Archive for Servers – Page 9

Swing Migration Updated!

Jeff Middleton is founder of IT Pro Experts and creator of the Swing Migration methodology and tool kit. He has just announced new updates to his kits.
http://itproexperts.com/blog/platform-migration-project-solutions-matrix/

I have successfully used Jeff’s Swing Migration for years to upgrade customers from older versions of SBS to the newer Microsoft platforms (SBS 2008, SBS 2011, Windows Server Essentials 2012). His methodology also applies to standard Windows and Exchange server migrations.

Display Exchange 2010 version

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:

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  1. Start the Exchange Management Shell (EMS). Give it a few seconds to start up.
  2. From the PowerShell [PS] prompt, type: get-exchangeserver | format-table name, *version*
    Note: the above PS command is NOT case sensitive
  3. Compare your result to the following table (see this Microsoft Technet page):
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 – Build 14.0.639.21 – Date 11/9/2009
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1 – Build 14.1.218.15 – Date 8/24/2010
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2 – Build 14.2.247.5 – Date 12/4/2011

In my case (see screenshot above), I have Version 14.2 (Build 247.5) which indicates that I have Exchange 2010 SP2 installed.

Uninstall NT Backup Utility after SBS Migration

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:

  • Click Start –> type appwiz.cpl and press Enter
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  • Click on View installed updates
  • Under the section Microsoft Windows, locate Update for Windows (KB974674)
  • Click to select KB 974674 and then click Uninstall
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SBS and Software Assurance

My good friend, and fellow MVP’er, Andy (Handy Andy) Goodman, nails the issue with SBS and Software Assurance (SA) in his blog post.

http://blog.sbs-rocks.com/2012/11/sbs-sa-make-good-is-not-microsoft-should-be-ashamed-of-itself/

GFI MAX Mail 9pm Update

I informed my customers that as of 9:00pm EST, I am being advised that “the Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle data centers are now processing messages at close to normal speed.”

That is good news. Tests that I have been running for the last few hours are indicating that things are slowly improving. Although it may take several more hours for full resolution, I am now hopeful that there will be no need to implement a backup solution to redirect mail delivery.

GFI MAX Mail issues

Most of my customers are using GFI’s MaxMail solution to provide virus and spam filtering, as well as email continuity and archiving.

Today, a customer called to report issues with sending and receiving emails. I was able to successfully connect to the server remotely, but incoming and outgoing email seemed to be at a stand still, but with no warnings or errors. I rebooted Exchange on this SBS 2008 server, with no improvement.

I then used MXToolBox to check out the status of the domain and test SMTP delivery. Voila! It reported an error in connecting to GFI’s intermediate IP addresses!

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I then called GFI Support, and the pre-recorded message informed me that I was not the only one with this issue. I also learned that GFI does have a specific URL for Blog status monitoring of GFI MAX: http://status.gfimax.com

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And here is what they are reporting:

Our engineers have been systematically assessing all of the centralized components of our service in North America, including our configuration databases, the greylisting service, our various spam and virus filtering engines, network responsiveness between datacenters, and other elements that could be causing the very slow response times of our filters.

The likely culprit from our testing is the centralized asset storage servers, which are responding more slowly than usual by nearly an order of magnitude. The engineers are investigating this in detail to determine what is causing multiple asset stores in multiple datacenters to be so affected.

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Storagecraft offer due to Hurricane Sandy

Storagecraft is the maker of the popular backup software for servers and workstations, ShadowProtect.

Due to the events caused by Hurricane Sandy, StorageCraft is offering a free three day use of their ShadowProtect IT Edition software to people in areas affected by the storm.

Read more here:

http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/affected-by-sandy-wed-like-to-help/

Storagecraft

The IT Edition allows you to backup and restore an entire server or workstation without installing any software on the computers. I have relied on the IT Edition of ShadowProtect for years, and is one of my primary “go-to” I.T. solutions in my tool bag!

Updating DNS Root Hints on SBS 2011

By default, on an SBS 2008/2011 server, DNS is configured to use Root Hints for Internet resolution. I have previously posted about potential issues with resolving domain names on an SBS server.

If you are using Root Hints, it may be necessary to update your root hints from time to time, as my good MVP friend, Mick, recently reminded me. And it’s fairly simple to do:

First, you need to access a list of known root servers and note the IP address of one of them. I’m going to use 192.228.79.201

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From your SBS server, open up DNS –> right click on your Server –> click Properties —> then click on the Root Hints tab to see the current list of root DNS servers.

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Go ahead and click the Delete button to delete ALL the listed root hints.

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Then click on the “Copy from Server” button and enter the IP address you selected, and click OK.

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The list of Root Hints will be populated. Click OK and then restart DNS Services!

Microsoft to change CAL Pricing

Client Access Licenses (CALs) are usually purchased as User CALs or Device CALs. Up until now, the pricing for these have been the same. But on December 1, 2012 Microsoft will be increasing the price of User CALs by 15%. And it makes sense, I suppose.

 

Device CALs are primarily useful, in my view, for shift work scenarios, where multiple people will use the same computer. E.g. John uses it from 6a-3pm, Sally uses it from 3pm-11pm, and Dave uses it from 11pm-6am. In these environment, one device CAL is the better (price) choice.

User CALs allow the same user to connect to a server from multiple workstations/devices. The price increase is in response to the “increasing value of user based licensing over the single device licensing model”.

For more information, check out:
http://www.softcat.com/news/industry-news/microsoft-client-access-licensing-rules-to-change

Windows Server 2012 Essentials RTM and Trial!

Today Windows Server 2012 Essentials has been released to manufacturing (RTM).

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A trial copy of Windows Server 2012 Essentials is immediately available for download:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2012/10/09/windows-server-2012-essentials-released-to-manufacturing-available-for-evaluation-today.aspx

Windows Server 2012 Essentials will be available for purchase on November 1, 2012.

It was just a few months ago (July) that the beta version of this product was announced. Then just a month ago we had the announcement of the Release Candidate (RC) version of 2012 Essentials.

The news that caught everyone’s attention (both good and bad) was that the name “Small Business Server” (SBS) would not be used by Microsoft as it moved forward with the 2012 era of Microsoft servers.

However, that does not mean that Windows Server 2012 Essentials isn’t jammed packed with features for the small or medium sized business. Here are just a few of those features:

  • Supports a maximum of 25 user (50 devices) with client CALS built in!
  • Enhanced Remote Web Access features, extending to Windows 8 clients
  • Wizards to setup, configure and manage Office 365 from the server
  • Support for Storage Spaces, allowing for  creation of resilient storage using a mix of different size disk drives
  • Supports backing up of workstations (maximum of 25) on a daily scheduled basis)
  • New health monitoring reports
  • Supports implementation as a Hyper-V guest
  • Supports third party add-ins
  • Supports Mac OS X clients (version 10.5 and up)

So, what’s changed? I’ll list what I consider are three two of the more important changes:

  • Windows Vista and XP workstations will not be supported
  • Exchange and Sharepoint have been removed from the product, but can be purchased and installed as separate packages
  • No Premium Add-On (PAO) packages, so no specific SQL package, although SQL can be purchased and installed as a separate package