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Scandic, een grote europese hotelketen met ondermeer een hotel in Nijmegen, gaat gebruik maken van Microsoft Online Services. De organisatie onderzoekt momenteel de mogelijkheden van BPOS (met name Sharepoint Online en Exchange Online). Op basis daarvan wil ze haar standaard server kosten naar beneden brengen.
Below you'll find our SharePoint Online wish list:
Want to add something? Post a comment!!
While migration Procore (see Microsoft site for case study), one of our BPOS TAP clients, we ran into some interesting issues with SharePoint Online. Procore has phased out all their file servers. All data is moved to BPOS.
The first problem we ran into was the 50GB Site Collection limit within SharePoint online. The 50GB Site Collection limit is by design. The first time we tried to create a Site Collection which exceeded the 50GB limit we immediately ran into an error stating this was not possible. Please don't mix up Subsites with Site Collections. One Site Collection can contain as much Subsites as a company needs. However the 50GB site limit is cannot be superseded.
The second problem we ran into was that a Site Collection cannot contain any managed paths. While implementing SharePoint Online all sites are created as a root site without the possibility of creating either managed paths or using the Managed Paths which is generated by default in a SharePoint Server Standard implementation (the Sites Managed Path). If you need to create an environment which needs more than 50GB of data you should keep this in mind while architecting the solution. The only way the creation of a new site collection works is by creating a new Top level site within MOCP.
The third problem is the 50MB file size limit. People using SharePoint Online cannot upload documents of more than 50MB per file. Currently there is no solution or workaround. The SharePoint Online Product Managers today however told us that there might be a possibility that the 50MB size limit will be changed.
From a practical point of view of course there is a fourth problem. If a company is used to working with locally installed file servers, they are used to speed. Opening a file will only take a few seconds (this of course is dependent on file size). If the company stores all its data in a SharePoint Online environment their experience will change a lot. They'll need to transfer files between their computer and the online environment which inevitably will take a long time. In order to solve this problem we decided to use Colligo Reader (free), which allows them to have a copy of all SharePoint data offline. For power user we use Colligo Contributor which allows for synchronization of data.
Microsoft Nederlands heeft in voorbereiding op de komende lancering van BPOS in Nederlands op 1 april aanstaande een nieuwe productsheet uitgegeven. In deze productsheet zijn heel kort de verschillende voordelen van BPOS weergegeven.
Je kunt de productsheet hier bekijken:
Eerder al poste ik een filmpje over de zin en onzin van Twitteren. Het moet echter niet gekker worden. Jennifer Aniston verbreekt nu haar relatie omdat haar huidige (nu voormalige) partner een frequent Twitteraar (of Tweeter) is.
Op Woensdag 9 april zal ik een tweetal presentaties verzorgen op de IPON 2009. De IPON is de onderwijs en ICT vakbeurs en wordt gehouden in de jaarbeurs Utrecht.
In de eerste presentatie zal ik ingaan op de nieuwe versie van de Wortell Learning Gateway (de 2.0 versie). De Learning Gateway is door Wortell ontwikkelde template voor onderwijsinstellingen. Als een school of bestuur (PO of VO) gaat starten met SharePoint kunnen ze deze template gebruiken om direct een compleet ingerichte omgeving te krijgen. Deze kan dan naar eigen inzicht worden uitgebreid.
In de tweede presentatie (Donderdag om 4 uur) zal ik ingaan op vereenvoudigt PC beheer. Hierbij zal ik voornamelijk beschrijven welke middelen en mogelijkheden er allemaal zijn om computernetwerken die draaien op basis van Windows Server 2008 op een gemakkelijke manier te beheren. Daarbij zal ik met name de (gratis) tools van Microsoft bespreken voor bijvoorbeeld software virtualisatie. Daarnaast zal ik ingaan op beheer van laptops (NAP).
Wil je meer weten over de IPON kijk dan even hier: http://www.ipononline.nl
Het programma van de sessies is hier te downloaden: http://www.ipononline.nl/images/programma9.pdf
Helaas is wel het oude pand van Wortell te zien op Google Maps street view. Het nieuwe pand echter nog niet. Hiervoor kun je wel PhotoSynth gebruiken: http://photosynth.net/Search.aspx?query=wortell
Zojuist is er een nieuwe Casestudy over Wortell op de Microsot site gepubliceerd. In de Case study wordt de door Wortell ontwikkelde versie van de Learning Gateway behandeld. De eerste alinea:
Schools in the Netherlands often want to deploy education portals but lack the expertise and budgets to do so on their own. Wortell, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, helps schools achieve their educational and administrative goals with portals based on the Microsoft Learning Gateway framework. With specialized templates and customizations from Wortell, schools get comprehensive, cost-effective education portals with on-site or hosted deployments.
De hele casestudy is hier te lezen: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003903
Migrating Exchange mailboxes to Exchange online is a relatively straightforward process. After trying this in the testlab several times everybody should be able to migrate mailboxes.
A whole different issue however arises when migration mailboxes from an (externally) hosted environment to an Exchange online environment. Most hosters will not allow you to install software on their servers which is needed to migrate mailboxes. Next to this the current Active Directory connector synchronizes all users in the Active Directory to the Exchange Online environment in order to use GAL synchronization.
Although hosters hate to see you leave to another hoster (which Microsoft is with the BPOS offering), they are normally helpful with exporting your data. However, since this is not always the case, you should check into this when signing up with a hosting provider for Exchange.
At one of our clients this is currently the case. They currently have 70 mailboxes at a hosting environment which need to be migrated to Exchange Online.
In order to do this we examined the following scenarios:
Use AD synchronization tools
Using the actual synchronization tools (which are found under the Migration tab) is by far the best option. This scenario will only take an hour or so (apart from the actual copying process). The biggest pitfall is however that most hosters will not allow you to install software on their hosting environment. Therefore this is not really an option.
Use hoster exported mailboxes and import them automatically
In this scenario we will set up an temporary Exchange 2007 environment and import the exported data into this Exchange 2007 environment. After that we will use the automated import tools to import the mailboxes.
Exporting mailboxes from an Exchange 2007 environment is actually very simple. This article on technet explains which steps need to be taken to export Exchange mailboxes: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266964.aspx.
Although the article describes the steps, normally a hoster should supply all Exchange mailboxes so you wouldn't have to worry about these steps.
After all mailboxes are present an Exchange environment should be set up in which all new mailboxes can be imported. In order to do this you would need an Active Directory Server and an Exchange Server. The software is available via the following links:
After the Exchange 2007 environment has been set up an import could be done of the earlier exported mailboxes. The following powershell command should be used in order to do this:
Import-Mailbox –Identity hew –PSTFolderPath: c:\PSTs\hew.pst
Please note that the users have to available on the environment and a mailbox must already be present.
Because this process can also take a long time there is also a way to import mailboxes in bulk. In order to do this you could have a look at the following tutorial: http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/exchange-2007-sp1-mailbox-management-part1.html
After this process has been completed the normal Exchange synchronization tasks can be performed.
The time needed to perform this scenario:
Note: You can only perform this scenario if the hoster supplies you with the actually exported Exchange mailboxes.
Use hoster exported mailboxes and import them manually
If you don't have the experience or knowledge to set up an Exchange environment, importing all PST files manually is also an option. However in order to do this you would need all usernames and passwords for the users you will be importing. Next to that all users will have to be logged on at least once and their automatically created passwords will have to be changed.
Next to that you will need to sign into the environment and need to perform multiple actions by hand.
In order to import PST files by hand perform the following actions:
These steps must be repeated for all users.
The time needed to perform this scenario:
User operated import / export
In this scenario the user performs the actual task of exporting and importing mailbox data. This scenario will be the quickest scenario for an administrator but will take by far the most time for users. However this scenario could be used not only for scenario's in which e-mail is hosted by a Hoster but also in scenario's where e-mail is stored in Outlook 2007 and another mailserver is used.
Because BPOS will use a different profile for Outlook 2007 it is not possible to just copy all mail from the old Outlook 2007 profile to the BPOS Outlook 2007 profile. Therefore the user will need to export data to a pst file, after which this pst file can be imported into the new BPOS Outlook 2007 profile.
Exporting e-mail to PST
First the user will have to export all mail to a PST file. In Outlook 2007 this task can be performed as following:
Importing e-mail to PST
Start up Outlook 2007 with the BPOS profile
The time needed to perform this scenario:
Note: Some users will probably need help using this option.
As you see importing mailboxes can give you quite some headaches. I personally think using the temp Exchange environment is by far the best option.
Jon Stewart van de Daily Show legt in deze video uit wat twittering is en veel belangrijker waarom Twittering zo belangrijk is. De zin en onzin vn Twittering!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
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