We recently blogged about the process of migrating a customer from BPOS to Office 365. While we discussed the steps in the final changeover, the planning and analysis stages leading up to the final migration are critical in ensuring a smooth transition. ChannelPro has posted an excellent article outlining the planning steps necessary for planning [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Managed Services'
How to Fix NtFrs Event ID 13559
January 4th, 2012 · No Comments · Managed Services, Uncategorized
The File Replication Service is needed for SYSVOL information to be replicated between domain controllers. If this fails, then issues with group policy objects/changes are not replicated and other active directory objects will not be updated. The error below – Event 13559, NtFrs – is one such error regarding replication.
This can be corrected by following [...]
5 Benefits of Managed Services
December 27th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services
With IT’s ever-changing and ever-evolving demands, it’s important that businesses, especially those with fewer resources, be able to keep themselves up to date – and there’s no better, more efficient, and more cost-effective solution than Managed Services.
Many large businesses prefer the use of Managed Services to meet their IT needs, but many smaller organizations continue [...]
BPOS to Office 365 Transition
December 8th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Microsoft
For those of you who haven’t heard, Microsoft released Office 365 – their new hosted platforms environment – this summer. We have a customer that utilizes the Microsoft Hosted Exchange environment for email, and I recently had the opportunity to migrate this customer’s email off of the old Microsoft hosting platform BPOS (Business Productivity Online [...]
Tags: business productivity·Managed Services·Microsoft·Office·Office 365
Exchange and Antivirus Don’t Always Get Along
October 27th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Microsoft, Servers
In my time as a Support Escalation Engineer at Microsoft for Exchange, and in my current Systems Engineering role here at Dallas Data Center, I’ve come across a lot of interesting issues within Exchange that tend to be caused by antivirus solutions installed on the Exchange Server. The two most common issues that I’ve seen [...]
Cool Tool Friday: Windows Problem Steps Recorder
August 5th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Microsoft
Welcome to this week’s installment of our new feature, Cool Tool Friday! Each Friday we will feature a tool – hardware or software – that we’re using and think you might enjoy. Whether it increases productivity, helps with organization, provides a quick work-around for difficult networking situations, or is simply interesting and fun, we’ll share it [...]
Tags: Cool Tool Friday·cool tools·Microsoft·Problem Steps Recorder·Windows
Fixing an Exchange Mail Flow Error
June 29th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Microsoft, Servers
We recently encountered an issue with a customer who could no longer receive external emails in their Exchange environment. After some digging, we determined that the SMTP service on the Exchange server was not communicating with Exchange due to corruption of the SMTP configuration.
To determine if this is the cause of a problem you’re encountering, [...]
IT Support—It’s Really Business Support
June 2nd, 2011 · No Comments · Business Continuity, Managed Services
Are you investing in IT to win—or just to keep up? Many, if not most, companies use IT as a tool, and in doing so they tend to focus on its cost. A better approach is to consider it a strategic asset. Doing so can differentiate your company and increase your profits.
Differentiate your company and [...]
How to Make the IT Department Love You
May 27th, 2011 · No Comments · Business Continuity, Managed Services
You rely on your IT staff to keep things running smoothly, and to be there quickly when things go wrong. Below are five simple tips to help them fix your problems quickly so you can both be productive and efficient.
Details: When you have a support request, have as much detail as possible. Screenshots from when [...]
Tags: IT Services·Managed Services
My First Two Weeks at Dallas Data Center
May 26th, 2011 · No Comments · Dallas Data Center, Data Centers, Managed Services
When a network engineer joins a new team, the goal is to make them an efficient and productive team member. Regardless of their technical skill level and knowledge, no two data centers are run exactly alike, and every customer is different. The introduction process has two parts: familiarizing the tech with the day-to-day internal operations [...]
Tags: Dallas Data Center·data center·network engineer·technician
Have You Done a Test Restore Lately?
