Tuesday 30 April 2013

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Exchange Server 2013 Deployment Assistant

  • Upgrading from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2013
  • Upgrading from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013
  • Configuring an Exchange 2013-based hybrid deployment for Exchange 2007 organizations

These new scenarios provide step-by-step guidance about how to upgrade your existing Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 organizations to benefit from the improvements and new features of Exchange 2013. Plus, Exchange 2007 organizations can now configure a hybrid deployment with Office 365 using Exchange 2013 instead of Exchange 2010 SP3 in their on-premises organization.

image

 

image

(Mixed Exchange 2010 and 2007 is still not available)

More information can be found here;

Wednesday 10 April 2013

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 2

image

Update Rollup 2 for System Center SP1 can be found here;

App Controller (KB2815569)
Issue 1
You cannot change the virtual machine network of deployed virtual machines.

Issue 2
The network connection is set to None after you view the network properties of a deployed virtual machine and then click OK.

Issue 3
You cannot view the virtual networks for a virtual machine.

Issue 4
When you change the virtual network in App Controller, you receive the following error message:

10605-InvalidVLanConfiguration

Issue 5
You cannot copy virtual machines that have multiple processors or large amounts of memory from Virtual Machine Manager to a Windows Azure cloud service that already has a deployment.

Issue 6
App Controller requires Microsoft Silverlight 5 but links to the download page for Silverlight 4.

Issue 7
An argument null exception may occur if network connectivity is interrupted.


App Controller Setup (KB2823452)
Issue 1
App Controller cannot be installed if the Microsoft SQL Server database server name starts with a number. For more information about this issue, see Installation of App Controller to a Remote SQL Server fails with Exception Error Code: 0x80131500.

Issue 2
Setup incorrectly reports that the SQL Server database has insufficient disk space.

Issue 3
Setup is unsuccessful when it tries to enable Internet Information Services (IIS).


Operations Manager (KB2826664)
Issue 1
The Web Console performance is very poor when a view is opened for the first time.

Issue 2
The alert links do not open in the Web Console after Service Pack 1 is applied for Operations Manager.

Issue 3
The Distributed Applications (DA) health state is incorrect in Diagram View.

Issue 4
The Details Widget does not display data when it is viewed by using the SharePoint webpart.

Issue 5
The renaming of the SCOM group in Group View will not work if the user language setting is not "English (United States)."

Issue 6
An alert description that includes multibyte UTF-8 characters is not displayed correctly in the Alert Properties view.

Issue 7
The Chinese (Taiwan) Web Console displays the following message even after the SilverlightClientConfiguration.exe program is run: Web Console Configuration Required.

Issue 8
The Application Performance Monitoring (APM) to IntelliTrace conversion is broken when alerts are generated from dynamic module events such as the Unity Container.

Issue 9
Connectivity issues to System Center services are fixed.

Issue 10
High CPU problems are experienced in Operations Manager UI.

Issue 11
Query processor runs out of internal resources and cannot produce a query plan when you open Dashboard views.

Issue 12
Path details are missing for "Objects by Performance."


Operations Manager - UNIX and Linux Monitoring (Management Pack Update) (KB2828653)
Issue 1
The Solaris agent could run out of file descriptors when many multi-version file systems (MVFS) are mounted.

Issue 2
Logical and physical disks are not discoverable on AIX-based computers when a disk device file is contained in a subdirectory.

Issue 3
Rules and monitors that were created by using the UNIX/Linux Shell Command templates do not contain overridable ShellCommand and Timeout parameters.

Issue 4
Process monitors that were created by the UNIX/Linux Process Monitoring template cannot save in an existing management pack that has conflicting references to library management packs.

Issue 5
The Linux agent cannot install on a CentOS or Oracle Linux host by using FIPS version of OpenSSL 0.9.8.


Service Manager (KB2828618)
Issue 1
If the number of "Manual Activities" that are displayed in the Service Manager Portal exceeds a certain limit, page loads may time out and do not render correctly. This results in a blank page.

Issue 2
Incorrect cleanup of a custom related type causes grooming on the EntityChangeLog table to stall. This causes the table to grow significantly.

Issue 3
Service requests complete unexpectedly because of a race condition between workflows.

Issue 4
The console crashes when you double-click a parent incident link on an extended incident class.

Issue 5
PowerShell tasks that were created by using the authoring tool do not run because of an incorrect reference to certain assemblies.

Issue 6
The Exchange management pack is stuck in a Pending state after management pack synchronization.


Orchestrator (KB2828616)
Issue 1
The Monitor SNMP Trap activity publishes incorrect values for strings when a Microsoft SNMP Trap Service connection is used.

Issue 2
Inconsistent results when you use Orchestrator to query an Oracle database.
Data Protection Manager (KB2822782)
Issue 1
An express full backup job in System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 may stop responding on a Hyper-V cluster that has 600 or more virtual machines.

Issue 2
When a System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 item level restore operation is performed on a SharePoint host header-based site collection, the restore operation is unsuccessful.

Issue 3
When you open Data Protection Manager on a computer that is running System Center 2012 Service Pack 1, the Welcome screen does not indicate the correct version of Service Pack 1.

Issue 4
When you perform a disconnected installation of the Data Protection Manager 2012 Service Pack 1 agent, you receive the following error message:  Protection agent cannot be installed on a machine where DPM is installed.

Issue 5
When you use Data Protection Manager 2012 Service Pack 1 for tape backup, you receive the following error message:

The operation failed because of a protection agent failure. (ID 998 Details: The parameter is incorrect (0x80070057))

Issue 6
Backups of CSV volumes may be unsuccessful with metadata file corruption in Data Protection Manager 2012 Service Pack 1.

Issue 7
The Data Protection Manager console may require more time to open than expected when many client systems are being protected.

Downloads;

App Controller (KB2815569)

Operations Manager (KB2828615)

Operations Manager - UNIX and Linux Monitoring (Management Pack Update) (KB2828653)

Service Manager (KB2828618)

Orchestrator (KB2828616)

Data Protection Manager (KB2822782)

image

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Cumulative update 1 for Exchange Server 2013 (KB2816900)

image

From the Exchange Team.

We know a lot of you have been waiting for this, and so it is with great excitement that we announce that Exchange Server 2013 RTM Cumulative Update 1 (CU1) has been released to the web and is available for immediate download! This is the first release using the new servicing model for Exchange Server 2013. In addition to this article, the Exchange 2013 RTM CU1 release notes are also available.

More information can be found here; as always please read the comments section prior to downloading!!


Server Deployment Updates and Changes (Read First)

Once the preparatory steps are completed, you can then deploy CU1 and start your coexistence journey. If this is your first Exchange 2013 server deployment, you will need to deploy both an Exchange 2013 Client Access Server and an Exchange 2013 Mailbox Server into the organization. As explained in Exchange 2013 Client Access Server Role, CAS 2013 is simply an authentication and proxy/redirection server; all data processing (including the execution of remote PowerShell cmdlets) occurs on the Mailbox server. You can either deploy a multi-role server or each role separately (just remember if you deploy them separately, you cannot manage the Exchange 2013 environment until you install both roles).

If you already deployed Exchange 2013 RTM code and want to upgrade to CU1, you will run setup.exe /m:upgrade from a command line after completing the Active Directory preparatory steps or run through the GUI installer. Deploying future cumulative updates will operate in the same manner.

Notes:
- Unlike previous versions, in Exchange 2013, you cannot uninstall a single role from a multi-role server. For example, if you deploy the CAS and MBX roles on a single machine, you cannot later execute setup to remove the CAS role; you can only uninstall all server roles.

- When you deploy the first Exchange 2013 Mailbox server in an existing Exchange organization, a new default Offline Address Book is created.

- If your environment contains only Exchange 2007, and you upgrade to Exchange 2013, keep in mind you cannot deploy Exchange 2010 in that environment at a later time. If you foresee a need to deploy Exchange 2010 servers into your environment, deploy an Exchange 2010 multi-role server (with all four servers roles) prior to executing Exchange 2013 setup.exe /PrepareAD

- Unlike previous versions, cumulative updates do not use the rollup infrastructure; cumulative updates are actually full builds of the product, meaning that when you want to deploy a new server, you simply use the latest cumulative update build available and do not necessarily need to apply additional Exchange Server updates.

- As you start migrating your mailboxes to Exchange 2013, one thing you may notice is that your mailboxes appear to be larger post move. Our improved space calculations may result in a mailbox’s reported size increasing on average of 30% when the mailbox is moved from a legacy version of Exchange to Exchange 2013.

For example, if a mailbox is reported as 10GB in size on Exchange Server 2010, then when the mailbox is moved to Exchange 2013, it may be reported as 13GB. This does not mean that migrating to Exchange 2013 will increase your capacity footprint by 30% per mailbox; it only means that the statistics are including more data about the space the mailbox consumes.


New Functionality Included in Cumulative Update 1
- Address Book Policy Routing Agent has been included in Exchange 2013 RTM CU1.
- Exchange 2013 RTM CU1 groups can once again be owners of groups for membership management.
- Public Folder Favourites Access through Outlook Web App
- Exchange Admin Center (EAC) has been enhanced and now includes Unified Messaging management.

High Availability and Monitoring Enhancements

- The Best Copy Selection algorithm now honors MaximumActiveDatabases.
- Auto-reseed now supports disks that have Bitlocker encryption.
- 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.
- Exchange 2013 RTM CU1 will support the Exchange Server 2013 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).

***Scott (beam me up) Schnoll has posted an update on High Availability Changes in Exchange Server 2013 CU 1

//build/ 2011 Nike Tablet

Interesting read from Build 2011 and the deployment and issues encountered with the Prototype Tablets;

The advance crew also configured the hall so they would be ready to start once Redmond sent down the final bits of the Developer Preview build. The hall was divided into sections, and each section consisted of eight long tables. Four of the tables were arranged in a square, and the other four tables were placed outside the square, one parallel to each side, forming four lanes.

Along the inner tables, there were docking stations, each with power, wired access to a private network, and a USB thumb drive. Along the outer tables, there were desk organizers like this one, ready to hold several devices in a vertical position, and next to the organizer was a power strip with power cables at the ready.

More information can be found here;