How PEI Can Relieve IT Administrators’ Job related stress

Stress is an undeniable fact of the modern workplace, and is often especially felt in the IT world. IT administrators face long hours, multiple demands, unexpected problems, and the knowledge that one small glitch can cause catastrophic results. Add in the fact that IT administrators essentially report to everyone in the company and you have recipe for job burnout and high turnover.

In the SMB world, where IT administrators often work with extremely limited resources and few or none of the failsafe and backup mechanisms usually employed by larger enterprises, stress problems are felt even more acutely.

People, Deadlines Biggest Stressors

Not surprisingly, the top three sources of stress for SMB IT admins are the bugaboos popularized by the “Dilbert” comic strip: people and deadlines. Specifically, SMB IT admins cited: management (28 percent), tight deadlines (20 percent) and the users they support (18 percent). And the effects of this stress can be debilitating. Nearly one in four (22 percent) SMB IT admins say they don’t feel great physically, while one in five (20 percent) say they have experienced stress-related health issues such as high blood pressure. So beyond basic compassionate concern for their employees’ well-being, SMBs also need to realize that left unchecked, chronic stress among their IT administrative personnel is a huge negative in terms of increased absenteeism and healthcare costs.

PEI Complete Managed Care can help. Tune into my next blog to see how!

Myke Schwartz, PEI

FEP 2010 install Troubleshooting steps

If during the process of moving your environment to FEP 2010, and you should happen to see FEP install failures with an error message of (FEP failed using Package ISV data to calculate precedence from CCM_ISV_SoftwarePolicy. It is required for applying policy. Error: Timeout after waiting 600000ms.) There are a couple of possible fixes from Microsoft suggestions –

1. Wait for CCM client to complete / report to SCCM before pushing software to the system.

2. Attempt to rerun the deployment once you have confirmed the above item.

o Test / review to see if FEP client installed correctly, if not continue

3. Start Powershell on the client by opening Command Prompt and typing Powershell

Run the following Powershell WMI query to check if the CCM_ISV_SoftwarePolicy class exists in WMI:

get-wmiobject -namespace “root/ccm/policy/machine” -class CCM_ISV_SoftwarePolicy

This resulted in the following error:

Get-WmiObject : Invalid class

At line:1 char:14

+ get-wmiobject <<<< -namespace “root/ccm/policy/machine” -class CCM_ISV_SoftwarePolicy

CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (:) [Get-WmiObject], ManagementException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : GetWMIManagementException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetWmiObjectCommand

Attempts to manually compile the CCM_ISV.MOF file located in the ConfigMgr Client’s cache folder C:\Windows\System32\CCM\Cache\<Package ID> using the following command produced the error below because the mofcomp.exe could not be found:

mofcomp CCM_ISV.MOF

‘mofcomp’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Run the SET PATH command from the command prompt to determine if the folder, C:\Windows\System32\Wbem, exists and if not add it to the PATH.After adding this path, the application of the FEP policies was successful.

4. Attempt to rerun the deployment once you have confirmed the above item.

o Test / review to see if FEP client installed correctly, if not continue

5. Uninstall the ConfigMgr client

Register MSXML Dlls: To re-register MSXML, click Start, click Run, type the following command, and then click OK:

Regsvr32 “C:\WINDOWS\system32\msxml3.dll”

Note This command assumes that you want to reregister MSXML 3.0 and that the .dll file is located in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\ folder.

Requested the customer to push the Client Agent again to these systems to re-install it and then to rerun the FEP2010 advertisement.

Re-register the client’s Scripting Libraries: Use the Fix-It from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949140 (which you did in the past) or perform the registration manualy:

To manually register the scripting components on your computer, use one of the following sets of steps, as appropriate for your situation.

You are running a 32-bit version of the Windows operating system

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.

2. Type regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\vbscript.dll, and then press ENTER.

3. Type regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\jscript.dll, and then press ENTER.

4. Type regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\dispex.dll, and then press ENTER.

5. Type regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\scrobj.dll, and then press ENTER.

6. Type regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\scrrun.dll, and then press ENTER.

7. Type regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\wshext.dll, and then press ENTER.

8. Type regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\wshom.ocx, and then press ENTER.

You are running a 64-bit version of the Windows operating system, and you receive the error message that is mentioned in the “Symptoms” section while you are using the 64-bit scripting components

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.

2. Type %systemroot%\system32\regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\vbscript.dll, and then press ENTER.

3. Type %systemroot%\system32\regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\jscript.dll, and then press ENTER.

