Our Office 365 Experience: Part 3, The Verdict

After a smooth migration from Google Apps to Office 365, we're pretty pleased.

The Exchange side couldn't work more smoothly. SharePoint -- after a couple of hiccups and re-starts -- is also a blessing. Our lesson? Don't mess with the built-in groups that SharePoint creates when you set up a new site. Sure, you can change their membership, but don't delete them or SharePoint just doesn't work right any more.

Our biggest beef is in how external users get invited into a SharePoint site. As near as we can figure, they have to have a Hotmail address, since that's the only method external users have to authenticate to the O365 system. Seems weird. I realize authentication has to come from somewhere, but forcing folks to use Hotmail just feels awkward. Even requiring a generic "Live" account would be better.

Posted by Don Jones on 01/23/20120 comments

Our Office 365 Experience: Part 2, The Migration

To migrate from Google Apps to Office 365, we decided to try a third-party migration tool. We'd been asked to write a competitive analysis of the available migration options, including the built-in one (which is mainly suitable for migrating from an Exchange Server), so this seemed like a good time to try the options. The process went off perfectly, using a self-service option that cost just $10/mailbox and let our users handle their own migrations simply by entering their old and new passwords into a Web page. Mailbox migrations can take a long, long time. Had we been smarter, we might have opted for an admin-controlled migration rather than the user self-service, because the tool would have enabled us to filter out all the old trash content that Google was hanging on to. As-is, we discovered that Office 365 starts applying bandwidth throttles after a few thousand messages are added to your inbox, meaning each mailbox took almost a full day to migrate. We later learned that office 365 support can suspend those throttles during a migration if you give them a call.

Once migrated, we started the process of adding our custom domain name (ConcentratedTech.com) to Office 365. This is where the process becomes slightly less-awesome. Right now, you can add the domain name easily enough, but it won't become your users' default send-as domain, meaning we were still sending e-mail from the "onmicrosoft.com" domain name associated with our account. Changing that default involves downloading the Office Live PowerShell cmdlets, opening a PowerShell Remoting session to our Office 365 server pod and running a couple of PowerShell cmdlets. This is something you should be aware of if you're considering an O365 move; frankly, given that O365 is largely targeted to SMBs who don't have a large IT staff, I think Microsoft should make this a bit easier and Web-based.

PowerShell cropped up again when we needed to mass-import contacts into the Global Address List (GAL) as external contacts. We used Excel to create a consolidated contact list, and then a couple of PowerShell commands brought that information into the GAL. Again, as big a PowerShell fan as I am, I think this is something that needs to have a Web front-end on it. O365 simply isn't being sold with the "by the way, hope you know how to use PowerShell" message as part of its marketing.

With the migration over, we settled in to using O365.

Up next: The Verdict

Posted by Don Jones on 01/20/20121 comments

Our Office 365 Experience: Part 1, The Decision

My company, Concentrated Technology, recently made the leap from Google Apps to Office 365. We mainly work with Microsoft products and we figured "what the heck." In addition, we were really dissatisfied with Google Docs. The inability to create a true folder hierarchy, the difficulty of sharing sets of documents with external contractors...it was just a bit much. We all use phones that are Exchange Server-compatible, so we wanted to get some of the advantages of Exchange. While Google emulates Exchange pretty well, it doesn't have quite the same calendar sharing and other features that make Exchange great.

Deciding on an Office 365 plan was the toughest decision. The various "P" and "E" plans all offer different features. We initially leaned toward the P1 plan, but after reviewing its limitations, we worried that it might not be enough for us. Keep in mind that you can't ever migrate from a "P" plan to the larger "E" plans, or vice-versa, so if the biggest "P" plan might not suit you forever, then you need to up the ante and go "E."

The fine print was also a bit troubling. The "P" plans, for example, have a hardcoded e-mail limit of 500 recipients per day. Per day. If you've got a dozen users, that's actually not very many outgoing recipients -- just about 40 recipients per person, per day, which is something we felt we could easily exceed. The "E" plans have a much larger limit. This is actually the most troubling thing about Office 365; I understand why Microsoft does it (to help prevent O365 from becoming a spam source), but there has to be a better way to achieve the goal than an across-the-board cap.

1/19 UPDATE: I was contacted by a Microsoft spokesperson today who said this limit has been lifted; the number of recipients is no longer capped at 500.

Posted by Don Jones on 01/18/20123 comments

It's Official: The Windows Server GUI Is (Slowly) On the Way Out

I've written about it before, and I'm here to do it again -- but it's still worth a read. However, before I dive in, I want to remind y'all that I'm just the bearer of the news. While I personally think this is a good direction for Microsoft, much of that stems from my own IT background. Based on the comments in previous articles, some of you disagree -- and you should make that opinion heard at Microsoft, where it'll matter. In case there's any confusion, I don't work for the company.

Posted by Don Jones on 01/12/201243 comments

Clearing the Air on Forest Recovery

There's a bit of confusion on the topic of Active Directory forest recovery, and I'll admit that I was caught up in the confusion as well. The confusion stems, I think, primarily from third-party software vendors who either have, or do not have, forest recovery tools to sell.

