Reasons to Avail Small Business Technical Support Services

Small Business Computer Support introduces a comprehensive list of computer support functions pertaining to computer software, hardware, and communications. With the increasing scope of the Internet based services and the spread of high speed connections, it is now possible for small businesses to employ high qualified computer technicians to look after the maintenance of their business system resources, and to provide computer repair facilities 24x7.

Online tech support companies have professional and trained computer engineers who remotely manage your systems and prevent the need to haul them to repair shops, thereby saving you time and money. Most small businesses have approved of such services as they can now their computers productive and effective at all times.

Small business tech support eliminates the need for sending personnel to customers' offices to fix the issue. They provide support more quickly and efficiently than any in-house staff can with expertise being the sole reason. The complete procedure is done online using remote desktop connection. With your permission, the technicians remotely take hold of faulty computers, diagnose issues, and resolve them right away. Everything is being done before customer who enjoys the authority to control the actions taken on the computers.

Such server services are gaining in popularity primarily because of the convenience they provide to the customer. Another underlying benefit is the cost. The customer need not pay if the technician fails to resolve the issue. Moreover, everything is offered at the convenience of the customer's premises.

Emergence of companies has enabled both established and start-up businesses to make use of cutting edge technology to readily fix their nasty computer errors and problems. These companies have highly trained technicians who maintain professional conduct along. They provide the expertise that small businesses require to leverage finest technical support for efficient working.

Online vendors dealing in small businesses computer support boast to have distinct plans which are tightly integrated to enable small businesses leverage the best computer support and tech support benefits at price suitable for rigid budgets. These plans are made after taking everything including companies' potential, future growth, and number of computers into consideration.

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Small Business Server - Truth or Myth?

There are many different articles about Small Business Server telling you what you can and cannot do with this product.

Some of us think SBS is not scalable, has a lot of restrictions and is meant only for really small businesses.

The truth is, you can do a lot with your Small Business Server and scalability options are quite impressive.

* SBS provides SharePoint Services - Truth. Your team members can communicate and collaborate with each other using this internal solution. It is easy to setup and manage.

* You cannot add additional Servers to SBS - Myth. You can add additional servers to your SBS domain with small limitations: there can be only one domain in your SBS network; there can be only one server running SBS; SBS server must be the root of AD forest.

* SBS provides ISA Services - Truth. With the premium version of SBS your network will get the firewall technology that will help you secure and protect your business.

* SBS requires different hardware than MS Windows Server 2003 - Myth. Windows Server 2003 technology is a foundation for SBS platform, therefore SBS can use any hardware that is approved for Windows Server 2003.

* SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition is included in SBS - Truth. This is a very powerful, integrated data management and reporting solution included with SBS premium edition. It will help your business run data-driven application with easy configuration and management.

* Most of the applications don’t run on Small Business Server - Myth. If your applications run on Windows Server 2003, chances are they will work on Windows SBS. Like I mentioned above, SBS platform is based on Windows Server 2003 and 99% of the time the performance will be exactly the same.

Source: http://www.trainsignaltraining.com/

How to Share any Folder via a Built-in Web Server?

You’re probably aware that OS X includes the powerful Apache Web server; you enable this server on the Sharing System Preferences panel by activating the Web Sharing service.

In OS X 10.5 (this hint won’t work on OS X 10.4), the bundled version of the Python programming language includes its own simple Web server. Using this simple Web server, you can easily make the contents of any folder on your machine available via a Web browser.

In Terminal, first cd to the folder you’d like to make available via the Web server. For example, cd ~/Pictures to switch to your user’s Pictures folder. Next, you activate Python’s built-in Web server with this command: python -m SimpleHTTPServer (and yes, capitalization counts). Press Return, and you’ll see a message stating Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 .... The important bit there is the port number (8000).

To access the server from the machine you’re running the Python server on, switch to a Web browser, and enter http://localhost:8000 (replace 8000 with the port you used, if you didn’t use the defaut) in the URL bar. When you press Return, you’ll see a listing of all files in the directory. Depending on what types of files are there, and which browser you’re using, you can then click on files to view them in the browser. In my testing, Firefox works better than Safari, as Safari wants to download file types it doesn’t know how to handle while Firefox will often let you open them with a helper application.

To access the server from another machine on your network, you need to know the server computer’s name. You can find this in the Sharing System Preferences panel, in the aptly-named Computer Name section of the panel. Just below the computer’s actual name, you’ll see a line that begins Computers on your local network can access…, followed by the name they’ll need to use to do so. Typically, this is simply the Computer Name followed by .local—so if the machine’s name is OctoMac, for instance, you can then access the server by entering http://OctoMac.local:8000 in your browser’s URL bar.

For access outside your network, you’ll need to open port 8000 in your router—and be aware that there’s no password protection on this simple server, so anyone could technically look at your files.

