How to upgrade Windows Server 2008 R2 to different Editions

Now if you accidentally or in mistake you installed wrongly the edition of Windows Server 2008 R2, it is not required to reinstall the entire OS again. Such a good news?

With DISM, the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool, you can conveniently upgrade your server Edition.

1. Run DISM /online /Get-CurrentEdition

2. Run DISM /online /Get-TargetEditions 

3. Run DISM /online /Set-Edition:<edition ID> /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

4. Once the key is valid, then the upgrade will start automatically. Reboot the server after the process complete.

5. Server rebooted and will show the Windows is being upgraded during the startup of the Windows.

6. Check from the DISM and also the System Properties, the Windows Edition has been changed to Enterprise Edition.

7. Done. Easy right?

However, you may need to follow the supported upgrade paths for this Upgrade, else the thing won't work.

i) Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard ->Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter

ii) Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Server Core -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Server Core -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Server Core

iii) Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard

Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 6

Another hot from oven! Exchange 2010 SP1 Update Rollup 6 is available now at Microsoft Download Center (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27849) since last week dated 27/10/2011.

From the description of this Update Rollup (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2608646),  there are quite a number of fixes that is relief to solve the serious crashes and bugs that reported since the released of update rollup 5 in August.

• 2431609  An update is available that updates the message of a retention policy in OWA for Exchange Server 2010
• 2449266  EWS drops the TCP connection to the EWS client application without any error message in a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2480474  A Users do not receive quota warning messages after applying SP1 for Exchange 2010
• 2514820  An incoming fax message is not delivered to the recipient in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
• 2521927  Disabling the Exchange ActiveSync Integration feature for OWA does not take effect in OWA Premium clients in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2528854  The Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication service crashes on a computer that has Exchange Server 2010 SP1 installed
• 2535289  The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service crashes occasionally when you run an antivirus application on an Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox server
• 2536313  Slow message delivery and mailbox access for journaling mailboxes on an Exchange Server 2010 server
• 2544246  You receive a NRN of a meeting request 120 days later after the recipient accepted the request in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
• 2548246  The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service crashes occasionally when a folder view is corrupted on an Exchange Server 2010 mailbox server
• 2549183  "There are no objects to select" message when you try to use the EMC to specify a server to connect to in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
• 2549289  A RBAC role assignee can unexpectedly run the Add-MailboxPermission command or the Remove-MailboxPermission command on an Exchange Server 2010 server that is outside the role assignment scope
• 2555851  A mailbox does not appear in certain address lists after you run commands on the mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
• 2559814  A user cannot add or remove delegates from a mailbox by using Outlook in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2561514  Exchange Server 2003 user cannot view the free/busy information of a user in a different federated organization
• 2563860  You cannot create a new mailbox database if you already have 1000 mailbox databases in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2567409  Certain free/busy messages are not replicated from an Exchange Server 2010 server to an Exchange Server 2003 server
• 2571791  Retention policies are applied to Contact items unexpectedly in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2572052  Certain properties of a recurring meeting request from external email accounts are missing in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
• 2575005  You cannot start the EMC or the EMS in an Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 environment
• 2578631  Certain users cannot send email messages to a mail-enabled public folder in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2579172  Items that are deleted or moved still appear in the original folder when you use Office Outlook in online mode to access an Exchange Server 2010 mailbox
• 2579671  No results returned when you use the ExpandGroup method in EWS to retrieve a list of members of a Dynamic Distribution Group in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2582095  The SmtpMaxMessagesPerConnection property of a send connector is not replicated to the subscribed Edge Transport server in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2600835  The RPC Client Access service crashes when you delete an attachment of an item by using Outlook in online mode in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
• 2601701  The memory usage of the MSExchangeRepl.exe process keeps increasing when you perform a VSS backup on Exchange Server 2010 databases
• 2616127  "0x80041606" error code when you use Outlook in online mode to search for a keyword against a mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2617126  The Store.exe process crashes when you send an email message that has attachments in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
• 2627769  Some time zones in OWA are not synchronized with Windows in an Exchange Server 2010 environment

System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Release Candidate

It's hot from oven! System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012 Release Candidate was published at Microsoft Download Center dated 26/10/2011.

The improvement of the release candidates as below, quoted from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27841.


New features in the release candidate include:

- Improved endpoint protection functionality, with integrated setup, management and reporting of System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection.

- Improved application catalog design that provides a better, more responsive experience when requesting and downloading applications.

- New support for Windows Embedded devices, including Windows Embedded 7 SP1, POS-Ready 7, Windows 7 Think PC, and Windows Embedded Compact 7.

- Improved compliance enforcement and tracking, with the ability to create dynamic collections of baseline compliance and generate hourly compliance summaries.

- Platform support for deep mobile device management of Nokia Symbian Belle devices. Pending a platform update by Nokia later this calendar year for these devices, customers will be able to try out the management of Nokia devices with Configuration Manager.

Microsoft Release Update Rollup 5 (UR5) for Exchange Server 2010 SP1

Microsoft has released the UR 5 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 on 23 August 2011.

Issues that the update rollup resolves 

Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 resolves the issues that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

• 2275156  The inline contents disposition is removed when you send a "Content-Disposition: inline" email message by using EWS in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2499044  You cannot save attachments in an email message by using OWA if the subject line contains special characters in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2509306  Journal reports are expired or lost when the Microsoft Exchange Transport service is restarted in an Exchange Server 2010 environment 
• 2514766   A RBAC role assignee can unexpectedly run the Add-ADPermission command on an Exchange Server 2010 server that is outside the role assignment scope 
• 2529715  Slow network or replication issues after you change the number of virus scanning API threads in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
• 2536704  Mailbox users who are migrated by using ILM 2007 cannot use the Options menu in OWA in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2537094  French translation errors occur when you edit a response to a meeting request by using OWA in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
• 2555800   You cannot use the GetItem operation in EWS to retrieve properties of an email message in an Exchange Server 2010 environment 
• 2555850   You cannot delete a mailbox folder that starts with a special character in its name by using Outlook in an Exchange Server 2010 environment 
• 2556096  The columns in the .csv logging file are not lined up correctly when you perform a discovery search on a mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2556107  The columns in the .csv logging file are not lined up correctly when you perform a discovery search on a mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 environment 
• 2556133   A device that uses Exchange ActiveSync cannot access mailboxes in an Exchange Server 2010 environment 
• 2556156  Extra.exe crashes when it performs RPC activity checks against an Exchange Server 2010 server
• 2556352  "ChangeKey is required for this operation" error message in Outlook for Mac 2011 in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2556407  Certain client-only message rules do not take effect on email messages that are saved as drafts in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2559926   "There are no items to show in this view." error message when you try to view a folder by using Outlook in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
• 2572958  The "Test-OutlookConnectivity -Protocol HTTP" command fails with an HTTP 401 error in an Exchange Server 2010 environment

Below is the URL to the download page for the UR5
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27193

Manual Configuration of Outlook for Exchange Online (Office 365)

Nowadays, everyone moves towards cloud. 

So, maybe someday your organization also plans towards cloud for your messaging system.

While in the coexist environment with your on-premise email server or other hosted email system, you might need the manual tweak/configuration at your migrated users in Office 365 for their Outlook connection before the autodiscover record is in place.

To manually configure Outlook:

1.       Obtain the required info from OWA:

a.        Log into OWA, in the upper-right corner, click the question mark (Help) icon and the click About.

b.       Locate and note the Exchange Client Access Server Name, Mailbox Server Name, and Host name.

2.       Create a new Outlook profile and choose Manually configure server settings or additional server types.

3.       Select Exchange and when prompted for the Exchange server you need to do a little detective work. Compare the values you noted above for Exchange Client Access Server Name and Mailbox Server Name. You should find that they both start with the same value. In my case they were HKNPRD0602CA011.apcprd06.prod.outlook.com and HKNPRD0602MB118.apcprd06.prod.outlook.com respectively. What you need is the part at the start that matches - in this case HKNPRD0602.

4.       Now, enter this value for the Exchange server and append .mailbox.outlook.com. Therefore, in my case the Exchange server was HKNPRD0602.mailbox.outlook.com.

5.       You can enter the user name as the user's display name, i.e. Megan Fox.

Exchange 2010 - DNS resolution between Parent and Child Domain

These two days working on the Exchange 2010 installation in child domain. To make sure the smooth installation, the name resolution (DNS) between Parent and Child domain must be configured properly.

Else, you might hit the error while installing the mailbox role such as below.

Even tried to uninstall the mailbox role, it will failed due to the system unable to resolve the root domain name resolution.

Hence, to make it right, it is just need to make sure the child domain DNS server has the secondary zone for the Parent domain DNS records. With that, the mailbox roles can be removed and installed perfectly without issue.

Mango

Looks like next year 2012 will be the war of foods vs robot .. Microsoft Mango is seems going to release very soon as the Internet world already spreading its leaked version, which is 7720 RTM Build.


See the below picture. It won thousand words.

Email missing? Cannot find in neither Junk folder nor Deleted Items as well?

If you someday somehow cannot find your email, even searched through your junk mail or deleted items also cannot find it, at last have to recover it using Outlook Recovered Deleted Items or even restore from your backup.

Then you will ask yourself, or the Email Administrator, why could this happened?

In your Outlook, there is a junk mail setting. Make sure your junk email setting is not enable the option of Permanently delete suspected junk e-mail instead of moving it to the Junk E-Mail folder.

Every email missing issue might not be due to this, however, it could be the reason.

So, please check. :)

First touch on the Office 365!

Changed!

My company just had a change last week. Is a long waiting from BPOS to Office 365 ! Finally.

The  login page URL is not hard to remember, --> https://login.microsoftonline.com

Below is the main page display after logon. On the left menu, it showed the administrative tasks, you can add users and security groups from there, manage the licenses and create the support ticket.

Recall back CCR failover for Exchange 2007.

In a recent project, do need to run the failover test for mailbox store/database at Exchange 2007. However, due to totally used to the UI on Exchange 2010 with the super easy DAG failover, therefore, in a short time, couldn't really locate where the exactly screen on Exchange 2007 Exchange Management Console (EMC) to run the CCR failover task for the mailbox store/database (in a CCR architecture).

Therefore, took me some times to search in the EMC and finally found it. Below are the screenshots that will lead you to perform the failover.

First, check the properties of the CCR cluster. Noticed that the Active DB and Quorum are located at node 1.

After that, right click again the CCR cluster, select "Manage Clustered Mailbox Server" from the right-click menu.

Wizard prompted, select the first action, which is "Move the clustered mailbox server to another node".

MS Exchange ActiveSync Issue after mailbox moved

Faced an Exchange Active Sync issue after the mailbox migrate from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, then the mobile device is unable to sync with Exchange 2010 with the following error found in the CAS server event log.

The event is 1053, source MSExchange ActiveSync and obviously the event stated is due to the permission issue because the Exchange server is unable to create the object under this user account.

Found a workaround from the Internet which posted by a blogger named Nick Mackechnie (http://blog.nick.mackechnie.co.nz). Hence, follow the same method as his.

Access to ADUG, click on the Advance Features under the View Tab.

Remove server information in email header for MS Exchange 2007/2010

An email message consists of three components, the message envelope, the message header, and the message body. The message header contains control information, including, minimally, an originator's email address and one or more recipient addresses. Usually descriptive information is also added, such as a subject header field and a message submission date/time stamp.


Above definition is from Wikipedia. 


When a user receive an email from another user B, basically from the email header, we are able to view the sender's (user B) email server name and ip address unless these information is purposely masked.   
In Exchange 2007/2010, these information (server name, IP) will be populated in the message header basically is to allow the ease troubleshooting on the mail flow.


However, if you like to protect these internal server information from showing to whole world, you may try this at your Exchange Server. It's pretty simple and straight forward. 

Basically you just need to create a new Hub Transport rule at your Exchange 2007/2010 Hub Transport Server.

Named the rule - i choose "Remove Header".

RPC encryption disabled by default in Exchange 2010 SP1

During one of my project on Exchange migration, i just realized that the default RPC encryption is disabled in Exchange 2010 SP1.

Below is the PowerShell command to retrieve the RPC encryption setting.

Get-RPCClientAccess | fl name, encryptionrequired (the results will list out the RPC encryption setting of all Exchange Servers)

Get-RPCClientAccess -Server ServerName | fl EncryptionRequired (the results will only list out the RPC encryption setting of specified server)

To enable/disable back the RPC encryption, just tweak the PowerShell command for "True" and "False"

Set-RpcClientAccess -Server ServerName -EncryptionRequired $True (enable encryption)

Set-RpcClientAccess -Server ServerName -EncryptionRequired $False (disable encryption)

Microsoft buying Skype for $US8.5 billion

Another big news in IT field.

Microsoft is buying internet voice and video leader Skype for $US8.5 billion ($A7.85 billion) in a move aimed at boosting its presence in an online arena dominated by Google and Facebook.

According to Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) & Tony Bates (Skype CEO) in the press conference held in San Francisco, they would optimise Skype for TV with Xbox and Kinect, for the phone and for the PC.

So, we all shall wait for what will be the next.

Are you also one of the skype user like me as well?