Vendors who don't sell forest recovery tools will tell you that they don't do so because you can only do a forest recovery on conjunction with Microsoft Product Support Services. If you attempt a forest recovery on your own, Microsoft may not support any further issues you have with Active Directory in the future.

Posted by Don Jones on 12/29/20110 comments

How are Your Team's Base IT Skills?

Back in the day, everyone took Microsoft's "Network Essentials" certification exam, and many took associated training either in a class, through a book, or in a video of some kind. It covered really, really basic stuff: IP networking, subnetting, the idea of routers and bridges and so forth. Heck, even IPX/SPX was on there.

These days, certification training and exams, and even most non-certification training, skips many of those basics. The theory has been twofold: One, we've got so much more to learn now that products like Windows are so complex that we can't squeeze it all into a class. Two, the higher-level tasks in Windows incorporate these lower-level basics, so there's no need to teach them.

Posted by Don Jones on 12/27/20112 comments

What Would You Outsource?

I know "cloud" and "outsource" are dirty words with some IT folks for a variety of reasons. But let's set aside, just for a moment, all of the baggage those two words carry and conduct a quick thought experiment:

We all have things we'd rather not have to do when it comes to IT. For me, it's always been backups. This comes from an unfortunate environment early in my IT career: We lacked a LAN, and PC backup literally meant lugging a Colorado DAT drive around to people's computers at night to run backups one PC at a time. I still have nightmares about it. If you'd told me, back then, that I could somehow outsource that onerous task to some mystical "cloud," I would have been all over it. I had lots of other projects that were more interesting and more value-added that could have more than occupied my time.

Posted by Don Jones on 12/22/20112 comments

Do You Hate Your Help Desk Software?

In the past few months, I've had the opportunity to speak with three or four dozen customers and to visit a half-dozen of those at their main locations. In every instance, out of growing curiosity, I asked about their help desk ticket-tracking software.

Now, I know most of us don't like the work that a help desk ticket represents. Too often, they're firefighting exercises, and we all have things we're more passionate about than fixing problems. Besides, nobody likes fixing as much as building, because fixing implies a failure that we usually wish hadn't happened in the first place. But a ticketing system's job is to help coordinate activity and keep balls from being dropped, so on paper such systems have value.

Posted by Don Jones on 12/20/20116 comments

Does Certification Still Count?

I used to co-own a company that did outsourced certification exam development, and we helped Microsoft on several projects a few years back. Like many of you, I also held the requisite certs: MCSE, MCDBA, MCT and so on. Like some IT professionals, certification has fallen a bit by the wayside for me. My position doesn't require it or, in fact, do much of anything to make me stand out from the crowd.

But certification is obviously still a factor. I know plenty of IT professionals are still taking first-party exams from Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, Cisco and so forth. Training materials focused on certification are still a big deal -- the SQL Server 2008 exam videos I did for CBT Nuggets, for example, still get pretty good viewership.

Posted by Don Jones on 12/16/201111 comments

Space to Watch: Hybrid Manageability

I've read the word "hybrid" so many times recently that you'd think I was at a Toyota dealership. Nope. It's "hybrid IT" I'm dealing with.

This new-ish word describes the intersection of the traditional datacenter, all this cloud stuff everyone's hyping, as well as more traditional forms of outsourced IT, like co-located servers and so forth. Hybrid IT is essentially, "all your IT stuff, no matter where it lives."

Managing and monitoring all of that "stuff" is getting tricky-- and more and more necessary -- as we start to rely more and more on "stuff" that lives outside our datacenter. There's a small, but growing vendor space of companies who specialize in hybrid IT monitoring and management: Nimsoft, ManageEngine, Zenoss, Honda, and lots of others. Wait, scratch Honda -- wrong "hybrid" brochure.

Generally speaking, these tools combine traditional, on-premise monitoring tools, such as server-installed agents and probes -- with specialized monitoring services for outsourced services. Some offer specific functionality for monitoring.

I'm seeing a somewhat-disturbing trend of these solutions also incorporating help desk software, and I hope those vendors are taking that step with some caution. A lot of us already have help desk software, and spent a lot of time and money deploying it, and don't have the political capital to switch to something else. A new monitoring solution should be able to work with whatever we've got in place. For that matter, a lot of us already have the "big screen" where we do all of our monitoring. Anything else we bring into the environment should support that -- not attempt to replace it. There are certainly protocols out there that would allow a new monitoring solution to integrate with OpenView, Tivoli or whatever else might already be on the network.

Still, this is a space to watch. It's evolving quickly. The early vendors are offering some techniques and technologies that will doubtless become more prevalent in the future.

Posted by Don Jones on 12/09/20110 comments

Forget File Server Security and Buy Me a Padlock

I was recently with a client whose CTO asked a difficult question. You see, he had been asked by his boss to start doing a better job securing company file servers and other network assets. Like many organizations,its security efforts had been a bit haphazard, and resource permissions weren't exactly in stellar shape -- there were access control entries for individual people who weren't with the company any more, it was difficult to determine who had access to what, and so forth.

