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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

DFs File Share for Lync

May 4th, 2012 brianc Comments off

If you want to use a DFs share as the file store in a Lync topology, you will need to install the Cumulative Update 5 after installing the Topology Builder but before you run it to configure your topology for the first time.

Further details and the fix can be found in this KB Article KB2666344

BrianC

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AD RMS with Hardware Load Balancer

May 4th, 2012 Ashley Moore Comments off

Just wanted to create a quick post to share an issue i had recently while on a customer site installing an AD RMS High Availability solution.

The solution had two AD RMS servers using a HLB for redundancy, both servers were installed and joined to the same RMS cluster with no problems. However when the HLB was introduced we couldn’t protect content. Also we couldn’t reach the certification cluster URL (https://ADRMS.yourdomain.com/_wmcs/certification/certification.asmx) IE would just time out eventually.

To cut a long story short after checking all the usual things such as SCP, connectivity, Load Balancer config, DNS etc. it turns out that AD RMS doesn’t like cookie encryption on the HLB! Once we disabled cookie encryption clients were getting load balanced as expected and able to protect content Smile

(note: This particular HLB was F5 BIG-IP)

Ash

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CRM 2011 Rollup 8 Released

May 3rd, 2012 Daniel Davies Comments off

Just to let you know CRM 2011 Rollup 8  has been released Smile

You can download from the following location http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29692&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all

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Trials and Tribulations of SCCM replication…

May 1st, 2012 steveh Comments off

Hi there,

A customer I am working with recently implemented a new child primary site and all seemed to be ticking along smoothly until a rather angry DBA turned up to ask why disk space was being consumed at the rate of knots on the SQL server hosting the SCCM databases…First things first, I was impressed with the speed that the DBA noticed this as the database hadn’t actually grown that ‘large’, and as SCCM admins we generally keep an eye on database/backup sizes. 1-0 to the SQL DBA :)

Now in my experience a fast growing SCCM database generally indicates one of two things; inbox issues or more commonly – site replication issues. Given this was the first child site to be introduced in the hierarchy therefore introducing the first ‘replication’ of content then this seemed like a good avenue to start investigating.

So first things first. Let’s check the database sizes out ourselves (not that we don’t trust the DBA!). We logged on to the SQL server and reviewed the SQL ‘data’ location where we found the SCCM parent site database had ballooned by approx 20% and the new child site database was nearly the same size as the parent site which is strange given it has approx. 90% less client data!

Now that we know that an issue exists we need to identify exactly what tables contain all this ‘extra data’. To do that we need to fire up SQL Management Studio, and log on to the instance as a user with permissions to run a few queries…

First we ran the following query on  both databases to identify large tables;

http://www.sqlteam.com/downloads/BigTables.sql (please note this query is from a third party and has not been tested and as such this is run at your own risk!)

This demonstrated that on the parent site the following tables were consuming more space than expected;

  • StatusMessageinsstrs
  • StatusMessages
  • StatusMessageAttributes

And on the new child primary site;

  • TS_TaskSequences

This was the interesting table – it was approx 90% the total size of the database and only had 45 rows! The same table on the parent site was approx 2mb and had 52 rows. You can check the size directly in SQL Management Studio if you wish.

So first things first – the status messages. Let’s review the component status view in the SCCM console. From here we got a bit more information – the SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER component was flagging thousands of notifications. Viewing this component demonstrated that there were several task sequences repeatedly processing every 5 seconds. Ah! Well first things first we have a patch that should be applied to address issues with distribution points repeatadly processing content/packages/task sequences… and this is KB978021. So let’s install that (on any and all DPs) to suppress these status messages.

Now we need a solution to get rid of some of the status messages in the database of the parent site. It is bad practice to interact with the database directly and for obvious reasons is not supported by Microsoft so therefore we need to look at another way. Another blog post came up with the following solution;

  • Fire up WBEMTEST
  • Namespace: rootsmssite_<code>
  • Execute Method
  • Path: sms_statusmessage
  • Select ‘Detect By Query’
  • Edit In Parameters
  • Select WQLSelect
  • Select ‘NOT NULL’
  • Query:
    • Select * from sms_statusmessage where messageid=’number’ and component = ‘SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER’

This will remove the status messages and can take some time. If there are lots of these to do then you should consider doing this in chunks. (Again, please try this in a test environment first to ensure no adverse affects occur in your production environment) It is worth noting that status messages are cleared up automatically by one of the SCCM site maintenance tasks… by default audit/component status messages are kept for 180 days, and this is configured in the status message filter section of the site settings.

We should now see the size of the parent site database has decreased. Half way there! Whilst we have stopped the status messages being generated we haven’t fixed the underlying issue. Why were these task sequences constantly processing? For that my next avenue was to look in the DISTMGR log file on the child site. Lo and behold I was greeted with the following messages;

“Failed to insert SMS Package <Packge_ID> because SDM Type Content <Unique_ContentID> is not present in the CI_Contents table. Will try later.”

These messages were repeated constantly, and there was 3 different Package ID’s referenced.

Now whilst these messages lead me to the solution it was a bit confusing as the CI_Contents table pertains to Software Updates. Now this site has a replica WSUS and did at one stage host a SUP however this was removed previously as it was added incorrectly. Whether this caused the issue we were seeing is unknown and was not investigated further.

I took the package ID and compared it to the ‘references’ tab on the task sequences that were not replicating and all the task sequences contained these packages which turned out to be Driver Packages. To resolve the issue  I simply re-created the driver package and modified the task sequences to point to the new version. Very simple, and it worked (after restarting the SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER component)… the messages disappeared from the DISTMGR log.

So we are nearly there, however one final thing we need to do is reclaim that database space to make the DBA happy. There are a number of SQL commands that can be used, however it is important to note that editing the database is not supported unless instructed to do so by Microsoft Premier Support. Doing so can leave you in an unsupported state. The commands are listed here for reference for you to use in your test environments;

  • dbcc cleantable (SMS_CEN, TS_TaskSequence)
  • dbcc shrinkdatabase (SMS_CEN)

Where SMS_CEN is the name of your database…
It is worth noting that these take a long time to run, approximately 1 hour per 10gb.

Thanks,
SteveH

 

Code blocks are not allowed in this file error in SharePoint 2010

April 30th, 2012 Jovan Davis Comments off

We came across the below issue after a using uploaded some files to a SharePoint site. When navigating to the affected site users would receive the following error:

An error occurred during the processing of /site/SharedDocuments/Forms/AllItems.aspx. Code blocks are not allowed in this file.

Solution:

The AllItems.aspx had become corrupt. To resolve this we replaced the Allitems.aspx file with one from a working site. To access the files, use the “Open with Explorer” option in SharePoint and navigate to the “Forms” folder.

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Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 Released

April 27th, 2012 Daniel Davies Comments off

Just to let you know Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (KB2645995) has been released Smile

You can download the rollup from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29427

Rollup 2 contains the following fixes (Referenced from http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2661854)

Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 SP2 resolves the issues that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

