“CIRA leads by example by being an open, democratic organisation with an elected board. Many organisations involved with Internet governance do not have open elections. The public, members, and stakeholders have limited input into how many Internet governance organisations are governed. CIRA is a beacon of light that I believe other Internet governance organisations should look to.“

As far as I know CIRA has a unique governance structure amongst domain name registries. We have a board where all of the voting directors are voted in by a large membership whose only restriction is that they have a domain in the registry. Boards that are voted in are rare among domain name registries. Boards that are voted in by a large semi-public membership are even rarer. In the Internet world most of the governing bodies have appointed boards, boards that are voted in by an exclusive member base, or boards that have some combination of the two. Even rarer is an Internet governance organisation where any member can say, “I want to be on the board” and actually have a chance at doing so. I would like to see this unique governance model continue at CIRA and I would like other Internet governance organisations to become more democratic, possibly emulating CIRA. Does this mean I think everything is perfect? No I don’t. There is always room for improvement.

For a board to be effective it needs to have a certain mix of skills and character. I covered this in a previous post. With an elected board how do we make sure that mix happens? The current thinking by governance experts is to have an appointed board. A nominating committee is struck. The committee polls the board to see what skills are needed then goes out and recruits people with those skills for the board. This just doesn’t work for me. Democracy is a value I hold very dearly. There is zero democracy involved here. This type of board will eventually become self-perpetuating and stagnant. If the board gets captured by a special interest group there is no way to fix it. Another model similar to this is the nominating committee proposes a slate of more candidates than there are vacant positions and the members vote but can only pick from the nominating committee slate. This has the same problems as the previous model for me. It may sound like democracy but it is not. This is the model many repressive regimes use. They have elections but all candidates must be picked by the ruling party. In a truly democratic election anyone could run for a board position and the members would pick from a slate of anyone that said they were interested. This used to be my preferred model and I still think of it as an ideal we should strive to get as close to as possible. When I ran for the board in 2008 I was espousing this model. This model has a couple of glaring problems though. CIRA runs some critical infrastructure for Canada. If anyone has as good a chance of getting on the board as anyone else how would we be sure that they are competent and the board has the skills needed to ensure the infrastructure keeps working? A fringe special interest group could nominate a full slate and vote en masse to elect them. I’ve come to believe we need some restrictions on who can run in order to guarantee a competent board. So, we should go back to my second model then? Well sort of. Over time CIRA has developed a hybrid system. Four out of twelve voting director’s terms are up every year. Three of these vacant spots will go to people from a slate from the nominating committee exactly like the second model. One of the vacant spots will go to someone who has nothing to do with the nominating committee. It is available to anyone who thinks they can do a better job than the current SOBs. There is a bit of a process – they have to get twenty members to stand up and say. “Yeah I support that person.” But that’s it, they’re on the slate. It is a very low bar. This allows a wild card candidate a seat on the board. It’s not true democracy but it is closer than the first two models and accomplishes the goal of ensuring a competent board. At most, because of the three year term, there will be three totally incompetent wild cards on the board. That’s an unlikely scenario though. A more likely scenario is that these wild cards greatly improve the board. If you look at the candidates that have been picked by the nominating committee over the years they have some striking similarities. They usually have university degrees. They have been successful in business or the academic world. They have been on many other boards. They usually have some governance training under their belt. There’s nothing wrong with this. Those types of people make good board members. They generally have the skills needed to make sure the organisation is running well. The nominating committee can make sure the board has an accountant, a lawyer, an HR person, and whatever other skills that may be needed. One problem is that these people usually tend to think somewhat alike. This is no fault of theirs, it’s the process. This year the nominating committee looked at 221 applications. I don’t know about you but the first thing I’d do is create a needed skills matrix and eliminate a bunch of them. I can’t see any other way to get through that many candidates in the time they have. Matrices are great but they mean that you eliminate people that may have great skills, just not the ones in the matrix. A matrix gives you people that are similar. Now let’s look at the member nominees. To get on the board through the member nomination process is much harder. The nominating committee nominees are vying for three spots between five to seven nominees. All they have to do is convince the nominating committee they’re board material, post a great candidate statement and they have a pretty good chance of getting elected. On the member side you have many people vying for one spot. You have to have a great candidate statement because you have to convince twenty members to support you on the strength of your statement or you have to have twenty friends who are members and talk them into supporting you. Then you get on a final slate of usually six to ten candidates vying for one spot, much worse odds. You have to campaign like crazy, write blogs, post in the election forum, use social media, and physically talk to people. You have to have well thought out opinions and be able to articulate them. You have to be stubborn and have a lot of stamina. Most of all you have to be passionate in order to convince people to vote for you. I’m not saying that some nominating committee candidates don’t have these attributes. I’m generalising big time here. I’ve seen good and bad directors come from both sides of the process but as a general rule I find the nominating committee gives us business minded or governance inclined directors and the member process gives us passionate dreamers and wild cards. I think this diversity is a very good thing. CIRA needs both but it needs a majority of the directors to be business and governance oriented with a smattering of dreamers. The system we have is very good at giving us this mix.

