Next event: Microsoft Teched Europe 2013

This week I’ve registered for the Microsoft Teched Europe 2013 in Madrid, Spain 25 – 28 June. I realy look forward to this great event and to meet some IT pro’s, MVP, speakers and vendors.

See you all in Madrid!!

techEd2013Madrid

KEMP LoadMaster v7.0-4 firmware is now available with Edge Security Pack

Kemp announced  Firmware release LoadMaster 7.0-4. Now Microsoft has announced that the support for Microsoft TMG will stop, we have to look further for an reverse proxy solution. Ofcource  there is Microsoft UAG, but with the new Edge Security Pack for KEMP Load Master, it is now possible to configure reverse proxy within the load balancers! Here you can view the new announcement from KEMP Technologies!

Figure_01

Figure_02

New Features and Feature Enhancements:
•Edge Security Pack – A range of new security features has been added to the LoadMaster.
•Sub-VS Support – The LoadMaster now supports the creation and management of sub-VSs.
•Graphical Metrics – There is a new dashboard home screen with the capability to display graphical performance information.
•New License format – A new license format has been introduced
•Oracle VirtualBox VLM – A new VLM package, to support VLM installation within an Oracle VirtualBox environment is available
•MIBS files have been updated
•SID and revision information included in IPS logging
•VLAN Separation per Interface •Support for larger TCP window sizes
•‘Kill switch’ is now supported on all LoadMaster versions
•LM-R320 has its serial number visible on the WUI
•The Netconsole Host interface is configurable via the WUI

Issues Resolved:
•Issue with SMTP STARTTLS when a client sends an EHLO is resolved
•Issue with ACL whitelist allowing other IPs is resolved
•Issue with switching VS types under load is resolved
•Some reboot issues have been resolved
•An issue with caching on Firefox has been resolved
•The “-“ character is now allowed in the DNS Search Domain field
•Issues with the MIBS have been resolved
•A circular routing problem has been resolved
•SNMP trap Source IP has been changed to pre 5.1-48 behaviour
•SSL renegotiation can be toggled on/off
•SSLv2 is no longer used for LoadMaster initiated SSL connections
•An issue with Not Available Redirection XSS has been resolved
•The Default IP is now displayed on the WUI when DHCP fails
•An issue with VS Specific insert X-Clientside header being overwritten by system default has been resolved
•The “-“ character is now allowed in the User Login field
•An issue with the Fail on Match functionality has been resolved
•An issue with Maximum Cache Size has been resolved

Known Issues:
• Quick setup Help appears automatically if no IP address is configured on the LM if a VLAN is configured on eth0 and no IP address is assigned to the underlying interface (eth0)

LoadMaster version v7.0-4 supports the following hardware:
•LM-2000
•LM-2200
•LM-2500
•LM-2600
•LM-3500
•LM-3600
•LM-5300
•LM-5500
•LM-Exchange
•LM-R320
•VLM-100
•VLM-1000
•VLM-Exchange

NOTE – ESP is supported on select LoadMaster models and new VLM installations.

Learn more about LoadMaster 7.0:

Manual
Full Release Notes
Full Documentation

Windows 8 Client Hyper-V copy/paste

A new feature within Windows 8 is Client Hyper-V. So within our Client OS you can run Hyper-V, that’s cool!! When you want to copy and paste some text, for example a script, this is not that easy as drag and drop or copy/paste! Is it possible? Yes, absolutely!!

The thing you need to do is copy the text on your local system, navigate back to your quest machine (VM), select the clipboard tab and hit Type clipboard text. Now you text is copied from the local machine into your quest machine!

2013-04-26_17h05_17    2013-04-26_17h09_35

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RES Workspace Manager 2012 Recent Files not vissible in start menu

A copple of months ago I have configured a new Citrix XenApp 6.5 with RES Workspace Manager 2012 environment. Within this environment I have configured mandatory profiles, added to Workspace Manager as a custom resource.

When the user are opening some documents, the Recent Files folder is filled up with the last opened document. The save location is C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent.

I’ve created a new User Setting to save the content within this folder. Now there is something strange happening!! The content is saved within a UPF (User Preference File) correctly, but its not vissible in the user session from the start menu.

When I open a commandline and browse to my user profile, the content is there! Huh…?!? After some troubleshooting, I have figured out that I had to change one setting within my custom resource. The folder AppData\Microsoft\Windows\Recent was marked as Read-Only. That’s the problem! After disabling the Read-Only, the recent files are vissible from my start menu.

Recent_Files_01    Recent_Files_02    Recent_Files_03

Recent_Files_04    Recent_Files_05    Recent_Files_06

Recent_Files_07    Recent_Files_08

How to: Enable data deduplication in Windows Server 2012

A very cool new feature within Windows Server 2012 is Data Deduplication. Windows will look on block level to duplicate files and removes this files with pointers to the duplicate files. This can save you a lot of diskspace! Data Deduplication can be enabled on all the volumes of your server, except the boot volume!

By default, Data Deduplication will only deduplicate data that is not changed over the last 30 days. You can change this value to any numbers of days you want. Lets enable Data Deduplication. After enabling Data Deduplication, there are three scheduled tasks available (only vissible through PowerShell).

In my example I’ve copied the Windows Server 2012 ISO three times to my ISO partition. So there are three folder called ISO1, ISO2 and ISO3. All the folder contains exact the same data. So three times the ISO files are around the 10 GB of storage on my disk. Watch the result after enabling this great new feature….do you have any idea?? ;)

1.) Open the  Server Manager and enable Data Deduplication on the File and Storage Services server role.
2.) Or open PowerShell and enable this rol
Import-Module ServerManager
Add-WindowsFeature -name
FS-Data-Deduplication
3.) Enable Deduplication on the specific volume or volumes
Import-Module Deduplication
Enable-DedupVolume
E:
4.) View the new scheduled Deduplication jobs
Get-DedupSchedule
5.) Change the MinimumFileAgeDays value to 0
Set-DedupVolume E: -MinimumFileAgeDays 0
6.) Start the Deduplication jobs manualy
Start-DedupJob E: -Type Optimazation
Start-DedupJob E: -Type GarbageCollection
Start-DedupJob E: -Type
Scrubbing
7.) After a few minutes, watch the result!
Get-DedupStatus
How cool is that. Are you also going to enable Data Deduplication? ;)

DEDUP_02    DEDUP_03    DEDUP_04

DEDUP_05    DEDUP_06    DEDUP_07

DEDUP_08    DEDUP_09    DEDUP_10

How to: Enable Jumbo frames on your ISCSI network interface using PowerShell

When building an Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V environment, you want to automate some steps on all the cluster nodes. One of this steps is definitely enabling Jumbo frames on your ISCSI interface(s). You can do this on the properties of you NIC interface, but when you’re installing Hyper-V 2012 Server…YES, there’s no GUI.

The great thing is that there is something called PowerShell ;) . You can configure Jumbo frames using PowerShell.

1.) Open PowerShell
2.) Generate an overview of all the Network Interfaces in your Hyper-V host
Get-NetAdapter | ft Name
In my labenvironment there are two ISCSI interfaces (ISCSI01 and ISCSI02)
3.) Show the advanced NIC properties of the ISCSI interfaces
Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -name ISCSI01
Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -name
ISCSI02
As you can see, Jumbo Packet is Disabled
4.) Configure the most common Jumbo Frame setting of 9014 bytes. Note that not all SAN’s supports this value.
Set-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name ISCSI01 -RegistryKeyword “*JumboPacket” -Registryvalue 9014
Set-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name ISCSI02 -RegistryKeyword “*JumboPacket” -Registryvalue 9014
5.) Now Jumbo frames is enabled
Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -name ISCSI01
Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -name
ISCSI02

JF_01    JF_02    JF_03

JF_04    JF_05    JF_06

Released: Exchange Server 2013 RTM Cumulative Update 1

Yesterday, the Microsoft Exchange Team has released Cumulative Update 1 for Exchange 2013 RTM. CU1 is the minimum version of Exchange 2013 required for on-premises coexistence with supported legacy Exchange Server versions. The final build number for CU1 is 15.0.620.29.

This is the Exchange 2013 product level required for co-existence with previous versions of Exchange, being Exchange Server 2010 SP3 or Exchange Server 2007 SP3 Rollup 10.

The Exchange Team provided a description of the major changes in CU1. You will find the announcement here;
Here are some of the major changes in CU1:

  • Includes Address Book Policy Routing Agent (info);
  • Allows group memberships to be managed by groups (again, as it was possible in Exchange 2007 but not in );
  • Access to Public Folders you have added as favorites via your favorites menu either in Outlook or Outlook Web App (still no regular Public Folder tree access though);
  • EAC has been enhanced and now includes Unified Messaging management and migration options;
  • Many probes, monitors, and responders have been updated and improved over the RTM release;
  • Get-HealthReport cmdlet has been streamlined and its performance has been optimized;
  • Supports the Exchange Server 2013 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 R2 and SCOM 2012 (due at a later date);
  • High Availability changes

You can download Cumulative Update 1 for Exchange 2013 here.

Be aware, this update requires some preparation first. So be carefull and read the release notes before hitting the install button ;)