4. Type %systemroot%\system32\regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\dispex.dll, and then press ENTER.

5. Type %systemroot%\system32\regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\scrobj.dll, and then press ENTER.

6. Type %systemroot%\system32\regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\scrrun.dll, and then press ENTER.

7. Type %systemroot%\system32\regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\wshext.dll, and then press ENTER.

8. Type %systemroot%\system32\regsvr32 %systemroot%\system32\wshom.ocx, and then press ENTER.

6. Re-install the CCMgr Client software

7. Push the Client Agent again to these clients

8. Re-run the FEP2010 advertisement.

o Test / review to see if FEP client installed correctly, if not continue

Sam Westfall, PEI

The Art and Science of Asking Questions is the Source of All Knowledge.

~Thomas Berger

With every blog I write, the process begins in a very similar way. I try to think of recent topics in the IT tech world, search for information on said topics online, then ask myself questions like “Will this be interesting” or “Do I know enough to write about this topic?” And those questions help me to shape a subject and a blog. Asking and answering questions before any task, whether it’s writing a blog or building a home, is extremely important. For instance, if you walk in to the GAP, and ask an associate to help you pick out a pair of pants, there are some questions that you might want to ask yourself before you just start pulling jeans off of the rack. What size are you? What fit are you looking for? Where are you planning to wear these pants? And you will continue to ask questions of yourself until you have narrowed down the selection to the perfect pair of pants. Now, if you had no idea what type of pants you wanted walking in to the GAP, that process might take a while. But if you know you are looking for a pair of boot cut jeans, the process becomes easier.

The same type of scenario goes in to planning your IT projects. If you walk in to a meeting with one of our Account Managers knowing you want to buy servers, but don’t know what you will use them for or specifically why you need new ones, that particular project will probably stop dead in the water until you have put together your own list of needs/wants for those servers. And while it will be the responsibility of the Account Managers and Engineers to become a trusted advisor, suggesting the right servers for your needs, it is good to ask a few specific questions of yourself before taking the next steps. Here are a few examples of great pre-project questions:

1. What are the high-level objectives of the project?

2. What are the estimated costs of the project — and the anticipated rewards?

3. Does the potential project align with the mission, vision, and values of the organization?

4. What are the risks associated with pursuing the project under consideration?

These questions help to answer the business value of your pursued project. And while this list is certainly not all encompassing, it’s a good start and will help keep the tasks at hand on track.

For more detail on those questions, see: http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/106373/project-management-4-questions-to-ask-before-starting-any-project

Erika Larson, PEI

Ground Up

Many times our business revolves around helping small to mid-size (50-2000 user) organizations design, implement and support enterprise grade solutions for their organizations. While that is the primary focus of PEI, we have also helped many smaller, start-up organizations get going from the ground up. Given the family business nature of PEI, we can understand the pains that start up go through when they are looking for that initial IT set up. Below are a few points that PEI takes into consideration when helping newer organizations get started from the ground up:

- Cloud, on premise, or combination

o Determining how you would like your company set up is critical. We can help address the pro’s and con’s of each choice so that the best decision possible can be made

- User adoption

o You must consider the “tech savvy-ness” of your workers when setting up the technical foundation of your company. Depending on how you think your workforce will react to newer technologies, the implementation plan will change to adapt to your users.

- Growth

o This is probably the biggest factor when deciding what tools to implement. While every new business owner has very lofty growth expectations, sometimes those growth expectations come with a large cost. Implementing the right solutions, with growth in mind, is the key to any technology investments an organization can make.

Arash Zadeh, PEI

 

Direct Access

What is direct access?

DirectAccess is a feature in the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems that gives users the experience of being seamlessly connected to their corporate network any time they have Internet access.

With DirectAccess, users are able to access corporate resources (such as e-mail servers, shared folders, or intranet web sites) following common security standards, anytime they have an internet connection.

Key Benefits:

• Improved Productivity

o Helps improve the productivity of remote staff by providing the same, always-on connectivity experience no matter if users are inside or outside the corporate network.

• Secure Connectivity

o Leverages IPsec for authentication and encryption.

o Provides the ability to apply granular policy control over access to resources, applications, and servers.

o Integrates with Microsoft Server and Domain Isolation, Network Access Protection (NAP), and BitLocker solutions, resulting in security, access, and health requirement policies that seamlessly interoperate between intranets and remote computers

• Greater Manageability

o Helps ensure that machines both on the network and off are always healthy, managed, and up-to-date.

o Provides administrators with the ability to update Group Policy settings and distribute software updates any time a remote computer has Internet connectivity, even if the user is not logged on.

o Helps ensure that organizations can meet regulatory and privacy mandates for security and data protection for assets that must roam beyond the corporate network.

