Microsoft Products

This is were I will blog about Microsoft products.

Blue Screen of Death when booting Hyper-V VHD in VirtualBox

by

 I had some virtual machines running on Hyper-V. I wanted to run some of these on VirtualBox for mobility reasons. VirtualBox supports running Virtual Machines from VmWare or Hyper-V. VirtualBox can boot VHD’s (Virtual Hard Disks) directly. You do not need to convert the virtual hard drive format. I copied the VHD’s too %systemdrive%:\Users\USERNAME\.VirtualBox\HardDisks on … Read more

Move Exchange Stores & logs to a Different Disk

by

This blog is for those that have your Exchange stores and logs on the C drive and the c drive on your server is running out of space. You know you need to move them but you don’t know how. Well I will cover this in this blog step by step below.

NOTE: Here are a couple of things to note before going further:

  1. If your server is running out of space on the C drive check all possible areas and be sure Exchange is the culprit before moving its components around.
  2. Do not jump on the server and start manually deleting log files.
  3. This post is to be used before your disk is full or after you have recovered from a full disk disaster. If your disk is completely full now visit this link How to Recover from “Disk Full” on an Exchange Log Drive once you have cleared some space come back to this blog to move the log files and database store.
  4. Make sure you have a good backup of Exchange before following these steps.
  5. Use the below steps at your own risk.

MOVING THE DATABASE:

First off we are going to use the Move wizards in this post for both the logs and databases move. Using the wizards will simplify these tasks  and we like to keep things simple. If you would prefer to do this in PowerShell see the link at the end of this blog post.

  • Open “Exchange Management Console”.
  • Expand “Server Configuration”>Select “Mailbox” .
  • image
  • You should now see the “Database Management” tab in the lower center console.
  • Right click on each of the Storage groups and click “Move Database Path”.
  • image
  • Record the “Database file paths”.
  • Go to your new drive that you are going to move the store to and create a folder to move it to. I recommend that you create a similar path (folder structure) to the folder you are moving your store to. EXAMPLE: %newdrive%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox\First Storage Group\.
  • No go back into “Exchange Management Console”>”Server Configuration”>“Mailbox”.
  • In the lower center console right click on the Storage group you want to move and click “Move Database Path”
  • Click the browse button and select the path to the folder you created in the previous step.
  • Once you have selected the path click the “Move” button.

image

Read more

Remove a computer from System Center Essentials 2010 that is no longer available

by

So we all have run into this or done it at one point. You decommission a server or workstation and forget to uninstall agents that where on that system. Well System Center Essentials installs an agent on your Windows server and or clients. So now your managed computer has been removed from the domain but the SCE 2010 agent still shows it in the console. How do you remove it? The SCE 2010 agent can be manually deleted from the SCE 2010 console to do this follow these steps:

  • Open the SCE 2010 Console:
  • Go to Administration space:

image

Read more

Install and Configure System Center Essentials 2010 Part 1

by

~ How to Install System Center Essentials 2010 ~

I recently had the opportunity to setup Microsoft System Center Essentials (SCE 2010) in my network environment. Microsoft System Center Essentials is a management solution for small to mid sized business network environments. It is a combination of a few System Center products including Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, and Virtual Machine Manager. It also includes windows update services. This solutions puts all of these solutions in one interface so an IT professional can efficiently manage their IT environment from physical and virtual servers to clients and other network devices. In this two part post I am going to walk through installing SCE 2010 and some basic configuration.

Software Used:

Below is the list of software you will need for your deployment.

  • OS is Windows Server 2008 R2
  • SQL Server 2008 R2
  • System Center Essentials 2010

Install of SQL:

First thing we need to do is install SQL server. SCE 2010 has a database on the backend and you need somewhere to store this.

You can use a local SQL instance or a remote SQL instance on an existing SQL server. I will walk you through installing this on the same server you will install SCE2010 on.

  • Launch your SQL install and click next on the “Setup Support Rules” and “Setup Role” screens accept the defaults.
  • You will then come to the “Feature Selection” screen select the same features as the image below.

clip_image002

  • You can chose to use the default instance. SQL will give it a name for you. I like to use named instances. Chose one of the options and click next.

Read more

How to increase session timeout in Exchange 2007

by

On a network I administer some of the end users wanted the session timeout in OWA to be longer so they don’t have to keep logging in after being idle for a while. This is an Exchange 2007 environment. This setting is stored in the registry on the Exchange server with the Client Access Server (CAS) role installed. There is two ways to modify this setting. One of course is to go into the registry and add the key for this value and set this value to the amount of time you want the session timeout to be.  The second way to set the session timeout is a by running a PowerShell command.

 

NOTE: The session timeout is set in seconds for example 1800 seconds = 30 minutes.

 

Read more

Setup & configure a certificate authority on Windows Server 2008

by

So you host a bunch of internal SharePoint sites, Websites and other internal web applications. You want to secure them with SSL but you cannot afford a certificate from a third party certificate authority right now.  I am going to walk you through installing a new CA, request a certificate, approve a certificate and then install a certificate.

CA Install:

 

Go to start and click on “Server Manager”

Select ”Roles”

 

Click on “Add Roles”

 

Select “Certificate Services” and click next

 

I typically choose “Certification Authority” and “Certification Authority Web Enrollment” and click next

NOTE: I choose the web enrollment so I can request certificates and download them from the web browser.

Read more

Step-by step guide on how to protect your network from spam

by

Intro

Spam, or more accurately Unsolicited Commercial Email, is still on the rise, with some estimates measuring it at 90% of all email traffic. It’s a nuisance for users, a storage nightmare for admins, and often a vector for phishing attacks and malware. Using a defense in depth approach, this article provides steps an email administrator can take to protect their network from spam.

Step one-user training

Users should be educated on how their actions can lead to or reduce the amount of spam destined for their inbox. Using corporate email for personal use, subscribing to mailing lists, registering their email address for promotions and giveaways, and forwarding chain mails are all vectors that can lead to spam. Consider disabling html support to prevent downloads that can confirm an address is valid, as well as to reduce the risk of email based malware.

Step two-web content

Spammers frequently scan websites looking for embedded email addresses in contact information. Raise awareness with your web developers and establish a policy that all email addresses in web pages should be masked using JavaScript or other encoding that allows a person to click or read the address, but makes it more difficult for a spider to harvest it. Use contact forms when possible instead of displaying email addresses.

Step three-tighten up your SMTP gateway

Disabling the verify command (VRFY) on your SMTP gateway makes it that much harder for spammers to check for valid email addresses. If supported, implement a delay before your server responds to a request with its banner. Legitimate email servers will wait for the 220 response before trying to send email, while many programs/scripts used by spammers will not. Your server can then drop email from this misbehaving sender. If your SMTP gateway supports Quit detection, configure it to drop email that it receives from a host that don’t close the session properly. Legitimate email servers end a session with the QUIT command, but many programs/scripts used by spammers don’t.

 

Read more

How to setup VPN Access on Server 2008

by

In this post I will cover how to setup and configure a Windows 2008 server as a VPN server. There are several different steps and configurations that need to be done. There are 4 parts to this setup that I will walk through.

Part #1 Installing NPAS and RRAS:

Open Server Manager and open roles

 

 

Click on add roles and add the Network Policy and Access Services role (NPAS)

Click next on the informational screen

On the role services screen choose Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS) and click next

 

On the next screen click install

When it is done it will give you a screen telling you if it installed successfully or failed

If it was successful click close and choose to restart when it prompts you

Read more