VelocityStorm Technology Blog

So, I setup a UC 500 system that needed to have 4 phones ring at once. You have to do this by adding second line appearance and doing button overlays. Thanks to Ken Plunkett who helped me with this one. Here is the solution:

The way that this is normally done is to add a second line appearance. You can create the this following way:

1. Enter the CLI.
2. Enter enable mode.
3. type “configure terminal”
4. Based on the number of simeltaneous calls you want the users to answer, enter the same number of ephone-dn’s (see below for 4). The last ephone-dn needs to have “huntstop channel”.

ephone-dn 120 dual-line
number 5001
description Main Line
name Main Line
huntstop channel
no huntstop
!
!
ephone-dn 121 dual-line
number 5001
description Main Line
name Main Line
preference 1
huntstop channel
no huntstop
!
!
ephone-dn 122 dual-line
number 5001
description Main Line
name Main Line
preference 2
huntstop channel
no huntstop
!
!
ephone-dn 123 dual-line
number 5001
description Main Line
name Main Line
preference 3
huntstop channel

5. For every phone you want to ring, enter the following (the ephone number is the number of the physical phone. The button is the actual button you want the number to appear on). Do this for each ephone you want the line to ring on.

ephone 13
button 2o120,121,122,123

6. type exit.

7. save your configuration.

8. In the auto attendant, point the number to the extension you added in the ephone-dn. In this example, 5001 was used, but you can use any number you want that meets your dial plan.

If you have multiple workspaces associated with your Groove account and add Groove to another computer (or rebuild one of your computers), you should download the Groove workspaces one at a time. The speed difference is significant.

So, I read Erick Simpson’s blog. He has written some excellent things on managed services. He mentioned a funny conversation he had with his friend Dave. I followed the link of course.

I think that running into something you are familiar with can be funny. I think that if a friend of yours is the creator of said material then that can add a twist. The story is funny. However, I don’t think the ramifications of the story are funny. Why? My reasons are:

1. Erick talks about how to get and keep a customer. You become a trusted advisor. The incumbent provider had used his contract. So, was he being displaced despite this? Or had he failed on the job? Not enough information on this.
2. The customer was willing to share another vendor’s contract with a sales person. Yes, this happens on occassion, but it is a violation of the contract (if it has an NDA clause - which most do). So, this customer was either very unhappy, unethical or unaware of what was in the conract. Whatever it was, it was not a tenable situation.
3. The real important stuff wasn’t answered. Granted, it was supposed to be a funny little story, but I would love to know what happened with this fickle customer? Why were they shopping around? Was it a problem with the service? Or were they just price shopping? My theory is that they were price shopping.

Interesting even so…. 

If you read the license, you will find that you cannot run Small Business Server as part of a workgroup. In fact, if you do, the server will shut itself down daily. I tested it and it does work that way. This is a VERY good thing because Active Directory is a VERY, VERY good thing. It increases security a great deal!

More on this topic soon (including screen captures).

I just found a nice SharePoint site. It is WSS Demo and it covers Windows SharePoint Server (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). One of the great things about it is that it shows sites that have been built using SharePoint. This is a question that we get from customers all the time so it will be useful to expand the list that we provide customers.  

Tomorrow I give a presentation on the Microsoft Malware Removal Kit. It is pretty cool. It uses Windows PE to boot into a light version of Vista. You can then run various malware tools to eliminate viruses, spyware, rootkits and more.

VelocityStorm was called by another IT company to help with an issue they were having. It turns out they were having trouble with installing service pack 2 on exchange on a small business server. This is generally not a big problem.

The other firm’s customer needed it because they wanted to use activesync to push email, calendar, tasks and the like to one of the owner’s windows mobile phone. In this case, it was a Treo 750c.

I went out, checked the server and saw it didn’t have service pack 2 on it. So, I took the usual steps to prepare the server. That included:

1. Imaged the server so that it could be restored if there was a disaster
2. Used NTbackup to backup the information store
3. Disconnected the system from the network
4. Turned off the anti-virus (in this case it was Kaspersky)
5. Installed service pack 2

Well, it failed. Same result as the other firm’s technician had. So, an interesting problem since this normally works unless there is something whacky about the server.

So, I backed out of everything and returned it to a normal state. I then prepared to install again. This time, though, I decided to see what kinds of events were generated.

