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That pesky 10GB limit

Originally posted on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog

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As I have always foreseen, the 10GB database limit for SharePoint Foundation 2010 is becoming more and more of an issue as installations start to grow. I really see this more and more, especially when it comes to SBS 2011 Standard which includes SharePoint Foundation 2010 which many people simply know as Companyweb.

Background

All forms of SharePoint require some form of database storage to store their content. SharePoint uses Microsoft SQL Server for this storage. There are however many different versions of Microsoft SQL Server all with different capabilities and limitations.

In the days of Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSS v3) the SharePoint content was saved into SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (SSEE). This version was not only free but supported unlimited database sizes. The downsides where that it wasn’t upgradable and it was a 32 bit database.

When SharePoint Foundation 2010 came along it had the requirement of 64 bit databases. That immediately ruled out SSEE. The initial choice was SQL Server 2008 Express. This version is 64 bit and is free but has a 4GB database limit. If you download and install SharePoint Foundation 2010 as a stand alone package and accept the default installation you’ll also get SQL Express 2008 and thus a 4GB database limit.

As you can appreciate, a 4GB database limit is pretty restrictive so when SBS 2011 became available it shipped with SQL Express 2008 R2 for SharePoint storage which upped the database limit to 10GB. Problem is now that is still not enough.

Options

So what happens if you have SBS 2011 and you are approaching the 10GB limit? What are your options? Here are some suggestions. They all come with compromises so beware.

1. Create a new SharePoint site and site collection move some of the data here. Doing this will give you new 10GB database into which you can store information. Given that companyweb is a web site you can link to another SharePoint site fairly seamlessly. The down side is that things like the search database are still limited to 10GB and if your data keep growing you are going to hit the 10GB limit again at some point. Also, it can be a little more confusing for users.

2. Do an in place upgrade of SQL 2008 Express R2 to a version that doesn’t have database restrictions. This can be achieved via the SBS Premium add on however don’t forget that there are other applications that use SQL on SBS including monitoring and reporting. This in place upgrade option also places more strain on the single box and is generally not recommended as best practice.

3. You can move the SQL databases to a second server running SQL. This can be achieved again with the SBS Premium add on that provides a Windows Server 2008 license and an SQL license. downsides include the fact that this requires additional hardware, setup, configuration and maintenance. It also means that things like the standard SBS wizards no longer work because it is now a custom installation. You also have to work out how to backup the second server as it is not generally covered by standard SBS backups. If you do want to do this then Microsoft has a Technet article you can follow at:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg616007.aspx

4. You can implement Binary Large Object (BLOB) storage. This basically allows the storage of file data outside the SQL database into the file system. Although this gets around the 10GB database limit (as files are generally your largest storage item) there are trade offs which I have detail in previous blog posts. Personally, I don’t think it is a good move, especially in an SBS environment for the simple reason is the added complexity amongst other things but it can be done. My advice if you are thinking about moving that way read my previous post.

5. Move Companyweb to Office 365. Here you’ll get access to SharePoint Enterprise Server 2010, you’ll get 10GB database limits as a starting point, you won’t have to worry about upgrades and you’ll get Office Web Apps to boot which you won’t get with Companyweb on SBS. You’ll obviously have to pay for suitable Office 365 licenses, migrate the data and help users understand what differences Office 365 provides.

So you do have options but they all come with a cost. Personally, if your users are really getting into SharePoint then I’d be looking at Office 365 simply because of the added functionality and reduced hassle. Failing that, there is always the option of pruning your data, removing old files and versions but sooner or later, chances are you’ll hit the 10GB limit again.

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Robert Crane
Principal
PO Box 5, Beecroft NSW 2119, Australia
Email: director@ciaops.com
Ph: 0409 010 950 Fx: 02 9868 1121

Contact Me:       

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Windows Phone Challenger at CES

Originally posted on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog

Yes, I know it is all staged and managed and blah, blah, blah …. BUT what these video continue to indicate to me is:

 

1. Windows Phone is as good if not better as the others

 

2. Microsoft is not in game of bashing the competition. It acknowledges that other brands and models are good as well.

 

This shows me they are truly confident about their product, which they need to be to compete. As I said in a previous post, don’t write Windows Phone off just yet.

