DPM 2012 R2 is backing up Hyper-V 2012 R2 in offline state

I upgraded our Hyper-V 2008 R2 failover cluster to Hyper-V 2012 R2, but since then some of the VMs are not able to be backed up in online state.

If you look at the event log on the Hyper-V host you will straight away find your answer there. 

As you can see from the error message above, it requires you to upgrade your Integration Services on your VM. You will have to restart your VM after the upgrade. 

Once you have done it, you will be able to backup your VM in online state

Sharepoint workflow - The email message cannot be sent

The issue really got me big time. I spent a long time trying to figure out what went wrong so I am hoping this post can help you. 

Our Expense Claim workflow was unable to send out email notifications and the error message was "The email message cannot be sent. Make sure the outgoing email settings for the server are configured correctly"

Synchronizing PDC time with Internet time

To synchronize your PDC emulator with the internet time server, please run the following command on your server which holds PDC emulator FSMO role.

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:internet-time-server /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update

Please replace the internet-time-server with the internet time server DNS name or IP address. If more then one is needed separate them with a space in between and don't forget the quotes: "time1.domain.com time2.domain.com"

List of Internet Time servers can be found here: http://www.pool.ntp.org

No chat history on Lync 2013 client

During our testing phase, we found out that the chat history is not working. We had the exclamation mark on the chat icon and there is nothing under it. The error was "there is an error communicating with Exchange Server". When I looked at the Lync Configuration Information (Ctrl - right click on Lync icon), I could see that both EWS information (internal & external) are blank and the EWS Information was telling me that it is not deployed.

Connectivity issue with DirectAccess 2012

Few months after we deployed DirectAccess solution into our infrastructure, we start getting hammered by people having issue with it. The one that drives me nuts is when someone says he couldn't connect, but someone else could connect without any issue. My first remedy is to ask them to restart the IP Helper service and Network Connectivity Assistant (only IP Helper for Windows 7). That doesn't always help. 

After a long time research on the internet, I found this link http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/lv/forefrontedgeiag/thread/20657310-1e2e-4f66-b002-21d2a5edcab8 - which describes the same issue we are facing. 

What we need to do was to run the following command to allow Teredo manage the connection instead of 6to4.

"netsh interface 6to4 set state disabled" from a command prompt on the laptop

I tested the solution on one of our laptops and it works great

Lync 2010 - "The address book is preparing to synchronize. Search results might not be current"

We got this message when we deployed Lync 2010 into our environment. 

This is how we solved it.

1. On Lync 2010 Server, launch Lync Server Management Shell and run this command: Update-CsAddressBook -verbose

2. Wait for a few minutes and you should see these events in your event logs. 

Event 21005 = Sync has started

Event 21010 = Sync has completed

Event 21056 = Details of the Sync

Event 21005 = Schedule for the next Sync

3. Because Lync client would randomly schedule the address book download at different intervals within a few hours; the Lync client can exhibit this same behavior. So if the steps above doesn't fix the issue then do the steps below

4. Run Regedit and navigate to HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\

Communicator

5. Create/edit the DWORD GalDownloadInitialDelay and set its value to 0

6. Close the Lync Client and delete GalContacts.db and GalContacts.db.idx files form that PC. You can find those files in the following locations:

Windows XP: %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Communicator\sip_<the_username@the_domain>\

Windows Vista/7: %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Communicator\sip_<the_username@the_domain>\

7. Restart Lync.

Setting up DirectAccess Server 2012

I got a mission from my boss to set up a new way for external users to connect to our network. In the past they use Microsoft VPN to connect and the problem is there are places where this VPN port is blocked and they cannot connect.

We then decided to look at DirectAccess from Microsoft. This new version comes as a role that you need to enable in Windows Server 2012 from Server Manager

How to kill hung Windows Services

Have you ever been in a situation where you have a hung Windows Service and you cannot restart the server because it is a production server?

Well, with these steps below you can kill that hung Windows Service without a need to restart the server.

How to remove non-existent domain from Active Directory

I just installed a second domain controller in our environment. My predecessor didn't replace the second DC when it went faulty a year back. I noticed something weird is happening. The DC2 couldn't serve as a Global Catalog server, I have got many errors in the Event Viewer, in particular Event 1202 and Event 1926 like the screenshots below.

How To Get a User's Security Identifier (SID) in Windows

In this post I am going to show you how to get a SID of a user account in Windows. 

The command you need to use is shown below

wmic useraccount get name,sid <enter>

You will then get a result similar to the screenshot below

Windows 8 highlights

I downloaded Windows 8 Release Preview to test it on my Hyper-V environment today and have a play with it. I have to admit that I love its feature where you can pause the file copying process. It's an awesome feature.

Importing Thumbnail Photo from Active Directory into Sharepoint 2010

We had been trying to figure out why the thumbnail photos we have in Active Directory are not imported to our Sharepoint 2010. Now I want to show the steps we took to solve the issue.

1. Make sure that the Picture property is mapped to Thumbnail 
   Photo.

• Click on Manage Service Application on Sharepoint Central Administration
• Click on User Profile Service then choose Manage User Properties

WSUS Agent - Not Yet Reported

I installed and configured Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 SP2 in our infrastructure. I don't use client side targeting to group computers' account. I noticed something's not right because after I had waited for more than half an hour, the status of all computers are still Not Yet Reported as per screenshot below.

Adding Local Administrator Account Through Group Policy

I wanted to deploy SCOM 2012 agent to all our Windows workstations and servers and I want to use a domain account which also a local administrator on each of workstation/server. Instead of adding the account to the local administrator group manually, the way to do it is to use Group Policy to assign my newly created Domain User account as the local administrator on each workstation/server. You can do this using Windows 2008 or Windows 7 Group Policy Console.

How to Remove Showing Posts With Label in Blogger

When you click on a label in a blog, you will see a list of posts under that label and at the top of the list you will see a message similar to this

If you want to know how to remove the message "Showing Post With Label" in blogger, then you have come to the right place. This post will show you how to do that.

Network Traffic Monitor

If you ever need a free Traffic Monitoring Tools then go try MRTG. It will monitor SNMP network devices and provides you with nice graphs to show your network loads. It is written in Perl and works on Unix/Linux and Windows too. You can download it from http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/download.en.html

Slow internet...

When you are working in the IT department, I guess "My internet connection's slow" comment is not uncommon. Nowadays people will notice first if internet goes down than when other system is down :)

It was my second week on my new job; everything was fine until that day when everyone screams “Internet’s slow!!” Since nothing was changed on the network and it’s a normal load in the network, my first thought was to check with the ISP, but they said nothing's wrong. The next thing I checked was the firewall interfaces’ settings and surprise…surprise… the interface that is connected to the Internet Corporate Gateway (ISP) was set to auto and it chose to set itself as Half Duplex.

SBS 2011 migration

In the middle of May 2012 I needed to migrate a Windows SBS 2003 Server to SBS 2011 for one of our clients. The customer is only using Microsoft Exchange, so no Sharepoint involved. Equipped with a document from Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14570), the initial job was completed without any major issues. We just need to migrate the mailboxes and shared folders.


Three days after, I went to Exchange Management Console to start the mailbox migration process then I found out that it didn't work anymore. We only have two weeks to complete the migration before the old server stop working (Microsoft only allow 21 days to complete the migration process). The error that I got is the one that complains about Kerberos authentication and to verify that the WS-Management service is running as you can see below.