OpsVault - Operate and Optimize Your IT Environment

Solving “The Delegates settings were not saved correctly” Error on Exchange 2010

Frank Battiston — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:29:00 GMT

One of Danijel Klaric's customers came to him with the following issue and asked if there were “better” solutions available than they found using their own Internet research. They use a mix of Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 clients and a lot of shared mailboxes. In the phase of testing their mailbox migration to Exchange 2010 Sp1 RU6 they encountered the following issue trying to delegate Calendar permissions using the “Outlook delegation wizard” on their shared mailboxes:

Daniel is a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, and found the following clever solution to this issue. Enjoy the read at http://www.opsvault.com/solving-the-delegates-settings-were-not-saved-correctly-error-on-exchange-2010/.

Project Barcelona: A Revolution in Enterprise Metadata Management – Part 2

Frank Battiston — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:14:46 GMT

In his last article, Chris Tao, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, discussed the nature of metadata, the need for metadata management in the modern enterprise, and some fundamental information about Project Barcelona. In his latest article, he goes through the Project Barcelona product UI to see how it can help Enterprise IT administrators. Using detailed screenshots and descriptions, Chris outlines how Project Barcelona is designed to help IT immediately garner the benefit of metadata management with minimal initial investment, which means there will be no up-front planning, modeling and ongoing maintenance required when using this product. Simply setup the product and configure the appropriate security account, and Project Barcelona will automatically start crawling and showing the results. Impressive stuff. Check out all the details at http://www.opsvault.com/project-barcelona-a-revolution-in-enterprise-metadata-management-part-2/.

A Microsoft SQL Server DMV/DMF Cheat-Sheet

Frank Battiston — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:52:00 GMT

“What SQL Server dynamic management views (DMV) or dynamic management functions (DMF) should I use?”

This is one question Microsoft SQL Server database administratators ask again and again to Mohit Gupta, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer who specialized in SQL Server. His short answer is: as many as you need. The detailed answer is: well, it depends. There are well over 150 DMV/DMFs spread across 20 some categories in SQL Server 2012 now, and it is a daunting challenge trying to remember all these. You probably haven't used every one, and you probably never will. The use of these really stems from what issues you are trying to deal with or what information you need from SQL Server. Since the use for most DMVs is scenario-based, Mohit provides a great list of DMV/DMFs he thinks every DBA should get familiar with, along with sample scripts you can use to garner better management and insight into your SQL Server environment. Check out all the details at: http://www.opsvault.com/a-microsoft-sql-server-dmvdmf-cheat-sheet/.

How To Monitor Disk Usage with System Center Operations Manager

Frank Battiston — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:00:50 GMT

Monitoring how much data is stored on a particular drive and displaying it in a graph and/or report format is often requested by customers running Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. Writing a standalone VBScript or PowerShell script isn’t overly complicated, but it generally resides outside of enterprise applications and is often managed and administered by too few individuals. Surely we can use Operations Manager (i.e. OpsMgr) to perform this simple data collection? Michel Audet, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, walks us through the details of creating a script to measure disk usage (which unfortunately isn't one of the performance counters available in Windows). By using WMI and focusing on the Win32_LogicalDisk class, Michel shows us how to create a probe-based collection rule in OpsMgr. Check it out at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-monitor-disk-usage-with-system-center-operations-manager/.

How To Customize The SharePoint Navigation Drop Down Menu

Frank Battiston — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:42:07 GMT

In a Microsoft SharePoint 2007 site, when we take the mouse pointer on the top link bar we get the drop down menu for that particular site. The drop down that shows up after placing the mouse pointer (an example is shown below) is sometimes too quick in that it doesn’t allow you to choose the other options lying underneath the drop down menu. For this we need to slow down the pace of drop down menus.

Chandrasekar Natarajan, a Premier Field Engineer, provides us with detailed steps on how to remedy this behaviour and slow things down a bit. You can check out his solution at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-customize-the-sharepoint-navigation-drop-down-menu/.

Understanding NAT When Setting Up Lync, Part 2 – STUN and TURN Explained

Frank Battiston — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:18:55 GMT

Joe Lefort, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, originally led us through why it's important to understand NAT when setting up Lync and OCS. In this follow up post, he dives into the details of different NAT types, and how STUN (Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) and TURN (Traversal Using Relays around NAT) factor into our decision making process for Lync and OCS implementations. Check out his nicely concise and informative article at http://www.opsvault.com/understanding-nat-when-setting-up-lync-part-2-stun-and-turn-explained/.

