December 2012 - Posts
HoHoHo my friends!
It’s that time of the year to start watching The Grinch and al that stuff right? 
The Outlook Team blogged about some features that will be no longer in use in Exchange Server 2013 and here is a short list:
- Exchange “Classic Offline” mode
- Deliver to PST for Exchange accounts
- Calendar Publishing to office.com (PubCal)
- VPN and Dialup Settings
- Outlook Search via Windows Shell
- Journaling
- Import/Export to Legacy Applications
- Legacy Contact Linking/Activites Tab
Something seems important to you? Please check the original post with all information about each one of the features above: http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2012/12/19/outlook-2013-deprecated-features-and-components.aspx
Cheers and Happy Holidays,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Hello my friends
I got in Canada this morning at 6:00AM and around 8AM I had a time issue because the freaking atomic clock that I was using was down (Can you believe it? Well if you are using from USA, you can check the list of their status on this site http://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi).
So, the topic of Today is going to be Time! (when I say that I keep hearing Morgan Freeman initial speech on Through the Wormhole series. If you haven’t seen it, please do!).
There are several ways to implement time on your environment and Microsoft has great documents and KBs for that, but here are Andy’s two cents of advice:
- Active Directory is sensitive about time discrepancies, so be consitente
- I would recommend to create a sub-Organization Unit under Domain Controllers called PDC and move the main Domain Controller of your forest/domain to that OU and assign a GPO to synchronize with an atomic clock for that server
- All other DCs should synchronize for this special DC
- If you are using Virtualization make sure that your hosts are synchronizing from the DCs
- Disable the Time Sync with your virtualization product and let the Active Directory control that, in case you forget or miss that configuration in a machine the previous step will keep consistency
- Learn how to use the w32tm to help you out during the troubleshoot phase
Okay, now that you have it configured you can use these following cmdlets to help you to troubleshoot any time issues.
How do I know which NTP server my server is using?
w32tm /query /source
How do I start the refresh process?
w32tm /resync /nowait
Bear in mind that the difference is not going to drop 5 minutes in a single shot. It going to be a slow process.
How far are we from the atomic clock?
That is a piece of cake, just run w32tm /stripchart /computer:time.nrc.ca
By the way, if you have a server too much ahead and you want to make sure that the server is using your local DC, you can restart the Windows Time Service to refresh settings and it will bring the time to the local NTP/DC server.
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Hi folks,
In Todays post let’s get more information about a Mailbox Export Request. First of all let’s get a list of the current requests using Get-MailboxExportRequest
We can get a brief summary of the operationrunning Get-MailboxExportRequest | select Identity,Status | fl however it doesn’t give you a lot of details if something goes wrong. However we just run this cmdlet to make sure
Now that we have the Identity information of the request, we can use the Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics to get more details, as follows.
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Today the Exchange CXP team released the following update rollups to the Download Center. All three releases cover Security Bulletin MS12-080. Because this is a security release, the updates will also be available on Microsoft Update.
Read more at source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/12/11/released-update-rollup-5-v2-for-exchange-2010-sp2-exchange-2010-sp1-ru8-and-exchange-2007-sp3-ru9.aspx
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Good morning Folks!
All posts of this week were related to the process of creating a new DAG in Exchange Server 2013. We went over the process to create the CNO object for the DAG in Active Directory, create the DAG using EAC, add the server members, and finally we managed the databases to test our solution.
It’s just the beginning however this process will give you all required steps to build and test an Exchange Server 2013 DAG in your lab environment. Here is a list with all posts of this week:
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Boa Tarde meus amigos,
So far in our series we got to the point of having the DAG configured and the servers ready for the final component: the Mailbox Database!!
In order to create a Mailbox Database and enable replication for this new database in our DAG these following steps can be used:
Logged on the EAC, let’s click on servers item on the left and then on databases. Let’s click on Add icon button and in the new wizard let’s name the new database (in our example here MVD-DB02) and let’s click on browse… the list of servers will contain the server names and on the third column if they are part of a DAG, as shown in the figure below. Click on the desired server to be the first one that will host our new database and click on ok.
Back to the initial page, let’s fill out the file path information using the drive letter that is shared among all members of the same DAG (in our post series is the drive M:) and finally click on save.
So far the procedure to create a Database is exactly the same of any other database. Here is the difference, as soon as you create the new database in a member of the DAG, you can click on More icon (…) and then click on Add database copy
Now we are talking, click on browse and the list of servers listed will be smaller then your servers, right? Well, that happens because you can only replicate that Mailbox Database to other members of the same DAG. Select the server member that you want to host a copy of the Mailbox database and click on OK. We can also define the activation preference however we are going to leave default settings and then click on Save.
