Reviewing the Acer C720 Chromebook

I was pleasantly surprised at how well I liked the Acer Chromebook C720 after getting to use one over the weekend. It is snappy, responsive, and is instantly on when opening the lid. The chromebook recently became the new laptop for my mother who is 72 old and had previously clung onto an old Windows XP netbook for almost a decade, unwilling to upgrade for fear of change and having to learn something new.

 I had recommended she get a new laptop because Windows XP end of life was coming soon and there wouldn't be anymore security updates for her computer after that. The new computer she upgraded to was the Acer Chromebook C720. It offered some great features that made it stand out from other laptops. Here are some photos and some of the features I liked about this little chromebook.

The Pros

• It looks great. The slim design makes it very sleek and lets it blend in anywhere, whether its sitting on the kitchen table, office desk, or on a coffee table.
• The weight and balance when holding it makes it feel very lightweight, very possibly the lightest laptop I have ever carried before.
• If you are used to having your cell phone or tablet turn on instantly for you then you will appreciate when you open the lid on this chromebook and it is instantly on and ready to go.
• The battery life on this chromebook is just a bit less than found in an iPad tablet, about 8 hours. While not much less than an iPad battery, for a laptop to be used by your mother, or grandmother, it certainly is good enough battery life for them to enjoy.

The Cons

• The confusing minimize and maximize buttons are difficult to figure out and are not located how a typical Windows user expects.
• The difference between Chrome Store and Google Play Store app tripped me up at first as I tried to install a Google Play store app on the chromebook.
• The 100GB Google Drive free offer was not readily available.  To redeem it I had to use the following link to get it.
• Lack of notifications that the computer needs a restart to complete a software update should of been more apparent.

Conclusion

The Acer Chromebook C720 laptop has style and is very good at what it does. It doesn't do everything that some other laptops might do, but sometimes just doing a few things really well is all that you want out of a computer. It is a computer that you can recommend to your mother, or grandmother, and they will absolutely love it.

I would even recommend it as the perfect online banking computer that an individual or small business might use for doing nothing other than online banking. This would help protect your bank account by limiting exposure from use of a compromised computer what can get infected through opening emails, visiting malicous websites, or running infected applications.

Amazon currently has the Acer C720 Chromebook (11.6-Inch, 2GB) available for sale here.

Windows 8 Scheduled Task to Move Files

It's important to try to automate as much as possible in the day to day activities of your IT job or else you risk wasting lots of time in managing the little things of the job. This means you need to write scripts to get things done for you and scheduling these scripts to run as often as needed.

Today I'm going to share a neat little one liner on how to move files around quickly and scheduling the task to run as often as you want to.  Lets say you have a directory called C:\Nightly and you want to be able to move files out of this directory on a daily bases into another directory called C:\Archive. If the files in this directory are rather large you should try to avoid using a copy operation because it will take a long time.This is where the MOVE command really shines as it is an instant operation.

To begin, create a new file called something like movemyfiles.bat and add the following line to it:

move /Y "C:\Nightly\*.*" "C:\Archive\"

This will move everything inside C:\Nightly into C:\Archive. Now open the Task Scheduler and create a New Basic Task. After clicking through the next buttons and when asked What action do you want to perform select Start a Program. Select your movemyfiles.bat file and your all finished scripting this task.

Getting Exchange Online Working With Android Phone

I recently made the switch from an iPhone 4 to a Moto X android phone. During the changeover I hit a minor stumbling block. I couldn't add an Exchange Online account to my new android email. This task was trivial on the iPhone but I had to spend some time messing around with the settings to get Exchange Online to work. Here are the steps you can use if your trying to do the same:

Step 1

Open the Email App. Don't confuse the Gmail App with the Email App.

Step 2

Type your Exchange Online email address and password, instead of clicking Next you will want to click the Manual Setup button instead.

Step 3

This will take you to the Account Setup menu asking you to choose what kind of email account this is. You should click the Exchange button.

Step 4

Here is where it can get tricky. You have to retype your Domain\Username to be your email address again, and make sure to put a backslash in the very front of of your email name, using the "\" symbol.

