Recipient Status Junk E-Mail

If you have users complaining some e-mails go straight to their Junk E-Mail folder, it is worth having a look at their Outlook configuration once you establish the e-mails are valid and there is no reason for them to be considered Spam.

If you check the Message Tracking Logs and see the following RecipientStatus:

RunspaceId              : 82ae90ad-cebf-4595-82ea-a78820cdd6cd

Timestamp               : 12/12/2012 17:07:45

ClientIp                :

ClientHostname          : HUB1

ServerIp                :

ServerHostname          : MBX1

SourceContext           : 08CF16C1275CCA32;2012-06-12T16:06:49.380Z;3

ConnectorId             :

Source                  : STOREDRIVER

EventId                 : DELIVER

InternalMessageId       : 13137

MessageId               : <CAN_JmwcSM+=9goLHua4rdmw4GfKth4bL1dJqkNfH-6M4W_+NEg@mail.gmail.com>

Recipients              : {[email protected] }

RecipientStatus         : {Junk E-Mail}

TotalBytes              : 3869

RecipientCount          : 1

RelatedRecipientAddress :

Reference               :

MessageSubject          : Sample E-mail

Sender                  : [email protected]

ReturnPath              : [email protected]

MessageInfo             : 2012-12-12T16:07:26.365Z;SRV=HUB1.letsexchange.com:TOTAL=19|QD=16|SDDR=1|SDDS=2|SDD=2

MessageLatency          : 00:00:19.4070000

MessageLatencyType      : EndToEnd

EventData               : {[MailboxDatabaseName, mdb27], [DatabaseHealth, 64]}

 

This might be due to the Spam options in Outlook itself. To check this, go to the user’s Outlook (or give yourself FullAccess to the mailbox), then go to Tools -> Options and click on Junk E-Mail... on the Preferences tab. Now check the Blocked Senders tab and make sure the sender is not listed there.

VMware vCenter Server 5.0 Update 2 Released

VMware has just recently released vCenter server 5.0 update 2. There are a few new features such as

• Supported to be installed on Windows 2012
• Additional guest customisation (Windows 8, Server 2012, Ubunut 12.04, RHEL 6.2, 6.3)
• vCenter Essentials and Essentials Plus edition no longer restrict virtual machine power-on operations when the vRAM usage of 192GB is met

For the release note and the rest of the bug fixes

https://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsp_vc50_u2_rel_notes.html

Merry Christmas

We would like to wish everyone a merry christmas

ESXi 5.0 Update 2 released

VMware has just release ESXi 5.0 Update 2 which fixes a numerous number of issues. They are documented here:

http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsp_esxi50_u2_rel_notes.html

Happy reading

VMware vSphere ESX 4.x End of Availability 15th August 2013

VMware has just recently announced that from 15th August 2013 you will not be able to download or generate licence key for VMware vSphere ESX 4.x and VMware Management Assistant (“vMA”) versions 1 and 4.

So if you need any vSphere ESX 4.x or vMA (v1 and v4) binary files or licence keys then do get them now and store them in a safe place.

The support end date for vSphere 4.x and vMA (v1 and v4) is still set at May 21st 2014

Please see this article released by VMware for more information https://www.vmware.com/support/product-support/esx/

Suppress warning about SSH configuration ESXi

After upgrading/building ESXi 5 and you have enabled SSH you will recieve a warning on the summary tab stating:

Configuration Issues
ESXi Shell for the host has been enabled
SSH for the host has been enabled

 

You will also get exclamation mark (warning) against each of your host.

To disable this warning you can follow this article (KB2007922) from VMware. For the people that wish to use powershell to configure this here is the command for it

set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name UserVars.SuppressShellWarning -Value 1

 

Released: Exchange Server 2010 SP2 Update Rollup 5 v2

Similar to what happened with Update Rollup 4, this one was released a few weeks ago but was almost immediately withdrawn due to a bug that affected DAGs...

Now version 2 has been released. For a full description of this RU, please check KB2785908  and to download it click here.

As with every RU or SP, Microsoft has updated the useful Exchange Server and Update Rollups Build Numbers wiki page.

I haven’t applied it on my lab yet, but will let you know as soon as I do.

Shutdown VM's via command line (esxcli)

There comes a time when you use vSphere client to shut down a virtual machine and you get no response or you need to power down some VM's and vCenter is unavailable. When this happens you would normally console to the ESXi host and start using command line to shut down. Using "esxcli" instead of "vim-cmd" now is so much easier in vSphere 5

1) SSH or get to the console of your ESXi host. I am assuming you know which host the VM currently resides. At the prompt type in "esxcli vm process list".

Running this command will list all the current running VM's as shown below. See if the one you wish to shut down is listed and make a note of the "world id"

2) Now for the command, to kill off the VM you would type in:

 "esxcli vm process kill --type={soft,hard,force} --world-id={world id}"

The kill type "soft" means trying to shut down the OS like how you would normally shut down an OS, "hard" means shutting down the OS without giving a chance for the applications to shut down, "force" means it doesn't care what state it is in, it will force the VM to switch off just like pushing a power switch.

So with the example I have above I would type in "esxcli vm process kill --type=soft --world-id=9741765"

3) Once the command has run successfully it will return you back to the prompt. Type in:

 "esxcli vm process list"

See if the VM that you are trying to power off is still listed. If you have selected kill type "soft" then it may take a few moments before it will  be powered off so run the command "esxcli vm process list" a few times. If after a few times or you waited long enough and feel the VM is not doing anything then run the command in step 2 again but using hard type instead

Office 2013 Visio Stencil

Microsoft has recently released the new Visio Stencil for the entire Office 2013 suite. It contains more than 300 icons (servers, applications and services), mainly focused around Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange technologies and features.

