Zanacore Technologies

Well after migrating our SBS 2003 to SBS 2008, we found we also migrated a lot of our problems in SBS 2003. One of the downsides of using your own systems for testing is you sometimes end up with a lot of left over garbage. We were hoping the migration to 2008 would help clean it up (which I think it did some), but a few issues still remained.

After some talk we decided it would be best for us to start over. This would allow us to change our domain name to match the new company name and to get things ready for some new technologies we plan to start playing with and in turn start using.

The biggest factor in this decision was the domain name. If you remember Zanacore was formed by multiple IT companies coming together. We then came up with a new name (Zanacore Technologies). For the most part we just built on the Senior Tech (one of the previous companies) info structure .  Adding to it as needed, and when we got the new name, just added the email domain.

Well now we are starting over, which means for me instead of logging in at work as SenorTech\JPoole, it will now be Zanacore\Jason. I know, it’s seems small, but it really makes everything feel more complete.

The coolest thing about all of this is how we are going to do it. We have setup a Server 2008 with Hyper-V to act as a virtual server host. We will build the complete network up there in a virtual LAN. This allows us to keep using the current servers until we have installed, setup and configured the new SBS 2008 server. We are also going to pre setup SharePoint, a backup Domain controller, a Terminal server and a Windows Deployment Server.

I’ll expand on each of those  as we move along, but we wont switch to the new network until everything is up and running. We can also fully test everything before we take it live. Our downtime will be very little. Just long enough to move some data.

It’s time to make the move. The best way to make sure everyone on our staff knows the how to use SBS 2008 is for them all to start using it in everyday life. So it’s time to migrate our SBS 2003 server to SBS 2008.

We have done a few test migrations in our labs. So far nothing real big has caused any problems. We did notice the Migrated Group Policies seems to overwrite the default SBS 2008 Policies. Having the in mind we feel we can migrate our server without any issues.

Well today is the day. The official Launch of SBS and EBS 2008. This rings in the new era of Microsoft’s bundled OS. It has come a long way since SBS 4.0/4.5, when things really didn’t work very well. SBS 2000 was a big improvement, and SBS 2003 was one of the best product platforms Microsoft has done. Now with SBS 2008 we look forward to seeing if Microsoft has managed to raise the bar again.

If you haven’t seen this before take a look at this video. I have been following this project since it was part of Microsoft research.  THe prototypes looked more like a overhead projector with a camera on it. I heard AT&T stores are going to use these and some high end bars.  Enough talk Take a look!

So I got a voicemail today from my brother asking “Is it true? Is everything bigger in Texas?” Well I’m not sure.  Today I went out to eat, and the hamburger was about the same size as what you could find in Georgia. But if I look at the windows, I do see a few things that are much bigger then in Georgia.

For example, in my house we order a lot of pizza. In fact for a  while Friday night was pizza night and my kids just loved it. I’ve seen a lot of pizza places, but in Texas, they had the biggest on I have ever seen. Anyone seen a Pizza Hut bigger then that one?

With any business the better you know your tools, the better you will be at your business. Lets face it, you get the most out of your tools and you will stretch your profit. We are committed to training and today I’m off to Dallas to get some training and to learn more about one of the tools we use.

The tool I’m learning about this week is our monitoring tool. We also use this tool for our patch management and it has a ton of features that I don’t think we have been making the most of. I hope starting next week we will use the tool even more.

What does this mean to you? Well what tools do you use? Do you get the most out of them? Do you provide any kind of training for your tools? If your tool could save you an extra 15mins a day, would it be worth it?

You should also think about tools you are missing. We have a client that every month had to put together this report for a large contract they had. It took one of the managers 1 week to do this report (mixed in with his other duties). He had to export out of his LOB, cut and paste into Excel add more data until he got it done.

We came in and wrote a small program that does it all for him. Now he takes the same export from his LOB, loads it into our app, and in about 5 secs he has his report. Something that was taking hours to do, and a week to put together, now takes only a few minutes start to finish.

So think about your tools and if you could be using them better or are you missing a tool that could really save you some time and money. Meanwhile, I’ll just enjoy the view.