For the server name, type outlook.office365.com, and you can keep everything below here on their default settings if you want.

Step 5

After confirming everything after pressing the Done button you should be all set up to use your new Exchange Online account on your android phone!

Limitations of Emailing in Microsoft SQL Server

How many times have you written a stored procedure in Microsoft SQL Server and had it set to send out an email from inside it. Pretty cool, huh? I've been doing this for years and without a single problem, until today. I thought for sure I was going crazy. I was convinced there must be some weird character in my code that is truncating my email body somehow. What I was seeing was just half an email body come through and the other half was just missing, no errors getting thrown at all. I tried all sorts of things to see if it was something in the text that I was sending.

Forward three hours later, and I found this is a limitation of SQL Server. Microsoft has set the email body size that can be sent out through database mail to only 4000 characters. Now doesn't that just bust your buttons! That really stinks. It severely limits the usefulness of sending rich content like HTML through SQL Server database mail.

Now here is my best workaround. You have to send email using other means outside of SQL Server. It's not the solution I wanted but a solution nonetheless.

The Most Productive Work Monitor

I used to work all day long using three monitors. I had one 17 inch and two 15 inch monitors on each side. At the time, I thought it was a good solution that gave me a detailed look into just what I needed to see on each screen. I then started noticing even my 17 inch monitor wasn't giving me enough space to see everything across a web page or through a remote desktop connection. I was getting slowed down multitasking between remote desktop screens as they were completely filling my 17 inch screen from top to bottom.

Along came the Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24-Inch Screen LED-lit Monitor and it opened up everything for me. This is more than just your average 24 inch widescreen monitor. It's a 1920x1200 resolution monitor, this means it's taller than the typical widescreen monitor. Below is how it looks:

 You'll be able to then remote into another computer at a slightly lower resolution of 1920x1080 but still display the remote computer screen at full-screen, all the while allowing yourself to still see your own taskbar and desktop programs. This makes it a breeze to work between all your open windows without having anything get covered up.

Comparison of my 24 inch monitor next to a 15 inch monitor viewing the same website

I still like to have my 15 monitor right next to the big 24 inch screen, as shown in the picture above. This lets me move anything I need to type or pin into view off to the side while I type using the 24 inch monitor.

After demoing this monitor at work I bought 9 more of them for everyone in the office to each have one. Everyone has become much more productive since using them and never wants to go back to their smaller monitors.

Cooling a Small Server Room

If you are like most small businesses you most likely are running your servers out of a small closet room. This presents a problem for adequately cooling all your servers that you may have crammed in that room. Fortunately for you, I have found the best solution to overcome this dilemma, and it was worked great for over a year for us.  Our server temperatures now stay an almost constant 69 degrees F.

Picture of our small server room closet with portable air conditioner

Here's a rack of servers in our closet room. Notice the servers are positioned directly in front of the doorway.  This is done on purpose to let the servers pull as much air as possible through the doorway. The room temperature air, about 73 degrees F, is normally too warm for the servers to use to cool themselves so you need to mix it with cooler air. This is where a portable air conditioner comes into play that will blow cooler air in front of your servers. You will need a 14,000 BTU unit to adequately cool a small server room like this and you must get a unit with dual hoses. A quick search on Amazon will find you a unit like this which is exactly what you will need:

Whynter 14,000 BTU Dual Hose Portable Air Conditioner with 3M Antimicrobial Filter

The dual hoses are important because you will need to exhaust the hot air from the unit up into your attic or ceiling. I recommend a heat insulated foil tube to direct the hot air upwards. The intake hose will need to pull from an adjacent room for fresh air. You may be tempted to also close the closet door but you shouldn't. There is a certain amount of air flow you need for the servers and you can't achieve that with the door closed.

Also, a little fan behind the servers directing hot air upwards to the ceiling is very helpful. What we have done is to also remove the ceiling panel directly above this fan to help exhaust more of the hot air from behind the servers. It also helps pull cool air through the servers and out the back.

This setup has worked really great for us and has been in place cooling our server room for over a year now with zero problems. I can highly recommend it to anyone needing to cool their small server rooms.

