Thursday, January 28, 2010
Shameless Plug
So I am big time now....at least I think so. Statera release a press release about me presenting at the Rocky Mountain Tech Tri-Fecta, http://www.statera.com/news/Pages/Statera%27s%20Sean%20McNeill%20to%20Present%20at%20Rocky%20Mountain%20Tech%20TRI-Fecta%20Event.aspx
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Windows Server 2008 Core Network Bind tool
I have done numerous Server 2008 Core installations, primarily to be the hosts for Hyper-V Virtualization. R2 made some great improvements in manageability as it relates to the Core platform, namely the SCONFIG command and the ability to have the GUI iSCSI initiator tool by running iscsicpl.
Well a new tool to help with Network Adapter bindings has just been released. I have used a previous version of this tool and it was helpful. Want to see what this one has. This functionality is really needed! http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/nvspbind
Thank You KeithMange
Well a new tool to help with Network Adapter bindings has just been released. I have used a previous version of this tool and it was helpful. Want to see what this one has. This functionality is really needed! http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/nvspbind
Thank You KeithMange
Monday, January 18, 2010
Rocky Mountain Tech Tri-Fecta 2010
I know I have already blogged about this but now it is personal. I will be presenting 2 sessions at the event, below is a quick synopsis of what I will be speaking on. Please if you are in the Denver area or want to come to Denver for a great ski weekend and get some training sign up here, http://rmtechtrifecta.pbworks.com/
My sessions:
Exchange 2010
Come learn what Exchange 2010 has to offer for Administrators and end-users. Exchange 2010 is the latest messaging server system from Microsoft, many improvements have been made to this system. Administrators can take advantage of the new Database Availability Group (DAG) function to provide a highly available and fault tolerant system for their environment. Great improvements in administration and replication have been made to Exchange 2010 and this session will explore and explain the new functionality. End users will benefit from the new highly available system and the integration with Outlook 2010. This session is geared towards administrators familiar with Exchange 200x with an emphasis on the improvements to Exchange 2007.
Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory
This session will detail the changes to Active Directory in Server 2008 R2. One of the biggest new features in Active Directory Directory Services (AD DS) is the AD Recycle Bin which allows an administrator to quickly recover a deleted object from AD DS. Powershell now naively supports Active Directory as well and will be discussed. We will also cover the changes made to AD DS in Server 2008. This session will also go over Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).
My sessions:
Exchange 2010
Come learn what Exchange 2010 has to offer for Administrators and end-users. Exchange 2010 is the latest messaging server system from Microsoft, many improvements have been made to this system. Administrators can take advantage of the new Database Availability Group (DAG) function to provide a highly available and fault tolerant system for their environment. Great improvements in administration and replication have been made to Exchange 2010 and this session will explore and explain the new functionality. End users will benefit from the new highly available system and the integration with Outlook 2010. This session is geared towards administrators familiar with Exchange 200x with an emphasis on the improvements to Exchange 2007.
Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory
This session will detail the changes to Active Directory in Server 2008 R2. One of the biggest new features in Active Directory Directory Services (AD DS) is the AD Recycle Bin which allows an administrator to quickly recover a deleted object from AD DS. Powershell now naively supports Active Directory as well and will be discussed. We will also cover the changes made to AD DS in Server 2008. This session will also go over Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).
Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2010
At my current client I am doing an Exchange 2010 deployment into an environment that has Office/Outlook 2003 as the primary client. Ran into a few gotchas with this scenario.
