TechPublishing Now MS Certified

TechPublishing Now MS Certified
Professor Robert McMillen, MBA Microsoft Certified Trainer and Solutions Expert

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Finally finished my Exchange 2007 server

I was building an Exchange 2007 server last week so I could test out Communications Server 2007. After installing and putting on a test user I decided to ask Microsoft a question. I wondered how many mailboxes I could put on the MSDN version of this software. They emailed me back and said "we will get back to you". So I waited three days and they said to call the Microsoft Partner program. So I called them and asked the same thing. They said I could install it up to ten times. I said that's not what I was asking. I wanted to know how many cals come on this before it tells me I need more. They said "you can install it up to ten times".
I thought I would go crazy so I told her we weren't speaking the same language. She went to her supervisor and came back and said "you can install it up to ten times", and then she said "we're not technical here". What? Not technical? I thought they were Microsoft.
I went back to MSDN and said they didn't know how to answer my qestion. They replied back that they will get me my answer in about three days. I just heard back from them, and they said " you can install it up to ten times."
I give up.

Monday, March 29, 2010

2007 continued

Well I'm still working on the 2007 install. I will be installing Communicator shortly to incorporate some of the cool features.
In the meantime all kinds of emergencies today. The main one was a virus outbreak at a client who still uses Symantec for AV. We tried to talk them out of it but oh well. A quick way to find out which computer is infected is to go into the firewall. In this case it's a Cisco ASA. From there you can do a show connection protocol tcp port 25. This will show you every computer that's trying to connect by blasting out email. I ignored the server and spam filter and found the one workstation that was infected fairly quickly. I then dispatched a tech and he is cleaning it up.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Exchange 2007 install

Well I decided to upgrade our own Exchange today from 2003 to 2007. There are definitely some things to be aware of when you do this. Use 64 bit instead of 32. Thatw ay when you go to 2010 you will be able to do an in place upgrade. Service pack 2 has been released but you need a license key to install it. Pretty strange. The enterprise version allows you to selectively journal users. Pretty handly if you spend the extra money. You can install it for 120 days without a key however.
I would ike to add the unified messaging, but that is going to take some planning. It would be great to incorporate it into our phone system. I will also have to add Communciator as well to get all the features.
It almost makes me want to move off of our iPhone to Windows phone 7 system, or whatever they're calling it these days, but I think we'll stay with Apple for now.
Now we will have to buy the unified certificate to avoid rpc/http problems. I like it when they add features. I just it when they change things. It's quite the problem for guys who like new toys but hate change.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

It's not me it's you

Don't you just love it when two vendors fight it out? I received a call from a customer that said when they send out an invite to an email server at another company it shows up as an hour later. That company said its not their fault. It must be our customer's problem. So they called me. I said how about I send an invite out to the same guy and see what happens. He emailed back and said that it also came back an hour late, but he still doesn't think it's his server. I told him I would be happy to fix his server if he wanted to setup an account with us. Then he ran windows updates, even though he swore he had already done this, and now it works correctly.

I will be working on an interesting switch problem later today. For some reason it's not passing UDP traffic. I think it may have something to do with the port being tagged for CDP using voice and data VLANs.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Upgrading to 2008 SBS

I started a company called All Tech 1 in Portland Oregon about the time of the bubble burst of 2001. After going through a lay-off I decided to go ahead and start it up siince it was a good time in my life to do it.
Yesterday one of my engineers came to me and said that he was stuck on a Windows 2003 to a Windows 2008 upgrade.
The new server was a domain controller, but couldn't replicate AD, and Exchange only saw the original server.
I went in to take a look at it. Almost all issues of replication seem to have something to do with DNS, so that's where I started. There was an entry for an old server pointed to 192.168.1.3. That was the same IP of the new server, but of a different name. After I updated the records I could get one way replication to work, but nothing else.
I made sure the name servers were also correct in the name server tab in DNS. It was also pointed to the old server. I restarted the netlogon service, and DNS server service and now replication was working both ways.
I was given the choice to restart the Exchange and other services, or to restart both servers in order for Exchange to work. I decided to just restart the servers and when it came back up Exchange saw both servers. Things moved much more smoothly after that.

New Blogger

Hello
Although I have been blogging for years for CBS affiliate KOIN News in Portland, I thought it would be more advantageous to do a more technical blog about my daily life in the IT industry. I am in the trenches everyday setting up and troubleshooting servers, networks, firewalls, and fighting malware. I run into some really weird things, and I thought it would be useful to tell others in the industry about it.