Author: Ward

Microsoft Office 365 Jump Start

The Microsoft Office 365 Jumpstart series provides an excellent perspective of the overall value Office 365 provides to modern organizations in terms of productivity, access, familiarity, security, control and reliability.

Exchange Video’s from TechEd North America 2011

Some interesting video’s from TechEd North America 2011 about Exchange 2010 Smile

  • EXL302 Archiving and Discovery in Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 and Exchange Online | Krish Sundaresan
  • EXL306 Best Practices for Virtualization of Microsoft Exchange 2010 | Jim Lucey, Jeff Mealiffe
  • EXL307 Load Balancing with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 | Andrew Ehrensing
  • EXL309 Microsoft Exchange Online in Microsoft Office 365: Migration Case Study | John Logan, Danny Kim, Ann Vu
  • EXL310 Microsoft Exchange Online in Microsoft Office 365: Simple Migration Live! | Ram Poornalingam
  • EXL311 Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office 365: How to Set Up a Hybrid Deployment | Jim Lucey
  • EXL312 Designing Microsoft Exchange 2010 Mailbox High Availability for Failure Domains | Ross Smith IV
  • EXL313 Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Tips and Tricks | Scott Schnoll
  • EXL322 Microsoft Exchange Online: Unified Messaging in Microsoft Office 365 | Michael Wilson
  • EXL324 Top 10 Insights on Development of Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 against Microsoft Office 365 | Albert Kooiman, Robin Thomas
  • EXL326 What’s New in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2: Featuring GAL Segmentation | Greg Taylor
  • EXL327 Real-World Site Resilience Design in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 | Robert Gillies
  • EXL401 Exchange Server 2010 High Availability Management and Operations | Scott Schnoll

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012 Beta 1 Available

Microsoft has just released as a public beta the newest version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012 with a few important updates:

  • Supporting System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012.
  • Using Lite Touch Installation (LTI), great improvements in the client side look-n-feel.
  • Also for LTI, behind-the-scenes enhancements for partitioning, UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), and user state migration.
  • Some minor bugs fixed.

MDT 2012 Requirements

Same as MDT 2010:

  • Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) 2.0. You can download it from here.
    Note: The download page indicates that the WAIK version is “1”; but don’t worry, the actual version is 2.0.
  • MSXML 6.0
  • PowerShell.
  • .Net Framework 3.5 SP1. Available for download here.
    Note: Even though .Net Framework 2.5 SP1 is not a requirement for MDT 2010 installation; one of its features, User-Driven Installation (UDI), does requires the latest Microsoft Framework installed.

MDT 2012 Look-n-Feel

For what I’ve seen so far, the user experience of the Deployment Workbench console is pretty much the same.

mdt2012a01

mdt2012a02

MDT 2012 Beta 1 Download

The beta is available in this link from Microsoft Connect,

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) 6.0 Beta: Accelerate the adoption of Microsoft private and public cloud platforms

Planning your journey to the cloud just got a bit easier. The next release of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit—version 6.0 Beta—includes assessment capabilities to evaluate workloads for both public and private cloud platforms. With MAP 6.0 Beta, you now have the ability to identify workloads and estimate the infrastructure size and resources needed for both Windows Azure and Hyper-V Fast Track. Also new to MAP 6.0 Beta is the Office 365 client assessment, enhanced VMware inventory, and Oracle schema discovery and reporting. Expanded assessment and discovery capabilities from MAP help you streamline planning for your next migration project. Plan what’s next with MAP.

New features and benefits from MAP 6.0 Beta release help you:

· Analyze your portfolio of applications for a move to the Windows Azure Platform

· Accelerate planning to private cloud with Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track onboarding

· Identify migration opportunities with enhanced heterogeneous server environment inventory

· Assess your client environment for Office 365 readiness

· Determine readiness for migration to Windows Internet Explorer 9

· Discover Oracle database schemas for migration to SQL Server

Download the beta materials on Connect:http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=219165

Kemp LoadMaster Sizing Guide for MS Exchange 2010

Kemp released a cool tool: LoadMaster Sizing Guide for MS Exchange to see which of our products is best for you.

Some info about Kemp:
KEMP LoadMaster combines versatility with ease-of-use to speed deployment (see our step-by-step guidelines in the LoadMaster Deployment Guide for Load Balancing MS Exchange 2010) of the complete portfolio of advanced messaging applications and protocols used by Exchange 2010, including Outlook Web Access, Outlook Anywhere, ActiveSync, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP and RPC Client Access (Native MAPI). With built-in SSL acceleration and/or overlay, the LoadMaster offloads a key source of CPU drain to improve the capacity of Client Access Servers. Layer 7 healthchecking at the LoadMaster ensures that should one of the servers become inaccessible, the load balancer will take that server off-line, while automatically re-routing and reconnecting users to other functioning servers. Not quite ready to make the move to Exchange 2010? KEMP LoadMasters integrate seamlessly with earlier versions of Exchange as well.
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Screenshot from de sizing tool:

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ActiveSync Random Password Prompts Fixed

Some users were getting random prompts for passwords in ActiveSync on Windows Mobile 6.1 & 6.5 en Windows Phone 7.  Environment: Exchange 2007, and TMG and Kemp Load balancers, but this problem showed up months after changing ISA 2006 to TMG.  It seemed random.  The error on ActiveSync was the generic:

Error:
please log in access was denied 0×85010002

In the TMG Monitoring you would see a denied connection on your ActiveSync rule with this status:

12239 The server requires authorization to fulfill the request. Access to the Web server is denied. Contact the server administrator.

