The end of an era occurs today when Microsoft officially drops extended support for Windows Server 2003.
This means that Microsoft will no longer issue security updates for any version of Windows Server 2003, which includes Small Business Server 2003, and Windows Home Server.
I have personally used Samsung’s 850 SSD drives in a few workstations, and they appear to work great.
However, there are several recent posts of Windows 2012 R2 and 2012 R2 Essentials servers crashing. The common denominator? Samsung’s 850 EVO SSD drives.
One person wrote that a 2012 R2 Essentials server will produce 100% crashes. Any other 2012 R2 server will crash if the write cache is disabled, which happens when a server is promoted to a DC. Hopefully, it’s a firmware issue with those drives that Samsung can address. Also, the Samsung 840 SSD drives appear to work just fine, and does NOT cause similar crashes.
Here are some links for your further reading pleasure that identify the issues at hand:
The Microsoft’s Exchange Team released Rollup 17 for Exchange 2007 SP3 (KB 3056710) on June 16, 2015
This release provide minor improvements and fixes for customer reported issues.
The Microsoft’s Exchange Team released Rollup 10 for Exchange 2010 SP3 (KB 3049853) on June 16, 2015
This release provide minor improvements and fixes for customer reported issues. Update Rollup 10 is the last scheduled release for Exchange Server 2010. Exchange Server 2010 is in extended support and will receive security and time zone fixes on-demand on a go-forward basis.
Download Update Rollup 10 for Exchange Server 2010 SP3 (KB3049853)
Note: although RU10 is labeled as the last scheduled release for Exchange 2010, they indicate that a future update (RU11) will be required in order to support upgrading to Exchange 2016. But as no release date for Exchange 2016 has been announced, this information is subject to change.
For as long as I can remember, Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS) and Essentials Server would default to using .local for the internal domain suffix during installation. So, if your company name was Contoso, it would create Contoso.local as your internal domain.
And for me, using .local worked great all these years. The customer would still use .com (such as Contoso.com) for their public web site and for their email address. Contoso.local was strictly for internal DNS purposes.
But SSL Certificate authorities have announced that they will not issue new UCC/SAN SSL certificates that contain non-public local Intranet domain suffixes (such as .local) or IP addresses.
See detail announcements from these vendors: GoDaddy DigiCert
So … the question was raised recently within my Microsoft MVP group: how does one install Windows Server 2012R2 Essentials with a custom internal domain suffix, since by default Essentials uses .local?
My good MVP friend, Robert Pearman, took the time to post a solution today on his blog site. He gives step by step instructions, along with screen shots:
http://titlerequired.com/2015/06/27/install-windows-server-essentials-with-a-custom-domain-suffix/
Here is a quick summary of the steps:
Friday morning (6-26-2015) I started receiving calls from several of my customers saying that they could not run Quickbooks, and that they were getting an alert that the file “dbdata11.dll” has been quarantined.
With the help of other members of The ASCII Group, we quickly determined that it was a false positive due to a bad definition file update from Vipre (or the RMM version called MAV).
Soon after, MAXFocus (previously GFI) sent out a service status alert of the issue, and that it had been resolved with definition version 41468 and above. It was recommended to add the file (dbdata11.dll) to the Vipre/MAV exception list, before updating systems with the newer definition file.
Note: make an exception only for the file, and not the folder and file, as the folder name is randomly generated by QuickBooks.
That should have been it. Right? … Wrong!
I received a call from one of my users saying that one of their systems with QuickBooks installed on it had locked up. At about the same time they reported this issue, I received an email alert from the RMM service I use saying that the C: drive of this system had dropped to below 20% free space.
Once we got the system rebooted, I logged in and discovered that there 44,175 folder taking up nearly 62GB of disk space. The location of these folders were in C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\appdata\local\temp. Each of these folders contained a single file: dbdata11.dll.
It turns out that every time Vipre/MAV quarantined this file, QuickBooks created a new temp folder with the same file!
So once I had the A/V definition file updated, and we rebooted the system, I went in and safely deleted all 44,175 folders!
What a fun way to spend a Friday!
Microsoft is preparing for the release of Windows 10 on July 29th, and is pushing out an update (KB3035583) which will allow you to register for the free download. It seems to me, not only is this an easy way for Microsoft to broadcast that Windows 10 is coming, but it can provide them with some statistical data on how many people may want to get Windows 10 when it is released, and what kind of systems they are using.
However, if you are just totally annoyed with the prompt, or you do not want to register for Windows 10, or you’re just not interested … you can uninstall KB3035583. Here’s how:
After your system has rebooted, you will need to block/hide KB3035583 from re-installing.
Hotfix: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3045682/
“You cannot restore files and folders from Server Essentials Backup on a Windows-based computer”
Last Saturday (4/25/2015) a local Tampa company, Urban eRecycling, was scheduled to have their truck at a shopping center for an event to encourage people to recycle their old computers and equipment, for free!
I had the opportunity to talk with them beforehand, and ended up taking several loads of old computers, monitors, disk drives and accessories to be recycled. They can demagnitize or crush hard drives, and can provide a Destruction of Data Certificate.
They will do free pickups at your business or residence.
I just found out that March 31st has been designated as World Backup Day!
Click on the image below to go to the World Backup Day website, and take the pledge to backup your data. And, if you need help doing so, let me know!
