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Sample Chapter Week 2: MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

Joel Stidley — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:02:00 GMT

Last week I posted Chapter 1 from the 70-236 study guide. This week we have Chapter 1 of MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

Inside, find the full coverage you need to prepare for Exam 70-643: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure, Configuring, one of three specializations in the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification track. Inside, you'll find:

Full coverage of all exam objectives in a systematic approach, so you can be confident you're getting the instruction you need for the exam
Practical hands-on exercises to reinforce critical skills
Real-world scenarios that put what you've learned in the context of actual job roles
Challenging review questions in each chapter to prepare you for exam day
Exam Essentials, a key feature in each chapter that identifies critical areas you must become proficient in before taking the exam
A handy tear card that maps every official exam objective to the corresponding chapter in the book, so you can track your exam prep objective by objective

For two more weeks I will be posting a sample chapter from either MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Second Edition or the MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

This week's sample is attached to this post. It is Chapter 1 from the 70-643 book, let me know how you like it!

If you are looking to study for either of the exams you can order the books here:

Exchange 2007 70-236 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/TS70-236
Windows 2008 70-643 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/ts70-643

Sample Chapter for MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Exam 70-236

Joel Stidley — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:27:00 GMT

MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Second Edition was released this week.

This study guide covers all of objectives in the 70-236 exam and includes new features introduced in Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1. There are a number of exercises in each chapter to help you gain experience with Exchange as well as numerous review and sample exam questions.

With Exchange Server 2010 in development today, now is a great time to use what you already know to become Exchange certified.

For the next four weeks I will be posting a sample chapter from either MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Second Edition or the MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

This week's sample is attached to this post. It is Chapter 1 from the 70-236 book, let me know how you like it!

If you are looking to study for either of the exams you can order the books here:

Exchange 2007 70-236 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/TS70-236
Windows 2008 70-643 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/ts70-643

Exchange 2010 Beta 1 News

Joel Stidley — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:59:00 GMT

Wow, the Interwebz is all a flutter with the tax day release of Exchange 2010 beta 1!

Here is a list someone else compiled of the press coverage:

Reviews

Microsoft Exchange 2010 Beta Looks Solid from Core to Cloud
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Includes Welcome Improvements) – eWeek
First look: Exchange 2010 beta shines – InfoWorld

News

Broader Office 14 testing coming by fall - CNet
Next Exchange features e-mail 'mute' button - CNet
Microsoft Brands Office 2010, Releases Exchange Beta – PC World / IDG
Microsoft fends off Google with Web browser-friendly Exchange 2010 - Computerworld
Microsoft to release Exchange 2010 beta on April 15 - ZDNet
Microsoft Exchange 2010 to address annoyances & mobility – Seattle PI
Next version of Microsoft Office coming in 2010 - AP
It's Office 2010: First technical previews due in Q3 - BetaNews

Exchange Server 2010 Beta Available

Joel Stidley — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:55:00 GMT

Wow, I echo a few of my fellow bloggers feelings that being able to blog about Exchange 2010 has been a long time coming. And the news comes on the day that Exchange 2003 goes into extended support. My company has been working with and running E14 for a number of months now and can tell you that it is a truly compelling version of Exchange.

If your company is still hanging on to Exchange Server 2003, you will want to consider moving to Exchange 2010 when it is released.

Why do I say that? Well there are still portions of the product that are NDA but the things that I can mention that are exciting:

Full multi-browser OWA support (see pic below)
Even lower I/O requirements (yes even lower than Exchange 2007)!
Better High Availability Options (more details to come)
Self-service options with Exchange Control Panel (ECP)
PowerShell 2.0 Support

You can download beta 1 of Exchange 2010 from Microsoft here. If you have questions be sure to vist the ExchangeExchange forums or the official TechNet forums for help.

Who says there are no jobs?

Joel Stidley — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:21:09 GMT

The company that I work for is still trying to find qualified people for some key positions within the company. To help find the right people, they are having an open house April 16, 2009 in Plano, TX. If you are in the area, a tech person and looking to work for a company (yes I know you might have to deal with me), please register to attend! The official invitation is below:

Terremark Worldwide invites you to join us for an Open House on Thursday, April 16, 2009 in Plano. We are celebrating our revolutionary cloud computing platform, The Enterprise Cloud™, which gives unprecedented control and flexibility to provision computing resources for your own mission-critical applications in minutes, not days. Come find out what Terremark is all about, meet our leadership from across the country, see live demos of The Enterprise Cloud™, and talk to our team about how you can go beyond the grind and work with top technology minds in the industry. Terremark Worldwide (NASDAQ:TMRK) deploys the latest technology in managing mission critical infrastructure and online applications to government, enterprise, and Web 2.0 customers. We offer a comprehensive suite of solutions including managed hosting, colocation, cloud computing, network, and security services. Open House will be held from 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. at
Marriott Legacy Town Center 7120 Dallas Parkway Plano, TX 75024 San Jancito Ballroom

Current and future opportunities companywide include:

Windows/Unix Support Engineers (Dallas)	Security Admin (Miami)
Implementation Manager (Dallas)	Security NOC Engineer (Miami)
Team Lead/Manager, Escalations (Dallas)	Federal Hosting Sales (Herndon)
User Experience Engineer (Dallas)	Federal Contracts Manager (Herndon)
.NET Developer (Dallas)	Federal Proposal Manager (Herndon)
Hosting Product Line Manager (Dallas)	Federal Financial Analyst (Herndon)
Facilities Engineer (Santa Clara)	Data Center Technicians (Santa Clara)

For more information and to register, please visit www.terremarkregistration.com/openhouse. Registration is not mandatory but is strongly encouraged. No third party vendors or recruiters, please.

Webcasts: Clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Getting started with clustering

Joel Stidley — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:19:00 GMT

There is a flurry of information over at the Microsoft clustering blog. I'm a little late posting this as some of the sessions have been given, however all of the webcasts will be available to watch on demand. If you are new to clustering you may find one of these sessions useful:

Introduction to Failover Clustering (Level 100)

Presenter: Symon Perriman, Program Manager, Clustering & HA

Air Date: March 18^th | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407190&Culture=en-US

Overview: High availability, disaster recovery, fault tolerance. If these words are not in your IT department's vocabulary, your organization is probably unprepared to deal with the inevitable—server downtime. Attend this webcast to learn about Windows Server 2008 R2 failover clustering, a high-availability solution from Microsoft. Failover clustering connects servers and monitors the health of the servers and the applications running on servers. In the event of a server failure, applications can fail over to another server and continue running with minimal interruption to your mission-critical applications. We cover the basics of failover clustering in this webcast, and we provide the information to help you get a failover cluster configured and deployed in a matter of hours.

High Availability Basics with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V (Level 200)

Presenter: Steven Ekren, Senior Program Manager, Clustering & HA

Air Date: March 19^th | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407222&Culture=en-US

Overview: Virtualization is a hot topic on customers' minds. But what happens if you consolidate a number of servers into virtual machines, put them on a single host computer, and that computer fails? All your eggs are in one basket, so to speak, and users may not be able to access critical information. To avoid scenarios like this, high availability has become part of the virtualization discussion for organizations of all sizes, not just large Fortune 500 companies. Be sure you have the necessary knowledge to discuss high availability and virtualization with your customers. If you are new to failover clustering, this webcast is for you. We provide step-by-step instruction on configuring a highly available virtualization solution with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and failover clustering features.

Or if you are wondering what's changing in Windows Server 2008 R2 you may want to attend/view these:

Failover Clustering Feature Roadmap for Windows Server 2008 R2 (Level 300)

Presenter: Elden Christensen, Senior Program Manager Lead, Clustering & HA

Air Date: March 26^th | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407235&Culture=en-US

Overview: Come and learn about all the new Failover Clustering enhancements that are going to be delivered in Windows Server 2008 R2 code name "Windows Server 7" operating system. In this webcast, we drill into incremental improvements from Windows Server 2008 to the cluster validation tool, Windows PowerShell support, the new cluster configuration program, and other exciting features.