  • A meeting request that is sent by an external user or by using a non-Microsoft email system is stamped as Busy instead of Tentative in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Slow performance when you create many contacts by using Exchange Web Services in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Email messages in the Sent Items folder have the same PR_INTERNET_MESSAGE_ID property in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Customized contact objects revert to the default form after a public folder database replication in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • You cannot generate an OAB file that is larger than 2GB in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • A user can log on to a mailbox by using Outlook for Mac 2011 unexpectedly in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • MAPI_E_INVALID_PARAMETER errors occur when a MAPI application receives notifications in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • A hidden user is still displayed in the Organization information of Address Book in OWA in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Event ID 3022 is logged and you cannot replicate a public folder from one Exchange Server 2010 server to another
  • Returned message items can disappear from the search results view when you use Outlook in online mode in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Error message when you use the “Folder.Bind” method in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • An email message from an Exchange Server 2003 user is forwarded incorrectly to an external recipient of an Exchange Server 2010 user mailbox
  • A read receipt is not sent when a receiver does not expand a conversation to preview the message by using OWA in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • The Get-FederatedDomainProof cmdlet fails in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 environment
  • An external email message is not delivered to mail-enabled public folders and you do not receive NDR messages in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Updates for a meeting request are sent to all attendees directly in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Text in tables is displayed incorrectly in the Conversation view in Outlook Web App in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • You encounter failures when you run the Test-EcpConnectivity cmdlet to test Exchange Control Panel connectivity in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • CPU resources are used up when you use the Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration cmdlet in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • “More than one mailbox has the same e-mail address” error message when you try to manage a mailbox in a tenant organization in an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Hosting mode environment
  • An ActiveSync user cannot access a mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 forest
  • An email address policy does not generate the email addresses of recipients correctly in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • OK button is not displayed when you change your password in Outlook Web App by using Firefox in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Certain MailboxStatistics properties are not updated when a user uses a POP3 or IMAP4 client to access a mailbox in an Exchange 2010 environment
  • DPM protection agent service may stop responding on Exchange Server 2010 servers that are protected by System Center DPM 2010
  • Error message when you open an RTF email message that has inline attachments in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • A user in a trusted account forest cannot use the EMC to manage an Exchange Server 2010 SP2 server
  • Error message when you try to copy the Inbox folder to another folder in Outlook in online mode in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • The Microsoft Exchange File Distribution service consumes large amounts of memory in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • The user-agent information about an Exchange ActiveSync device is not updated in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • The display name of a contact in address book is empty in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • An EWS application crashes when it calls the GetStreamingEvents operation in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Error message when a user who does not have a mailbox tries to move or delete an item that is in a shared mailbox by using Outlook Web App Premium
  • W3wp.exe consumes excessive CPU resources on Exchange Server 2010 Client Access servers when users open recurring calendar items in mailboxes by using Outlook Web App or EWS
  • EdgeTransport.exe process crashes in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Whatif switch does not work in the Set-MoveRequest or Resume-MoveRequest cmdlet in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Resource mailbox does not forward meeting request to delegates after one of the delegates’ mailbox is disabled in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • The update tracking information option does not work in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • File name of a saved attachment is incorrect when you use OWA in Firefox 8 in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Incorrect delivery report when you send an email message to a recipient who has configured an external forwarding address in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • EdgeTransport.exe process crashes without sending an NDR message when you send a message to a distribution group in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • Day of the week is not localized in MailTips in Outlook Web App in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • You cannot log on to Outlook Web App when a proxy is set up in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
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Setting the Maximum Send and Receive Size for all users in a certain Distribution Group in Exchange 2010

April 27th, 2012 Daniel Davies Comments off

Here is a quick command you can run from the Exchange management shell which will set the Maximum Send and Receive Size for all users in the specified Distribution Group.

In The Below Example i’m setting the Send/Receive Limit to 100mb for all users in the Distribution Group called DG1.

Get-DistributionGroup DG1| Get-DistributionGroupMember | Set-Mailbox -MaxSendSize 100mb -MaxReceiveSize 100mb

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System Center 2012 Official Release #mms2012

April 17th, 2012 steveh Comments off

We can finally talk/blog about it…. System Center 2012 release just announced at MMS 2012 :) RTM code is on your VLS! Get downloading!

It’s Official….. we can drop the ’8′

April 17th, 2012 steveh Comments off

It’s just been announced at MMS2012 that the next Server edition will be Windows Server 2012. We can finally drop the ’8′ :)

Cumulative Update 5 for Lync 2010 is now available

April 13th, 2012 Jovan Davis Comments off

CU5 for Lync Server 2010 is now available, see the articles below for more details:

View article…

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2493736

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