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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
 Posted - 07/09/2012 : 2:35:24 PM
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Hey all... sorry for the outage today.
I signed up for O365 yesterday. (Research, and the more that I know about the "cloud" the better I can talk about it. Also perhaps one day I can put all of my Web server and mail server stuff on cloud services and can thereby live anywhere I want.)
I wanted O365 to host my minasi.com email accounts, and that's where the problem began. As O365 includes a lotta stuff for $6/month -- that 250-person-Lync conference may turn out to be useful, maybe I'll run an occasional 90 minute mini-seminar for $50 or something like that -- it needs to add a bunch of records to DNS.
Here's where the wheels fell off.
Adding about seven records to DNS is dead simple for me or probably anyone reading this, but not to the average small shop, and Microsoft's small-shop offering "P1" assumes that you don't understand squat about DNS, and so you've got to make a wizard happy in order for the Exchange server to start doing things... and the wizard ain't happy until it sees that you've hosted your domain on ns1.bdm.microsoftonline.com and ns2.bdm.microsoftonline.com. Now, inasmuch as I've owned this domain since before Microsoft even thought the Internet was worth connecting to<g>, that rankled.
I dropped Finn an email, as he'd told me that I DIDN'T have to cede my domain to Microsoft, and he, puzzled, said that his outfit hadn't had to do that... which is when I realized that he's at E-something rather than P1 and so guessed that Microsoft had built P1 with the do-it-my-way wizard.
My next plan was to do what it said and wait a day, then write whatever records it wrote into the Microsoft-controlled-DNS onto the DNS server that's been hosting minasi.com for a while, and then just go to Network Solutions and move my DNS back. Unfortunately here's how DIG shows my Network Solutions NS records:
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
minasi.com. 172800 IN NS web2.minasi.com.
minasi.com. 172800 IN NS netdoor.minasi.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
web2.minasi.com. 172800 IN A 70.165.73.5
netdoor.minasi.com. 172800 IN A 70.165.73.6
And you do indeed read that right... 172,800 seconds is 48 hours. So some systems will take a bit to get themselves straightened out, so again apologies for anyone who's still having troubles. Meanwhile, cross your fingers that I stuffed all of the requisite RRs into DNS correctly so my O365 stuff continues to work.<g>
Sorry I've not been around much, I'm traveling and working hard on my new Server course and trying to assemble a Win 8 course as well. I hope everyone's doing well!
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Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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anthony
Moderator
USA
2373 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/09/2012 : 3:50:09 PM
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All Google makes you do is add a CNAME record with a random number they pick and point it to ghs.google.com and voila and you are part of the borg...  |
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JamesNT
Moderator
USA
3150 Posts
Status: offline |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/09/2012 : 4:38:37 PM
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| James, that looks like a video of a rock concert... relevance?<g> |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/09/2012 : 4:49:58 PM
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| Again... apologies for the spotty performance. Some of it's the DNS turnover, but some of it is (I think) because I'm migrating a mailbox from the email server on this system to O365. Seems to be bogging things down a trifle... |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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JamesNT
Moderator
USA
3150 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/09/2012 : 10:46:00 PM
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The name of the song is Thunderstruck by AC/DC. Just making another lame Cloud joke.
JamesNT |
James Summerlin
www.jamessummerlin.com |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/10/2012 : 04:16:35 AM
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I THINK I finally got it. The solution validates two important network truths:
1) It's probably DNS.
2) Stuff happens.
We've got two DNS servers, web2.minasi.com and netdoor.minasi.com. Netdoor is a secondary and I NEVER touched it during the whole O365 debacle... but somehow it got its glue records for web2 and netdoor mixed up. Result: if you wanted to go to the Web server (web2) you ended up at netdoor, IF you went to netdoor to resolve web2.minasi.com. No problem if you happened to get resolved by web2. No idea how that happened, but it seems resolved. |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Jazzy
Administrator
Netherlands
1932 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/10/2012 : 07:11:51 AM
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| For this reason I recommend the E offerings, not P. Also, E offers 24/7 phone support and I think this is of great value. Sorry Mark, you should've consulted an expert first. |
Jetze Mellema
Exchange specialist
Former MVP (2005-2012)
My blog: http://jetzemellema.blogspot.com (Dutch)
My company: http://www.imara-ict.nl/ |
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wobble_wobble
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Ireland
4517 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/10/2012 : 11:32:20 AM
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To be honest, it kinda demonstrates how crappy some of their solution is....that its acceptable to have a potential customer off the air for a infinite period of time, due to some techie/ bean counter/ management intervention that stopped the process working simply.
Don't get me started on dynamic ports access for Azure!
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Joe
After everything that has happened during the month of Jan 07, I do believe that pigs fly backwards!
http://whatismyv6.com/ |
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DennisMCSE
Moderator
Canada
2400 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/10/2012 : 1:52:27 PM
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Finally am able to get on the site. Our proxy server must have cached the bad DNS entries well after Mark fixed the entries.
Was starting to get withdrawl symptoms. Even though I don't always post stuff, I'm on here almost every day.
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DennisMCSE
Blog: http://itprofirewalker.wordpress.com/
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/Firewalker96
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jadgate
Major Contributor
USA
918 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/10/2012 : 2:40:57 PM
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Mark-
Just curious, did you look at other non-MS hosted Exchange providers out there in making your decision? Or has MS "sucked all the oxygen" out of that market niche with O365 and with their price points?
I'm mulling over bumping my SBS 2003 server box at home to SBS 2011, but would like to ditch Exchange if I do.
Later,
Jim
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James Adgate, CISSP
IT Auditor and Compliance Specialist
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
IT Security Policy and Risk Mitigation for Enterprises
http://linkedin.com/in/jamesadgatech
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Edited by - jadgate on 07/10/2012 2:42:17 PM |
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JSCLMEDAVE
Administrator
USA
6116 Posts
Status: online |
Posted - 07/10/2012 : 2:42:49 PM
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| I would look at what Jetze mentioned with the E offerings... |
Tim-
“This too shall pass" |
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Jazzy
Administrator
Netherlands
1932 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/11/2012 : 03:19:09 AM
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There are many other Exchange hosting providers. None of them can beat the price of Office 365, not even close. Microsoft offers single sign-on, directory synchronization, migration tools and enterprise level support. The datacenters are being run by the people who make the software and understand how you should deploy it for many million mailboxes in 7 datacenters all over the world. Huge online community for peer2peer support and many 3rd party products for migration, management and other solutions.
Other hosting providers should have unique selling point, for example integration with other parts of their solution. If they don't have USP, I don't know why you should choose them over Office 365.
quote:
Originally posted by wobble_wobble
To be honest, it kinda demonstrates how crappy some of their solution is....
With all due respect, we have a user here who decided to buy a software solution which involves handing over the management of DNS completely. If the user needed a solution without service interruption he should have chosen another option.
Is there room for improvement? Yes, definitely. Is the solution crappy? No sir, I don't agree.
If you ask me, part of the problem is that we all seem to think that cloud computing equals easy. So Mark went ahead and without up-front evaluation to see if the solution meets his needs, he went and changed his DNS records to Microsoft's. I wonder if this is how he buys a car, insurance or a mobile phone.
And I'm using Mark just as an example, I see many people complain that they were not able to migrate parts of their IT infrastructure to a 3rd party and apparently expect this should be easy and fool proof. Should it be easy? Would be nice. Is it easy? Nope, not yet. |
Jetze Mellema
Exchange specialist
Former MVP (2005-2012)
My blog: http://jetzemellema.blogspot.com (Dutch)
My company: http://www.imara-ict.nl/ |
Edited by - Jazzy on 07/11/2012 03:19:59 AM |
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wobble_wobble
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Ireland
4517 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/11/2012 : 06:24:08 AM
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Jetze,
Fair points, but how would you suggest one does an eval of a live site, without moving your live site?
Why does one version have the need to give over the DNS rights and another does not, why not an option for either?
As you said,
quote:
The datacenters are being run by the people who make the software and understand how you should deploy it for many million mailboxes in 7 datacenters all over the world. Huge online community for peer2peer support and many 3rd party products for migration, management and other solutions.
Is it mentioned by these people the potential risks involved, that you loose connectivity?
I have not read the documentation as I am not involved in that space any more, but as I said,
quote:
that its acceptable to have a potential customer off the air for a infinite period of time, due to some techie/ bean counter/ management intervention that stopped the process working simply.
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Joe
After everything that has happened during the month of Jan 07, I do believe that pigs fly backwards!
http://whatismyv6.com/ |
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Pesos
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
USA
3506 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 11:25:13 AM
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| Look at who P is targeted towards - is Joe Office Manager typically going to have the knowhow to handle or even have a clue what DNS is? I rip Microsoft on a lot of things, but overall I think P is handled fairly well (especially given the rock bottom price!)... |
-Wes |
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Jazzy
Administrator
Netherlands
1932 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 12:57:55 PM
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| That's my point Wes, cloud providers say IT is easy and the Office Manager can do it. But it isn't (always) easy and doing stuff without proper investigation, knowledge or preparation can lead to downtime. |
Jetze Mellema
Exchange specialist
Former MVP (2005-2012)
My blog: http://jetzemellema.blogspot.com (Dutch)
My company: http://www.imara-ict.nl/ |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 1:32:07 PM
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Actually, I never imagined that an outfit like Microsoft would do something that unilateral and potentially damaging to a firm with an online presence. I suspected that there'd be a few bumps in the road, and I wanted to experience them, so I read all of their material, followed the rules, and run up against this, and now I know what it's like to get on the O365 bandwagon. That will help me help others to avoid this injury. I'm sure my O365 fiasco cost me a few sales in the past couple days, but that's life, as my current email infrastructure has always been a pain in the ass and it's just getting worse AND I'll be traveling a lot, so it was now-or-never time for an email change.
And, besides, one of my favorite quotes is that "bad decisions often lead to great stories... and now I've got one.<g>
Jim -- I did look around and seriously considered Intermedia -- Nathan Winters recommends them highly, and I don't know too many folks smarter about Exchange. But I think that more of my customers will go to O365 in the next year than to Intermedia, and feeling their pain will pay off for me.
In light of my migration-induced blackout, Joseph's characterization of O365's requirements as "crappy" actually doesn't seem like an unfair one here. Here are two things that spring to mind immediately.
1) Administration: my god, does this need work. Can't seem to get to the admin pages from a "mobile" browser, unless it's just a deliberate anti-Apple thing. No iPad-based admin stuff for me, unless I've missed something.
Getting to the Exchange Online page brought back fond memories of playing Zork. "Hey, I wonder if I click here... hmmm, maybe I should have dropped the golden key in the chamber pot?" And their IMAP migration tool is awful. Basically it runs for a while and either says "hey, it worked," or it says "the system was unable to log on" or something like that. For heaven's sake, at least let me see the failed IMAP transaction so I can guess what's going on. I'm migrating four accounts with identical configurations... two worked fine, two don't, so I'm just feeling around in the dark with thick mittens. And when I DO get a migration to work, the system says that it'll keep trying to re-sync with the old server every 24 hours. I don't want that... how do I stop it? Delete the job? Too bad there aren't any useful logs that'd tell me which emails didn't get migrated, or why. (Or, if they DO exist,I surely don't seem them on the Migration page.)
And just try to open two browsers where you're logged into two different accounts. No go, although you might figure it out with two different TYPES of browsers, like IE, Chrome and Firefox. Yes, there's a way to do it from the admin UI -- at least I discovered it once -- but I think I have to go back and fish the golden key out of the chamber pot, and I'm SURE that'll bring the friggin' goblin back to life, and I don't have the time to drop enough things in the maze to find my way back. I'd sure like a hyperlinked all-in-one-page list of possible admin tasks, or remoteable PowerShell commands.
As Anthony and Joseph have remarked either here or on email to me, Google did a far better job here:
Step One is, of course, to validate that you do indeed own the domain: excellent, necessary, responsible. But how? Google says, "add an innocuous TXT record to the zone, as only its owner could do." Microsoft says, "potentially screw up your email by adding an invalid MX record to your zone." +1 for Google, -1 for Microsoft. But then they force you cede them hosting of your DNS domain because they need me to add these records:
@ A 70.165.73.5
@ MX 0 minasi-com.mail.eo.outlook.com.
@ TXT ( "v=spf1 include:outlook.com ~all" )
_sipfederationtls._tcp SRV 100 1 5061 sipfed.online.lync.com.
autodiscover CNAME autodiscover.outlook.com.
lyncdiscover CNAME webdir.online.lync.com.
sip CNAME sipdir.online.lync.com.
That's just plain silly. They could just as easily have said, "here's a text file, download it or give us the email address of the person to send this to, the person who runs your DNS." Nope, Microsoft screwed up.
Jetze --
What a surprise to hear you rubbing sand into a Microsoft customer's wounds rather then recognizing a failure on the part of Microsoft. As I've suggested before, you might consider being nicer to us newbies... after all, if we were all as smart as you, then you would no longer be so exceptional, right?
As it turns out, I have some small knowledge of things like DNS, MX and SRV records. I downloaded and read all of the "technical information for IT pros" documents, read the Web pages and unless there's a rock that I didn't turn over, nothing told me that I'd have to suffer through surrendering and then re-taking my domain. (Or, for that matter, that the migration tool they tout online is so horribly flawed.)
No, I trusted a large software company that's been working like mad for the past few years to distinguish themselves as providers of first-class cloud services. I exposed myself to the kind of experience that my friends, colleagues and customers would almost inevitably see, as the pricing of O365 is so reasonable that it appeared (to me) inevitable. The result was that they failed on a few infrastructure counts but are doing (as far as I can see) fairly well on the post-migration email hosting front. It's a pleasure to get email on my iPad without a lot of pain and suffering.
Wes --
It doesn't SAY that about P versus E. It just says that both offer email (my primary concern) and that P is $2/mailbox/month cheaper.
For the future --
Lync looks exciting and SharePoint seems worth some exploration.
I see that I can host up to 250 attendees on an online meeting. Could I then reasonably run a series of for-pay short lectures? We'll see.
I'd love to move my main Web site to something hosted because I want the option to get out of Virginia Beach and try living in a city or two. I don't know how much flexibility my SharePoint site will tolerate -- I kind of wonder if my classic ASP pages for credit card transactions, newsletter list management and this forum can run on my O365 site. If not, no worries, I never expected Web hosting in the deal. So, in sum, I'm not impressed yet, but I'm hopeful.
If anyone's got an insight or two, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!
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Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Playwell
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Netherlands
4822 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 3:13:03 PM
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You do not HAVE to surrender your dns, i certainly did not.
The only drawback on that is that Linc does not work, because my Linux based provider does not support the much needed DNS entries. Don't care, am in it for the mail experience. Which is a whole lot better then the Gmail one I might add. |
'People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. '
Quote by Isaac Asimov
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 4:33:25 PM
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| Did you have P1? I didn't see a way around the wizard. Thanks. |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Playwell
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Netherlands
4822 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 5:04:38 PM
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| I have a P1. I just quit after MS believed i own my domain and added the entries to my isp's DNS. It's been a while though. |
'People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. '
Quote by Isaac Asimov
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aval
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
USA
3276 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 6:01:02 PM
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quote:
There are many other Exchange hosting providers. None of them can beat the price of Office 365, not even close.
For education, K-12 at least, Exchange Online (without Sharepoint, etc.) is FREE.
Looks like Intermedia starts at $8.00 a mailbox. For 100 mailboxes, that's $800, then x 12 months...
I've seen O365 start at $4.00.
OK, here's a comparison of features:
http://www.intermedia.net/products/exchange-hosting/
And here's the O365 variants:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/compare-plans.aspx
One thing I don't get though...
Our entire onsite Exchange implementation cost us less than $7000 the first year (cost of server, software, UPS, antivirus and licensing) and is NOWHERE close to costing us $8000 + the following years (Yes, I'm pretending that we are a business and would have to pay for hosted Exchange).
At $8.00 a mailbox (and that's starting price) I don't necessarily see the cost advantage for a small or medium business that could do without a second server and DAG for redundancy? For example, we decided that disk and PSU redundancy, plus next day replacement of failed parts, would suffice, and... good luck or whatever, we've had essentially 0 unplanned downtime since March 2009.
EDIT - now at $4.00 there might be an advantage, especially if it's the year you want to upgrade to Exchange 2010, and necessarily have to buy another server (no in place upgrade). |
Edited by - aval on 07/12/2012 6:10:35 PM |
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aval
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
USA
3276 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 6:16:42 PM
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| It would be fair to clarify that some of that software was at EDU pricing. |
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wobble_wobble
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Ireland
4517 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/12/2012 : 7:09:58 PM
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But now your in the Cloud and all is sunny, light and easy.
Mark,
Sharepoint won't.
Lync is cool.
Skype is cool.
MS own both - they said there was a path and then they dug a moate.
