These are a group of new Microsoft Private Cloud Videos:

• Video: Thought Leadership Series – Enabling Private Cloud

Garth Fort talks about why you should consider converting your current datacenter infrastructure into a private cloud fabric.

• Video: Thought Leadership Series – All about the App

Garth Fort talks about Microsoft’s unique philosophy around managing apps and highlights some of the compelling app management capabilities in System Center 2012.

• Video: System Center 2012 Application Management Overview
  Anant Sundaram, a Senior Product Manager, talks about the importance of application management in the private cloud and virtualized datacenter.

• Video: System Center 2012 Infrastructure Management Overview
  David Mills, a Senior Product Manager, talks about the importance of infrastructure management in the private cloud and virtualized datacenter.

• Video: Deploying the Fabric with Virtual Machine Manager 2012
  Kenon Owens, a Product Manager, talks about some of the new deployment and configuration features in VMM 2012.

• Official Press Release

Microsoft Brings the Cloud Down to Earth for Enterprises

• Use MVA

MVA: Configuring and deploying Microsoft’s private cloud

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Related Posts:

• Free Microsoft Private Cloud Training: http://blogs.technet.com/b/meamcs/archive/2012/01/23/free-microsoft-private-cloud-training.aspx 

On February 21 & 22 Microsoft Learning is running a 2-day virtual training event to help the world learn about the upcoming enhancements with the Creating & Managing a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 Jump Start.  It is 100% free and open to the public, so register now! Sign up today.

Event Overview

Adopting this exciting new computing paradigm provides a whole new landscape of technology and career direction for IT professionals. Microsoft Learning and the Microsoft System Center 2012 team have partnered to bring you an exciting opportunity to learn what you need to know to deploy, manage and maintain Microsoft’s private cloud solution. Leveraging the popular Jump Start virtual classroom approach, the industry’s most gifted cloud experts will show attendees why this new private cloud solution, based on System Center 2012 and Windows Server, has garnered so much attention. Presenters include Symon Perriman, Sean Christensen, Adam Hall, Kenon Owens, Prabu Rambadran & Chris Van Wesep and there will be a live Q&A during the event.

Event Agenda

Day 1: Deployment & Configuration (Feb. 21)

• Part 1: Understanding the Microsoft Private Cloud
• Part 2: Deploying the Infrastructure Components
• Part 3: Deploying the Private Cloud Infrastructure
• Part 4: Deploying the Service Layer
• Part 5: Deploying the Applications & VMs

Day 2: Management & Operations (Feb. 22)

• Part 6: Managing the Infrastructure Components
• Part 7: Managing the Private Cloud Infrastructure
• Part 8: Managing the Service Layer
• Part 9: Managing the Applications & VMs

Jump Start Overview

This accelerated Jump Start sponsored by Microsoft Learning is tailored for IT professionals familiar with Windows Server technologies, Hyper-V virtualization, and the System Center management solutions. The course is designed to provide a fast-paced and technical understanding of how and why Microsoft’s approach to the private cloud delivers scalability, security, flexibility and control.

Here are few unique benefits of this course:

• Students have the opportunity to learn from and interact with the industry’s best cloud technologists!
• This high-energy, demo-rich learning experience will help IT Professionals understand why Microsoft private cloud solutions are making a splash in the industry.
• Students will see with their own eyes how Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center 2012 work together to provide the best combination of security and scale.
• Information-packed agenda! Day one of this two-day online course will focus on designing and deploying the right solutions for your organization, while day two will provide an in-depth look at the tools available to help monitor, secure and control the operational aspects of a private cloud.

Sign up today.

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Related Posts:

• Microsoft Private Cloud Videos: http://blogs.technet.com/b/meamcs/archive/2012/01/23/microsoft-private-cloud-videos.aspx

Installing SP2 is a relatively straightforward stuff and Exchange 2010 SP1 and SP2 servers can co-exist peacefully alongside each other for as long as it takes to roll out SP2. However, it is best practice to run a consistent service pack level across an entire Exchange organization so it’s best to schedule the updates to occur as quickly as possible.

The biggest deterrent in the update process for most people is likely to be the requirement to schedule the prerequisite Active Directory schema update, which is required to support new features such as Address Book Policies (ABPs). Once the schema has been updated and replicated throughout the Active Directory forest, you must be able to upgrade Exchange 2010 SP1 servers following the normal order of CAS-Hub Transport-Mailbox servers (Edge servers can be updated first or last, UM servers should be updated before mailbox servers). CAS servers in Internet-facing sites are usually the first candidates for upgrade and this is especially so in Exchange 2010 SP2 if you plan to run a hybrid on-premises/Office 365 configuration. Those who run multi-role Exchange 2010 servers can simply start to upgrade their Exchange 2010 servers.

Updates are performed from the command line with the SETUP program or by running the normal Exchange 2010 installation program. If you run SETUP, you’ll probably run the command
SETUP /m:upgrade /InstallWindowsComponents to apply the upgrade and to install any Windows components that might be missing on a server.

Figure 1 SP2 update fails because IIS6 WMI Compatibility component is required

If you use the GUI version of the installation program to install SP2, you might encounter the error shown above when you attempt to upgrade Exchange 2010 SP1 CAS servers. This is because SP2 introduces a new requirement for CAS servers to have the IIS6 WMI Compatibility role. The Exchange installation program is able to detect the lack of prerequisite software on a server and offer to install the missing pieces for you but it can only do this for new installations as the code doesn’t cover the situation where a service pack or other upgrade introduces the need for a new component. As you’ll already have noted from the command-line example described above, the same limitation doesn’t exist for SETUP.

For those who like to script server updates, you can use PowerShell to run these commands to ensure that the correct prerequisite software is installed for Exchange 2010 SP2 (the change from previous versions is the addition of the Web-WMI component;

Import-Module ServerManager

Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework, RSAT-ADDS, Web-Server, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-Metabase, Web-Net-Ext, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, RSAT-Web-Server, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dyn-Compression, NET-HTTP-Activation, RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy, Web-WMI –Restart

For mailbox servers that are members of a Database Availability Group, remember that Exchange includes a script called StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 that is designed to prepare a DAG server member for maintenance, such as installing a service pack. This script:

1. 1.       Runs the Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy cmdlet for each database copy hosted on the DAG member to block replication and replay activity.
2. 2.       Pause the node in the cluster. This prevents the server taking on the role of the Primary Active Manager (PAM) for the DAG
3. 3.       Sets the value of the DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy parameter on the DAG member to “Blocked“. This step prevents the PAM attempting to automatically activate any of the database copies that are present on the server.
4. 4.       Moves all the active databases that are currently hosted on the DAG member to other DAG members. Assuming that there are DAG members available to accept the workload, clients should be automatically transferred to the new locations by the RPC Client Access Layer.

Like all the other scripts included in the Exchange kit, you can find this one in the location \Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Scripts. You’ll also find its companion script that’s designed to bring a DAG member back online after maintenance is complete, StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1, in the same location. This script does the following:

1. 1.       Runs the Resume-MailboxDatabaseCopy cmdlet for each database copy hosted on the DAG member to allow the server to fully participate in database replication and replay.
2. 2.       Resumes the node in the cluster to enable full cluster functionality for the DAG member
3. 3.       Sets the value of the DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy parameter on the DAG member to be “Unrestricted“. The PAM is then able to automatically activate database copies on the DAG member.

Note that workload is not automatically transferred back to the newly re-enabled DAG member. You will have to either perform a manual switchover of databases to make them active on the DAG member or rely on the update of another DAG member to transfer databases and balance workload across the DAG. Inevitably, you will end up switching some databases around once all the servers have been upgraded to SP2.

As an example, here’s how we would run the scripts to work with a server called ExServer1 during maintenance.

1. 1.       Navigate to the scripts directory (or do one of the tricks to get the scripts directory in your search order for PowerShell).
2. 2.       Run the script to prepare a DAG server member for maintenance.

.\StartDagServerMaintenance -ServerName "EXSERVER1"

1. 3.       When maintenance is done, run the other script to bring the server back online within the DAG.

.\StopDagServerMaintenance -ServerName "EXSERVER1"

All in all, your upgrade to SP2 should proceed reasonably smoothly and with a minimum of fuss. Microsoft has invested lots of time into making it all flow nicely and you’ll appreciate their work after the upgrade is complete. You can check your Exchange MMC “About” and you should have a new version number.

Figure 2 Exchange 2010 SP2 installed.

Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 is now released, Microsoft Exchange team promised a year-end SP2 release, and this week it delivered.  It is not such a major update as Service Pack 1, but there are a small number of interesting new features that have been added to the product along with all Exchange hotfixes that were released the past year. There are around five hundred Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Update Rollup fixes that have been included into Service Pack 2. This article won’t even attempt to explain them all, but will instead concentrate on the handful of interesting new features; the new service pack has four major features:

OWA Mini

In Exchange 2003 a special version of “webmail” was available for WAP enabled mobile devices. Using a WAP-enabled mobile device, such as is popular in Japan, it was possible for users to access their mailbox using a character-based interface. This was called Outlook Mobile Access, or OMA. This feature was removed from the product in Exchange 2007 but, due to large interest in the feature from Asian countries; it has now returned as OWA Mini in Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2. Using OWA Mini, it is possible to use a character based interface to access Mailbox data and to thereby send and receive messages. Navigate to the https://webmail.contoso.com/owa/oma URL and logon using the standard credentials.

The reason for the strange-looking URL is that OWA Mini is now implemented as a special view of OWA. In Exchange 2003, it had been a completely separate application.

Figure 1 Outlook Web Access Mini

Address Book Policies

In Exchange 2007 and earlier it was possible to implement a feature called Address List Segregation. This feature made it possible to use several fully-separated address lists in Exchange. The old version used Access Control Lists (ACLs) on the various address lists to achieve this. ACLs are the means by which permissions are assigned in a Windows Operating System. But Exchange 2010 introduced a new technology called the Address Book Service that is running on the Exchange Server 2010 Client Access Server. Therefore the ACL based method didn’t work anymore on Exchange Server 2010.

Service Pack 2 now fixes this lack of functionality by implementing Address Book Policies or ABPs. Let’s suppose that two companies named Contoso and NWTraders are using one Exchange environment and there’s a need for unique Address Lists (this need is also quite common in educational environments). One or more separate Address Lists are created for each company. These will include a company specific Global Address List. These lists are combined in an Address Book Policy and assigned to all mailboxes in the respective companies. The ABP enforces that only these Address Lists are visible to the mailboxes, whereas address lists from other companies are not visible.

Figure 2 Contoso and NWTraders on one Exchange organization using different Address Lists

ABPs only enforce a particular view on the Address Book Service in Exchange Server 2010. Therefore it is possible to include people from one company into Address Lists from another company. In figure 1 for example it is possible to include employees from Contoso in Address Lists from NWTraders. This can be achieved using filtering on properties when creating the Address Lists. Let’s look at a joined development program where employees from Contoso are working in NWTraders projects and a Distribution Group is created in the NWTraders organization. For this Distribution Group a filter can be used on the Active Directory attribute CustomAttribute1, filled with “Exchange Customer Program”. When a user in the Contoso domain has this “Exchange Customer Program” property in the CustomAttribute1 attribute, it automatically shows up in the Address List in the NWTraders organization. This can be a very useful feature, especially in a University environment, but at the same time it can be tricky if you want to host multiple companies that should not be aware of each other in the Exchange organization.

An ABP must contain the following:

• One Global Address List.
• One Offline Address Book.
• One room list. This is required in an ABP. Even if you don’t use these in your company, you still need to add an empty room list.
• One or more address lists.

Cross-site Redirection

In larger, geographical dispersed companies it is likely that several locations are used, each hosting their own Exchange 2010 Servers (in the same Active Directory and Exchange organization) and their own Internet connection. OWA users in Europe for example would access their mailbox using a URL like https://emea.mail.contoso.com/owa while American users would use a URL like https://us.mail.contoso.com/owa. Previously when a US based user tried to logon to the EMEA email portal an error message was shown, stating that the user should use the US based email portal. With Service Pack 2 a new cross-site redirection is implemented into the Exchange product. When the US based user logs on to the EMEA email portal, he is automatically silently redirected to the US email portal. The only bad thing is that this only works when the Client Access Server is connected directly to the Internet, without a reverse proxy solution.

Hybrid Configuration Wizard

An Exchange 2010 on-premises environment can be integrated with Office 365. This is called ‘rich coexistence’. In Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 Microsoft made some significant enhancements to this ‘rich coexistence scenario’, and the Hybrid Configuration Wizard is one of them.

Using the Hybrid Configuration Wizard you can:

• Share free/busy information between an on-premises Exchange 2010 organization and Office 365;
• Move mailboxes between an on-premises Exchange 2010 organization and Office 365, preserving the Outlook profile and the OST file;
• Use message tracking between the on-premises Hub Transport Servers and Office 365 for message forensics, mail flow analysis, reporting and troubleshooting;
• Use mail tips for mailboxes located both in Office 365 and in the on-premises Exchange 2010 environment;
• Use online archiving, i.e. where the personal archive is located in Office 365;
• OWA redirection between Office 365 and the on-premises Exchange 2010 implementation.

To setup a ‘rich coexistence scenario’ with Office 365 a number of servers need to be installed.

• A Directory Synchronization server (dirsync) that synchronizes the local Active Directory with the Office 365 directory. This way one Address List is created where mailboxes can exist both on-premises and in Office 365;
• An ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) 2.0 server that can provide a true single sign-on solution. Using ADFS it is possible to logon to the local Active Directory domain and at the same time logon to the Office 365 mailbox using the local credentials. A claims based authentication solution is used to achieve this;
• The Exchange 2010 server itself that is used together with Office 365.

Figure 3 Several servers are used in a coexistence scenario with Office 365

Of course it was also possible to setup a coexistence scenario with Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1, but the new Hybrid Configuration Wizard that is included in Service Pack 2 will decrease the number of steps needed to configure this from 49 steps to only 6 steps.

Exchange 2010 SP2 also has a host of smaller enhancements:

• Mailbox replication service: Two new parameters have been added to the new-WebServicesVirtualDirectory and Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory cmdlets to remove the manual configuration when moving mailboxes to another forest.
• Mailbox auto-mapping: Exchange 2010 SP2 now lets admins turn off the automapping aspect of mailboxes that have full access permissions to others mailboxes through the Add-MailboxPermission cmdlets.
• Multivalue custom attributes: Five new multivalue custom attributes let you store additional information about a mail recipient.
• Litigation hold: Exchange 2010 lets you place a legal hold on mailbox, so users cannot delete anything in their mailbox or their archive. With SP2, an admin can bypass the hold using a new IgnoreLegalHold switch, which is available through several cmdlets relating to the mailbox or mail user.

Several hundred hotfixes

Several hundred hotfixes are also included in Service Pack 2, most of them are included in Exchange 2010 SP1 Rollup Update 1 to Rollup Update 6. One interesting fix I’ve seen (and tested) is with Outlook clients running in Online Mode. With Exchange 2010 the UDP notification mechanism was removed from Exchange, resulting in a decreased Outlook 2003 user experience, especially when running in Online Mode. But there are also issues with Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 that suffer from the same behavior (although rare). This is fixed in Service Pack 2 so Outlook 2003 running in Online Mode functions as expected, without any screen update delays.

Conclusion

The new Service Pack 2 for Exchange Server 2010 contains several hundred hotfixes and only a few new features. The Address Book Policies solution is very interesting if you want to setup an Exchange environment where multiple Address Lists that are fully separated are needed. Also the new Hybrid Configuration Wizard is a new cool feature if you want to setup a mixed environment with Office 365.

When browsing the settings for the Search Service Application in SharePoint 2010, I received the error “Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {OFFICE14-0005-0000-0000-000000000000} failed due to the following error 8007042d”.

I checked the SharePoint Server Search Service “SharePoint Server Search 14” in the services MMC and noticed that the service was Stopped due to a login failure. Updated the login information, started the service, and I was able to browse the search service application settings pages successfully.