Microsoft

Microsoft has published seven System Center evaluation VHDs. They are great and very easy to deploy, with a wizard automatically configuring them into your environment! Available Downloads System Center 2012 R2 App Controller – Evaluation (VHD) System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager – Evaluation (VHD) System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager – Evaluation (VHD) System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager – Evaluation (VHD) System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator – Evaluation (VHD) System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager – Evaluation (VHD) System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager – Evaluation (VHD) For more information, see the “What’s New in System Center 2012 R2” documentation from Microsoft. ...

If you administer DirSync for your organization, you likely have seen emails like this, indicating some of your users didn’t sync. It can be a frustrating email, since the “error description” is for some reason blank and the “On-premises object ID” column is not something that’s easy to correlate to a user account within your Active Directory. There are also application event log entries (FIMSynchronizationService #6111 and Directory Synchronization #0), but again these aren’t exactly rich with detail. ...

Azure Active Directory Sync (DirSync) seems so simple on the surface doesn’t it? “Next, Next, Finish”, right? Ha! If you’ve ever had to revisit your DirSync server to troubleshoot or make a configuration change, you know there can be more than meets the eye. A lot of useful information happens to be scattered across various registry keys, SQL tables and XML files. If you’re not familiar with the FIM Management Console, and these other locations it might be hard to see what’s going on. ...

Update: Be aware, this script has not been tested with SIP, X400 or other address types. I recently encountered a question in an online forum where someone asked for a script to convert all of their user’s email addresses to lower case values. While this doesn’t affect the message delivery, it can have an impact on aesthetics when the address is displayed in an external recipient’s email client. An Exchange Email Address Policy can do this to some degree, but I wanted to see how it could be done with PowerShell. ...

Feb 2021 Edit: Microsoft finally took down the TechNet Gallery. This script is now available on GitHub: RecipientReportv5.ps1 Exchange Server stores alternate email addresses in Active Directory’s multi-valued proxyAddresses attribute. There can be only one uppercase SMTP, and this represents the primary, or “reply to” address. There can be many lower case smtp entries which represent aliases, or alternate addresses. Viewing this information in the Exchange Management Console is straightforward enough: ...

Microsoft has released another high-quality poster, this time featuring the Hyper-V architecture in Windows Server “8” Beta. My favorite part of the Windows Server “8” release has to be the Hyper-V updates. You can download the poster from Microsoft’s website. Additional Reading Understand and Troubleshoot Hyper-V Replica in Windows Server “8” Beta How does Storage Migration actually work? Videos Windows 8 Hyper-V: Availability Video Windows 8 Hyper-V: Scalability Video Hyper-V Cmdlets in Windows Server “8” Demo Video Windows Server “8” Extensible Switch in Hyper-V interview with Bob Combs

There is a critical Remote Desktop vulnerability that requires immediate patching. Install this update immediately – Microsoft security bulletin MS12-020. This vulnerability affects multiple Windows versions, particularly those exposing Remote Desktop to the internet, such as Terminal Servers. For those unable to patch immediately, I recommend enabling Network Level Authentication (NLA) as a temporary mitigation. To configure NLA, open the Remote Desktop settings and select the option to allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication. ...

PST (Personal Storage Table) files have several valid uses. Home Outlook users, and those who use IMAP/POP accounts such as Gmail and Hotmail, will always need them. In enterprise environments, they can be used for archiving data in organizations which do not enforce retention policies. In these cases, PST files can be configured through group policy and AutoArchive features. However, in most situations, PST files represent unmanaged storage of email. For regulated enterprises, this can create real compliance problems. When legal discovery is required, PST files scattered across user machines become a nightmare for administrators and legal teams alike. ...

Microsoft releases Exchange 2010 SP2 with Hybrid Configuration Wizard, Address Book Policies, Cross-Site OWA Redirection, and OWA Mini.

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