When you’re done with the Web server, return to Terminal on the host machine and press Control-C. You’ll probably see a bunch of messages flow by in Terminal, but that’s fine—the server will stop, and you’ll get the Terminal command prompt back. As I stated up front, I’m not sure how much real-world use you’ll get out of this hint, as you can do similar things with file sharing, Back to my Mac, screen sharing, FTP servers, and more…still, I found it interesting, and it’s an amazingly quick way to share a given folder with another machine on a temporary basis.

Source: macworld.com/article/140370/2009/05/pythonserver.html

Google Launches Network to Promote Small Business

Google announced the launch of a new initiative called the Small Business Network in an effort to contribute what it can to the success of small businesses, which are Google's bread and butter.

"It's no secret that small businesses play a key role in Google's success as a company and drive the economy as a whole," says David Fischer, Google's VP of Global Online Sales and Operations. "AdWords, AdSense, Apps – you name it – have all grown because small businesses use them. Because of that, increasing their bottom line is very important to us."

The Small Business Network is designed to promote business-friendly policies at the federal and state levels. Fischer says the company asked itself, "What can we do to help broaden the collective voice of small business both on Capitol Hill and in the states? We want to know about the issues that are important to our small business partners so that we can better invest in their goals and objectives and ultimately, their success."

While Google's intention is to take on a variety of issues, the company is getting started right off the bat with increasing broadband access and preserving an open Internet.

The network takes full advantage of Google's Moderator tool, which allows interested parties to share their thoughts and others to vote them up and down, creating a sense of priority among them. Google is hoping that they will be able to use the Network to help encourage lawmakers to grant funds to ISPs to create broadband access for small businesses around the U.S.

Source: webpronews.com

Wireless Internet Security: Secure Your WIFI Communications?

Your wifi communications are not as secure as you may think. Others can listen to your data, sometimes as easily as to a radio broadcast!

How do I know this?

In a school where I used to work as the IT/Network administrator, I had to set up a wireless network that would be shared between teachers and students. Knowing how clever the teenagers are, the administration was adamant to know just how secure their data would be, so I have been asked to do extensive research on this.
In a short time I was able to:

* Identify the computers and their owners that are logged on the network.
* See who is logging onto which email accounts.
* Log people's email login information.
* Log people's email messages.
* Target a specific computer and gather data about the pages they visit, including the content of the pages themselves.
* Log any FTP login and password.
* Display any of the data/passwords in an accessible time table, revealing in-depth information about who visited what and when.

A little disturbing, no? Fortunately, this was a project done purely for research, and none of the data was ever used for any purposes other than identifying ways how to improve our network security.

Source: examiner.com

AppGate Security Server based on Open Solaris

With Open Solaris a free edition of the AppGate Security Server and support for virtual environments is offered.

With this version of the Security Server, AppGate enables all users to access files regardless of platform and without installing any client software. Users only have to point their web browser to the AppGate Security Server and log in to the system in order to access remote files. The AppGate Security Server performs authentication and authorization, and depending on the user's role, authentication method, client configuration, etc., the server can make different files available to its users.

Version 9 is based on Open Solaris which makes it easy to have the AppGate server run in virtual server environments. The AppGate Server can run in a virtual server, be remotely managed and can in turn control access to other physical and virtual servers. This enables new architectures to be built in a secure way. In addition version 9 fully server support Windows 7.

AppGate security servers build on existing functionality such as:

* Application Layer Firewall
* Mobile & Fixed VPN
* Granular & Role based Access Control
* End-point Security with device check.

Source: net-security.org/secworld.php?id=7278

Configure TS Session Broker using Route Robin

Terminal services session broker is responsible to route incoming TS connections between two or more servers, to the right terminal server. When the TS Session Broker receives an incoming connection, it checks first to see if that user has an existing session on a terminal server in the farm. If they do, then the connection goes to that terminal server. If they don’t, then the Session Broker will redirect to the terminal server with the lowest number of sessions.

If you are going to use Route Robin for load balancing you need to create two or more A records with same host name

Example:

A record terminal 10.0.0.1
A record terminal 10.0.0.2
A record terminal 10.0.0.3
A record terminal 10.0.0.4

So now if you try to connect to “terminal” you will be randomly redirected to one of the servers in the list.

To configure TS session broker:

• Open Server Manager
• Navigate to roles.
• Press on “Add Roles”
• Select Terminal Services from the list of roles and then Next to continue.
• On the resulting information screen click Next to proceed to the Role Services screen where the TS Session Broker option needs to be selected

Add Terminal Servers to the TS Session Broker :Settings need to be applied on TS Session Broker server only

When TS broker roles is installed , you will notice new security group in “local Users and Groups” named “Session Directory Computers”

You need to add your Terminal Servers computer account to that group.



Joining Terminal Servers to a TS Session Broker: Settings need to be configured on Terminal Servers only

* Open Terminal Services Configuration tool :tsconfig.msc
* Under TS Session Broker click on Member of farm in TS Session Broker



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