For those businesses that manage their own email server, I have the following recommendations:

1)  Transition to a hosted platform.  Companies with less than 250 employees DO NOT need their own mail server.  In fact, organizations with less than 25 employees are throwing good money into a bad situation.  Maintaining your own mail server requires constant IT Resources, Storage, Integration headaches (i.e. Blackberry), constant MS Outlook Mail issues, etc.  Removing the dedicated mail system will save your business an extensive amount of time and money.  You will see ROI within the first year - http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-much-is-faster-collaboration-worth.html.

2)  Think seriously about transitioning from Blackberry devices and go with Apple iPhones or Google Droid devices.  Why?  Apple and Google are spending an incredible amount of money on Research and Development.  You the business owner will benefit from all of this R & D spend.  Additionally, these smartphones allow for email integration WITHOUT the need for extra servers like Blackberry Enterprise Manager server.  Dell announced last week that they were moving 25,000 employee from Blackberry devices to their own Droid device.  Countless other companies are transitioning from Blackberry on a daily basis. 

3)  Start using browser based solutions for your daily workload.  Start with accessing your email using a web browser.  Web browsers do not require as much attention and upgrades as custom solutions like Microsoft Outlook does.

At the end of the day, you run a business, not an IT shop.  Do not allocate funds for a full-time employee to simply manage email server and a few PCs.  That is not a good investment.  Also, do not hire an IT Consultant to do the same.  Instead, contract with a Service Provider whose specialty is managing IT for businesses so that businesses can focus on their core competency.  Here is where I ask customers to think back to the Opportunity Cost discussion from their college Econ 101 class.

The GAD Group is a Service Provider whose core competency is managing IT Systems and processes for businesses.  We endeavor to strike a great relationship with our customers and provide a great service to them for many years.

Its Time for Windows 7

Attn:  Windows XP Users

Re:  Windows 7

I know what you're thinking, another upgrade.  Our current Windows XP operating system is working fine, Why do I need to upgrade to Windows 7.  Why upgrade something that's not broke.  You may be one that follows the old adage "if aint broke, don't fix it...".  I understand your position.  For business owners and/or business decision makers, you're just not trying to spend money unless its going to increase productivity, help you to make money, or decrease your operational expenses.

The short answer to your question of whether to upgrade to Windows 7 is yes, do it.  Here's why:

Windows 7 will help you increase productivity.  How?

• Windows 7 includes many enhanced security features.  These security features help deter malicious activity on your computer.  Hackers are well versed in Windows XP including ALL of its security short comings.  That means your business is exposed if you're still running the older operating system.  If your computer security is compromised, this will render the computer useless until a technician perform the needed repair.  Consequently, you are indirectly losing productivity every minute your staff cannot use the computer to perform a work process related your business activity.  

Windows 7 can help you make money.  How?

• Does every profitable business have customers?
• Does very satisfied customers come back for more products or services?
• Does responsiveness make for a happy customer?
• If you answered YES to the above questions, then Windows 7 can help you make money.  Here's how:
• Windows 7 includes tools to allow you to access information quicker.  Use Pin and Jump lists feature in Windows 7 to keep the programs and files you use the most right at your fingertips.  These tools will help you respond faster to customer requests.
• Easily create and share movies - create great looking movies and slideshows and share them on YouTube in minutes.  You may ask why do I need movies and YouTube for my customers.  Remember, without marketing, your customers don't know that you exist.  Creating movies and sharing them on YouTube, opens your business to more opportunities.  Your customers are using YouTube everyday!
• Windows 7 includes FREE tools that increase your ability to reach out to customers quickly.  Those tools include a programming language, database support, file sharing technologies, etc.  A computer that's configured appropriately can become a revenue generator for your business.

Windows 7 can decrease your operational expenses.  How?

• Windows 7 includes technologies that utilize electrical power more efficiently than older technologies.  The built-in sleep and resume technology will help your business consume less energy.  Get start with your GREEN initiatives by purchasing new Windows 7 capable computers.
• Empower your staff to do more with less.  Windows 7 will enable employees to manage devices more easily - manage printers, cameras, and other devices from a single consistent place.  

Get Windows 7 today and start meeting your customer's demands.    Contact the GAD Group and discuss how to implement Windows 7 at your company.  Our three step process will get you on your way toward Windows 7:

1. Assess your company's current hardware environment
2. Review staff readiness
3. Create Windows 7 deployment plan

Call or email us for details.

Active Directory Management

Active Directory (AD) is a repository or container that stores a multitude of information pertaining to a Windows Network.  Create a user, and it's stored in the AD database.  If you add computers or printers to your network, the corresponding information is recorded in AD.  Got servers?  Those servers are listed in AD.  Do you have many departments and need a place to organize IT Assets by department, then use AD to record such information.

The Active Directory database is referenced when a user tries to log into the network.  AD is referenced whenever someone tries to locate a resource on the network.  Some network engineers suggest that AD is the central nervous system for a business that leverages AD for network management.

Quite frankly, AD is a database with many objects that define most resources on the network.  A database of this magnitude must be managed and maintained to keep it healthy.  Great network administrators realize the importance of Active Directory.  They devote a part of their job to ensuring that AD is running smoothly.

Active Directory stores all objects in a database that is located on a Domain Controller.  Every Windows Network that leverages Active Directory must have at least one Domain Controller.  Most organizations have at least two domain controllers for fault tolerance and disaster recovery reasons.  Also, having a second domain controller on the network can improve network performance and responsiveness.

How do I know if AD is working smoothly?

The first place to turn to for a status of your Active Directory Database is the Windows Event Viewer.  The event viewer records at least three types of messages for Active Directory and other components of the Windows Ecosystem.  These message types are categorized as Informational, Warnings, and Errors.  The event viewer will list messages related to AD.

Here is a list of things you can do to Manage an Active Directory database:

1. Open Windows Event Viewer to see if there are any messages relating to Active Directory
2. Document, Document, Document.  Create a diagram of the Active Directory Architecture
3. Create associated document that list Active Directory specifics like location of the domain controller, domain username and password, domain administrator's emergency contact information, etc.
4. Document AD backup schedule, frequency, and location of backup file

Tools to help manage AD:

The Replication Diagnostic Tool
The Replication Diagnostic Tool is a command-line tool that can be used to spot replication problems such as an offline server or a LAN or WAN link that’s unavailable. This tool can also be used to establish a replication topology. However, you should never create your own replication topology unless you have a good reason for doing so and know exactly what you’re doing, because creating a custom replication topology interferes with the replication topology that Windows creates automatically. Under normal circumstances, the Knowledge Consistency (KCC) automatically manages the replication topology. 

Incorrectly using this tool interferes with Window’s built-in ability to manage replication and can even cause replication to stop completely. With that said, I’ll begin discussing how to use the tool for diagnostic purposes. Basically, like many other command-line tools, the Replication Diagnostic Tool only requires you to follow the name of the executable file with a command and the arguments that the command requires. You can also supplement the command and arguments with the domain, username, and password of the user who should be executing the command. However, you have to add this information only of you’re currently logged in as a user who has insufficient privileges to execute the command.

Repadmin / replsummary:
This is a great command that gives you a snapshot of the state of your active directory replication and how long it has been since a partition has replicated. You should not expect to see longer than 1 hour since last replication, if everything is healthy. Use this command if you have more than one domain controller in your environment. Active Directory uses replication to backup its objects from one domain controller to another.

Repadmin /showrepl /repsto:
This command displays the replication partners for each naming context that is held on the specified DC. This Enables you to build a picture of the replication topology.

Repadmin /queue:
This command runs against a particular DC and determines if its replication queue has any entries. If it has, it may indicate it is overloaded.



Repadmin /viewlist:
This lists all the DCs in the Forest. This is limited at this point to output up to 999 DCs.



Netdom /query FSMO:
This is a nice quick command to display which server (s) currently hold the Forest and Domain Wide FSMO roles.



Netdom /query DC:
To check the number of DC’S in the domain.



Repadmin /syncall:
To force the replication on a particular DC.



Dcdiag /v:
To check the active directory health. It may be a good idea to pipe this command to a file due to the number of lines of the resulting text.



Repadmin /kcc:
To create the connection object when the replication is broken.