I use direct access almost daily and love the ease of use. The look and feel of all the tools and information that I access is the same as if I am in the office. Direct Access is a great tool for working remotely. It just works!

Jon Eyberg, PEI

Exciting System Center 2012 Features

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit Microsoft and see, first hand, some of what System Center 2012 has in store for us. For the first time, System Center components have been truly integrated, providing some unique and powerful automation capabilities.

What if Configuration Manager could automatically respond to, and remediate, an error or warning event detected by Operations Manager? What if a request for a software installation in Service Manager could be automatically carried through an approval process leading to the application being installed by Configuration Manager? What automatic virus infection remediation? Client data protection? System Center 2012 can do it all.

Still, there are a couple features that I’m really excited about, and I think warrant a little more attention.

First is Configuration Manager’s shift to a user-oriented architecture, which allows application installs to be targeted at users, not just computers. It also presents available applications based on who is searching, not which computer he or she is using. This change can really make an administrator’s life easier. We can focus on who needs access to things, rather than which device provides access (and who is in possession of that device). The new Configuration Manager bridges the gap between user and app, creating an easier administrative experience and a superior user experience.

The other feature is Operations Manager ability to monitor, natively, web apps (.NET and J2E, specifically). Operations Manager can not only inform you if your application is unavailable, it can also alert you to performance issues within the application itself. Additionally, the Operations Manager dashboard allows an administrator to delve from a physical host server, into a virtual machine, and then into web services and specific web sites and applications to identify problems within a single interface. Operations Manager can greatly simplify monitoring your systems and infrastructure and shorten time to resolution.

System Center 2012 offers many, many more capabilities as well. Hopefully, this has helped whet your appetite, as the official release is right around the corner!

Shane Skriletz, PEI

How to Backup Lync (Part 1)

A question that I am frequently asked after we get Lync installed and running is “How do we backup Lync?” This is a great question and one that is easy to answer. Thanks to the Central Management idea and Topology Builder, we only have to backup a few items in order to get the entire Lync environment backed up.

There are two crucial pieces for most environments. First is the topology itself and then secondly, we need the user’s data (Contacts, etc). To do the first piece, we use Export-CsConfiguration from the Lync Management Shell. An example:

Export-CsConfiguration -FileName MyTopologyBackup.zip

To backup the users data, we need to use the dbimpexp.exe tool. This tool is available in the root folder of the Lync Server installation media. It is also installed at \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Support as part of the Core Components. Here is an example of how to run the dbimpexp.exe command:

Dbimpexp.exe /hrxmlfile:<path and backup file name> /sqlserver:<SQL Server FQDN>\<instance name>

dbimpexp.exe /hrxmlfile:MyUserDataBackup.xml /sqlserver:mysqlserver.domain.com

With these two pieces you can get most of your Lync environment. In the next article I will detail how to backup other Lync components such as the Location Database, Group Chat and Response Group settings.

Adam Ball, PEI

How Unified Communication Can Improve Your Business

Unified Communications is designed for one thing – to take it easier and more cost effective for employees to connect, and to improve their ability to connect with customers and business partners. The general premise is to merge two or more communications into one easy-to-use interface. Generally, we’re talking about phone calls, instant messaging, conferences and collaboration.

The purpose of this blog is to identify the key drives and pains that small and medium businesses face, and to briefly show how improvements can positively impact the bottom line.

Top Business Challenges

Small and medium businesses are often faced with competition with from larger enterprises. To effectively compete, you need the right tools. Some of the major challenges faced include:

Pressure on Key Employees

Smaller organizations often have a few key “go-to” employees who are in great demand. Because of their critical role, their time is at a premium. What they need are tools that can prioritize their communications.

Owners Who Need to be Everywhere

The need to be constantly available means you’ve got to take calls from anywhere. Technology that stays with you, allows you to identify important contacts, routes communications and enables collaboration is critical.

Multi-Functional Roles

Any employee at a small or medium business leads a busy professional life that requires multiple roles. Juggling customers, partners, colleagues and tasks means you need efficient and time sensitive tools.

Limited IT and Telco Expertise

Small and Medium businesses don’t generally have the same resources and staff to support advanced telecommunication technologies. Have tools that are easy to understand, justify, deploy and manage is essential.

Unified Communications – Improving Business

The integration of voice and other communications makes it easier for your employees to identify and locate people quickly, and access and share critical information. Decision making is faster and better, and customer service is enhanced. By converging resources, the cost of communications, including voice, instant messaging and conferencing, is cut.

