{"id":8754,"date":"2007-01-25T09:45:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8754"},"modified":"2007-01-25T09:45:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","slug":"new-microsoft-branch-office-promotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8754","title":{"rendered":"New Microsoft Branch Office Promotion"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Yesterday, Microsoft <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/presspass\/press\/2007\/jan07\/01-24BranchOfficePromoPR.mspx\">announced <\/a>a new offering for branch office server deployment.\u00a0 More details below.\u00a0 Let me just quickly look at branch office server deployment first.<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>The ideal for any infrastructure with branch offices is that there are no servers in these offices.\u00a0 Costs such as hardware and\u00a0software are obvious and you might be surprised they are they small costs.\u00a0 The hidden costs are the management of these machines:<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>Maintenance: more machines = more administrative effort = less time spent on engineering and projects.\n<\/li>\n<li>Security: Machines need regular security maintenance.\u00a0 Company data must be physically secured, not just logically.\u00a0 DC&#8217;s should only be placed in locations with computer room security.\n<\/li>\n<li>Complexity: More machines, more applications, more custom configurations =&gt; more complexity = more failures and more firefighting.\n<\/li>\n<li>Backups: Small branch offices cannot afford IT.\u00a0 The result is that a secretary or a PA usually does the backups.\u00a0 Are you really sure you can recover from a disaster?\u00a0 There&#8217;s more expense on hardware, tape media and software licensing.\u00a0 Then there&#8217;s administrative time spent on fixing or explaining things over and over again.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t forget the essential off-site storage for tapes &#8230; what good is disaster recovery if the tapes are burned with the building or the building is inaccessible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Windows 2003, Windows 2003 R2, Microsoft DSI\/System Center, \u00a0Terminal Services (and partners)\u00a0and some 3rd party solutions have offered alternatives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A &quot;Wide Area Data Network&quot; approach is possible with a product such as the Riverbed Steelhead.\u00a0 This TCP\/IP optimisation product offers you the ability to completely remove servers from all of your branch offices, thus reducing all of the associated costs.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not an option for everyone so there are other soltions too.\n<\/li>\n<li>We can use a hands-off management thatnks to the System Center family of products.\u00a0 MOM 2005 allows us to know what is happening on servers everywhere.\u00a0 Fault and performance monitoring is possible, not only for Microsoft products but also for products where venders have developed management packs (Citrix, Dell, HP), 3rd parties have developed solutions (for UNIX, LINUX, EMC, etc) and you can create your own custom management packs.\u00a0 SMS 2003 allows you to completely manage the configuration of your servers from a central location.\n<\/li>\n<li>Automated Deployment Services can be used to remotely build a server from an image using a PXE network service.\u00a0 With Remote Desktop enabled, you can then completely finish the build from a central location.\n<\/li>\n<li>Security can be maintained centrally.\u00a0 WSUS and SMS 2003 Iventory Too for Microsoft Updates offer 2 ways to deploy updates and report on their deployment.\u00a0 Other tools such as Microsoft baseline Security Analyser or SMS 2003 Scan Tool for Vulnerability Assessment allow you to scan your secutity configuations and report on them centrally.\n<\/li>\n<li>Terminal Services, Citrix, 2X, ProPalms are just some of the Server based Computing solutions that allow you to run &quot;thin branches&quot; that would contain no servers and just terminals and maybe laptops.\u00a0 All servers would be placed in hub offices or the HQ.\u00a0 User&#8217;s computing activity appears local but all of their processing is done centally.\u00a0 All of the data resides centrally, so backups would contain more data but the amount of administrative effort actually decreases hugely (e.g. 2 file servers in HQ instead of 1 server in every branch) if engineered correctly.\n<\/li>\n<li>Backups become much easier.\u00a0 If you follow server centralisation then the return is obvious.\u00a0 If you need to maintain file servers in branches then you can take advantage of Windows 2003 R2&#8217;s Distributed File System (DFS)\u00a0and DFS Replication.\u00a0 Data can be replicated from branch offices to central file servers.\u00a0 The data exists in the same logical namespace and is accessed by applications and users the same way, wheter they are in the branch office or in the central office.\u00a0 Security is maintained the same way as always and is replicated automatically.\u00a0 Files are replicated at block level and block replication repitition (why replicate the same block 100 times because it&#8217;s on the file system 100 times) is avoided by the Remote Differential Algorithm.\u00a0 Now, administrators can backup the central replica and no backups need take place in the branch office.