EDU pricing works in US not in EMEA - local makes better sense.
Lync call out works in US on O365 - talk to me if you want it in EMEA.
The migrations tools.....kinda reminds me of the WINs tools.
Yehaw......I'd love to be in the meeting with Mark, Jetze and the O365 people. I promise I'd giggle into a paper bag.
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Joe
After everything that has happened during the month of Jan 07, I do believe that pigs fly backwards!
http://whatismyv6.com/ |
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jadgate
Major Contributor
USA
918 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/13/2012 : 01:31:31 AM
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Thanks for the comparison.
If individually encrypted or enforced TLS-encrypted channel email is a need, I can tell you there have been a few gotchas with the enterprise implementation of BPOS (what 365 used to be called, love how MS keeps changing the names) where I work. We found that individually-encrypted emails sent would fail when mail with attachments hit 7 mb (due to Mime bloat; probably is closer to 10 megs) - the recipient would get a very cryptic unhelpful email message (and no, encrypted email in and of itself is not PCI-compliant - gotta be an end to end solution :)). What was particularly aggravating about discovering that was that it's NOT anywhere in the BPOS system documentation, such as it is, at least as of the end of 2010, and the fact that they license the Voltage solution to do that, and Voltage's OWN cloud offering lets you send an encrypted email of up to 50 megs in size. Also, the third party site you go to pick up the encypted email cannot be branded with your own company's name, which would make me pause, if I was not familar with it - after all, embedded links can send you anywhere, given the sophistication of URL obsufication by phishing attacks these days.
Joe tells me that the BPOS implementation of TLS has had a few glitches. As I understood what he told me, in some instances, after the SMTP boogie happens a few times (re-trys/transmits) the SMTP engine assumes all is well even if it not and will happily send the email, even if an enforced channel is not available. Not sure if that within the RFC standards for TLS, if it is, that's kind of scary...
My $.02
Jim Adgate |
James Adgate, CISSP
IT Auditor and Compliance Specialist
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
IT Security Policy and Risk Mitigation for Enterprises
http://linkedin.com/in/jamesadgatech
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Edited by - jadgate on 07/13/2012 01:33:57 AM |
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wobble_wobble
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Ireland
4517 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/13/2012 : 04:14:50 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by jadgate
Joe tells me that the BPOS implementation of TLS has had a few glitches. As I understood what he told me, in some instances, after the SMTP boogie happens a few times (re-trys/transmits) the SMTP engine assumes all is well even if it not and will happily send the email, even if an enforced channel is not available. Not sure if that within the RFC standards for TLS, if it is, that's kind of scary...
Jim,
This was in relation to Exchange 2003 and Ex 2007 inhouse. I'm not sure, unaware if BPOS could do it - apologies if I confused you on that. I've not being involved in trying to get BPOS or O365 to use TLS. But if it did it, there will probably be an extra charge and no SLA. But I sit to be corrected.
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Joe
After everything that has happened during the month of Jan 07, I do believe that pigs fly backwards!
http://whatismyv6.com/ |
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Curt
Moderator
USA
6652 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/13/2012 : 10:59:26 AM
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LOL!!!
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Minasi
I THINK I finally got it. The solution validates two important network truths:
1) It's probably DNS.
2) Stuff happens.
We've got two DNS servers, web2.minasi.com and netdoor.minasi.com. Netdoor is a secondary and I NEVER touched it during the whole O365 debacle... but somehow it got its glue records for web2 and netdoor mixed up. Result: if you wanted to go to the Web server (web2) you ended up at netdoor, IF you went to netdoor to resolve web2.minasi.com. No problem if you happened to get resolved by web2. No idea how that happened, but it seems resolved.
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Curt Spanburgh
Microsoft Certified Business Solution Specialist.
Dynamics CRM MVP
Contributing Editor, Windows IT Pro
He that is walking with wise persons will become wise, but he that is having dealings with the stupid ones will fare badly.
Proverbs 13:20
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Curt
Moderator
USA
6652 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/13/2012 : 11:02:39 AM
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And now we know why the we have the flushdns option from the beginning of DOD model.
quote:
Originally posted by DennisMCSE
Finally am able to get on the site. Our proxy server must have cached the bad DNS entries well after Mark fixed the entries.
Was starting to get withdrawl symptoms. Even though I don't always post stuff, I'm on here almost every day.
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Curt Spanburgh
Microsoft Certified Business Solution Specialist.
Dynamics CRM MVP
Contributing Editor, Windows IT Pro
He that is walking with wise persons will become wise, but he that is having dealings with the stupid ones will fare badly.
Proverbs 13:20
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/13/2012 : 2:37:56 PM
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| Sadly flushdns doesn't extend to servers! |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Jazzy
Administrator
Netherlands
1932 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/14/2012 : 03:02:35 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Mark Minasi
Jetze --
What a surprise to hear you rubbing sand into a Microsoft customer's wounds rather then recognizing a failure on the part of Microsoft. As I've suggested before, you might consider being nicer to us newbies... after all, if we were all as smart as you, then you would no longer be so exceptional, right?
Mark, the way I see it is that we're not newbies here but IT pro's in some degree. I want to be very clear that we should not believe all the crap cloud providers tell us. I'm sorry that I used your experience as an example, was not meant to rub it in.
I'll repeat myself: cloud providers want you to believe that as an SMB owner you can manage your IT yourself and don't need a tech to move parts of your IT infrastructure to the cloud. I disagree and I think you proved my point here. Newbies do not tend to test or evaluate stuff first, read the documentation first, try to understand the migration process first. No, they click the nice link and go with the wizard. The result might be unexpected service unavalability.
So I may sound harsh but that's not my intention, my message is that SMB owners deserve better than DYI projects. I hope that we all pick up that message here and use it when advising our own company or our customers. |
Jetze Mellema
Exchange specialist
Former MVP (2005-2012)
My blog: http://jetzemellema.blogspot.com (Dutch)
My company: http://www.imara-ict.nl/ |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/14/2012 : 10:08:15 AM
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My point was that I DID read the docs.
And it's not really about newbies or experts. It's about whose side you, as a consultant, are on.
There are plenty of people who will rush to Microsoft's defense even when they are demonstrably wrong... I've known many. And for some of those people, one day they get a blue badge and it's like they've finally "arrived," reached their life's goal. (Don't misunderstand, I'm not talking about all or or anywhere-near most MSFT employees, just the number who styled themselves "independent" while all along they were just sidling up to Redmond.)
Do you advocate for Microsoft, or their customers? It's an important question and in truth I don't think that everyone in the business has really examined it. (And I'm not saying the client's always right... the people I meet who won't buy MS because "Microsoft is Satan" or some other nonsense, or the small percentage of the members of the open source movement who'd have you believe that all intellectual property is theft, or the vendors like Sun in the old days who decried Microsoft's monopolies mainly because they blocked THEM from having monopolies get no sympathy from me.)
I don't know how property sales work in the Netherlands, but here the broker gets their fee from the buyer. Many of them, however, cozy up to the seller with some bilious nonsense about how they have the seller's best interest at heart, when they don't. Many "independent" consultants in IT suffer from that same problem, I think, and it does no one any good. |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Jazzy
Administrator
Netherlands
1932 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 07/14/2012 : 11:08:27 AM
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You're asking me those questions Mark? Then I failed to explain what I trying to say. I'm independent and work for the customer, the customer pays my bill and not Microsoft. I love Microsoft (not so much as a companoy, but I do love their products) but sometimes I feel I have to defend my customers from Microsoft's marketing crap. For example with Exchange 2010 the marketing message was more or less: you don't need to take backups anymore and you should use DAS storage. I explain my customers that this can be an option, but I recomend them to think about it before they make a decsiion. Now with cloud computing the crap is even more so businesses need independent IT pro's to explain them if the cloud is the best solution or not. And if they think they should go to the cloud, does that mean the SMB owner should be able to do that? Would be nice but in reality cloud computing is still not mature, it's complicated to on board and even more difficult to offboard or move your data and services to another vendor.
Anyway, I have the feeling I'm repeating myself here. So, I hate to see you and other customer run into trouble. Is this because Microsoft's solution is crappy (Joe's statement). I don't think so, I think their solution is pretty nice compared to the alternatives in the current market. I think the issue is that they tell you that you can do it yourself and that it's easy. |
Jetze Mellema
Exchange specialist
Former MVP (2005-2012)
My blog: http://jetzemellema.blogspot.com (Dutch)
My company: http://www.imara-ict.nl/ |
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