Well done Hindrik!

First blog post in a while…that’s not to say there’s not much been going on, the exact opposite to be honest, so I thought I’d kick start the blog post back into life by congratulating Hindrik on officially becoming a Microsoft Certified Professional. Well done Hindrik!
Microsoft has a large number of certification that IT professionals can study for and then hopefully pass the exam. Hindrik’s first Microsoft Certification is “Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012”.
We’re pleased to say that he passed with flying colours which was down to his hard work and study routine.
So where next for Hindrik? Well he’s started looking at the next Microsoft certification of course!

Where has the year gone!!!

Wow, is all I can say. This feels like the fasted first half to the year that we’ve ever had.

So what have we been up to… well so far this year, we’ve helped with two client office relocations, installed a Distributed File System (synchronising server data) between two sites, installed six Microsoft Windows 2012 Servers (including 2 Hyper-V), installed our first Microsoft Exchange 2013 email server, migrated several terabytes of data from old servers to new ones, implemented a cloud based email security and business continuity system for several clients, two Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 installations, one Microsoft Office 365 migration, installed over 100 new computers, took on three new clients and we have another two in the pipeline.

Along with all of this, we’re renovating our office space to allow us to take on more staff. Exciting times!

Cloud E-mail Vs On-Premise E-mail Servers

The term “Cloud Computing” only really hit the business world a couple of years ago and it’s fair to say that media hype has been far in excess of the actual adoption rates! Why is this? Well the technology maturity, infrastructure and pricing were not quite there in my opinion. However this year Microsoft slashed the price of their Cloud email system, called Office 365, to very reasonable rates that make it a real contender as an on-premise email server. There are prices and plans to suit most companies, see here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/office365/compare-plans.aspx

Changes to the Small Business Server Family

Last thursday a bunch of geeks gathered at the Microsoft offices at East End of Princess Street for the Edinburgh Small Business Server Community meeting. I’m proud to say that I was one of those geeks!

Is your website EU Cookie Compliant?

On May 26th 2011 a new EU originated law came into effect that requires website owners to make significant changes to their sites and may fundamentally change the whole web browsing and shopping experience for everybody. This Cookie Law is amended privacy legislation that requires websites to obtain informed consent from visitors before they can store or retrieve any information on a computer or any other web connected device. The law was then deferred for 1 year to 26^th May 2012.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2426/contents/made

SBS 2011 bare metal restore failure

The single best feature of Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 / 2011 is without a doubt the ability to do a full bare metal restore. In other words, if your server dies, you can restore it to exactly how it was at your last backup, and in record time too! This is something that we test on a regular basis and on every server that we install.