Here are the basics on “How to change your password in Office 365”
1. First you will need to log into the Office 365 website (http://login.microsoftonline.com)

2. Next, Select Outlook at the top of the page to access the “Outlook Web App”
3. After you have your Outlook page open, look at the Upper right section of the page you will see an Options drop down menu. Select See All Options from the menu

4. On the screen below select Change your Password,

5. Follow the rest of the on screen instructions and press SAVE.

Changing your password is a good thing to do routinely and helps to prevent unneeded stress in the unlikely case your account gets breached, But things like that do happen.
My final word of advice on passwords is never EVER use the same password for Facebook that you use for anything else. In my experience this is the top reason that email accounts get hacked and your friends and family start telling you that they are getting emails from you about Viagra or any other unwanted info.

Written by: Joe Brummett

Edina, MN – 05/17/2013 – Emergent Networks announced today it has achieved Premier Certification from Cisco®. To earn Premier Certification, Emergent Networks had to meet standards for networking competency, service, support and customer satisfaction set forth by Cisco.

“Achieving the Cisco Premier Certification is an essential step for Emergent Networks to expanding our portfolio of best in class products and solutions for our clients. It was a logical step in our company growth to add the Cisco product portfolio to our mix.” Jamie Anderson – President

As a Cisco Premier Certified Partner Emergent Networks demonstrates a range of technical expertise. To achieve Cisco Premier Certification Emergent Networks was required to achieve the Cisco Express Foundation Specialization. This specialization includes tests on technical competency in the integration of basic routing and switching, wireless LANs, and security technologies. In addition, Emergent Networks was required to integrate a base level of Cisco Lifecycle Services into their offerings and demonstrate measurably high levels of customer satisfaction based on independently audited customer satisfaction surveys.

The Cisco Resale Channel Program provides partners with the training required to build sales, technical and Cisco Lifecycle Services skills. Cisco resale partner certifications—Gold, Silver, Premier and Select—represent an increasing breadth of skills across key technologies and a partner’s ability to deliver integrated networking solutions. Cisco resale partner specializations—Master, Advanced and Express—reflect an increasing depth of sales, technical and service expertise in particular technologies.

About Emergent Networks
Emergent Networks is a full service technology consulting company that provides business infrastructure planning and design, ongoing network support and managed offerings. Our focus on building highly available systems, with business continuity and disaster recovery in mind from the start, have set us apart as one of the premier IT services companies in the Midwest.

We leverage current and emerging technologies that are relevant to the client’s needs to design and implement a complete solution for our customers, while keeping the bottom line in mind. We offer solutions designed to your specifications in the areas of data storage systems, networks, connectivity, security, data backup & restore, data replication, archiving and disaster recovery. We will fully implement the solution or provide any level of assistance needed. We can work with your in house IT staff to complete that long list of projects. Emergent Networks also provides managed services, managed backup, and email encryption from our SSAE 16 certified data center.

Cisco, Cisco Systems and the Cisco logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems Inc. in the United States and certain other countries.

Currently, with the speed at which desktops and applications proliferate, enterprise organizations are having a hard time keeping up with management of these entities in their environments. The users must hit the trifecta of variables to have a good experience. They need to be who they are, they need to be on the right computer, and they need the correct applications installed. In the past, the solution was seemingly to up the amount of IT resources at your disposal in an effort to stay on track with the rapidly changing infrastructure. I am not saying that this is the wrong approach; in fact, it has worked for a very long time. So why change it?

I think the very nature of technology is one of recursive advancement in the field of practice. So, why are we trying to ‘fix’ a business need by adding more resources and not trying to tackle the actual issue at hand? Maybe it starts by identifying the issue at hand. In my mind, the current issue with IT infrastructure is that we “stopped trying to proactively advance the level of service we are providing to our employees and shifted our focus to trying to keep up with the ever-increasing pace of technology.”

What resulted from that shift of focus is that we lost sight of what we are really trying to accomplish, providing advancement in the level of service in which we are providing to our employees to accommodate for the business need. No self-valuing IT staff member wants to be written off as a ‘tech guy’ that is trying to do his best to keep up with all of this technology.

So what do we do to try to fix this broken system?
We look at new technologies that can enable us to stop the madness of trying to control an autonomous desktop environment and that allow us to shift focus back to the true need of the organization.

