Tag: Powershell

Exchange 2013 RMS Shared Identity user FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042 not found

Today I was re-installing Exchange 2013 into an Active Directory forest The schema was already extended with the Exchange 2013 schema extensions.

When installing Exchange 2013, installation of the Mailbox Transport role failed with the following error:

Error:
The following error was generated when “$error.Clear();
if ( ($server -eq $null) -and ($RoleIsDatacenter -ne $true) )
{
Update-RmsSharedIdentity -ServerName $RoleNetBIOSName
}
” was run: “RMS Shared Identity user FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042 not found.”.

FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042 is a Exchange 2013 built in arbitration user account which must exist in every Exchange 2013 environment. The GUID never changes, it is always “4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042”.

The setup failed because someone deleted this user account from Active Directory!

How can we get it back?

You have two ways to get this mailbox back. If you have a computer on your network with the Exchange 2010 management tools installed, you can create the user account using powershell with the following command:

New-Mailbox -Arbitration -Name FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042 -UserPrincipalName FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042@default_accepted_domain

For more information on this see Microsoft KB978776

What happens if you do not have exchange management shell installed on any computers? Well there is another way to get this account back. This account is originally created when you prepare the domain/schema. If you run setup.com /PrepareAD on your domain it will re-create this account for you. See below:

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 2.0

    Microsoft® Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) is a Microsoft-supported, stand-alone solution for the information technology (IT) pro or solution provider who wants to convert virtual machines and disks from VMware hosts to Hyper-V® hosts and Windows Azure™.
    MVMC can be deployed with minimal dependencies. Because MVMC provides native support for Windows PowerShell®, it enables scripting and integration with data center automation workflows such as those authored and run within Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2. It can also be invoked through the Windows PowerShell® command-line interface. The solution is simple to download, install, and use. In addition to the Windows PowerShell capability, MVMC provides a wizard-driven GUI to facilitate virtual machine conversion.
    New Features in MVMC 2.0
    MVMC 2.0 release of MVMC includes the following new features:

    • Converts virtual disks that are attached to a VMware virtual machine to virtual hard disks (VHDs) that can be uploaded to Windows Azure.
    • Provides native Windows PowerShell capability that enables scripting and integration into IT automation workflows.
      Note The command-line interface (CLI) in MVMC 1.0 has been replaced by Windows PowerShell in MVMC 2.0.
    • Supports conversion and provisioning of Linux-based guest operating systems from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts.
    • Supports conversion of offline virtual machines.
    • Supports the new virtual hard disk format (VHDX) when converting and provisioning in Hyper-V in Windows Server® 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
    • Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.1, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts Hyper-V virtual machines.
    • Supports Windows Server® 2012 R2, Windows Server® 2012, and Windows® 8 as guest operating systems that you can select for conversion.
    Standard MVMC Features
    In addition to the new features previously identified, MVMC provides the following functionality:

    • Converts and deploys virtual machines from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts on any of the following operating systems:
    • Windows Server® 2012 R2
    • Windows Server® 2012
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
    • Converts VMware virtual machines, virtual disks, and configurations for memory, virtual processor, and other virtual computing resources from the source to Hyper-V.
    • Adds virtual network interface cards (NICs) to the converted virtual machine on Hyper-V.
    • Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.0, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts to Hyper-V.
    • Has a wizard-driven GUI, which simplifies performing virtual machine conversions.
    • Uninstalls VMware Tools before online conversion (online only) to provide a clean way to migrate VMware-based virtual machines to Hyper-V.
      Important MVMC takes a snapshot of the virtual machine that you are converting before you uninstall VMware Tools, and then shuts down the source machine to preserve state during conversion. The virtual machine is restored to its previous state after the source disks that are attached to the virtual machine are successfully copied to the machine where the conversion process is run. At that point, the source machine in VMware can be turned on, if required.
      Important MVMC does not uninstall VMware Tools in an offline conversion. Instead, it disables VMware services, drivers, and programs only for Windows Server guest operating systems. For file conversions with Linux guest operating systems, VMware Tools are not disabled or uninstalled. We highly recommend that you manually uninstall VMware Tools when you convert an offline virtual machine.
    • Supports Windows Server and Linux guest operating system conversion. For more details, see the section “Supported Configurations for Virtual Machine Conversion” in this guide.
    • Includes Windows PowerShell capability for offline conversions of VMware-based virtual hard disks (VMDK) to a Hyper-V–based virtual hard disk file format (.vhd file).
      Note The offline disk conversion does not include driver fixes.

