While at Microsoft TechEd IT Forum in Barcelona, I talked with Barry Shilmover (Senior Program Manager, System Center) about creating System Center management packs. Management packs are the sort of “plugin” parts of the System Center platform that do the discovery, monitoring, and management for System Center in addition to containing the help “knowledge.” Barry walks us through the life-cycle of a management pack when it’s executing - discovery, monitoring, and then executing management tasks as needed - and then walks us through an overview of how management packs are built. As he notes, the underlying model is based on Microsoft’s SDM, which Microsoft is using to create the SML standard.
A quick run down:
1. Install the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0.
2. In the Start menu, locate the Compatibility Administrator inside the ACT folder. Right-click it and Run as administrator.
3. In the left hand pane, right-click on the database under Custom Databases and select Create New, and select Application Fix.
4. Enter the name of the application you want to alter and browse to it to select it.
5. Click Next until you are in the Compatibility Fixes screen.
6. On the Compatibility Fixes screen, find the item RunAsInvoker, and check it.
7. Click Next and Finish.
8. Select File and Save As. Save the file as appname.sdb in a directory you will easily find it.
9. Copy the appname.sdb file to the Vista computer you want to alter the elevation prompt behavior on.
10. Click Start>All Programs>Accessories. Right click Command Prompt and click Run as administrator.
11. Run the command: sdbinst appname.sdb
It should display: Installation of "appname" complete.
System Center Updates Publisher allows updates from other vendors, including internal products, to be integrated into Configuration Manager Software Updates. In SMS 2003 this capability was known as Inventory Tool for Custom Updates (ITCU). Updates and definitions can be downloaded from select vendors including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Adobe. They can also be created through editing tools to support products from other vendors and ones developed internally.
Read the complete documentation before planning your implementation. Key points include:
Install SCUP from the SCCM media or download separately
Create a certificate used to sign updates (if one doesn't already exist on the updates server) and copy it to all clients that may use SCUP updates
Configure other security requirements as needed
Select the vendors and products you want to support, and add their catalogs to the Import list
Many can be defined in SCUP, so it will automatically check for new updates
Some vendors, such as Adobe, require licensing their SCUP catalog and downloading it manually
Select desired updates and publish them
This downloads the source file to the WSUS server and makes the update available through SCCM Software Updates, just like any Microsoft updates
SCUP updates can be deployed with Microsoft updates in a normal monthly security update deployment or separately, using the usual Software Update Deployment process
Vendor and product names become available in Search Folders and other functions after corresponding updates are published
NOTE: at the time of writing this article, there appears to be a serious bug in the SCUP configuration. If SCUP is installed locally on the site server, deployment fails to read the files from the WSUS server. It tries to use port 80, rather than 8530. This is being investigated through the mssms discussion list.
DNS provides the name resolution services required by Active Directory. The DNS server in Windows Server 2008 complies with the set of Requests for Comments (RFCs) that define and standardize the DNS protocol.
Because the DNS Server service is RFC compliant and it can use standard DNS data file and resource record formats, it can work successfully with most other DNS server implementations, such as DNS implementations that use the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) software.(continue at source)
Today, before the introduction of windows Server 2008, many Microsoft-based networks deploy WINS technology and servers in their environment. WINS is an alternative name resolution protocol to DNS. It is an older service that uses NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT), mostly used in older operating systems such as Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0. WINS and NetBT do not support IPv6 protocols and both are entering legacy mode for Windows Server 2008, and since Windows 2000 Server and beyond, most network services are no longer based upon NetBT name resolution, and use DNS names instead. That is why, in most cases, it is assumed that clients would want to retire their WINS infrastructure in favor of DNS name resolution.(continue at source)
Stefan Stranger:Today I stumbled on a great tool for documenting your database SqlSpec 3.7 from Elsasoft.
SqlSpec will generate easy-to-read database documentation for any of the following platforms:
SQL Server 2000, 2005, and above
Analysis Server 2005
Oracle 9i and above
DB2 8.2 and above
Sybase ASE 12.0 and above
Informix IDS 10.0 and above
PostgreSQL 8.0 and above
MySQL 5.0 and above
Access 97 and above
VistaDB 3.0 and above
ENEA Polyhedra 7.0 and above
You can read more about the many features of SqlSpec here.
But we as System Center specialists are probably mostly interested in our SQL Server 2005 OperationsManager, OperationsManagerDW and ReportServer databases(continue at source)
Microsoft and VMware will be battling for market share in the virtualization market space. On the high end enterprise side, VMware has the majority of the market with their VMware ESX Server. With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft will offer their new Windows Server Virtualization (WSV) option. Let’s find out what WSV is and how it can help you…(continue at source)
Martin Zugec: So another small project is coming... Sometimes you need to get something from active directory. For example (because my environment is using groups heavily), I want to see relationships between different groups or I want to see my memberships - which groups I belong to (not just MemberOf, but also nested groups), but I also want to see how am I member of that groups...
That is why I wrote small utility called ADGO (AD Groups Overview), that is able to visually represents some data to you. For example I have user called ADGOTest. He is member of group ADGOTest_Group1 and this group is member of ADGOTest1, ADGOTest2 and ADGOTest3.
London, UK - 05/12/07 – 3CX has announced the release of version 5 of 3CX Phone System for Windows; the newest version of their award-winning software-based VOIP PBX for Windows which helps businesses give employees mobility, rids them of costly phone tag and reduces administration and training time by IT staff.
3CX Phone System allows businesses to completely break free from the shackle of hardware-based, proprietary phone systems. Built on the open SIP standard, 3CX Phone System interoperates with all popular SIP phones, VOIP Gateways and VOIP providers.
Nick Galea, CEO at 3CX said, “We are excited to deliver version 5 of 3CX Phone System at a time when the market is realizing that proprietary, hardware-based PBXs are becoming obsolete. 3CX IP PBX is a modern software based PBX that evolves the communication of businesses to the 21st century, by delivering mobility, productivity and cost-saving advantages”. (more)
Today, IT security is a big challenge. Security as a whole encompasses a wide variety of items from building access to network security. One of the biggest problem facing security administrators today is tracking user’s access to servers and shared corporate data. This data is notoriously difficult to manage as many people use it and therefore there is a much greater risk of unauthorized access attempts.
The first step to securing an IT infrastructure is to actually decide who should have access and who shouldn’t. Then you can put in place the necessary restrictions. But how do we then ensure these restrictions are not only in place but that they are also efficient? Utilizing an existing Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 management group, you can install and configure Audit Collection which is used to securely collect and store audit information from key Active Directory Domain Controllers and servers and even client machines should this be required. Not only that, but utilizing SQL 2005 Reporting Services, the data can be viewed in a number of reports to make interpreting it much easier and more intuitive. In addition, the out of the box functionality can be enhanced with the addition of some excellent add-on software by SecureVantage. (continue at source)
Want to start with System Center Configuration Manager 2007? The blogcast repository has a good section with all kinds of blogcasts describing how to start using SCCM 2007.
We have spent a great deal of time to bring you the videos you see on this page and site for free. We sincerely hope that these help you in you process to upgrade from SMS or adopt SCCM into your organization. The videos have all been tested and internally documented for accuracy. However, your organization may have unique server settings that may affect the what we describe a process in the Blogcasts.
This article describes the differences between Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 when you use the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) client to remotely connect to the server for administrative purposes.
In Windows Server 2003, you can start the RDC client (mstsc.exe) with the /console switch to remotely connect to the physical console session on the server (also known as session 0). In Windows Server 2008, the /console switch has been deprecated. (For more information, see the “Why the /console switch is no longer needed” section of this article.) In Windows Server 2008, session 0 is a non-interactive session that is reserved for services.
You can use the new /admin switch to remotely connect to a Windows Server 2008-based server for administrative purposes. The /admin switch is introduced with RDC 6.1. RDC 6.1 is included with the following operating systems:
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta and RC
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Beta and RC
This Management Pack Guide describes the features and requirements of the Server Virtualization Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 (OpsMgr), and provides deployment instructions for the management pack.
The Server Virtualization Management Pack provides enterprise wide monitoring of Microsoft virtual environments. The management pack monitors the health and availability of virtual machines deployed on hosts running Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the health and availability of the hosts. The management pack also monitors the components of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (VMM), including the VMM server, database server, hosts, library servers, and self-service portals, and provides reporting for VMM.
Note The Server Virtualization Management Pack provides the same comprehensive monitoring of hosts and virtual machines that is available through the Virtual Server 2005 Management Pack for Microsoft® Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, and can be used to monitor Virtual Server by organizations that have not yet deployed VMM.
One of the things we heard fairly early on while planning VMM was that offline storage of VHDs was going to become an increasingly large management task. Based on this need, we created the "VM Library" feature to allow users to save virtual machines that weren't currently running to a managed location. As we developed the requirements for this feature, we quickly realized that people wanted to store more than VMs, they wanted to store all of the stuff that they used to create VMs as well (ISOs, templates, OS profiles, Hardware profiles etc.) so we changed the feature's name to "library" instead of "VM library". Before defining the feature in detail, we had to make some key design decisions and at the risk of boring you, I'll walk through some of that decision making process.(continue at source)
Marius Sutara: Some of you may know already that with Operations Manager SP1 RC we allow for overriding alert severity and priority. What is little unfortunate is inconsistency between creating alert generating rule and overriding especially as first uses string describing severity or priority used, while later simply expects integer value. Mapping between string and integer is what this post will try to explain. (continue at source)
Microsoft has released a new poster to assist targeting in Operations Manager 2007. The poster provides best practices on Rule and Monitor targeting in the form of Do’s and Don’ts. Download this poster for free from Microsoft Download Center.
When installing System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM aka SMS v4), it is not always possible to give internet access to the server involved. I like to have everything I need beforehand whenever doing an install.
When SCCM setup launches, it tries to download the ConfigMgr.Manifest.cab from here. Overall it is best to allow SCCM to grab all the files it needs automatically because the ConfigMgr.Manifest.xml file inside the ConfigMgr.Manifest.cab file can be updated by Microsoft to point to new locations when these files are updated or moved.
With that said, here are the links contained in ConfigMgr.Manifest.XML as of 12-15-07 for the RTM release of SCCM 2007, broken into groups.(continue at source)
The mechanism for grooming the operational database in SCOM has changed compared to MOM 2005. In MOM 2005 we had a SQL job to handle the grooming – in SCOM 2007 we have a SCOM rule. The rule has a set schedule to run daily at midnight – and there is no built in override to allow this schedule to be changed. In some situations, it's helpful to manually force grooming. This can be done by manually executing the p_partitioningandgrooming stored procedure. This will call a series of other procedures which will grab your groom settings (retention threshold values) from the database and proceed with the groom.
The mechanism for grooming the datawarehouse is a bit more involved. First, there is no way to set the data retention period for the warehouse in the UI. These retention periods are stored in the MaxDataAgeDays column in the StandardDatasetAggregation table of the warehouse. You can set these however you like. From there, grooming (and aggregation actually) happens every time data is inserted into the warehouse. To be sure though, you can also trigger it to happen manually by running the following stored procedure from the data warehouse.
Exec standarddatasetgroom
The dataset ID’s represent the type of data to be acted on. You can grab the datasetid from the dataset table which is also in the datawarehouse. If you open this table you will note there are 5 dataset types – event, client monitoring, performance, alert and state.
When SCOM actually does the aggregation and groom job it calls the standarddatasetmaintenance stored proc which will result in the standarddatasetgroom procedure getting called. For grooming, we don’t care about aggregation so we can just call the groom job directly.
Instructions for how to move the data warehouse database, and ACS database – have been published.
The Operations Manager 2007 Backup and Recovery Guide has been updated as of December 2007, to include moving the DW and ACS DB's, in addition to the previously published move of the OpsDB. Perhaps you deployed your databases to interim hardware? Perhaps you outgrew you current disk I/O? Perhaps you want to move to a high availability cluster?
The use of Windows Mobile Devices continues to increase and one of the questions I often get asked is "How do I manage these devices in the same way that manage my desktops and laptops"? It's a very good question and one that has really been around since Windows Mobile devices started to appear in the enterprise. I remember when I was in our own IT department it was one of the areas we struggled with. I mean when you think about it there is often quite a bit of corporate data that walks out the door when one of these devices leaves the corporate premises. So enter System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008. Wow! Now that's a title!
So who is it for? Primarily if you are an enterprise customer or telecom provider. If you have a large number of Windows Mobile devices that you need to manage, then it's for you. When does it ship? - The product is due in February 2008. Having said that it relies on an update to Windows Mobile 6.0 that won't be out untile later in the year. We are probably looking at sometime between April and June 2008. I'm trying to get both updates to test so I can share more information on how it works so stay tuned. What does it do? - The short list.. (more)
There are some cases where Windows just doesn’t like the program you are trying to install or get rid of and occasionally the installer/uninstaller hangs. At this point you can try restarting or you may have to power off manually. The problem arises when you get back to Windows, it will no longer let you install/repair or uninstall the program you were working with. This is fixable.