I tested with Windows Mobile Emulator from outside the firewall and was able to reproduce the error within hours (just letting it sit there).

I first thought this was the HTTP session timeout that changed with the Kemp Loadbalancers.

I poked around the web listener settings some more and noticed the timeout settings for forms authentication were set (this same web listener was used for OWA).  TMG is supposed to be smart enough to not apply any of the forms auth settings to clients that don’t support it (falling back to basic auth as with ActiveSync).

The forms auth timeout was indeed affecting ActiveSync. To find it, look for the web listener of your ActiveSync rule, go to properties>Forms tab>Advanced> and make sure “apply session timeout to non-browser clients” is unchecked.

ISA Web Listener Advanced Form Options

Thinapp Error: Target .dat does not exist or is not data container because it does not have a ReadOnlyData= Setting

I had a problem with a Thinapp Capture: Target .dat does not exist or is not data container because it does not have a ReadOnlyData= Setting

IMAGE

The executable "chemiekaarten 2011.exe" links to a primairy datacontainer "Chemiekaarten.dat". Deze wordt niet gevonden in package.ini

Delete the following rule Shortcut= after [chemiekaarten 2011.exe] at package.ini  and add the follow ing ReadOnlyData=bin\Package.ro.tvr.

Thanks to my college Edwin

Windows Phone app for the Exchange Team Blog

The Exchange Team Blog” app for your Windows Phone. You can download it from here or directly from the Marketplace on your Windows Phone.

The app allows you to read our blog posts on the go. Some notable features are:

  • Favorite posts you love and refer them quickly
  • Follow our tweets from the same app
  • Quickly filter and read posts by tags/categories
  • Send us your suggestions
  • Share posts with your social networks

Here are some screenshots:

Source: The Exchange Team Blog

System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Doesn’t Detect Tape Drives In Library

I’ve used System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) since the 2007 beta, primarily for SharePoint and SQL backups & Exchange Backups.  At a customer they have one  DPM server which backs up to disk and additionally to a HP MSL2024 Tape Library for long term protection. The runs Windows Server 2008 R2 with DPM 2010 since its release.

After updating de DPM Server with SP1 for Windows 2008 R2 en updated the drivers. I had some issues with DPM. What I found was that although DPM installed correctly it couldn’t see  all the tape drives in the VTL. All the tape drives were visible in Device Manager and none were showing errors. I use the RECOMMENDED * HP StorageWorks Tape Drivers for Windows

In the DPM console under Management -> Libraries, the library was listed, but Total Drives was 0, rather than the expected 2. The DPM console showed the following error:

image

I followed the instructions to remap the drives here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb795782.aspx. The DPMLA.xml file produced by the tool was correct, showing the correct SCSI IDs, serial numbers etc. but DPM still couldn’t see the drives.

I found the solution to the problem on the DPM forum here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dpmtapebackuprecovery/thread/1d599443-7bf6-437a-bf12-52847fa7c8e5/ What I did is update the tape drive driver to the Inbox LTO driver as described on the forum and below:

1) Open device manager
2) Locate the tape drive
3) Right-click and look at the properties.
3) Under the DRIVER tab, select UPDATE DRIVER
a) Select the Install from list or specific location (Advanvced) – next.
b) Select Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install. – next.
c) Uncheck the Show comtabile hardware checkbox.
d) Highlight LTO under the manufacturer.
e) Highlight the LTO tape drive under model – then next.
f) This should install the Microsoft ltotape.sys driver.
4) Rescan the tape library in the DPM console – try to take another backup.

After following the above steps, all the two tape drives were visible in the DPM console.

DPM 2010 Fix: Disk based recovery points are not deleted as per retention goals

When using System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 or 2010 (DPM) to backup your production servers, you might encounter a situation where the recovery point volumes for your protected data source keep running out of space and the number of days that DPM has recovery points for exceeds the desired retention range. If you run vssadmin list shadows, or run diskshadow.exe followed by list shadows all command, you can see that there are more shadow copies than there should be based on the desired retention goal. Also, if you manually run the DPM Power Shell pruneshadowcopies2010.ps1 script, no recovery points are removed, but there are no errors.

So what’s going on here? Most likely this is happening because the NetBIOS name of the DPM server is longer than 15 characters.

Resolution

To resolve the problem perform the following to truncate the name to the 15 character limit.

1) Using notepad, open C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\bin\pruneshadowcopiesDpm2010.ps1 (For DPM2010) or pruneshadowcopies.ps1 (For DPM 2007).

2) Locate the following entry:

$dpmservername = &"hostname"

3) Replace the &"hostname" with the truncated 15 character NetBIOS name of the DPM server. For example, if the DPM Server’s host name is "Long-DPM-server-name" then modify the entry as follows:

$dpmservername = "ward-dpm01.wardvissers.local"

4) Save the modified script.

5) Either run the script manually, or wait for it to run at midnight – then verify the shadow copies are being pruned as expected.

Now I have nice Green Protection Groups
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Special Thanks to J.C. Hornbeck

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