A Black and White Laser Printer for Your Office and Home!

It's not too often I find myself really impressed by a printer. Most are high maintenance machines that just suck through ink like a race car and cost you more money the longer you own it. That was before I found this gem of a printer for about $100, Brother HL-2270DW Compact Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex.

It has kept our whole office churning out pages without any hiccups at all for an entire year. It sips ink so sparingly we have yet to replace the large black toner cartridge. It helps the cartridge is massive in size when compared to the printer as the fewer times you have to replace it the more money you save. If you need to replace it,  the cost is very reasonable for about $45 found on amazon for a high yield cartridge, Brother TN450 High Yield Toner Cartridge - Retail Packaging - Black. I always recommend high yield over standard toner as the cost per page becomes lower the more you print.

Also, there is a toner saving setting when you log into the printer that can really extends the toner lifetime. We always like to keep a spare one next to the printer and I smile each time I see it, wondering how long it will be before we will need to use it.

It turns out I liked the printer so much that my wife and I now have one in our house. We print everything from taxes, to recipes, coupons and even photos. If your lucky enough to have a Netgear home router like this one, NETGEAR N750 Dual Band Wi-Fi Gigabit Router (WNDR4300), you can use the bundled software called Netgear Genie to turn it into an AirPrinter for iPhones and iPads.

Upgrading Small Business Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012

Many IT departments are still running Small Business Server 2003. Eventually you will need to make the switch to Windows Server 2012 as the end of life for SBS 2003 is almost here. Fortunately I have recently done this exact type of upgrade to a new domain controller. View my blog Building a Windows Server 2012 Domain Controller from Scratch to see a build log of a new domain controller server. After getting a new server built you can then start the process of upgrading your old domain onto the new server

The first step in migrating is removing Exchange 2003 from your SBS 2003 domain. If you aren't already using Exchange Online by now you are in trouble! Go get your exchange online service from Microsoft, I like Plan 1. Follow these steps to remove your old Exchange Server. 

Remove Exchange

1.  Go to Active Directory Users and Computers
2.  MyBusiness->Users->SBSUsers, Select All, Right click Exchange Tasks. Delete Mailbox.
3.  Users-> Select All, Right click Exchange Tasks. Delete Mailbox.
4. Insert SBS 2003 Disc 2, Add or Remove Programs->Windows Small Business Server 2003->Remove Exchange.

Now you can join your new Windows Server 2012 to the SBS 2003 domain. The next step is to raise your forest level to the minimum required level for a Windows Server 2012 domain.

Raise Forest Level

1. Go to Active Directory Domain and Trusts ->Raise Forest Functional Level to 2003. 
2. This will also raise the domain level to 2003.  

 Now we can promote our new Windows Server 2012 to become another domain controller in our domain. 

Promote Domain Controller

1. Add roles and features->Active Directory Domain Services
2. Promote it to domain controller

Usually you would let this server synchronize with the current domain controller but I have found there to be a bug with replication from SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2012 and it requires that you manually reset replication. To check if you are replicating look on the new server shared folders for the following shares called SYSVOL and NETLOGON. You should have files containing your logon scripts on both servers if replication is working. If not, follow these steps to reset replication on both domain controllers.

Reset Replication

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type cmd and then press ENTER.
3. In the Command box, type net stop ntfrs.
4. Click Start, and then click Run.
5. In the Open box, type regedit and then press ENTER.
6. Locate the following subkey in the registry:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters\Backup/Restore\Process at Startup
7. In the right pane, double click BurFlags.
8. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type D4 and then click OK.
9. Quit Registry Editor, and then switch to the Command box.
10. In the Command box, type net start ntfrs.
11. Quit the Command box.

If you did everthing right on the registry wait for event ID 13516 to show up in you new server event log under Custom Views->Server Roles->Active Directory Domain Services.

Migrate DHCP
Next is to migrate over your DHCP server settings.Now this step may be easy for some but it can bite you in the pants in the future. It can be as simple as just Export and Import DHCP settings to the new server. This will work fine if you only intend to have one DHCP server on your new domain. However, if you ever want to have DHCP failover servers, which is a great new feature in Windows Server 2012 that uses two domain controllers, you can not export and import from SBS 2003. You will have to manually add all your DHCP settings into your new DHCP server by hand.

