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Archive for Servers – Page 10

How to install KernelPro USB-over-Ethernet for Hyper-V SBS 2011

by KW · Comments (0)
Oct 09 2012

Hyper-V is a great environment, for both testing and production purposes. I run my SBS 2011 production server as a  virtual (guest) to my windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V physical environment.

I may be wrong, but it sure seems as if SBS 2011 starts up faster virtually rather than if it was installed normally, on a physic platform.

One often-asked question with Hyper-V and SBS is “how do I access a USB external drive to run my daily SBS backups?”

The solution comes from KernelPro and their USB over Ethernet solution. This allows you to either connect to a USB drive on a different computer in the network, or in the case of Hyper-V, allows a guest partition to access the USB drive on the parent partition. But don’t be confused by the name “USB over Ethernet’ – this is exactly what you want. The program has both a Server (Full) and a Client module program that will be used.

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From the Parent partition:

  • Connect the removable USB drive (to be used for your SBS backup)
  • Right click Computer, then click Manage –> Storage –> Disk Management, reformat the drive (if necessary), and then select to take the drive Offline
  • Download and install the full (server) version of the KernelPro ‘USB over Ethernet’
  • Start up the Kernel Pro utility and it should display all your USB devices (drives, keyboards, mice, etc.)

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From the Guest partition:

  • Download and install the client version of KernelPro ‘USB over Ethernet’
  • Start up the utility, click on the Add new USB server icon, and enter the LAN IP address of your Hyper-V server
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  • Then click on your USB drive to use, and under Properties, set the option to ‘connect automatically when it is available on the server’
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  • KernelPro will use a random port number, which you may need to open in the client firewall configuration
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Configure and schedule your SBS Backup, and you are all done!

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Categories : Hyper-V, SBS, Servers
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Joining MultiPoint Server to SBS 2011

by KW · Comments (0)
Oct 08 2012

One of the hidden gems of the Microsoft Server family is MultiPoint.

Think of it as a Term Server with wizards and a console dashboard (similar to SBS or WHS) that makes implementation and management of the server a breeze. But it’s so much more. It’s perfect for classroom scenarios, or for a training room, or as a solution in a business environment.

So, the question is: how does one join a MultiPoint server to an SBS 2011 domain?

Fortunately, Marina Roos (SBS MVP ) has written an excellent set of instructions (click here) with screenshots on exactly what to do .

Her article addresses three primary steps:

  • Add a registry key on SBS 2011
  • Create the RDP file for users
  • Create a GPO that will push the RDP file to the user’s desktop

Be sure to check out Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 on Microsoft’s website.

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Categories : Multipoint, SBS, Servers
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SBS 2011 No DNS Name Server Records

by KW · Comments (0)
Oct 04 2012

If you run the SBS 2011 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA), you may see the following warning:

No DNS name server records.
Source: 74
Issue: There are no DNS name server (NS) resource records for the delegated _msdcs forward lookup zone.

Well, that’s nice. But you may ask yourself: What does this mean? Why did it happen? and Do I need to fix it?

The short answer is that this often occurs as a result of doing a migration to SBS 2011. If your SBS 2011 server is a standalone server (not in a multi DC environment), then it’s not a big concern. You could probably just click on “Exclude this Result” to hide/ignore the warning from appearing when you run future BPA reports.

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But if you’re like me, you want to resolve the issue, if possible, instead of just ignoring it.

The warning is caused by the fact that BPA is looking for a _msdcs sub zone under your domain.local zone in DNS. Here’s an example where it is missing:

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An excellent tutorial on resolving this issue in detail is available on the Official Windows Server Essentials and Small Business Server Blog site. It also covers the situation where the _msdcs.domain.local zone is missing.

In my case, I already have a separate _msdcs.domain.local zone. So all that  I need to do is to manually create the _msdcs zone and restart the Netlogon service. So, let’s get to work:

  • Right click on your domain.local zone and select New Delegation, then click Next
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  • Type in _msdcs for the delegated domain name, and click Next
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  • Click Add, and then enter either the FQDN of your server (sbs1.kwsupport.local in my case) and click Resolve, or you can just enter your server’s IP address.
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  • In either case, once you have created the new zone, and finished, you will see the new _msdcs zone listed
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  • Finally, open up Services.msc and click to restart the Netlogon service, and you’re done.
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Rerun the BPA and you will see that this warning message no longer appears!

Hope this helps you!

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Hyper-V Replication Hangout

by KW · Comments (0)
Oct 01 2012

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

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Categories : Hyper-V, SBS, Servers, Windows
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SBS 2011 DNS parameter MaxCacheTTL is not set

by KW · Comments (0)
Sep 28 2012

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.
    image
  • Click on the Forwarders tab.  If there is nothing listed, then you are NOT using DNS forwarders
    image
  • 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:
    image

 

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
    image

 

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

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Categories : SBS, Servers
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SBS 2011 MaxMessageSize Warnings in BPA

by KW · Comments (0)
Sep 27 2012

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:

image  image

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:

image

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.

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Categories : Exchange, SBS, Servers
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Hyper-V Replica for Small Businesses

by KW · Comments (0)
Sep 27 2012

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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Categories : Backup, Hyper-V, SBS, Servers, Windows
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Resolving SBS 2011 BPA Warning – Administrator Rights for Batch Jobs

by KW · Comments (0)
Sep 23 2012

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
    image
  • 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
    image
  • Verify that the Administrators group has been added to the list
    image

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.

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Windows Server 2012 Free ebook

by KW · Comments (0)
Sep 05 2012

Microsoft Press announced today that the PDF version of Mitch Tulloch’s book Introducing Windows Server 2012 (RTM Edition) is available as a free download!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2012/09/05/free-ebook-introducing-windows-server-2012-rtm-edition.aspx

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Windows Server 2012 Essentials and Hyper-V

by KW · Comments (0)
Sep 02 2012

If you are an I.T. person, becoming familiar with Hyper-V is not an option (IMHO). Here are some screen shots of Windows Server 2012 Essentials (based on the Release Candidate version), running as a guest in a 2012 Hyper-V GUI environment — all on an 8GB HP MicroServer system! I will use W2012e to refer to the Windows Server 2012 Essentials platform.

#1 – 2012 Hyper-V Parent Metro Screen – note that after enabling the Hyper-V role, a Metro App is automatically added.

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#2 Clicking on the icon starts up the 2012 Hyper-V Manager Window. Note that I have two guest sessions, Windows Server 2012 Essentials (W2012e), and a single Windows 8 client workstation.

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#3 Double-clicking on the W2012e guest, will start up the W2012e session, and is ready for me to sign in. One trick to remember: don’t use Ctrl-Alt-Del from a guest session! Instead use Ctrl-Alt-End to logon.

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#4 And after logging in,

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#5 .. we will see the W2012e Metro-styled Start page. You will see that I’ve added the Dashboard to the main screen.

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#6 Clicking on the Dashboard icon will bring up the W2012e Dashboard program, from where we can manage our server, adding users, configuring backups, installing SSL certificates, and more!

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More posts to follow on the Windows Server 2012 Essentials product …

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Categories : SBS, Servers, Windows
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