Statera + Microsoft + The Cloud

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Rocky Mountain Tech Tr-Fecta

Registration is now open for the one day FREE Tech Tri-Fecta to be help at Metro State College in Denver. Check it out here: http://rmtechtrifecta.pbworks.com/

Microsoft Hyper-V Technet Resource Page

Good source for Technical Information and Resouces around Hyper-V,
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565807.aspx

Exchange 2010 Info

Couple good announcements about Exchange 2010:
Blackberry Enterprise Server support for Exchange 2010,
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/12/09/453486.aspx

Exchange 2010 Rollup 1 has been released,
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/12/09/453485.aspx

Exchange 2010 goes RTM!

It is official, hot off the presses Exchange 2010 goes live!
see the full announcement here from the MS Exchange Team: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/09/453096.aspx

Server 2008 R2 Support coming for Exchange 2007

See the announcement here: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/04/453026.aspx

Zune HD

My wife and daughter got me a Zune HD for my birthday. Been playing with it this weekend and loving it! First portable device to have HD Radio on it and has a great feature while listening to the radio to "tag" a song you like and then buy it from the Zune Marketplace.
The browser is good, must have wireless connectivity but in this day and age not to hard to find a hotspot. Only has about 10 apps, all free, mostly games but a calculator and MSN Weather app, all free. Hopefully the application selection approves!
The touch interface was very easy to learn and is easy to use. Another great feature is it works just fine with my car FM transmitter that the wife got me last year for my Zune 4GB! I have created a new playlist for my daughter so while we drive around she can listen to her favorite songs, mostly Pink! And now with HD Radio on the Zune HD I can get HD stations in my car without an upgrade to my car radio.

Running Admin Tools from a non-domain joined computer

As a consultant I find myself at client sites and working from my Statera laptop that I do not join to the clients domain. So usually my only option for running admin tools is to remote into a server and run the tools from there, not too bad. Tried running with the runas command and it never worked, even though I usually have domain admin credentials in the clients domain, get an error. So a friend of mine posted a link to this blog post, http://www.jameskovacs.com/blog/TIPHowToRunProgramsAsADomainUserFromANondomainComputer.aspx
here the author talks about running SQL tools in a similar situation to me. So I tried it out for a few other admin tools and yes, it works great. The trick if you didn't already follow the link is to use the /netonly switch in the runas command line argument:
runas /netonly /user:domain\username "Path to admin tool"
works like a charm and plan to use it more at client locations. I am also toying with the idea of creating a Powershell application to automate this, if I get it going will post it as well.

SCVMM 2008 R2 Problem with P2V from Dell Physical Server

Had a client that I upgraded to 2008 R2 Hyper-V and SCVMM 2008 R2. When they tried to P2V Dell Physical servers they received BSOD or errors on the Install Integration Services step. We tried over and over and could not successfully P2V the server. We then tested to see if a new VM build had any problems with installing Integration Services, worked perfectly. So we ended up getting Microsoft Premier Support involved. After several tests and trials later the problem was solved; the problem dealt with the physical server being build with the Dell OpenManage startup CD. Seems this method of build set a registry key that conflicts with the Integration Services install. The key in question is:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Wdf01000\Group] = Base
changing the key to "WdfLoadGroup" and rebooting the VM allowed the Integration Services to install successfully.

Exchange 2010 Code Complete

The MSExchange Team guys are reporting that the Exchange 2010 Code is complete and is on schedule for RTM in early November.

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/10/08/452775.aspx

Exchange 2010

I attended the Microsoft Launch for Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 here in Denver this week. My company http://www.statera.com/ was actually a sponsor and I worked our table for awhile. In the afternoon I was able to attend a couple sessions on Exchange 2010 with Harold Wong.
The first session was about Exchange 2010 high availability. One of the biggest changes in 2010 is the removal of Storage Groups, now you only deal with Databases. And with databases you can create Database Access Groups (DAG). A DAG consists of Databases and Mailbox servers for replication. Was is improved from Exchange 2007 is the fact that a database can be easily replicated to up to 16 mailbox servers. Also databases can be staggered to be active on multiple mailbox servers. You can have database one active on mailbox server 1, database 2 active on mailbox server 2 with each mailbox server having a replicated copy of the non-active database. This basically allows you to have an Active-Active cluster. Allowing an organization to utilize all mailbox servers for active user connections.
Another huge feature is the fact that you can now have the HUB and CAS role on a mailbox server that is participating in a DAG. in Exchange 2007 if you clustered the mailbox role you could not place any other roles on that server. Now a small to medium size company can have complete redundancy with only two servers running MB, HUB and CAS roles.

