After resetting your password and signing into Lync, you may be repeatedly prompted to enter a user name and password so Lync can connect to Outlook. See below:
Solution
Remove the Microsoft_OC1:uri=username@domain.com:specific:EWS1 entry from Credential Manager (Windows Vault)
We had an issue recently with End User Recovery for DPM 2010 recently , where on certain shares on a file server we were backing up didn’t show previous versions, with the following error “There are no previous versions available”.
Working Previous version on file share
Failing Previous versions on the same file share
To resolve this issue we had to do the following
Now we’ve removed the share from DPM we will need to do some changes in AD via ADSI Edit.
The first thing we need to do is find the canonical name of the share, so if you open command prompt on a server with AD tools and Asdiedit installed such as a DC and run the following command.
Change the below in Bold to match your domain
dsquery * cn=ms-sharemapconfiguration,cn=system,dc=Domain, dc=com –attr ms-productionSrvShare cn -limit 1000 > C:shares.txt
Once you have run the above command open the shares.txt file on the C drive that would of been outputted
Example of outputted file
ms-productionSrvShare cn
MS-ShareMapConfiguration
\ServerShare def225c9-0816-4192-bcea-46f1fb71f5b6
Now open ADSIEDIT but keep the shares.txt file open so we can refer to it
Once that has been done wait for your AD to replicate or force replication.
Now you need to modify the protection group that is backing up the file share in question.
Wait for the consistency check to complete and then previous versions should be working again 
Microsoft have recently announced they will be releasing MCITP certification for Office 365. These will be in the form of two exams:
Exam 70-323: Administering Office 365 intended for IT professionals who administer Microsoft Office 365 in an environment that may include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Lync, and/or Microsoft SharePoint – link . Once passed you will be awarded with Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Administering Office 365.
AND
Exam 70-321: Deploying Office 365 intended for consultants and IT professionals who plan and implement Office 365. This includes migrations to Office 365 (simple and hybrid deployments) – link . Once passed you will be awarded with Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP): Office 365 Administrator.
Cheers
Paul
For all those out there who are looking to move some of their services to the cloud, there is an free online resource from Microsoft that will take you though the steps required in order to set up your environment for a move to the cloud:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/hh699847
You only need Silverlight installed and each lab is around 20 to 30 minutes in total. It also covers Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.
Used in conjunction with other online documentation answered a lot of questions that I had about setting this up.
Cheers
Paul
We had an issue recently when trying to access an external FTP site. We tried to open the FTP website via Windows Explorer, we typed our credentials in and we got the following error.
The part we are interested in is the “502 Active FTP not allowed” , this is due to the fact that Active FTP is automatically disabled via TMG.
To allow Active FTP in TMG do the Following
Also do the following on the access rule you created to allow FTP access
You will now be able to access the FTP site 
Re-post from; http://www.windowsitpro.com/content1/tabid/57/catpath/virtualization/topic/windows-server-8-hyperv-30-evens-odds-vsphere-140573
At the recent Windows Server Workshop at the Microsoft campus in Redmond Washington Jeff Woolsey, Principle Program Manager Lead for Windows Virtualization in the Windows Server and Cloud division presented the new features in the next version of their Hyper-V virtualization platform. In the introduction to the workshop Jeffery Snover, Distinguished Engineer and the Lead Architect for the Windows Server Division made the bold statement that with Microsoft it’s the third release is where Microsoft really gets it right and with regard to what Microsoft demonstrated in the next version of Hyper-V this is definitely true. The upcoming Hyper-V 3.0 release that’s included in the next version of Windows Server has closed the technology gap with VMware’s vSphere.
Hyper-V 3.0 Scalability
The days when Hyper-V lagged behind VMware in terms of scalability are a thing of the past. The new Hyper-V 3.0 meets or exceeds all of the scalability marks that were previously VMware-only territory. Hyper-V 3.0 hosts support up to 160 logical processors (where a logical processor is either a core or a hyperthread) and up to 2 TB RAM. On the VM guest side, Hyper-V 3.0 guests will support up to 32 virtual CPUs with up to 512 GB RAM per VM. More subtle changes include support for guest NUMA where the guest VM has processor and memory affinity with the Hyper-V host resources. NUMA support is important for ensuring scalability increases as the number of available host processors increase.
Multiple Concurrent Live Migration and Storage Live Migration
Perhaps more important than the sheer scalability enhancements are the changes in Live Migration and the introduction of Storage Live Migration. Live Migration was introduced in Hyper-V 2.0 which came out with Windows Server 2008 R2. While it filled an important hole in the Hyper-V feature set it wasn’t up to par with the VMotion capability provided in vSphere. Live Migration was limited to a single Live Migration at a time while ESX Server was capable of performing multiple simultaneous VMotions. In addition, vSphere supported a similar feature called Storage VMotion which allowed a VM’s storage to be moved to new locations without incurring any downtime. Hyper-V 3.0 erases both of these advantages. Hyper-V 3.0 supports multiple concurrent Live Migrations. There are no limits to the number of concurrent Live Migrations that can take place with Hyper-V 3.0. In addition, Hyper-V 3.0 also provides full support for Storage Live Migration where a virtual machine’s files ( the configuration, virtual disk and snapshot files) can be moved to different storage locations without any interruption of end user connectivity to the guest VM.
Microsoft also threw in one additional twist that vSphere has never had. Hyper-V 3.0 has the ability to perform Live Migration and Storage Live Migration without the requirement of a shared storage on the backend. The removal of this requirement really helps bring the availability advantages of Live Migration to small and medium sized businesses that came afford a SAN or don’t want to deal with the complexities of a SAN. The ability to perform Live Migration without requiring shared storage really sets Hyper-V apart from vSphere and will definitely be a big draw – especially for SMBs that haven’t implemented virtualization yet.
VHDX, ODX, Virtual Fiber Channel & Boot from SAN
Another important enhancement with Hyper-V 3.0 was the introduction of a new virtual disk format called VHDX. The new VHDX format breaks the 2TB limit that was present in the older VHD format and pushes the maximum size of the virtual disk up to 16 TB per VHDX. The new format also provides improved performance, support for larger block sizes and is more resilient to corruption.
Hyper-V 3.0 also supports a feature called Offloaded Date Transfer (ODX). ODX enables Hyper-V to take advantage of the storage features of a backend shared storage subsystem. When performing file copies on an ODX enabled SAN the OS hands off all of the data transfer tasks to the SAN providing much high file copy performance with zero to minimal CPU utilization. There is no special ODX button. Instead ODX works in the backend. ODX requires the storage subsystem to support ODX.
Companies that use fiber channel SANs will appreciate the addition of the virtual Fiber Channel support in the Hyper-V guests. Hyper-V 3.0 guests can have up to four virtual fiber channel host bus adapters. The virtual HBAs appear in the VMs as devices very like virtual NICs and other virtual devices. Hyper-V VMs will also be able to boot from both fiber channel and iSCSI SANs.
Extensible Virtual Switch & NIC Teaming
In keeping par with the sweeping changes in Hyper-V’s compute capabilities and storage Microsoft also made a some of significant enhancements to Hyper-V’s networking capabilities. First, they updated the virtual switch that’s built into the Hyper-V hypervisor. The new virtual switch has a number of new capabilities multi-tenant capability as well as the ability to provide minimum and maximum bandwidth guarantees. In addition to these features the new virtual switch is also extensible. Microsoft provides a API that allows capture, filter and forwarding extensions. To ensure the high quality of these virtual switch extensions Microsoft will be initiating a Hyper-V virtual switch logo program.
Another overdue feature that will be a part of Windows Server 8 is the built-in ability to provide NIC teaming natively in the operating system. VMware’s ESX Server has provided NIC teaming for some time. Prior to Windows Server 8 you could only get NIC teaming for Windows via specialized NICs from Broadcom and Intel. The new NIC teaming works across heterogonous vendor NICs and can provide support for load balancing as well as failover.
The Magic Number 3
As Jeffery Snover pointed out three does seem to be the magic number – at least for Hyper-V. Hyper-V 3.0 brings Microsoft’s virtualization on par with VMware’s vSphere. Businesses that are just getting into to virtualization or those businesses that may be bulking at VMware’s latest price increases will find Hyper-V to be a very cost effective and highly competitive alternative.
Smart Teaming
Risual are one of 21 partners within the Microsoft Consulting Services Smart Teaming Agreement. Established in January 2011 the Smart Teaming agreement has been setup to enable efficient, predictable, and transparent partner sub-contracting relationships by standardizing the engagement process, sharing skills / capability, demand data, and driving consistent value for Microsoft and its partners.
The Smart Teaming agreement runs for three calendar years ensuring a strong relationship is established and maintained between partners and Microsoft Consulting Services. The agreement enables partners to support Microsoft with augmenting key engagements by providing skills that cover the Microsoft stack and also supplying niche and in demand skills.
In the UK, Microsoft are committed to ensuring 80% of all sub-contracting is covered by the Smart Teaming partners and to date has been a great success in achieving this metric.
When using the SharePoint command-line tool STSADM, you may receive “Command line error.” even though the syntax is correct:
Solution
Manually type out the command rather than copying/pasting from another application such as Internet Explorer. This is caused by the encoding method, particularly any hyphens in the command. Hyphens and dashes vary between ANSI and UTF-8 encoding.
Microsoft have released an Outlook connector for Facebook , you can get the download from here http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5039&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all
Instructions to Set up
Once Added you will be able to see your friends latest posts, status updates etc from the People pane in Outlook 
Microsoft has recently revealed the new file system RsFS. Much more detail can be found at the following blog:
In this blog, I am just highlighting some of the key things to take away about ReFS:
Cheers
Paul