Download

HV Backup A free Hyper-V backup Tool

HVbackup is a very easy and powerful free tool to backup and restore Hyper-V virtual machines, in standalone and clustered (CSV) environments, overcoming all the limitations that a generic tool like Diskshadow provides.
This tool targets Windows 2008 (R2) and Windows Server 2012 (R2). All the corresponding core and free Hyper-V editions are also supported!
HVBackup supports app consistent and crash consistent backups through the Hyper V VSS writer component integrated in the operating system.
There are quite a few expensive commercial solutions on the market supporting this scenario, but this is the first open source one, based on the research we did before publishing the project.
We integrated this tool in our datacenter’s production environment management infrastructure, which means that it undergoes continuous testing in a real world environment 🙂
HVBackup can be invoked from the command line, scripted with Powershell or integrated in any .Net program through it’s class library.
The backup process generates a separate zip file for each virtual machine in the specified output directory, containing all the files owned by the VM and identified for backup by the VSS Hyper-V provider.
Requirements:
.Net Framework 3.5, which can be easily enabled on the command line.

Samples:

HVBackup -a -o c:\backup
Performs a full VSS backup (using the HyperV VSS writer) of all VMs on the host.
HVBackup -l VM1,VM2 -o \\yourserver\backup
Performs a full VSS backup of the provided list of VMs (use quotes if the names contain spaces).
In this sample the output directory is on a remote server.
HVBackup -f list.txt -o c:\backup
Performs a full VSS backup of the VMs names provided in “list.txt”, one per line.

How to perform a scheduled backup

backup.cmd :

set BCKPATH=\\yourserver\yourpath
net use %BCKPATH% /user:<user> <password>
pushd %BCKPATH% && forfiles.exe -m *.zip -d -7 -c “cmd /c del @path”
popd
HVBackup.exe -a -o %BCKPATH% 1> lastlog_out.txt 2> lastlog_err.txt

Note: This script will delete every zip file older than 7 days in the target directory before performing a backup of all the VMs on the host. Change it accordingly to your needs.

Now, as we don’t have a scheduled task UI on hyper-v or server core, in order to schedule the previous script every night at 01 AM, just run:

schtasks.exe /create /tn HVBackup /tr c:\hvbackup\backup.cmd /sc DAILY /ru <username> /rp /st 01:00:00

Tool: http://hypervbackup.codeplex.com/

Download: HVBackup_1_0_beta1_20120330.zip Windows 2008 (R2) and Windows Server 2012

Download: HVBackup_1_0_1_Beta.zip Windows Server 2012 R2

Cumulative Update 3 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

Issues that the cumulative update resolves

Cumulative Update 3 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 contains the fix for the security issue that is described in Security Bulletin MS13-061

(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/MS13-061)

and resolves the issues that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

  • 2865161 “Errors: Failed exporting item id: from source id” when you try to copy search results in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2866064 Can’t load OWA Premium by using Internet Explorer 11 in an Exchange Server environment

  • 2871980 Child domains are not displayed for selection when you create a mailbox by using EAC in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2874216 Security issue that is described in Security Bulletin MS13-061 is resolved by an Exchange Server update

  • 2878160 “The Active Directory user wasn’t found” error when you create or update an In-Place eDiscovery search in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2882608 Exchange Server 2013 does not share the inproxy.dll file

  • 2886115 Retention policies are not applied to Exchange Server 2013 mailboxes when user accounts are on different domains

  • 2888274 WebClientReadFormQueryString string and WebClientEditFormQueryString string return incorrect URLs in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2888315 Event 2112 or 2180 is logged when you try to back up a database in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2888612 Retention policy does not work after you run a cmdlet in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2889786 Sign-in format for Outlook Web App on mobile devices is not adjusted according to the Set-OwaVirtualDerictory cmdlet in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2890650 Items in the Drafts folder are not stamped with the retention policy tag in an Exchange Server 2010 or 2013 environment