 

Take a look at these videos and see what you think:

 

 

Windows Phone at CES Day 2 recap

 

 

Windows Phone $100 challenge

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Robert Crane
Principal
PO Box 5, Beecroft NSW 2119, Australia
Email: director@ciaops.com
Ph: 0409 010 950 Fx: 02 9868 1121

Contact Me:       

Chat:

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Skype: director_cia
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MSN: director@ciaops.com

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Don't write Windows Phone off just yet

Originally posted on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog

Many people have completely written off Windows Phone but I’m seeing more and more reason that this might not be such a forgone conclusion. One of the more recent reasons why in my mind was the partnership with Nokia which has resulted in Nokia releasing a whole swag of phones, including the Lumia range. Here’s a video of the new Lumia 900:

 

 

 

These phones look pretty nice and are available now I believe in the US. I hope they won’t be long for our shores here in Australia as I reckon they will make a big impact. Sure, Windows Phone still has a mountain to climb to catch up BUT as far as I can see it is moving the right direction and there indications from others in the market that they face major challenges as well.

 

So I wouldn’t write off Windows Phone just yet.

 

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Robert Crane
Principal
PO Box 5, Beecroft NSW 2119, Australia
Email: director@ciaops.com
Ph: 0409 010 950 Fx: 02 9868 1121

Contact Me:       

Chat:

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Skype: director_cia
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MSN: director@ciaops.com

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We need to do some marketing

How many times have I heard that in response to a downturn in income? The problem is that it is generally only going to make things worse because if a business isn’t already marketing then it can’t simply solve its short term cash flows issue but suddenly doing ‘marketing’.

You know what else? Marketing is not making sales, thus marketing alone isn’t going to magically restore the bottom line. In most cases it is going to make a business spend additional money and devote time away from the core parts of their business in the vane hope it will result in more income.

Marketing is something a business should be doing all the time. If you haven’t started then you should immediately and keep doing it no matter what your cash flow situation. Problem is that when many businesses think marketing is only about doing letterbox flyers and sending out ‘buy now’ emails and guess what? The chances of that working are very slim. Don’t believe me? How much junk email and postal mail do you read? Chances are not a lot, so why do the same thing? You could argue that it must work because others are doing to which I’d contend there is HUGE difference between ‘must’ and ‘does’. If you don’t know about something do the research don’t just follow the crowd. Good business is based on fact not here say.

If you want to have effective marketing you firstly need to determine what you are going to offer. That is going to be determined by the customer not by the business. You should be asking, ‘what does my customer need that I can provide?”. If you don’t know then you should do your research up front to find out. At the end of the day you only make money if someone buys what you have to offer. It maybe the best product in the world but if nobody buys it then it no help to your business now is it? Remember the value is in the eye of the customer only!

Now that you have something to offer you also need to ask yourself if someone else is already providing it. If they are how is your offering different? If it isn’t then the only way you’ll compete is on price and that is simply a race to the bottom. You need a USP (a unique selling position). What makes what you offer different or more appealing than everyone else. Focus on that one thing rather than everything else that everyone else does as well.

Studies show that you have to show something to people 6-7 times before it begins to stick. Most businesses that ‘resort’ to marketing to lift their cash flow, try something once, typically fail and then wonder why. This is why it is so important that marketing is an ongoing process and process that occurs through a variety of mediums. But most importantly of all, any marketing that is done needs to have its results MEASURED. How else do you know what works if you don’t measure it?

Why do most small businesses think marketing is a waste of time? Because they don’t see immediate results to their bottom line. That is their only measurement criteria, we did this letterbox drop, did we make more money? No. Therefore marketing is a waste of time. Q.E.D.

The first step in any marketing is to work out what your customer needs that you can potentially supply. Next step is to work out if anyone else can offer the same product. Third, requires tailoring the offering to be as unique as possible. Next you need to keep at it and measure the results and continue to fine tune the offering.

Unfortunately, that is not a quick fix and it requires continued work. However, if you can get the process refined and automated then it can become a very effective tool. Unfortunately, unless you have done the ground work any ‘marketing’ effort is going to be wasted and this is what I unfortunately see as being the case too often.

Office 365 keeps getting better

Originally posted on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog 

One of the big advantages I have always seen with Office 365 (or any online service for that fact) is its ability to improve quickly over time. Having the servers in a hosted data centre makes it much quicker and easier to roll out new and updated features over anything that is installed on site.

 

Here is a list of a few improvements that have been made recently that you may not be aware of:

 

Maximum number of email recipients has been increased for the P Plan

 

Previously, those on a P Plan were restricted to only sending to 500 recipients a day via email. This has now been increased, as of the end of December, to 1500 which is the same as for those on the Enterprise plans. Some may still complain that this is unacceptable, even though it is probably more than enough, I reckon this number will be increased further down the track.

 

Lync online web scheduler now available

 

On of the frustrating things I found when organizing meetings was that it could only be done via Outlook and only be done by logging into Outlook as a valid Office 365 user. I longed for the old Live meeting days when you could schedule a meeting directly via a web site. Well now you can with Lync after Microsoft announced the availability of the Lync online web scheduler. To organize a meeting now all you need to do is visit https://sched.lync.com.

 

Health dashboard supports per tenant status

 

When Office 365 had services issues you could examine the health dashboard to see what was going on. The only problem with that was that the health dashboard was regional. This meant that it only told if something was an issue in the Office 365 region. I did have cases where issues were exhibited with clients and it didn’t shown on the dashboard which was frustrating. However, according to this blog post that has now changed so that the dashboard shows the health information of the specific tenant that it is launched from.

 

The K plans have been improved

 

As this post outlines the K Plans (diskless worker) have been improved. This means that K Plans now have a storage limit of 1GB (used to be only 500MB). They now also support activesync, meaning devices like smart phones can be utilized. Also importantly, the ability to apply legal hold and unlimited mailbox storage can be added as an add on to these mailboxes. This greatly improves the flexibility of the K Plans and means that they are more likely to be adopted with an organization since they are so cheap and probably all that most users need.

 

Office 365 trust center has been updated

 

If you aren’t already aware you’ll find that Microsoft has created a site dedicated to answering question around the security and privacy of Office 365. You’ll find it at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/trust-center.aspx and is worth remembering so you can refer customers to it who may have concerns about how Microsoft manages and secures their information.

 

So just a few updates recent from Microsoft on Office 365 but it impressive to see these continue to roll out and improve the product. I expect we’ll see a whole range more in the very near future.

 

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SharePoint workshop

Originally posted on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog

SharePoint - Beyond the Basics

 

About:

 

To really make the most of SharePoint you need to take it beyond the basics. This means connecting data, creating and utilizing metadata, customizing the look and feel of sites, add web parts and implement workflows. This course will show you how to do all that plus work effectively with products like SharePoint Workspace and designer to take any SharePoint installation from default to a true productivity and communications hub.

 

The aim of this hands on course is to provide you with the technical ability to work with SharePoint at an intermediate to advanced level as well as understand the tools that are required to craft advanced SharePoint solutions.

 

Venue: North Ryde RSL Club, 33 Magdala Rd, North Ryde, NSW 2113

 

Date: Wednesday 22nd of February 2012, from 8.30am - 5.30pm

 

More details and registration at - http://bit.ly/wgsAcW

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Robert Crane
Principal
PO Box 5, Beecroft NSW 2119, Australia
Email: director@ciaops.com
Ph: 0409 010 950 Fx: 02 9868 1121

Contact Me:       

Chat:

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Skype: director_cia
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MSN: director@ciaops.com

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The difference between P and E

Originally posted on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog

One of the most common questions customers ask about Office 365 is the difference between the P (Small Business and Professional) and the E (Enterprise licenses). Hopefully, this will help.

 

1. P Plans cannot be upgraded to E Plans

 

Probably the most important thing to consider when selecting between P and E Plans. Once you move onto a P Plan the only way to change to another plan is to migrate the data out, cancel the P plan, buy a new plan and migrate the data back.

 

2. P Plans do not support advanced Exchange features

 

The P Plan does not support the following advanced Exchange features:

 

- Unlimited inboxes

- Legal hold

 

3. P Plans are aimed at no more than 25 users

 

The absolute maximum limit for P Plans is 50 users but it is recommended that they don’t exceed 25 users.

 

4. Plans do not support all the advanced SharePoint features

 

P Plans do support the following advanced SharePoint features:

 

- Office Web Apps read/write

- Access Services (for databases in the cloud)

 

P Plans do not support the following advanced SharePoint features:

 

- Form services

- Visio Services

- Excel services

- Encrypted traffic for SharePoint (i.e. all sites are http:// not https://)

- Multiple intranet sites (they have a single site collection only).

- Addition of extra space for SharePoint sites. P Plans only have 10GB to start with + 500MB per user max.

- My site

- Unlimited external (non-Office 365 users). P Plan is limited to 50.

 

5. P Plans do not support identity synchronization

 

P Plans do not provide the ability to link your local user list (Active Directory) to Office 365. Thus, with P Plans you will always have two distinct sets of users, on premises and one in Office 365 that both require maintenance. This typically means with P Plans you need to main 2 sets of user logins and passwords.

 

6. P Plans require DNS moved to Office365

 

DNS is basically a record of where information about Internet servers are located (i.e. web servers, email servers). By default, the P Plans require that these records be moved to and managed by Office 365.

 

7. P Plans only have community support (outside Australia)

 

For regions outside Australia P plans have not support apart form that found on the Internet. In Australia however P Plans are supported by Telstra via phone 24/7.

 

8. P Plans do not allow the management of mail security

 

Exchange Online as part of Office 365 is protected by Microsoft Forefront Protection for Exchange (FOPE). P Plans do not permit the administration or customization of this. Thus, with P Plans you are unable to set custom email white and black lists, block IP, etc.

 

9. P Plans have lower email receipt limits

 

P Plans have a reduced amount of email that can be sent per day per user. Theses limits can be found at:

 

http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/dd630704.aspx

 

with P Plans the limit is basically 500 mail recipients per day.

 

10. P plans are limited to 50 online meeting participants

 

P Plans have access the Lync client software but are limited to having only 50 participants maximum attend any meeting. Thus, if you are planning to do webcasts to large audience 50 will be the limit with a P Plan.

 

Hope that makes things a little cleare.

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Robert Crane
Principal
PO Box 5, Beecroft NSW 2119, Australia
Email: director@ciaops.com
Ph: 0409 010 950 Fx: 02 9868 1121

Contact Me:       

Chat:

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Skype: director_cia
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MSN: director@ciaops.com

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Additional Security settings in Office 365

Originally posted on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog

Exchange Online in Office 365 is protected by Forefront Online Protection for Exchange [FOPE] (at no extra charge mind you). In BPOS you could look at the FOPE console but couldn’t make any changes. Not the case in Office 365, where you have much more control.

 

To access the FOPE console login to your Office 365 console as an administrator. Select the option to Manage Exchange.

 

From the menu on the left hand side select Mail Control and you should see a screen similar to:

 

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On the right hand side you will notice the following under Additional Security Settings.

 

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You can actually click this and when you do it will open up the FOPE control panel like so:

 

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Be very careful what you change here as you really need to know what you are doing. Selecting the wrong option can block mail for your Office 365 organization.

 

Apart from the configuration settings you will find some handy features like email reports. Which are pretty sweet as you can see:

 

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FOPE is an excellent part of Office 365 that probably doesn’t get the acknowledgement it should as part of the offering. So if you are using Exchange Online with Office 365 take a look at what FOPE can provide.

