With some hours to go it will be the end of the year 2008! It was a very great year, with a lot of new bloggers, great new products and a lot of great topics! Let’s hope 2009 will be also a great year and that we’re gonna blog some nice things in this world of bits and bytes!
Thanks to everyone who visited my blog. I hope you’ll visit my blog also in the next years 
From now on, everyone a great and wonderfull 2009!!
Greetz Mark
Ex-colleague Duncan Epping wrote a great article on his blog about running Exchange 2007 on VMware ESX. You can find this article here.
- Installation
- Best practices
- Migration
- Storage solutions
Have a look on his blog, there are some great articles more, so check it out by yourself on Yellow-Bricks.com
This new Microsoft site lets you test you Exchange 200x remote connecttivity. You can choose the following tests:
Exchange Connectivity Analyzer
- Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Test
This test will simulate the steps a mobile device uses to connect to an Exchange Server using Echange ActiveSync.
- Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync AutoDiscover Test
This test will walk through the steps a Windows Mobile 6.1 device (or another AirSync licensed device) uses to connect to the AutoDiscover Service
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 AutoDiscover Connectivity Test
This test will walk through the steps Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 uses to connect to AutoDiscover
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 RPC/HTTP Connectivity Test
This test will walk through the steps Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 uses to connect via RPC/HTTP
- Inbound SMTP Email Test
This test will walk through the steps an Internet e-mail server uses to send inbound SMTP email to your domain
Today I was testing some things in my virtual 2008 Server Core. When you are browing through regedit, it’s easy to have a bigger screen resolution. You can change the screen resolution in the register, using regedit.
- Log into Server Core with an admin account
- Run Regedit from the command prompt and modify the following reg keys:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video
- you will find one or more GUIDs. Expand each one to find the one with a VolatileSettings subkey under the 0000 subkey (usually the first GUID)
- Double-click the 0000 key and modify the DefaultSettings.XResolution and DefaultSettings.YResolution values to set your resolution
- Close Regedit
Logoff and log back on to receive the new resolution settings.
When you’re deploying a new Active Directory environment, you have also have to design the new group policy structure. When you need to search for a specific policy and you don’t know where you can find it, use the following excel sheet. This sheet lists the policy settings for computer and user configurations included in the Administrative template files (.admx/.adml) delivered with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).
You can filter on the following options:
- Filename (.admx)
- Policy Setting Name
- Scope (User of Machine)
- Policy Path
- Registry information (HKLU or HKLC)
- Requirements
- Explain text
- Supported On
- Reboot required
- Logoff Required
In this article we are going to install a Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. First of all, i’ve downloaded the free ISO on the Microsoft Download Center.
Download Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 here
There are a copple of prerequisites for using Hyper-V Server 2008:
- Hyper-V Server 2008 is a 64-bit only technology and requires a 64-bit capable hardware with Intel VT or AMD-V technology enabled.
- Processor : Intel Pentium 4, Xeon, Core 2 DUO processor; AMD Opteron, Athlon 64, Athlon X2, . Hardware Data Execution Protection (DEP) must be available and be enabled. Specifically, you must enable Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit).
- Minimum CPU speed : 1 GHz; Recommended: 2 GHz or faster
- RAM : Minimum: 1 GB RAM; Recommended: 2+ GB RAM; Maximum 32 GB
- Required Available disk space: 2GB of available hard disk space (additional disk space needed for each guest operating system)
The installation contains seven steps, then your new Hyper-V Server 2008 is running……almost
After you changed the password for the Administrator account, the Hyper-V Configuration Tool (hvconfig.cmd) automatically launches. You can use it for:
Change the computer name (requires a reboot)
Change workgroup settings or domain membership settings (requires a reboot)
Change network settings
Add local Administrator accounts
Change Windows Update settings
Download and install Windows updates.
Change Remote Desktop settings
Change Regional and Language settings (through inet.cpl)
Change Date and Time settings (through timedate.cpl)
Log off, restart and shutdown
As you can see, the installation is done within a few steps. Configuration can easally be done with the Hyper-V Configurator.
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 is a great choice for customers who want a basic and simplified virtualization solution for consolidating servers as well as for development and test environments. Hyper-V Server 2008 only offers the most basic of virtualization features, making it ideal for:
- Test and Development
- Basic Server Consolidation
- Branch Office Consolidation
- Hosted Desktop Virtualization (VDI)
Customers who require richer and more robust virtualization features, such as Quick Migration, multi-site clustering, large memory support (greater than 32 GB of RAM), and more than four processors on the host server, should use Windows Server 2008.
Windows Server 2008 provides business continuity, disaster recovery, greater scalability for consolidating large workloads, and flexible and cost-effective virtualization rights (one free virtual instance for Standard Edition, four free virtual instances for Enterprise Editions, and unlimited virtual instances for Datacenter Edition with the purchase of a license of Windows Server 2008).
The following table outlines which Hyper-V–enabled product would suit your needs:
ExInsight is a free monitoring and statistics tool for Exchange 2000/2003/2007 that provides a real-time view of the internals of Exchange Server transactions and allows you to evaluate individual user’s usage of Exchange Server.
This tool is especially useful for Exchange administrators and developers. By using this tool, you can gather real-time data about the users in an Exchange environment and learn more about the inner workings of MAPI, OWA, POP3, IMAP4, NNTP and other protocols.
ExInsight helps you to understand how individual users affect the performance of an Exchange Server, analyze application usage of Microsoft Exchange, and guide troubleshooting of applications that depend on Microsoft Exchange.
ExInsight consists of two tools: Activity Statistics and Transaction Monitor . These tools allow you to monitor users’ activity on multiple Exchange servers from any computer in the network.
Activity Statistics
This tool enables administrators to view statistics about individual users’ consumptions of Exchange Server resources and the users’ actual experiences. Shown on a user-by-user basis, this tool allows you to see the following information:
- Protocols used by the clients (MAPI, OWA, POP3, IMAP or NNTP)
- CPU usage (CPU time, CPU percentage)
- Number of messages sent, received or created
- IP addresses used by the clients (only for MAPI clients)
- Microsoft Office Outlook versions and mode, such as Cached Exchange Mode and the classic online mode
Transaction Monitor
This tool displays a continuous communication between any computer and Exchange Server, helping to guide troubleshooting of applications that depend on Exchange. You can view and log every Exchange Server transaction, applying filters and highlighting to pinpoint trouble areas.
Transaction Monitor shows accounts requesting the data, the names and locations of the objects queried in Exchange, timings and transaction results. This tool also provides simplified summaries and links with detailed diagnostic information for each transaction.
Download Version 1.1.152 – 7.38 MB (without .NET Framework 2.0, prerequisite)
Download Version 1.1.152 – 30.8 MB (with .NET Framework 2.0 included)