Transfer FSMO roles
Now, we are almost done. The next part is the most important. We will need to transfer all five FSMO roles from the SBS 2003 server to the new Windows Server 2012 server. You should then confirm the transfer with the following command: netdom /query fsmo

Removing Old Server
We now can started the removal process of the old server off the network. Remove Certificate Services from the old server. Next run DCPromo. If the netlogon service times out then just stop it, then restart dcpromo again.

Enable Time Service
On the new server you need to enable the time service with a command like the following: 
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:newservername /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update

And that's it, not so painful now was it?

Building a Windows Server 2012 Domain Controller from Scratch

Recently I had to build a new domain controller to replace our 10 year old one. We like to run servers into the ground here before replacing them. I didn't want to pay a lot but I wanted high performance so I decided to build a custom server one from scratch. Support for Windows Server 2012 was a must, along with built-in USB 3.0 which we use for offsite backups. This server is amazingly fast, with reboots under 10 seconds and it never breaks a sweat at doing its job 24/7. Here's the build log of parts needed:

• Memory: 2 x Kingston Technology ValueRAM 8GB DDR3 1600MHz PC3 12800 ECC CL11 DIMM with TS Server Workstation Memory KVR16E11/8
• System Hard Drives: 2 x Samsung Electronics 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 256 GB SATA 6GB/s Solid State Drive MZ-7PD256BW
• DVD Reader: Lite-On Super AllWrite 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive - Bulk - IHAS124-04 (Black)
• Hot Swap Cage: ICY DOCK ToughArmor MB996SP-6SB 6 x 2.5 SATA 6Gbps HDD / SSD Mobile Rack / Cage in 1 x 5.25 bay
• Tower Case: Corsair Carbide Series White 500R Mid Tower Computer Case (CC-9011013-WW)
• Power Supply: Corsair Enthusiast Series CP-9020039-NA650W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular High Performance Power Supply
• Motherboard: Supermicro Motherboard ATX DDR3 1600 LGA 1150 Motherboards X10SAE-O
• Processer: Intel Xeon E3-1245V3 Haswell 3.4GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80646E31245V3
• Backup Hard Drive: WD Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD20EZRX

Now, lets go over a few things about putting this server together. Use the two SSD hard drives to install the operating system on and configure Windows Server 2012 Software RAID 1 (Mirroring). This will protect you in case one of the system drives fail.

The Western Digital 2 TB Green hard drive is where you want to save your nightly server backups in case the whole machine needs to get recovered to a certain point in time. You should also run a full server backup regularly onto a USB 3.0 external drive and keep it offsite in the event of any disaster.

Backing up SQL Server with USB 3.0

A backup isn't really a backup until you get it offsite. The cheapest way to do that is to copy your nightly SQL Server backup files to a portable USB 3.0 external hard drive. There is a 10x speed difference between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 so a 10 hour copy operation becomes 1 hour with the faster connection.

Now wait, you might say your server is only at USB 2.0. That's fine, because you need to first pick a different computer to initially backup your SQL server and this is where you select a shared network drive on a computer that has USB 3.0 ports. Mostly likely a newer desktop computer with 1TB or 2TB of internal storage. This will be your first line of defense computer should you need to recover SQL Server data files. If something happens to this computer you can fall back on your external USB hard drive.

First thing you should do each work day is bring in your external hard drive and plug it into the computer where your nightly backups are saved and copy your most recent backup. Once it's done unplug the drive and move it offsite. I recommend you use windows bitlocker to first encrypt the hard drive. This is a feature built into Windows 7 and 8 versions, and it can then be unlocked on any machine using the right passcode.

I have tried Seagate external hard drives in the past but experienced bad writes so I can't recommend them. Instead I have been using Western Digital My Passport drives and have been very pleased with performance for over a year with them. These are the ones I like to buy WD My Passport Ultra 1TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 with Auto and Cloud Backup - Black (WDBZFP0010BBK-NESN)