Exchange 07/10 Connectiontimeout Interval

When email is being protected by an external cloud based solution the default connectiontimeout interval for exchange 07/10 is 10 minutes. And normally this is not enough for eg. Forefront Online , Postini, Messagelabs.

So here is some powershell commands to resolve the issue.

Firstly Get-ReceiveConnector | fl Id*,*connectiontime*

Change the ConnectionTimeOut value

Set-Receiveconnector -ConnectionTimeOut 00:20:00

Name of connector is specified by ServerName\receive connector name

SCE 2010 Plus Suite


Microsoft have released System Center Essentials 2010 Plus Suite which includes DPM2010. This is an amazing bundle and offers real value for customers. I have just finished a network using both products and SCE 2010 is a super product as is DPM2010. They are both really easy to use powerful tools.

You can get info on the suite here

"0x00000101 – CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT"

975530 – Last Review: August 10, 2010 – Revision: 14.0
Stop error message on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer that has the Hyper-V role installed and that uses one or more Intel CPUs that are code-named Nehalem: “0x00000101 – CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT”

I have a newly installed HP DL380G6 , completely up to date etc.. that has been randomly rebooting. I installed who crashed to review the memory dump and found that each time it happened this error code was generated CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT

So after some research on the web I found A Hot Fix available from Microsoft to fix the problem. You can get it HERE

Disable UAC in Group Policy


Sometimes applications can be fussy about UAC and this is how to disable it via group policy. I have not had a chance to test app-v but i am sure app-v can overcome problems with uac etc..

# User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode – Set its value to Elevate without prompting.
# User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation – Set its value to Disabled.
# User Account Control: Only elevate UIAccess applications that are installed in secure locations – Set its value to Disabled.
# User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode – Set its value to Disabled

Entourage EWS Attachment Limits

I had a customer that had problems sending emails over 10mb via Entourage EWS via an SBS2008 Server.

So here is how to fix it.

In addition to running the appropriate cmdlets to change message size limits in Exchange, you’ll need to edit web.config found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\exchweb\ews. Open with Notepad (or your favorite text editor) and search for maxrequestlength. Change the value to reflect the size in kilobytes desired, then save the change.

For good measure, edit web.config located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\owa.

Once both files have been edited open a command prompt and run the following commands:

cd \Windows\System32\inetsrv

appcmd set config “SBS Web Applications/ews” -section:requestFiltering -requestLimits.maxAllowedContentLength:51200

appcmd set config “SBS Web Applications/owa” -section:requestFiltering -requestLimits.maxAllowedContentLength:51200

IIS RESET

51200 KB = 50mb

Companyweb Broken on SBS2008 after WSS3.0 SP2

A customer of mine recently had a problem when their companyweb stopped working. So I started to look into application event logs, services running etc.. and I discovered that a windows update (Service Pack 2 for WSS3.0) did not install correctly. It didnt finish installing and was only part installed.

Now this one absolutely broke my heart and I am not alone on this from my research on the web. So throughout my searches on the web I cam across this article from the SBS Team Blog.And another one from technet . But the simple fix is to download WSS SP2 and manually extract the contents using this command “wssv3sp2-kb953338-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:c:\extract” and then manually install each component. Now you will think the installation of each package is freezing as they are quite small in size the biggest component being 25mb but leave them alone to finish their installation, restart your server.

Make sure the bindings are correct in IIS Manager on the SBS Sharepoint site and voila your back up and running.

This took me a lot longer than I would have preferred to sort out but there you go. A Microsoft Update that breaks things if not installed correctly with no easy way to roll back.The update also changes Sharepoint authentication to kerbeos instead of NTLM.

Micrsoft Online Services & Iphone


First of all heres a video to setup iphone with Microsoft Online Services.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTctxZnOYVc

One thing which caught me out was the server name.The Emea OWA login URL is https://mail.emea.microsoftonline.com

But the actual server address for the iphone is red002.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com

Then test your active sync credentials via https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

Once you have green ticks , all done.

SBS2008 Setup Checklist


I bought the first SBS2008 book that was released which was SBS2008 Unleashed by Eriq Oliver Neale and it was ok. But then the SBS2008 Blueprint book was published from SMB Nation and I found this book much easier to read and follow.

There are 2 Authors Harry B and Philip Elder , Philip is a SBS MVP and has a great blog which he keeps updated reguraly and of special interest is his SBS2008 Setup Checklist. It is currently on version 1.5 and I cant think of a better way of installing and configuring SBS2008.

You can see the setup guide here http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2009/05/sbs-2008-setup-checklist-v111.html

Oracle (Sun) Virtual Box

I recently used Microsoft Virtual PC on a site but ran into problems with bridged network cards amongst other small issues. I gave up on Virtual PC and thought my only other alternative was VM Ware Player which is free but I could’nt get VM Ware tools installed into my VMWare Virtual PC and VM Work Station is a bit expensive.

But then Virtual Box came to my rescue and has worked perfectly. And its free! I dont know how long it will remain free after Oracles aquisition of Sun.But hey its free now and a doddle to setup.

Shadowprotect images .spf and .spi files can boot up straight into virtual box as if they were a vhd or vmdk.

Here is a video tutorial on using Virtual Box from David Davis on Virtualizationadmin.com

http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/player.asp?AYHfxlcC