How to Debug Exchange 2007/2010 OOF Replies That Don’t Properly Trigger

Frank Battiston — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:55:21 GMT

Have you run into the issue where an OOF doesn’t trigger for all mailboxes located on a server? Pascal L’Huriec, a Senior Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, shares his experience where one server was impacted in a large organization, and when the impacted mailboxes were moved to another server the OOF worked fine. In addition to that, when turning on or off the OOF from the Outlook 2010 or OWA client, the MAPI property PR_OOF_STATE did not toggle to True or False, as it should. Pascal details troubleshooting steps, explains why it's happening and provides a solution. All of this in a nice and concise post at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-debug-exchange-20072010-oof-replies-that-dont-properly-trigger/.

Managing SharePoint User Profile Service Application Permissions with PowerShell

Frank Battiston — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:21:08 GMT

When the User Profile service application is configured in Microsoft SharePoint 2010, by default NT Authority\Authenticated Users and All Authenticated Users are granted permissions to create My Sites and use other features (personal and social) provided by the user profile service. But what if you don’t want to grant all of these permissions to all users? Chandra Natarajan, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer provides us with a PowerShell script to limit permissions. Check it out at http://www.opsvault.com/managing-sharepoint-user-profile-service-application-permissions-with-powershell/.

How To Quickly Manage Groups With Groups In Exchange 2010

Frank Battiston — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:13:00 GMT

A common issue with Exchange 2010 is that you are unable to allow a Distribution list to be managed by a “group”. This was changed by design in Exchange 2010 to allow greater separation of Active Directory and Exchange management using Split Permissions, a feature that a number of our customers asked for. A great workaround was created which enumerates a group and adds each member into the “Managed By” list in Exchange.This works brilliantly, but has some limitations. The main limitation is that after a Security Group’s membership is updated, either an Administrator has to run the Mode3 switch of the script, or a period of time has to pass until the script runs in Mode3 as a scheduled task. Matt Abraham, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, provides us with an alternative method using RBAC and Powershell that allows us to quickly manage groups with gourps in Exchange 2010. Check out his findings at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-quickly-manage-groups-with-groups-in-exchange-2010/.

How Visual Studio 2010 F5 Solution Deployment Works With SharePoint

Frank Battiston — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:21:25 GMT

Let’s say in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 you create a new “ContentType” project by specifying the SharePoint site and solution type as farm solution. Inherit this new content Type from the Base Content Type of “Document”, then add the CustomField and CustomContentType xml files in the solution. Once the custom fields and custom content types are created, hit F5 to compile and deploy this Content Type in the SharePoint site. After the SharePoint site is displayed, we notice that the new content type exists in the Site. Then go back to VS2010, and hit Shift-F5 to stop debugging. Now, again hit F5 to redeploy this Content type and it will fail with the following error message, “Error occurred in deployment step ‘Activate Features’: The field with Id {65600B98-5A04-4EC6-895B-E9A93CD17CC7} defined in feature {a6192d76-512f-48de-9284-251b49902345} was found in the current site collection or in a subsite”. What's the cause of this error message? Chandra Natarajan, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, dives into the details and solution in his post at http://www.opsvault.com/how-visual-studio-2010-f5-solution-deployment-works-with-sharepoint/.

Solving Additional Issues With Exchange Offline Address Book Download

Frank Battiston — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:52:43 GMT

Frank Plawetzki posted a great article on issues that can affect how clients retrieve their Offline Address Book (OAB). This has also been the source of some recent work for Rhoderick Milne, another Premier Field Engineer, so he provides further insight on OAB download issues he encountered that were due to:

Invalid SSL Certificates
The OAB web.config file

Check out the background behind these issues and how he solved these at http://www.opsvault.com/solving-additional-issues-with-exchange-oab-download/.

How To Automate SharePoint 2010 Installation and Configuration Using AutoSPInstaller

Frank Battiston — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:05:26 GMT

Deploying a large scale Microsoft SharePoint 2010 farm is typically a challenge for Enterprise IT administrators. Not only does the default PSConfig GUI wizard require administrators to manually finish each step, it doesn’t provide the administrator with the ability to customize some of the underlying parameters, such as defining SharePoint database names or disabling some specific SharePoint Service Applications during setup. AutoSPInstaller is a CodePlex open source project that was created to solve these challenges. Using AutoSPInstaller, IT administrators can easily customize the SharePoint 2010 deployment process by just changing some basic parameters. Chris Tao, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, provides us with details on how to use AutoSPInstaller in his post at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-automate-sharepoint-2010-installation-using-autospinstaller/.

How to setup a software PBX to test the PSTN features of Lync Server

Frank Battiston — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:55:15 GMT

Joe Lefort, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, walks us through the non-trivial process of setting up a lab-based environment using Microsoft Lync, 3CXPhone, and snomONE IPPBX software. Adding PSTN connectivity ups the complexity of Lync installations rathjer substantially, and most folks who wish to tinker about probably can't afford to put real PSTN connectivity in their lab. Joe shows us how to create a PSTN test environment "on the cheap." Check out his detailed post at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-setup-a-software-pbx-to-test-the-pstn-features-of-lync-server/.

How To Use a User Control (Web Service Call) in a SharePoint Web Part

Frank Battiston — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:39:28 GMT

In a typical ASP.NET application, using a User Control is pretty straight forward, we just need to map the control to an ObjectDataSource and bind its settings. But in Microsoft SharePoint Server, when an ObjectDataSource control is used, it will throw the error message saying “The type specified in the TypeNameProperty can be found“. The reason for this is that the proxy class required to connect with the web service is not available in Microsoft SharePoint. So for this to work, we have to create proxy. Chandra Natarjan, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, details the steps required to create such a proxy in his post at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-use-a-user-control-web-service-call-in-a-sharepoint-web-part/.

Why You Need To Understand NAT When Setting Up Lync or OCS

Frank Battiston — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:51:33 GMT

Microsoft Lync and OCS are fairly easy to set up if all you want to do is have internal IM/presence and conferencing. The moment you decide to open your SIP domain up to the outside world, things take a change for the complex. Why you might ask? Simply put, NAT (Network Address Translation) comes into play. There are lots of things to think about on the edge, but one question Joe Lefort, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, hears with way too much regularity (partly because our documentation is pretty weak in this area), is ‘what is the big deal about NAT, and why should I care?‘. That's the topic of his concise article available at http://www.opsvault.com/why-you-need-to-understand-nat-when-setting-up-lync-or-ocs/. Check it out as he delves into NAT, ICE, SIP and SDP.

A Microsoft Word Document Template For Disaster Recovery Planning

Frank Battiston — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:39:13 GMT

Let’s say you want to create a disaster recovery (DR) plan for a common, shared enterprise IT service such as e-mail or document collaboration in your organization. One of the results of the plan will surely be a document outlining the DR strategy for that service. But where do you start? What should be part of a DR plan document? And how does it fit into the over-all business continuity plan?

To help with that process, Alex Windel, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, has created a Microsoft Word document template for disaster recovery planning. It’s somewhat centered around SharePoint as a technology but you can easily customize it to fit your needs. The recommendations in the template are based on how Microsoft IT does disaster recovery. Read about and download the template at http://www.opsvault.com/a-microsoft-word-document-template-for-disaster-recovery-planning/.

A Quick Tour Of The Microsoft Exchange PST Capture Tool

Frank Battiston — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:54:57 GMT

The venerable Personal Storage Table (PST) file has been present in Microsoft Exchange environments for many years. In some ways its success has lead to its downfall. With the proliferation of PST files on a network, multiple issues are introduced which include:

Unauthorised data removal – users may export data to PST and remove the data from the workplace
Data loss – since data is no longer on the Exchange server, if the only copy of a PST is corrupted then the contents can be lost. There are PST repair tools but they are no substitute for a central backup. Should the only copy be on a laptop that is lost, hopefully there was nothing important in the PST file…..
Accessing over network – It is not supported to access PST files over the network.
Email discovery – it becomes very hard if not impossible to search for all messages in an organisation if a portion are stored in offline PST files.

In response to customer feedback, Microsoft has made an investment in this space by acquiring Red Gate’s PST import tool. The Exchange team recently announced the release of the tool on their blog. Documentation for the PST Capture tool can be located on TechNet, along with the actual download. The tool can import PST content into on-premise Exchange 2010 servers and also to Exchange Online.

Rhoderick Milne takes the tool for a quick spin and provides some detailed guidance and troubleshooting tips. Check it out at http://www.opsvault.com/a-quick-tour-of-the-microsoft-exchange-pst-capture-tool/.

What you need to check when Outlook fails to download the OAB

Frank Battiston — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:46:54 GMT

Are your Outlook clients having issues downloading the Offline Address Book from Exchange? If so, Frank Plawetzki, a Senior Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, provides some hints on things that need to be checked in order to follow the OAB generation and publishing process from the server to the client. While checking this list, the administrator can be sure that the OAB has been generated successfully and check if it has been published at the place where the Outlook client is expecting to find it. Check out the details at http://www.opsvault.com/what-you-need-to-check-when-outlook-fails-to-download-the-oab/.

