Migration Training

Starting this week Harbor Computer Services has entered into 6 weeks of migration training. We'll be meeting on Tuesday evenings  to go through the process of migrating from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008. Practice makes perfect.

Doing this migration as outlined by Microsoft practically takes a village and also leaves a lot of vulnerability and really poor restore possibilities. They provide a 21 day window within which to complete the migration and suggest that we should plan for a couple of weeks and leave the remaining days just in case. I'm sure that idea if we proposed it to you would go over like a lead balloon. We're calling this the open heart surgery method. As in once you start you can't stop and either it works or the patient dies on the table. If the patient dies during open heart surgery there's no magic Go Back button. Should the Microsoft method take the required 2 weeks and you get that far into it and it fails, you have to put the network back to where it was 2 weeks ago and start all over! The potential for data loss and network down time is staggering and we will not be following that path.

We believe that our practice and method development will result in a 2 day migration with zero down time. The only time the network will be disrupted will be as we switch from the current firewall to the new one and this will happen very quickly. Every other part of the migration can happen during business hours and without disruption.

For six weeks we'll be practicing this over and over again on our own network. Then we're going to test it on a real client, in a virtual practice environment. Then we'll live migrate our server. Finally if all of the tests for the next 6 weeks are successful, we'll migrate the first client for real. Using this method we will be able to test the migration of each server before performing it live. This testing process will uncover any unique gotcha's that we might encounter and give us the opportunity to prepare and resolve those before migration day arrives.

The opportunity to provide a zero down time solution has never been so well in reach and I'm really excited to be able to provide this type of migration. It's been an IT person's dream since 1995 when the first Zero Administration toolkit was published. It of course didn't work, but it was a start. The future is finally here.

Farewell to Keith Lahtinen

Keith is moving on to realize one of his dreams, to become a pastry chef and take full advantage of his retirement.

20 months ago, Keith decided to retire from his IT company, Managed IT. He and his clients moved over to us and Keith started part-time work doing non-emergency maintenance tasks. In between work he spent a lot of time with his grandson and went fishing. Fishing and part-time work is over now and Keith having passed the pre-requisite course with flying colors was one of the students selected for entry into the culinary arts program at Schoolcraft College.  We've had some of his pastry...yum. Congratulations are in order for Keith for getting into the program the first time around. There's waiting list to get into this well respected program.

Someday I hope to be able to decide to follow another dream too. We should all be so lucky as to be in good health, sound mind and opportunity to follow our dreams when we get to retirement.

Diana will be taking over the maintenance routine from Keith. We had a meeting on Monday to review each client, update status and make the transition so everything should continue smoothly.

Because I haven't posted any good news lately

On the invoice cover sheet for many months I was posting good news and it was popular. I haven't posted any over the summer, so here's one for you. Every down economy has a silver lining and the longer we stay down in the dumps about our situation in Michigan the longer the down turn will last. Everyone knows that Michigan has to build a new economy and as our president would say, "it's hard work". But the hard work is paying off. High tech companies are moving into Michigan. We're ripe. We've got lots of engineers looking for jobs, we've got lots of cheap communications running at the highest speeds, there's plenty of office space waiting for occupants, we've got excellent universities and we have a relatively low cost of living. On the high tech front the good news continues. This is Michigan's future and it really is exciting to see it developing. Don't get me wrong, we've got a really long road ahead but at least we know where our silver lining is.

$2 Billion and 1,496 Jobs Added to Region's Economy in 12 Months
DETROIT - At the annual meeting for investors today, the Detroit Regional Economic Partnership unveiled business growth and attraction results it assisted in during it's 2007-2008 program year (July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008).  During the year, The Partnership helped 67 companies either expand or locate in the Detroit Region.  These efforts generated $2 billion in additional investment and added 1,496 new jobs for Southeast Michigan's economy over the past year.  The Partnership is the Detroit Regional Chamber's economic development organization and a collaboration between the public and private sectors.

Internet Usage Policy

Last week I posted my frustration at spending my staff time and your dollars on cleaning computers. We'd much rather spend our time helping your business thrive, not just tread water. IT resources are such an significant investment, as a business owner, it just kills me to see the investment abused. Your IT infrastructure should be making your company money. Everything about it should add value to your bottom line by streamlining processes and making your employees the top productivity performers in your industry. That's why I love this business.

Following the post I received some excellent and surprising comments. I had two employees, from different companies, tell me that they are working the first job they have ever had that didn't make them sign an Internet Use Policy. They weren't happy about it either. They were a little bit upset because they see the wasted time caused by playing around on the Internet. I had one employer, express frustration about not being able to monitor what's going on. (we can help with that) Another asked me for a solution. Most importantly a client wrote me to say this message should come from the business owner to employees and then went further and offered to share an Internet Usage Policy with all of you!  

I have uploaded this Internet Usage Policy for you to access and make your own. I want to put out a big THANK YOU, to Leadership Oakland for agreeing to share this with everyone. It's this kind of sharing that makes small business fun to work for. If you are not already acquainted with Leadership Oakland's programs you should check them out.

Here's the link to the policy:

http://cid-d663f9eee9d8ad39.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Templates