Mail and More
On completion of the registration phase, I emailed a letter with attachments from my account in Dr. John's Health Services to my email account at Windows NT Magazine. I was pleasantly surprised that the email reached my magazine account in less than 10 minutes. I then started forwarding mail to all users in Dr. John's Health Services from my magazine account. Again, all users received the mail within 10 minutes. At the same time, I had Word and Excel applications running on the client machines and began forwarding internal mail as well, with no adverse effects to the network speed.
Configuring Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Internet Information Server (IIS), Exchange, and Proxy Server was hassle free—SBS handles all those tasks automatically. An option under the Internet Connection Wizard is the Domain Name Wizard, which lets a small business register its domain name directly with InterNIC. You can establish a company on the Internet within 24 hours, when InterNIC propagates its directory. Verio assigned me the domain name CLINIC.ABS.COM, and email addresses using the format user@clinic
.abs.net, where user is the username for individuals with an SBS account in my domain. The whole process from connecting to an ISP to using the Internet and email took less than 15 minutes to configure.
With the use of FrontPage 97 and its templates, I spent about an hour creating a Web page for Dr. John's Health Services. I followed a sample template and changed only some text to reflect the fictitious business. Through the SBS console, I selected Post Web Pages to Your Web Site. By default, the ISP hosts the Web pages; however, you can choose to host your Internet Web site on your server.
Management Blues
Once a network is up and running, a smart administrator will monitor it to make sure it's running smoothly and to anticipate potential problems. The network must be easy to manage and control. SBS networks are no exception, especially because SBS businesses might not have MIS support.
The control panel for SBS is the Manage SBS window, which you activate from the Start menu. The To Do List appears first, and exiting the To Do List presents the Manage SBS window, which contains three tabs: Tasks, More Tasks, and Online Guide. The Tasks tab provides icons for managing users, printers, email, shared folders, backup and restore, and troubleshooting. (You can add icons to the Tasks tab; however, to do so, you must edit the Registry, which is not something the intermediate user will likely attempt.) If you select Manage Users and then Manage Connected Users, you see the window shown in Screen 4, which contained incorrect data for my network. I had 11 users connected to server HOPE from 11 client workstations; each user was accessing email and running an application. However, the Manage Connected Users window listed only 3 users with active con-
nections and displayed several connections for the same computer with no username identified.
Cross-checking with Server Manager revealed that the server did not show a connection with all the client computers. When I tried to interrogate the connection to a client, SBS displayed the message "The network path was not found." However, the computer in question could transmit and receive email across the Internet and run a remote application from the server. I encountered the same problem under SBS, Beta 2, and Microsoft stated that this problem might be a refresh problem.
From the Tasks tab, you can select Manage Shared Folders to control access to folders, manage folder size, and move folders to different drives. From the Manage Shared Folders window, I activated the Share a Folder Wizard, from which I granted access to the shared folders that contained sample data.
Under the More Tasks tab, you can manage email distribution lists, hard disks, client computers, Internet access, faxes, modems, adding or removing software and hardware, and publishing on the Internet. When I selected Manage Computers, I encountered another problem. My network configuration had not changed, yet the window displayed only a few of my 11 connected computers.
Recovering the SBS Console
In closing the Server Manager window, I accidentally closed the Manage SBS window. When I selected Manage Server from the Start menu, SBS greeted me with an error window stating, "ActiveX component can't create object." Consulting the SBS release notes, I found an entry recommending that if the SBS console displays the ActiveX component error message, stop and restart the WWW Publishing Service. Using the Services applet in Control Panel, I stopped the WWW Publishing Service, restarted it, and selected Manage Server from the Start menu. Fortunately, the SBS console returned and displayed the Tasks tab.
Unfortunately, every time I closed the Manage SBS console, I had to stop and restart the WWW Publishing Service to open the window. At times, the software presented me with a blank Manage SBS window when I jumped from the More Tasks tab to the Tasks tab. Because I had chosen to host the Web site on the ISP and not on server HOPE, I decided it might be easier to turn the WWW Publishing Service off. However, I found that the Manage SBS console continued to give me the same ActiveX component error while the WWW Publishing Service was off. The WWW Publishing Service had to be on if I wanted to access the Manage SBS window.
Management Backup
Continuing my evaluation, I investigated the backup systems for managing SBS and the domain. One feature is a variety of preconfigured Performance Monitor windows available through the Exchange program menu. You can select Performance Monitor windows to view Server Health, History, IMS Queries, Statistics, Traffic, Load, or Users. The windows provide useful information, but they do not look like the typical Microsoft window with a title bar and borders, as you can see in Screen 5. You can resize the windows and move them around with the mouse, but they do not provide a right-click option menu. The only way I could close these Performance Monitor windows was to activate Task Manager and select End Task. (Microsoft claims that double-clicking the graph area displays a title bar and Close button, which you can use to close the window.)
One feature I wanted to make sure I tested was Crystal Reports for Microsoft SBS. Seagate Software Information Management Group makes Crystal Reports for Microsoft SBS, and Microsoft does not provide technical support for Crystal Reports. All my attempts to generate a report during my evaluation of SBS, Beta 2 produced application error messages. From the Online Guide, I read that I could generate system reports from NT's Event Viewer, and tables and graphs on email usage, Internet access, Web server statistics, and fax usage.
I was pleasantly surprised with the RC version of this management tool. In just a few guided clicks of the mouse, I generated several different reports, such as a Server Summary that displayed total messages sent and received, and a breakout by user of who sent the most email internally and externally. I produced a graph depicting the number of Web site hits by hours of the day, and I generated a summary of the Web sites most popular with the domain users. Screen 6, page 78, shows a report of the Top 10 sites that domain users surfed. (This feature presents a useful way to identify when clients are visiting non-work related sites.)
Remote Management
SBS provides the ability to manage and control a network from a remote client over RAS. Microsoft includes the utility software in the CD-ROM bundle, but Microsoft needs to correct some major bugs before the software is useful. While I was following the installation instructions supplied in the release notes, the blue screen of death (BSOD) paid me a visit when I attempted to run the remote client software. The BSOD occurred twice on the remote client computer after clean installations of NT Workstation 4.0 and SP3.
I decided to modify the instructions and configure the remote workstation as a regular user within the domain over a RAS connection. This tactic proved successful; however, even with a 56Kbps connection, the download of SBS client software took more than 3 hours. From the Dial-Up Monitor, I found that 38MB of data had been downloaded to the client computer.
My next step was to install the Remote Client software on the computer. This step was successful and did not give me the BSOD. However, when I ran the Remote Client software, I received the very unusual Manage SBS console shown in Screen 7. Every first letter on the tabs and icon labels was missing. The tabs and icons were functional, but the labels were hard to decipher. As a value-added reseller (VAR), I would be concerned about what other software code might be missing. Response of the Manage SBS console was slow over the modem connection, except for the Online Guide, which displayed complete Help pages promptly.
Debriefing
At the end of the Lab's product evaluation process, the product reviewers typically critique their experiences with the product to put product strengths and weaknesses in perspective. Sometimes problems are only cosmetic or cause a minor hiccup in the overall performance of the product, but sometimes problems are critical enough that the vendor needs to address them before it releases the product commercially. In the case of SBS, several problems are significant—especially considering SBS's target market (no permanent MIS support). For example, having to stop and start NT services to make the Manage SBS console appear is inappropriate.
Monitoring tools need to accurately describe what is happening in the network—displaying only 3 of 11 active connections in my test network was unacceptable—and monitoring tools must be easy to use. For instance, performance monitoring windows need to toggle on and off in the familiar fashion; users should not have to use Task Manager to close these windows.
As a potential VAR, I want a remote client package that I can trust to work properly and feed me realtime information. I don't have a lot of confidence in a product when the GUI is missing letters, as in my remote access experience with SBS. The product must be error free, or VARs will be reluctant to install it. Small businesses cannot afford frequent maintenance costs.
Keep Working, Microsoft
I'm going to hold Microsoft's feet to the fire on this product. With this RC, the company obviously made improvements from SBS, Beta 2, but more work needs to be done. The concept behind SBS is great: Give a small business the computing power it needs to succeed in the booming information age, and deliver that power in one package that doesn't cost a fortune and doesn't require a rocket scientist to run.
SBS's performance is there, too, but the product must have error-free management and control to be useful. Reliability and ease of use are what small businesses need to keep down their total cost of ownership. Obviously, Microsoft still has some work to do on SBS. By the time you read this review, Microsoft may have addressed the problems I experienced with the product. I hope so. The product is worth the extra effort.