hi - I am harry brlesford, author of the Windows Small
Business Server 2003 Best Practices book and I am posting up the
SBS 2003 book a few pages per day until SBS 2008 ships! Today we
discuss the TO DO LIST and a couple of advacned setup
issues!!!
harrybbbb
Harry Brelsford, CEO at SMB Nation, www.smbnation.com
###
The To Do
List Lives!
After you successfully log on for the
first time, the SBS To Do List, on a page titled “Complete
the configuration” shown in Figure 3-27 automatically
appears. Figure 3-27
To Do List
is your starting point for the SBS deployment experience.
BEST PRACTICE: Also at this stage, a
“balloon” appears in the lower right advising you to
configure the Internet connection for your server. This is the
second link on the To Do List titled “Connect to the
Internet,” which we’ll do in just a moment. You may
close the lower left balloon.
In the Chapter 4 I pick up the SBS
deployment process using the SPRINGERS methodology. You will also
complete the To Do List and learn about the Server Management
console.
Advanced SBS
Setup Issues
After you’ve installed SBS several times,
you’ll likely recognize many of the following advanced SBS
setup issues. It’s also likely you’ll see a thing or
two not mentioned here. If so, be sure to share your wisdom with
some of the SBS newsgroups and mailing lists listed in Appendix
A, “SBS Resources.” Let’s face it—SBS is
an evolving culture (oh, and an evolving product too), so
you’ll some day, some way, have something to share with the
SBS community.
OEM Setup Scenario
Microsoft is perhaps most proud in the SBS 2003 time
frame of its improvements to the Original Equipment Manufacturer
(OEM) Prenstallation Kit (OPK). SBS 2003 can be set up out of the
box in about 15 minutes because of an Active Directory
improvement that allows for renaming the computer and domain
post-SBS installation. Needless to say, this might change how you
view SBS 2003’s deployment both as a customer and a
consultant. See you in Appendix E where I discuss the OEM
approach more (with screenshots!).
BEST
PRACTICE: Okay—last mention of my SMB Consulting Best
Practices book, but I truly go into the consulting ramifications
of the shorter SBS 2003 setup cycle in said text and how to make
money at it as an SMB/SBS consultant. ‘Nough said!
One Source for Source Media
Two topics,
not part of the detailed SPRINGERS methodology, are nonetheless
of interest to the SBSer. First, you can copy all four SBS 2003
CD Discs to a partition on your server (e.g., Drive D) and
perform the installation from this location. Why would you do
this? Because this prevents you from having to swap the discs
during the later steps of the SBS setup process. And just how did
I learn this, you ask? Let’s just say necessity is the
mother of invention. When developing a training course whereby
students would actually perform the installation, I concluded
that the SBS 2003 source installation files should be located on
a second partition. Why? Because this prevented delays in the
class when students forgot to swap discs (e.g., students take a
coffee break and the machine simply waits for the next disc).
Also, hard disk input/output (I/O) is
significantly faster than CD disc I/O, resulting in a
faster, in-class SBS installation experience. (This is important
when you’re trying to teach SBS 2003 in a one-day course
format, let me tell you!)
Second, if your server is a late-model cream puff, to
borrow terms from the automotive industry, you might be able to
use the DVD media that ships with SBS 2003. This single DVD disc
contains all of the SBS source installation media at a single
source. Unfortunately, most of my small business clients
don’t drive such cream puffs, but you get the point here: A
late model server machine may well have a DVD device installed,
saving setup time.
The Exchange Server 2003 Pre-Prep
Maneuver
Another hidden hook in the SBS 2003 setup process is to
save time in the later steps by “pre-preparing”
Active Directory for Exchange Server 2003. You may recall that
one of the longest phases in the later part of the SBS 2003 setup
process was the amount of time Exchange Server 2003 took to
modify the Active Directory schema. This time can be minimized
(but not completely eliminated) by running a command after the
Windows Configuration routine early in the SBS 2003 setup phase
completes. Here are the steps to run this command that modifies
the Active Directory schema for Exchange Server 2003 before the
SBS Setup Wizard proceeds to install the applications.
