AndersonPatricio.ca

Basic installation guide for Windows PowerShell Web Access

Hi folks,

PowerShell Team blogged about a new feature that is coming in Windows Server 2012 which allows a PowerShell console in a web browser. Isn’t that cool?

Windows PowerShell Web Access is a new feature in Windows Server 2012. It is an IIS application that provides a Windows PowerShell console in a web browser. The IIS application acts as a gateway between the web browser and the machines that you can connect to in your environment. These machines should have Windows PowerShell remoting enabled.

The video below illustrates the three simple steps of setup and configuration –

1. Feature installation
In the video we use GUI to install the feature. We could also use the Windows PowerShell cmdlet equivalent for installation (run the cmd in an elevated PowerShell console) –
Install-WindowsFeature –Name WindowsPowerShellWebAccess –IncludeAllManagementTools

Read more at source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2012/06/27/windows-powershell-web-access-basic-installation-guide.aspx

Product Review: Lepide Exchange Manager

Hello folks,

Today’s review will be about a tool called Lepide Exchange Manager developed by Lepide Software (www.lepide.com) and the version that we are using for this review is the version 12. This tool can be used with Exchange Server 2000/2003/2007 and 2010.

The trial version of the tool reviewed here can be found at http://www.lepide.com/exchange-manager/.

First impressions and overview...

Lepide Exchange Manager can be considered a Swiss Army knife for a messaging administrator and because of its neat features it allows a recover from a Disaster within a few steps, and besides of the recover capabilities which caught my attention at the first glance the tool also has search, report and export/import capabilities which are key for the daily exchange administration tasks.

The installation process is pretty straight forward and requires just a little of attention from the messaging administrator such as Outlook (32 or 64 bits) installed on the machine where the tool will be installed, other than that you will have the tool up and running in less than 5 minutes. Also, the message administrator must be prepared to seize disk properly in order to be able to restore large EDB/PSTs and OSTs files on the server where the tool is installed.

The tool was well designed and on its first page has two areas: Source and Destination where the administrator will spent most of the time during its working on the tool and all features and capabilities are no more than 2 clicks away from this initial page (figure 01).

Figure 01: Lepide Exchange Manager main interface

The source is where the messaging administrator can define where the exchange information is coming from and here you have the server side with offline EDB (healthy and corrupted databases) and live exchange mailboxes (could be a single or multiples mailboxes) and also the client side where the traditional PST or even OST files can be used (Figure 01), and the second step is the destination where the messaging administrator can choose from a PST (new or existent) or Live Exchange Servers.

Figure 02: Selecting a source

After defining Source and Destination the administrator will have access to all capabilities of the software that we are going over in the following sections where content can be copied/exported between Source and destination. The administrator also can check with a glance a preview of the exchange data loaded as Source and from there generate reports, search content, export data and so forth.

Search features…

The Search feature was reviewed as well and it allows the administrator to select many mailboxes and use several fields to perform a search (Figure 03) and because it can be run against offline DBs and also live mailboxes becomes a really good feature for auditing purposes. The administrator also has several tabs to narrow down the search and even exclude duplicates based on some parameters.

Figure 03: Initial Search Source page

Reporting features...

The report is available at Mailbox level and the administrator just need to select with folder to be used in the report and the pre-defined Reports (Figure 04) and a page with the results will be displayed and then the administrator has the option to save them and the only option available is HTML

Figure 04: Generating a Report

Import/Export features

Lepide Exchange Manager has great Import/Export features which are really handy for several scenarios, the first feature that catch my attention was the ability to export any content from an open source (Offline EDB, PST/OST, or Exchange live mailboxes) to either MSG or EML format and also the ability to save in a file with the same hierarchy (Figure 05). Besides of that you can also import the data back from those types of files.

Figure 05: Exporting a message to a file which can be imported in similar process to a PST/Live mailbox

Besides of using this feature during a recover scenario it also can be well used to validate the Exchange backup where a restored database can be loaded into the tool and a message can be restored without impacting the production environment. I’m pretty sure that your Backup Team will love this feature when they have to satisfy SOX auditors.

Review Summary

In these final notes about this review I’m definitely giving two thumbs up for Lepide Exchange Manager or if you prefer the 1 to 5 scale I would definitely give a 4.5 where the product met and exceed my expectations.

This review was my first contact with Lepide Exchange Manager and I’m still impressed how easy was to deploy and get the results that were expected from the tool and also its performance to manage different source data (Exchange Offline Database EDB, PST/OST files and live mailboxes), especially in cases of a Disaster Recovery situation the tool becomes a key component and not just at the server level but also helping to export data from OST files.

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

MSExchange.org – PowerShell 101 for Messaging Administrators and IT Pros

Hello folks,

Long time no see, a lot of work and Eurocup 2012 makes this blog to slow down for a little but we are still here! This week the fourth article of my series was published at MSExchange.org and this new series we talk about PowerShell 101 where the idea is to show the readers how to create their own scripts and understand basic concept of PowerShell.

Here is the list containing all articles published so far:

• PowerShell 101 for Messaging Administrator and IT Pros (Part 4)
  http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/management-administration/powershell-101-messaging-administrator-pros-part4.html
• PowerShell 101 for Messaging Administrator and IT Pros (Part 3)
  http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/management-administration/powershell-101-messaging-administrator-pros-part3.html
• PowerShell 101 for Messaging Administrator and IT Pros (Part 2)
  http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/management-administration/powershell-101-messaging-administrator-pros-part2.html
• PowerShell 101 for Messaging Administrator and IT Pros (Part 1)
  http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/management-administration/powershell-101-messaging-administrator-pros-part1.html

Can’t verify domain in Office 365

Hello my friends,

If you are getting the following error message and you are sure that all DNS entries were added properly, you may be right! I’m having this issue with my personal domain where I associated and validated the domain andersonpatricio.ca a long time ago with a test account for an articles series and even though my Office 365 trial account has expired for months I can’t use that domain anymore.

The solution? There is nothing that you can do at your end, you must open a ticket with Microsoft Support and they will give a couple of options: allow you to log on your old account and delete the domain from there or start a internal process to clean up the domain (I’m not sure about this one because I haven’t got there yet but it seems like that is the plan B).

Exchange Management Console using filters

Hello comrades (Don’t ask me why… I was watching a 2nd world war movie),

When you start having more than a single server and several databases it may be hard for a local administrator to open the Database Management tab because it will take longer to list all databases and their status and so forth, the same applies when you have hundreds of users especially if you usually only works with some of the databases or set of users (remote or site administrators).

If you are using a naming convention to differentiate your databases among locations you can use the Save Current Filter as Default feature of Exchange Management Console.

Let’s say that our environment has tons of databases and my account is responsible just for the databases in a site called Porto Alegre (POA), so when I open the first time the Exchange Management Console I will see all databases as shown in the figure below.

Let’s click on Create Filter and then let’s select Name on the first field, Contains in the second one and on the third one you fill out with the unique string to identify the set of databases that you want to manage right off the bat. In our case it is POA.

Now, it’s time to save it for other occasions, click on View and then Save current Filter as Default. That’s it, close your console and open it again and voilà the filter will be in place and your databases will be ready!

Note: This option also applies to any other filter that you may have in the Exchange Management Console.

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

My MCM self-study labs and a couple of hints about the exam process

Hi there,

One of my new’s year resolution was to study for the MCM exam and last February I was able to manage to write the exam and I passed, and now somehow I should go back to my LAB to start studying for the MCM LAB Exam. Since I’m planning to do that I would like to share with you a few hints about my study process so it may help yours as well.

Important: I couldn’t get approval from my company to join the MCM training in Seattle and that is the only reason that I decided to go for the MCM certification without the training. I do believe that the value of having the training is way better than the certification because you will learn more from the source (the training facility and instructors are top notch) besides of the networking with your peers that are also interested in the same goals. If you have the opportunity to go for the MCM training, please don’t think twice, go!

Of course I can’t and I wouldn’t comment any technical questions about the exam but the exam is harder than any other exam that you have ever done for Microsoft certifications in the past (I’ve been writing exams since NT 4) and I’ve been working with Exchange since version 5 and before getting the results I wasn’t sure if I had passed.

In my humble opinion a good hint to pass the Knowledge Exam is that you must have a really good experience with the product and a deep understanding of the architecture and how the pieces fit together. The experience portion shouldn’t be just managing an environment but also performing transition between versions, troubleshooting and so forth.

In order to study for the MCM Exam I created 4 (four) scenarios in my personal LAB to help my self-study process (I have a really good set of servers powered by Microsoft SCCVM and Windows Server 2008 R2). Bear in mind that the exam requires a lot of knowledge, so you should know how to enable a feature and the most important how it works which means that having a lab similar to mine is not enough, you should go deeper on the technical side and try out all features to be more prepared for the exams.

Here are my labs and as you may have guessed all of them are related to Gaucho culture on their names

LAB #01: Pampa Revolution

In this LAB I’m using just 5 servers with 8GB RAM in average and I have a Front and Back Exchange Server 2003, a Domain Controller, and I have two Exchange Server 2010 (SP1 and after while an upgrade to SP2 to be honest) performing CAS/HUB and Mailbox roles.

The objective of this lab is to test the entire process to migrate from Exchange Server 2003 to 2010.

LAB #02: Porto Alegre a new frontier…

In this LAB I used a single DC and I use a LTM (Local Traffic Manager virtual applicance from F5) and 2 Exchange Server 2010 (SP1 and SP2) with all three roles installed on them and a third Exchange Server just for Unified Messaging. Also I have Lync Server and a DPM Server.

My goals for this LAB is to test integration between Exchange with other Microsoft products such as Lync and DPM and also test the Load Balancing using F5.

LAB #03: Montevideo: Rise of the DAGs

In this LAB I have 2 DCs, 2 File Servers, 4 CAS/HUB servers, 4 Mailboxes and a couple of clients and finally a TMG.

The objective of this exercise is to build the DAG in a DR environment and test all possible *-over scenarios and see how the client experiences the issues.

LAB #04: The cloud is not the limit

In this LAB I have only 2 Exchange Servers and a couple of servers required to do Office 365 integration and 2 clients. Also I have a TMG server responsible to segment the network in two network and the only way to reach each segment is through routing at TMG level.

The objective for this LAB is to test the integration with the cloud and also between two different Exchange organization (each segment has its own forest and Exchange organization)

Well, you won’t find answers or even clues about the exam itself but I hope my personal lab used to study will help you out. Have a good luck and may the force be with you!

Now, it’s time to rebuild my Lab and start my journey to perform the Lab Exam

Back from Holidays.. time to get back to work

Hi folks,

You may have noticed that I disappeared from Blog, Twitter, Forums and all that stuff for the last 2-3 weeks and that anomaly was cause by my holidays

During my time out of the grid a couple of articles that I wrote a few months ago were published at MSExchange.org. One of the article series that was started was about PowerShell 101 for Messaging Administrators where I try to explain how to start building your own scripts and how to use the PowerShell.

• Automating Exchange Server 2010 Deployment
• PowerShell 101 for Messaging Administrator and IT Pros (Part 1)
• PowerShell 101 for Messaging Administrator and IT Pros (Part 2)

Okay, that’s all for a recap from my holidays and now it’s time to start talking about new stuff in this blog. Stay tuned!