MVP Summit 2009 & I’m a PC

April 2, 2009 at 11:56 AMSaso Erdeljanov

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I was attending Microsoft MVP Summit 2009 in Seattle at the beginning of March. It was nice meeting all great people from around the world! I would like to thanks to Microsoft for organizing such a great event with 700 sessions, EMP party, breakfast and lunch, hotels were covered,…

I must say that Exchange team is really great! I enjoyed talking with every member of Exchange team that I meet.

During Steve Balmer’s keynote we were part of I’m a PC campaign. For sure it was fun. :) Video is available from Microsoft home page.


MVP "I'm a PC" Video

Pictures

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Microsoft Surface in hotel Sheraton, Seattle

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Panoramic view from “smoking area” in hotel Sheraton, Seattle

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Pike Place Market, Seattle

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Luka Manojlovic, Miha Pihler, Dejan Sarka

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Football field in Microsoft Campus

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Vladimir Meloski, Helio Panissa Jr, Luka Manojlovic

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Slovenian flag in center ;-)

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EMP Party

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Regional Dinner with MVP Lead Allesandro Teglia

Links:

Posted in: Microsoft | MVP Summit

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Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server

January 29, 2009 at 1:05 PM2102

MVP_FullColor_ForScreen I received a pleasant surprise on January the 1st from Microsoft MVP Award Program. I was awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in year 2009 for Exchange Server. It’s a privilege and honor to serve as MVP!

I would like to thank Microsoft for noticing my efforts in the community over the last years!

You can also read Welcome post from my MVP Lead Alessandro Teglia!

Posted in: Microsoft

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POW #7 - DPM 2007 SP1 Error 0x80004002

January 5, 2009 at 11:30 PMSaso Erdeljanov

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After updating my Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM 2007) to Service Pack 1 (SP1) I received a bunch of errors regarding inconsistency and recovery points creation.

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I was looking trough MSDPMCurr.errlog (located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM) and found following error:

GetDifferentialSoftwareSnapshotMgmt3Interface () failed: (0x80004002)

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It appears that Service Pack 1 does not correctly register VSS writer...

After searching around I found solution on Ask The Core Team blog. You need to re-register vss_ps.dll on server.

Solution:

  • Run cmd.exe (with administrative privileges in Windows Server 2008)
  • Run regsvr32 %windir%\System32\vss_ps.dll
  • Restart Volume Shadow Copy service

Link:

Posted in: Disaster Recovery | Exchange | Microsoft | POW

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TechNet - Exchange Server 2007 Tips& Tricks

November 25, 2008 at 12:54 PMSaso Erdeljanov

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Yesterday, I was presenting at Microsoft TechNet and MSDN Event in Ljubljana (Hotel Mons) about Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Tips and Tricks.

Agenda

  • Windows Server 2008
  • Transport
  • High Availability

 

TechNet - Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Triki in Nasveti

Posted in: Microsoft | Presentations

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POW #4 - Send connector external FQDN in HELO/EHLO banner

October 27, 2008 at 1:55 PM2102
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Pretty common problem this days is around specified FQDN for external connections from Exchange 2007 HUB servers.

For demo purposes let's say our internal FQDN of Exchange 2007 HUB server is DEMO-E2K7SP1.demo.pri and external FQDN is demomail.exchange.si.

Specify FQDN for Send Connector

We need to specify FQDN for each send connector we created for internet delivery. In our case we have send connector named Internet. Let's specify FQDN:

Set-SendConnector -Identity "Internet" -Fqdn demomail.exchange.si

As you can see demomail.exchange.si is specified as FQDN for above mentioned send connector. Please do not forget to also create/use certificate with Subject Name (or Subject Alternative Name) demomail.exchange.si.

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Let's see what will be present in mail header at recipient side. As you can see bellow in the first red marked part demomail.exchange.si FQDN was used at HELO/EHLO step when contacting recipient mail server.

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As you may also noticed DEMO-E2K7SP1.demo.pri is also visible in mail header. There is nothing wrong with that! It's expected behavior of every mail server in the planet. Full 'travel' path is always included in message header.

How do I hide internal servers from message header?

My recommended solution is with Transport Rules usage. Here is sample transport rule that strip Receive part from message header.

Create new transport rule:

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Specify Condition from users Inside the organization, sent to users Outside the organization and Action remove header (Received).

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If we look again into message header you will notice that internal server is not visible anymore (Received: from DEMO-E2K7SP1.demo.pri). Removing other parts from message header can also be done with Transport Rules.

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I hope this problem with distinguishing between configuration errors and records in message header is just a bit more clear now.

Posted in: Exchange | Microsoft | POW

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POW #3 - Enable Windows Server Backup support for Hyper-V

October 8, 2008 at 9:41 AM2102

POW_Blue_SDid you try to backup Hyper-V Virtual Machines with Windows Server backup and received Event ID 521 error on Hyper-V host?

 

Backup started at '7.10.2008 23:21:14' failed as Volume Shadow copy operation failed for backup volumes with following error code '2155348129'. Please rerun backup once issue is resolved.

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 Event ID 12302 error on guest computer?

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: An internal inconsistency was detected in trying to contact shadow copy service writers.  Please check to see that the Event Service and Volume Shadow Copy Service are operating properly.

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Result of running vssadmin list writers command is empty?

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Event ID 10102 error appears in Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS/Admin Event Log?

Failed to create the backup of virtual machine 'GUEST01'. (Virtual machine ID 0FBA408B-B269-4169-9278-EC650FEEBB1B)

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Solution resides in the registry ;).

Fix VSS Event ID 12302 on Hyper-v guests

In order to get rid off Event ID 12302 on Virtual Machines you need to follow the following procedure:

  • Backup registry key:
    HKLM\Software\Microsoft\EventSystem\{26c409cc-ae86-11d1-b616-00805fc79216}\Subscriptions

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  • Delete registry key Subscriptions.
  • Restart Virtual Machine (key will be regenerated after restart).
  • Verify that vssadmin list writers command returns valid list of writers.

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 Enable Hyper-V VSS Writer with Windows Server Backup

In order to enable VSS backups of Hyper-V Virtual Machines, you need to add the following registry keys and String Value to enable Hyper-V VSS Writer with Windows Server Backup on Hyper-V host.

Key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\
WindowsServerBackup\Application Support\{66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}

String Value:

Name: Application Identifier
Type: REG_SZ
Value: Hyper-V

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Also check that Hotfix KB956697 (Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V VSS writer is not used during a backup job because of corrupted or invalid virtual machine configuration files.) is installed!

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008

I also have great news for all Hyper-V lovers. Microsoft released Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008! The best thing about it is that it's FREE! Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 is a stripped version of Windows Server 2008 Core and contains only Windows Hypervisor, Windows Server driver model and virtualization components.

Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 is a stand-alone product that provides a simplified, reliable, cost-effective and optimized virtualization solution enabling organizations to improve server utilization and reduce costs. It allows organizations to consolidate workloads onto a single physical server and is a good solution for organizations who want a basic and simplified virtualization solution for consolidating servers as well as for development and test environments. Low utilization infrastructure workloads, departmental applications and simple branch office workloads are also candidates to virtualize using Hyper-V Server 2008.

Links:

Edge Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007

August 25, 2008 at 2:57 PM2102

Another great tool from OCS team!

The Edge Planning Tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 provides settings for configuring your perimeter network based on information that you provide to the tool.

The Edge Planning Tool asks questions about your proposed or current edge server deployment. The tool uses your answers and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices to generate the following reports:

  • Settings that you can use to configure your certificates, DNS services, and firewalls.
  • Custom documentation for configuring your edge servers, reverse proxy, and next hop server.
  • A comparison of your answers to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices.

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Source: Edge Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007

Cipher Suite Update for Windows Server 2003

July 17, 2008 at 1:06 PM2102

This update adds support for the following Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cipher suites in the Schannel.dll module for Windows Server 2003:

  • TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA AES128-SHA
  • TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA AES256-SHA

Note: These cipher suites are based on the RC4 algorithm.

 

Source:

KB948963 - An update is available to adds support for the TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA AES128-SHA and the TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA AES256-SHA AES cipher suites in Windows Server 2003

Posted in: Windows | Security | Microsoft

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Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008

July 10, 2008 at 10:09 AM2102

This guide describes important tuning parameters and settings that can result in improved performance for the Windows Server 2008 operating system. Each setting and its potential effect are described to help you make an informed judgment about its relevance to your system, workload, and performance goals.

This information applies for the Windows Server 2008 operating system.

What's New:

  • Added "Power Guidelines" under Server Hardware section and added "Performance Tuning for Virtualization Servers" section.

Included in this paper:

  • Performance Tuning for Server Hardware
  • Performance Tuning for Networking Subsystem
  • Performance Tuning for Storage Subsystem
  • Performance Tuning for Web Servers
  • Performance Tuning for File Servers
  • Performance Tuning for Active Directory Servers
  • Performance Tuning for Terminal Server
  • Performance Tuning for Terminal Server Gateway
  • Performance Tuning for Virtualization Servers
  • Performance Tuning for File Server Workload (NetBench)
  • Performance Tuning for Network Workload (NTttcp)
  • Performance Tuning for Terminal Server Knowledge Worker Workload
  • Performance Tuning for SAP Sales and Distribution Two-Tier Workload

Download: Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 White Paper

Posted in: Microsoft | Windows Server 2008

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Migrating Vista/Server 2008 VMs from Virtual PC, Server or VMware to Hyper-V?

June 29, 2008 at 3:13 PM2102

There is one little trick you need to remember if you are migrating VHDs with Vista/Server 2008 that was previously created on Virtual PC or Virtual Server 2005.

Enable Detect HAL!

How to Enable Detect HAL?

  1. Start the virtual machine and Run Msconfig.exe.

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  2. In the System Configuration dialog box, click the Boot tab, and then click Advanced Options.
  3. In the BOOT Advanced Options dialog box, click to select the Detect HAL check box, and then click OK.

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  4. Click Yes to restart the virtual machine.
  5. Clear the Detect HAL check box after reboot (it takes longer to boot).

 

Source: KB 954282 - The VMBus device does not load on a virtual machine that is running on a Windows Server 2008-based computer that has Hyper-V installed