Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s cloud services. Azure can host virtual machines and act as a location to store files. However, Azure can do much more as well, providing an Active Directory instance, provide SQL database access, work with hosted Visual Studio, host web sites or provide BizTalk services. All of these can be managed at https://manage.windowsazure.com. You can also manage Windows Azure from the command line on Linux, Windows or Mac. To download command line tools, visit http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/downloads/#cmd-line-tools. Once downloaded, run the package installer. When the package is finished installing, visit /usr/local/bin where you’ll find the azure binary. Once installed, you’ll need to configure your account from the windowsazure.com site to…
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Run Windows Updates From The Command Line
Windows Updates can be run using a standard batch script. Do so using the wusa.exe is the command that runs updates that you specify. These updates are run using the wusa command, nested inside the Windows directory (%WINDIR%\SysNative to be exact). To run, specify the path to the package you’d like to install. In this case, I’ve mapped a drive to my updates, and placed each in a directory named after the update ID. To run, just run with the path to the .msu file: wusa.exe U:\2862152\Windows8.0-KB2862152-x86.msu To then uninstall the package (if you dare), use the /uninstall option. In this command, you don’t need to provide the path, only…
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Defragment and Repair Exchange Information Stores
An Exchange Information Store is a database. A Standard Exchange Server can host 3 Information Store databases. Each is a Jet database and can exist at its own file path and will have a .edb file extension. You can manually defrag an Exchange database using a tool called eseutil. In this case, you’ll encounter from 5 to 20 minutes of downtime per gig of the Information Store. You can run eseutil, Eseutil can be run to scan a database to determine whether an offline defragmentation is necessary. You can run eseutil to manually determine the space that could be saved with a defrag. To do so, run eseutil with the…
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Temporarily Disable Timeout Detection For Exchange 2010 and Up
I’ve seen a number of cases where Exchange Information Stores are located on SANs. If you don’t have enough throughput you’re likely to see RPC request timeouts for the database, mailboxes or even a server. This typically correlates to Event IDs of 10025, 10026 and 10027. If a mailbox is having such problems then it will be quarantined. If you have this happen once or twice then it’s likely not that big of a deal. However, if it happens repeatedly then you’ve likely got a problem. These can be cumbersome to fix. So while you’re working on things, rather than have mailboxes go offline all the time, you can edit…
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Control Windows Firewall From The Command Line
The Windows Firewall is controlled using the netsh command along with the advfirewall option. This command is pretty easy to use, although knowing the syntax helps. The most basic thing you do is enable the firewall, done by issuing a set verb along with a profile (in this case we’ll use current profile) and then setting the state to on, as follows: netsh advfirewall set currentprofile state on Or if you were controlling the domain profile: netsh advfirewall set domainprofile state on You can also choose to set other options within a profile. So to set the firewall policy to always block inbound traffic and allow outgoing traffic, use the…
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Exchange Server 2010 PowerShell Mailbox Exports
Need to export mailboxes from Exchange? Hate using exmerge to do so. Gone are the days of exmerge. Well, not entirely. But welcome to the days of New-MailboxExportRequest. Much longer and cooler command than exmerge ever thought about being. C:\>New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox cedge -FilePath \\kryptedexchange.krypted.com\pst\cedge.pst You then receive confirmation that the export has been queued: Name Mailbox Status ---- ------- ------ MailboxExport https://krypted.com//Users/cedge... Queued To view the status, swap New with Get (Get-MailboxExportRequest): Get-MailboxExportRequest The output is as follows: Name Mailbox Status ---- ------- ------ MailboxExport https://krypted.com//Users/cedge... InProgress To get even more info, use the -Name option with Get-MailboxExportRequest, identifying the actual process name. Get-MailboxExportRequest -Name MailboxExport | fl The output…
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Obtain UPN from PowerShell
A UserPrincipalName (or UPN) is an attribute that contains an Internet-style login name for a user based on the Internet standard RFC 822. The UPN is used for a lot of different tasks, notably for Kerberos/Single Sign-On. As such, there are a lot of scripts that can now key off of a UPN. You can use the Get-ADUser cmdlet to query accounts for the UserPrincipalName attribute. To do so, we’re going to -Filter our results to display everyone (although we could include a username to only get one user) and then define the Search Base (using -SearchBase) to refine where in the query that the search will begin. Use the –Properties parameter…
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Resolve 530 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated Error In Exchange 2010-2012
When working on mail flow issues, one of the first troubleshooting steps with any mail server is to try and telnet into port 25 of the server. Exchange has an error, 530, that says that the smtp connection wasn’t authenticated. If you’re trying to relay through an Exchange server, that’s a good thing, as you wouldn’t want an open relay. However, if you’re trying to relay to an Exchange server, that’s not such a good thing. So let’s look at what this symptom looks like. First we try and telnet into port 25 of the server: telnet exchange.krypted.com 25 Which shows the following: 220 exchange.krypted.com Then we say hi: Helo…
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Rename a Windows 2012 Server Using PowerShell
When you are creating a bunch of Server 2012 Virtual Machines (or physical machines for that matter) it is helpful to programmatically change their names. To do so, use the Rename-Computer PowerShell cmdlet followed by the name you want the computer to have, as follows (assuming a name of 2012.krypted.com): Rename-Computer 2012.krypted.com Before you do anything else (e.g. bind to AD) you should then reboot the host, using the Restart-Computer cmdlet: Restart-Computer
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Configure Windows Server 2012 As An NTP Server
When you’re configuring a Mac to leverage an existing Windows infrastructure, having the clocks in sync is an important task. Luckily, Windows Server has been able to act as an NTP server for a long time. In this article, we’ll look at configuring Windows Server to be an NTP server for Mac and Linux clients. Note: Before you get started, or any time you’re hacking around in the registry, make sure to do a backup of your registry/SystemState! To enable NTP on Windows Server, open your favorite registry editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeTimeProvidersNtpServer. From here, enter a key called Enabled as a dword with a value of 00000001. The NTP Server should look…