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Disable SSL certificate warning in vSphere PowerCLI
edited by on August 21st 2015, at 10:23

If your vCenter server has a self-signed certificate, you will get a warning about this when connecting to it from vSphere PowerCLI. You can disable this warning through PowerCLI with the Set-PowerCLIConfiguration cmdlet.

  1. Start an elevated vSphere PowerCLI (right-click, Run as Administrator).
  2. Enter the following cmdlet:
    Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore
    Press Enter again to confirm the change.

After making the change, new connections to the vCenter server will no longer produce a warning about the certificate.

 
Legacy public folder access for Exchange 2013 users
edited by on August 20th 2015, at 16:26
The way public folders work has been changed radically in Exchange 2013. Starting from Exchange 2013, public folders are basically stored in a regular mailbox, and then published as public folders. With Exchange 2010 being the last version to support so-called "legacy" public folders, Exchange 2013 is not able to access these folders. As a consequence, if you're in the middle of a migration from Exchange 2007/20102010 to 2013, or are running a mixed environment, and you still have these legacy public folders on your Exchange 2010, you will notice that users with a mailbox migrated on Exchange 2013 will no longer be able to access these public folders. As Exchange 2013 no longer sup  ...
 
Windows 10 (generic) installation keys
edited by on August 19th 2015, at 11:14

To (re)-install Windows 10 with retail or OEM media (including the Windows 10 media creator), you can (temporarily) use the "generic" installation keys, officially provided by Microsoft.

These keys allow you to perform the installation, after which Windows will run in a 30-day trial mode, before a proper key and activation is required. The keys are language and platform-independent.

Windows 10 (Home)TX9XD-98N7V-6WMQ6-BX7FG-H8Q99
Windows 10 (Home) Single Language7HNRX-D7KGG-3K4RQ-4WPJ4-YTDFH
Windows 10 ProVK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T
Windows 10 EnterpriseNPPR9-FWDCX-D2C8J-H872K-2YT43
 
"Item not found" error for Office365 users with on-premise mailbox
edited by on August 18th 2015, at 15:07
If you have an Exchange Hybrid Configuration setup, you may have some users that use services of Office365 but still have their mailbox on-premise. These users probably have an Office365 license assigned to them. Selecting these users from the Users list in the Office365 Admin Portal reveals the following message when viewing the primary e-mail address for such a user:

Error
The items you're trying to open couldn't be found.

Additionally, the same error is displayed when attempting to view or edit Exchange Online properties for such a user.

The error is actually a "bug" in the Office365 Admin Portal, caused because the user has an Exchange Online license assigned. Because of thi  ...
 
Shared mailbox still visible in Outlook after removing permissions
edited by on August 18th 2015, at 14:20
Exchange's AutoMapping feature allows shared mailboxes to be added automatically to a user's Outlook if that user obtains full access permissions to that mailbox. This eliminates the need for the user to add the mailbox manually in Outlook. Subsequently, the same mechanism is also used when access to a shared mailbox is removed for a particular user. The mailbox should then automatically disappear from Outlook. Unfortunately, this does not always work properly.

Because of an intermittent bug, sometimes it can occur that a shared mailbox is not automatically removed from Outlook after access to that mailbox has been revoked. In fact, manually removing the mailbox (through Registry) doesn't h  ...
 
Configure DNS for Office 365 using DirectAdmin
edited by on August 17th 2015, at 13:25
EDIT: highlight required trailing dots + added CNAME for msoid.

If you're using a hosting provider which uses DirectAdmin for its DNS management, it may be a hassle to correctly configure DNS records for Office 365, mainly because of syntax issues. After some trial-and-error and googling, I finally managed to correctly devise the proper syntax to configure Exchange Online and Lync Online.

The set up of the entries below is a left and right field in the DNS management, safe for MX-records, which are set up elsewhere. For most services, don't forget to add the trailing . at the end of each record pointing to a Microsoft Server. Otherwise, resolving will incorrectly add your own do  ...
 
Count the number of mailboxes on an Exchange Mailbox server
edited by on August 17th 2015, at 10:10

Easily count the number of mailboxes located on an Exchange (mailbox) server with Powershell:

[PS] >Get-Mailbox | Group-Object -Property:ServerName | Select-Object Name,Count

Name                   Count
----                   -----
exchange01                43
exchange02               100
exchange03               252
 
Site markup test post (Ignore it, really!)
edited by on August 14th 2015, at 14:29
This is a markup test post. You can safely ignore it!

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec molestie ornare velit non imperdiet. Sed egestas semper dui a consequat. Nam varius tincidunt maximus. Quisque at ultrices est. Vivamus vel sem vitae lorem tincidunt vulputate. Fusce at accumsan nisl.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec molestie ornare velit non imperdiet. Sed egestas semper dui a consequat. Nam varius tincidunt maximus. Quisque at ultrices est. Vivamus vel sem vitae lorem tincidunt vulputate. Fusce at accumsan nisl.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec molestie ornare velit non imperdiet. Sed egestas sem  ...
 
Exchange 2013 Maintenance mode
edited by on August 14th 2015, at 14:22
Every once in a while you will have to perform maintenance (e.g. installing updates, troubleshooting, hardware maintenance) on your Exchange 2013 servers. In the past, you had to schedule proper downtime and do manual changes to configurations for this to work properly. Exchange 2013 SP1 introduced "Maintenance mode", allowing your Exchange 2013 servers to be put in maintenance mode. This allows you to perform maintenance on a server without the end users noticing it's gone, or without having to schedule downtime.

Maintenance mode was designed for mailbox servers (i.e. servers that have the mailbox role, either standalone or multi-role). However, it's worth noting that putting a s  ...
 
Website down from yesterday evening until this afternoon
edited by on August 14th 2015, at 12:34

Routine maintenance in our hosting yesterday evening (2015/08/12) caused a lengthy downtime of the server our website is running on. Although the server itself was operational right after the maintenance, there were some network issues, causing the server not to be reachable from the outside.

In the meantime, the issue has been resolved.

UPDATE (2015/08/14): the same issue also caused problems with e-mail, which was not resolved until yesterday (2015/08/13) late in the evening. Any communication through the contacts or comments form will not have arrived and will have to contact us again.

 
Office 365 Hybrid setup: no free/busy information - mail migration fails
edited by on August 14th 2015, at 12:29
Setting up a hybrid configuration between Office 365 and on-premise Exchange may seem straight forward, but there are a lot of pitfalls to tackle. One of the more frequent issues is a problem with free/busy information not being visible, or the inability to migrate mailboxes from/to Exchange Online.

Additionally, you may have received this error during the initial configuration of the hybrid setup:

Hybrid Configuration Wizard
Office 365 was unable to communicate with your on-premises Autodiscover endpoint. This is typically due to incorrect DNS or firewall configuration. The Office 365 tenant is currently configured to use the following URL for Autodiscover queries from the Office 365 tena  ...
 
Office365 hybrid config: cookies not enabled error in EAC
edited by on August 14th 2015, at 09:14

In an Office365 hybrid configuration, you may get the following error after the Sign in to Office 365 prompt in the EAC:

Error
412
Cookies Are Disabled :(
Please make sure that you enabled cookies in your browser settings and that your Exchange Admininstration Center domain has been added to trusted sites or local intranet zones.

To resolve, you need to do just that:

  1. Go to Internet Options, tab Security.
  2. Click the Intranet zone, then click the Websites button, then the Advanced button.
  3. Add your EAC FQDN to the list (e.g. https://exchange01.contoso.com/).
  4. Completely close the browser, then log back in.
 
Skype for Business standalone
edited by on August 13th 2015, at 15:55

There's no direct installer available for Skype for Business, as it is part of Office Pro Plus, but if you have enough with the basic version (i.e. you're missing a couple of enterprise grade features), you can get Skype for Business by first installing Lync Basic, then install the required updates to turn Lync into Skype for Business.

