Test Layout

I've been a fool for too long. There is a FREE (yes, FREEEEEEEEE!) tool for performing remote desktop through firewalls. LogMeIn.com has a free version of their tool for remote desktop access through firewalls. This tool is excellent for users that want to remote control and office or home PC when they are in different locations. It is not as well suited for IT professionals that want to control PCs within the internal environment for repairs. The biggest benefit of this software is that no firewall configuration is required. After the agent is installed on the PC, it initiates the connection out through the firewall on port 80. If your computer has web access without authentication, then game on. If you need other tools like the ability to transfer files or print, then you can upgrade to another version with a monthly fee. The other main alternative product with a monthly fee is GoToMyPC.

This may be not overly relevant to many environments, but Microsoft is finally releasing a solution for backing up Exchange 2007 when running on Windows Server 2008. When you install Exchange 2007 SP2 the functionality is added. If you have SBS2008, this functionality is already there. If you are a large organization, you likely have third party backup software that performs Exchange 2007 backups. However, for mid-sized organizations trying to save a few $ on backup software, this is a life saver. I know of one client that will start using this immediately. For more information see: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/05/13/451311.aspx

When you configure Outlook Anywhere or RPC over HTTP, the error messages from the client side are basically useless. However, there is a new Web site that simplifies the troubleshooting process. https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ When I used it to test RPC over HTTP connectivity to our Exchange 2003 server, it came up with an error on our GoDaddy certificate. However, the certificate is legitimate and works fine for both Web stuff and RPC over HTTP. So, perhaps there's a reason it's still in beta. For a more detailed description of the tool see this article from the MSExchangeTeam: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/03/25/450908.aspx

I was playing with Windows 7 today and I noticed that the backup utility is much improved over Vista. Two big things: You can backup just specific files and folders. In Vista, it was done on a per volume (drive letter) basis. The disk you back up to does not need to be dedicated to backup. So, you can just keep a folder for backups. Vista took a whole partition and then hid it from you so that you couldn't put other data on it.

I just taught the Windows 2008 clustering course last week and figure I better get some notes related to it before I forget. It seems that every course I teach no matter how much I think I know, I have new info highlighted by students concerns or just plain old figure out something new. This course was no exception: Clustering in Windows 2008 is much easier than previous versions of Windows. The wizardized process is very easy. You barely need to understand what clustering is to get this up and running. Printer clusters now store their drivers as part of the printing cluster on shared disk. You no longer need to worry about synchronizing drivers on different cluster nodes. File share clusters are accessible only by name and not IP address. It seems like they are using a technology similar to host headers on an IIS Web site. iSCSI shared storage can be access two different ways. Both nodes in the cluster can share the same target (the way I've always done in the past) or two targets...

One of the new features in Exchange 2007 is built-in support for managing resource mailboxes. The help docs for this, to me, seemed a bit difficult to understand. I've been meaning to go through an write a decent guide on how to use them, but never got around to it. Turns our the MS Exchange Team beat me to it. However, since this is way past release, none of us were particularly speedy on this. However, here's the link: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/02/26/450776.aspx

I've been doing a lot of work with Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 for a recent project. Backup needs to be addressed as part of this project. So, I started testing out Data Protection Manager (DPM) and found it to be quite nice. I'd been meaning to take a look at DPM, but never got around to it. Overall it looks like a good and reasonable priced solution for MS shops. There is no agent available for non-Windows servers. The big thing with DPM is that it's disk-based backup with an option to go to tape. Your initial backup on a server is a full backup, but after that, it's all snapshots. Makes a daily backup go much faster. You can archive to tape on a schedule that you determine. So, cool from that perspective. Now for backing Hyper-V and Virtual Server VMs you have two options. First, install an agent in the VM and backup the VM like a physical server. This option gives you the most flexibility because you can choose what data to back up and wh...