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Migration Step Nine: Check the health of Exchange

bradley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:02:00 GMT

c Optimize Exchange Server and mailboxes. Follow the instructions on pages 16 through 17 in the Microsoft migration document.

c Empty the Deleted Items folder.

c Archive older mail

It can take a long time to migrate large Exchange Server mailboxes. It will take less time if you reduce the size of the mailboxes before the migration. To help reduce the size of the mailboxes, ask each of the users to do the following:

· Empty the Deleted Items folder

· Archive older mail

For additional information about optimizing Exchange Server, see the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer at the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=101795).

To empty the Deleted Items folder

1. In the Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging client, click Tools in the toolbar, and then click Empty "Deleted Items" Folder.

2. Click Yes on the warning dialog box.

To archive older mail

1. In Outlook, click File in the toolbar, and then click Archive.

2. In the Archive dialog box, click the down arrow in the Archive items older than text box.

Note

You must tell the users what date to select in the calendar that appears.

3. If you want to make sure that all the older mail is included, select the Include items with "do not AutoArchive" checked check box.

4. Click Archive all folders according to the AutoArchive settings at the top of the dialog box.

5. Click OK.

In Windows XP, the older mail is moved to the archive.pst file in C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder.

In the Windows Vista® operating system, the older mail is moved to the archive.pst file in C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook folder.

Well since this is my test run, I will suck this up and not do this step, but in the real migration about a week before the real migration, I'm going to remind folks of the tasks they should have been doing all along...that is keeping their mailboxes clean.

Now Amy Babinchak and Philip Elder recommend to defrag the exchange databases:

The following can be done to test the health of the Exchange databases at the command prompt and with the stores dismounted (remember to backup):

MS KB192185: How to defragment with the Eseutil utility (Eseutil.exe)
TechNet: Eseutil /G Integrity Mode.
TechNet: Eseutil /P Repair Mode.
MS KB301460: Exchange Command-Line Parameters for Isinteg.exe Tool

So here's what I'm going to do:

In Exchange System Manager, right-click the information store that you want to defragment, and then click Dismount Store.

Now that the databases are stopped you can make a copy of these files (just in case)

In my case I have these on another drive, you may see these on your C: drive.

At the command prompt, change to the Exchsrvr\Bin folder, and then type the eseutil /d command, a database switch, and any options that you want to use.

This will take some time.

And then it will indicate it's done.

And don't forgot at the end to go remount the store

Migration Step Eight: Raising the functional level of AD

bradley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:50:00 GMT

c Raise the functional level of the Active Directory domain and forest. Follow the instructions on pages 12 through 14 in the Microsoft migration document.

To be fair this probably should have been done sooner in the steps, but it's still in the prelim phase and before we've started the install of SBS 2008 so we're still during the time phase appropriate to this.

Download details: Windows SBS 2003 to 2008 Migration Guide:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=52b7ea63-78af-4a96-811e-284f5c1de13b&DisplayLang=en

On page 12-14 of that document is the instructions to change the functional level.

To raise the functional level of the domain

1. On the Source Server, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Domains and Trust.

2. In the console pane, right-click the domain for which you want to raise the functional level, and then click Raise Domain Functional Level.

Note

The current domain functional level is displayed in Current domain functional level, in the Raise Domain Functional Level dialog box.

3. In Select an available domain functional level, click Windows Server 2003, click Raise, and then click OK in the warning dialog box.

Now we do the forest....

To raise the functional level of the forest

1. On the Source Server, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Domains and Trust.

2. In the console pane, right-click Active Directory Domains and Trusts, and then click Raise Forest Functional Level.

Note

The current forest functional level is displayed in Current forest functional level, in the Raise Forest Functional Level dialog box.

3. In Select an available forest functional level, click Windows Server 2003, click Raise, and then click OK in the warning dialog box.

Just a reminder of all of the key migration resources

bradley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:43:00 GMT

Just a reminder of all of the key migration resources that I'll be referring to and using during these blog posts/dry run of migation that I'm doing.

That first url -- www.sbsmigrationtips.com is actually a key SBS blog post entry that I got lazy enough to get a url redirect so I could find that blog post.

Then there is Philip's blog post -- MPECS Inc. Blog: SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration Guide – v1.4.0:
http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2009/06/sbs-2003-to-sbs-2008-migration-guide.html

Then the key official documents you need:

Download details: SBS 2008 Migration Checklist:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=F67148DA-CBA8-4222-8AE5-136A6597A340&displaylang=en

Download details: Windows SBS 2008 Migration Help:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=95E4863E-BB59-4A66-9FEE-9874E8903888&displaylang=en

Download details: Windows SBS 2003 to 2008 Migration Guide:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=52b7ea63-78af-4a96-811e-284f5c1de13b&DisplayLang=en

MPECS Inc. Blog: SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration Guide – v1.4.0:
http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2009/06/sbs-2003-to-sbs-2008-migration-guide.html

Migration Step Seven: Checking Exchange is ready to go

bradley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:34:00 GMT

We're back on our Migration blog post series (hint all of the Migration blog posts are tagged with "Migration" for easy reference).

And now we're going to check and make sure our Exchange is ready to go:

I. In the source domain, check for the existence of an account named Postmaster.

SBS setup tries to create a Distribution List with the SAM account name of Postmaster. If it already exists, you will receive the following errors at the end of setup.

Setup errors due to an existing Postmaster account:

The e-mail distribution groups cannot be created.
Incoming and outgoing e-mail for Windows SharePoint Services are not configured.
Incoming and outgoing e-mail for Windows SharePoint Services are not configured.

To fix this, you will need to restore the source server, rename the Postmaster account and start the migration all over again. Alternatively you can complete the steps listed in http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc626214(WS.10).aspx and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc626120(WS.10).aspx.

Now while I have postmaster@domain.com addresses underneath the Administrator account, these are not what this tip is talking about. They are looking for a specific Postmaster user account, not the Postmaster email account.

J. Check Exchange 2003 policies:

Existing Mailbox Management policies
Duplicate SMTP addresses in recipient policies
Invalid SMTP addresses in recipient policies

If any of these are present during the migration to SBS 2008, the setup will finish with the following errors:

Setup errors due to mailbox management policies or duplicate/invalid SMTP addresses in recipient policies:

The Exchange E-mail address policy cannot be configured.
Incoming and outgoing e-mail for Windows SharePoint Services are not configured.
Incoming and outgoing e-mail for Windows SharePoint Services are not configured.

How to check for Mailbox Management policies:

If you have Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2000 recipient policies that are ONLY Mailbox Manager policies and do not define e-mail addresses (they do not have an E-mail Addresses (Policy) tab), perform the following steps to delete the policies:

In Exchange System Manager, expand Recipients, and then select Recipient Policies.
To verify that a policy is only a Mailbox Manager policy, right-click the policy, and then select Properties. The Properties page must not have an E-Mail Addresses (Policy) tab.
To delete the policy, right-click the policy, and then select Delete. Click OK and then click Yes.

If you have Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2000 policies that are BOTH E-mail Addresses and Mailbox Manager policies (they have both the Mailbox Manager Settings (Policy) tab and the E-mail Addresses (Policy) tab), perform the following steps to remove the mailbox manager portion of the policy:

In Exchange System Manager, expand Recipients, and then select Recipient Policies.
Right-click the policy, and then select Change property pages.
Clear the Mailbox Manager Settings check box, and then click OK.

How to check for duplicate/invalid SMTP addresses in recipient policies:

In Exchange System Manager, expand Recipients, and then select Recipient Policies.
Right-click the policy, and then select E-Mail Addresses (Policy) tab.
Inspect the SMTP Addresses for any that are unchecked. If you find any, place a check in the box or remove that address.
Inspect the SMTP Addresses for any that have an IP address. For instance, @192.168.1.1. If you find any, remove those addresses that contain an IP address.
Click OK.

c Remove Mailbox Management policies. Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 used Mailbox Management policies for some types of e-mail. If these policies exist on the server running SBS 2003, setup will generate errors that will prevent you from completing the migration. Exchange BPA 2.8 checks for this condition. Remove Mailbox Management policies from the server running SBS 2003. For more information on how to do this, see the Keys to Success blog post.

Remove duplicate or incorrect SMTP addresses. Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 may have duplicate or incorrect SMTP addresses in recipient policies. If these addresses exist on the server running SBS 2003, setup will generate errors that will prevent you from completing the migration. The SBS 2003 BPA with the latest updates checks for this condition. Remove the duplicate or incorrect SMTP addresses from Exchange. For more information on how to do this, see the Keys to Success blog post.

I already ran the SBS bpa and didn't get any warnings, but I'm also going to run the Exchange BPA just to make sure:

Download details: Exchange Best Practices Analyzer:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=DBAB201F-4BEE-4943-AC22-E2DDBD258DF3&displaylang=en

And I'm going to run the "are you ready for Exchange 2007" test

And it reminds me that I've yet to flip the AD to the right levels... but it doesn't find any mailbox policies that I need to worry about.

Migration Step Six: Removing ISA

bradley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:30:00 GMT

When I moved the SBS 2003 over to the (unsupported) HyperV platform, one of the things I had to do was to uninstall ISA 2004 and take the virtualized box back down to one nic.

Just a reminder of the steps I took -- this is from the SBS 2008 migration checklist:

c Uninstall ISA Server 2004. If ISA Server 2004 is installed on the server running SBS 2003, you must uninstall it before you can begin the migration.

c Uninstall the ISA Server 2004 desktop client. To uninstall the ISA Server 2004 desktop client, follow the instructions in this blog post (http://msmvps.com/blogs/kwsupport/archive/2008/09/07/uninstalling-isa-2004.aspx).

c Export your third-party SSL certificates. If you have any third-party SSL certificates installed on the server running ISA Server 2004, you should export the certificate for reinstallation on SBS 2003.

c Uninstall ISA Server 2004. Uninstall ISA Server 2004 from Control Panel using Add or Remove Programs.

Import your third-party SSL certificates. Once you have uninstalled ISA Server 2004 you will need to import your third-party SSL certificates onto the server running SBS 2003. To import your certificates, follow the instructions starting with the section “Installing the SSL Certificate into IIS” in this blog post (http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2007/08/21/how-to-install-a-public-3rd-party-ssl-certificate-on-iis-on-sbs-2003.aspx).

I also relied on Chad Gross's "killing off ISA" blog post here:

Killing off ISA - Aimless Ramblings from a Blithering Lunatic . . . - MSMVPS.COM:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/cgross/archive/2009/10/11/killing-off-isa.aspx

One setting I noticed that needed to be updated (especially if you removed the ISA a week or two before you did the rest of the migration was/is to remove the proxy ISA server settings from inside WSUS server proxy settings. If you leave that proxy server information behind inside of WSUS, your WSUS server won't sync up to get patch information.

Pixel Shaders and Silverlight, WPF

KevinMcNeish — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:55:00 GMT

Recently, Silverlight 3 gained the ability to use custom pixel shaders as was already available in WPF. What exactly are custom pixel shaders? A shader is a set of software instructions executed on your computer's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) that performs complex per-pixel effects suh as applying a lighting value, bump mapping (a technique used to make a surface look more realistic by modeling interaction of a bumpy surface texture), shadows, highlights, translucency, and so on. Pixel shaders...(read more)

Why .NET apps keep crashing on your Tablet PC

Alun Jones — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:24:29 GMT

I’ve been struggling with this issue for some time.

I have a small, simple .NET application I wrote in Visual C# a few months ago – I’ve tentatively titled it “iFetch”, because it fetches radio shows from the BBC iPlayer.

It really is very little more than a simple data grid view that displays the details of the shows and allows users to select them for downloading and later listening.

Despite that, I’ve had some terrible trouble with it. Sometimes it’ll work perfectly, other times it’ll just suddenly crash, and apparently without warning and for different reasons – sometimes when I click on a row, other times when I select to sort on a column heading.

The crash seems to be intermittent, but doesn’t reproduce on other computers; even computers of the same configuration.

For those who want technical details, here we go – the crash is a System.StackOverflowException error, and appears to be due to an unchecked infinite recursion in System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.DataGridViewRow.DataGridViewRowAccessibleObject.Bounds.get().

The clue here is that this is a “DataGridViewRowAccessibleObject” – not a mere DataGridViewRow. These “AccessibleObject” versions of common .NET components only come into existence and spread their effect when an “accessibility application” is active on the system. Apparently, in addition to text-to-speech readers, braille devices, etc, a Tablet – whether external like mine, or internal like those in a Tablet PC – classifies as an accessibility application.

That’s why this bug was intermittent for me – sometimes I had my external graphics tablet plugged in, other times I didn’t. To make matters worse, it seems to only trigger when one or more rows in the DataGrid are hidden.

If you get this error, first try checking to see if Microsoft have fixed the flaw – check for .NET service packs – and then, if there is no direct fix for the flaw, try either unplugging your tablet, if you can, or temporarily stop the Tablet PC Input Service, while running the program.

So far, I have received no feedback from Microsoft about when this will be fixed.

The DataContext component: deferred properties

luisabreu — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:39:27 GMT

Today we’ll keep looking at the DataContext component and we’ll see how it supports deferred properties. Deferred properties are properties which are lazy loaded as “needed”. Using deferred properties means that the component will try to make a remote call for getting the value of that property. As you’re probably expecting, this means that you’ll have to write code on the client and server side. On the client, we’ll need some JavaScript functions which are responsible for:

checking if a specific property is deferred;
returning an instance of the Sys.NetWebServiceOperation which has all the data needed for performing the remote call which returns the value of that property.

After creating the functions and configuring the DataContext component’s isDeferredPropertyMethod and getDeferredPropertyFetchOperationMethod , we can get the deferred value of the property by using the DataContext’s fetchDeferredProperty method. Let’s take a look at the client side code (which augments the code we introduced in previous posts):

var entityManager = {
    metaCounter: {},
    getEntityId: function (dataContext, entity) {
       //removed: check previous posts
    },
    getNewIdentity: function (dataContext, entity, entitySet) {
        //removed: check previous posts
    },
    isDeferredProperty: function (dataContext, entity, propertyName) {
        var id = dataContext.getIdentity(entity);
        return propertyName === "contacts" &&
               id !== null &&
               /$new/.test(id);
    },
    getDeferredProperty: function (
         dataContext, entity, propName, parameters, userContext) {
        //returns web service operation
        var id = dataContext.getIdentity(entity);
        return new Sys.Net.WebServiceOperation(
            "GetContactsFor",
            {id: parseInt(/(\d+)/.exec(id)[0]) },
            "get" )
            ;
    }

};

It goes without saying (I think!) that this is just demo code (you’ll need better code for real world scenarios). As you can see, the contacts property will only be lazily loaded when we’re trying to get it from an object which has been previously persisted in the server side (once again, you’ll need to go back to the previous posts to understand what’s going on here). In the real world, I’d probably check that property against undefined too so that you’d only ask for the data when the property hasn’t been initialized.

The getDeferredProperty tries to find the id of the current person’s instance (don’t forget that person instances which have been previously persisted are on the form people$xxx where xxx is an integer which identifies the current instance) and uses it to build a JS literal object which is used to pass parameters to the server side code. Notice that the Sys.Net.WebService’s “constructor” expects three parameters: the first identifies the name of the operation; the second is a literal object which represent the parameters that will be passed to the server side method. Finally, the third parameter is a string which identifies the HTTP method that should be used in the server side call.

Now, we’re ready to create a new DataContext instance:

var ctx = Sys.create.dataContext(
  {
    serviceUri: "PeopleService.svc",
    getIdentityMethod: entityManager.getEntityId,
    getNewIdentityMethod: entityManager.getNewIdentity,
    isDeferredPropertyMethod: entityManager.isDeferredProperty,
    getDeferredPropertyFetchOperationMethod: 
                      entityManager.getDeferredProperty
  }
);

One additional note before looking at the server side code: we *really* need to set the serviceUri property when we intend to use deferred property fetching. If you don’t set it, you’ll end up receiving an exception when you try to get the value of the property from the server side:

ctx.fetchDeferredProperty(
    people[0], 
    "contacts", 
    null, 
    null,
    function(){
        var contacts = people[0].contacts;
       //contacts already filled here!
    });

The fetchDeferredProperty method receives several parameters:

a reference to the entity whose property is going to be obtained through the remote call;
name of the property which is being lazily fetched;
parameter: literal object with parameter info that will be passed to the server side. Note that this object will be merged with the parameter object encapsulated by the WebServiceOperation returned from the DataContext’s getDeferredPropertyFetchOperationMethod function;
mergeOptions: the Sys.Data.MergeOption which identifies the merge which will be used when the data is returned from the web service;
succeededCalback: callback function which will be invoked when the data is returned from the server and has already been passed to the property;
failedCallback: function invoked when the remote call ends up generating an error;
timeout: timeout defined in ms;
userContext: object which will be passed to the callback method when the DataContext receives a response from the server side.

In order for the previous client code work, we need to update our server side service’s code by adding the GetContactsFor method. Once again, and since is just demo code, I’ll implement in the easiest way possible: I’ll make it return a collection with a single predefined contact:

[OperationContract]
public IEnumerable<Contact> GetContactsFor(Int32 id) {
    return new List<Contact>{
        new Contact{ 
                Type = ContactType.Phone,
                Ct  = "123123123"
        }
    };
}

And there you go: you don’t need anything else for making the DataContext component get the value of the contacts property lazily. And that’s it for now. Stay tuned for more on MS AJAX.

PowerShell WMI events

RichardSiddaway — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:29:51 GMT

In my previous post ( http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!43CFA46A74CF3E96!2598.entry or http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!43CFA46A74CF3E96!2598.entry ) I started to look at WMI events in PowerShell v2. The win32_process class was used but all that showed us was that a process had started. We need a bit more information. A bit of digging brought up the Win32_ProcessStartTrace class that seems to do what we want.

Register-WMIEvent allows us to specify the class we want to use rather than a query – however if we try that we don’t get anything returned - oops.

Looking through the help for Register-WMIEvent shows that we have the possibility of performing an action when the event occurs. The action scriptblock can use a number of variables including $Event, $EventSubscriber, $Sender, $SourceEventArgs, and $SourceArgs automatic variables. Wanting to understand these variables I tried dumping it though get-member.

PS> Register-WmiEvent -Query "Select * FROM Win32_ProcessStartTrace" -Action {$Event | gm}

Id              Name            State      HasMoreData     Location             Command
--              ----            -----      -----------     --------             -------
2               c1016218-f80... NotStarted False                                $Event | gm

The subscription runs as a PowerShell job. Using the opening of Notepad to trigger the event we can see that data is returned.

PS> Get-Job

Id              Name            State      HasMoreData     Location             Command
--              ----            -----      -----------     --------             -------
2               c1016218-f80... Running    True                                 $Event | gm

And see that we have a few properties to play with. ComputerName may come in useful if we are dealing with remote machines.

PS> Receive-Job -Id 2

TypeName: System.Management.Automation.PSEventArgs

Name             MemberType Definition
----             ---------- ----------
Equals           Method     bool Equals(System.Object obj)
GetHashCode      Method     int GetHashCode()
GetType          Method     type GetType()
ToString         Method     string ToString()
ComputerName     Property   System.String ComputerName {get;}
EventIdentifier Property   System.Int32 EventIdentifier {get;}
MessageData      Property   System.Management.Automation.PSObject MessageData {get;}
RunspaceId       Property   System.Guid RunspaceId {get;}
Sender           Property   System.Object Sender {get;}
SourceArgs       Property   System.Object[] SourceArgs {get;}
SourceEventArgs Property   System.EventArgs SourceEventArgs {get;}
SourceIdentifier Property   System.String SourceIdentifier {get;}
TimeGenerated    Property   System.DateTime TimeGenerated {get;}

The properties look similar to those we saw in the last post. Lets dig into SourceEventArgs

PS> Register-WmiEvent -Query "Select * FROM Win32_ProcessStartTrace" -Action {$Event.SourceEventArgs | gm}

Id              Name            State      HasMoreData     Location             Command
--              ----            -----      -----------     --------             -------
3               8d4246a5-5f8... NotStarted False                                $Event.SourceEventArgs...

PS> Get-Job

Id              Name            State      HasMoreData     Location             Command
--              ----            -----      -----------     --------             -------
3               8d4246a5-5f8... Running    True                                 $Event.SourceEventArgs...

PS> Receive-Job -Id 3

TypeName: System.Management.EventArrivedEventArgs

Only thing here that look interesting is NewEvent

PS> Register-WmiEvent -Query "Select * FROM Win32_ProcessStartTrace" -Action {$Event.SourceEventArgs.NewEvent | gm}

Id              Name            State      HasMoreData     Location             Command
--              ----            -----      -----------     --------             -------
4               0857a744-1d3... NotStarted False                                $Event.SourceEventArgs...

PS> Receive-Job -Id 4

TypeName: System.Management.ManagementBaseObject#\Win32_ProcessStartTrace

Name                MemberType Definition
----                ---------- ----------
ParentProcessID     Property   System.UInt32 ParentProcessID {get;set;}
ProcessID           Property   System.UInt32 ProcessID {get;set;}
ProcessName         Property   System.String ProcessName {get;set;}
SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR Property   System.Byte[] SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR {get;set;}
SessionID           Property   System.UInt32 SessionID {get;set;}
Sid                 Property   System.Byte[] Sid {get;set;}
TIME_CREATED        Property   System.UInt64 TIME_CREATED {get;set;}
__CLASS             Property   System.String __CLASS {get;set;}
__DERIVATION        Property   System.String[] __DERIVATION {get;set;}
__DYNASTY           Property   System.String __DYNASTY {get;set;}
__GENUS             Property   System.Int32 __GENUS {get;set;}
__NAMESPACE         Property   System.String __NAMESPACE {get;set;}
__PATH              Property   System.String __PATH {get;set;}
__PROPERTY_COUNT    Property   System.Int32 __PROPERTY_COUNT {get;set;}
__RELPATH           Property   System.String __RELPATH {get;set;}
__SERVER            Property   System.String __SERVER {get;set;}
__SUPERCLASS        Property   System.String __SUPERCLASS {get;set;}

Now we have got to the information we need. So how can we use this. Up to now we have just allowed the job to run and then picked the data from the job. One option is to write the data to the prompt as shown in this example http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2009/08/30/exploring-wmi-with-powershell-v2.aspx. A lot of this digging was because I didn’t understand how this was put together. PowerShell really is the best way to discover how to use PowerShell!!

This gets us to this script which is modified from the PowerShell Team blog

            001              
002               
003               
004               
005               
006               
007               
008               
009               
010               
011               
          ## query               
$q = "Select * from Win32_ProcessStartTrace"               
## action script block               
$a = {               
    $eSEANE = $Event.SourceEventArgs.NewEvent               
    $str = 'Computer {0},ID {1}, Name "{2}", Time {3}, Source {4}'                
    $data = $str -f $Event.Sender.Scope.Path.Server, $eSEANE.ProcessId, `               
      $eSEANE.ProcessName, $Event.TimeGenerated, $Event.SourceIdentifier               
    Write-Host $data               
}               
Register-WmiEvent -Query $q -SourceIdentifier "Process Start" -Action $a 
       
 

Turns out the ComputerName parameter doesn’t work but a comment on the blog shows how Jeffrey Hicks solved the problem.

What we get now is a listing at our PowerShell prompt when a new process starts. We can keep working and the data comes through when the prompt is idle.

Next we will look at closing a process and recording the data in a log

Technorati Tags: PowerShell v2,WMI,Events

Access 2010 and Sharepoint discussion

Tony — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:02:22 GMT

Bob Alston, a comp.databases.ms-access newsgroup regular, asked about Access 2010. A very interesting discussion with fellow access MVP Albert Kallal with his usual lengthy and informative postings has started. Albert has posted a nice collection of current links to the Access product group blog as well as his own video.

New: McAfee Online Support Community

jubo — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:01:00 GMT

The old McAfee forums have been changed into the Online Support Community. This new community has areas for Enterprise users, home and home office users as well as Security Awarness and Community Help. Discussions, blogs, wikis, profiles and polls.

And best thing... you can now even talk with real McAfee professionals! Come and join us at: McAfee Online Communities

System Center Essentials Team Blog : Support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 in System Center Essentials 2007 SP1

Rod Trent at myITforum.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:45:28 GMT

This table indicates the current support for the indicated operating systems by System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 components. Operating system Support installing the System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 management server? Support installing the System Center Read More......(read more)

Download details: Operations Manager 2007 R2 Documentation

Rod Trent at myITforum.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:35:04 GMT

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 technical documentation helps you plan, deploy, operate, and maintain Operations Manager 2007 R2. For information about the specific guides available in the library, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/bb498235 Read More......(read more)

Download details: Update Rollup for Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (KB971541)

Rod Trent at myITforum.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:34:15 GMT

The Update Rollup for Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) combines previous hotfix releases for SP1 with additional fixes and support of SP1 roles on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This update also provides database role and SQL Read More......(read more)

Steve Rachui's Manageability blog - ConfigMgr/OpsMgr : SCCM: Forcing a Task Sequence to Rerun

Rod Trent at myITforum.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:32:55 GMT

There are well known methods to force an advertisement to rerun – including several add-on tools available for the SMS or SCCM console. To date, however, there are not equivalent methods to force a task sequence to rerun. Part of this Read More......(read more)

Working with Web Forms and MVC: Bridging the Gap - Context

bmains — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:02:00 GMT

I've spent some time figuring out how to bridge the gap between web forms and ASP.NET MVC style of development. Just because the UI works differently, doesn't mean the actual framework works in a different way. If you use .NET 3.5 SP 1 for both your web forms and MVC style development, it is helpful to come up with a helper component to serve up the context. Why would I suggest this? Well, in web forms, you can access the current context information by accessing System.Web.HttpContext.Current, which returns the current HttpContext being executed. The HttpContext object has an array of services (request, response, etc.) that you can make use of. This is available in ASP.NET MVC in the controller too, via the ControllerContext.HttpContext reference.

The difference between the two is that the former uses an HttpContext object, while MVC uses an object of type HttpContextBase in System.Web.Abstractions.DLL. The context is a reference to HttpContextWrapper, which inherits from HttpContextBase, and provides you with all of the services previously mentioned. So basically, you are working with the same thing, but not the same object. But if you use 3.5 for all of your development, you can use the same object to leverage both, by creating a helper class and always referring to this for your context.

public static class HttpWebContext
{
    public static HttpContextBase GetContext()
    {
         return new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current);
    }
}

This works in web forms because this is how it works anyway, while MVC uses this in its underlying architecture (if you use a tool like Reflector you can dig down into the code to find it). And so this common component shares the context across two environments, and its isolated and follows the Singular Repsonsibility Principle [SRP]. Now what about testability, because your internal components will be using this, and the http context won't be available in a testing environment (since it's web framework specific). For instance, your controller may do something like:

public ActionResult View()
{
    var context = HttpWebContext.GetContext();
    //use the context in some way

   return View();
}

So how can that type of method be mocked? If you use TypeMock, this can be done easily:

var ctx = Isolate.Fake.Instance<HttpContextBase>();
var requestFake = Isolate.Fake.Instance<HttpRequestFake>();
Isolate.WhenCalled(() => ctx.Request).WillReturn(requestFake);
//Additional faking here

Isolate.WhenCalled(() => HttpWebContext.GetContext()).WillReturn(ctx);

For Moq, this is harder because it doesn't mock statics; so you could make it an instance-based approach, or you could use a provider approach. For instance, create a provider that has:

public abstract class ContextProvider
{
public HttpContextBase GetContext();
}

Have two implementations, one for returning the current context like we have above, and have another returning a faked http context that inherits from HttpContextBase, and then store this reference in the configuration file or pass it in as a parameter to a class. You could get kind of crazy with it, but by using the provider approach, it helps you differentiate the web environment and test environment without exceptions occurring.