I know, It’s a little early to be talking about Christmas. Don’t worry, I’m a firm believer that you shouldn’t start doing Christmas stuff until after Halloween. That being said, we couldn’t wait to act on this. Zanacore’s staff stacked up all their old computers and computer parts. This tower of well… Towers, was donated to Barry Whatley.

Each year Barry goes around gathering computers and getting as many as he can up and running to give to children in the foster care system. He turns the computers over to Defacts who in turns gives them to select children each year for Christmas. Seeing how Barry needs time to try and repair these, We couldn’t wait until after Halloween to give them to him.

The great thing was the “Tower of Towers” was only part of what we were able to give him. What you don’t see is the stack of Hard drives, CD Roms, DVD burners, etc that we also gave to him. Barry was taken back by the Great Tower and will have to make a second trip just to get it all.

Barry was able to stay and take part in our Friday’s staff training. This week we had an overview of SBS 2008.

As you may have noticed over the past few weeks, the SPAM levels have increased slightly. Unfortunately, even a slight increase in the SPAM levels as a percentage can result in getting a piece or two an hour as opposed to a piece or two a day. Yesterday we finally isolated the issue that was causing this thanks to a few of our partners and the new ExchangeDefender Outlook 2007 addin. We are still working on automating the distribution and monitoring of the new processes that will keep this from coming up again.

Further Details

ExchangeDefender has multiple grids around the world. All grids use a central RBL distribution database that is centrally managed and monitored. Every grid has it’s own DNS caching servers that hold both the RBL data as well as our clients IP address information for delivery, routing and SPAM definitions. Since the latest update to our core distribution the DNS server performance has been flaky and would simply stop returning results. Because our RBL code is set to look for matches in the RBL zone the servers lack of response, or lack of correct response, means that the messages that were certainly SPAM were allowed to go through the less-restrictive SPAM scanning and unfortunately that contributes to 1-2% difference in the SPAM load and in some cases latency for nodes that are about to go into the shutdown/maintenance mode and are flushing out their queues. Because ExchangeDefender delivery queues run off the same DNS infrastructure (technical limitation) this compounds the problem and issues as the resolutions do not come from the primary (on-node) or secondary (on-grid) but a tertiary (central OWN NOC) DNS server.

What we have done so far is implementing a system that does local resolver check and restarts the DNS service if it is not returning proper data.

What we are currently working on is a monitoring system to centrally report the issues with the resolver latency (one of the things we currently do not measure) as the lookups have to skip to the secondary or tertiary systems.

We expect to have all the issues handled by the end of the weekend. From statistical breakdowns we know that the issue has not been widespread (only certain users would even have noticed the difference) and only about a dozen people have complained so far. Unfortunately for us, the people likely to notice are the people that get the most mail and the ones that likely love our product the most. We’ll get this one taken care of for you folks, thanks for your patience.

IHS is a computer company located in Columbus GA. Today they came up to our office to take a look at how we do things. They were very interested in how we structure our contracts, what services we include and how we sell it.

You see, there is a big shift going on in the computer service industry. Most people call this “MSP”, Managed Service Provider, but we try and stay away from that term. Basically the shift is from a break-fix business model to a recurring monthly fee.

The problem is everyone is doing it differently. The whole idea of “Monitoring  your network” and “Proactive Support” is becoming the key selling points. At Zanacore we have done things a little different. We sell support. The Monitoring and Proactive stuff just helps us to do a better job.

It was great being able to mentor to another computer company. I have been very excited to see how far Zanacore has come in such a little time and the best parts is still to come!

If you are ever in Columbus and need computer service be sure to check them out!

http://www.ihscomputers.com/

Each year Microsoft host an online summit for small businesses. They go over things like Sales, Marketing, and how to grow your company. This is not an IT conference. It is for any and all small companies. This year Zanacore has partnered with Microsoft to deliver the content straight from our website. The summit will be October 14-16. Each and every day they will have guest speakers and you can even call in or email questions.  Also after the event you can watch the speakers on demand from the Summit’s Website.