1. Outlook 2003 with the default settings will not connect to a mailbox on Exchange 2010. This is because by default Exchange 2010 requires RPC Encryption between the client (Outlook) and the Exchange Server. Outlook 2003 does not have this enabled by default, Outlook 2007/2010 do have this enabled by default. You must choose the "more Settings" button when configuring an account in Outlook 2003 and select the Security tab to enable Encryption between Outlook and the Exchange Server. This can also be done via a GPO setting with Outlook 2003 provided you install the Office/Outlook 2003 ADM files and also modify the OutLK11.adm file to include the below Policy:
POLICY "Enable RPC Encryption"
KEYNAME Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\RPC
PART "Check to turn setting on; uncheck to turn setting off" CHECKBOX
VALUENAME EnableRPCEncrption
VALUEON Numeric 1
VALUEOFF Numeric 0
END PART
END POLICY
2. Outlook 2003 in Online mode is slow to update deleted items sometimes resulting in unknown error messages. This is because Exchange 2010 does not issue UDP notifications to Outlook 2003, it defaults to a 60 second polling cycle. This behavior is somewhat corrected with Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2010 and a RegHack on the Exchange 2010 CAS servers. For a description of Update Rollup 1 and a download location go here, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976573
The RegHack is located and explained here, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2009942&sd=rss&spid=13965
I recommend setting ParametersSystem to 10000, as this is the minimum time (10 seconds) that Outlook 2003 will pole for updates from Exchange. It is to be noted that this change will result in an additional load on the Exchange 2010 server hosting the CAS role, plan accordingly.
The best way to alleviate this problem is to upgrade the Outlook clients to 2007 (and 2010 when available) versions. The fix for #2 above with only improve the problem, not completely solve it.
As always if you need any help with an Exchange deployment please do not hesitate to contact me directly at Sean dot McNeill at Statera dot com.
1. Outlook 2003 with the default settings will not connect to a mailbox on Exchange 2010. This is because by default Exchange 2010 requires RPC Encryption between the client (Outlook) and the Exchange Server. Outlook 2003 does not have this enabled by default, Outlook 2007/2010 do have this enabled by default. You must choose the "more Settings" button when configuring an account in Outlook 2003 and select the Security tab to enable Encryption between Outlook and the Exchange Server. This can also be done via a GPO setting with Outlook 2003 provided you install the Office/Outlook 2003 ADM files and also modify the OutLK11.adm file to include the below Policy:
POLICY "Enable RPC Encryption"
KEYNAME Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\RPC
PART "Check to turn setting on; uncheck to turn setting off" CHECKBOX
VALUENAME EnableRPCEncrption
VALUEON Numeric 1
VALUEOFF Numeric 0
END PART
END POLICY
2. Outlook 2003 in Online mode is slow to update deleted items sometimes resulting in unknown error messages. This is because Exchange 2010 does not issue UDP notifications to Outlook 2003, it defaults to a 60 second polling cycle. This behavior is somewhat corrected with Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2010 and a RegHack on the Exchange 2010 CAS servers. For a description of Update Rollup 1 and a download location go here, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976573
The RegHack is located and explained here, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2009942&sd=rss&spid=13965
I recommend setting ParametersSystem to 10000, as this is the minimum time (10 seconds) that Outlook 2003 will pole for updates from Exchange. It is to be noted that this change will result in an additional load on the Exchange 2010 server hosting the CAS role, plan accordingly.
The best way to alleviate this problem is to upgrade the Outlook clients to 2007 (and 2010 when available) versions. The fix for #2 above with only improve the problem, not completely solve it.
As always if you need any help with an Exchange deployment please do not hesitate to contact me directly at Sean dot McNeill at Statera dot com.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Exchange 2010 versus 2007
As a senior consultant with Statera I go out on sales calls and work with clients wanting to upgrade their messaging environment. Lately I have had to explain the difference and reasoning about going to Exchange 2010. Several prospective or current clients want to know why they should go to a relatively new technology in Exchange 2010 instead of Exchange 2007. I usually give the same speech and figured I would give the high points in this post:
1. DAG's (Database Availability Groups) this is probably the most compelling reason to go directly to 2010. DAG's offer the most straight forward and easiest way to invoke both High Availability and Disaster Recovery. DAG's combine and enhance the various replication options from Exchange 2007 (LCR, CCR, SCC and SCR) into a standard, easily administrated solution. Exchange 2010 removes Storage Groups from the Exchange vernacular and puts the Database as the main storage hierarchy. Another benefit of DAGs versus Mailbox clustering in Exchange 2oo7 is that now instead of a active passive scenario, you can now have an active active scenario with each node having active databases and cop0y databases; this allows for better utilization of server hardware.
2. Server reduction: Exchange 2010 allows an organization to placed the HUB and CAS roles on a server that is participating on a Mailbox DAG. Previously in Exchange 2007 if you had a clustered Mailbox server you could not place any other roles on the clustered servers. Exchange 2010 can reduce a simple high availability design for an organization from four server to two. In Exchange 2007 you would need to have two dedicated servers for a mailbox cluster and then another two servers to host the HUB and CAS roles. In Exchange 2010 you can have the same redundancy with only two servers, each one hosting the Mailbox, HUB and CAS roles.
There are also other benefits of Exchange 2010 is the reduction is IOPS for the databases has been calculated as much as 70% compared to Exchange 2007. Since the path to go from Exchange 200X to Exchange 2010 is the same, a company looking to move either to Exchange 2007 or 2010 is a big decision. If the company decides to go with 2007 a complete migration will require another complete migration in the future to migrate to 2010. My recommendation is to forgo the next migration and go directly to 2010. While 2010 supports installation on Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2007 does not. These two factors highlight that going directly to Exchange 2010 and Server 20087 R2 will result in a company being in a supported state from Microsoft for a longer duration than going with Exchange 2007 on Server 2008.
I do understand that some companies still are hesitant to run on the "Bleeding Edge" of technology. My answer to this is that Exchange 2010 is more of an R2 version of Exchange 2007 than a complete redesign of the Exchange platform as Exchange 2007 was compared to Exchange 2000/2003.
If you are contemplating this move please take the above information into effect and please do not hesitate to contact me at Sean dot McNeill at Statera dot com for more information.
1. DAG's (Database Availability Groups) this is probably the most compelling reason to go directly to 2010. DAG's offer the most straight forward and easiest way to invoke both High Availability and Disaster Recovery. DAG's combine and enhance the various replication options from Exchange 2007 (LCR, CCR, SCC and SCR) into a standard, easily administrated solution. Exchange 2010 removes Storage Groups from the Exchange vernacular and puts the Database as the main storage hierarchy. Another benefit of DAGs versus Mailbox clustering in Exchange 2oo7 is that now instead of a active passive scenario, you can now have an active active scenario with each node having active databases and cop0y databases; this allows for better utilization of server hardware.
2. Server reduction: Exchange 2010 allows an organization to placed the HUB and CAS roles on a server that is participating on a Mailbox DAG. Previously in Exchange 2007 if you had a clustered Mailbox server you could not place any other roles on the clustered servers. Exchange 2010 can reduce a simple high availability design for an organization from four server to two. In Exchange 2007 you would need to have two dedicated servers for a mailbox cluster and then another two servers to host the HUB and CAS roles. In Exchange 2010 you can have the same redundancy with only two servers, each one hosting the Mailbox, HUB and CAS roles.
There are also other benefits of Exchange 2010 is the reduction is IOPS for the databases has been calculated as much as 70% compared to Exchange 2007. Since the path to go from Exchange 200X to Exchange 2010 is the same, a company looking to move either to Exchange 2007 or 2010 is a big decision. If the company decides to go with 2007 a complete migration will require another complete migration in the future to migrate to 2010. My recommendation is to forgo the next migration and go directly to 2010. While 2010 supports installation on Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2007 does not. These two factors highlight that going directly to Exchange 2010 and Server 20087 R2 will result in a company being in a supported state from Microsoft for a longer duration than going with Exchange 2007 on Server 2008.
I do understand that some companies still are hesitant to run on the "Bleeding Edge" of technology. My answer to this is that Exchange 2010 is more of an R2 version of Exchange 2007 than a complete redesign of the Exchange platform as Exchange 2007 was compared to Exchange 2000/2003.
If you are contemplating this move please take the above information into effect and please do not hesitate to contact me at Sean dot McNeill at Statera dot com for more information.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Windows 7 Special folders
God Mode was just the beginning, check this article with background and more hidden gems in Windows 7, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10426627-56.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
God Mode in Windows 7
Cool new feature in Windows 7 to allow you to have access to all administration functions for Windows in one folder, God Mode. Read about how to enable it here: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/01/05/windows-7-god-mode/##
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