The Youngest Microsoft Cert - Signs of the times

This is proof of the times we live in, kids are more proficient and they have available the tools and knowledge that helps evolution take its course. Click on the hyperlink -> Incredible to see an 8 year old so devoted to science. This Macedonian kid has a dream lab where he can hack or “discover” the world of computing.  I remember my first PC, a Synclair ZX80, that I bought mail order from Spain with all my savings. I was 12 years old in the early 80s. Do you remember the old Sinclair ZX81 computer? You know, the tiny, little 8-bit machine with a huge following, and a horrible flat keyboard?

 

I’m sure my 3 year old daughter will take the title soon.  At 2 year’s old she new 95% of the 50 states of the union, and, now at 3 she knows how to operate Windows XP and Vista to get to Elmo’s Sesame Street and uses the Fisher Price Arts & Craft Studio to do some intricate designs in the PC.

 

Alessandro Squeo

Procedures for Upgrading MSA1000 and Components

One of my Exchange 2003 customers was running low of space on his Exchange server data store (1 Store only – with 300GB EDB) for about 1000 users.  So, I convinced him to use the Modular SAN that he has in place and I persuaded him to Update the firmware before we attach the new LUNs to Exchange. So, I thought it would be nice to share these links for the process of updating and upgrading the MSA1000.  After the Update, I connected two LUN to the Exchange server and created 2 additional storage Groups and the folders and mount points for 12 databases.  Then, created the appropriate Storage Groups and Data Stores on Exchange System Manager and used the Exchange Tasks to Move most of the mailboxes from a Single Store to 12 distributed and well balanced newly mounted stores with the transaction logs in their own spindle. Finally, I performed and offline defragmentation of the old store to reclaim all the white space.  Now, the customer has 300 GB distributed in 12 databases with faster DISK I/O operations and a more relaxed Backup and Restore window.

For this process, you will use the MSA flash utility …this is an excerpt from the document linked below:

Flashing the MSA1000 Controller Firmware – Offline Flash Utility

The first step involved in flashing the MSA1000 firmware is to power down all servers that are connected to the MSA1000. Please follow appropriate methods to bring down applications, servers, clusters, etc.

Place the MSA1000 Firmware Upgrade CD in a server’s CD ROM drive (that is connected to the MSA1000), and power up the server. The server will boot to the MSA1000 Firmware Upgrade CD. When the utility is fully booted, the MSA1000 utility screen will appear with the options to flash the MSA1000 firmware, the Environmental Monitoring Unit, or the Fabric Switch6 (if installed).  

Go to: http://www.hp.com/go/msa1000 to check for updates that may affect your environment.

Go to the Technical Documentation page of the MSA1000 website at http://www.hp.com/go/msa1000 and use the instructions provided in the "Upgrading the MSA1000 for Enhanced Features" document. Do not use the instructions provided with the MSA1000 Support Software CD or included in the HP StorageWorks MSA1000 Installation Guide.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Alessandro Squeo

 

Microsoft Online Services Complete Readiness Assessment

If you want your client to review their readiness to a Microsoft Exchange Online solution, go thru this questions and contact me if you're interested on BPOS or Microsoft Hosted solutions.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddnzt8tj_12d6d84wdx&hl=en

SMTP connector not found OnExchange 2007

Use ADSIEDIT to delete the old connectors from the Active Directory database.

Navigate to the Configuration - Services - Exchange - Administrative Groups and expand the Connections.

Then just remove obsolete connectors at both ends.

How to obtain the latest service pack or update rollup for Exchange 2007

Go to this link to access the latest service pack or update rollup for Exchange 2007

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937052

Some Exchange Topologies

These are some of the most common Exchange topologies I have encountered. Although, I have been expossed to much more bigger environments with multiple domains and sites.  It is in those environments that I find the most challenging situations.  Stay tune as I add more content on this blog.

Moving Exchange 2003 Databases and Transaction Logs files to a SAN LUN or Virtual Disk

If you want to move log files and/or database files to a LUN, use the following procedures. 

 

1.      Attached the SAN LUN to the Exchange server. One for the Database files and one for the Transactional Logs if at all possible (let's say N: and L:)  If not possible, one LUN will suffice for the Database and Transaction Logs.  How big are the databases and how many mailboxes? Do you have Blackberry in the environment? I ask these questions because I'm thinking of performance optimization as well.

 

2.      Create a Folder Structure similar to the original "Exchsrvr\Mdbdata" file structure for consistency reasons (optional).  But, it is recommended  that you have the Folder structure with these permissions specified:

       

Administrators: Full Control

Authenticated Users: Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, Read

Creator Owner: None

Server Operators: Modify, Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, Read, Write

System: Full Control

 

Note Only assign permissions to the Server Operators group if the Exchange server is a domain controller. Otherwise, assign permissions to the Power Users group. Only domain controllers should have permissions to the built-in Server Operators group. Stand-alone and member servers should have permissions to the built-in Power Users group.

       

        You may also have to grant the following permissions to the root drive that contains the new Mdbdata folder:

 

System: Full Control

 

 

3.      Move the Log Files.  Follow this procedure:

 

        a.      Open ESM (Exchange System Manager)

        b.      Expand the Administrative Groups.  If it does not appear, you need to enable the option to show the Administrative Group.  To allow the Administrative group to be shown, right click on the Exchange Organization and click on Properties and click on select the Display Administrative Group check box.

        c.      Locate the Storage Group(s) where you want to change the path for the log files. Right-Click the Storage Group and then click on Properties.

        d.      In the General tab click the browse button next to the Transaction log location box, and then specify the new drive or folder location for the log files.

 

 

4.      Move the databases Files.  Follow this procedure:

 

1. Open ESM (Exchange System Manager)
2. Expand the Administrative Groups that contains the databases that you want to change.
3. Under Storage Group, right-click the mailbox store or the public folder store that you want to change, and then click on Properties.
4. Click the Database tab.
5. Next to the database that you want to change, click Browse, and then specify the new drive folder location for the files.

You can move the EDB and STM files for the databases.

If the databases are still mounted, you will receive a pop-up window message that informs you of the action that you are about to perform will dismount the stores.  Click YES to dismount the database automatically and move the location.

6. When you finish moving the databases, remount the databases manually.

 

One last note, moving log files or database files invalidates all existing incremental and differential backups; therefore, make a full backup after these changes.

 

Regards,

Alessandro

 

How to add an SPF Record

How to Add an SPF Record On a Windows DNS MMC

 

Step 1: Select and open the domain in which you wish to add the SPF record. Right-click in the record list and select "Other New Records..." from the menu.

Step 2: Select the Text (TXT) record type and click the "Create Record..." button.

Step 3: Type the SPF record data in the "Text" textbox. Click the OK button.

 

v=spf1 a –all

or,

v=spf1 mx -all

 

Step 4: If you are done adding new records, click the "Done" button. Note the new SPF TXT record.

 

For adding the SPF record to BIND or TinyDNS (djbdns)

If you run BIND

Paste this into your zone file:

yourdomain.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ptr include:yourdomain.com ~all"

When a mail server sends a bounce message, it uses a null MAIL FROM: and a HELO address that's supposed to be its own name. SPF will still operate, but in "degraded mode" by using the HELO domain name instead. Because this wizard can't tell which name your mail server uses in its HELO command, it lists all possible names, so there may be multiple lines shown below. If you know which hostname your mail server uses in its HELO command, you should pick out the appropriate entries and ignore the rest.

So this should also appear in DNS. You may or may not be in charge of the DNS for these entries; if you are, add them.

mail.yourdomain.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 a -all"

or, for your parent hosting domain or secondary MX record

smtp.yourHostParentDomain. IN TXT "v=spf1 a -all"

 

If you run tinydns (djbdns)

'yourdomain.com:v=spf1 a mx ptr include\072yourdomain.com ~all:3600

'mail.yourdomain.com:v=spf1 a -all:3600

'smtp.yourdomain.com:v=spf1 a -all:3600

 

 

Alessandro

My C: Drive on my server is running out of space - What to do

A quick and cheap solution will be to move the Page File to a different partition, But, what can you do when your Page File is already in another partition and you have less than 5% of free space on your System or C partition. This is what I did for one of my customers that didn’t have the budget to buy another server and wanted a quick fast solution without bringing the server down while on production.

 

On a HP Proliant server with one array controller and 4 disks configured as a RAID 5 with a C and a D partition.  We physically added a 72 GB hard drive in one of the empty HD slots while the server is running. The HP servers allow you to add a HD on the fly and it will automatically recognize that there is a new hardware in the bay.  

Then, I launched the ACU (Array Controller Utility) under the Array Controller Configuration there is the original RAID5 array and the newly added HD unallocated and not part of the array.

 

The first task is to add the new hard drive to the existing array.  For that, we select the existing array and on the right side there is an option to “Expand” the array.

This process could take hours and in some cases a couple of days.  It depends on the hardware and the array controller memory cache.  You need a minimum of 128MB Cache – I’ve seen 64MB been able to be expanded as well.

After this process has completed, and you could check the progress by refreshing the array status and it will display the percentage completed, there will be an option to “Merge” or “Extend”.

 

Now you need to Extend the array with the newly incorporate hard drive.  This process is faster than the previous, but after this step is completed, you will see the unallocated free space on the Windows Disk Management MMC.

 

For this particular customer I decided to create two mount points. One for the Software Distribution folder and the other one for the Installer folder. These two folders are under the Windows directory or %systemroot%.

 

Now follow these steps in this order:

-              Open the Task Manager and kill the wuauclt.EXE process by selecting it and click on end process.

-              Then, open a CMD prompt and type: net stop "Automatic Updates"

-              Open the Windows Explorer and navigate to the Windows or %systemroot% directory and rename both the “SoftwareDistribution” folder and the “Installer”  to something like “SoftwareDistributionTEMP”  and “InstallerTEMP”

-              Now create two new empty folders labeled “SoftwareDistribution” folder and the “Installer” just as they were originally.

-              Open the Windows Disk Management MMC if don’t have it open.

-              Select the unallocated space and create a new Extended Partition with the all the available unallocated space.

-              Within that new partition we now can create two new Logical Drives mount point formatted as NTFS and with 10GB in size each.

Note: The logical drives don’t need to have a drive letter assign. You want to specify the folder paths that these logical drives will be mounted as

-              Finally, move the content or data inside the Temp folders to the original place.

 

Leave the rest of the unallocated space for future space needs.

 

At last we want to restore the Windows Automatic operations as normal.  Type following command in the CMD prompt:

net start "Automatic Updates"

wuauclt /detectnow

 

Alessandro 01/02/2009