Small Business Server 2008 Backups

I just watched Sean Daniels' video on some of the new SBS 2008 features, where he gives a sneak peek of the new backup procedure. He mentions that it is snapshot-based using VSS and geared towards (multiple) external USB/FireWire drives. This brought up a few immediate concerns for me:

1. It sounds like it could re-introduce some of the hassles that differential and incremental backups used to pose for many tape users. My understanding was that SBS tried to remove this complexity by enforcing daily full backups.
2. External drives are generally IDE/SATA based and have a relatively high failure rate (often due to poor cooling). What happens when one fails? What if it’s the one that contains your very first backup?

I'll post the answers to these questions as soon as I have them...

UPDATE: In response to my questions, Sean has been kind enough to start a FAQ here: http://sbs.seandaniel.com/2008/03/small-business-server-2008-backup-q.html.

The short version is that both of these issues have been addressed by including a full backup on each bacup drive from which the incremental backups on the same drive are calculated. Only one good drive is required for a complete restore.

SQL 2005 Express SP2

I recently had some issues installing SP2 for SQL 2005 Express on one of the servers I manage. The installation appeared to complete without incident, however, at every update check I was told that I still needed to install this critical update again.

I tried several times, expecting that my never-waning persistence would fix the problem, but no luck. I even downloaded the update and installed it manually - still no change. I reviewed the installation logs but found no errors. I verified the file versions and everything appeared to be updated. I finally resorted to calling Microsoft's Professional Support Services and with Bob's help, discovered that this was simply a matter of an incorrect registry entry.

The "Version" and "Patch" values under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Setup were not updated during the SP2 installation, and were incorrectly set to 9.1.2047 rather than to 9.2.3042.00. Manually updating the values and re-running the Microsoft Update detect cycle resolved the problem.

I can't be sure whether this was the root problem, or just a symptom of something bigger, but so far everything is working as expected. Hopefully this saves someone else a few minutes.

Baffling Error Messages

I always tell my very wonderful, yet fairly computer illiterate wife to be very careful of suspicious looking messages and prompts while browsing the Internet, especially ones with poor English or unexpected requests. Being an unusually cautious user, she often asks me what to do when she encounters something she hasn't seen before. One day last week she showed me her laptop and asked me what to do with this one:

Since the only option is an OK button, my first instinct was to just go ahead and click it, but due to the strange wording of the message I was second guessing myself this time. Was this a cleverly disguised attempt to install some sort of spyware?

Only after I Googled the error on another machine did I trust that clicking the OK or close buttons would not bring the otherwise perfect system to a grinding halt. It turns out that this is simply a generic error message from Picasa Web Albums, but without any context and with the odd choice of wording, it could easily be confused for one of those "suspicious" prompts that my wife has sworn never to click on without a second opinion.

Google, if you're reading this, please consider changing this behavior to avoid adding yet another layer of confusion for the average Internet user who is already overburdened with so many other baffling messages.