  • 2895487 “Copy Search Results” option does not work in an Exchange server 2013 environment

  • 2895500 DBCS characters appear garbled when you run some PowerShell scripts in EMS in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2895678 “Nombre de usuario\dominio” is displayed unexpectedly on the Spanish version of the OWA and EAC logon pages in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2902929 You cannot forward an external meeting request in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2902933 “Generate incident report” does not display the “Bcc” field in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2902934 Korean language localization issue in Exchange 2013 OWA user interface

  • 2902936 You cannot change SMTP addresses for distribution groups by using EAC in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2902938 You cannot preview Office documents in shared folders by using Outlook Web App in an Exchange Server 2013 environment

  • 2902939 EMS connection error when you separately install an Exchange Server 2013 Mailbox server and a Client Access server

  • 2883203 Exchange Server 2013 restarts frequently after Cumulative Update 2 is installed

  • 2890814 No redirection to the Outlook Web App URL for Exchange Online users in an Exchange hybrid deployment

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Removing Windows 8.1 Built-in Applications

Last year Ben Hunter published a PowerShell script that is designed to remove the built-in Windows 8 applications when creating a Windows 8 image. Well now that Windows 8.1 has been released it must update the PowerShell script to work with Windows 8.1.

The script below takes a simple list of Apps and then removes the provisioned package and the package that is installed for the Administrator. To adjust the script for your requirements simply update the $AppList comma separated list to include the Apps you want to remove. The script is designed to work as part of an MDT or Configuration Manager task sequence. If it detects that you are running the script within a task sequence it will log the to the task sequence folder otherwise it will log to the Windows\temp folder.

I chanced the script a little bit. I don’t want to remove some programs dat Ben Hunter did…

The Script:

<#    
    ************************************************************************************************************
    Purpose:    Remove built in apps specified in list
    Pre-Reqs:    Windows 8.1
    ************************************************************************************************************
#>

#—————————————————————————————————————
# Main Routine
#—————————————————————————————————————

# Get log path. Will log to Task Sequence log folder if the script is running in a Task Sequence
# Otherwise log to \windows\temp

try

{
$tsenv = New-Object -COMObject Microsoft.SMS.TSEnvironment
$logPath = $tsenv.Value(“LogPath”)
}
catch
{
Write-Host “This script is not running in a task sequence”
$logPath = $env:windir + “\temp”
}
$logFile = “$logPath\$($myInvocation.MyCommand).log”

# Start logging
Start-Transcript $logFile
Write-Host “Logging to $logFile”

# List of Applications that will be removed

$AppsList = “microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps”,”Microsoft.BingFinance”,”Microsoft.BingMaps”,`
“Microsoft.BingWeather”,”Microsoft.ZuneVideo”,”Microsoft.ZuneMusic”,”Microsoft.Media.PlayReadyClient.2″,`
“Microsoft.Media.PlayReadyClient.2″,”Microsoft.XboxLIVEGames”,”Microsoft.HelpAndTips”,”Microsoft.BingSports”,`
“Microsoft.BingNews”,”Microsoft.BingFoodAndDrink”,”Microsoft.BingTravel”,”Microsoft.WindowsReadingList”,`
“Microsoft.BingHealthAndFitness”,”Microsoft.WindowsAlarms”,”Microsoft.Reader”,”Microsoft.WindowsSoundRecorder”,”Microsoft.SkypeApp”

ForEach ($App in $AppsList)

{
$Packages = Get-AppxPackage | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq $App}
if ($Packages -ne $null)
{
  Write-Host “Removing Appx Package: $App”
  foreach ($Package in $Packages)
      {
      Remove-AppxPackage -package $Package.PackageFullName
      }
}
else
{
      Write-Host “Unable to find package: $App”
}
$ProvisionedPackage = Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -online | Where-Object {$_.displayName -eq $App}
if ($ProvisionedPackage -ne $null)
{
      Write-Host “Removing Appx Provisioned Package: $App”
      remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online -packagename $ProvisionedPackage.PackageName
}
else
{
      Write-Host “Unable to find provisioned package: $App”
}

}

# Stop logging
Stop-Transcript

Creating a Home Drive with Windows PowerShell

With the following script I will do 3 things:

1. Set the user his home folder with drive letter
2. Create a folder on your home folders file share
3. Giving users full control on there folder.

 

The Script:

Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase “OU=wardusers,DC=wardvissers,DC=local” | Foreach-Object {
$sam = $_.SamAccountName
$sid = $_.Sid
$HomeDrive=’J:’
$Domain=wardvissers.local’
$UserRoot=’\\wardvissers.local\dfs\home\’
$HomeDir=$UserRoot+$sam

# Assign the Drive letter and Home Drive for the user in Active Directory

SET-ADUSER $sam –HomeDrive $HomeDrive –HomeDirectory $HomeDir

# Create the folder on the root of the common Users Share

NEW-ITEM –path $HomeDir -type directory -force

$account=$Domain+’\’+$Accountname

# Set parameters for Access rule

$rights=[System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemRights]::FullControl
$inheritance=[System.Security.AccessControl.InheritanceFlags]”ContainerInherit,ObjectInherit”
$propagation=[System.Security.AccessControl.PropagationFlags]::None
$allowdeny=[System.Security.AccessControl.AccessControlType]::Allow
$dirACE=New-Object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule ($sid,$rights,$inheritance,$propagation,$allowdeny)
$dirACL=Get-Acl $HomeDir

$dirACL.AddAccessRule($dirACE)

Set-Acl -path $HomeDir -AclObject $dirACL

Write-Host $HomeDir access rights assigned

}

Active Directory Accidental Deletion – Prevention

Accidental deletions in active directory can cause havoc and unfortunately. This may have been avoided and secondly could have been fixed in less than 10 % of the actual time spent if the environment was using one of the latest features that we included in Windows 2008 R2 ( Active Directory Recycle Bin ). Most critical situations arise due to accidental human /tool interference or configuration and it is important to be able to come out of such situations within minimal down time, Accidental Deletion in Active Directory is one such situation.

Powershell Enable Protected From Accidenta lDeletion:
Get-ADobject -Filter * -SearchBase “DC=wardvissers,DC=local” | Set-adobject -ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true

Convert VHD to VHDX

VHDX is the new and default format of virtual hard disk (VDH) that is provided by Windows 8 Client Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. There are many reasons to favor VHDX files over VHD files, including:

  • scalability to 64 TB instead of 2040GB
  • better performance by offering 4 K sector matching
  • protection against data corruption during power outages
Using PowerShell to Convert to VHDX

You can dispense with the time-consuming wizard by using PowerShell. This will be extremely useful if you need to use a script to automate lots of VHD conversions across many virtual machines. The following snippet will convert a VHD to a VHDX:

Convert-VHD –Path d:\VM01\Disk0.vhd –DestinationPath d:\VM01\Disk0.vhdx

When you create a new VHDX file (not converted) it has a physical sector size of 4 K. A converted VHDX file has a physical sector size of 512 Bytes. You can change the physical sector size of a converted VHDX by running this piece of PowerShell before you power up the virtual machine:

set-vhd d:\VM01\Disk0.vhdx -PhysicalSectorSizeBytes 4096

Now you have a virtual machine that is using the best kind of virtual machine storage, the VHDX format virtual hard disk

The above instructions do not finish the job. The next essential set of steps are:

  1. Open the settings of the virtual machine.
  2. Replace the VHD with the VHDX.
  3. Start and test the virtual machine.
  4. Delete the VHD file.

Server 2012 Dedub

Start Windows PowerShell. Right-click the Windows PowerShell icon on the taskbar, and then click Run as Administrator.

Run the following Windows PowerShell commands:

PS C:\> Import-Module ServerManager
PS C:\> Add-WindowsFeature -name FS-Data-Deduplication
PS C:\> Import-Module Deduplication
PS C:\> Enable-DedupVolume E: & Enable-DedupVolume D:

And wait….

dedub

Saving already 240GB on my home lab…. Dedub is great

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