Only use this utility if you have received an error in the Add/Remove Programs (Windows 95 to XP) or Programs and Features (Windows Vista) while attempting to repair/uninstall a program, there may be a problem with the Windows Installer or routines required to execute the operation. Errors may also occur during reinstallation attempts.
For your convenience, Microsoft provides a little known utility called Windows Installer Cleanup and it does exactly what it says. This utility cleans up any mess an incomplete install/uninstall leaves behind and repairs the files required to complete the operation.
International Client Packs (ICPs) contain international-language clients to use with System Center Configuration Manager (SC Config Mgr) 2007. ICP downloads contain only the Config Mgr client files, not the English-language SC Config Mgr 2007, which is required.
ICP1 contains the following languages:
English
French
German
Japanese
Spanish
ICP2 contains all languages from ICP1 plus the following:
Wake on LAN is a new feature of SCCM that was not present in SMS. You can use it to wake offline (standby/hibernate/shutdown) computers to install updates, software packages or task sequences (e.g. OS).
To use WOL remember to run through some of these steps:
1. Check if you can at all wake the target workstation. You can use this tool: http://www.matcode.com/wol.htm to run a check.
2. Make sure computers/routers supports WOL: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680822.aspx
3. Verify HW inventory ran at least once on the computer before you use WOL.
4. Check WOL logs: WOLMgr.log, WOLCMgr.log for WOL activity once you advertise a WOL-enabled package/update/task sequence.
5. Monitor WOL activity – see if any packets are sent (perf counters), if computers are targeted by WOL (report). See: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693671.aspx
The downside of WOL is security - there is not much authorization process prior to WOL. But SCCM SP1 will have integration with Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) to provide more secure method of computer wake-up. AFAIK SCCM SP1 is expected Q2 2008. For SMS 2003 you can still use Intel's AMT add-on: http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/partners/intelamt.mspx.
The Microsoft Product Support Reporting Tool for VMM facilitates the gathering of critical system and logging information used in troubleshooting support issues. This utility gathers basic operating system and storage information as well as specific information used in troubleshooting VMM issues. Please read the readme.txt file for more details.
You may install and use an unlimited number of copies of MPSRPT_SCVMM solely for the purpose of gathering system information necessary for Microsoft Product Support Services to provide you with technical support services requested by you. All other purposes are not supported by Microsoft. Please refer to the EULA for more detailed information regarding your usage rights.
This datasheet describes the capabilities of System Center Capacity Planner 2007.
Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2007 provides the IT professional with the guidance required to plan a new deployment in the most efficient manner, while also delivering “what-if” analysis to optimize existing implementations and plan for change.
Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system. This white paper summarizes what is new in Windows XP SP3.
This guide describes the key concepts required to understand Operations Manager. It describes modeling, how modeling is implemented in Operations Manager, and key changes between Operations Manager 2005 and 2007.
The Solution Accelerator’s team is excited to announce the release of the SharePoint Monitoring Toolkit. This toolkit consists of a set of System Center Operations Manager 2007 management packs designed to help IT pros monitor their WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 and 2007 SP1 environments. These newly released packs were engineered to take advantage of SCOM 2007’s features, including new and improved reporting, additional actions, new views, and integrate IIS and SQL health rollup for a better understanding of the system-level dependencies of the SharePoint environments.
These packs replace currently released SCOM 2007 packs for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007, and eliminate any dependencies on backward compatibility packs.
Many of you probably know already, that alert’s description can use parameter replacements to reference the value of any of the properties of the data type causing the alert to be raised in the first place. I tried to comment on some most commonly used data types and its XML representation in order to help with writing replacement XPath query, which then yields such value as a result of its execution (see older postings about parameter replacements and data item XML).
Unfortunately what I forgot to stress out is that alert description is the only place where such replacement works. Recently I saw couple of requests to help with a replacement inside of alert name (to customer the use of replacement seemed as a good way to create more unique alert names especially when there could be a multiple triggers raising such alert and proper suppression had been used in order to "preserve" the alert for each one of them).
The MOM team published a complete list of all the command line parameters for OpsMgr 2007 server roles including Audit Collection. And the command line parameters for upgrading to Service Pack 1 (SP1) Release Candidate (RC)Agent – (MOMAgent.msi)
The bulk of your department's budget goes towards maintaining current systems and services, rather than using the bucks to hire people to manage those assets or develop new systems.
You realize system monitoring would be much easier with a single view of the health of your environment, including the applications and services running in production.
You feel stuck in the IT version of the movie Groundhog Day - you solve the same problems over and over again every day in exactly the same way, except unlike in the movie, here you and your systems can really die. Plus, this is not a particularly efficient way to maintain operations.
You don't have enough internal manpower (or brainpower) to solve problems as they come up, and consultants aren't cheap.
You find out there are problems when users (or upper management) start calling you. While this mechanism is actually quite effective in getting your attention, it's somewhat stress inducing and definitely not proactive.
You realize that even though your servers are humming along just fine, you have no idea how your client applications are actually performing against what is running on those servers. This makes it tough to know if there are latency issues.
Complying with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley takes up all the time you once used to do your real job.
You would be more productive if you weren't monitoring your production environment all day ... and night. Plus during lunch and vacation.
Your production environment is so diverse and widespread that when there's a problem, you don't even know where to start looking!
You don't have the time to write down all the troubleshooting information that is in your brain, and your boss is concerned you might be hit by a truck (or want to take that vacation). This probably is not the best way to run a production environment.
In Operations Manager 2007, Run As Profiles and Run As Accounts are used to select users with the privileges needed for running rules, tasks, and monitors.
Management Pack authors create a rule, task, or monitor, and then associate it with a Run As Profile. The named Run As Profile is imported along with the Management Pack into Operations Manager 2007.
The Operations Manager 2007 administrator creates a named Run As Account and specifies users and groups. The administrator then adds the Run As Account to the Run As Profile and specifies the target computers that the account should run on.
The goal in this short tutorial is to create a Timed Script Two State Monitor and associate a run as account to this monitor and save it all in a Management Pack. The Timed Script Two State Monitor is a vbscript that uses WMI to check if BizTalk orchestrations are not started.
System Center Essentials 2007 is a new management solution specifically designed for IT professionals working in midsize businesses who often face IT challenges similar to those of larger enterprises—troubleshooting user problems, automating management tasks, managing multiple systems, and diagnosing and resolving IT problems. And when you download the 90-day trial software, you're automatically registered to receive valuable resources delivered at strategic intervals throughout the software evaluation period.
The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool is a set of free models of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) which allow you to explore the necessary infrastructure based on usage requirements. This tool uses the System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP) as an engine to provide for data collection, visualization, simulation and report writing. The tool can be used in pre-sales and feasibility study of a deployment project to give you a rough estimate of hardware requirements.
The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 collects the unique usage requirements of a particular SharePoint deployment by having the IT-Pro answer a series of questions about expected usage and operating conditions. The Capacity Planner then generates a recommended baseline topology and hardware configuration which can be modified through the SCCP model editor. Finally the tool can run simulations against the selected hardware configuration and generate estimated server loads and user experience reports. Click here for a project Executive Overview. Follow the three simple steps below to try it out
Today we're going to take a look at the Basics of Browser Helper Objects (BHO's). We're not going to cover BHO's and Security in this post, that will be covered in our next post on BHO's.
First off, what is a BHO? A BHO is a DLL module designed as an extension to Internet Explorer by allowing customization and added functionality. BHO technology was introduced back in 1997 with the release of Internet Explorer 4.0. Applications that install BHO's are popular because they allow the application developers to provide features and customizations that enhance their applications. For example, the Windows Live Toolbar (shown below) includes a Browser Helper Object (Windows Live Sign-In Helper). This BHO is a control displayed when you try to log into Windows Live services and helps you log in with multiple Windows Live ID's on the same machine.(continue at source)
This is a complete set of demos focusing on Microsoft Forefront and System Center.
Note: his has been compressed with WinRAR into a single .exe. Please make sure you have all parts before extracting.
Image folder = *1.80*GB compressed, *8.94*GB uncompressed.
The Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) deployment of Microsoft® System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 enabled administrators to back up more data in a shorter time frame while offering native support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 technologies. This approach has shortened recovery times and has enabled a centralized backup approach for multiple server and application platforms.
Windows Server® 2008 is the most recent version of the Windows Server operating system. The Microsoft® System Center family of solutions helps you implement Windows Server 2008 in your organization with less effort and complexity than previous versions of Windows Server. The System Center solutions discussed in this white paper include Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, and Microsoft SoftGrid® Application Virtualization.
The Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 Management Pack collects and analyzes data from the event logs of update servers that can be used to identify the causes of downtime and take action to decrease downtime in the future.
The WSUS 3.0 Management Pack helps you diagnose and resolve the issues reported as events by the WSUS 3.0 server. There are four major event categories: Client Health, Core Health, Database Health, and Web Services Health.
Yesterday Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 and also the availability of the Release Candidate of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.
You can get the Release Candidate of Windows Server 2008 here. Note that you can still use your Beta3 of RC0 product keys.
As you might know, Virtual PC virtual machines synchronize their date with the date of the hosting operating system. There might however be situations when you need to change the date of the VM to something other than the date of the host OS. In these cases you may add the following XML section to the .VMC file:
As mentioned in our article earlier this week, Paul Thurrott now reports:
More info soon, but Microsoft will announce the RC1 releases of Windows Vista and 2008 today. Also, I'll be posting and overview of XP SP3 RC1 with screenshots this morning as well.
The Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 supports the 10.1 version of Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server with Service Pack 1. The MP supplies critical events and alerts on virus and worm activity to Operations Manager 2007, and also monitors the health and availability of these products.
The Management Pack for Forefront Security for Exchange Server 10.0 can be found here
Windows Server® virtualization is a new role in Windows Server® 2008 that provides you with the tools and services you can use to create a virtualized server computing environment. This guide introduces Windows Server virtualization by providing instructions for installing this role and configuring a virtual machine for testing purposes.(continue at source)
Exchange Server 2007 has 5 (five) distinct roles: Mailbox, Client Access Server, Hub Transport, Edge Transport and Unified Messaging. Some of these can be installed together or they can also be distributed among servers. The number of servers to be utilized by Exchange Server can vary due to several factors, such as:
* Number of users using the Message System,
* High Availability roles,
* Fault tolerant roles,
* Cluster environments.
This article explains how to configure a single Exchange Server 2007 to work properly and how to deploy the Anti Spam Transport Agents on this single Exchange Server 2007 box.(continue at source
One of the most common calls that we get relates to the warning dialogs, the "gold bar" message or even the infamous "Red X" image being displayed where the ActiveX control should be loaded. In some instances, the problem is caused by a failure of the control itself. However, the more common cause is due to the way that the Internet Explorer Zone security settings are configured that prevents the control from loading (or disabling some of its features). (continue at source)
Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system. This white paper summarizes what is new in Windows XP SP3.
To demonstrate upgrading a CCR cluster from Exchange 2007 RTM to SP1, I have created a video demo that takes you through the process of upgrading the passive node followed by upgrading the CMS to SP1 and finally upgrading the active node. This demo also demonstrates "Managing Clustered Mailbox Server" via the Exchange 2007 SP1 Exchange Management Console.
I also want to make a few points clear. The demo is actually for upgrading the entire CCR environment to SP1, not just the CMS. It is important that both nodes be upgraded for the entire environment to work properly. I would also like to clarify that at some point in the video, I mention that before you do the upgrade, all resources on CCR-NodeA need to be taken offline or moved to the other node. You should move the resources to the other node and NOT take them offline. This is because one of the groups should be the default Cluster Group, and if you take that offline, the cluster shuts down. (continue at source)
Yes, that's right, running Windows on a Mac. This isn't new to those of us who have been using virtualization, but with the introduction of the Intel-based Macs, users had a whole new area to explore running Windows or Windows based applications. For virtualization, there were many options to run on the older Mac OS like Virtual PC and GuestPC. These types of applications emulated a PC environment inside an application that ran in the Mac OS. This was functional but each had limitations most notably the speed at which they ran Windows.
But now Macs have the Intel chips and everything changes. You have some new options that weren't available before. For running Windows, you can use a virtual environment still (Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are some examples options here) or you can run it directly on the Mac hardware. Mac's software that allows you to do this is Boot Camp (comes with Mac OS X 1.5 Leopard). Boot Camp essentially emulates a BIOS which will then allow you to boot to a Windows XP or Vista CD and install directly onto the Mac. You can do this using their instructions which would give you a dual boot environment (Mac and Windows), or you can install Windows as the only OS on your Mac.
1. Insert Windows XP CD or Windows Vista DVD into the drive.
2. Boot the Mac computer and during the boot process , press and hold the option key.
3. This will bring the boot menu and one of the options should be the CD/DVD.
4. You will boot into the familiar Windows boot process, follow this as normal.
5. When selecting a hard drive and partition, you will need to create the disk as an MBR disk.
a. Press SHIFT+F10 to get a command prompt
b. Run diskpart and convert the GPT disk to an MBR disk (this must be done for the primary boot drive only). More info here.