Okay, we have identified the problem and have a theory about how we can fix our broken IT model. We want to move forward with new technology that transitions us to the new model of doing business in IT. In the transition we need to develop a new ideology of business-need-driven technology. We need to change our mind set of what we perceive as a desktop. Currently, a desktop is a monolithic brick that sits under your desk. Its job in life is to host an operating system and that in turn, supports the applications that you need to do your job. What we set out to achieve by using products like XenDesktop is to change the structure of computing and change how you think about it. What we want to do is deliver a fast, secure desktop as a service from the datacenter that has the tools and applications installed that allow you to do your job well enough to drive the business forward, nothing more, and nothing less.

Citrix Provisioning Services is the catalyst that this change needs by enabling the streaming of a master image with Windows 7 to any number of virtual or physical computers in your organization. This image can be configured with the applications that the employees need to do their job. Every night, the computers reboot and in the morning the users are presented with a persistent desktop that is the same today as it was yesterday. All write data is dissuaded and the desktops grab a fresh image ever night they reboot. Using tools like Citrix profile management and XenDesktop Personal Vdisks, we can achieve the perception that the users information is staying on the desktop like it does today, but behind the scenes we are redirecting that content to a centralize network location that IT can manage very effectively.

By successfully implementing XenDesktop with Provisioning Services, we can effetely eliminate the variables in your environment that caused the chaos in the first place. This method of desktop management has been proven to drive employee productivity up because the users do not experience the daily issues that keep them from doing their job. They can access their highly available desktop securely from anywhere in the world and have the peace of mind that they know it will work right. It is also proven to lower the cost of doing business in IT by eliminating the resources needed to keep with your ever-changing environment.

Let your users hit the trifecta upon every log in!

Written by: Peter Petersen

She believes in being a trusted advisor for her clients.  Consistent and honest dialogue is the key to creating long lasting strategic partnerships.  In her spare time, Carrie likes to spend time with her two rescued pit bulls, cook and garden.  She is also an avid Green Bay Packers fan.  Emergent Networks is pleased to have Carrie join our team and look forward to the great work we will be able to do in the future for our clients. 

He graduated in 2002 for the University of Utah with a Bachelors of Science in Human Development and Family Studies. He was the Center Director at Sylvan Learning Center for 6 years and has 4 years of experience in outside sales selling business hardware and software.  He has a strong belief that consistent communication has always been the key to not only solve problems, but prevent them from happening in the first place. He maintains a high sense of urgency and follow-up with clientele and enjoys collaborating with teams.  Emergent Networks is pleased to have Bret join our team and look forward to the great work we will be able to do in the future for our clients.

Jason Wieland has joined the Emergent Networks team as a Unified Communications engineer. He will be primarily focused on the design and implementation of unified communications solutions that include voice, video, and networking.  Jason has 12 years of IT experience.

He graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor degree in Computer Information Science from Minnesota State University in Mankato and had been working in the financial services industry as an IT Manager.  Jason joins Emergent Networks with a broad understanding of IT delivery, security, and continuity. Emergent Networks is pleased to have Jason join our team and look forward to the great work we will be able to do in the future for our clients.

When you enable pool pairing the secondary pool holds a copy of the CMS database, information on conferences etc. and in the event of a disaster the users will automatically fail over.  It is no longer required for users to log out and back in to move to fail to another pool.  Please note that it can take up to 5 minutes before presence is working properly.

In addition to providing DR, two paired pools can also be set as backup registrars for each other.  In Lync 2013 this is a 1:1 relationship only.

Lync 2013 does not provide DR support to users homed on a survivable branch appliance.  If a front end server pool that serves as a backup to SBA users will go into resiliency mode.  Another reason to forgo the SBA and put in a Lync 2013 server for sites over 25 or 30 users.

Bill holds many technical certifications as well as vast experience and knowledge of how to architect technology solutions for businesses. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor degree in Computer Science in 2003 and has been developing his skills ever since. Emergent Networks is pleased to have Bill join our team and look forward to the great work we will be able to do in the future for our clients.

The majority of devices IT departments are encountering are an influx of iOS and Android run smartphones and tablets as well as products from Microsoft, Blackberry and other vendors. The primary use of these personal devices in the workplace is to access company email, which could contain company/customer information and therefore the ability to control the personal device to protect the customer data and other sensitive information becomes a necessity. You must ask yourselves, will you allow employees to connect their personal devices to the company resources. What are the possible positives and negatives? What additional IT resources will we need to manage and secure these personal devices? What applications are my employees installing and how can I protect the device from a breach? A mobile device management (MDM) solution can be used to manage BYOD and internal users can be required to meet security requirements set by the company’s MDM solution.

A mobile device management solution normally is software that secures, monitors and supports mobile devices deployed across multiple operators, service providers and enterprises. MDM solutions do not need to be limited to BYOD devices, but can also be company-owned devices. A strong MDM solution can reduce support costs and business risks and optimize the functionality and security of the mobile devices accessing your network. Some basic features of MDM are standard in Microsoft Exchange 2007 and above including:

• Pin enforcement and timeout locking
• Remote wipe/lock functionality

If you have greater security needs then you will have to look into 3rd party mobile device management vendors. Some of the advanced features that are included in most 3rd party MDM solutions include:

• Asset inventory – allows the bank to ensure all applications installed on devices meet defined usage policies.
• GPS tracking – can find where a device is based on global positioning
• Application Deployment and management
• Device Encryption

Now that your company has decided to allow BYOD into your office the next step the IT department needs to take is to develop a comprehensive BYOD policy that outlines what is and is not allowed to be done while linked to the company network. For smart phones and tablets you must outline/ restrict the types of applications that are installed on the devices to ensure the safety of your networks and customer information. Here are links to a couple BYOD Policy examples:

• http://ow.ly/efQMl 
• http://ow.ly/efQR9

Also with the BYOD policy you should identify whether utilizing a mobile device management software solution is required to meet your security policies. BYOD can be a great way to empower your employees to work the way they want, but you must perform due diligence and lay the ground work to have a successful BYOD implementation. If everyone understands what is expected and required for them to utilize their own devices while accessing company resources, then you eliminate potential issues of allowing BYOD within your infrastructure. Predefining the tools, policies and procedures necessary is imperative to introducing a successful and secure BYOD strategy without anxiety.

“We are getting ready to consolidate all our older databases onto a new system. My question is does SQL 2008 need drives configured to one type of RAID for the databases, another type of RAID for the logs, and another type of RAID for the backups? I’m hoping we can simplify the storage with SQL 2008 so we can better utilize our available space. None of our databases are large or heavily utilized. The biggest would be just a few gigabytes. Most are less than a few hundred megabytes.”

An answer to this question takes into account more than just best practices. It involves budget, redundancy needs, RTO/RPO, how heavily the system is used, the amount of disk needed, etc. As much as I love tech stuff & over-engineering things, in the end it’s all about the customer. 

Some clues emerge from their statement:

• “Consolidate onto a new system… better utilize available space”
• “Hoping we can simplify” 
• “None of our databases are large or heavily utilized”

Their client profile proves those statements out. Their data is certainly mission critical (no one can afford to lose data), but their requirements do not include having the absolute highest performing system at all costs.

Aside: Before we go any further here are 2 terrific articles that explain RAID levels. The diagrams are especially good. I have a hard time envisioning the difference between RAID 1+0 (10) vs. RAID 0+1, but these web pages explain it very succinctly.

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/08/raid-levels-tutorial/ 
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/10/raid10-vs-raid01/

In a perfect world, we could all use RAID 10 for everything. It is the best performing, most fault-tolerant layout of all. But it is expensive and makes the most sense for mission critical and/or heavily utilized servers.

Here are common guidelines:

• Place SQL Server Data files and the Log files onto separate disks.
• Data files can be RAID 5. If they are constantly updated and/or get a large volume of data bytes updated – then RAID 1 or 10 is a good option
• Log Files work best as RAID 1 or 10.
• If you physically separate out the tempdb – it should be on RAID 1 or even on unprotected disk. (tempdb gets re-created every time the SQL Server stops and starts).
• Backup files can be RAID 5. These need to go off-site on a daily basis.

Now, given what the customer said (small databases and low utilization), if they standardized on RAID 5 for all of their storage needs – they’ll be just fine.

In my opinion – the most important details for any customer to remember have nothing to do with RAID levels. They are:
(a) The separation of data and log files
(b) That SQL Server backups are taking place and are rotating off-site. ***

On a side note: Do not EVER EVER let someone talk you out of SQL Server backups. Glenn Berry, in his spectacular free e-book “SQL Server Hardware Choices Made Easy,” phrases this much more eloquently than I ever could…

“RAID is no substitute for SQL Server backups
Never, never, never let anyone, whether it is a SAN vendor, a server admin from your Operations team, or your boss, talk you into not doing SQL Server backups as appropriate for your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) metrics. I cannot emphasize this point enough! Regardless of any pressure to which you are subjected, you must stand your ground. As the old saying goes, “If you don’t have backups, you don’t have a database.“