 

The other advice I would give you when it comes to FOPE is that it REALLY works best when viewed through Internet Explorer and also without an lingering Windows Live ID around. So if you want to access FOPE, open a new Internet Explorer windows, login to the Office 365 console as an administrator and go from there.

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Robert Crane
Principal
PO Box 5, Beecroft NSW 2119, Australia
Email: director@ciaops.com
Ph: 0409 010 950 Fx: 02 9868 1121

Contact Me:       

Chat:

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Skype: director_cia
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MSN: director@ciaops.com

(download)

Podcast Episode 20 with Brett Hill

Originally posted on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog

Been too long since my last podcast but I have managed to produce another one for your listening pleasure.

 

In this episode you’ll hear from Microsoft MVP Brett Hill all about Office 365 and what it has to offer for both customers and resellers. You’ll get a good idea of the product as well as some of the challenges cloud computing faces in general along with Brett’s tips and tricks for a better implementation.

 

You’ll find the episode at:

 

http://ciaops.podbean.com/2012/01/03/episode-20-brett-hill/

 

with information about Brett at http://www.office365answers.com.

 

All the previous episode are available at http://ciaops.podbean.com so take a look.

 

Remember, I’m always looking for guests. So if you have something you’d like to discuss please contact me (director@ciaops.com). Alternatively, if there is someone or something that you would like to hear please also let me know and I’ll try and arrange it.

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Robert Crane
Principal
PO Box 5, Beecroft NSW 2119, Australia
Email: director@ciaops.com
Ph: 0409 010 950 Fx: 02 9868 1121

Contact Me:       

Chat:

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Skype: director_cia
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MSN: director@ciaops.com

(download)

I've seen the future

It isn’t all that often that I am really blown away with changes in technology. Sure, they are cool, interesting and in some cases astounding but something that really blows me away is rare. I can report that I have recently had one of those experiences with my Xbox.

Microsoft has just updated the interface on the Xbox to be more Metro like (a la Windows 8) but that isn’t the big change. The big change in my mind is the ability to allow third party apps to be downloaded and installed to the console. It goes to show you how powerful apps concept is in our technology world these days as pioneered by Apple. But even that is not what I found earth shattering. My epiphany came when I installed the ABC iView, SBS on Demand and YouTube apps.

The ABC iView and SBS on Demand apps allow you to watch TV from two popular channel here in Australia. This is fantastic but still does have some limited content in what is available. However, it is when I started to look at the YouTube app that my brain exploded.

With the YouTube app on my Xbox I can watch just about every YouTube clip right on my TV set! I started with watching some of the clips that I have saved as favourites on my channel. I then moved into looking at what YouTube recommended and then finally trawled through some popular picks including shorts for upcoming movies. I could have stayed up all night watching YouTube (which contrary to popular belief does have some very interesting and engaging content).

Think about this for a moment. ALL of the content on YouTube is now available on your TV. You can use the YouTube app to tee up what you want to watch during the day and then come home a play it. You can view all the latest movie trailers on your TV WHENEVER you want. Why would you ever go back to watching normal network TV? Why would you pay for cable TV? The Xbox makes this available ONTOP of all the other great things the Xbox does.

Now, also throw into the mix the ability to control and access your YouTube preferences from your mobile device (say an iPad). You can then potentially stream onto your TV or this device as well as you move about. YouTube becomes your personal TV station where you control the content. The possibilities are endless. The possibilities are also endless for Microsoft as it positions one of its devices into the living room of consumers.

The one thing that I waiting for is for my DVD services (Quickflix) to become available on the Xbox (HURRY UP). That will give me access to a huge range of movies and TV shows on demand. However, with iView, SBS on Demand and especially YouTube now available for the Xbox I think I’ll be busy enough until Quickflix becomes available.

It’s still early days for this but I can see what a potential game changer this is for traditional media businesses. With YouTube you can watch the content just about anywhere you have an internet connection. The integration of the service across devices like the iPad and iPhone but down to consumer devices like TVs is going to open up even more people to viewing the wonders of YouTube. Like I said, if you sit down and think of the possibilities here your head will explode!