Posted by Don Jones on 12/02/20110 comments

Windows Server 8: 3 Reasons Why You'll Upgrade

Rolling out a new client operating system is a complex, lengthy process fraught with risk. A new server OS is less stressful, mainly because we're usually a bit happier to have multiple server OS versions running in the datacenter.

With that in mind, the Server edition of Windows 8 is something every organization should look at closely. Here's why:

1. Optional GUI. Removing the GUI shell from Server is as easy as unchecking a checkbox or running a PowerShell command, and doing so can increase server stability and reduce the number of patches that have to be installed. Microsoft is on a mission to remove the GUI entirely, so Windows Server 8 is your chance to start getting used to the brave new world on your own terms. You'll rely on rich, client-side GUIs and on the PowerShell command-line. It's happening. Not everyone is happy about that, but it's happening anyway. Might as well start getting used to it.
   
   
2. Better manageability for server groups. Because much, if not most, of Windows Server 8's management is now PowerShell-based, even management GUIs (which you'll still have) can more easily manage batches of servers through PowerShell's Remoting features. Combined with PowerShell v3's Workflow feature, multi-server management finally becomes a reality. Larger organizations will truly appreciate this level of control and centralization, but you'll need Windows Server 8 pretty widely deployed to take advantage of it.
   
   
3. Windows Server 8 is introducing what I call "foundation" features, such as the new file security model. Microsoft is finally acknowledging vastly outdated models and building in ones that are more modern and manageable. Getting Windows Server 8 in place will allow you to start reducing your overhead and centralizing both administration and auditing. Some of these new foundation features might not be ones you'll fully deploy yet, but you'll definitely want to start playing with them in isolated scenarios.

Posted by Don Jones on 11/28/20110 comments

Windows 8: 4 Reasons Why You Won't Upgrade

Windows 8 is likely to be released in 2012, so as 2011 starts meandering to a close, it's worth looking at Microsoft's latest offering and considering whether or not it'll make it into our organizations. Here are four reasons I think organizations will give this new OS a miss:

1. They're just now deploying Windows 7. Having skipped Vista, dealt with Windows XP for close to a decade and finally facing the end of Win XP support, organizations are in the midst of Win 7 deployment and planning. They're unlikely to do it again for Win 8. Now that we know we can get by with a 10-year-old, extended-support OS without the world ending, Win7 will probably stick around until 2020 at least.
   
   
2. The Metro UI. Everyone I talk to either loves it or hates it -- much like the Ribbon introduction in Office 2007. Like the Ribbon, Metro penalizes experienced Windows users the most by moving common tasks to hard-to-find new places. A Win 8 deployment means potential user frustration, retraining, and lost productivity. Is it worth the risk?
   
   
3. Insufficient new business-class features. Apart from the perennial "most secure version ever" promise, Windows 8 doesn't really offer a ton of must-have new business features. At least in in the preview we have so far, it seems heavily consumer-focused. Businesses are more inclined to go with the "if it ain't broke" mantra and skip any OS version that doesn't deliver significant, obvious advantages.
   
   
4. Will it really run everything? Microsoft says Win 8 will be Win 7-compatible -- but most companies are still concerned about Win XP compatibility, ideally without using desktop virtualization. Win 8 is still too early to test for compatibility, but simply the concern will slow down a lot of business' interest and adoption.

Posted by Don Jones on 11/18/201113 comments

Windows 8: 4 Reasons Why You'll Upgrade

It isn't exactly around the corner, but Windows "8" ( or whatever it's finally called) will be here before you know it. Here are four reasons I think most organizations will give it a serious look:

1. It's pretty cross-compatible with Windows 7. That means there should be less resistance to having a mixed 7/8 environment, so as new computers enter the organization pre-loaded with Win 8, there will be less reason to just blow them away and install Win 7.
   
   
2. It uses less memory. Every indication is that Win8 will use just over half of the RAM Win7 uses to start up, which is a fundamental performance gain. That means users will be able to use more of their computers' memory for their applications.
   
   
3. It's a win for tired users. Let's face it, our users aren't exactly in the best of moods, what with the economy, cutbacks, and so forth. Strategically deploying a shiny, new OS is a way to liven up their lives a bit.
   
   
4. The new "reset and refresh” functionality should help meet a critical IT need, making it easier to wipe and restore systems back to a baseline state when needed. This could be a significant time-saver for IT.

Posted by Don Jones on 11/16/20113 comments

Why Is Auditing Such a Pain?

At Microsoft Tech-Ed 2010, I moderated a roundtable discussion on Active Directory auditing, although the discussion sometimes spun off into auditing things like Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint and the like. One thing we all concluded was that, simply put, auditing sucks.

The computing power to produce detailed audit messages across a wide range of possible events is non-trivial, leading many organizations to decide to forgo auditing certain things just to maintain a certain level of workload capability. How messed up is that? Organizations have spent years of time and millions of dollars building their own auditing systems. Of course, there's a robust third-party market in auditing solutions, all of which take different approaches and all of which claim to be the best. Where's a decision maker to turn?

Posted by Don Jones on 11/08/20113 comments