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Here is another great tool from Microsoft. This is the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant. It is for Exchange 2010 deployments. It can assist you in creating a step by step plan for your Exchange deployment. It can help with On-premise, Cloud, or Exchange Hybrid deployments. This tool will also help you with upgrade scenarios.

Basically the tool will ask you a series of questions about your environment and how you want to setup Exchange. It will then populate a checklist that you can follow for your deployment. You can click through the checklist in the browser, download it or print it.

Here is a link to the tool:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/exdeploy2010/default.aspx#Index

System Center Universe 2012 is a one-day globally available technical event which will focus on the System Center 2012 products and new capabilities resulting from these releases. The conference begins at 8:00 am CST on Thursday, January 19th, 2012.

Jason Buffington will be presenting about Data Protection Manager 2012. Here is a link to the full agenda:

http://www.systemcenteruniverse.com/Agenda

Many System Center User Groups will have remote viewings of the sessions. You can find out if your local SCUG is participating at this link:

http://www.systemcenteruniverse.com/UserGroupViewings

Microsoft has released a web based tool that can be used to build PowerShell cmdlets for SharePoint. This is a great tool for those that are new to SharePoint PowerShell or PowerShell in general. It allows you to drag and drop a PowerShell verb and noun into a design surface and then input your specific SharePoint information such as farm, site collection database etc to complete the cmdlet. Once you have the cmdlet designed you can copy it out  and can run it on your server.

Microsoft announced this tool At the 2011 SharePoint Conference in Anaheim, CA which I was at. I missed that announcement and learned about this tool from Russ Kaufmann’s blog.  Thanks Russ!

Here is a link to more information about PowerShell for SharePoint and  this tool:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff603532

Here is a link to the tool itself:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/TechNet/en-us/Office/media/WindowsPowerShell/WindowsPowerShellCommandBuilder.html

Microsoft DPM MVP Robert Hedblom will be hosting a free webcast covering what the new features are in DPM 2012.

Here is the information from his blog:

Interested in DPM? Want to know the new features in DPM2012?

At the 13/10 1PM GMT+1 I will host a webcast (Live meeting) that addresses the new features and will also show the new GUI.

Please email me @ robert.hedblom[at]gmail.com and I will provide you the link and information you need.

This is free , you don’t have to pay to attend

Date:13/10 2011
Time:1 PM GMT +1

Today I became Backup Academy Certified in VMware & Hyper-V backup.

Backup Academy is an online training and certification resource created and powered by Veeam. Veeam is a virtualization backup software company. Backup Academy has an online certification test that you can take it is much like other certifications requiring 70% or higher score to pass.

Backup Academy has 8 training videos by IT industry experts. These videos cover the basics of backup, backup of virtualized environments, VSS, Windows Server Backup, VMware backup tools, best practices for backing up VMware and Hyper-V environments, and more. It does not cover DPM but Backup Academy will have more content when they update in the future. Maybe they will add Data Protection Manager to the training and certification at some point!

Here are the experts that have contributed to the training and certification on Backup Academy:

Greg Shields: Greg holds both Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert status and is a senior partner at Concentrated Technology.

David Davis: David holds VMware vExpert status as well as Cisco CCIE and VMware VCAP credentials. David is a popular blogger, author and expert in the virtualization community.

Elias Khnaser: Elias holds VMware vExpert status and is the CTO at Sigma Solutions. Elias has authored a number of books on IT certifications and is a popular blogger on a number of websites.

Eric Siebert: Eric holds VMware vExpert status and a number of IT certifications. Eric has authored several books and is a popular blogger.

Rick Vanover: Rick holds VMware vExpert status and a number of IT certifications. Rick is a popular blogger and podcaster.

This certification is a good indication that you as an IT Professional understand the basics of backup. I recommend this training and certification for anyone that works with data protection. It is good for the beginner and a good refresher for experienced backup admins.

Here is the Backup Academy  website: http://www.backupacademy.com

Here is a blog post with more information on the academy and certification: VEEAM Post on Backup Academy

DPM 2012 Beta is out. One of the new features of DPM 2012 is that you can install the DPM Administrator Console on other servers or workstations and manage your DPM 2012 and even DPM 2010 servers remotely without having to logon to the DPM server. The cool part is that you can manage existing DPM 2010 servers. This is done through applying a hotfix to your DPM 2010 server and installing the console on your workstation or server from the DPM 2012 beta software.

In this blog post we are going to walk through setting this up. It is a simple two step install installing the hotfix on the DPM 2010 server first and then the console on the workstation. Here is the process:

First download the DPM 2010 Interoperability patch for DPM 2012 Beta hotfix (DataProtectionManager2010-KB2581742) and DPM 2012 Beta.