Would this approach work in .NET 2.0? Well, the great feature about 3.5 is the System.Web.Abstractions, which contains the HttpContextBase class that handles this for you. So if you can use 3.5, you can leverage this API for your needs. Otherwise, you would have to create your own wrapper, which is possible but tedious (since it's such a big class).

PowerShell Eventing

RichardSiddaway — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:41:38 GMT

This isn’t the latest sport added for the 2012 Olympics but a way to dig deeper into what is happening on your machine. There is a continuous stream of events occurring on a computer – programs stop or start, files open or close etc etc. Some, but all, of these events are recorded in the event logs. If we want to understand what is happening we can track this using the PowerShell Event engine that is introduced in PowerShell v2.

Three types of events can be registered – PowerShell engine, .NET and WMI using the following cmdlets respectively

We can use the following cmdlets to discover the events that actually happen.

Get-Event
Get-EventSubscriber
New-Event
Remove-Event
Unregister-Event
Wait-Event

We’ll start by looking at WMI events. We can use Register-WmiEvent to register the event we want to track. In this case we want to know when new processes are started. We can create an event registration using

Register-WmiEvent -Query "Select * from __instancecreationevent within 5 where targetinstance isa 'Win32_Process'" -MessageData "Process Started" -SourceIdentifier "New Process"

__instancecreationevent is a WMI System Class. 5 refewrs to the system being scanned every 5 seconds

WMI System classes are created on a per WMI namespace basis i.e. a new set of system classes is created for each WMI namespace. The full list of WMI system classes can be seen at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394583(VS.85).aspx or can be browsed using PowerGUI's WMI browser.

We can view the system classes relating to WMI events.

Get-WmiObject -Namespace 'root\cimv2' -List "__*Event"

and we will see that there is a __InstanceDeletionEvent class as well. if we want to track process creation and deletion (program open and close) we will need to register this as well.

Register-WmiEvent -Query "Select * from __instancedeletionevent within 5 where targetinstance isa 'Win32_Process'" -MessageData "Process Stopped" -SourceIdentifier "End Process"

When we run these commands nothing seems to happen. We can see the event registrations (or subscriptions)

PS> Get-EventSubscriber

SubscriptionId   : 1
SourceObject     : System.Management.ManagementEventWatcher
EventName        : EventArrived
SourceIdentifier : New Process
Action           :
HandlerDelegate :
SupportEvent     : False
ForwardEvent     : False

SubscriptionId   : 2
SourceObject     : System.Management.ManagementEventWatcher
EventName        : EventArrived
SourceIdentifier : End Process
Action           :
HandlerDelegate :
SupportEvent     : False
ForwardEvent     : False

If we start notepad and and then check the process

PS> Get-Process notepad | select name, starttime

Name                                                        StartTime
----                                                        ---------
notepad                                                     07/11/2009 14:20:19

we can compare this to the event information

PS> Get-Event -SourceIdentifier "New Process"

ComputerName     :
RunspaceId       : 2a581963-55cd-4e46-82ab-ddb6a38fa9a2
EventIdentifier : 27
Sender           : System.Management.ManagementEventWatcher
SourceEventArgs : System.Management.EventArrivedEventArgs
SourceArgs       : {System.Management.ManagementEventWatcher, System.Management.EventArrivedEventArgs}
SourceIdentifier : New Process
TimeGenerated    : 07/11/2009 14:20:23
MessageData      : Process Started

Which doesn’t seem to tell is much beyond the fact that a process has started – it specifically doesn’t tell us which process has started.

Similarly when we stop a process

PS> Stop-Process -Name notepad
PS> Get-Event -SourceIdentifier "End Process"

ComputerName     :
RunspaceId       : 2a581963-55cd-4e46-82ab-ddb6a38fa9a2
EventIdentifier : 29
Sender           : System.Management.ManagementEventWatcher
SourceEventArgs : System.Management.EventArrivedEventArgs
SourceArgs       : {System.Management.ManagementEventWatcher, System.Management.EventArrivedEventArgs}
SourceIdentifier : End Process
TimeGenerated    : 07/11/2009 14:27:47
MessageData      : Process Stopped

We get a message that the process has stopped but no identification as to which process.

Events only exist in the current session and the subscriptions are lost if the PowerShell session is closed.

Couple of quick points

The event queue can be quickly cleaned using

Get-Event | Remove-Event.

We can remove event subscriptions using

Unregister-Event -SourceIdentifier "New Process"
Unregister-Event -SourceIdentifier "End Process"

We will dig further into the eventing capabilities in future posts

Technorati Tags: PowerShell v2,WMI,Events

Removing items from the ‘Run’ window history

Erik Rozman — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:25:42 GMT

I have quite a few annoying habits, and some of them have to do with how I work with computers.
One of these little annoying habits is accessing specific locations and applications on a system from
the ‘Run’ window. Some of you may say that it’s so eighties since we have the search box in Vista
and 7 but I still like it. It’s a simple and quick process: Press Star+R write the location and you are
there.Better yet,if it’s an item you already used it’s stored in history so you don’t have to re-type
the full path or name-and this was the point where it got annoying…

When looking at the history of the Run command I found quite a few items that no longer existed
there, obviously I wanted to remove them. I tried highlighting them and pressing Del to no avail.
Eventually I found that the history items are stored per user in the registry,specifically at the following
path:HKEY_CURRENT_USER → Software → Microsoft → Windows → CurrentVersion → Explorer → RunMRU.

As you can see, the items stored in history are arranged in values(REG_SZ) from a to z. Every time you enter
a new item in the Run dialog box it is stored under a “free” letter. Once you hit Z, you can no longer add items
to your history.

Since I have deleted some of the files that they refer too, some of these values have become stale,yet they
still linger on, while others are still useful and I would like to keep them around. The simplest way to clear the
list form stale entries is to simply delete them from the registry (as usual, be very careful when messing around
with the registry as you may render your system unusable).

Once deleted, they will disappear from the list and allow new entries to be added.

I also noticed that the MRUList value has a list of the alphabet letters based on the order in which the values were created.