 

To download it, please go here.

 

Deploying vCenter Operations Management Suite start vAPP error

My company decided that we should give vCenter Operations Management Suite a go as we needed a tool which gives us the capacity planning. It used to be capacity IQ but now it is bundled as part of this suite. https://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-operations-management/features.html

The product comes as a vAPP ( 2 VMs) which makes life easier to deploy but as I try to power on the vAPP I get this error "Cannot initialize property 'vami.netmask0.VM_1', since network 'PPE-Servers-1' has no associated IP pool configuration.". If this comes up for you then you will need to redeploy the vAPP following the steps below

The error does give a hint that you need "IP pool" so my first point of call was to go to vCenter and look under "networking" but there are no tabs or options to create IP Pool. In the end I found it under "Home > Inventory > Datastores and Datastore Clusters"

Highlight your datacenter and you will see the tab "IP Pools" Click on "Add"



Give the IP Pool a name, If you are using IPv4 fill in the details of the subnet and gateway address for it. Tick box "Enable IP Pool", no need add address range unless you wish the appliance to get an address from here.

 

Select "DNS" tab and fill in any information about your sites DNS settings

Select "Associations" tab and tick box which network the IP pool belongs to.

Now you are all ready to deploy the vAPP again and this time it should just work.

Database Size, WhiteSpace and Users in Exchange 2010

While with Exchange 2007 it wasn’t straightforward or easy to get the size and the available whitespace of your Exchange databases, with 2010 is much easier! Now, the Get-MailboxDatabase cmdlet includes the DatabaseSize parameter and the AvailableNewMailboxSpace parameter which shows the whitespace available.

So, all we have to do is run a script like this:

$DBs = Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | ? {$_.Mounted -eq $True} | Sort Name
ForEach ($db in $DBs)
{
  $DBsize = $db.DatabaseSize.ToMB()
  $DBusers = ($db | Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Measure).Count
  $DBWhiteSpace = $db.AvailableNewMailboxSpace.ToMB()

  Write-Host "$($db.Name), $DBusers, $DBsize, $DBWhiteSpace"
}

VMware Hands On Labs (HOL) beta is now open

VMware has started to roll out their Hands On Labs (HOL) so that people like myself can try new product features without needing to build a complete lab. Hopefully I will receive an email soon with username/password test drive. I will give a review of HOL once I get to log in !!

Follow the HOL blog :
http://blogs.vmware.com/hol/2012/11/the-vmware-hands-on-labs-online-public-beta-is-now-open.html

Community resource :
http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/resources/how

Sent/Deleted Items Behavior in Shared Mailbox

If you ever get users complaining about any of the following cases, please note that to resolve it all you have to do is add/update a registry key:

• when I delete an e-mail from the shared mailbox I manage, the e-mail goes into my Deleted Items folder instead of the folder in the shared mailbox;
• when I send an e-mail as (SendAs) the shared mailbox I manage, the e-mail goes into my Sent Items folder instead of the folder in the shared mailbox.

 

The following applies to Outlook 2007:

Change the Sent Behaviour
1. Open the Registry and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences\
2. Look for the DelegateSentItemsStyle DWORD (if it doesn’t exist, create it)
3. Set the value to 1
4. Restart Outlook

Now any e-mails sent from that shared mailbox (again, when using SendAs permissions) will go into the Sent Items folder of the shared mailbox.

 

IMPORTANT: After you set the DelegateSentItemsStyle registry value to 1, the functionality is only available when the Exchange account is set to Use Cached Exchange Mode. The DelegateSentItemsStyle registry value will not work consistently on an Exchange account that is configured in Online mode...

 

 

Change the Deleted Behaviour
1. Open the Registry and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options\General2. Look for the DelegateWastebasketStyle DWORD (if it doesn’t exist, create it)
3. Change its value to
    a. 8 = Stores deleted items in your folder
    b. 4 = Stores deleted items in the shared mailbox folder
4. Restart Outlook

 

Now any e-mails deleted from that shared mailbox will go into the Deleted Items folder of the shared mailbox.

 

IMPORTANT: make sure that the delegate user has at least Author level rights for the Deleted Items folder of the owner's mailbox. If the delegate does not have these rights, and this registry option is set to 4, then either the item is deleted permanently or the user receives an error message.

Running Windows 2012 on ESX 5

Windows 2012 has been released officially and I decided it was time to give it a test drive on ESX 5 (Build 623860). I started to do the install and after the first reboot I got a Windows logo on a black screen with spinning dots.

On first look I thought it was drivers or the boot options was incorrectly selected. Upon checking at VMware's patch portal (http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal) there was a fix under patch "ESXi500-201207401-BG" :

Article Link For Patch ESXi500-201207401-BG

"PR 838946: During the installation of Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 64-bits virtual machine, the virtual machine displays a black screen with a loading icon and stops responding during the start-up process.

Note: If using Windows Consumer Preview version, after you promote a Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 64-bits virtual machine as a domain controller, rebooting the virtual machine causes the virtual machine to stop responding and display a black screen during the start-up process."

I did the patch update and it took the build to version 768111 and now all working like a treat without needing to do any tweaks. 

VMware learning video for free

VMware now has a  new learning site which has free instructional videos. They current have videos for the following VMware products:

• Site Recovery Manager 
• vCenter
• vCloud
• vFabric/Spring
• vSphere
• vSphere Storage Appliance

It is a great way to learn and get an overview of products

www.vmwarelearning.com

First Post

This is a quick post to introduction myself Kin Yung and Nuno Mota who will co-author this blog. It will be articles, reviews and tips and tricks