The Three Benefits of UC

There are three areas decision makers should pay special attention to:

Customer Services – Skills-based routing, conferencing, and presence within UC make it easier to stay in touch with customers and support their needs.

Improved Productivity – UC uses presence information and “click to communicate” capabilities to speed information to the right people. Collaboration is improved and the numbers of interactions to complete a task are reduced. This means orders are filled faster, decisions are made more quickly, and productivity is increased.

Lower Cost of Communications

A UC Solution may appear expensive, but properly designed and deployed, your communications costs can be reduced. Voice calls and volume is reduced thanks to Instant Message Chats; Travel Time is reduced thanks to audio, video and web conferencing; and Conferencing is delivered more cheaply because you can avoid expensive conference hosting services.

When Do You Consider Unified Communications?

If you’re moving to a new location.

If your old phone system will no longer be supported by the vendor.

If your business is growing and you want to “reach next level.”

If you’ve lost too many sales because opportunities are not getting to the right people quickly enough.

If you hear too many (or any) negative customer service stories.

If your employees work from the road or out of the office—and you can’t reach them when you need them.

Conclusion

Look for partners that can customize a solution that fits your specific business needs and budget. The “one size fits all” or single appliance compromise isn’t going to address what you want, or where you want to go. A competent partner will work with you and address not just the technologies, but the “use case scenarios” that are critical for successful adoption.

Tim Krueger, PEI

Recommendations for Rookies – Microsoft Project Professional 2010

These past couple of months I have been working with my fellow project manager, Dan, to configure and figure out Project Server. After playing with a lot of the settings, I found that the backbone of Project Server’s web application is really Microsoft Project Professional. So far, to us, Server is an interactive platform to do resource allocation and update projects via timesheets. In order for Project Server to behave the way we want, we need project plans that are properly constructed. You can create a basic project plan in the project web app but it is not going to have a lot of the features that our in-depth project plans need.

Through my tests and trials I noticed there is a specific order each column should be filled in that works best. I start with the task name and fill in every task and sub task in the project. Then I build my team and assign the resources required to complete each task. Next I set the order the tasks are to be completed in by noting the predecessors. The last thing I do is determine task type and enter my variables.

Project uses three variables to determine the timeline of a project-Duration, Units and Work. Duration is the overall amount of time it will take to accomplish a task, which is usually measured in days. Units depend on the resource and is the percentage of available time the resource gives to the task. The third, Work, is the amount of time in hours it actually takes to do the task. The underlying concept is that you tell project 2 of the variables, one of which is fixed as the task type, and the program populates the third. For example, if you enter a task with Work = 8 hours and Duration = 2 Days, project will calculate that 50% of the resource’s effort will go to that task on each day. People often overlook that the default task type in Project is Fixed Units. So given the scenario above, if you keep the task type set to Fixed Units and then you change duration, project will recalculate the amount of work. This can be a bit confusing so here is my recommendation for rookies:

The task type should be set to the variable that does not change. Enter that variable for each task in its associated column. Then enter the variable you would like to control in its column. Finally, hit “Calculate Project” and let the program determine the values for the third variable.

Heidi Christensen, PEI

The Advent of the Cloud

With Cloud computing being ‘all the rage’, I can’t help but equate the evolution of the IT sector with the demographic that tends to follow suite. Does anyone really remember “Time Sharing”? One job in…one job out.

If you’re under 45 years old, probably not.

Dumb terminals, probably IBM green screens, hard wired into monolithic mainframes; could be IBM’s, NCR’s, Burroughs, Digital Equipment Corp’s (DEC’s), Wang, Sperry Rand, Control Data (my former employer), Honeywell and yes………even General Electric.

This was the era of the baby boomer. Typically folks born between 1946 and 1964. Green stamps, posty notes, wide ties, milkmen, xx cents for a gallon of gas, hula hoops and Frisbees, drive-ins, silly putty, mood rings, lava lamps, 8 track players and pet rocks all come to mind.

Then Nerds starting showing up……..and creating companies that would forever change the way we live.

PC’s, Client Server, then Enterprise and Internet computing came into vogue and as a result time, sharing and ‘batch processing’ went through any number of transformations.

Application Service Provider (ASP) comes to mind where a vendor might house any number of ‘instances’ of an app and effectively ‘rent’ it to a customer. This is about the time the Gen X crowd (born early 60’s to late 70’s) would have hit the employment market.

Then SaaS (software-as-a-service), PaaS, and IaaS, started showing up. And low and behold……here comes Gen Y (born from the 70’s to 2000) to bring it to the marketplace.

And now “the cloud”…………..

Just wondering what they’ll call that generation. Gen Z?

Matt Teahan, PEI