Test Layout

On a pretty regular basis I see requests in support forums about setting up new Exchange servers and verifying functionality. So, first I’d like to discuss the overall configuration and then how you can test it. I’m going to assume, you’ve already installed Exchange. Authoritative Domains The domain name that you use for email such as, conexion.ca, must be configured as an authoritative domain in Exchange Server 2010. Doing this tells Exchange that it is responsible for that email domain and should accept messages for it. The steps on how to configure an authoritative domain are here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996314.aspx. E-mail Address Policy To give your users email addresses, you need an email address policy that contains your domain name and the format of the email address that you want to use. The default may or may not be what you want. Any new email address policies you create have a higher priority than the default. More information about configuring email a...

When you are working with cmdlets that want passwords, the cmdlets require the password to be a secure string rather than a regular string. A secure string is encrypted in memory. When you read data from a csv file, it is automatically imported as a regular. To read a password from a file and use it, you need to convert it to a secure string. To convert an existing string to a secure string use the following: $SecurePass = ConvertTo-SecureString $UnsecurePass -AsPlainText -Force After converting to a secure string, you can use it as a password when create user accounts with New-ADUser or as part of credentials you are passing to a cmdlet. For more information about working with passwords, secure strings, and credentials see the following TechNet article: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4546.working-with-passwords-secure-strings-and-credentials-in-windows-powershell-en-us.aspx

One of our clients had the misfortune to have a RAID 5 array get corrupted last week. When you went into the configuration of the RAID card and looked at the virtual disk, 1 disk in the array was shown as missing, 1 online, and 1 offline. The disk that was missing was actually marked as foreign, which means that it is not recognized as part of the virtual disk. To make it even more fun, the RAID 5 array was also the boot disk. Step 1 for recovery, force the offline disk to online. With three disks in a RAID 5 array, two online should have all of the data and be OK. However, it was not to be. The drive was still not accessible. I added a new disk and made a parallel install of Windows so I could see what was going on. The partition that should have had all the data was corrupted in some way with the partition type showing as RAW instead of NTFS. I tried importing the foreign disk, but no such luck. Which makes sense as the RAID card thinks it is part of another virtual disk. I did all o...

It has never occurred to me before, but you cannot rename a scheduled task in Windows Server 2008. You can modify everything but the name. Not really a big issue, but we had a scheduled task where the name included the time the action was supposed to occur and I had just changed that time. It could be confusing when the two don't match. However, there is a work around: Export the incorrectly named task as XML. Rename the XML file to the task name that you want. Import the XML file to create the renamed task. Delete or disable to incorrectly named task.

Let me start by stating that I am not a big SQL guy. I can find my way around when I have to, but I'm not in the expert zone. However, one of our clients just had a big issue with SharePoint 2010. Their server crashed and the WSS_Content database that holds the SharePoint site data was in Read Only mode. It was giving errors indicating that database files were not accessible. The log file was missing. There are a lot of postings on the Internet about repairing databases in Emergency mode. However, only one had the process that worked for me in this case. Most articles just say to run DBCC CHECKDB with the REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS option. However, my database was in Read Only mode and wouldn't allow it. I was also unable to access any database properties through SQL Management Studio. So, I needed to perform most operations by using Transact-SQL when I was attempting to make repairs. Here is the process that worked for me: Take the failed database offline and make a copy of it to ...

Computer accounts in a domain have a password just like user accounts. These accounts have a password that is changed automatically in the background every 30 days. When the password on the account and the password stored on the member server or client computer get out of sync, then the trust relationship is lost. When the trust relationship is lost, the computer can no longer authenticate domain users. This can cause applications to fail and prevent users from logging on. You can verify that the trust relationship has failed based on an event in the System log. Windows XP would often allow users to log on with cached credentials after the trust relationship was lost. Windows 7 typically displays a message about the trust relationship being lost and prevents domain users from logging on. The following process rejoins the domain without losing any computer account information: Reset the computer account in Active Directory Users and Computers Configure the computer as a member of a work...