10 Feb 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Remotely Enable Remote Desktop via Powershell

Microsoft
I've been working on project recently for a customer and needed to remotely enable remote desktop on several servers but they were located in a dark datacentre and there was no console access available.  I know you can always enable this by editing the registry but this requires a server reboot which was not an option for me.  So I decided to have a look at Powershell and found that the following commands enabled remote desktop without the need for a reboot. (Get-WmiObject Win32_TerminalServiceSetting -Computername ServerNameHere -Namespace root\cimv2\TerminalServices).SetAllowTsConnections(1,1) | Out-Null (Get-WmiObject -Class “Win32_TSGeneralSetting” -Computername ServerNameHere -Namespace root\cimv2\TerminalServices -Filter “TerminalName=’RDP-tcp'”).SetUserAuthenticationRequired(0) | Out-Null
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20 Jan 2015
By Yendis

Windows Server Technical Preview – Storage Replica

Microsoft, ,
Storage Replica enables storage-agnostic, block-level, synchronous replication between clusters or servers for disaster recovery, as well as stretching of a failover cluster for high availability. Synchronous replication enables mirroring of data in physical sites with crash-consistent volumes ensuring zero data loss at the file system level. Asynchronous replication allows site extension beyond metropolitan ranges with the possibility of data loss. To help you get familiar with Storage Replica, we have a downloadable guide to provide you with step-by-step instructions for evaluating the Stretch Cluster and the Server-to-Server scenarios. These are both designed for Disaster Recovery and provide “over the river”…
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11 Jan 2015
By Yendis

Using an Azure VM as a DAG Witness Server

Microsoft, ,
I’m happy to announce support for use of an Azure virtual machine as an Exchange 2013 Database Availability Group witness server. Automatic datacenter failover in Exchange 2013 requires three physical sites, but many of our customers with stretched DAGs only have two physical sites deployed today. By enabling the use of Azure as a third physical site, this provides many of our customers with a cost-effective method for improving the overall availability and resiliency of their Exchange deployment. You can learn more about the deployment and configuration process, as well as learn about our best practices in the TechNet Library…
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04 Sep 2014
By Yendis

Exchange Updates

Microsoft, ,
As you may have seen Microsoft released its Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 6 quickly followed by two patches due to issues raised by customers Exchange Server 2013 databases unexpectedly fail over in a co-existence environment with Exchange Server 2007 (KB2997209) Exchange Online mailboxes cannot be managed by using EAC after you deploy Exchange Server 2013 CU6 (KB2997355) To find out what issues were fixed in CU6 click HERE To download CU6 click HERE As the hotfixes are now available I would strongly recommend installing them taking all the necessary precautions i.e. backups etc. Updates also came out for Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007,…
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24 Jul 2014
By Yendis

HP iLO 4 Firmware Issues

Hardware, Microsoft, VMware, , , ,
Recently there has been an issue raised with HP that in rare  instances,  on a ProLiant Gen8 series server with HP Integrated Lights-Out 4 (iLO 4) Firmware Versions 1.30, 1.32, 1.40 or 1.50, intermittent Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) events may occur. After rebooting the server, the operating system loads properly and no additional impact to system operation will occur. If this issue occurs, the operating system will indicate that an NMI has happened; however, the specific indication will vary by OS: VMware ESXi operating systems will experience a Purple Screen of Death (PSOD). Linux operating systems will display a message indicating that…
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27 May 2014
By Yendis

Static IP address assignment in Windows Azure

Microsoft, ,
Have you ever wondered how to set a Static IP address on a VM in Windows Azure especially when deploying a domain controller?  Well up to recently the only way of possibly achieving this was to  create different virtual subnets for different groups of VMs to try and control the IP address the VM would be given from Windows Azure - I must admit this was a clunky way of doing this but was the only way recommended by Microsoft Support. Now things have just got better with the introduction of Windows Azure PowerShell 0.7.3.1 (or Later) you can now do this. By using PowerShell…
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20 May 2014
By Yendis

Windows 8.1 Bitlocker Drive Encryption

Microsoft, , ,
I have recently updated my laptop from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 8.1 Pro and previously used TrueCrypt to encrypt my laptop drive but on this occasion I thought I'd give Bitlocker a try instead as this is now available with the Windows 8.1 Pro version.  Normally you would use Bitlocker with TPM (Trusted Platform Module) but I didn't have TPM installed in my laptop but I still wanted to use it.  As I discovered there is a way around this by using either a PIN or USB drive as a pre-authentication method.  I also discovered that the default encryption algorithm used is…
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22 Apr 2014
By Yendis

Windows XP client and Windows server 2012 R2

Microsoft, ,
If you are still running a combination of Windows XP and Windows 7 client machines you may come across an issue when introducing your first Windows 2012 R2 Domain Controller server into your environment that your Windows XP clients no longer run login scripts.  The problem is to do with the versions of SMB which is supported between client and server communication which can cause issues with connecting to shares via UNC or executing login scripts on the DC. The following image will give you an idea of the versions of SMB between different clients and server. As you can see Windows XP…
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20 Apr 2014
By Yendis

SCCM 2012 Client install on Xendesktop Image

Citrix, Microsoft, ,
I was having an online discussion with a friend this week about the correct way of installing the Microsoft SCCM 2012 client on a Xendesktop (MCS) golden image.  After doing some research there are conflicting actions with some blogs saying  "install it and that's it",  whilst others saying you must perform some additional work before closing  your image. I was intrigued to find the answer to this debate.  So I decided to test this in my Xendesktop lab myself so I decided to install SCCM 2012. To cut a long story short what I did notice was that if you deployed desktops after just installing the client you would start to get issues with "Bad MIF"…
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19 Jan 2014
By Yendis

Microsoft Recommends NOT to Disable IPv6

Microsoft, , ,
You may always here from people in the industry that IPv6 "breaks things/stops things working" and that the recommendation is to disable it. If you where to speak to Microsoft or attend their seminars, you will always hear them say DON'T disable IPv6.  So who is correct!! The link below gives you an insight into IPv6. I've extracted  an example  Q and A from the list. IPv6 for Microsoft Windows http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/cc987595.aspx Q. What are Microsoft’s recommendations about disabling IPv6? A. It is unfortunate that some organizations disable IPv6 on their computers running Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2008, where it…
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