Tablemaker's questions

Been recently playing around with different options for management of my servers. One of these is WSUS.

Getting a beginning list of updates was simplistic enough (though, the list is a bit...long) but a question of terms comes into play.

MS uses the term Supersede when describing older updates that have been covered by a newer patch/service pack. But does this mean I can just flat out decline all updates that are superseded?

Or is there a pitfall with this attitude going forth due to poor terms or implementation on WSUS' part?

If so, is there a best way to identify when this is a poor idea for updates (declining all updates of Office 2003 and just installing SP3), or is it a matter of manually going through each update (making sure every update is installed preceding SP3)?

My company currently has only a Covad T1 that connects the main office to the internet. This line is mainly for our billing office (located across the state) to connect to us for our Terminal Server. Our future plans for our main office include having a company E-Mail Server as well as a Web Site for employee access, applications, information, PR, etc. Our normal day to day internet access doesn't include much besides a GPS program(which gets replaced by google maps if it goes down, which it does a lot), various people in the office using their personal(professional) email, streaming music, typical office business use with nothing too critical relying on the actual internet and a majority of our connections are for internal use. With our future plans in mind my question breaks down to some parts.

• What are the steps (after figuring out who we're going with, what package, etc) in order to get a cable line working with a T1 in order to have the T1 as a back-up. I have done some research and either I'm more terrible at searching than I thought or there is no concrete documentation on this.

• What kind of bandwidth should I spec out or expect to get by adding in these features in the future for our business. I don't expect facebook level traffic but we do have a huge contract with the local hospitals (we do all of their medical transport) and the company is well known in the area so I'm not quite sure what to expect as it will mostly be local (by local think NJ, PA, DE, I expect nothing should be coming from beyond that area)

• And also, who do you think has the best support or way of going about this process and keeping a reliable cable connection working? But also allows a back-up T1 to kick in should anything go wrong. Options here include Comcast, Verizon, and a few local companies that probably just work off of them.

I should also add that the only guaranteed time the company needs to be connected to the internet is for our billing office which is between 8A-4:30P M-F so this is more for convenience than anything (downloading updates is a nightmare on the network, even during off-hours) and nightly downtime on the cable line is a non-issue.

We currently have a single SQL server (2005, on a Windows server 2003 machine) with 3 DBs on it that I would like to just straight copy so that I can run some test on them for an upgrade. I don't think I can do this with the copy DB wizard as I am running my test servers on VMs and do not have them properly networked. I also cannot take this DB down as it needs to be up 24/7 for the company. So what I'm asking is, is there any way to just straight copy the DBs and then import them directly into a different installation of SQL server (2005 or 2008, running tests on both) without taking the DB down or corrupting anything by accident. and having them work as if nothing had happened on a different machine?

I don't quite understand the differences between the two besides the obvious price differences. What does each offer over the other?

Can anyone give a real description of a blade server and what it's advantages are besides space? Are there any disadvantages? And also, do you think smaller companies (think around maybe 4-5 actual servers) should invest in them or stick with the standard rack-mount with servers inside the rack?

new here, greetings and such.

My problem is relatively simple, but the situation is a tad odd. Currently, I have just been hired on to improve (essentially fix) a server room for a health care dispatcher. However, their server room is in shambles. Everything works, but it's a matter of I don't know what is going to break first. They have just recovered from a 10-day data loss from their SQL server (the main server that keeps everything they need for day-to-day operation). The server is a custom built, running Windows '03 with SQL '05 and needs to be upgraded badly. However, their back-up system is also a problem because they have everything essential on 4 tapes, one of which has failed already (the reason for the crash and missing those 10 days). Everything I have priced out for a new SQL server as well as a disk back-up appliance from dell. Both costs are over $10K and I know for the moment, I can only get away with getting one or the other.

After all that background, my question to you folks is. Which should I get first? A new server that controls the whole company, or a better back-up solution to ensure nothing is lost? And also, how would I go about convincing management of buying one of these items. I have a nice case prepared, ready to show how each of these are important to the operation. I just feel a few more points that maybe I did not think of would help as well.