The process may take a few moments and click Close.
As result of our operation we will see the Database listed and on the column server with copies both DAG members will be listed. If we look at the right side we will get more information about this database such as Active Server, member servers, check replication details, suspension, removal and so forth.
Moving the Mailbox Database to another DAG member…
Let’s click on the Mailbox Database on the list of database, and let’s click on activate and click on yes on the dialog box that will be displayed. Bear in mind that activate link only will be available on passive copies of the database.
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Good morning it’s almost Friday!
Okay, so far in our series we created the CNO object for the new DAG in our brand new Windows Server 2012 DCs and we also created the DAG object using EAC, now it’s time to add the mailbox servers to our new DAG.
Let’s click on servers in the main page and then let’s click on database availability groups and a list of all our DAGs will be listed. Let’s click on the 5th button of the toolbox as shown in the Figure below.
In the new page, let’s click on Add icon and add the servers, here it’s up to you if you want to do one by one or all of them at the same time. After adding all servers that you want, please click on save.
Now we are talking, the member server is being configured to support DAG which includes Failover settings and this process may take up a few minutes depending of your environment. Wait for the results and they should be similar to the image below. Click on Close.
If we look to the same initial page of the database availability groups section, we will notice that the servers added are being shown in the Member servers column.
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Bom dia my friends!
Yesterday we configured the CNO to support our DAG and in Today’s post we are going to create the DAG using EAC. To make sure that we are on the same page here are the key features of my lab:
- 2 Domain Controllers running Windows Server 2012 RTM; my forest and domain were configured to Windows Server 2012
- 2 Exchange Server 2013 RTM deployed with Client Access role
- 2 Exchange Server 2013 RTM deployed with Mailbox role and a key components:
- 2 Network adapters (one for LAN and another one for replication); The DNS registration is disabled on the replication adapter, just in case I configured 255.255.255.252 subnet to allow only 2 hosts.
- Drive M: on both servers where we are going to configure our future mailbox databases
The DAG configuration using EAC can be found when we click on servers, and then database availability groups and on that place we are going to find all DAGs. Let’s create our first one, shall we?
The first step is to click on the Add button (+ icon) and on the new page, let’s use the CNO that we created yesterday (MVDDAG) and we can define which server will be the witness server (the recommendation is to use another Exchange Server that won’t be part of the DAG to keep all exchange administration on servers where the mail administrator has jurisdiction 
). We can also define the path for the File Share witnes (by default is C:\DAGFileShareWitness) or leave it blank and the default value will be used.
Finally, let’s define an IP to be used for the DAG and then click on Save.
That’s all to create a DAG, and as soon as we start adding members then this IP and the cluster configuration itself will be deployed automatically to the new members (that is our topic for tomorrow!).
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Bom dia amigos (Today’s post is coming from Sao Paulo, Brazil)
This week we are going to create a DAG in Exchange Server 2013 and in the first post we will be pre-stating the computer account that will be used by our future DAG also known as CNO (Cluster Network Object).
Usually the entire process is done automatic during the DAG creation using either EAC or Exchange Management Shell which is going to be our topic for tomorrow.
However in a restrict environment or in some circumstances you may want to create the object before executing the wizard. Also, when using a Windows 2012 Domain Controller you may consider using this procedure as well.
The process is straight forward and it’s done entirely using Active Directory Users and Computers. The first step is to create a Computer object, in our case let’s call MVDDAG, as shown in the figure below.
The next step is to disable the account… and a dialog box will be displayed, just click on Yes and then OK.
In Active Directory Users and Computers, click on View and then Advanced Features. This task will enable the Security tab for our next step.
Let’s ask properties of the new object that we have just created and then go to the Security tab, then click on Add.. and add the Exchange Trusted Subsystem with Full control permission.
The result should be similar to the one shown in the figure below.
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio
Back in October, we announced that the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build of Exchange Server 2013 was signed off. Since that time, we’ve been focusing our efforts on releasing the next version of Exchange through multiple distribution channels to our business customers.
Today, we’ve reached another important milestone – The Exchange team is excited to announce the general availability of Exchange Server 2013. You can download the bits from TechNet today and evaluate the product for 180 days. You can also sign up for the Office 365 Preview to get the most current Exchange experience in the cloud in just a few minutes.
Read more at source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/12/03/exchange-server-2013-reaches-general-availability.aspx
Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio