M365 and AZURE Blog

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Windows 2012 Server First look, good by DCPromo

Installing Server 2012 is pretty fast and easy, what may people will be finding pretty impressive the new Metro interface.

Metro-styled Control Panel is the new era for windows, and it may strike you as it does not look like any other versions of windows you may have known.

Now here are few recommendations to get you going, get familiar with managing Windows from command line

PS is your friend , to be honest if you have not skill in command line and you are in this line of work you better get the basic down. Upcoming versions of windows and applications such as Exchange is more command line less GUI integrated.

I will show you some of the simple , basic stuff you can use to get started,

Open PS,,,,,,,,,,

You can open most of the GUI you used to have from PS

Go to Control panel type control hit enter

Devmgmt.msc

From PS type Start PowerShell to invoke another window ( very handy)

Start PowerShell

start http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/

Use server manager to Add remove roles to your server,

DCPromo wont work from command line )-:

As you can quickly realize basic is still there , if you have promoted server to be domain controller in the past you should not have any hard time to hang up on new interface and to be honest , it looks pretty neat and useful competed to previous versions GUI presentation.

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal ( MVP north America)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Exchange 2010 Clearing out all mail in the mail queues

Scenario:

Al of a sudden you have figured out there are thousands of messages are queued up on your Edge server and you have identified all these messages are spam etc.

End goal:

you need to delete all mails within the queue folder as quick as possible

On the Edge Server Stop Transport Service

Get-Service MsExc*

Get-Service MsExc* |FL

Get-Service MsexchangeTransport

Stop-Service MsExchangeTransport

Start-Service MsExchangeTransport

once this is done drill down to this directory

Select everything and delete them

Once you re-start the transport service , the required files will be put in there and all queues will be cleared out

This is quick and dirty way of dealing with un-wanted mails if there are mails in the queues which you have business purpose you can be more sophisticated with this PS command

Remove Messages from Queues

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123535.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2010/10/27/removing-specific-messages-from-your-exchange-server.aspx

Oz Casey, Dedeal ( MVP north America)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +http://smtp25.blogspot.com/(Blog)http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Friday, August 3, 2012

Exchange 2013 EAC ( Exchange Admin Center)

For sure new version of Exchange ( 2013) has many improvements. One of the most striking future is EAC which will be new to almost everyone out there. The new management interface for E2013 is now comes with the browser there is no more heavy, slow MMC interface. The previous versions of management understanding and experience in Exchange versions always been problematic and such changes are hear breaking (-: remember the news we no longer see active directory and Exchange within the ADUC, and how that felt.
Yes to understand the value better and give credits to Exchange team, we need to focus on changing fast technology. Coloration and online services , their increasing heavy usage , pushed the product to have sharp changes in my opinion and yes they have the correct tract.
I am sure many of you will be surprised and some of you may get disappointed, but once again IMO this is necessary change and will improve the messaging quality for administrators. Now I like to share with you little secrets I figured out , might help you to get over with these changes (-:
You install E 2013 preview and excited to get on it to play on the new E2013 server after successful install you will see this

Now you open Exchange tool box and here is what you see

Now you are confused and wondering how you jump onto EAC ???? you need to open IE and type the fallowing URL in there

https://localhost/ecp

and now if install did go well here is EAC

Okay you can start playing with new way of managing your environment , now if you like to see things bit more organized
open MMC

Add remove snap in
Lets say pick AD snap in
Pick Active Directory
Pick Link to Web address

in the URL insert

https://localhost/ecp/default.aspx

Give it a name

Now you have the tool box, ADCU and EMC ( Wish adding PS here too)

I hope this makes bit easy for you guys to see things together.

You can utilize to use Pick Link to Web address add Exchange team blog and any other useful website you use in your daily administration day.
Stay tuned for more exciting news, and remember IOPS gain in E2013 is somewhere over %40 over Exchange 2010, and I am sure case studies will be available for us to verify this soon. Exchange 2013 ROCKS and has many great futures and offerings, I am very excited to see the improvements.
Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal ( MVP north America)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog)http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Installing Exchange 2013 Preview, error failed to connect to an Exchange Server in the current site.!!!!!

If you are installing Exchange 2013 preview and getting error “ failed to connect to an Exchange server in the current site, have a look fallowing steps to remedy the issue.

To alleviate this error you will need to register ASP.NET with .NET Framework 4.5 in

Open a Windows Command Prompt.
Run the following command

%SystemDrive%\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -ir –enable