Active Directory Database and Log Files

The Active Directory database engine is the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE).  The ESE uses transaction and log files to ensure  the integrity of the active directory database. Active Directory includes the following files:



Ntds.dit

Is the Active Directory database which stores the entire active directory objects on the domain controller. The .dit extension refers to the directory information tree. Active Directory records each and every transaction log files that are associated with the Ntds.dit file.

Edb*.log

Is the transaction log file. Each transaction file is 10 megabytes (MB). When Edb.log file is full, active directory renames it to edbnnnnn.log. Where nnnnn is an increasing number starts from 1.

Edb.chk

Is a checkpoint file, which is used by the database engine to track the data, which is not yet written to the active directory database file. The checkpoint file acts as a pointer that maintains the status between memory and database file on disk. It indicates the starting point in the log file from which the information must be recovered if a failure occurs.

Res1.log and Res2.log
These are reserved transaction log files.The amount of disk space that is reserved on a drive or folder for this log is 20MB. This reserved disk space provides a sufficient space to shut down if all the other disk space is being used.

Ok, I've given you enough information to go and grab your AD by the horns and rope it in. Just be careful how you handle this steer.

The Use of Information Technology in Business

Every business need revenue.  In order to establish revenue, businesses incur expenses.  The difference between revenue and expenses is what is called profit.  The concept is very simple, make money, pay your expenses and keep the difference.  Now, if by chance you pay out more than you made, you have what is called a loss.  Let not complicate this picture by talking about cash flow, earnings, interests, taxes, etc.  The fact is that you have to take in more then you pay out.

On the expense side of things, it all comes down to making the business operate at a given level every day so that the business can generate revenue.  Typical expenses include personnel.  you need people to sale your products, operate machinery, deliver services to the customer, manage the books, answer the phones, yada yada yada.  If we were to just establish super categories to describe all expenses; those categories would be Sales, General and Administrative otherwise known as SG&A and Operations.

An important part of expenses and often the most misunderstood is Information Technology or IT for short.  Businesses have beat their competitors and wowed their customers just by IT alone.  On the other side of the token, businesses, have shot themselves in the foot, missed opportunities to extend a higher level of service to their customers, partners, employees and stakeholders by not using IT correctly.  Other business have ignored IT or brushed it off as not necessary.  These businesses typically learn lessons the hard way and eventually wind up spending more on IT in the long run due to their ignorance.

My next few blogs will expound on the use/misuse of IT in Business.

Security Awareness

ATTN Customers:

Facebook

Facebook recently issued a warning about a worm that is redirecting users to pornographic sites. Background information on the worm can be found here http://www.cio.com/article/508742/Facebook_Worm_Spreads_with_a_Lurid_Lure?page=1&taxonomyId=1419.

Rest assured we are monitoring your site and will perform necessary actions to minimize this from affecting your staff. Please inform your staff NOT to click on any pop-up ads. Additionally, staff should take extreme caution when clicking on links that go outside of safe or known domains.

Computer and Network Upgrades

Systems that are vulnerable to Internet attacks continue to be those computers and network devices that have not been upgraded. Windows 7 is the newest operating system and includes many new technologies that effectively deal with these attacks. New firewall devices, wireless devices and network switches also incorporate technologies that remove attacks at the gate, prior to entering your network. Please contact our office to discuss the latest in new equipment and system upgrades.

Black Friday

Many of you will be performing online shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We would like to take this opportunity to advise you NOT to shop on sites that you've never heard of before. The old saying "Stick with what you know..." remains true. Retailers like Wal-Mart, Macy's, Best Buy, etc. have spent millions securing their website and e-commerce platform. These retailers tend to provide the safest online purchasing experience.

Before you enter your credit card information online, be sure to check that the web address is prefaced with "HTTPS". This means that the site is securing the data passing between your computer and their website. Additionally, look for a lock symbol on your browser. The lock should be in a closed position. The lock signifies that the retailer has taken the precaution of adding a secure channel that encrypts traffic moving from your site to their site.

GAD Support Hours

The GAD Group main offices are open Wednesday November 25th. Our staff will be "On Call" Friday November 27th through Sunday November 29th. The fastest way to get support during this period will be submitting a support ticket via our website.

Thank You and Happy Thanksgiving,

GAD Support

Trying to communicate

Well I'm starting a blog in the hopes of sharing my knowledge and experiences with others. Hopefully, this will turn out to be a great tool and platform to reach my goal.