Does this mean that we have the perfect system? I don’t believe it does. When I first started looking at CIRA I couldn’t understand how this bizarre election system worked. I’d never seen anything like it. I ran with a platform of pushing for governance reform. I’ve changed my mind considerably. I’ve studied the system. I think it works well but there is always room for improvement. It is a very cumbersome, time consuming, resource intensive process. Our elections start sometime in February with the board picking the nomination committee and ends near the end of September. That’s an eight month long process. I’m sure some ways could be found to speed this up. The nominating process could be more open. I’d like to see all the material the nominating committee received from their final selections made public. This should include the exact same resume they submitted and a synopsis of the reasons the committee picked them. It would be helpful if the committee said things like the board told us they needed more financial strength and this person is a former CFO from such and such. I would like to see all the candidates’ conflict of interest statements. Currently there are no term limits for directors. I’d like to see a three term limit. I’d like to see a preference by the nominating committee for selecting a director returning for a second (not third) term as long as that director has a positive review from the board as a whole. It takes a while to learn how CIRA works. Someone that has spent the past three years learning and has the confidence of the board should not be let go of easily. After six years they’re on their own and shouldn’t be shown any preference. There are many little fine tunings like the examples I’ve given that could improve the process.

How should CIRA go about this? I think CIRA is already on the right track. A small subcommittee of the governance committee has been working on this for a year. Next year the corporations act will be changing and we’ll have to make some bylaw changes to comply. When these necessary changes are being done the members could also vote on some minor changes to improve the election process.

I’m running for the board of directors for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). If you have a .ca domain I’d like your vote.  In order to vote you have to be a member (which is free). To become a member go here to register. My election statement is here.

*** UPDATE ***
It has been pointed out to me that there are other governance models that may accomplish my goal of a board that has the needed skills but still allows for the wild card factor. If a model could be found that simplified the current process but guaranteed there was a reasonable method for a member to bypass the nominating committee that would be well worth considering.

I made a decision several years ago to live a simple life giving back to society as much as possible. I was a successful businessman at a crossroad in life. My business was a retail consumer electronics store in a small town. I had previously run several other successful small businesses. Business was about to change drastically. Wal-Mart and London Drugs were coming to town. Both are big retailers of consumer electronics. To compete I would have to change my business model to specialise in a niche market they didn’t serve. I wasn’t sure if the trading area had a large enough population to be successful in a niche market. I decided I’d had enough of the retail rat race. It had been very rewarding but I was at a point in life where quality of life was more important than quantity of life. I wanted to do something I enjoyed, was good at, and would allow me time to give back to a society that had been good to me. I started an IT consulting business specializing in the IT needs of small businesses. I had the training and knowledge. I was good at it. I knew small business having lived it for the past twenty years. At the same time I pursued a career as a speaker at IT conferences. This is not very profitable but it is very enjoyable. I downsized my life. I adopted a policy of living small, using less of the Earth’s resources. I’m not fanatical about it but I try to take out of the economy/ecology/society only what I need to live a fulfilling life.

After a few years the IT consulting was doing well enough that I could start giving back to society. I spent some time researching trying to decide where I could best do this. I have long believed that the Internet has the potential to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of the human race. Knowledge is power. The Internet has the potential to distribute that power to anyone that wants it. It has tremendous potential for both good and bad. I am very patriotic. I believe Canada is one of the freest societies in the world. I believe in a philosophy of leading by example. In 2008 I decided to get involved with Internet governance by running for the board of directors of CIRA. This dovetails with my beliefs and philosophy of leading by example and Canadian patriotism. CIRA leads by example by being an open, democratic organisation with an elected board. Many organisations involved with Internet governance do not have open elections. The public, members, and stakeholders have limited input into how many Internet governance organisations are governed. CIRA is a beacon of light that I believe other Internet governance organisations should look to. CIRA is Canadian by definition. CIRA works hard nationally and internationally to ensure the Internet continues to use free and open protocols. CIRA advocates the continued bottom up multi stakeholder model of Internet governance. In other words CIRA is a perfect fit with my beliefs.

Now that you know something about me and my beliefs I’m asking for your vote. Over the past three years I have made many valuable contributions to the board. I have consistently advocated for policies in line with my beliefs and will continue to do so when re-elected for another term. Thank you for taking the time to read about me and thank you for being involved with CIRA. Even though it is free monetarily to become a CIRA member there is some effort involved.

One of the most important components of a well functioning board is its size. CIRA’s board has fifteen directors with three of them being non-voting positions. This is considered quite large by most governance experts. My feelings are that it is a good size for CIRA. The board of a NFP should represent the stakeholders. CIRA has many stakeholders so a slightly larger board than normal works. The downside of a large board is that directors have to be diligent in making sure their voice is heard. This can lead to long discussions that tend to repeat the same points. The upside is that many points of view are available. That brings up what I think is the most essential ingredient of a good board – divergent opinions. I’ve been on smaller boards of six or seven people where everyone has very similar opinions. The board decides on a policy that makes perfect sense to them only to encounter a huge backlash when they find some stakeholder has a very different opinion. Divergent opinions can cause problems for a board though. It’s important that all directors respect one another. They have to be willing to consider opinions different from theirs and they have to know when their opinion is the divergent one and possibly let the majority rule. That said it is very important that directors do not go against their basic beliefs just because the majority doesn’t agree with them. It is a delicate balancing act.

I’ve been talking about the character of a board. That is very important but equally as important is the skillset of the board. In order to fulfill their mission and vision all not for profits need operating capital. They need to ensure this is available on an ongoing basis. Depending on the size of the organisation the board may be directly involved in this or they may have employees that run the business side of the organisation. CIRA is in the latter category with a very competent staff running the organisation. This means it is crucial that the board has the skills needed to judge how well the the business side of things is working. This is not easy to do when you’re not involved in the day to day operations. You have to rely on reports from the staff on how the staff is doing. It is very important that the majority of the board is comfortable with financial reporting and can read between the lines. Even the best staff, doing a great job, are people. It is human nature to accentuate the positive when someone is reviewing your work.

Another important skillset is specific knowledge of the business and industry the organisation is involved with. In CIRA’s case this is the Internet and specifically the domain industry. All directors should have some knowledge in these areas. Some directors should have detailed knowledge in these areas so they can inform the other directors if needed. Again, relying totally on staff won’t work no matter how good the staff are. The board is the organisation’s last line of defence against doing something that will endanger the ability of the organisation to fulfill its mission and vision. This doesn’t mean the board should constantly second guess and interfere with the day to day running of the organisation. It means the board needs the mix of skills needed to assess the staff’s plans and sometimes step in and ask – Are you sure? Can you explain that in more detail?

So, what does an ideal board member on a not for profit board look like. They have some business skills and the ability to read and understand financial reports. They have at least one specific skill in an area needed by the organisation. They have a working knowledge of the area or industry where the organisation participates. Their character includes integrity, confidence, and empathy. I think I have these skills and traits. This is from my candidate statement:

“I have a very thorough technical knowledge of the underlying technology of the Internet. This knowledge was gained through education and twenty years of practical experience in the field. I continue to seek out training on the latest technologies and work in the field.

I have an excellent knowledge of the domain industry. I gained this knowledge by research, attending industry conferences, ICANN meetings, and sitting on the CIRA board.

I have the financial and entrepreneurial skills gained from running several businesses. To start, grow, and manage a business requires a broad range of skills. I have successfully started and managed businesses where I am the only employee, businesses with thirty employees and multimillion dollar budgets, and others in between. I have worked in very large organisations as a ground level employee and as a mid-level manager. This varied experience has taught me what it takes financially and operationally to run an organisation of any size.

I have a broad range of not for profit board experience. I have eighteen years of combined experience serving on not for profit boards. I have chaired three boards, vice chaired four boards and chaired many committees. I have completed the Institute of Corporate Directors Not For Profit Governance Essentials program.

I have the time and the will to research issues before the board. I am able to commit the time needed to attend board and committee meetings. I have the empathy needed to understand and listen to opinions different from mine. I have the personality needed to work constructively with board members I may disagree with. I have the open mindedness needed to be able to see when I am in error and need to change my mind on an issue. I have the confidence needed to stick to my beliefs and make sure they are heard in the face of criticism. In short, I have the skillset, experience, and temperament needed for a director.“

My full candidate statement is here: https://elections.cira.ca/2011/nomcomcandidates/show/22/en

Your first question is probably – What does CIRA do? CIRA manages the .ca country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD). Now you’re probably asking – What the heck is a ccTLD? A top level domain is the characters on the right side of the last dot in an Internet name. This blog lives at www.kdbsystems.ca .ca is the top level domain, kdbsystems is the second level domain, www is the third level domain, and so on. My business site is at www.kdbsystems.com. In that case .com is the top level domain. Because .ca represents a country, namely Canada, it is called a country code Top Level Domain. Each country only gets one ccTLD. CIRA is a not for profit organisation that runs the .ca ccTLD under a contract with the Canadian government.

What’s involved in running .ca? First there is the registry. If you want an Internet domain for a web site or an email server or whatever you need a domain name. This has to be unique so that people can find it. Someone has to keep a database for each TLD with all the domain names, who registered them and how to find them on the Internet. Let’s walk through what happens when a business decides it wants a web site. They’re Canadian so they want a .ca domain. They contact a middleman called a registrar who checks that the domain name is not already registered to someone else. If it’s not the registrar for a fee contacts CIRA and pays CIRA to insert the data into the registry database. The business is now the proud owner of a .ca domain. They contact a web hosting company, often the registrar, who sets up a web site on a server that is connected to the Internet. This server has an IP address that is a series of numbers. People who want to access the web site have to know this IP address to find it. No one could remember all of these numbers so the Domain Name System (DNS) was devised. The DNS translates domain names, which are much easier to remember, to IP addresses so your computer can find the web site. CIRA manages the DNS for the .ca domain. When someone tries to find www.kdbsystems.ca their computer contacts a local DNS server, probably run by their Internet Service Provider. This DNS server probably doesn’t know where www.kdbsystems.ca is so it contacts the .ca DNS servers to find out. That’s a very simplified explanation of a complicated process. CIRA runs the .ca DNS servers as well as the registry database. As you can see CIRA is critical to the Internet in Canada. If CIRA were to stop operating people couldn’t access government and many business web sites. Any email address that ends in .ca wouldn’t be reachable. This could have very bad consequences if .ca quit working for even a few hours.

