How to quickly build a domain controller

There is a great article from Mike Foley on how to build a Windows domain controller with 4 reboots. It is a great step by step article and very useful especially if you need to always build labs again and again.

Head over there to read the article http://www.yelof.com/2014/08/04/zero-to-windows-domain-controller-in-4-reboots/

VMware Nights @ Kilby's Bar

VMware has launch a series of videos set in a bar in Silicon Valley where a bunch of IT people are talking about the transition to a software defined IT world. Videos are about 2 minutes long and just for a laugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA2TiA2fDNg&list=PL9MeVsU0uG66Y34LaqbZchWbLanxkQ4dy

Outlook 2013 OST File

Outlook 2013 introduced many improvements into the most famous e-mail client. Some of these are around Outlook data files (OSTs).

By default, when Outlook 2013 is installed, a new compressed version of the OST is created. I say “compressed” because apparently Outlook compresses several data fields/values in order to reduce the size of the OST file. This new compressed version is, allegedly, up to 40% smaller than OST files created by earlier versions of Outlook.

If you don’t want Outlook 2013 to create a new compressed OST file across the workstations in your environment when you upgrade your users’ Outlook client, use the Outlook Group Policy template (Outlk15.admx) to enable the Do not create new OST file on upgrade policy. You can find this setting under User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Outlook 2013\Account Settings\Exchange.

A big change is that when running in Cached Exchange Mode, Outlook 2013 will only cache 12 months’ worth of data from the Exchange server by default! This is part of the new Sync Slider feature, which allows users to limit the number of e-mails that are synchronized locally into the OST. Users will be able to view messages that were removed (or not synced) by scrolling to the end of an e-mail list in a folder and clicking the message Click here to view more on Microsoft Exchange.

Note that this setting does not affect the number of items synchronized in Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Journal and Notes.

Obviously, users can change how much e-mail to keep offline. To do this:

• Start Outlook;
• Click Account Settings on the File tab, and then click Account Settings;
• In the Account Settings dialog box, double-click your Microsoft Exchange account on the E-mail tab;
• In the Change Account dialog box, drag the Mail to keep offline: slider to the desired number of months;
• Click Next;
• Click OK when advised you have to restart Outlook to complete the configuration change;
• Click Finish;
• Restart Outlook.

On the other hand, administrators can change this setting on behalf of their users. The cached mode Sync Slider setting is maintained in the Outlook profile settings in the Windows registry. To administer this setting via group policy, you can use the Outlk15.admx and Outlk15.adml group policy templates available from the Microsoft Web site. Outlook uses the following registry data:

• Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Cached Mode
• DWORD: SyncWindowSetting
• Value: integer value (Decimal) with the following values:

o   0 = All (entire mailbox)

o   1 = One month of mailbox items

o   3 = three months of email items

o   6 = six months of email items

o   12 = twelve months of email items

o   24 = twenty-four months of email items

Another improvement is the Fast Access feature that brings the “instant access” of Online Mode into Cached Mode and improves the robustness of syncing. If, for example, a user was on a slow connection, he/she would typically need to wait a while for the mailbox to be updated to then start working. However, when users start Outlook 2013, they will almost immediately see the most recent e-mails and a completely up-to-date calendar as Outlook prioritizes these while caching the remaining items in the background.

Removing unwanted VMware Plugin

There are times when you installed some 3rd party products or additional VMware products where a plugin is added to vSphere client. Usually when you uninstall the products the plugins should be removed from vSphere client but sometimes it doesn't work and you need to do them manually. VMware has an KB article to help you along this process

VMware KB1025360

vSphere 6? 2015? Public Beta

VMware has opened up it Beta program for the public to try out the next version of vSphere. There are loads of new features to be tried and tested by us the public to help make the product better. There are a number of webinars which will go through all the new product features weekly and will be recorded. Go join the program at https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere-beta but be sure you have a myvmware account to be able to sign up.

Please note that although the beta program is open for anyone to try the product but what you learn and see must be kept confidential as per VMware's Master Software Beta Test Agreement and Program Rules

Good luck

Back up SSO for vCenter 5.5

SSO has become a very important component for vSphere environments since 5.1. I gather most people have their management servers running as VMs as well now and do either VM-level or storage arrays backups as a way to protect themselves. But as always it is nice to know how to do a manual backup and restore of just the SSO component should you ever need it.

Here is the KB article published by VMware and it might be worth scripting it and have it as a scheduled task

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2057353

Exchange Cmdlet Size Values

Exchange cmdlets that accept a size value support various unit prefixes such as kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB). When setting a user’s mailbox quota, for example, the following two cmdlet produce the same result:

Set-Mailbox “user” -ProhibitSendQuota 1024MB -UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults $False

Set-Mailbox “user” -ProhibitSendQuota 1GB -UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults $False

Users Unable to Delete Oversized Messages

If for some reason you reduce the maximum message size in Exchange, be careful because your users might experience the issue below. Let’s take an example:

• Exchange organization is configured to allow e-mails only up to 30MB in size;
• Users receive e-mails over 20MB in size;
• Exchange organization is reconfigured to only allow e-mails only up to 20MB in size.

