating given some problems I ran into with Invalid token errors (80090308) when trying to Move all Replicas of the Public Folders to the Destination server.

There was further frustration and uncertainty when removing Exchange 2003 using the SBS 2003 Setup Wizard which reached a less than clear conclusion when setup had seemingly ran its course:

0xc007041d - The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. (EXIFS)

Facility: Microsoft Exchange Setup
ID no: c107041d
Microsoft Exchange Setup

I’m still unsure whether Exchange 2003 ever did remove itself properly from our Domain . . .

Otherwise I am extremely impressed with the ease most steps in the migration process could be performed and found the whole experience much less daunting than my initial reading of the subject.

Bitten by a [Old] Bug . . .

I set up a virtual lab to test some deployments of Office 2007 and Symantec Endpoint Protection. Cue many hours banging my head off the wall and cursing the wrong software.

I needed to test the deployment of the packages before putting them onto clients’ systems so I set up a couple of VMs from media I had lying about. I set up a Server 2003 DC and an XP Pro client to mimic the infrastructure I’d be rolling the packages out in.

I decided to use Virtual PC for a change as I’ve always stuck with VMware Server to date but wanted to get some experience of Microsoft’s offering since I’d used it a little at the last training course I did and been quite impressed by it.

The Server 2003 VM was no problem, I got AD configured and added a test user and computer account. Unattended setup of the XP Pro VM went smoothly using an old SP2 integrated media made with nLite and I joined the client to the domain without fuss.

I proceeded with my software deployment tests:

• Office 2007 via GPO
• Symantec Endpoint Protection via the included deployment wizard

I quickly discovered issues with both applications after their initial push deployments when running under a Limited User Account; both threw up Error 2503 and Error 2502 with no real information as to what was causing the issue.

Googling both errors yielded little in the way of useful results beyond a Microsoft Knowledge Base article saying to make sure time and date were correctly set - which they were. I also could find no reported issues running either as a limited user and didn’t expect there’d really be an issue as both are meant for a corporate environment where such is standard practice.

I was stumped; I could add the user to the local Administrators group and everything would work wonderfully so I realised I had a permissions issue of some type. I was focused on the programs and attempted relaxing the permissions on the respective registry keys and folders for both to no avail.

I tried Process Monitor to no avail (I’m really not very good debugging issues with this app to my shame). I even ran the Security Configuration and Analysis MMC snap-in with the workstation compatibility template in the hope of relaxing any permissions or policies I’d missed. I was completely barking up the wrong tree.

I realised both issues were relating to MSI packages and maybe the permission issue was to do with the Microsoft Installer. I’d briefly had this thought and dismissed/forgot to investigate it thoroughly in my previous troubleshooting. Having run out of ideas and finding a post while having a final google for any hint what Error 2502 or 2503 could mean in general with a LUA.

I struck gold. A bug in the version of nLite used to make my XP Pro media had mangled the permissions in the registry for the installer. I confirmed the issue after reading this post and replaced the permissions as directed. A logoff and logon later the errors were gone.

I’d wasted countless hours fighting an issue that’s long been fixed since the next version of the nLite software and I’d been using an RC of v1.3 for that particular install media.

I guess the moral of the story is to always make sure you have the latest and greatest release of all components even the non-obvious ones. Or stick to vanilla Microsoft media is probably the more professional mantra. Ultimately it’s my own fault and I should really have been on top of this issue much quicker. I’m pretty sure more skilled use of Process Explorer would have saved me a lot of time.

MS CRM 3.0 Email Routing Rules

I’ve been setting up a simple CRM system to handle support requests from clients and assign them a tracking token.

I used this guide I wrote a while back to install and configure the basics of the CRM server. This gave me a working system with a support@company.com email address which routes messages to a Support queue.

This all works wonderfully until you want to reply to a support request and track the interaction with the client. i.e. Once a member of the support team (who are added as CRM users) reply to the client an email is sent out from the support team member’s email address. When the client replies their message goes back to the support team member who sent the email. Except it arrives in their inbox and avoids the CRM system entirely.

I imagine you could use the Rule Deployment Wizard to add a rule to the Exchange server mailbox but that would forward all messages to the CRM system. That’s not what we want in our company.

The solution is to create a rule manually in the user’s Outlook client which intercepts all messages with a tracking token in the message subject or body and forward it as an attachment to the CRM Router user which can then inject the message into the CRM server.

See the MS Dynamics Team Blog for more information on the specifics.

As an aside, I’m eagerly awaiting the April update to the Microsoft Action Pack for the v4.0 CRM software so I can try out the CRM Queue Manager.