1. Imaged the server
2. Did an NTbackup of the information store
3. Ran exchange best practices analyzer on the system. It didn’t show any obvious issues or missing hotfixes.
4. Emptied the event logs (saved the old ones to a folder)
5. Disconnected the system from the network
6. Shutdown anti-virus again
7. Installed service pack 2 again

It failed.

Checked the event logs. The errors indicated that the store was partially attached. That is odd since service pack 2 would normally shut them down.

So, I ran the install a second time. This time it worked.

So, I rebooted, make sure the store was online, started AV and connected to the network. Did a full test of exchange and OWA functionality. It all worked.

I still don’t know why the exchange store didn’t fully shutdown. I did save the event logs and the exchange install log, so I may analyze that to find out why.

VelocityStorm just became certified with Cisco so that we could sell a fantastic VOIP product called the UC 500. This VOIP system is ideal for offices or branches with 48 or fewer people. The quality is outstanding and the price is great. Cisco is series about moving into the SMB space and this system is a great example of one of their SMB products. What is wonderful for the end user is that they will get an enterprise-class system at a SMB price. What could be better?

Read more here: Cisco Unified Communications (UC) 500 for Small Businesses

We are very eager to see how this compares to Microsoft’s Response Point. We have two technicians going to Response Point training over the next week. Response Point is a similar offering from Microsoft and other vendors.

I think I will post this to some user groups I belong to as well. Time to sell HP.  

Dell Launches Mega-Bundle, But Cuts Out Channel
By Edward F. Moltzen, CMP Channel
4:21 PM EDT Wed. Oct. 10, 2007

Dell is launching a new top-to-bottom bundle that includes desktops, servers, networking and service, but will only sell it directly — even as the company is working behind the scenes to hash out details on its forthcoming formal channel program.
The Round Rock, Texas-based company is cutting the channel out of its On-Demand Desktop Streaming solution. The offering, announced Wednesday, is a bundle that includes diskless OptiPlex desktops, a PowerEdge 2950 server, a PowerConnect Gigabit switch, Citrix Provisioning Server for Desktops Software, and a PowerEdge 2900 storage server.
The new solution is part of Dell’s continuing initiative to streamline information technology products, the company said. During a press conference, though, Dell Senior Vice President Jeff Clarke said the product would not be available through the channel.
“This is going to be sold with our direct sales force, our direct service force,” Clarke said. The offering is aimed at what the company describes as IT simplification, and allows for system images to be deployed, managed and refreshed across many desktops, remotely. The company says 100 clients can be managed across a single server.
“This is an evolution of Dell from being a hardware provider to being a solution provider,” Clarke said.
Dell said the offering allows for software, applications and data to be streamed across a network to desk-based workers, and that it believes it can lower IT labor costs by as much as 56 percent.
The announcement and Clarke’s remarks came on the same day when Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell appeared at the Gartner IT Symposium in Orlando, Fla., to be peppered with questions about Dell’s channel strategy. To some in the channel, where skepticism about Dell’s channel plans have run high, the move does not appear to be one that will change the mood.
“If you called me a month ago, I might have told you I felt differently, that they were truly committed to a channel, but it’s just another day in the park with Dell,” said John Riesenburger, chief operating officer of Vertical IT Solutions, a Tampa, Fla.-based solution provider and Dell reseller. “There is no channel program and they really need to not be saying they have that.”
Riesenburger said the new Dell offering sounds like a move back to the mainframe model, “going back to centralized processing.
“If it pulls it off and it comes to fruition, it sounds like a pretty interesting initiative,” Riesenburger said. He added, “Dell can’t do anything from a service delivery standpoint. That’s the good news.”
Dell executives have said the company plans to roll out details of a new channel program by year’s end, including deal registration and solution provider incentives. The company is in the midst of an overhaul of its business strategy after two years of under-pressure sales and profits and after losing the worldwide market share lead in PCs to Dell.
 

Want to get your VPN clients (Nortel Contivity VPN Client or Cisco VPN Client) to work easily through a PIX?

Here is what you must configure to make it work:

- Port 500 UDP for isakmp
- Protocol 50 as a RAW IP filter (Encapsulation Header (ESP))
- Protocol 51 as a RAW IP filter (Authentication Header (AH))