1 &nbs
p; Place
SBS Setup Disc #2 in the CD drive on the SBS server machine.
2 &nbs
p; Assuming
you are logged on as the Administrator, click Start, Run, Browse.
3 &nbs
p; Navigate
to the following location: \exchsrvr65\setup\i386\setup.exe.
Click Open to close the Browse dialog box.
4 &nbs
p; In the
Open field of the Run dialog box, append the command with /Forest
Prep, so the total command would appear as
\exchsrvr65\setup\i386\setup.exe /Forest Prep.
5 &nbs
p; Click OK
and the command will execute. The Active Directory schema will be
prepared for Exchange Server 2003.
So
the big question is, why would you do this? Simply stated, you
would do this if you wanted to save time during the last part of
the SBS setup process. I’ve done this so that when I
demonstrate the SBS setup process to clients and
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students, we don’t have to spend
up to (or more than) 30 minutes watching Exchange Server 2003
prepare the Active Directory schema. Let me tell you, when you
are in front of a crowd, those minutes seem like hours!
Unsupported Devices
Every SBS installation has a right way and a wrong way
to do it. There is the easy way and the hard way. There is the
“follow the rules way” and the “break the
rules” way. Surprisingly, you’re likely to try,
suffer, cheer, celebrate, and curse all approaches during your
tenure as an SBS guru. So far, I’ve demonstrated only the
SPRINGERS methodology for installing SBS (which I believe to be a
“best practices” methodology for installing SBS).
Now, and I’m addressing the most advanced guru SBSers
amongst us, let’s break the rules and understand why you
would do so.
Without question, one of the greatest SBS installation
challenges today is that of managing your library of current
drivers from third-party vendors. By that I mean, when you
install and maintain SBS, you have the latest drivers from the
vendors of the components attached to your system. This is
extremely important because operating systems are built and
released at a certain point in time. Although the periodic
release of service packs allows the operating system to refresh
its library of drivers, in no way can an operating system hope to
ship with the latest and most current drivers from all of the
third-party vendors. It’s a common and daunting challenge
that confronts system engineers everywhere.
What’s the bottom line? If you have unusual or new
drivers, you need to specify F6 when installing SBS in the early
character-based setup screen (immediately after the
character-based setup process commences, which would be while
disk 1 is still in the floppy drive if you selected to set up SBS
with the four disks instead of booting directly from the CD disc)
when you are asked to specify additional controller and adapter
cards. And when you communicate that you want to specify drivers,
you often have to specify the drivers for existing controller and
adapter cards, because the setup’s auto-detection has not
been stopped. That is, once you press F6, you’ll likely
have to specify all controller and adapter cards, not just the
unsupported one you were trying to add.
BEST PRACTICE: So of course there must be a Texas
tale to
accompany this section, and here it is. There I
was on a sweaty
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and SBS book, newsletter and conference resources.
summer Saturday afternoon installing
SBS (prior version, but example still applies here) at an
accounting firm called “CFO2Go” in Bothell,
Washington. For some strange reason, the SBS installation kept
“hanging” or stopping right when the networking
components were being installed. It was all very strange and I
tried the setup a couple of times. No luck. I even tried
installing the DNS, DHCP, and WINS services manually thinking
something was hung up there. Heck, I even tried manually
installing Terminal Services in Remote Administration Mode. Lo
and behold, it turns out the SCSI card was an older Adaptec brand
card that had been misidentified by the underling Windows
operating system during setup (this was actually Windows 2000
Server). Once I downloaded the correct and supported Adaptec
driver for Windows 2000 Server, it worked just fine and I was
able to sail right past my blockage. Clearly this isn’t an
SBS 2003 example, but is included here for reference purposes to
help you think how you might solve some setup failures (if any
should occur) in SBS 2003.