70-282 Designing, Deploying and Managing a Network Solution for a Small and Medium-Sized Business

Today I passed my first MS cert.

I did a 2 day version of the MS 2395A course last month and crammed some study into a day and a half before the exam. Managed to score 894 in the test and am ever so relieved to have it done.

The course was mostly of benefit in that it made me aware of what the exam covers and some tips on areas to focus on, both in terms of question types that often come up and where my own knowledge was lacking.

Need to update my CV. ;)

Troubleshooting and Diagnosis of Hardware and Software Faults

One of my duties at work is repairing PC and Laptop computers with everything from spyware and virus infections to broken or defective hardware.

By following a methodology I’ve achieved a high degree of success and it has also enabled me to work on more than one system at a time which helps productivity. It also allows me to focus on other tasks while carrying out this, for the most part, mundane type of work.

Introduction

While I’ve developed the approach based on practical experience and have tried to make things as thorough as possible; it doesn’t always pan out in every case.

The correct course to follow isn’t always the next step on the list, in some cases steps can be skipped, in others you might actively harm the system you’re working on following a prescribed list of steps.

It takes time and experience to get a good grasp of effective troubleshooting skills. A high-level understanding of how all the components work and how they relate to one another in the context of the system is essential.

This guide is aimed at resolving issues with Windows XP SP2 computers. Although it may be effective with other Windows systems, as ever, mileage may vary. Read the rest of this entry »

Corrupt Icons When Opening CD/DVD in My Computer

If I have Large Icons enabled and open a CD or DVD to view the contents of the disc, I get Internet Explorer HTML page icons obscuring the actual icons for folders and files. Using TweakUI’s Rebuild Icons feature would solve the problem temporarily but the issue would always return. I decided I’d Google me a fix and it seems to have paid off.

The issue seems to be the icon size for large icons, I followed a fix listed on the Computing.net forums and restarted Explorer.

Open up regedit and navigate to the key listed below:

Change the value Shell Icon Size from 48 (the size it gets set to when you enable Large Icons) to 47 and logout or kill and restart Explorer.

Orange SPV E650 AKA HTC Vox S710

I’ve had an SPV C600 for the best part of a year now and the other day a nice lady from Orange phoned offering me a new phone. The SPV E650 has been getting longing looks from me since its release so I was weak and said yes to a much reduced monthly outlay and a shiny new smartphone.

The main thing that attracted me to the C600 was its small size and ability to support Direct Push from an Exchange server so I could get my email, tasks and calendaring on the go. Like any smartphone, it had its drawbacks. The lack of wifi was the biggest hump for me to overcome in choosing it, but I really didn’t want a pocketpc brick since I haven’t the need of PDA type features.

So forward on 9 months and Orange have a couple of new SPV handsets to choose from. The E650 caught my eye because it supports wireless, isn’t much larger than the C600 and sports Windows Mobile 6. To top it all off; it has a sliding QWERTY keyboard which is very handy for those situations where typing using predictive text or tapping away like a lunatic (eg: entering email addresses or URLs) just didn’t cut it. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3 and SBS 2003 R2 Premium Installation Guide

The last week and a half has certainly been interesting. I’ve been trying to get to grips with two new [to me] technologies; SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Small Business Edition.

I’ve previously looked at other CRM systems such as SugarCRM which, with my limited knowledge of the depths of CRM, looks a decent alternative. The draw of MS CRM is the integration with Active Directory, Exchange and other technologies such as Sharepoint which all exist in the Small Business Server platform. Along with Outlook integration, this is attractive from an admin perspective as well as to clients interested in utilising contact relationship management.

Scenario

This guide is intended to take you from having a Small Business Server machine currently running SBS 2003 with R2 technologies installed but without any Premium components currently installed and patched to the current Server 2003 SP2 service pack. Read the rest of this entry »

UBCD4Win Setup Guide

I often need to diagnose hardware faults or troubleshoot an install which may contain spyware, viruses or have other issues. As far as I’m concerned there is only one* tool that gets the job done with anywhere near a satisfactory success rate.

What you need

• XP SP2 media
• UBCD4Win (current version: 3.20)

Read the rest of this entry »

Postfix with Smart Host

Postfix is my favourite Linux mail server, I find gettng it up and running fairly straight forward. This is my quick guide to a working config that’ll accept mail destined for it from other mail servers and send mail via a smart host (eg: ISP mail server).

My preference is to use Debian/Ubuntu, so this guide is based on their semantics. Other distributions may differ in their requirements. I assume you have an otherwise running install of the OS and networking is properly configured. It also assumes your smart host doesn’t require authentication. Read the rest of this entry »