My full election statement is here. The short version is that I have the technical knowledge to know if things are going off course. I have the temperament needed to get along with other board members even if we have opposing views. I have the strength to stick to my principles when needed. I have the empathy needed to hear the other side of the story and understand it. I have the business knowledge needed to make sure CIRA is managed in a way that will ensure the needed finances are in place. Lastly, and I think most importantly. I believe the Internet is the single largest disruptive thing that has happened to the human race. As the Internet works now most of the people in the world have access to most of the collective knowledge of the human race. Disruption can be a force for good or evil. I’d like to see the good outweigh the evil. Part of CIRA’s mandate from the Canadian government is “to develop, carry out and/or support any other Internet related activities in Canada”. The other activities should be about keeping that balance on the good side. I have consistently championed this strategy during my term on the board and I’ll continue to champion it when elected for another term.

In upcoming posts I’ll expand on the challenges that CIRA faces, how I think CIRA should manage them, and more about the “other activities”.

In 2008 I was elected to the board of directors for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority for a three year term. That term is almost up and I’m standing for re-election. During my three years on the board as I gained knowledge of the domain industry, how the Internet works, DNS, ICANN, the IGF, ISOC, and more I realised that the world has come to rely on the Internet. For something that the world relies on its governance is very different from anything else I can think of. It is not well understood by people outside of those involved. There appears to be a struggle for control of it that could have profound consequences for all of us. Currently the Internet is governed by a very loose conglomeration of commercial interests, governments, special interest groups, and just plain people. ICANN arguably the most important Internet Governance organisation has what’s called a multi-stakeholder bottom up governance model. Anyone can attend an ICANN meeting. There are three a year and they move all over the globe. It’s free for anyone to register and attend but you do have to pay your own expenses. CIRA will be hosting one in Toronto in 2012. Once there you can attend almost any session. Very few are closed. There is a public forum where anybody can get up to the microphone and have their say. You can join special interest groups within ICANN and put forward policies through these groups. It is very chaotic and confused but somehow the Internet stays running. The network protocols used to connect and communicate with the Internet are free and open. No one controls them. All this chaos, confusion, and lack of control confound governments and many commercial interests. They want more regulation and control. Some governments want to censor what their citizens can see and do on the Internet. Some commercial interest groups want more control of commerce on the Internet. Some of the special interest groups want more regulation to protect the public from the governments and commercial interests. The public seems to just want to access all the cool stuff on the Internet, preferably as cheaply as possible. Right now there seems to be some sort of balance between all these divergent interests. The balance sways a bit but so far it is somewhere near the middle. I’d like to see it stay in the middle. To that end I’m going to use this blog to explore Internet Governance issues. Because I’m currently in the middle of trying to get re-elected to the CIRA board I’ll probably be blogging about that a lot. Because technology fascinates me there’ll definitely be posts about the technology of the Internet. Finally when I see something cool like Multipoint Server 2011 I’ll write about that.

Stay tuned my next post will be about the CIRA election.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. I’m getting married in New Orleans after the conference. And no Dee I didn’t forget. I was joking about that. I’m so excited about the marriage that it’s hard to remember I have actual work to do while in New Orleans. Great conference, a chance to meet up with some old friends, take in some great jazz, and then get married, what could be better than that?

The other cloud thing that would work in a very big way for small businesses is line of business (LOB) applications. These are a real pain point for most small businesses. They usually need a dedicated server. They’re usually hard to backup properly. They are a major pain to upgrade. Whenever you call for support invariably it’s your network, software, or hardware that’s at fault not the vendor’s application. If all the small business user had to do was point their browser to the app and logon they would be in LOB app heaven. They pay many thousands of dollars yearly for the current terrible support. They would gladly pay for this. The only problem would be a prolonged Internet outage. Some LOB apps that control local equipment wouldn’t work. I can think of many cases where it wouldn’t work but when it did it would be the best thing to happen for a small business since spreadsheets were invented. I’m pretty sure the vendors would love it as well. It would mean far less support problems for them.

