On Saturday January 12, 2013 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a recommendation to disable Java, based on vulnerabilities reported in this CERT (http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/625617).
Update: on Monday January 14th, Oracle released a security patch (Java 7 Update 11) to address these vulnerabilities.
Symptom: your Windows 8/Windows 2012 system locks and crashes after installing some updates
We are still collecting information and data on this issue, but here’s a word of advice:
Working with Exchange 2010 and SBS 2011, you should expect to become familiar with PowerShell. Here’s a quick easy solution for displaying the version of Exchange 2010 installed on a server:
In my case (see screenshot above), I have Version 14.2 (Build 247.5) which indicates that I have Exchange 2010 SP2 installed.
I just received a letter from Microsoft indicating that I have been renewed as a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for the Small Business Server (SBS) product for the 10th consecutive year.
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2013 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Small Business Server technical communities during the past year.
This one was truly a surprise, considering that my level of active participation in the SBS technical community was virtually non-existent for the first half of the year as I recovered from congestive heart failure. I’m thankful to those involved with the decision to renew my status as an MVP.
Every year I say that I am truly honored with the selection, and that is the simple truth. I’m honored to be associated with a great group of fellow MVP’s that are more than that – they are my good friends and family. I value their wise business advice as well as their technical expertise. Their encouragement to me and my wife during this last year with my health issues has been extraordinary.
I also wish to remember one of our MVP’s, Eriq Neale, who passed away in June after a long fought battle with cancer. He was a fellow guitar-player like me, and enjoyed life, family and his God with equal fervor and zeal.
When migrating from SBS 2003 to SBS 2011, I will often backup data folders on the old server with NT Backup. However, SBS 2011 does not provide the NT Backup utility natively on it. However, Microsoft does offer a “read only” version of NT Backup (KB 974674) that can be installed on SBS 2011 and used to restore .bkf backup files.
Once your migration is complete, it is critical that this NT Backup utility is uninstalled from your SBS 2011 server as it affects the regular daily backup that you will be doing with your SBS 2011 server. The issue would not become apparent until you attempt to do a bare metal restore of your SBS 2011 server. See Susan Bradley’s blog post on the subject.
What’s not addressed is how to uninstall this utility. You won’t find it in the regular Add/Remove programs section of the control panel. Nor will you find it anywhere from Start > All Programs.
Here’s how to uninstall it:
I am still encountering SBS 2008 servers where the Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) reports that the SharePoint SQL Log File is getting too large. There is a KB article that documents a script that will truncate the log file. I’ve created a zip file with the appropriate SQL command line plus a batch file to run it (see Part 1 below).
It is also recommend that after truncating the SharePoint database log file, that you set the recovery mode to “simple” for the database log file (see Part 2 below), and then you won’t need to use this command script again!
I created a zip file that contains both the SQL command line file that the KB article describes, plus a .cmd file that you can use to run the SQL command. In addition, my .cmd file will display the size of the SharePoint database log file both before and after.
Steps:
Steps
SBS 2008 runs Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. On December 11, 2012 Microsoft released Update Rollup 9 (UR9/KB 2746157) for the Exchange Server 2007 running Service Pack 3. It’s important to keep your Exchange server up-to-date with service packs and update rollups.
Before installing this (or any) update, it is strongly suggested that you make sure that you have a recent full backup of your SBS server, and that you plan to reboot your server BEFORE installing this update, as well as AFTER installing it. You want to ensure that you have a properly running server before installing updates.
UR9 can take up to 15 minutes to install. But as there are no intermediate prompts, go ahead and kick it off, and then do something else other than stare at the progress bar!
After installing the update successfully, reboot your server, open up Services (services.msc) and verify that all Exchange services that are set to start automatically are indeed running.
Microsoft announced today on their SkyDrive blog site that Live Mesh will be officially retired on February 13, 2013.
http://blogs.windows.com/skydrive/b/skydrive/archive/2012/12/13/update-on-windows-live-mesh.aspx
SkyDrive continues to be enhanced with apps for Windows, Windows Phone, Android, iPhone, iPad and Xbox 360, and is deeply integrated with Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT.
Short and simple: if you are running Exchange 2010 or Sharepoint 201, DO NOT install Windows Management Framework 3.0 (WMF 3.0).
For a slightly more descriptive explanation, check out my good friend Michael Smith’s blog post.
I recommend and install Calyptix’s Access Enforcer all-in-one network security appliance at many of my customer sites. Compared to my experience working with some other security appliances, I find the Access Enforcer very easy to install and maintain.
If you work with Calyptix, you may not be aware that they do “mail bagging” automatically if you enable SMTP filtering. “Mail bagging” simply means that if (for whatever reason) incoming mail cannot be delivered to your on-premise mail server, the Access Enforcer will hold (bag) it. Once your mail server is back online, it will release the emails.
The Calyptix KB article on mail bagging was updated today to address the proper requirements for using this feature.