jim jacob

Bookmarks for 2/18/10

jim — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:04:00 +0000

I’ve actually sat on these for over a month, but I wanted to post them anyways.

System Center Operations Manager Technet Virtual Labs
Disaster Recovery for Hyper-V
Configuring Failover Clusters with Windows Storage Server 2008
RemoteApp for Hyper-V
Windows 7 on fingertips – Shortcut Keys
Remote Desktop Load Simulation Tools
To virtualize Exchange or not to virtualize Exchange?
BranchCache Design Guide
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 – Evaluation VHD Software
Windows 7 Test Drive – Play with Windows 7 online before you go and buy it.
HP Sizer for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (via MSExchange.org)
Today’s kindergartners, tomorrow’s workforce

Local host file not resolving correctly

jim — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:19:16 +0000

We recently re-built a machine with a fresh copy of Windows that had issues resolving names listed in the local host file. All of the entries matched the ones that were on PCs that were able to resolve them. We made sure that the file had no extension listed, and it didn’t. We even copied over a file from a machine that worked thinking something may have happened to the file itself. However, nothing we did worked.

After some searching around, I came across an entry that stated that the Network Service account needs rights to the host file. I verified that the DNS service running on the machine was indeed the Network Service account (which it was), and gave the account rights to the file.

Once I made the change, the entries inside the host file started resolving properly.

Bookmarks for 12/9/09

jim — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:31:47 +0000

Save a ton of money in your electric bill with VMWare DPM (Distributed Power Management)
Microsoft’s Hyper-V R2 vs. VMware’s vSphere: A feature comparison
“VMware Data Center in a Box” using VMware Player
Hyper-V Monitor Gadget for Windows Sidebar
MessageOps Exchange Online Monitor (Beta) – “…allows you to monitor the health of the Microsoft Exchange Online environment and the availability of your organization’s mailboxes…”
Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1
FixWin – “FixWin is a small portable application, distributed as freeware, to repair and fix common Windows annoyances & issues.”
Effects of excessive mailbox size and storage on Outlook performance
Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components Poster
Windows Server 2008: Planning for Active Directory Forest Recovery
Upgrading Active Directory Domains to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 AD DS Domains

Bookmarks for 12/1/09

jim — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:08:59 +0000

Setup previously failed while performing the action "Install". You cannot resume setup by performing the action "BuildToBuildUpgrade" – Tips for upgrading your Exchange 2007 cluster to SP2.
Microsoft Site Recovery Solution – A few white papers and webcasts on how to utilize virtualization for your disaster recovery needs.
Microsoft BPOS end-user experience – “This article contains screenshots and descriptions of the end-user experience when using BPOS at this point in time (November 2009).”
Outlook Social Connector
Vyatta Virtual Router on Hyper-V – This is great if you run a “lab” environment that doesn’t connect to your network, and you don’t want to install RRAS on your servers.
Hey, Scripting Guy! What’s the Deal with the Dash in Cmdlet Names?
Geeks rule! – Good post with links to some of the offerings that Microsoft has to offer such as E-Learning videos, labs and beta download.
The Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack: Video Overviews
So Then What is App-V?
Windows SBS 2008 Hands-On-Labs available for download from MS Connect – You’ll need Hyper-V to run these labs.
Exchange TechCenter announced

Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook

jim — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:44:19 +0000

A great way to start a Monday morning after a break is to not be able to check your email. I fired up Outlook, and got the error “Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.” (see below)

After some searching around, I came across a solution that fixed the problem.

I ran the following command in a Run box:

Outlook.exe /resetnavpane

Once I ran that command, Outlook opened with an error informing me that the data file for my mailbox wasn’t closed properly (see below). After it ran its check, Outlook opened fine.

Bookmarks for 11/18/09

jim — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:52:41 +0000

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for SQL Server – The webcast was on Nov. 4th, but you can still download it.
TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for Exchange Server – The webcast was on Nov. 4th, but you can still download it.
Installing Exchange 2010 Pre-requisites For Windows 2008 SP2
New Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals – It now contains over 5,500 applications for both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. Download the spreadsheet here.
What is Windows Azure? (video) (via Microsoft Nyhetsblogg)
BitLocker to Go Reader – now available for download – Download it here.
Office 2010 Beta – It will be publicly available today, but it’s available on TechNet now.
Big Improvements to Virtualization in Windows Server 2008 R2
Exchange Server 2007 Management Tools (32-Bit) – Download it here.
Exchange 2010 Installation Prep work
Exchange in the cloud or on the ground?
Windows 7 DirectAccess Explained

Bookmarks for 11/14/09

jim — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:01:22 +0000

Multihomed DCs with DNS, RRAS, and/or PPPoE adapters – Explains in depth why you shouldn’t use multihomed domain controllers.
Google Gives You More Storage for Less, but Still No GDrive – You can now get up to a 16TB mailbox.
Exporting and Importing Mailboxes with Exchange Server 2010 – They’ve added a way to import/export mailboxes from the GUI.
Hyper-V WMI: Creating/Applying/Deleting Virtual Machine Snapshots – A good explanation on how snapshots work with Hyper-V.
Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator
Hyper-V Routing without a Router VM
Office 2010 Beta website is live – But you can’t download it yet.

Bookmarks for 11/11/09

jim — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:53:30 +0000

Displaying Exchange 2007 public folders in SharePoint
VMFS Metadata size? – A formula on how to calculate the amount of disk space the metadata will consume.
Microsoft Azure: Security in the Cloud
First iPhone worm rickrolls jailbroken phones – I’m surprised it took this long for someone to create one.
Cloning Hyper-V Virtual Machines the Right Way (Part 1 & Part 2)
The Server Virtualization host; not a pimped file and print server – He lists considerations to take into account when designing your virtual environment.
Exchange Server 2010 RTM bits Public – Download it here.
Disk2vhd – A utility that helps create a VHD version of your physical disk while the disk is online. You can even create a VHD on the volume that is being converted.

Exchange 2007 support on Server 2008 R2

jim — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:09:24 +0000

Microsoft has decided to offer support for Exchange 2007 running on Server 2008 R2 after customers gave some feedback. They are going to release an update early next year.

Distribution Group Management in Exchange 2007

jim — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:34:01 +0000

Managing a distribution group in Exchange 2007 works little differently than it did in Exchange 2003. In Exchange 2003, you could select a user to manage a distribution group, and select the option so that they could update the members in the list. (see image below)

In Exchange 2007, you have the ability to select a manager to manage the members of the list as well. However, the manager has no rights to add/remove members from the list. (see image below)

In order to grant this permission to the user, you have to run the following command from the Exchange Management Shell:

Add-ADPermission -Identity:'Group Display Name’ -User:domain\username -AccessRights ReadProperty, WriteProperty -Properties 'Member'

Make sure you have the appropriate permissions before you run that command, or it will error out. According to the Technet article, you will need the following permissions to run the command successfully:

1) Exchange Recipient Administrator role.
2) Account Operator role for the applicable Active Directory containers.