  1. Microsoft Lync Basic 2013
  2. Install these two patches:
 
CloudTrax 4
edited by on August 12th 2015, at 17:04

CloudTrax, the free online Mesh wifi networking platform, has undergone a major update. CloudTrax 4 introduces several improvements and new features:

  • 4 SSIDs (instead of 2) with more flexibility and automatic channel selection.
  • Take direct action on clients, access points and vouchers from a new Manage section and a new and improved network analysis and problem detection interface, and maintenance windows.
  • New authentication methods (external RADIUS), splash page editor and improved voucher management.

More information and upgrade instructions here.

 
Exchange 2013: mailbox database switchover (in a DAG)
edited by on August 12th 2015, at 15:47
In an Exchange cluster with a Database Availability Group (DAG), you can easily "switch over" one, more or all mailbox databases to another node.

Warning
If you need to take a node offline, it's better to put it in maintenance mode. This will properly notify the cluster that the node is in maintenance and prevents automatic failover (of other services, if any) to other nodes.

Switchover can be done through EAC, or through the EMS (Powershell).

To switch over all mailbox databases to a server called EX2:

Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase -Server EX2

To switch over the database called DB1 to a server called EX2:

Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase DB1 -ActivateOnServer EX2

The switchover will  ...
 
Completely disable automatic suspend in Ubuntu 14.04
edited by on August 12th 2015, at 12:00

To disable automatic suspend, but leave manual suspend working in Ubuntu 14.04, create the text file:

/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.disable-suspend.pkla

with contents:

[Disable suspend (upower)]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.suspend
ResultActive=no
ResultInactive=no
ResultAny=no

[Disable suspend (logind)]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.suspend
ResultActive=yes
ResultInactive=no
ResultAny=yes

[Disable suspend when others are logged in (logind)]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.suspend-multiple-sessions
ResultActive=yes
ResultInactive=no
ResultAny=yes
 
REQUEST SENSE call failed. Possible cleanme signal detection failure
edited by on August 12th 2015, at 09:22

Backups with HP Data Protector may fail with the following error:

REQUEST SENSE call failed. Possible cleanme signal detection failure

First, attempt to perform a manual clean of the drive, then try re-running the backup. If it fails again, power-cycle/reboot the drive/library.

If the error still persists, start HP Library and Tape Tools and run a drive assessment. You'll need to load a tape into the drive first. If the test fails (i.e. it returns an error code, such as internal error), call HP for support.

 
Website bug fixes and changes
edited by on August 11th 2015, at 15:44
With the next version of this site postponed again, I decided to resolve some long standing issues with the current version, and make some changes as well:

You can finally press Enter when searching for stuff. This did not work because of a missing JS function.

Removed all local inclusions of CSS and JS and moved them back to separate files. I've also removed any dynamic JS code creation and replaced them with JS-only equivalents for cleaner code. As a result, I had to fix and/or modify several other functions on the site (search-within-section in particular).

Fixed listing of posts for a specific month. It did not work properly for months before October of each year due to a missing lead  ...
 
Page locking for 64-bit SQL Server: it is still important!
edited by on August 11th 2015, at 10:48
I noticed there's many conflicting information on the internet about the need for page locking and its required privileges (Lock page in memory) for the instance's service account for 64-bit SQL Server. As part of a SQL Server health check, I decided to look more closely into the matter and came up with the conclusion that setting the page locking privilege for the SQL Server instance's service account is indeed still important, despite many other sources claiming otherwise. And here's why...

In the past, during the 32-bit era, a single process was limited to a maximum of 4GB of memory. This would become a problem with databases which would often require more than that in order to maintain   ...
 
SCOM 2012 Agent proxy not enabled for cluster nodes
edited by on August 10th 2015, at 16:03
If a server that is part of a fail-over cluster and also runs SCOM 2012 agent, you may get the following alert:

Alert: Agent proxy not enabled
Last modified by: System
Last modified time: 8/10/2015 3:53:20 PM
Alert description: The agent was not able to submit data on behalf of another computer because agent proxy is not enabled. Details:Health service ( server-name ) should not generate data about this managed object ( Microsoft.Windows.Computer ).

The agent will notice the server is part of a cluster and will attempt to retrieve additional information about the cluster, which is not allowed by default.

To resolve, follow these steps:

In Operations Manager, go to Administration.

In the  ...
 
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