The Microsoft EBS Team Blog

Site to site VPN and Windows Essential Business Server

2009-11-06T02:12:00Z

[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Alok Goyal] My name is Alok Goyal and I am a part of the Essential Business Server (EBS) team. Today, I wanted to talk about a new document I posted on the Microsoft Connect site. The document is titled "Site to site VPN and Windows Essential Business Server ." It talks about how to establish site to site VPN tunnel in an Essential Business Server environment. The core audience of this document is the network engineers who need to configure and test a site to...(read more)

OWA Address Book "Could not connect to a directory server” errors on EBS

2009-11-05T20:47:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Mark Stanfill] When trying to browse through the OWA Address Book on a default EBS configuration, the first page of the address book will load, but attempts to browse to subsequent pages will fail with the error: Could not connect to a directory server. If the problem continues, contact technical support for your organization. This error occurs because the default “Microsoft Exchange Server Publishing: Outlook Web Access” web site publishing rule is configured...(read more)

How to Enable Exchange 2007 Autodiscover in EBS 2008

2009-11-04T15:45:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Shawn Sullivan] The Autodiscover service, which allows Outlook 2007 and Windows Mobile 6.1 ActiveSync clients to obtain mailbox connection settings with little user intervention, is not configured by default in EBS 2008. In order to open the Autodiscover service to both internal and external clients, you must follow several steps on both the Messaging and Security servers: Configure the correct DNS records that will point external clients to the proper URL for...(read more)

EBS, SCE, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7

2009-10-30T18:11:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Mark Stanfill] System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 (SCE 2007) included with Essential Business Server 2008 now fully supports Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 clients, but there are a few manual steps that must be performed before these clients can be managed from the SCE Console. Because the SCE engine is derived from System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), it is important to be familiar with the supportability statement in KB 974722 as well. Step 1: ...(read more)

Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Preparation Wizard/IT Environment Health Scanner fail with DNS WMI Provider error

2009-10-29T13:00:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Vikramjit Singh, Stephen Li, and Mark Stanfill] Updated 10/29/2009 to reflect IT Environment Health Scanner information. If you are preparing to install EBS 2008 in an environment with Windows 2000 DNS servers, you may receive the following error while running the EBS Preparation and Planning Wizards : DnsConfig A connection cannot be made to the WMI provider with a scope of \\Win2kDNS.contoso.local\Root\MicrosoftDNS and a path of MicrosoftDNS_Server. For more...(read more)

How to run the IT Environment Health Scanner in an EBS Environment

2009-10-28T13:05:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Mark Stanfill] By default, TMG disallows WMI traffic as part of its security hardening. However, the Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner ( direct download ) requires WMI to collect data for its analysis. To work around this limitation, you must temporarily create an exception to allow the Health Scanner to successfully complete. On a default run, you will see an error like the one below: To prevent this error, you must explicitly...(read more)

Understanding EBS Client Licensing

2009-10-12T16:42:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Mark Stanfill] We get a fair number of queries about CAL enforcement in EBS support, so I’d like to try to clear up some of the common questions that our partners have. Because EBS enforces client licensing in a fairly strict manner, it is important to understand the repercussions of being out of compliance in order to ensure that your clients are able to successfully connect to the network. How to Properly License Clients Assigning CALs to users is a simple...(read more)

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (KB951847) Fails to install on EBS Servers

2009-10-12T15:57:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Mark Stanfill and Chris Puckett] Updated 10/12/2009 – new version of script linked. You may see installation failures of Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (KB951847) on the 3 EBS Standard Edition Servers. Clients and other servers are not affected. The behavior is that the update will fail to install and continually be offered each time you check for new updates. The following event will be logged: Log Name: ...(read more)

Top 3 Ways to Get More Out of Exchange with Windows Essential Business Server 2008

2009-10-06T20:32:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of David Fabritius] Midsize businesses interested in upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 should consider Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) 2008. EBS 2008 is an integrated software suite that is designed and priced for midsize businesses and includes Exchange Server 2007 as one of its core components. When you deploy Windows Essential Business Server 2008, in addition to getting all the value of Exchange Server 2007, you will also see added benefits from the...(read more)

Upgrading Your Servers? Consider Essential Business Server 2008.

2009-09-28T20:16:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Becky Lymberis] For many midsize businesses, a day in the IT department is often about putting out fires and running to users’ desktops to troubleshoot issues. Problems like this are not uncommon; with fewer resources than their enterprise counterparts, managing and keeping an updated IT department is extremely challenging. As the business needs evolve, servers tend to proliferate and suddenly the business is running on multiple versions, all with different tools...(read more)

IT Health Scanner Fails on Data Collection

2009-09-24T23:48:54Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Wayne McIntyre] During the data collection phase of the IT Health Scanner, you may receive an error as shown below. “ A list of servers could not be collected from Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). Ensure that your network is functioning correctly and that this computer can access AD DS.” Cause: This issue can occur if you have a server object in AD with a blank (null) DNS hostname. Resolution: To resolve this issue you need to locate the server with...(read more)

New feature : Adjust the level of protection provided by Security Server in Windows Essential Business Server 2008

2009-09-10T19:57:00Z

Security is of paramount importance in organization any size; it is no surprise that strong security solutions are deployed to protect various assets that provide the competitive advantage in the ever so challenging medium-sized business (up to 300 users/devices) segment. In many such organizations, it is common to find one security solution that is used to secure the perimeter; another security solution to protect the client computers; another completely different solution to protect the web portals;...(read more)

How to Install Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 on Windows Essential Business Server 2008

2009-08-25T16:29:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Stephen Li] Recently Microsoft Exchange 2007 released Service Pack 2. This SP2 enables customers to increase their operational efficiency and it sets the foundation for the transition to Exchange Server 2010. Enhanced auditing, Exchange volume snapshot backup functionality, dynamic active directory schema update and validation, public folder quota management, centralized organizational settings, named properties cmdlets, and new user interface for managing diagnostic...(read more)

Error “The CAL product key entered is not valid for this operating system” when you try to install licenses on the EBS Management Server

2009-08-04T23:13:00Z

[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Vikramjit Singh and Mark Stanfill] You may receive the following error after you add the 25-character alpha-numeric product key using the “Add Cal Pack Keys Wizard” on the EBS console Licensing tab. Error Adding CAL. The CAL product key entered is not valid for this operating system. The first thing to verify is that you bought the licenses (Standard/Premium) for the right product. We have seen a few instances where licenses were bought for Windows for...(read more)

IT Network Health Scanner Demo powered by EBS

2009-07-24T05:43:27Z

As you may have picked up earlier this month we announced a tool that can help you support your IT network by discovering network issues and reporting how to resolve them. Before you download it from here check out the video below. Thanks to David F our Technical Product Manager for putting this together. Nick King – Product Manager...(read more)