AndersonPatricio.ca

How to schedule PowerShell scripts using Windows Tasks

Hi Folks,

Last week I blogged here about PowerShell v3 and a new feature that is going to do the content of topic automatically however if you don’t have Windows 8/PowerShell 3 and you want to configure a script that you created to run on Windows Server 2008 R2 these following steps can be used:

If your script is not digitally signed, you can run the Set-ExecutionPolicy –ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted as shown in the figure below.

Now, it’s time to create a new Windows Task and what really matters for us is the Start a Program section, and these following values must be entered:

• Program/Script field:
  C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe
• Add arguments (optional) field
  -NoLogo -NonInteractive -File C:\path\yourscript.ps1

All pieces together are shown in the picture below.

That’s all my friends, from now your PowerShell scripts will work just fine. I do recommend to do a test and depending of the script you may want to configure a specific account to run on the Task and also to configure the script to

Demystifying the CAS Array Object by MSExchangeTeam

Hi folks,

The MSExchange Team created a two article blog series about CAS Array object in Exchange Server 2010, as follows:

• Demystifying the CAS Array Object - Part 1
  
• Demystifying the CAS Array Object - Part 2
  

HVR: Hyper-V Replica

Hi folks,

Windows 8 is coming with tons of new features however one of the most anticipated is the HVR which is key for the private cloud. In the following post the Hyper-v team shed some light on the topic and also some links to understand better the new feature.

Hyper-V Replica (HVR) is a new feature in Windows Server “8” Beta that provides asynchronous replication of Hyper-V virtual machines for BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) scenarios.

Watch this space for in depth blogs from the Hyper-V Replica team on how-to’s, tips & tricks, sample PS cmdlets, commentary on some of the engineering decisions (eg: why do we support server names in the product and not IP addresses, why did we design resync and scenarios where it would be used).

To know more about HVR, see Understand and Troubleshoot Hyper-V Replica. A quick summary which demonstrates the feature capabilities is available here.

Read more at source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2012/03/09/windows-server-8-beta-hyper-v-replica.aspx

Need help with Microsoft software licensing? This post is for you..

Hi folks,

Do you have problems understanding Licensing? If yes, you are not alone however this post will help you out to better understand your options with new Microsoft Technologies, such as: Office 365, Azure, CRM online and so forth.

You may want to review this blog post that lays out licensing basics for any organization that needs to license software for more than 5 or less than 250 devices or users. It details the different ways you can buy a license and what choices are available for volume licensing, which can give you pricing advantages and provide flexible options for your business.

As technology evolves and more organizations move to online services such as Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Windows Azure Platform, Windows Intune and others, it’s important to understand how to purchase, activate and use online service subscriptions to get the most out of your investment. Once purchased through a volume licensing agreement or the Microsoft Online Subscription Program, these services can be managed through web portals:

• Online Services Customer Portal (Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Intune)
• Dynamics CRM Online Customer Portal (Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online)
• Windows Azure Customer Portal (Windows Azure Platform)
• Volume Licensing Service Center (other services)

Licensing Resources:

• The SMB How to Buy Portal – receive clear purchasing and licensing information that is easy to understand in order to help facilitate quick decision making.
• Microsoft License Advisor (MLA) – Use MLA to research Microsoft Volume Licensing products, programs and pricing.
• Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) – Already have a volume License? Use the VLSC to get you easy access to all your licensing information in one location.
• Online Services – licensing information for off-premise options.
• Windows 7 Comparison: – Compare versions of Windows and find out which one is right for you.
• Office 2010 Comparison: – Find out which Office suite is right for you.
• Licensing FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions About Product Licensing.

Additional Resources You May Find Useful:

• TechNet Evaluation Center
  Try some of our latest Microsoft products For free, Like System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products, and evaluate them before you buy.
• Springboard Series
  Your destination for technical resources, free tools and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows-based client infrastructure.  
• AlignIT Manager Tech Talk Series
  A monthly streamed video series with a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers.  Ask questions and participate real-time or watch the on-demand recording.

Scheduling Background Jobs in Windows PowerShell 3.0

Hi Folks,

The PowerShell team explains a nice new feature of PowerShell 3.0 which allows the management of Jobs using PowerShell.

One of the most common phone calls that the support team gets for Windows PowerShell is "How do I use Task Scheduler to schedule Windows PowerShell scripts?". As an administrator, you need to have full control over when scripts run in your environment. Perhaps you need run a script only during a one-off maintenance window or maybe you want to schedule some routine maintenance on a server so that it runs at non-peak times. Although it was possible to use Task Scheduler to invoke scripts in Windows PowerShell 2.0, it was not trivial. What's more, you were responsible for writing code to store the detailed results of your script if you wanted to view them later.

Read more at source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2012/03/19/scheduling-background-jobs-in-windows-powershell-3-0.aspx

Windows Server “8” Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster

Provides a visual reference for understanding key Hyper-V technologies in Windows Server “8” Beta and focuses on Hyper-V Replica, networking, virtual machine mobility (live migration), storage, failover clustering, and scalability.

Download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=29189

Getting started with Cloud Computing

Hi folks,

I would like to share with you guys a really nice summary about Cloud Computing using Microsoft Technologies. Enjoy it!

Public Cloud computing means that the infrastructure to run and manage the applications users are taking advantage of is run by someone else and not you. In other words, you do not buy the hardware or software to run your email or other services being used in your organization – that is done by someone else. Users simply connect to these services from their computers and you pay a monthly subscription fee for each user that is taking advantage of the service. Examples of Public Cloud services include Office 365, Windows Intune, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Hotmail, and others.

Private Cloud computing generally means that the hardware and software to run services used by your organization is run on your premises, with the ability for business groups to self-provision the services they need based on rules established by the IT department. Generally, Private Cloud implementations today are found in larger organizations but they are also viable for small and medium-sized businesses since they generally allow an automation of services and reduction in IT workloads when properly implemented. Having the right management tools, like System Center 2012, to implement and operate Private Cloud is important in order to be successful.

So – how do you get started? The first step is to determine what makes the most sense to your organization. The nice thing is that you do not need to pick Public or Private Cloud – you can use elements of both where it makes sense for your business – the choice is yours. When you are ready to try and purchase Public Cloud technologies, the Microsoft Volume Licensing web site is a good place to find links to each of the online services. In particular, if you are interested in a trial for each service, you can visit the following pages: Office 365, CRM Online, Windows Intune, and Windows Azure.

For Private Cloud technologies, start with some of the courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy and then download and install the Microsoft Private Cloud technologies including Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center 2012 in your own environment and take it for a spin. Also, keep up to date with the Canadian IT Pro blog to learn about events Microsoft is delivering such as the IT Virtualization Boot Camps and more to get you started with these technologies hands on.
Finally, I want to ask for your help to allow the team at Microsoft to continue to provide you what you need. Twice a year through something we call "The Global Relationship Study" – they reach out and contact you to see how they're doing and what Microsoft could do better. If you get an email from "Microsoft Feedback" with the subject line "Help Microsoft Focus on Customers and Partners" between March 5th and April 13th, please take a little time to tell them what you think

Cloud Computing Resources:

• Microsoft Server and Cloud Computing site – information on Microsoft's overall cloud strategy and products.
• Microsoft Virtual Academy – for free online training to help improve your IT skillset.
• Office 365 Trial/Info page – get more information or try it out for yourself.
• Office 365 Videos – see how businesses like yours have used Office 365 to transition to the cloud.
• Windows Intune Trial/Info – get more information or try it out for yourself.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online page – information on trying and licensing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Additional Resources You May Find Useful:

• Springboard Series
  Your destination for technical resources, free tools and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows-based client infrastructure.
• TechNet Evaluation Center
  Try some of our latest Microsoft products for free, Like System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products, and evaluate them before you buy.
• AlignIT Manager Tech Talk Series
  A monthly streamed video series with a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers. Ask questions and participate real-time or watch the on-demand recording.
• Tech·Days Online
  Discover what's next in technology and innovation with Tech·Days session recordings, hands-on labs and Tech·Days TV.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio

Check out Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell (pre-release)

Wanted to write a quick post about a tool that can help you find and catalogue various PowerShell scripts that are scattered on various online communities or – possibly – your internal company network shares.

The tool is called Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell and has entered the public Beta 1 stage now.

• Download Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell (pre-release)
• User guide
• Script Explorer Forum

Read more at source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/03/14/check-out-microsoft-script-explorer-for-windows-powershell-pre-release.aspx

Managing UPN to help Exchange authentication

Hi Folks,

In some organizations where the Active Directory domain is different from the public name, such as apatricio.local (Active Directory FQDN) and the external SMTP address is andersonpatricio.ca. Some organizations may want to authenticate users using user@domain.com format instead of DOMAIN\username or just username and that can be easily done using additional UPNs.

The entire process can be divided in a couple of tasks, such as manage UPN, manage the user and then finally configure Outlook Web App.

Managing UPN on Active Directory

First thing to do is to add the desired UPN to the Active Directory and that can be done using Active Directory Domain and Trusts. Let’s right-click on the first item and then Properties.

There is a single tab, let’s add our domain to the list, in our case andersonpatricio.ca and let’s click on Add and then Apply and Ok.

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Note: Depending of your Active Directory size and replication topology it may take some time to replicate the information.

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Managing the UPN at mailbox/user level

Our next step is to get properties of a mailbox using Exchange Management Console, and on Account tab we have a second option for user logon name (User Principal Name) field, let’s select our new domain (andersonpatricio.ca) and let’s click on Apply.

Managing Outlook Web App..

Time to configure Authentication at Outlook Web App level (open Exchange Management Console / Server Configuration / Client Access and then Outlook Web App) and ask Properties of the Outlook Web App and then let’s go to Authentication tab and let’s change it to user principal name (UPN) and let’s click on Apply and Ok in the new dialog box that will show up.

Final task is to run IISReset /noforce in the command prompt to refresh the settings.

Testing..

It’s time for testing! open Outlook Web app and type in the UPN and password and voilà the mailbox will be opened.

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Note: You can also test that now you can’t use the regular username to authenticate.

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Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca (English)
Twitter: @apatricio
Facebook: http://facebook.com/AndersonPatricioCA

Top 5 Reasons to choose Microsoft Hyper-V R2 SP1 over VMware vSphere 5

Hi folks,

Virtualization is a reality in the vast majority of the companies and in case you are using VMWare and you are trying to find a good reason to explain the change to your boss about the benefits of using Microsoft Virtualization, this post can be useful

Microsoft released a document comparing VMWare vSphere 5 and Windows Server 2008 R2 however the Windows 8 (beta) just released will bring tons of new features for Microsoft customer.

Here is the PDF http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/F/A/EFA7E5D1-C8F9-40EA-8296-896CD42C1A20/Top_5_Reasons_to_choose_Microsoft_Hyper-V_R2_SP1_over_VMware_vSphere%205.pdf

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio

Exchange Client Network Bandwidth Calculator BETA2

Hi folks,

If you are trying to convince your boss how the bandwidth benefits of moving those remote users to OWA specially in Exchange Server 2010 the Exchange Client Network Bandwidth calculator is your tool, in this release the team added support to Office 365 and they also said that next release will have support for Outlook 2011 for Mac.

Check it out some of the new features of this new release (Beta2) that I copied from the original post:

• Corrected Outlook 2003 network latency requirements
• Provided some Office 365 context help
  • Added Office 365 icon against recommended Office 365 clients
  • If Office 365 is selected on the input page
    • Availability protocol is highlighted if configured incorrectly for Office 365
    • OWA 2007 removed from client list
    • Outlook 2003 removed from client list
    • Non-Outlook Anywhere clients removed from list

Check the tool out: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/03/09/exchange-client-network-bandwidth-calculator-beta2.aspx

Introducing: Log Parser Studio

MSExchangeTeam announced Log Parser Studio (LPS) which helps a lot using a great user interface which helps a lot.

Anyone who regularly uses Log Parser 2.2 knows just how useful and powerful it can be for obtaining valuable information from IIS (Internet Information Server) and other logs. In addition, adding the power of SQL allows explicit searching of gigabytes of logs returning only the data that is needed while filtering out the noise. The only thing missing is a great graphical user interface (GUI) to function as a front-end to Log Parser and a ‘Query Library’ in order to manage all those great queries and scripts that one builds up over time.

Log Parser Studio was created to fulfill this need; by allowing those who use Log Parser 2.2 (and even those who don’t due to lack of an interface) to work faster and more efficiently to get to the data they need with less “fiddling” with scripts and folders full of queries.

With Log Parser Studio (LPS for short) we can house all of our queries in a central location. We can edit and create new queries in the ‘Query Editor’ and save them for later. We can search for queries using free text search as well as export and import both libraries and queries in different formats allowing for easy collaboration as well as storing multiple types of separate libraries for different protocols.

Read more at source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/03/07/introducing-log-parser-studio.aspx

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio

Lync client and multimedia devices in a VDI solution

Hi folks,

Nowadays, a lot of companies are looking at VDI as a solution and the collaboration where Lync plays a main role in this subject must be validated. This video can shed some light on the topics and the capabilities available with Citirx and Microsoft.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX3ERi0tNFY&feature=player_embedded#!

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca (English)
Twitter: @apatricio
Facebook: http://facebook.com/APatricioCA

Released: Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool (OCAT)

Hi folks,

MSExchange Team blogged Today about OCAT (Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool) the introduction and the link to continue reading can be found below.

OCAT was developed by two Microsoft support engineers with over 30 years of combined experience in Outlook, Exchange and Office support. Based on their support experience, they compiled a set of detection rules that look for Outlook configurations that have historically been potential sources of problems in Outlook. The tool looks and feels like Microsoft Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA) - the same infrastructure used by ExBPA was chosen for the development and final implementation of OCAT.

Read more at source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/03/05/released-outlook-configuration-analyzer-tool-ocat.aspx

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio