Windows, OSX and Linux fonts and CSS

I was trying out our new helpdesk and how it looks in different browsers and I noticed when I used Ubuntu it did not have the right font. Now we have the font Century Gothic as our brand font and our helpdesk displays this using CSS, however this font is not installed in Ubuntu by default so it picked the next font available which was Georgia and this just did not look right.

So how do you work around this? Well one is to know what the default fonts are in Windows, OSX and Linux.

This page has all the information you need.

http://www.apaddedcell.com/web-fonts

I noticed that the equivalent font in Ubuntu is URW Gothic L and so I amended our CSS to use this font if Century Gothic is not found. The CSS is below

#top-menu {font-family: Century Gothic, URW Gothic L, Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;}

Determine SQL Server version

If you need to determine what version of SQL Server is running just make a new query as follows

select @@version

Then you can look the version number against this Microsoft KB

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321185

Small Business Server 2011 Sharepoint Foundation Event ID 70

Microsoft has changed a few things in Sharepoint for version 2010. One of them is how it is patched and updated. It is now a two step process, you use Microsoft Update for the update and then you have to manually upgrade the database from the command line.

So how do you know if you need to do this? Well its likely in your event logs you have seen Application Log Event 70 Sharepoint Foundation Search.

The mount operation for the gatherer application 08dd5186-9d3a-4ded-ac19-b626c26e3208 has failed because the schema version of the search administration database is less than the minimum backwards compatibility schema version supported for this gatherer application. The database might not have been upgraded.

If so you will likely need to upgrade your database, you can double check this by using some Powershell. Open the Sharepoint Management Shell and run this line

(get-spserver $env:computername).NeedsUpgrade

If this returns True then you need to upgrade the database.

Right so now you need a standard elevated command here.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN

Run this command

PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

The database is now upgraded for you and the Sharepoint upgrade is complete.

Remember Small Business Server 2011 is aimed at non IT folk, really Microsoft what are you thinking?

Small Business Server 2011 Post Install Errors

When you install a new SBS Server 2011 you will find a fair few issues in the event logs, a number of these are benign and you can ignore them. Microsoft has a KB on this that is well worth a read and then you can ignore these in your event log monitoring application. You do have a Managed Services application don't you?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2483007

Is it the Cloud that is hurting SME IT Support Providers?

There is a lot of talk now at the small business level about the "cloud". Those in the world of IT have known about this for some time but it has finally filtered down to the business owner who has heard wonderful things about 24/7 computing and how "it" never fails.

If your business sells on premise solutions and support/maintenance post sales then surely this is your death knell sounding isn't it? After all who needs Small Business Server and Microsoft Office when we have Google Mail and Office 365.

Well perhaps this might be true for some, I have seen some of our customers move to this type of solution, but to be fair they were mostly consultancy level business with maybe three or four employees. Is a cloud based service better for them and save them time and money because they have no on premise server to worry about and less support costs to pay for? The answer is yes!

Now don't get me wrong, I do not want to lose customers, far from it. What I want to do is always recommend the best solution for my customers and if that means for some of our smaller customers recommending a cloud solution because it is best for them then we will do it. The value comes in that we offered the best solution and people talk to people, word gets around that we do what is needed for our customers and that brings in new business, business that does need our helpdesk, our managed services, our great customer service.

So we thought if people want hosted email, hosted SharePoint, no backups to worry about and 24/7 uptime why don't we provide it too? So we do.

We can offer our customers who want a hosted solution, one that is designed for what they need. Many big cloud players are very much out of the box stuff and our customers have custom needs and these change all the time, they need techs who know what to do and how to do in like it was yesterday.

Want Exchange in the cloud? Keep SQL on premise for MRP? Managed Services for Anti Virus, Internet Threat Protection and Computer Theft Tracking? Yes we can do all this, Google cannot offer this and nor can Office 365.

The cloud is awesome and I use it all the time, our helpdesk is cloud based, so is our project management and CRM. Our email and Sharepoint is on premise. We have a mixture and its likely you will too.

You can have your cake and eat it with the cloud and on premise, you just have to know which slice goes where.

How to tell which version of Exchange 2007/2010 you are running

This is a good thing to know so you can work out what Update Roll-up or Service Pack you need to apply. It uses the awesome EMS.

Get-ExchangeServer | fl name,edition,admindisplayversion

Exchange Server Service Packs & Build Numbers

If you need to support users with Mac OSX then it good to know what version of Exchange Service Pack and build you have.

This is all information Microsoft publish but they kind of hide it away so here it is.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/exchange-server-and-update-rollups-builds-numbers.aspx