Friday, August 27, 2010

Free ebook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (Second Edition)

Here it is! Mitch Tulloch has updated his free ebook of last year; it’s now updated for Windows Server 2008 R2. You can now download Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions, From the Desktop to the Datacenter in XPS format here and in PDF format here.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

No internet Access when Connected via Sonicwall Global VPN Client

One of my customers does not want split tunnels enabled when their staff connect via Sonicwall Global VPN. But when they connect , they cannot access the internet , only outlook and network shares etc..

So please click on this LINK which is a great Article from Sonicwall on how to apply a NAT Policy that will allow internet access while connected to VPN without a split tunnel. It will also allow the connected user to use the head offices static ip address.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Exchange 2010 SP1 - prereq hotfixes needed for Server 2008 R2

Updates needed for Server 2008 R2:

KB 977020 - .NET Framework 2.0 hotfix
KB 979099 - AD RMS hotfix
KB 979744 - .NET Framework 2.0 hotfix
KB 979917 - ASP.NET 2.0 hotfix
KB 982170 - UCMA hotfix - July 2010 - 3.5.6907.206
KB 982867 - .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 hotfix
KB 983440 - ASP.NET 2.0 hotfix rollup
Office 2010 Filter Pack

These updates are not made by the Exchange team, and cannot be included in the SP1 download binaries.

Exchange 2010 SP1 Available

The Microsoft Exchange team have released Service Pack 1 for Exchange 2010 which you can get here

A complete list of the new features are available here

I have been really looking forward to the ability to import pst's directly into exchange like we could with exmerge.

I would recommend taking a snapshot of your exchange 2010 vm if your exchange 2010 server is virtualised , just in case anything goes wrong!It took approximately 1 hour for me to upgrade a decent spec server to service pack 1.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) Technologies

Bookmark this LINK It is a technet directory of video tutorials of MDOP technologies. There are some really great tools here like DART which I have used many times but reviewing some videos on this site , I can easily see some amazing features I wasn't aware was available.

SCE 2010 Plus Suite


Microsoft have released System Center Essentials 2010 Plus Suite which includes DPM2010. This is an amazing bundle and offers real value for customers. I have just finished a network using both products and SCE 2010 is a super product as is DPM2010. They are both really easy to use powerful tools.

You can get info on the suite here

Sunday, August 22, 2010

"0x00000101 - CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT"

975530 - Last Review: August 10, 2010 - Revision: 14.0
Stop error message on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer that has the Hyper-V role installed and that uses one or more Intel CPUs that are code-named Nehalem: "0x00000101 - CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT"

I have a newly installed HP DL380G6 , completely up to date etc.. that has been randomly rebooting. I installed who crashed to review the memory dump and found that each time it happened this error code was generated CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT

So after some research on the web I found A Hot Fix available from Microsoft to fix the problem. You can get it HERE

HYPER-V GUEST BACKUP USING NATIVE BACKUP IN HOST SERVER

To successfully back up a hyper-v host with windows server backup. The Hyper-v vss writer needs to be registers with windows server backup.

Here is an article on virtualizationadmin.com that shows you how to do this manually.

But why do it manually when you can go here to click on fix it from microsoft and they will do it for you!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

SCE2010

Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 is a super product. I had some trouble with SQL Server during the install but I got it installed by firstly installing SQL 2008R2 Express with advanced features. Advanced features is required for reporting services element of SCE 2010. You can download SQL 2008 R2 Express HERE

You can also install the SCE Management console on a client pc. A technet article is available HERE

I have not tested SCE's virtualization management but look forward to doing so.

Remove Inactive Objects in Active Directory

Today I upgraded an Active Directory Forest from a functional level of Windows 2000 to Windows 2008R2.

It was a fairly simple process and done with the help of snapshots in Hyper-V just incase I needed to roll back.

When I began to design my new group policies I noticed there were nearly 200 computer accounts with the majority of them being inactive.

I found a few powershell scripts that will list the inactive computer accounts within a timeframe that you specify in the script. But then I found a command even better.

DSQUERY This command can scan for inactive computer accounts within a specified timeframe and then delete them as well!!!


dsquery computer -inactive 8 -limit 0 | dsrm (8 is the number of weeks)

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Microsoft Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Test

There is a remote connectivity analyzer for OCS! The same way there is one for exchange.

You can reach it here

Sunday, August 8, 2010

MCITP : Windows Server 2008 R2, Virtualization Administrator

To get your MCITP in Virtualization you need the following exams

Exam 70-659 or Exam 70-652 and Exam 70-669 and Exam 70-693.

I plan to do 70-693 this week and I am very confident I will pass the exam. However I think Microsoft should also include the 70-403 System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Configuring as SCVMM is an essential part of any enterprise microsoft virtualization solution.

Blogging vs Wiki Server

I have been using my blog as my own notebook and quite often search my blog to remind me how to do things or to click on links for hot fixes etc..

A customer of mine wants me to setup an internal Wiki server which their programmers can access.

I also want to setup one for cdsoft for our service dept etc..

From my research it is a simple enough to setup but there are a lot of plugins that make it work really well. So when I get it finished I will post how it goes.

Disable UAC in Group Policy


Sometimes applications can be fussy about UAC and this is how to disable it via group policy. I have not had a chance to test app-v but i am sure app-v can overcome problems with uac etc..

# User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode - Set its value to Elevate without prompting.
# User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation - Set its value to Disabled.
# User Account Control: Only elevate UIAccess applications that are installed in secure locations - Set its value to Disabled.
# User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode - Set its value to Disabled

Cloud Based Email - Google Apps or BPOS

I have setup both Google Apps & BPOS (Microsoft Hosted Exchange)

They are both really simple to setup and offer 25gb mailboxes which is incredible.But I have to say my preference would be with Microsoft's Hosted exchange for the amount of features you get with it.

Like OWA, Outlook Anywhere, Seamless Mobile Integration, Sharepoint Integration.

Although I would go with Google Apps for any site with 5 users or less as Microsoft BPOS requires a minimum of 5 users.


When I first joined CDSOFT I was a big fan of Google Apps & Google's hosted enterprise spam solution - Postini. But we are a dedicated Microsoft Gold Partner and will continue to push Microsoft Solutions.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Sonicwall VPN Client for Apple Mac

This is a great free utility called ipsecuritas for creating vpn connections to sonicwalls on Apple Macs

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Xbox 360

I thought my xbox was broken as i could not download a required update to play mass effect 2. So I downloaded the update burnt it to disc and applied the update that way.The problem was firewall settings. If i was working in my every day job i would have checked for open ports straight away, just didnt think of it at home!!

Ports that need to be open are

* Port 88 (UDP and TCP)
* Port 3074 (UDP and TCP)