May 24th, 2011 · No Comments · Backup, Disaster Recovery, Managed Services, Storage
A lot of businesses make it a habit to back up their data, and leave it at that. But many do not realize that there is another half to an effective backup system – regularly testing it.
One of the most basic actions a company takes – big or small – with its data is back [...]
Lessons from the Epsilon Incident
May 20th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Security
One of the world’s leading email service providers, Epsilon, found itself the victim of a phishing attack that saw a significant amount of data lost to cyber-thieves. It’s important to learn from mistakes like these and make sure that both your own and you clients’ data is kept secure and safe from thieves.
There’s been a [...]
Solving Issues with P2V Migration
May 16th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Servers, Virtualization
I was working with one of our customers who had an old Windows 2000 Server running and they wanted it to be joined in their Citrix Xen environment. We thought to ourselves, this should be no problem. However, when we started the P2V process we ran into a few issues. We have since figured out [...]
Tags: Citrix·Managed Services·Servers·Virtual Machines·Virtualization·Windows 2000
Protecting Yourself After Sony’s Hacker Attacks
May 4th, 2011 · No Comments · Disaster Recovery, Managed Services, Security
On April 20th, Sony’s online gaming service – PlayStation Network, or PSN – abruptly went offline. After days of confusion, it was revealed that the service had been attacked by hackers, who had not only crashed the servers but had managed to gain access to the account information of the 77 million PSN subscribers. At [...]
Tags: Disaster Recovery·Hackers·Identity Theft·Playstation·Security·Sony
Protect Yourself from the “Request Rejected” Email Virus
April 18th, 2011 · No Comments · Business Continuity, Managed Services, Security
The phishing scams being warned of as a result of the Epsilon data breach aren’t the only malicious emails making the rounds right now. A spam email with the subject “Request rejected” is currently infecting computers around the world.
The message does not contain any clue as to what the rejected request might be, and since [...]
Tags: Business Continuity·Email·Managed Services·Scam·Security·Spam·trojan·virus
Beware Software Bogeymen
April 7th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Security
Malicious cyber thieves might be scaring you into buying and downloading software that may harm your computer.
Security firm McAfee has published a report early in the year showing that up to a million people worldwide fall victim to so-called “scareware” each year. Scareware, or rogueware, is software that poses as legitimate security software but in [...]
Understanding Private and Virtual Private Networks
April 6th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Security, Virtualization
The world is flat. That is if you ask New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Friedman, who wrote a book of the same name describing just how the world got flatter and flatter thanks to a whole host of factors, one of which is technology. Technology—most notably computers, telecommunication devices, and [...]
Tags: Managed Services·networking·Security·Virtualization·VPN
When Did You Last Update Your Disaster Recovery Plan?
April 1st, 2011 · No Comments · Backup, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Managed Services, Security
We recently talked about why your business needs a disaster recovery plan to survive. Is yours updated and ready to protect you?
If success is what you aspire to, you need to know what to do when unexpected events cause harm or hassle to your business. You need to be prepared, and you need to know [...]
New Potentially Dangerous Vulnerability Found in Windows
March 25th, 2011 · No Comments · Managed Services, Security
A new vulnerability found in Microsoft’s Windows operating system can potentially open up your PC to remote attackers. On top of compromising the data within your PC, hackers can also introduce malware into the vulnerable machines to possibly enlist them unwittingly in criminal botnet rings.
The newly found bug is particularly dangerous as it can be [...]
Tags: Hackers·Managed Services·Security·Vulnerabilities·Windows
Why It’s Impossible to Survive Without a Disaster Recovery Plan
March 17th, 2011 · No Comments · Backup, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Managed Services
Disasters of all kinds could inevitably hit your business at any time. Therefore, in addition to having a backup plan, you should also create and implement a disaster recovery plan to constantly provide you with business security, as well as avoid financial loss and going out of business.
Simply put, organizations that suffer data losses generally [...]
Tags: Business Continuity·Disaster Recovery·Managed Services