Migration Step Five: Running the Source tool on the SBS 2003 server

bradley — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:19:00 GMT

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2009/11/02/pre-migration-steps.aspx

So we're once again in our series of how to prepare for a migration.

To recap, we read, we watched.

We ran the www.sbsbpa.com on the server

We ran the IT Environmental Health scanner - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=dd7a00df-1a5b-4fb6-a8a6-657a7968bd11 to ensure all was well.

We checked the primary account.

We took a backup.

We took a system state backup.

{heck we even used the Disk2vhd to move it to a test bed just so we can run this test before doing this for real}

We're now ready for the Migration prep tool:

H. On the Source Server, run the SBS 2008 migration prep tool.

This tool performs the following actions:

Installs update 943494 on the SBS 2003 server to extend the migration grace period from 7 to 21 days.
Runs ADPREP to update the forest, domain, and group policy object access control entries.
Changes Exchange 2003 from Mixed mode to Native mode.
Adds the Authenticated Users group to the Pre-Windows 2000 security group.

If Exchange 2003 is not running in Native mode, Exchange Server 2007 will not be installed and you will have to start all over. The error message is Exchange Server 2007 cannot be installed. For more information, see this.

If the Authenticated Users group is not a member of the Pre-Windows 2000 security group, then standard users will not be able to access the Remote Web Workplace. The error message they will see is: Cannot connect to the Remote Web Workplace site. To continue, contact your network administrator.

The tool can be found on the SBS 2008 media under the tools folder. If you don't have a DVD on the SBS 2003 (like I don't) stick the DVD in any other computer, copy the tools folder onto removable media and put it on the SBS 2003.

Now that we have umpteen backups, on the SBS 2003 box launch that Sourcetool.exe file

We have a backup so we're going to check the box.

The installer starts

When it finishes it's now prepared the SBS 2003 for the migration.

What it did in the background is install

Application KB943494 (Hotfix for Windows Server 2003 (KB943494)) was installed.
Does the ADprep and flips Exchange to native mode
Adds the Authenticated Users group to the Pre-Windows 2000 security group

MESSAGE Security Enabled Local Group Changed:
Target Account Name: Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access
Target Domain: Builtin
Target Account ID: BUILTIN\Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access

Reboot and we're ready for the next step.

Next step building the answer file.

Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4 framework training kit available for download

Brian Madsen — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:50:19 GMT

With the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4 now's the time to get cracking writing some code and getting familiar with our new, and improved, IDE.

Download link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=752CB725-969B-4732-A383-ED5740F02E93&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4 framework training videos on Channel9:

http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/VS2010/

Malware SPAM: Congratulations!! You have won todays Macbook Air winner.zip

donna — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:40:50 GMT

A malicious attachment in today's malware spam is in the wild. The email message is:

Congratulations!! You have won todays Macbook Air.
Please open attached file and see datails.

70% of malware scanners will detect the file. Once executed, the trojan will try to connect to IP address 78.159.121.41

http://www.calendarofupdates.com/updates/index.php?showtopic=24840

Crash dumps, ASP.NET and VS 2010

luisabreu — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:21:25 GMT

Pretty cool stuff!

Orange : Opentransit négocie avec Cogent, les abonnés trinquent

jeanmarc — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:49:13 GMT

La principale raison pour laquelle je me suis abonné à ~~Wanadoo~~ Orange il y a bientôt 10 ans et pour laquelle j’y suis resté aussi longtemps est la qualité du réseau (juste après la présence d’une agence FT/Orange près de chez moi).

Seulement, depuis quelques semaines, mon internet “Orange inside” (international outside ?) est malmené par une filiale de France Telecom, grand (et surtout unique) fournisseur de bande passante (on dit aussi fournisseur de transit) pour Orange, j’ai nommé Open Transit. Et il en va ainsi pour beaucoup d’autres abonnés…

Comment ça fonctionne ?

Open Transit est le fournisseur de transit unique pour Orange/FT (fournisseur de contenu/FAI).
Cogent est un autre fournisseur de transit pour des fournisseurs de contenu (et ISP ?) US.
Ces deux fournisseurs de transit sont interconnectés via un accord de peering dans le but d'échanger leurs trafic internet.
Toute perturbation entre ces deux fournisseurs de transit se répercute mécaniquement sur leurs clients FAI et/ou fournisseur de contenu et donc sur leurs propres clients (par exemple les abonnés Orange).

Dans le cas qui nous préoccupe, c’est la route Orange <=> Open Transit <=> Cogent <=> Youtube/MegaUpload/etc.. qui nous intéresse.

Reprenons…

Alors que l’outil de test “made in Orange” DSLTest m’annonce fièrement et à juste titre + d’1 Mo/sec par tous les temps et à toute heure sur tous les PCs de la maison, c’est tous les soirs (et les soirs commencent très tôt chez Open Transit, surtout le Week-end !) que mon débit sur certains sites à l’étranger chute lamentablement, à en faire pleurer de rire un modem 56K.

Jugez donc vous même :

Jean-Michel Jarre, comme d’autres vidéos Youtube, se traine lamentablement entre 15 et 20 Ko/sec et est, bien évidemment à ce débit, saccadée.
MegaUpload m'offre royalement entre 25 et 30 Ko/sec...

Vous me direz : les sites sont saturés, y’a trop de monde, etc…

Hé bien non, au même moment chez 9, Free, SFR et d’autres, le débit est excellent sur Youtube et plus que correct sur Megaupload (au moins 10 fois supérieur). De même, DailyMotion, hébergé en France, fonctionne parfaitement… partout.

Alors que se passe t’il ?

Il m’a fallu pas mal de recherches et un peu de connaissances réseau pour comprendre.

Voilà le genre de mesure qui donne de gros indices (à faire aux heures de saturation, bien sûr !) :

C:\>tracert -d 209.222.128.146       (un des cache de video youtube)
Détermination de l'itinéraire vers 209.222.128.146 avec un maximum de 30 sauts.
1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2    32 ms     *       33 ms 86.215.255.1
3    33 ms    32 ms    32 ms 10.125.86.74
4    32 ms    33 ms    33 ms 193.253.89.105
5    36 ms    59 ms    36 ms 81.253.129.30
6    41 ms    41 ms    41 ms 193.252.100.226
7    41 ms    41 ms    41 ms 193.251.129.82
8   255 ms   223 ms   218 ms 130.117.15.129
9   174 ms   172 ms   176 ms 130.117.1.73
10   168 ms   171 ms   181 ms 130.117.50.22
11   148 ms   148 ms   147 ms 154.54.2.5
12   126 ms   205 ms   213 ms 38.104.57.198
13   126 ms   125 ms   125 ms 209.222.128.146

Entre 193.251.129.82 (te3-1.lonse1.london.opentransit.net qui appartient donc à OpenTransit) et 130.117.15.129 (gi9-39.mpd01.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com qui appartient à Cogent, tous les deux à Londres), c’est un temps de réponse multiplié par 5 qui nous souffle que la connexion entre ces deux réseaux (le fameux “peering”, interconnexion entre les deux fournisseurs de transit) est saturée ou volontairement bridée.

Autre info importante, on s'aperçoit également que le problème existe DANS L'AUTRE SENS, c'est à dire de Cogent vers OpenTransit.

D'ailleurs, si on utilise l’outil "looking glass" de Cogent pour tracer Orange.fr (en gros, on lance un tracert depuis un routeur de Cogent vers une adresse au choix. Faire routeur Washington DC / traceroute / www.orange.fr), on voit bien le point d'engorgement sur le même lien de peering de Londres (entre 5 et 6) :

Tracing the route to www.orange.fr (193.252.122.103)

1 fa0-8.na01.b005944-0.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.250.56.189) 0 msec 0 msec 4 msec
2 gi1-3.3807.ccr02.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.6.189) 4 msec 0 msec 0 msec
3 te8-4.ccr04.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.26.1) 8 msec
4 te4-4.ccr02.jfk05.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.7.10) 8 msec

5 francetelecom.jfk05.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.10.74) 28 msec 28 msec 32 msec
6 pos0-9-0-0.auvtr1.Aubervilliers.opentransit.net (193.251.243.242) 128 msec 128 msec 128 msec

7 tengige0-0-0-5.pastr1.Paris.opentransit.net (193.251.243.186) 116 msec 112 msec 112 msec
8 gi9-0-0.passe2.Paris.opentransit.net (193.251.240.214) 112 msec 108 msec 112 msec
9 po6-2.bagse1.Bagnolet.opentransit.net (193.251.241.118) 112 msec 112 msec 116 msec
10 wanadooportails.GW.opentransit.net (193.251.251.54) 112 msec 112 msec 112 msec
11 rtbg1fsbae01-v183.net.b1.fti.net (193.252.121.175) 108 msec * 108 msec

Quelques recherches plus tard, c’est un autre indice qui émerge sous la forme d’une info qui date d’Avril 2005 :

…abonnés Wanadoo qui se voient refuser l'accés à une partie non négligeable de sites en France et à l'étranger qui utilise le transit IP Cogent…

Il y a donc des antécédents de désaccords entre FT/OpenTransit et Cogent.

Evidemment, Orange ne communique pas sur cet engorgement et la hotline ne connait pas ce type de problème (que je devine absent de ses “arbres de résolution” d’incidents abonnés).

Mais le point essentiel qui vient confirmer la situation, c’est ce discret message du 25/10/2009 sur le forum de Da Linux French Page : “A tous les coups pour les sites qui rament tu passe par une interco Open Transit (Orange) / Cogent. Visiblement (d'après un gentil gars du support cogent), ils se tirent la bourre en ce moment pour renégocier des accords de peering.”

Alors Orange, quand est-ce que je vais récupérer un accès internet (pour lequel je paye un abonnement, faut il le préciser ?) de qualité ? Faudra t’il attendre que la situation se débloque ? Combien d’abonnés Orange va t’il accepter de perdre (et ça a déjà commencé) avant de remédier à la situation ?

Le forum Orange non officiel héberge une discussion sur le sujet…

Microsoft Trial Software Center

Erik Rozman — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:01:55 GMT

If you have been ever wondering which titles Microsoft offers for trial you
can look at the whole list at the following link.

Holy cow this really works but this is really unsupported

bradley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:15:00 GMT

Holy cow this really works! - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA":
http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2009/11/05/holy-cow-this-really-works.aspx

Please keep in mind that in the next few days as I blog about the migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 test run that I'm doing that the SBS 2003 installed in HyperV is totally and utterly unsupported when it's in that HyperV like that. Exchange 2003 is not supported in HyperV, only in Virtual Server.

If you put SBS 2003 on a platform that virtualization is not supported, you will get push back from support where they will tell you you have to recreate the issue on a supported platform.

Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/897615

Exchange is normally the one that sets the support line in the sand.

Summary Support Statement*
This configuration is Not Supported.

* Customers with Premier-level support agreements should contact their account manager for more information
* Additional information is available in the "Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software" which can be viewed here

Support Statement Details

Product: Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 on Hyper-V with Windows Server 2003 SP2 (x86) Guest OS

More Information

For Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 only Virtual Server 2005 R2 and later is supported as hardware virtualization software. See here for specific configuration information.

http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvpwizard.htm

For those asking about ESXi

Summary Support Statement*
This configuration is Supported.

Support Statement Details

Product: Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 on VMware ESXi with Windows Server 2008 (x64) Guest OS

Search the Knowledge Base for information related to this configuration

More Information

Exchange 2007 SP1 and later must be deployed on the Windows Server 2008 operating system. (Note: Windows Server 2008 R2 is not currently supported with Exchange Server 2007 on hardware virtualization). For more information about support and scaling see the Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments here .

Supported features: Anti-Virus, Back-up Software, Virtual Machine Management Software, Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR), Virtual Processors

Unsupported features: Unified Messaging, Dynamically Expanding Virtual Disks, Virtual disks that use differencing or delta mechanisms, Hyper-V Quick Migration combined with Exchange Clustering, Virtual Machine Snap Shots

Mark's Rules for Successful Replacement Mode - MR4SRM. RM = replacment mode

steveb — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:50:00 GMT

Second in the Mark Stanfill EBS 2008 tweet series (check out his TMG series here), we have Mark's latest on Rules for Successful Replacement Mode. As before, I'll be updating this post with new tweets as Mark sends them out. Be sure to check back for updates.

#EBS08 New Series - Mark's Rules for Successful Replacement Mode - MR4SRM. RM = replacment mode.

#EBS08 MR4SRM Rule #1 - Make a complete server backup first. No exceptions.

#EBS08 MR4SRM Export config to XML using http://bit.ly/2jlxkE. Pay special attention to all IP addresses . Make sure they're corrrect.

#EBS08 MR4SRM You need 2 functional EBS servers for Replacement Mode. If not, restore one server from backup.

#EBS08 MR4SRM Always back up CALs on Mgmt server before RM.

#EBS08 MR4SRM Mgmt server needs CALs reinstalled or restore post RM.

#EBS08 MR4SRM Mgmt Server RM will pull down all WSUS data again - many GB. Export & import - http://bit.ly/4DUxtN. Backup data drive

#EBS08 MR4SRM All servers are going to need patching. Expect many reboots, considerable time.

#EBS08 MR4SRM Security & Msg can pull updates from WSUS rather than MU. Deselect optional updates during RM. Critical updates come from MU

#EBS08 MR4SRM Make sure AD is healthy before RM. Always run IT Health Scanner first - http://bit.ly/Od1uH

#EBS08 MR4SRM Never, ever delete computer accounts or run metadata cleanup before RM. http://bit.ly/Cwsrr

#EBS08 MR4SRM All DCs need to be online and contactable before RM.

#EBS08 MR4SRM Make sure IIS is healthy, started, listening on port 808 for /remoting directory on all servers before RM.

#EBS08 MR4SRM Run "dnscmd /config /enableglobalqueryblocklist 0" for wpad autodiscovery - http://bit.ly/3NceQm

#EBS08 MR4SRM Management Server restore - repair all SCE clients underAdministration node.

#EBS08 MR4SRM RM on Messaging obviously does not restore mailboxes & PFs. Make backups first - online, offline, PSTs. Belt and suspenders.

#EBS08 MR4SRM To get Security Server to report back to SCE after RM - "net stop fweng /y", repair SCE client, restart services

#EBS08 MR4SRM Remove UM (if present) from Exchange before RM of Messaging Server to avoid setup failure.

Noda Time is born

skeet — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:02:31 GMT

There was an amazing response to yesterday's post – not only did readers come up with plenty of names, but lots of people volunteered to help. As a result, I'm feeling under a certain amount of pressure for this project to actually take shape.

The final name chosen is Noda Time. We now have a Google Code Project and a Google Group (/mailing list). Now we just need some code…

I figured it would be worth explaining a bit more about my vision for the project. Obviously I'm only one contributor, and I'm expecting everyone to add there own views, but this can act as a starting point.

I want this project to be more than just a way of getting better date and time handling on .NET. I want it to be a shining example of how to build, maintain and deploy an open source .NET library. As some of you know, I have a few other open source projects on the go, and they have different levels of polish. Some have downloadable binaries, some don't. They all have just-about-enough-to-get-started documentation, but not nearly enough, really. They have widely varying levels of test coverage. Some are easier to build than others, depending on what platform you're using.

In some ways, I'm expecting the code to be the easy part of Noda Time. After all, the implementation is there already – we'll have plenty of interesting design decisions to make in order to marry the concepts of Joda Time with the conventions of .NET, but that shouldn't be too hard. Here are the trickier things, which need discussion, investigation and so forth:

What platforms do we support? Here's my personal suggested list:

.NET 4.0
.NET 3.5
.NET 2.0SP1 (require the service pack for DateTimeOffset)
Mono (versions TBD)
Silverlight 2, 3 and 4
Compact Framework 2.0 and 3.5

What do we ship, and how do we handle different platforms? For example, can we somehow use Code Contracts to give developers a better experience on .NET 4.0 without making it really hard to build for other versions of .NET? Can we take advantage of the availability of TimeZoneInfo in .NET 3.5 and still build fairly easily for earlier versions? Do developers want debug or release binaries? Can we build against the client profile of .NET 3.5/4.0?
What should we use to build? I've previously used NAnt for the overall build process and MSBuild for the code building part. While this has worked quite well, I'm nervous of the dependency on NAnt-Contrib library for the <msbuild> task, and generally being dependent on a build project whose last release was a beta nearly two years ago. Are there better alternatives?
How should documentation be created and distributed?

Is Sandcastle the best way of building docs? How easy is it to get it running so that any developer can build the docs at any time? (I've previously tried a couple of times, and failed miserable.)
Would Monodoc be a better approach?
How should non-API documentation be handled? Is the wiki which comes with the Google Code project good enough? Do we need to somehow suck the wiki into an offline format for distribution with the binaries?

What do we need to do in order to work in low-trust environments, and how easily can we test that?
What do we do about signing? Ship with a "public" snk file which anyone can build with, but have a private version which the team uses to validate a "known good" release? Or just have the private key and use deferred signing?
While the library itself will support i18n for things like date/time formatting, do we need to apply it to "developer only" messages such as exceptions?
I'm used to testing with NUnit and Rhino.Mocks, but they're not the last word in testing on .NET – what should we use, and why? What about coverage?
Do we need any dependencies (e.g. logging)? If so, how do we handle versioning of those dependencies? How are we affected by various licences?

These are all interesting topics, but they're not really specific to Noda Time. Information about them is available all over the place, but that's just the problem – it's all over the place. I would like there to be some sort of documentation saying, "These are the decisions you need to think about, here are the options we chose for Noda Time, and this is why we did so." I don't know what form that documentation will take yet, but I'm considering an ebook.

As you can tell, I'm aiming pretty high with this project – especially as I won't even be using Google's 20% time on it. However, there's little urgency in it for me personally. I want to work out how to do things right rather than how to do them quickly. If it takes me a bit of time to document various decisions, and the code itself ships later, so be it… it'll make the next project that much speedier.

I'm expecting a lot of discussion in the group, and no doubt some significant disagreements. I'm expecting to have to ask a bunch of questions on Stack Overflow, revealing just how ignorant I am on a lot of the topics above (and more). I think it'll be worth it though. I think it's worth setting a goal:

In one year, I want this to be a first-class project which is the natural choice for any developers wanting to do anything more than the simplest of date/time handling on .NET. In one year, I want to have a guide to developing open source class libraries on .NET which tells you everything you need to know other than how to write the code itself.

A year may seem like a long time, but I'm sure everyone who has expressed an interest in the project has significant other commitments – I know I do. Getting there in a year is going to be a stretch – but I'm expecting it to be a very enlightening journey.

Weekend reading

Rui Silva — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:53:35 GMT

Demystifying Microsoft in the Cloud Leapfrogging from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 Exchange 2010 RTM DAG using Server 2008 R2 – Part 2 West Coast Launch Tour Follow Up Microsoft Expands Windows Support for Exchange Server 2007 IP_V6 is a must if you are trying to install Exchange 2010 Play Exchange 2010 Mailbox Items on Your Phone By Using the EWS Managed API OWA 2010 Premium in Firefox on a Linux machine (Ubuntu Desktop) VIDEO: Archive in Exchange 2010 Uncovering the new RPC Client Access Service...(read more)

Gearing up for the next trip to China…

Rod Trent at myITforum.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:00:18 GMT

It’s been a busy time around the Trent house for what seems like forever. China in March, MMS 2009 in April, local soccer program all summer, a kid starting college on a Track scholarship, a new baby, a daughter turning 16, etc., etc. So, Read More......(read more)

SQL Server books

RichardSiddaway — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:55:01 GMT

A couple of SQL Server books that I would recommend having been involved with both of them.

First up is SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action by Rod College (Manning - http://www.manning.com/colledge/) which I reviewed several times before publication. It covers SQL Server from sizing and installation, through configuration and day-to-day administration. Lots of good best practice information written in a easy to read style.

The second is SQL Server MVP Deep Dives (Manning - http://www.manning.com/nielsen/) to which I contributed a chapter on PowerShell and SQL Server. This book has contributions from 53 MVPs (mainly SQL Server) and is edited by Paul Nielsen, Kalen Delaney, Greg Low, Adam Machanic, Paul S. Randal, and Kimberly L. Tripp. The royalties from the book go to War Child International - (www.warchild.org)

Two good books to add to your SQL Server library

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