In this scenario, users might not be able to delete the “oversized” e-mails (over 20MB) in Outlook Web App [OWA]. When using Outlook, the local copy of e-mail is deleted, but not the one in the server.

Even though we can use the MessageSize parameter with the Advanced Query Syntax in Outlook, the Search-Mailbox cmdlet doesn’t support it to it is not easy for an administrator to search for these messages from Exchange.

The workaround is to temporarily increase the user’s MaxSendSize and MaxReceiveSize limits and then delete the e-mail using OWA/Outlook.

congratulations on Nuno new book

I would like to congratulate Nuno on the release of his book titled "Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 High Availability" and for him to share the knowledge and experience to everyone.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Exchange-Server-2013-Availability/dp/1782171509

All over soon XP

By April Microsoft will not official support XP but no doubt people will still want to use XP. There might come a time where you need to reinstall XP. Installing XP will be the easy bit but to download the patches/updates you might not be able to get them from Microsoft site anymore.

There is a handy tool called WSUS offline update where it goes to Microsoft Update site and downloads all the patches for a specific OS. It could be XP/Vista/7/2003/2008 etc and it also support Office products as well.

As the deadline for XP is coming soon it might be ideal to use this software to download all the patches/updates to be used in the future if you so happen to need to rebuild your XP machine.

http://www.wsusoffline.net/

Ikea Hack

Not really an IT related post but if you want to create a "Macbook Air Desktop" or "Mac Mini and Apple Airport Extreme Base Station" Stand using Ikea furniture's then have a look at this site. It is all about hacking Ikea furniture's

http:///www.ikeahackers.net

Macbook Air Stand
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/02/macbook-air-desktop-stand.html

Mac Mini Stand
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2014/02/mac-mini-and-apple-airport-extreme-base-station-stands.html

Exchange Server 2013 High Availability Book

After a lot of work, I have finally released my first book: Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 High Availability! :)

I now fully appreciate the work involved in the process of writing/releasing a book!

“This practical hands-on guide will provide you with a number of clear scenarios and examples that will explain the mechanics behind the working of Exchange 2013 and how maximum availability and resilience can be achieved through it. Throughout this book, you will go through all the roles, components, and features that should be considered when addressing high availability.

You will go through how to achieve high availability for the Client Access and Mailbox server roles, what’s new in load balancing, site resilience, the new public folders, and much more.

You will learn to successfully design, configure, and maintain a highly available Exchange 2013 environment by going through different examples and real-world scenarios, saving you and your company time and money, and eliminating errors.” 

The book is available now on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Packt Publishing, and soon in Google Play store, Apple books, Safari books online, Bookshout!, Kobo books, EBL, Vital Source and O'Reilly.

Any feedback appreciated! :)

Virtual servers on Raspberry PI

Never expected that you can run virtual servers on Raspberry PI. Now you can and the full instructions is here at this blog: http://www.hyggeit.dk/2014/02/virtual-servers-on-raspberry-pi-with.html

Powershell Deployment Toolkit (PDT) for System Center 2012 SP1/R2

Ever wanted to try out System Center 2012 SP1/R2 but find that there are a lot of components needed to be installed to get going ?. Well there is a Powershell Deployment Tookit (PDT) by Rob Willis who has wrote a set of scripts to help you deploy the whole environment hands off including SQL !!! , how cool is that ?

I haven't had time to try it yet but here is the link to the page for downloading the set of scripts and instructions.

Here is the link give it a go:
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/PowerShell-Deployment-f20bb605#content

Office 365 Public Folder Scripts

Microsoft has released a few scripts to enable the creation of Public Folders in Office 365 and to synchronize Public Folders AD objects between on-premise and Office 365 directories.

These scripts can be used for:

• Initial creation of mail enabled public folder objects in the destination Active Directory for public folder migration from Exchange 2007 or 2010 to Exchange 2013
• Synchronization of mail enabled public folder objects from cloud to on-premise Active Directory
• Synchronization of mail enabled public folder objects from on-premise to cloud Active Directory
• Synchronization of public folder mailbox objects from cloud to on-premise Active Directory

To download the, visit the Microsoft Download Center.

Google Takeout

Google takeout? what is that?. Google now gives you an option to archive all your data from google products so things like your emails (gmail), videos (youtube) and more (15 currently).

Head over to https://www.google.com/settings/takeout and start archiving your data if you want an offline copy.

Wiki explaination of Google Takeout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Takeout

New Exam based on vSphere 5.5

VMware has just released a new exam based on vSphere 5.5. So you can now take an exam based on 5.0/5.1 or 5.5 to earn your VCP5-DCV certification.

Exam Codes:
vSphere 5.5 based exam - VCP550
vSphere 5.0/5.1 based exam - VCP510

Good Luck