By Matthew Mattoon on Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The following describes a scenario and resolution which I recently resolved.  The AffectedListName was a Mail-Enabled Security Group which was not able to be found in the GAL on any client using Cached-Exchange Mode.  

Our scenario was caused by a existing group being renamed but the SMTP address not being changed.

I am using the following variables which you will need to change to suit your environment: AdministrativeGroupName MailboxServerName AffectedListName AffectedListOldName Company.com  

Enable Diagnostic Logging: Using Exchange System Manager -> Administrative Groups -> AdministrativeGroupName -> Servers -> MailboxServerName Right-click and Properties of MailboxServerName. ...

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By Matthew Mattoon on Friday, January 23, 2009

OK, so I am deploying a new Virtualization Infrastructure.  In doing so I ran across a problem I had not seen before so I thought I would log the scenario, in order to be of help to someone some day...

My hardware was a Dell PowerEdge2950 with an Intel Pro 1000 VT Quad NIC installed in the original config.  

I installed Hyper-V Server 2008 and immediately went to work configuring the machine and found that the only network cards detected were the onboard broadcoms.  Now since we plan on using more than 2 interfaces, this just will not work.  I tried manually installing the drivers off of the Dell page, however I was receiving "OS not supported."  This is no doubt due to an overzealous install checker.  I tried a few different...

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By Matthew Mattoon on Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The storage team has a post on how to automate the generation of DFS Replication Health Reports.

These reports include a massive amount of information, and can be incredibly helpful in determining the status of your replication.  Reports can also be manually generated with the File Server Management Tool.  I personally find that reporting is one of those things that really lends itself to automation.

Complete article here.

By Matthew Mattoon on Monday, November 10, 2008

Both the Evaluation and Workgroup Editions of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 can be upgraded to the Retail SKU.  Michael on the SCVMM team has a post describing the process.

Article can be found here.

By Matthew Mattoon on Friday, September 26, 2008

Cheng has a post on using Distributed File System with System Center Virtual Machine Manager found here.  I have been running SCVMM with DFS-exposed libraries since Beta 2 of SCVMM 2007.  He has taken all of the guess work out of how to do it and has essentially documented everything I had to figure out.  If you have a virtualization infrastructure in multiple sites then you should definitely take a look at this article.

By Matthew Mattoon on Friday, September 19, 2008

One of the biggest benefit to Hyper-V over VMWare is Virtualization Rights. Basically Microsoft has provided you with a discount in the form of the ability to run Windows Server 2008 in Virtual Machines for free (this is based on which edition you are running - read on for more details).

This is a big win especially for a branch office scenario. When deploying branch offices normally you are constrained for space yet have requirements that would normally require multiple machines. The most common is the need to have a local DC (in order to define a replication strategy that makes sense - especially when using DFS). In most cases if a second machine did not make sense then most companies would not bother with virtualization because of...

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By Matthew Mattoon on Monday, September 15, 2008

In a previous post I described the benefits of DFS Namespaces, today we will be discussing DFS Replication.

Below I have outlined some of the features of DFS Replication.

Multimaster Replication Engine. DFS Replication can be used with standalone and domain-based namespaces as well as individual folders. Differential Replication. Cross-file RDC. Available with Enterprise and Datacenter only. These features will make many deployment scenarios more efficient. You can use DFS to perform data collection for a consolidated backup strategy, for data distribution as a method of publication of common data...

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By Matthew Mattoon on Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Just about every organization has the same approach to file services. This approach almost always includes a single point of failure or in larger organizations multiple single points of failure. These single points of failure are the file servers themselves. For the most part file services are completely overlooked when it comes to upgrades and restructuring, outside of a basic storage upgrade.This is part 1 in a 2 part series.

Part I - DFS Namespaces Part II - DFS Replication Distributed File System is a Microsoft Windows Server Role, now while DFS has been around for some time this article pertains to DFS in Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008. DFS is actually two separate components:

DFS Namespaces ...

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