The Second session was about Archiving in Exchange 2010. Microsoft now offers Archiving naively in 2010, but it is a light implementation. The problem I see, as Harold pointed out, is the fact that the archive mailbox for a user's mailbox is located in the same database as the user mailbox. This configuration really kinda defeats one of the primary reasons to archive, move the archived mail off the primary mailbox server and storage and move to secondary storage. Harold stated that Microsoft is working on a fix to allow the archived mailbox to be setup on another database, this would probably be in a service pack for 2010. Another missing piece is a tool to automatically move messages and items from local PST files to the archive location. With the release a user would need to manually do this step.

More to come on Exchange 2010!

Server 2008 R2 Core Edition

Couple really helpful features were added to Server 2008 R2 Core, sconfig and iscscicpl.
sconfig comes from the Hyper-V Server 2008 free download, it is a nice configuration utility that handles many of the initial setup tasks needed for the server. Having these in a nice easy to use group makes the initial IP, naming, domain membership as well as remote access available very nice.
iscscicpl is the GUI iSCSI initiator interface that was available only in Server 2008 full install editions. This now makes connecting and configuring iSCSI SAN storage a breeze.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V

I have already done a couple upgrades of Hyper-V from R1 to R2 and must say that Microsoft has taken a huge leap in their data center virtualization offering! I think most everyone who follows virtualization knows about the BIG improvement, LIVE MIGRATIONS. But Live Migrations are not the only new feature/enhancement with the R2 Hyper-V release. One of the small features that might not get a lot of notice but I really appreciate is a check mark on the Virtaul switch that allows you to turn off administrative access on a physical NIC when connected to a virtual switch. This to me not only reinforces the best practice to have a separate, dedicated NIC for admin access to the host computer but really cleans up the Network Interface connections on a host computer. With R1 each time you created a Virtual Switch a "duplicate" Network Interface was created and without proper naming (side note: ran into this at a client sight, they did not properly name the Network Interfaces and it made troubleshooting and administration a nightmare) would result is numerous Network interfaces only differentiated buy a number appended to the end of the standard name. Now check the check box does not create this second Network Interface, nice work Microsoft.

Another cool feature, and what actually enables Live Migrations, is Clustered Shared Volumes. Along with allowing for multiple hosts to access a single LUN at the same time, it eliminates the requirement for creating and individual LUN for each virtual machine. This provides for better utilization of shared storage space. Now you can create a single large LUN and present it to all hosts in the cluster and place multiple VMs within this LUN separated by simple folders.

More to come!

Exchange 2007 SP2 has been released

Read more about this new service pack for Exchange 2007 here:
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/08/25/452095.aspx

NT 4 Upgrade troubles

So last night ran into several problems trying to upgrade a newly created NT 4 Server that was promoted to the PDC role to Server 2003. Some if the issues I believe can be attributed to the age of the hardware we used, but needed, to get NT 4 installed in the first place (driver availability). Some of the problems might be attributed to the software media being used to first install NT 4 server and then the first attempted OEM 2003 CD (seems an OEM "repair" 2003 CD will not allow an upgrade, only a fresh install)
So today I worked on getting a NT 4 Server build in Hyper-V, it was a bit of a challenge and via some Internet searches with configuration tweeks I was able to get it done. Below is a list of settings for installing NT 4 server on Hyper-V:
1. Use an ISO image of the NT4 Server, not the actual CD (kept getting blue screen for inaccessible boot device)
2. Be sure to only use 1 CPU and select the "Limit CPU Functionality" check mark
3. Change the boot order to have the IDE Drive first and CDRom second
4. Remove the default Network Adapter and choose the Legacy Network Adapter
5. Make sure the VHD size is no more than 4GB

I know that some of this might seem easy, but working with an old OS like NT 4 is a challenge and hopefully these tips will help someone else out in the future (but really hope you actually don't ever need NT 4 again)

Also there is no Integration Services for NT 4 so be prepared for work with keyboard shortcuts if working on a RDP session to SCVMM or the Hyper-V server.

Interesting client project

Been working at a client here in Colorado to upgrade them from a Windows NT 4 domain to 2008 Active Directory and Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2007. Yes you read that right! The fun part is neither can be done in one move, both require going to 2003 levels first then to the final desired levels. This is a pretty small shop, about 100 users so it is not that bad, but working with NT 4 and Exchange 5.5 has made me really appreciate the new OS and Exchange versions.

Tonight is one of the big moves, upgrading a newly installed NT 4 BDC to PDC then upgrading the OS to 2003. Hopefully this goes pretty smooth. Over the next few days I will then be installing Exchange 2003 and migrating mailboxes to get to a much more stable and supportable environment. After this week it should be pretty easy to get to 2008 AD and Exchange 2007.

Wish me luck!

Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 have gone RTM

Microsoft announcing on several blogs that both new OS's have gone RTM!

Statera Client CIO Video

A few post back I posted about a client case study for Exchange 2007 and Hyper-V virtualization implementation. Well we know have a video up with the CIO talking about Statera and the companies experiences working with us on this project and others. Check it out here, http://www.statera.com/customers/default.htm

VMWare Core Tax

The guys over at Windows Virtualization Team Blog have a very interesting post about VMWare vs Hyper-V licensing and a "VMWare Core Tax" once processors begin shipping with more than 6 cores per processor. This is a compelling argument when you look at costs for virtualization.

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/06/28/Beware-the-VMware-Core-Tax-and-More.aspx

Exchange 2010 Call Answering Rules

The guys over at the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog have a great entry talking about new functionality in Unified Messaging for Exchange 2010, Call Answering Rules. Check it out here, http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/06/22/451667.aspx

Power Consumption Comparison for Exchange 2007, PHysical vs Virtual

The guys over at the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog have a post talking about power consumption for an Exchange 2007 environment comparing Physical versus Virtual. Good information: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/06/19/451650.aspx

Microsoft Partner Evidence Program (PEP)

We, Statera, have been nominated and approved for the Microsoft Partner Evidence Program (PEP) for 2010 products. I know it includes SharePoint and Office 2010 and am trying to find out if it also covers Exchange 2010, Exchange being the one I am most interested in. This is a big deal, we get the bits in about a week so we can start learning these new technologies and also assist clients with pre-RC installs.
We have already had preliminary talks with one of our best clients about implementing SharePoint 2010 in this program!

Case Study for Hyper-V and Exchange 2007

Check out this case study for a project I completed implementing Hyper-V with Exchange 2007. The client liked Hyper-V so much with Exchange 2007 that they then had me assist with a new Hyper-V cluster for consolidating other servers.
http://www.statera.com/customers/cases/CoBizVirtualizationCS060309.pdf

Statera Releases a CRM to SharePoint Cloud Integration Engine

Just recently, Statera went into a Beta phase for their an integration engine called Stratus (http://stratus.statera.com). It’s a really cool idea/product which integrates Microsoft CRM Online with SharePoint Online completely via Microsoft’s Azure Services platform (which means everything is running in the Cloud). Some of the capabilities Stratus provides include:

· CRM users can provision SharePoint sites for Account, Opportunity and Case records, allowing them to store documents in a location where they are easier to collaborate on and in an environment where non-sales employees may be more familiar with
· CRM users can upload documents while in CRM and they are stored directly in SharePoint
· CRM users can view associated SharePoint document libraries and their contents and pull up documents without ever leaving CRM
· SharePoint users can navigate to SharePoint sites that are associated with CRM Account, Opportunity or Case records and access uploaded documents, CRM contacts, CRM activities as well as some other general CRM information
· SharePoint users can create new contacts or activities via the associated SharePoint site that are in turn stored in CRM
· SharePoint users can save CRM contacts directly into their Outlook contacts folder with the click of the mouse

The product also works with the on-premise versions of SharePoint and CRM or any combination of Online and On-premise (e.g. CRM Online and SharePoint on-premise), though the on-premise activation is not yet available.

There are some other cool ideas that will be coming out with in the future. For more information, check out the video or sign up to use the platform at http://stratus.statera.com – it only takes a few minutes to sign up and usage is free!

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Hyper-V

Good post from the Microsoft Virtualization Team blog about applying SP2 to Windows Server 2008 running the Hyper-V role and what is needed from a host and guest VM perspective.

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/06/17/Re_3A00_-Windows-Server-2008-SP2-Hyper_2D00_V.aspx

Scripting Games 2009

The Scripting Guys over at Microsoft are getting ready to kick-off Scripting games 2009! This is a great way to learn and expand scripting knowledge! I have been a scripting junkie for several years, first with VBScript and now mainly with PowerShell. I encourage any and all script monkeys to check this it out!:
http://blogs.technet.com/heyscriptingguy/archive/tags/2009+Summer+Scripting+Games/default.aspx

Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 RTM Date

Several sites have reported that Windows 7 will RTM on October 22nd, and now from the Windows Server Team Blog, Windows Server 2008 R2 will also RTM at the same time!

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/06/02/windows-server-2008-r2-rtm-and-general-availability.aspx

Server 2008 Core and Hyper-V Cluster lessons learned

Part 1 Install and Networking

Server 2008 Core and Hyper-V clustering is the way to go. I will not say it is the easy way, but once you get everything running it works very smooth.

Plan out your environment! Hyper-V does not allow you to over-allocate memory so you must plan to ensure that your Hyper-V cluster can sustain a loss of one of the hosts. Best plan is to plan your cluster for a full load minus one host. This way you can ensure that a loss of a host due to hardware failure or planned maintenance you VMs will still function properly.
Shared storage is also very important, without it you don't have clustering or failover. The most recent deployment I worked on we utilized a NetApp filer and accessed the storage using iSCSI.

First off, Networking, here is a good guide for installing and configuring Server 2008 core, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753802.aspx, This covers the basic setup and configuration.
Next thing to learn and love is the NETSH command line tool for configuring network adapters in Server 2008 Core, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q242468&ID=KB;EN-US;Q242468. This is an overall doc, but I have found the "help netsh cmd" to be very helpful.
So now you have the interfaces configured, you need to use hardware teaming to ensure you have fault-tolerance for the interfaces. Hyper-V does not provide fault-tolerance naively, you must use the vendor teaming software to create a team and then added the teamed interface to the Virtual Switch. Intel NIC teaming was pretty easy, once you install the teaming software it also installs numerous VBScripts for configuring the team(s). Broadcom was a bit more difficult, you must use a command line tool using the MAC addresses for the team members to configure the team(s). The way I learned these processes was to first build a Server 2008 full version and use these scripts and command line tools to configure the teams and the verify the settings useing the GUI.
For Storage access you cannot utilize teaming, you must use MultiPath. I found the Microsoft MultiPath to work very well and was easy to setup.

I cannot stress this enough, ensure you designate a interface for management and do not add this interface to a virtual switch. This will ensure you have proper access to the server as well as the server having proper access to the network and domain services.
Also naming/labeling the interfaces greatly assists with the configuration and troubleshooting. Make sure you rename the interfaces from the default "Local Area Connection XX" to a more descriptive name to identify them days, weeks and months down the road.

In the next part I will cover Hyper-V install and cluster setup.....stay tuned.

Big Week for Micrsoft OS

This past week Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP2 was confirmed RTM, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335036.aspx

Also Windows 7 RC was released to MSDN and TechNet subscribers (general availability on May 5th)
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/apr09/04-30Windows7RCPR.mspx

I am getting ready to install SP2 my dual boot laptop, Vista x64 is my primary workstation and I also have Server 2008 as a second boot for Hyper-V and a couple test workstations. Yes, soon after I will be installing the Windows 7 RC on Hyper-V.

I also want to get Server 2008 R2 installed, debating whether to upgrade my Server 2008 install on my laptop or go with a Hyper-V VM instead.

Changing Free/Busy Publication time to Public Folders in Outlook 2007

My current client has a mix of Outlook versions and wanted to ensure that clients using pre-2007 Outlook could see free/busy information for 2007 client for 6 months. Well I looked and looked but could not find the setting to extend the publish time for free/busy in Outlook 2007. A co-worker finally found it for me, thought I would post this to help others out:

Standby Continuos Replication (SCR) in a Parent Child domain

Ran into a problem configuring SCR here at a client, the client has an empty root domain with a child resource domain. Exchange is in the Child resource domain along with everything else. When I attempted to get configure SCR between two mailbox servers I got an error about SCR is not supported between servers in different domains. My first thought was to verify the machines were in the same domain and yes they are. I then tried the command from the target machine for the SCR (first time was from source) and got the same error.

I then went searching and found this:
http://blogs.technet.com/timmcmic/archive/2008/12/21/exchange-2007-sp1-ru5-error-regarding-replication-between-computers-in-different-domains-when-using-standby-continuous-replication-scr.aspx

Seems that Exchange 2007 SP1 Rollup 5 introduced this error and it was not fixed in Rollup 6 just released this month. The link has work some arounds for the problem and states it is schedule to be fixed in Rollup 7. Thanks to Tim McMichael for explaining this bug so I did not go crazy and start rebuilding or re-joining servers to domains.

Windows Server 2008 Core and iSCSI SAN configuration

I am working at a client implementing Server 2008 Core cluster with Hyper-V. Had some interesting issues arrise during this implementation and I am still working on completing the project. Once completed I plan to document some of the gotchas and configurations I found during this project and document them here.

Stay tuned