(via Mashable)
T-Mobile, Danger lose Sidekick customer data due to server failure. Rumor on the street is that a SAN upgrade gone awry caused the data loss. And it seems that there were no backups of the data. (via TechCrunch)
Exchange Server 2007 won’t run on next Windows Server. This includes Server 2008 R2. I wonder how many customers are going to be thrilled with this news.
It seems that Outlook 2010 will have support for multiple exchange mailboxes. After reading through some of the post comments, it does look like it will have support for caching on the extra accounts and that the max number of exchange accounts as of now is 3. That number may change by the time it hits the shelves.
I did have a couple of questions though.
1) Is Exchange 2007 going to support this? As of now, I don’t see how you can attach another mailbox to an existing user with a mailbox. Unless a future service pack will address this issue, I have a feeling only the next version of Exchange will support this. Please correct me if I am wrong.
2) How are Windows Mobile phones going to handle multiple mailboxes?
These questions have been asked in the comments, but they haven’t addressed them yet.
Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments. Some of these may seem obvious, but it’s still worth reading.
A few weeks ago, we had a user complain that they were not able to access anything on the network. If I recall correctly, she was able to log in to the domain, but that was pretty much it. She wasn’t able to access any of the resources on the network.
After we started researching the problem, we found a few entries that pointed to a virus being the cause of the issue. We couldn’t find any traces of a virus after running multiple scans.
Next on the list was to rebuild the TCP/IP stack. If you don’t know how to rebuild a TCP/IP stack, you can follow the instructions on Knowledge Base article 299357. Essentially, you have to run one command from the command prompt:
netsh int ip reset filename.txt
After a quick reboot, the issue was still there.
After we researched some more, I came across a post that stated we needed to check a value for a key inside the registry. The key was located at:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters\TransportBindName
The value is supposed to be “\Device\” (see image above) without the quotations. We added that value, restarted the machine, and everything was back to normal.
UPDATE: HP has updated their drivers to include support for Server 2008 R2. The version number is 9.80.10.0.
If you look inside the cp011548.xml file, you will see the following:
As you can see, Server 2008 R2 is listed as a supported OS. There is no longer a need to make the changes.
However, if you want to extract the contents of the executable, use Winrar or 7-zip. Once you open the executable, you will see all the files that it contains. See below.
We’ve wanted to start testing Server 2008 and SQL 2008 and eventually begin a migration process from our current environment of Server 2003 and SQL 2005. We purchased some blade servers with two BL680c servers allocated for our new environment. I began prepping the servers first with Server 2008 R2 since it was available for us to use. This wasn’t our first time installed Server 2008, but it was our first time installing Server 2008 R2 on our blade environment.
The install of the operating system went smooth. We were able to install the Proliant Service Pack 8.21 without any issues as well. However, we did run into one problem – the HP Network Configuration Utility would not team our NICs. We were able to team two of the NICs, and it looked as if it successfully teamed them. Yet when we looked in the Configuration Utility, it showed no teamed NICs. Weird. When we looked in the Network Connections applet, they showed as disconnected. After a restart, the teamed NIC was gone.
After searching HP’s site for an update, we found version 9.70 available for download; we were running version 9.60. After checking out the enhancements tab, it showed that there was support for Server 2008 R2. Perfect. We downloaded the update and tried to install it on the server. This is when we ran into our next hurdle – the error message stated that the update was incompatible with our operating system. That seemed odd since it was for Server 2008 x64 with support for R2.
After some searching around, it seems that we weren’t the only ones who were experiencing this issue. However, the sites I came across didn’t have resolutions to this problem, so I called HP support to find out what was going on.
After speaking to a service rep, he informed me that Server 2008 R2 hasn’t been certified for the BL680c. He forwarded me the Proliant support matrix for Server 2008 R2 (see left), and the only system that was shown as supported was the BL460 G1 series. That does me no good. Unfortunately, he also had no time table as to when it would be certified, but he did send me the link for the Proliant Support Pack for Server 2008 R2, but it was in the beta stage. I didn’t want to run the risk of installing beta software on our servers which were slated to enter production in the near future.
I’ll just have to keep checking the site and hope that our servers will certified before they enter production.
UPDATE (09/17/09): Diego, from HP, left a comment on how to resolve this issue. Thanks Diego for the tip!
I tested it out and it worked with no issue! I did have to update the drivers for the NICs as well. After that, I had no issues teaming the NICs.
Here’s what I did.
First, I edited the cp010849.xml file and added the following line to the subsection labeled "SUPPORTED_OPERATING_SYSTEMS" under the "PREREQUISTES" section. See the image below if you need to see what the final output should be.
supported_operating_system platform="nt_x86-64" major="6" minor="1" sr="OEM" name="Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2"/
NOTE: In order to edit the file, you’ll have to extract the contents of the downloaded executable to your drive first.
Once I made the changes to the file, I re-ran the setup and was able to install the updated software. See below for screenshot.
Windows 7 has been officially RTM’ed with a release date of August 6th to Technet and MSDN subscribers, and October 22nd as the official release date.
We are slowly in the process of upgrading all of our user’s Office 2003 installations to Office 2007. During this transition phase, we came across an issue where users who are on Outlook 2003 are not able to view shared calendars from Outlook 2007. When you share a calendar in Outlook 2007, an email with a link to the calendar is emailed to the user you are trying to share it with. Unfortunately, Outlook 2003 users can’t simply click the link and open up the calendar.
Microsoft’s Knowledge Base Article 912265 deals specifically with this issue. Essentially, you have to share the mailbox – yes the mailbox – with the user you are trying to share the calendar with. Only the reviewer permissions is necessary, so you need not worry about them reading your email. Next, share your calendar by adding the user in the permission tab, and assigning them the appropriate permission level. If you need a description of the permission levels, go here and expand the section under step 4.
One thing that Microsoft left out of their documentation is what to do when you want to share a calendar that isn’t your initial calendar – I refer to this as the “default” calendar even though that probably isn’t the proper term. Again, with Outlook 07 to Outlook 07, it’s very simple since an email link is sent to the user. However, the process to share those calendars with Outlook 03 is a little different.
As previously mentioned, you have to share the mailbox with the user and assign them the reviewer level. The next step is to share your “default” calendar. If you don’t want the user to see your appointments, then give them reviewer access as well. Once these two steps have been completed, then you can share your newly created calender to the user with the permission level you want them to have.
Even though the user will see your mailbox, your “default” calendar, and the shared calender in their list, they won’t be able to view anything without having the appropriate permission level.
System Center Management Pack Catalog. I didn’t realize that they had management packs for that many products.
Google has released their Google Voice App for both Blackberry and Android. I tested it out on a local call, and it sounds great. You can download the app by visiting m.google.com/voice on your Blackberry or searching for “Google Voice” in the Android Market. If you don’t have a Google Voice account, you can request an invite here.
Elsewhere