Consulting 2 of 2

With the design part down and the implementation part up, things started to get a little tedious. I had begun to learn of the idiosyncrasies of SBS 2008 and discover [the hard way] about various faulty things in the office.

To begin, the RJ-45 cable in the upstairs office was bad -- took a good two hours to realize what it was. Luckily there were 4 new wires run specifically for the server yesterday.

The proprietary WYSIWYG site/email was an annoying learning curve as no one, not even the people who setup the account in the first place, knew how to get anywhere or do anything when it came to DNS, nameservers, website source files (before I found out they don't work independent of the hosting site) or anything managerial for the domain name.

I don't have access to 64bit hardware so I have never been able to fool with Exchange 2007 implementations and the like (eg: hyper-v). Exchange System Manager was significantly different, which was an expected curve. All of the details on the behind-the-scenes of the Internet Address Management Wizard are here.

Now, my top three [Windows] oddities (start from the bottom):

1. Under any circumstance, DO NOT disable IPv6 on the network adapter!
   

   If you uncheck the IPv6 protocol from your network interface card on your Windows SBS 2008 server you may see the following issues after a reboot:
   
   

   • Microsoft Exchange services fail to start
   • Server hangs at "Applying Computer Settings..." (can eventually logon after 30 - 60 minutes)
   • Network icons show as offline
   • Various Application and/or System Log events

   
   After researching why the system was getting hosed on boot, unchecking the IPv6 option on the network adapter was not the "proper" way to disable it.
   

   SBS 2008 is designed to fully support IPv6 and has IPv6 enabled by default. Most users should never need to disable IPv6, however if you must disable IPv6 here is how to disable it properly:

   and it goes on to talk about a registry hack.  What's up with that?



2. The backup drive given by Dell with the purchase of the server doesn't work with the backup solution that's part of the server.
   

   Unable to Perform Scheduled Backup on a PowerVault™ RD1000
   Removable Disk Drive Using Windows Server Backup Tool
   Dell Ref: 168102:
   If you attempt to schedule backup on a PowerVault RD1000 removable disk drive using the Windows Server Backup tool, the following error message is displayed: No disks are available for use as a backup destination.
   This is an expected behavior as the Windows Server 2008 operating system lists the PowerVault RD1000 disk drive as a removable drive. Windows Server Backup tool does not allow scheduled backups on removable devices. You can however perform a Backup Once operation using the Powervault RD1000 removable disk drive.

   
   um. . . k. A scripting backup solution it is.



3. Server Manager console crashes often.
   
   Not too sure why the glorified .mmc console was dropping dead on me frequently -- a few Windows Updates later and I was good as SP2.