Test Layout

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but Microsoft has made an e-book about Windows Server 2012 available free for download. You can get it here: Free E-Book Offer: Introducing Windows Server 2012

As I move more batch jobs and scheduled tasks over to PowerShell, I've found that I often want to send some sort of status message when a script completes. The .NET Framework, which PowerShell uses, includes the Net.Mail.SMTPClient object that you can use to send email messages. First you need to create a new instance of the object in a variable: $mail= New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient("IPorDNSofSmtpServer") Then, you can send the message: $mail.Send("FromAddress","Recipient1,Recipent2","Subject","Body") In most cases, you would use variables to define the addresses, subject, and body of the message. Some potentially useful documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.smtpclient.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.smtpclient.send.aspx

Updates were performed on a client's WSUS 3.0 SP2 server this week and KB 2720211 killed WSUS. Here are the symptoms we saw: WSUSDB in single user mode (done as part of the failed update process, but not undone when the update failed) Named pipes disabled (also I think done as part of the failed update process). MMC for WSUS fails with "MMC has detected an error in a snap-in" After doing some research, it seems that this update causes a problem for some servers and not others. This particular server Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit. I'm not sure if that is part of the issue. The resolve is: Use SQL Server Configuration Manager to enable named pipes Use SQL Server Management Studio to change the database to MULTI_USER Stop the Windows Update service and World Wide Web Publishing service before connecting to allow you to use the single connection that is available. Copy some files manually from the update into their correct location. I'm not sure why but it appears o...

I created a lab exercise for course 10751A: Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 that includes an Exercise on installing the new Operations Manager Web Part. This web part displays Operations Manager dashboards in SharePoint sites. By default, the dashboard is accessed based on the credentials you used to log on to SharePoint, but you can override this and use a single set of credentials for all users. This is useful when providing status information to people that do not have Operations Manager permissions. As part of configuring the web part, you need to copy two encryption keys from the Operations Manager Web console into SharePoint. In earlier testing, with beta and release candidate software, this worked flawlessly. In our testing with RTM software we ran into a weird intermittent error where the dashboard could not be accessed by using the shared credentials. In the web part the following message is displayed: An unexpected error has occurred. If you ...