Saturday, May 29, 2010

Friday, May 28, 2010

Micrsoft Online Services & Iphone


First of all heres a video to setup iphone with Microsoft Online Services.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTctxZnOYVc

One thing which caught me out was the server name.The Emea OWA login URL is https://mail.emea.microsoftonline.com

But the actual server address for the iphone is red002.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com

Then test your active sync credentials via https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

Once you have green ticks , all done.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

App-V 4.5 SP2 now available

http://blogs.technet.com/b/mdop/archive/2010/05/25/app-v-4-5-sp2-now-available.aspx

Saturday, May 22, 2010

SBS2008 Setup Checklist


I bought the first SBS2008 book that was released which was SBS2008 Unleashed by Eriq Oliver Neale and it was ok. But then the SBS2008 Blueprint book was published from SMB Nation and I found this book much easier to read and follow.

There are 2 Authors Harry B and Philip Elder , Philip is a SBS MVP and has a great blog which he keeps updated reguraly and of special interest is his SBS2008 Setup Checklist. It is currently on version 1.5 and I cant think of a better way of installing and configuring SBS2008.

You can see the setup guide here http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2009/05/sbs-2008-setup-checklist-v111.html

SBS2008 Rollup 4 Available

http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2010/04/28/sbs-2008-update-rollup-4-released-kb979454.aspx

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Oracle (Sun) Virtual Box



I recently used Microsoft Virtual PC on a site but ran into problems with bridged network cards amongst other small issues. I gave up on Virtual PC and thought my only other alternative was VM Ware Player which is free but I could'nt get VM Ware tools installed into my VMWare Virtual PC and VM Work Station is a bit expensive.

But then Virtual Box came to my rescue and has worked perfectly. And its free! I dont know how long it will remain free after Oracles aquisition of Sun.But hey its free now and a doddle to setup.

Shadowprotect images .spf and .spi files can boot up straight into virtual box as if they were a vhd or vmdk.

Here is a video tutorial on using Virtual Box from David Davis on Virtualizationadmin.com

http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/player.asp?AYHfxlcC

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Using Free NAS with Hyper-V


I ran into a situation where I needed to recover a lot of mailboxes via backup exec on an Exchange 2003 Server and needed to do it via a recovery storage group and exmerge.

But the problem was I did not have enough storage on the exchange server to recover with a RSG.And adding additional storage was not an option , next step for customer was a hardware upgrade for exch 2010.So luckily enough I had a Hyper-V Server with loads of storage so I did the following.

1. Created a new vm with a 500gb dynamic disk , added in a legacy adapter , 4gb ram , 4 virtual cpus.
2. Then started up the new vm and booted into the free nas os, selected the legacy adapter , set the legacy adapter to receive dhcp, took note of ip address.
3. Then logged into the free nas via the http://ip received from dhcp. User name: admin password:freenas
4.Configured freenas as per this article from Dave Lawlor
5. Then downloaded and installed latest microsoft iscsi initiator for Server 2003.
6. Connected to my freenas via iscsi and formatted my new volume.
7. Then moved my RSG to the new volume I created.

This was an interesting resolution to my problem as I couldnt locate the RSG on anything but a local drive and exchange thought my new volume was a local drive.

Now this problem was probably a once off but it is a really simple way for people to play around with iscsi and san technology and its free.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

System Center Config Manager Training

New training material released from Microsoft for training on Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/systemcenter/cm/ff597934.aspx