How To Do SharePoint Collaboration in the Absence of Proper Governance, Part 2

Frank Battiston — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:00:41 GMT

In his previous post, Daniel Brunet, a Senior Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, explained the goal of his series of articles is to help SharePoint farm administrators make decisions when they have to maintain one or multiple SharePoint farms without governance, and he touched on one of the most flexible and potentially challenging service offerings within SharePoint: Collaboration. This is a continuation of that discussion, focused on the following four elements of Collaboration:

Security
Customization
Capacity Management for Collaboration
Backup and restore

Check out the excellent details available at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-do-sharepoint-collaboration-in-the-absence-of-proper-governance-part-2/

Windows Server 2003: Restore and Reanimation of Tombstoned Group Membership Links

Frank Battiston — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:24:49 GMT

The issue being looked at is performing an authoritative restore on a Windows Server 2003 domain controller of a group results in the reanimation of tombstoned group membership links. So, if an Organizational Unit containing Users and Groups was deleted, the authoritative restore of the OU will result in users being re-added to groups they were removed from. This can lead to unexpected behavior. For example, these users may be able to access resources they should not have permissions to, or vice versa. Liju Varghese, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, shows us how to reproduce the issue and detailed steps on how to resolve it. Check it out at http://www.opsvault.com/2003-auth-restore-and-reanimation-of-tombstoned-group-membership-links/.

How To Troubleshoot Microsoft Exchange Server Latency or Connection Issues

Frank Battiston — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:14:54 GMT

Samuel Drey, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, provides us with an excellent article to help IT Operations teams and Microsoft Exchange professionals understand, troubleshoot and remedy situations where users are experiencing issues connecting to the Exchange messaging service via Outlook or OWA. Along with providing a process for troubleshooting server-side issues, he also provides detailed tables which he created from the work he's done on versions of the Microsoft Exchange Risk Assessment Program. He outlines key performance counters and associated ranges for Exchange 2003, 2007 and 2010. Useful info that you can check out at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-troubleshoot-microsoft-exchange-server-latency-or-connection-issues/

What You Need to Know About Microsoft Support Terminology

Frank Battiston — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:23:12 GMT

Supported. Best Effort. Recommended. Unsupported. Best Practice, And the list goes on. When discussing the meaning of Microsoft Support terminology with his customers, Rod Fournier (a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer) finds there are several terms that come up almost daily in conversations. His post provides some hopefully helpful definitions that allow you to figure out the differences and sometimes subtleties in the meanings of these terms. Check it out at http://www.opsvault.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-microsoft-support-terminology/.

Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 – What You Need To Know

Frank Battiston — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:28:17 GMT

The Exchange team recently released SP2 for Exchange 2010 over on the Exchange team blog, and Rhoderick Milne, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, created this blog post to provide links to all the relevant content for SP2 and to raise awareness of some specific issues so that these will not negatively impact your deployments. If you're looking to make the move to SP2, please enjoy the service pack "responsibly" by insuring you're fully informed about the caveats and the changes it will make within your production environment. All the details can be found at http://www.opsvault.com/exchange-2010-service-pack-2-what-you-need-to-know/.

How To Do SharePoint Collaboration in the Absence of Proper Governance

Frank Battiston — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:30:37 GMT

In his previous post, Daniel Brunet, a Senior Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, explained the goal of his series of SharePoint articles is to help farm administrators make decisions when they have to maintain one or more SharePoint farms without governance. One of the most challenging service offerings with SharePoint besides Content Management is Collaboration, as it usually needs both flexibility and scalability. In this follow-up article, he outlines several "rules" to help a SharePoint admin deal with the intricacies Collaboration, and also looks at other aspects such as Managed Paths, self-creation of site collections, and Office 365. A wonderfully detailed view, available at http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-do-sharepoint-collaboration-in-the-absence-of-proper-governance/.

Windows System State Recovery: What’s up with that Authoritative Restore checkbox?

Frank Battiston — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:30:05 GMT

Liju Varghese, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, walks us through the nuances of performing a system state restore in Directory Services Restore Mode using Windows Server Backup, including how to mark an Active Directory object authoritative. Check out the details at http://www.opsvault.com/windows-system-state-recovery-whats-up-with-that-authoritative-restore-checkbox/.