\u00a0 This is suitable for archive backups and disaster recovery.\u00a0 Operational backups can be handled by Volume Shadow Copy, both in the branch and the central office.\u00a0 With some education, users (or power users) can be taught how to use the Previous Versions Client to recover files from their file servers wihtout resorting to tapes or to calling IT.\u00a0 data Protection Manager is a product that should also be looked at here.\n<\/li>\n<li>Disaster Recovery: A branch with 5 users may generate a lot of cash.\u00a0 But do you really want a DR site for it?\u00a0 You may want some functionality to maintain business operations and there may be regulatory requirements for a DR operation.\u00a0 But do you really need a full replica incurring WAN costs, hardware, software, space rental, etc.\u00a0 It&#8217;s also more stuff to be managed.\u00a0 We&#8217;ve already looked at how we can replicate file server to central offices for backups.\u00a0 We can also use that for DR.\u00a0 When DR is invoked, why not use the replica in the central site?\u00a0 It&#8217;s has two way replication and is accessed in exactly the same way via the logical architecture that abstracts the physical location of the data from users and applications.\u00a0 Users can either access the data via RAS, web facing Terminal Services (via\u00a0a Citrix gateway or alternatives), travel to the central site, etc.\u00a0 DR is now available for those branches without any additional costs.\n<\/li>\n<li>Remote branch management is made easier with Windows 2003\u00a0R2 tools such as Print Management Console and File Server Resource Management.\u00a0 Printers are the millstone around the neck of helpdesks everywhere.\u00a0 Using PMC you can deploy printers to users or computer via group policy.\u00a0 That all but eliminates the calls asking &quot;how do I connect to my local printer?&quot;.\u00a0 The console itself can be used to monitor the status of those printers.\u00a0 FSRM can be used to control your file shares.\u00a0 You can use <em>real<\/em> folder level quotas to control usage of file systems.\u00a0 Rules can be implemented to control the types of data being stored.\u00a0 Does your organisation relaly want to offer an IPod backup service for the employees?\u00a0 I think not.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s just\u00a0a quick sample of what&#8217;s to offer.\u00a0 Many organisations have started down the road of eliminating branch office sever computing.\u00a0 Some just cannot.\u00a0 I worked with a retail operation that had 200+ branches in the UK and Ireland and was centrally manged from Dublin.\u00a0 They could not afford for server based computing to be offline in the event of WAN outages.\u00a0 Therefore, a server was placed in every branch.\u00a0 SMS 2003 with the 1E SMSNomad product was deployed to manage all branches.\u00a0 The solution appeared to work well.\u00a0 But think of the costs of deploying all that software.\n<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/presspass\/press\/2007\/jan07\/01-24BranchOfficePromoPR.mspx\">announed <\/a>a new product bundle offering yesterday.\u00a0 This SKU is intended for those enterprises that have many branch offices that require branch office server computing.\u00a0 The bundle offers to reduce server software costs by up to 43%.\u00a0 It includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition\n<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA Server) 2006 Enterprise Edition\n<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Enterprise Operations Management License (OML) &#8211; a license to manage this machine\n<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 R2 Server Configuration Management License (CML) &#8211; a license to manage this machine\n<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This bundle will be available from February 1st, 2007 until January 31st, 2008.\u00a0 Microsoft goes on to say that &quot;the promotion includes 10-pack licenses for each of the included products&quot;.\u00a0 I <em>think<\/em> that they are saying you get 10 CAL&#8217;s for Windows Server 2003 R2.\u00a0 You&#8217;ll want to verify that with your assigned LAR (not necessarily your direct reseller &#8211; they tend not to know the official lines on these things).\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<p>In addition, Packeteer Inc. is offering a 30 percent discount on its iShared FlexInstall wide area file services (WAFS) software product.\u00a0 WAFS is not the way I&#8217;d go, it only optimises file server data.\u00a0 Riverbed&#8217;s Steelhead appliance optimises all TCP\/IP traffic: SQL, Oracle, Lotus Notes, Exchange, file servers, HTTP and lots more.\u00a0 Just ask the UK&#8217;s Royal Navy who started trialing them last year for their command and control systems in warships and submarines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Microsoft announced a new offering for branch office server deployment.\u00a0 More details below.\u00a0 Let me just quickly look at branch office server deployment first. \u00a0 The ideal for any infrastructure with branch offices is that there are no servers in these offices.\u00a0 Costs such as hardware and\u00a0software are obvious and you might be surprised &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8754\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;New Microsoft Branch Office Promotion&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}