WARNING: This will erase all data on this disk and you will no longer be able to boot it to any MAC operating system. You will need to boot back to your Mac OS CD/DVD to reset the disks and reinstall your Mac OS (which will erase all data on the disk again).
c. Close the command prompt window and you can now select this drive for installation with Windows.
If you set up a dual-boot system using Vista Home Premium and say, Vista Business, the menu text will be the same for each: viz Microsoft Windows Vista.
You will therefore be unable to tell which is which, since by default, setup will add the generic entry: “Microsoft Windows Vista” for each installation of Vista, irrespective of the version.
So, to make the boot menu text more clear, you can take the following steps (continue at source)
As an aid to clearing up some of the confusion around supported Cluster configurations the Product Group posted a list of supported and unsupported configurations here
In Part One of our Introduction to ActiveX, we covered the basics of ActiveX controls. Today we're going to go over some ActiveX specifics as they relate to the Internet Explorer environment and the management of ActiveX controls. The default installation location for ActiveX controls is %windir%\Downloaded Program Files. You will normally see the control itself, as well as the .INF file contained within the .CAB file when downloaded to the client machine during installation. Note that the operating system sees this location as a special directory type, so you will need to use a CMD window to view the installed files in their normally downloaded state.(continue at source)
If you have ever run an enterprise web site you have probably received a panicked call from a customer or from your Tier 1 monitoring team that your site was responding slowly or throwing 500 errors and that you needed to resolve this issue ASAP. Maybe you are rolling out a new application or software across your site and want to perform side by side analysis of servers to ensure their health.
Over the past year we have rolled out multiple pre-release versions of Windows Server 2008 / IIS 7.0 onto the www.microsoft.com site. During this process we have had to monitor the overall health of the site. Which included being able to quickly identify content/application that were not behaving well on a server, cluster of servers or across the entire site. When running an enterprise of IIS servers it is invaluable to understand the traffic patterns of your site and to have the tools to help identify problem areas. There are many tools in the wild to monitor the health of your enterprise, but I will show you how to use Logparser to harvest your IIS logs and pinpoint a site problem. The goal of this blog is to help you identify issues or anomalous traffic patterns on your IIS web site.(continue at source)
While reading my RSS feeds i noticed the following post by Mariusz Kedziora. Mariusz works for Microsoft in Poland. The post is in Polish but thanks to one of the many translation services which can be found around the internet i got an idea of what he was posting about.
Mariusz tells that he has heard that last week build 6.0.6001 v. 658 was signed off, and he believes this build will be the RC1 build. It should arrive this week somewhere on Microsoft Connect. At this moment Microsoft Connect doesn't list RC1 yet. If this is true, then i expect that we could expect to see a release candidate of Windows Vista SP1 as well, because when RC0 (6.0.6001 v. 275) was released Microsoft also released the (pre-)Beta of Vista SP1.
Note: I think speculating on these kind of topics is risky, from what i know MS releases builds of Windows Server 2008 regularly so this build could also be another one of the many already released. But because of the fact that the one mentioning this is actually working at Microsoft i wanted to mention it anyway.
If you have an installation of Virtual Server that has been working correctly - but now you are finding that:
1. The Administrative website loads, but does not display any virtual machines.
2. The Administrative website loads, but displays an error message about a corrupt configuration file.
3. The Administrative website fails to load and you get an error stating that the CGI application took too long to respond.
It is highly likely that you have a corrupt virtual machine configuration file (.VMC) that is causing this problem. To figure out if this is the case you should:
1. Open the Services manager under Windows and stop the "Virtual Server" service.
2. Open "%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Virtual Server\Virtual Machines"
3. Move all the .LNK files out of this directory into a temporary holding spot (I just use a new folder on my desktop).
4. Use the Services manager to start the "Virtual Server" service.
If you can now load up the Virtual Server Administrative website with no problems - you do have a corrupt configuration (if the website still does not load - time to look elsewhere). No you can go through the process of moving .LNK files back (and starting and stopping the "Virtual Server" service each time) until you narrow down the problematic configuration file.(continue at source)
Redmonk.com: 
Read about it here.
DNS provides the name resolution services required by Active Directory. The DNS server in Windows Server 2008 complies with the set of Requests for Comments (RFCs) that define and standardize the DNS protocol.
Stefan Stranger:Today I stumbled on a great tool for documenting your database SqlSpec 3.7 from Elsasoft.
Martin Zugec: So another small project is coming... Sometimes you need to get something from active directory. For example (because my environment is using groups heavily), I want to see relationships between different groups or I want to see my memberships - which groups I belong to (not just MemberOf, but also nested groups), but I also want to see how am I member of that groups...
London, UK - 05/12/07 – 3CX has announced the release of version 5 of 3CX Phone System for Windows; the newest version of their award-winning software-based VOIP PBX for Windows which helps businesses give employees mobility, rids them of costly phone tag and reduces administration and training time by IT staff.
Want to start with System Center Configuration Manager 2007? The blogcast repository has a good section with all kinds of blogcasts describing how to start using SCCM 2007.
Visit the Systems Center Configuration Manager 2007- Start to Finish Guide
| 18 Dec '07 - 07:50 | kenneth van surksum | 
no comments | news source ~ Terminal Services Team Blog 
Download the Server Virtualization Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2007
Yesterday Microsoft released new documentation on Data Protection Manager 2007:
The use of Windows Mobile Devices continues to increase and one of the questions I often get asked is "How do I manage these devices in the same way that manage my desktops and laptops"? It's a very good question and one that has really been around since Windows Mobile devices started to appear in the enterprise. I remember when I was in our own IT department it was one of the areas we struggled with. I mean when you think about it there is often quite a bit of corporate data that walks out the door when one of these devices leaves the corporate premises. So enter System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008. Wow! Now that's a title!
There are some cases where Windows just doesn’t like the program you are trying to install or get rid of and occasionally the installer/uninstaller hangs. At this point you can try restarting or you may have to power off manually. The problem arises when you get back to Windows, it will no longer let you install/repair or uninstall the program you were working with. This is fixable.
Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system. This white paper summarizes what is new in Windows XP SP3.
System Center Essentials 2007 is a new management solution specifically designed for IT professionals working in midsize businesses who often face IT challenges similar to those of larger enterprises—troubleshooting user problems, automating management tasks, managing multiple systems, and diagnosing and resolving IT problems. And when you download the 90-day trial software, you're automatically registered to receive valuable resources delivered at strategic intervals throughout the software evaluation period.
Today we're going to take a look at the Basics of Browser Helper Objects (BHO's). We're not going to cover BHO's and Security in this post, that will be covered in our next post on BHO's.
Yesterday Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 and also the availability of the Release Candidate of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.
As you might know, Virtual PC virtual machines synchronize their date with the date of the hosting operating system. There might however be situations when you need to change the date of the VM to something other than the date of the host OS. In these cases you may add the following XML section to the .VMC file:
Exchange Server 2007 has 5 (five) distinct roles: Mailbox, Client Access Server, Hub Transport, Edge Transport and Unified Messaging. Some of these can be installed together or they can also be distributed among servers. The number of servers to be utilized by Exchange Server can vary due to several factors, such as:
To demonstrate upgrading a CCR cluster from Exchange 2007 RTM to SP1, I have created a video demo that takes you through the process of upgrading the passive node followed by upgrading the CMS to SP1 and finally upgrading the active node. This demo also demonstrates "Managing Clustered Mailbox Server" via the Exchange 2007 SP1 Exchange Management Console.
Yes, that's right, running Windows on a Mac. This isn't new to those of us who have been using virtualization, but with the introduction of the Intel-based Macs, users had a whole new area to explore running Windows or Windows based applications. For virtualization, there were many options to run on the older Mac OS like Virtual PC and GuestPC. These types of applications emulated a PC environment inside an application that ran in the Mac OS. This was functional but each had limitations most notably the speed at which they ran Windows.
In Part One of our Introduction to ActiveX, we covered the basics of ActiveX controls. Today we're going to go over some ActiveX specifics as they relate to the Internet Explorer environment and the management of ActiveX controls. The default installation location for ActiveX controls is %windir%\Downloaded Program Files. You will normally see the control itself, as well as the .INF file contained within the .CAB file when downloaded to the client machine during installation. Note that the operating system sees this location as a special directory type, so you will need to use a CMD window to view the installed files in their normally downloaded state.(continue at source)
If you have an installation of Virtual Server that has been working correctly - but now you are finding that:
