Cluster Shared Volumes don’t get out of Redirected access mode with McAfee

November 19, 2011

SInce we upgraded to McAfee VSE 8.8 we have random bluescreen crashes on our Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V hosts, the cause is the McAfee mfehidk driver. The issue seems to be solved in VSE 8.8 Patch 1. But now a new problem appeared. When backups (Commvault) run, the CSV on our Hyper-V cluster nodes will go into redirect access mode. This is normal behaviour when using a backup product and Cluster Shares Volues. But after the backups are finished the CSV doesn’t return to normal online mode.

McAfee support confirmed this to be a compatibility issue for which they currently don’t have a solution. To be continued …


“Your email was deleted without being read” in Exchange 2010 SP1

June 9, 2011

Update: an RU5 interim update and a RU6 update later, the issue should be solved according to Microsoft, but we should see the results in 120 days, now that sucks …

Symptom: Even when not-read message are disabled in Outlook, users automatically send “Your email was deleted without being read” to the sender. The messages are related to mails which are 120 days old.

Cause: In my case the user moves all his unread mails from his Inbox to different mapped PST files with Client side rules. The resulting not-read message is known bug in Exchange 2010 SP1 RU3. An interim update is available on demand (KB2471964), though we decided not to install it as according to Microsoft the issue shall be solved in RU4. Release of RU4, quoting a Microsoft employee, will be somewhere mid July 2011 (no promises).


Fill Exchange 2010 receive connector automatically

May 28, 2011

As a best practice to send SMTP traffic to your Exchange 2010 organization, you should create a receive connector with IP address limitations. Afterwards you add the hosts (servers or clients) which are allowed to send mail traffic to the receive connector. Imagine you have 600 servers and servers are added every day. It will be a challenging task to never forget to add the 1 servers which has been recently installed. So lets make life easy.

Imagine you have all your servers somewhere listed in a SQL database (home-made, our in a 3th party application), you could use them to fill the Receive Connector on a schedule. You will have to add the task on every server which needs the receive connector.

To run the script, a scheduled task can be created on a server which needs the receive connector:

Program/Script: C:\exchangeScripts\serverdb_receiveconnector.ps1
Start In: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin

The following 2 scripts should be made available on the system:

C:\serverdb_receiveconnector.bat:

Powershell.exe -PSConsoleFile “C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\exshell.psc1″ -command “C:\serverdb_receiveconnector.ps1″

Now the actual script called “serverdb_receiveconnector.ps1″. Replace the $query parameter with the query which applies to your database, use the correct server/database/user/password to access the database.

#Receive Connector
$rc=”Test Receive Connector”
$query=”SELECT server_name FROM Servers”
$connstring=”server=FQDNSQLServer;database=DatabaseName;trusted_connection=false;UID=UserToAccessDB;PWD=PlainTextPasswordHere”
$Connection = New-Object System.Data.SQLClient.SQLConnection
$Connection.ConnectionString = $ConnString
$Connection.Open()
$Command = New-Object System.Data.SQLClient.SQLCommand
$Command.Connection = $Connection
$Command.CommandText = $Query
$Reader = $Command.ExecuteReader()
$Counter = $Reader.FieldCount

$conn = Get-ReceiveConnector $rc
Set-ReceiveConnector $rc -RemoteIPRanges “255.255.255.255″
while ($Reader.Read()) {
for ($i = 0; $i -lt $Counter; $i++) {
$ipadd=$Reader.GetValue($i)

Try{
$ipaddtranslated=[System.Net.Dns]::GetHostAddresses($ipadd)
}Catch{
write-host “DNS lookup failed for ” + $ipadd
}

Try{
$conn.RemoteIPRanges += “” + $ipaddtranslated
}Catch{
write-host “Add failed for ” + $ipadd
}

}
}
Set-ReceiveConnector $rc -RemoteIPRanges $Conn.RemoteIPRanges
$Connection.Close()


Clean old delegates from Exchange 2010 mailbox: scripted

May 28, 2011

We have had some recent problems were all kinds of symptoms appeared for mailboxes which had deleted users on them as delegate so I made a little script to fix the issue. The script will list all delegates on a mailbox in a certain OU. Delegates which have SID instead of a username are probably users which are already deleted in AD or users from OLD no-longer existing or reachable domains. The permission for the no longer existing users will be deleted from the mailbox. The script will log the current mailboxpermissions on your C: drive.

Replace the “ThisIstheOUToWhichYouWantToLimitTheDeletions” with the short OU name (no ldap path needed), so e.g. “Financial Department”

$AllUsers = get-mailbox * -ResultSize Unlimited -OrganizationalUnit “ThisIstheOUToWhichYouWantToLimitTheDeletions”
ForEach ($User in $AllUsers) {
$user.displayname | out-file C:\Mailboxpermissions.txt -append
get-mailboxfolderpermission $user | Select User, FolderName, AccessRight | out-file C:\Mailboxpermissions.txt -append
$userperm=get-mailboxfolderpermission $user | Select User

ForEach($perm in $userperm) {
if($perm -match “S-1-5-21″){
$sid=$perm.user
Remove-MailboxFolderPermission -identity $user -user $sid -Confirm:$false
}
}
}


Stream MKV to Ipad

May 28, 2011

One of the shortcomings of the Ipad is the limited number of native supported audio/video formats. Most of my video content is in the Matrosjka (MKV) format. When you primarily see you your video at home, you can use streaming from a Windows / Mac computer to your Ipad. Just share the folder in the ServeToMe application which you install on the computer and click play on the Ipad. Streaming has never been that simple. It has been the best $3 I ever spend. Playback over 54G wifi is quite fast, no hickups and only seconds of pre-processing before it starts streaming.

Stream to Me: download here
Serve To Me: download here


Text-indents in Outlook 2007 / Exchange 2010

May 26, 2011

A couple of weeks ago we noticed negative text-indents when RTF mail messages were requested by Exchange 2010 Web services (EWS) in HTML format (EWS conversion engine). When the message is requested in RTF it will be automatically converted to HTML. The negative indents only appeared on the message header of a forwarded message, so that the left part of the message header dropped off-screen. The negative text-indent could not been seen in Outlook 2003 (Word 2003 HTML engine), though it could be seen in Outlook 2007 / 2010 (Word 2007/2010 engine). We had an active incident opened at Microsoft. The official Microsoft response from the responsible engineer is that the issue won’t be fixed until the release of a new version of Exchange.

After noticing this in EWS we had 3 cases were users forwarded messages to home PCs (Outlook 2010) from Office workstations (Outlook 2003,2007) and saw exactly the same issue, no EWS involved. The issue is still pending investigation …


Attachment not visible in Outlook

May 21, 2011

Symptoms:

When you send a mail with an inline attachment, the attachment is not visible by the receiving party which uses an Exchange 2007/2010 Exchange environment. The client can be outlook 2003/2007/2010. An inline attachment is an attachment created by e.g. dragging a file in the mail while creating it to add the attachment. This can be easily fixed by using the following configuration adjustment:

    Exchange Server 2010:

  • Stop the Exchange Transport service.
  • Locate the EdgeTransport.exe.config file. This file is located in the following path:
  • C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin\
  • In the EdgeTransport.exe.config file, add the following entry between the <appSettings> element and the </appSettings> element:

    <add key=”TreatInlineDispositionAsAttachment” value=”true” />

  • Restart the Transport service.

If the TreatInlineDispositionAsAttachment option does not exist or if the option is set to “false,” the behavior is the same as the behavior that is mentioned in the “Symptoms” section.

If the TreatInlineDispositionAsAttachment option is set to “true,” the inline attachment that is not referenced is available for download.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;954684


Backup a Hyper-V guest with Windows Server Backup

May 21, 2011

In case you configured Windows server backup to backup Hyper-V guests, you better register the Microsoft Hyper-V VSS writer or you might end up without backups.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958662


Failing Free Busy in Outlook 2007

March 27, 2011

Failing Free Busy information or crashing outlook

When you have the folling symptoms with outlook 2007 you can use the following workarround when using an Exchange 2010 environment:

Symptoms:

  • You cannot see free/busy information in outook
  • Outlook crashes when trying to see free/busy information
  • The following workarround can be used:

  • Go to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar”
  • Create new DWORD value “UseLegacyFB” with value data ’1′
  • MS: : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958934/en-us


    RDP to 2008R2 server slow

    November 28, 2010

    If you have connection problems like slowness & parts of the screen which are reloading too slow, than try changing the following registry key on server/client you are connecting to:

     

    Using regedit, navigate to:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

    And on the key, make a new DWORD value, name it DisableTaskOffload. Set its value to 1.


    Follow

    Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.