I decided to bite the bullet and not worry about not being able to install Exchange 2007 after Exchange 2010 is installed. I’ve got good backups for my SBS 2003 server so it’s time to start. I’m going to start slow. I’m just installing the Client Access Role today. First I have to prepare the server. I went to the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant site, answered a few questions then downloaded a PDF file with basic instructions on how to proceed. I read over the Exchange stuff on TechNet once again just to be sure I hadn’t missed anything. I found a great site with a very quick guide to installing all the prerequisites. Thank you PowerShell and netometer.com. A quick check once again on the health of Active Directory and I was ready to go. I can’t stress enough that when installing any version of Exchange you need a healthy Active Directory. Next up was updating the Schema, Active Directory, and the domain. This all appeared to work without a hitch. I waited for the changes to replicate then ran the Exchange setup and picked the Client Access Role. It installed just fine. I exited the installation and checked the installation logs, event logs, and fired up the Exchange Management Console. Everything looked great. One tip I’d like to pass along is don’t install Exchange from the distribution media. Copy the media to a folder on the server you’re installing Exchange on. You can then copy any Exchange Rollups into the Update folder and they’ll get installed during the Exchange installation.

The next step involves installing a certificate. I haven’t decided if I’m going to use my own certificate or purchase one. I’m leaning towards the public cert. In any case I’ve got to get back to work that pays so I’m going to take a break here.

The next morning my daily report from the SBS 2003 server contained a surprise. There were over 2,000 errors in the Directory Service event log. The error was:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: NTDS General
Event Category: DS Schema
Event ID: 1136
Date: 4/6/2010
Time: 10:03:44 AM
User: NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON
Computer: SBS-SERVER
Description: Active Directory failed to create an index for the following attribute.
Attribute identifier: 2515870862
Attribute name: msExchObjectID
A schema cache update will occur 5 minutes after the logging of this event and will attempt to create an index for the attribute.
Additional Data
Error value: –1403 JET_errIndexDuplicate, Index is already defined

There were several AD attributes with this error every five minutes. A quick Google/Bing found the problem had to do with the regional settings. Both servers were set to the Canada region, Canadian English, and a US keyboard. That’s pretty much how I always set up Windows. Apparently this combination, and many others, can cause problems with AD updates. I reset everything to US, rebooted and the errors continued. Further searching found a needed registry change. I found it on the Microsoft support forums here. The value for US English is 0x409 Hex by the way. It took a while to find that as well. After another reboot all the errors stopped. I’m sure I could have figured out how to use Canadian English but I don’t really care. Setting everything in the domain to US regional settings actually makes many things work better. Lots of applications just assume US settings. Date sorts and displays are often borked up if you use anything other than US settings so I’m just going to live with Windows thinking I’m in the US J

SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 1)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 2)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 3)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 4)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 5) Coming soon

As part of the project I have to move the DHCP server from the SBS server to a new server. With Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise you get what is called one plus four licensing. You can install it on physical hardware. That’s the one license. If this installation is only used as a Hyper-V parent you can then install four child partitions with the same license. So far I’ve used two of these licenses, one for the domain controller and one for the future Exchange server. I want to run a Terminal Server for the third license. This leaves me with one spare license. I plan to experiment with Direct Access so I’ll probably need the last license for that. Long story short, DHCP would have to go on one of the existing servers. I decided to put it on the domain controller. During the changeover I’ll be running DHCP on the SBS server and the new domain controller. The reason for this is one or the other may be down for a while when making changes. This isn’t normally a big deal as long as none of the existing leases expire or no new computers get connected to the network. My problem is I have many different computers coming and going. I may have customer computers I’m working on that would need a new lease. This means two DHCP servers. I installed The DHCP server role on the new domain controller, configured both the existing DHCP on the SBS server and the new DHCP with the same scope but different exclusions so they wouldn’t be trying to give out the same addresses. Once finished I authorised the new DHCP server in Active Directory and logged off. The next morning there was a surprise waiting for me in the daily SBS report. One service was not running. I logged on to the SBS server and saw that DHCP was not running. I’d forgotten one of SBS’s quirks. If another DHCP server is running it will shut down its own DHCP server. A quick Bing/Google search found the registry change and all was well with DHCP running on both servers. One more checkpoint done on the migration from SBS 2003 to Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.

SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 1)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 2)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 3)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part  4)

The Server 2008 R2 domain controller has been running for a couple of days. Active Directory replication is working. DNS is installed and working. As a test I went into several mmc consoles on the SBS 2003 server and made some changes to Active Directory. The changes replicated to the 2008 R2 DC. I did the same thing on the 2008 R2 DC. I made some changes in DNS on both servers as well. All was good. As a bonus I found some orphans in both AD and DNS from when I was testing IPv6. I took this as an opportunity to clean up AD and DNS. I don’t know if any of these orphan entries would have hindered the Exchange migration but it’s always best to have AD as clean as possible in any case. Now that AD was ready it’s time to bring up a Server 2008 R2 virtual machine to run Exchange 2010 on. The latest white paper for 2008 R2 Hyper-V claims there is very little difference in performance between dynamic and static virtual disks with Hyper-V 2008 R2 so I decided to test this and installed Server 2008 R2 Enterprise into a virtual machine with 2 virtual CPUs, 4.5GB RAM, and a 127GB dynamic virtual IDE disk. The RAM may be a little light. The minimum for Exchange 2010 is 4GB. I made it 4.5 to be a little above. If that causes performance problems it’s easy to change later. The same applies to the number of CPUs. If the dynamic disk is a problem I can move the Exchange database to a different disk. I’ll probably end up doing that anyway as it’s not the best practice to locate the Exchange database, logs, etc. on the same drive as the OS. I installed Server 2008 R2 in the virtual machine then downloaded and installed all the Windows updates. Microsoft has some great tools to help with installing Exchange 2010. The first place I visited was the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant. This is a great tool that will walk you through many different Exchange deployment scenarios. I picked Upgrade from Exchange 2003, answered a few questions on the next screen, and got a step by step checklist of what needed to be done. It’s a great tool. One of the first steps is to make sure you have all the requirements in place to Install Exchange 2010. Another great tool is the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer. You need to download and install this tool. I installed it on the server I’m going to be running Exchange 2010 on. When you run it you have to specify a domain controller. I tried it with both domain controllers and got the same results. Different results here would be a sign that something was drastically wrong with AD. The report said I had to change the existing Exchange 2003 server to Native Mode and make a couple of registry changes on the server that was running Exchange. I did this, re-ran the scan, and was left with one warning. The warning was that during the Exchange 2010 installation the schema will be updated such that I would no longer be able to install an Exchange 2007 server in the domain. If I want the ability to do this I’d have to install an Exchange 2007 server before installing an Exchange 2010 server. That would be a lot of extra work. This made me pause. I’m not planning on installing any Exchange 2007 servers once the migration is complete. If something goes wrong however I had it in the back of my head that I could always just migrate from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 which includes Exchange 2007. If the schema change when installing 2010 precludes this I’ll have to re-think my upgrade path. I planned to halt the migration here for now anyway. Before I restart I’ll have to do some investigating of this issue. I can obviously restore my SBS 2003 server to the state before the schema is changed but if the migration takes a long time this would mess up the restore process. I’d have to restore the SBS 2003 server then restore the latest Exchange 2003 database. It’s not really that big of a deal but as I was going to pause here anyway I’ll spend some time thinking about this. Watch for the third instalment of this series once I ponder for a while.

SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 1)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 2)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part 3)
SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 Migration (Part4)