• DPM 2010 hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581742
• DPM 2012 Beta: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27216

Copy the DPM 2010 Interoperability patch hotfix for DPM 2012 Beta  to your DPM 2010 server.

Make sure your DPM 2010 is all up to date. Once DPM 2010 is up to date install the beta hotfix.

Open up DPM 2010 after the hotfix and verify it is still working.

Now the DPM 2010 server is ready lets install the console on the client machine.

Here are the steps:

Navigate to the DPM 2012 Beta install and chose 32 or 64Bit depending on what your workstation is.

Launch the DPM 2012 Beta install on your local workstation.

Select “DPM Central Console” to begin.

Read the rest of this entry »

I will be attending the September 2011 MN System Center User Group. They will be giving away 2 free copies of a TechNet subscription and a copy of my Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2010 book.

Paul Thomsen, Solution Engineer for 1E will be speaking and they will also have free food.

Visit the user groups website for more info: http://mnscug.org/meetings/173-september-2011-meeting.html

I have seen issues on DPM forums where others have recovered from DPM failures and their protected data becomes inactive or other issues such as the data suddenly becoming inactive on its own placing the data in a category named “Inactive protection for previously protected data”. It is not clear how to mark protected data active again once it is marked as inactive. In this post we are first going to look at the manual process of marking protected data inactive and then bringing it back into an active state.

Marking Protected Data as Inactive in DPM:

• Go into DPM Administrator console.
• Go to the Protection area.
• Right click on the Protected Data and select Stop Protection.
• When the Remove From Group window appears be sure that the checkbox next to "Delete replica on disk" is unchecked.

If this is checked the data will not simply be marked inactive but will delete the data.

• Click OK.

Your data will now appear in an Inactive state.

New replicas of this data will no longer be created but the existing replicas will remain on the DPM server for future recover.

Marking Protected Data from Inactive back to Active in DPM:

Marking the protected data from inactive back to active is not as simple as right clicking on and selecting an option.

That would be a logical place for that option to be but it is not. To mark the data active again you need to modify the protection group the data belonged to and add it back in.

This will mark the data active to start protecting it again. Your existing replicas will be present and you can restore from them.

Here are the steps to do this:

• Go into DPM Administrator console.
• Go to the Protection area.
• Right click on the Protection Group that your inactive data was a part of and chose Modify Protection Group.
• Locate the protected data that is inactive & select it for protection then complete the modify protection group wizard.

You will see the following warning:

• Click yes on this warning as it is letting you know that the inactive data will start a consistency check as soon as it becomes active.

Once it is successful your protected data will now be back in an active state.

I recently setup a Hyper-V cluster on Windows Server 2008 R2. Live Migration & failover would not work. Quick Migration would work. I also could only see the  CSV (Cluster Shared Volume) on one NODE at a time.  I then noticed this error in the cluster event logs:

Cluster Shared Volume ‘Volume1′ (‘Cluster Disk 2′) is no longer available on this node because of ‘STATUS_BAD_NETWORK_PATH(c00000be)’. All I/O will temporarily be queued until a path to the volume is reestablished.

I set this cluster up with three networks 1. iSCSI 2. Heartbeat 3. Public; and a CSV on the iSCSI network for the virtual machines. After some research I discovered that you actually want “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” and “client for Microsoft networks” enabled on your heartbeat network cards on all nodes in your cluster.

Now there is information out there saying that you need to disable “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” and “client for Microsoft networks” on all network cards except for the ones connected to the public network when clustering in Windows. I found this to be true except when using CSV in a Hyper-V cluster. I have setup file server and print server clusters before this way and everything worked just fine. CSV  requires the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol and this is enabled in Windows Server 2008 by making sure “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” and “client for Microsoft networks” are checked.

More about the requirements for CSV can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff182358(WS.10).aspx

I was setting up multiple wireless access points with the same security and the same SSID. I had no way in windows to tell which AP I was connecting to. I needed to know because as I moved through the office I needed to ensure the computer was jumping onto the AP with the strongest signal in that area.  One of my IT staff found a great tool that would tell me this information. This tool is called inSSIDer 2. We loaded inSSIDer 2 then walked around with a laptop and sure enough the tool highlighted the AP we were connected to. This gave me confirmation that the setup worked as planned. inSSIDER 2 is an alternative to Netstumbler and works well on Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can be used for much more then what I used it for. Here is a list of uses from the makers website:

You can download the tool here: http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

Another good tool when working with Wireless networks is Wifi Analyzer. This for an Android phone and is free.

You can learn more about this tool here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer