Archive for SBS – Page 10

NitroDesk Touchdown for iOS

Connecting smart phones to work with Exchange mail servers these days may seem standard fare. But that was not always the case.

I did not recommend iPhones to my SBS customers until version 3.0. And when one of my customers purchased a Droid back in 2010, I could not make it work reliably to their SBS 2008 server.

Solution? I ended up installing NitroDesk’s Touchdown software. Not only did it solve the reliability and connection issues, but it also provided better syncing of contacts, calendars and tasks. View a list of Touchdown features here.

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Now comes word of a version of Touchdown for iOS. You can trial it free for 30 days. The cost of the software is $20US, and can be downloaded from Apple’s App store. I will be testing it myself in the next month and then post my review.

Note: Touchdown requires that your Exchange server supports the ActiveSync protocol.

Hyper-V Replication Hangout

The replication feature of Hyper-V 2012 is getting a lot of attention recently. This Thursday Oct 4th, 2012 at 6pm EDT some of the SBS MVP’s will be discussing Hyper-V replication for small businesses:

We’re hosting a hangout to talk about Hyper-V Replication for Small Business with Boon Tee. Boon wrote a great series of blog posts which I shared in an early post on this blog. We’re hosting a hangout so you can ask Boon questions, live! We’ll talk about the technical aspects as well as how to talk to your small business clients about Hyper-V Replication.

Click here to RSVP, and please plan to join us!

P.S. It is not necessary to have a Google+ login in order to watch and listen!

Click to RSVP for this free session

10th Annual SMB Nation

I encourage my fellow I.T. Pro’s to consider attending this year’s SMB Nation Fall Conference to be held at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, from Oct 12-14, 2012.

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I remember attending the very first SMB Nation conference (2003) that Harry Brelsford organized and held in Indianapolis, IN. I’m not sure anyone (except Harry) who attended that first conference could imagine the impact that SMB Nation has made to the SMB (small/medium businesses) technical community.

I would love to be there in person, but I am limiting the amount of traveling I do this year as I recover from last year’s illness.

ATTENTION: You can now attend SMBNation virtually!

If you are unable to attend the conference in person, they are offering the chance to attend the conference from the comfort of your workstation. This offer is space limited (500 people). If you sign up by Oct 4th, the cost is $299. After that, the price for the virtual admission goes up to $399.

Just click on the Global Broadcast button to register!

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SBS 2011 DNS parameter MaxCacheTTL is not set

Running the Best Practices Analyzer for your SBS server is highly recommended. After addressing any critical errors, you may find yourself wanting to understand and clean up some of the warnings that may be identified by running BPA.

One such warning is this one:

The DNS parameter MaxCachetTL is not set
Source: 58
Issue: The DNS parameter MaxCacheTTL is not set

The reason for this warning is that there have been some identified cases where name resolution of some top level domains (such as .cn, .br, or co.uk) will fail. This failure happens if you are using root hints for name resolution in your DNS server. And, by default, both SBS 2008 and SBS 2011 come configured with root hints by default.

Note: this problem with certain top level domains does not occurs if you are using DNS Forwarders for Internet name resolution.

Microsoft has a KB article on this issue and its resolution (KB 968372).

Before proceeding, I am going to completely ignore the “which is better – root hints or DNS Forwarders” argument. Do your own Bing searches on that topic and happy reading for a few days! Here’s one such link: Which is best, root hints or DNS Forwarders – Please Vote!

Let’s address this issue with three questions and answers:

Question #1: What if I don’t know if I am using Root Hints or Forwarders?

  • Open up DNS Manager, click on DNS in the left frame, right click on your server in the right frame, and click Properties.
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  • Click on the Forwarders tab.  If there is nothing listed, then you are NOT using DNS forwarders
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  • Click on the Root Hints tab. If you are using Root Hints, then this should be populated with a list of IP addresses, like this:
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Question #2: If I am using Forwarders, what do I need to do to make this warning message go away?

  • With your BPA Reports page on display, click on the DNS parameter MaxCacheTTL warning to display details about the warning message
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  • Click on Exclude this Result
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Question #3: If I am using root hints, what do I do to resolve this issue?

To resolve this issue, we will need to add a new registry key and set the MaxCacheTTL to 2 days.

  • Start Registry Editor
  • Drill down to HKLM –> System –> CurrentControlSet –> Services –> DNS –> Parameters
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  • Right click on Parameters, click New –> DWORD (32-bit)
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  • Enter MaxCacheTTL as the New Value, and press Enter
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  • Double click on the MaxCacheTTL key, and change the value to 0x2A300 (Hexadecimal) or 172800 (decimal), then click OK
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  • Exit the registry and restart the DNS Server service.
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Rerun BPA and the MaxCacheTTL warning should be gone!

SBS 2011 MaxMessageSize Warnings in BPA

If you run the Best Practices analyzer (BPA) on your SBS 2011 server, two warning messages about a conflict in the MaxMessageSize between the Exchange Transport and the Exchange Send/Receive Connectors. Here’s what the BPA warnings look like:

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And if you click on each of them, you will see a detail view:

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Since they are only warnings, you could simply ignore it by clicking on the “Exclude the Result” button for each. But, fixing these warnings is a fairly simple process. More importantly, fixing them will get you better acquainted with Exchange PowerShell. Oh, and one final note: these same commands will work on an SBS 2008 server.

So, let’s get going!

Step 1: Start up Exchange PowerShell

Click Start –> Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 –> Exchange Management Shell

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Give it a few moments to initialize. Once done you will have a black window with a command prompt.
Looks pretty much like the DOS Command Prompt window, doesn’t it?

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Step 2: View current settings

Now we need to type in three PowerShell commands in order to view the current MaxMessageSize values:

  • get-receiveconnector | ft name, maxmessagesize
  • get-sendconnector | ft name, maxmessagesize
  • get-transportconfig | ft maxsendsize, maxreceivesize

Note: the symbol before ft is commonly called the pipeline (|) symbol.
It’s located on the backslash (\) key on most keyboards.

Here’s the result of those three commands on my server:

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In my case, my Receive and send connectors were all set to 10MB maxmessagesize, but my transport maxmessagesize was configured as unlimited. So, I had to ask myself: what do I want to change?

Step 3: Change MaxMessageSize settings

I decided that I wanted to change everything to to a 30MB maxmessage size. So, here are the commands to do that:

  • set-transportconfig –maxreceivesize 30MB –maxsendsize 30MB
  • set-sendconnector “Windows SBS Internet Send SBS1” –maxmessagesize 30MB
  • set-receiveconnector –identity “Windows SBS Internet Receive SBS1” –maxmessagesize 30MB
  • set-receiveconnector –identity “Windows SBS Fax Sharepoint Receive SBS1” –maxmessagesize 30MB
  • set-receiveconnector –identity “Default SBS1” –maxmessagesize 30MB

Here’s a screenshot of entering those commands on my server:

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Step 4: Verify Changes

Rerun the three commands from Step 2 and verify that all maxmessagesize values match!

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Now, rerun BPA and those two warnings should be gone!

Finally, for more information, you may wish to refer to the Microsoft blog post on this same topic.

Hyper-V Replica for Small Businesses

Boon Tee, my good friend and fellow MVP’er from Australia, has posted several articles recently on his blog site addressing how to install and use Hyper-V core, and implement a Hyper-V replica environment for disaster recovery. These are well written articles with step-by-step instructions. Thanks, Boon!

 

Disaster Recovery with Hyper-V Replica for Small Business on a Budget

How to set up Hyper-V Replica for Small Businesses

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SBS 2008 Update Rollup 6 Released

Are you running or supporting a Small Business Server (SBS) 2008 network?
Are you planning to introduce Windows 8 clients to your SBS 2008 network?

If you answer YES to both questions, then you will want to take a look at installing SBS 2008 Update Rollup 6 (KB 2729101) to your server.

Specifically it addresses/fixes 3 issues:

  • Allows Windows 8 workstation to be joined to an SBS 2008 domain using the client deployment tools
  • Windows Store apps now work on a Windows 8 workstation after joining it to the SBS domain
  • Allows connecting to a Windows 8 client workstation from the Remote Web Access web page

As always, it is strongly recommended that you have a good backup of your server before applying updates.

Step 1 – Approve update either through WSUS or MU

WSUS:

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Microsoft Update:

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Step 2 – Install update – this takes less than a minute to install

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Step 3 – Restart your server

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Resolving SBS 2011 BPA Warning – Administrator Rights for Batch Jobs

This post describes how to resolve the following warning when running the Best Practices Analyzer for SBS 2011 (or SBS 2008):

The built-in Administrators group does not have the right to log on as batch job

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Although this it is just a warning, I would advise resolving his issue, which requires a single update to a Group Policy setting. You will see this if you have done a migration to SBS 2011 (or SBS 2008).

Steps:

  • Click on Start –> Administrative Tools –> Group Policy Management
  • Drill down Forest: domain.local–> Domains –> domain.local –> Domain Controllers –> Default Domain Controllers Policy
  • Right click on Default Domain Controllers Policy, then click Edit
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  • The Group Policy Management Editor window displays
  • Drill down Computer Configuration –> Policies –> Window Settings –> Security Settings –> User Rights Assignment
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  • In the right hand pane, locate the policy: Log on as a batch job
  • Right click on this policy, and then click Properties
  • Click Add User or Group –> Click Add and then add the Administrators group to this policy
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  • Verify that the Administrators group has been added to the list
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That’s it. No reboot or restart of any services is required. Rerun BPA and that warning message should be gone.

Here is the Microsoft TechNet article describing this issue.

Windows Server 2012 Essentials–A First Look

On Saturday, Sept 22, 2012 I gave a presentation on the new Windows Server 2012 Essentials product, a new release from Microsoft, at the 2nd annual Tampa I.T. Pro Camp day.

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I brought in a HP MicroServer unit (12”x12”8” in size) with 8GB of memory, running Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V (GUI) as the parent.

I had two guest partitions running – Windows Server 2012 Essentials and Windows 8 client workstation. I think several people were more interested in the HP MicroServer than with W2012 Essentials 🙂

For those who are interested, here is a PDF file of my I.T. Pro Camp/Tampa slide deck presentation.

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Tampa I.T. Pro Camp Tomorrow

The 2ns annual Tampa I.T. Pro Camp takes place tomorrow (Sept 22, 2012) from 8am to 5pm. Please come and spend a day learning about new Microsoft products, from Server 2012 to Power Shell 3.0. Registration is free (click here).

I will be presenting at 9am on the topic of “Windows Server 2012 Essentials – A First Look’.

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Here is a list of all 30 sessions that are currently scheduled:

http://itprocamp.com/tampa/2012/08/19/2012-schedule/

Location for this event is:

Rasmussen College
4042 Park Oaks Blvd
Suite 100
Tampa, Florida 33610

(Approx. the corner of MLK Blvd and Falkenburg Dr in Brandon)