Thursday 27 December 2012

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

Saturday 22 December 2012

Monday 17 December 2012

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/

Saturday 15 December 2012

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

 




Wednesday 12 December 2012

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.

Thursday 6 December 2012

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


Tuesday 4 December 2012

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.
 

New Azure KMS IP and domain Addresses for activation

For Windows virtual machines deployed into Azure using marketplace images you may have created rules in your NSG or firewalls to allow the s...