Advanced Mobility in SBS 2003

Happy late August Monday to y'all!
I am the author of Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices and each day, out of the kindness of my heart (not!?!?) I post up a few pages of my book for you to read. I will do this until SBS 2008 ships this fall.
Today we explore advanced mobility topics at the end of Chapter 8.
cheers...harrybbbb
Harry Brlesford | ceo at SMB Nation | www.smbnation.com
Microsoft Small Business Specialist, SBSC, MBA, CNE, MCSE, MCT, CLSE, CNP, and MPC
ps - I host an annual SBS and SBSC conference in Seattle each October - this year we celebrate SBS 2008 - see u there?

Advanced Topics


How ‘bout an advanced bushel of “quick hitters” on mobility and remote connectivity before we move on to the next chapter? Cool!


• VPN and Terminal Services expectation management. Something I spend tons of time on in my SMB Consulting Best Practices book relates to VPN versus Terminal Services. An SBS customer will hear the VPN buzz word and ask you to come out to their house and set it up so that she can VPN into to SBS network back at the office. Upon completing your


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8-58

Section 2 ☛ Extending SBS 2003



duties, she is disappointed that “nothing changed” and the only evidence is a dancing green computer in the lower right. Turns out many custom­ers really want to use Terminal Services with its coolness of having a remote session, but they didn’t know to ask for it.


•
HTTP compression is enabled by default. One of the buzz words floating around building 43 in Redmond, where the Microsoft SBS development and marketing teams are housed, is HTTP Compression. HTTP compression speeds up OWA and is turned on by default in SBS 2003. To see for yourself, expand Advanced Management in the Server Management console. Expand SPRINGERSLTD (Exchange), Serv­ers, SPRINGERS1, HTTP. Right-click on Exchange Virtual Server and select Properties. Select the Settings tab. Observe that Compres­sion is set to High.


•
Shared Modem Service removed. I mentioned it earlier in the book





and it’s true. The Shared Modem Service, which facilitated outbound remote connectivity (such as dialing up a bulleting board system), can not be natively accomplished in SBS 2003. But leave it to Burl, the SBS consultant who works for me, to find a couple of third-party modem-sharing solutions: Spartacom (www.spartacom.com/products/ modemshare.htm) and DialOut/Server (www.pcmicro.com/ dialoutserver/).


BEST PRACTICE: So you’re thinking about pulling a fast one, eh? Not so fast, pardner. When you upgrade from SBS 2000 to SBS 2003, you lose the Shared Modem Service. So the old upgrade switch-a-roo won’t work, buddy boy. Sorry.


• KBase article 821438. As of this writing, you should put this on your SBS 2003 radar screen for RWW. This article, titled “FIX: Antivirus Programs May Cause Some Web Applications to Restart Unexpect­edly,” relates to SBS 2003 in that RWW might be affected by this (your antivirus program could impact RWW).




• License Ticks. This is an interesting question from SBS 2003 hands-on labs students, in nearly every town, related to RWW and licensing. Basically some folks were looking for a way to purchase few client access licenses (CALs) and have many folks log on remotely (essen­tially for free). The answer I received from a Microsoft product man­ager was “No and no!” The Windows authentication process during the RWW logon “ticks” against the SBS CAL count. You gotta pay full freight for the remote users.

• Third-party. Third-party mobile worker/remote connectivity solutions you could be aware of include Symantec’s infamous PCAnywhere (ver­sion 11, $199.95). A popular grassroots solution is VNC (www.realvnc.com) shareware that relies on contributions, t-shirt sales, and mouse pad sales). Take a look at GoToMy PC, which was acquired by Citrix in late December 2003 (see the CRN article at www.crn.com/ sections/BreakingNews/breakingnews.asp?ArticleID=46811). Also consider learning more about NetSupport 8.1 as a remote management tool (www.mcpmag.com/reviews/products/article.asp?Edit­orialsID=458). See Frank Ohlhorst’s column in a moment.




Next Steps


You guessed it. Forward to dig deeper into the remote connectivity area. There are entire books on remote connectivity, VPN, and the like. A quick search at Amazon revealed several capable books on VPN computing, such as Stephen Northcutt’s Inside Network Perimeter Security: The Definitive Guide to Firewalls, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Routers, and Intrusion Detection Systems (Que, ISBN: 0735712328).