Innovating High Availability with Cluster Shared Volumes (Level 300)

Presenter: Steven Ekren, Senior Program Manager, Clustering & HA

Air Date: April 2^nd | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407238&Culture=en-US

Overview: In this webcast, we provide an overview of the new Cluster Shared Volumes code name "Centipede" failover clustering feature in the Windows Server 2008 R2 code name "Windows Server 7" operating system. Join us to learn how the Windows Server cluster storage architecture is innovating to enable Hyper-V virtualization technology, a new and significant enhancement planned for "Windows Server 7" that is creating a lot of excitement. This is a session you don't want to miss.

Multi-Site Clustering with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (Level 300)

Presenter: Ahmed Bisht, Senior Program Manager, Clustering & HA

Air Date: April 9^th | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407242&Culture=en-US

Overview: As the Windows Server operating system becomes more accepted in large-scale, high-end, mission-critical IT environments, the requirements for disaster tolerance and business continuance become more and more important. In this webcast, we discuss how you can build a fault-tolerant, high-availability server solution with Windows Server 2008 failover clustering that also facilitates disaster recovery.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2009/03/18/9488114.aspx

40% off Microsoft Certification Exams this week

Joel Stidley — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:48:40 GMT

It is Microsoft Skills week March 9-13. There is special discounts on training and exams as well as some giveaways. The deets are here.

To get the 40% off exams just use coupon code NAM40UP at the Prometric site when scheduling your exam.

PowerShell 2.0, where did I leave that remoting!

Joel Stidley — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:30:17 GMT

With PowerShell 1.0 all cmdlets were run against the local PowerShell runspace and thus ran in the local machine context. This was great for the most part as many of the Exchange cmdlets were able to reach out and manipulate non-local information so that it could move mailboxes or configure storage group settings. That works fine and well for many cmdlets, but what if you need to get information with a cmdlet that doesn’t allow you to specify a remote server, from your administrative workstation? Not so easy, huh?

This is one way PowerShell 2.0 remoting can help.

Note: Exchange Server 2007 does not support PowerShell 2.0. PowerShell 2.0 is currently a CTP, so there are no released Microsoft products that support PowerShell 2.0, however you can be assured at after PowerShell 2.0 has been released Microsoft products will switch over to fully support these new features.

To be able to use PowerShell remoting, PowerShell 2.0 needs to be installed on both the client and the server that you will be remoting to and from. Without having a specific product that leverages or consumes PowerShell 2.0, you can run cmdlets on a remote server by using the Invoke-Command cmdlet.

For example you could return the list of running services on FileServer1 by running the Get-Service cmdlet remotely. (Yes, I do realize that you can also specify –ComputerName parameter on the Get-Service cmdlet, but this same method can be used for other cmdlets that are unable to work remotely):

Invoke-Command -ComputerName FileServer1 –scriptblock {Get-Service}

That is nice and all, but what if you want to get the list of services from more than one server? You can specify more than one server in the computer name parameter.

Invoke-Command -ComputerName FileServer1, FileServer2 –scriptblock {Get-Service}

Now that is just cool!

Outlook 2007 February Update

Joseph Nguyen — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:50:00 GMT

The Outlook team has posted an update that should improve reliability and performance. Here's an excerpt:

"This update contains a significant number of new performance-focused improvements for Outlook users. We especially focused on the areas of starting up and shutting down Outlook, switching between folders with large numbers of messages, calendar reliability and consistency, and general responsiveness of the application when performing common tasks around managing your e-mail, calendar, and other information..."

I'll say this, Outlook does close faster. You can read the blog and download it from here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/02/25/announcing-the-february-cumulative-update-for-outlook-2007.aspx

Exchange Server 2007, OWA and ISA Server 2006 - Part 2

aschan — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:06:00 GMT

Exchange Server 2007, OWA and ISA Server 2006 – Part 1

This is my second post outlining the configurations necessary to publish Exchange Server 2007 OWA in a DMZ with ISA Server 2006 in a workgroup configuration, in particular how this differs from the TechNet procedures documented here. In the first part, I outlined how to configure authentication over SSL (including installing the necessary certificate) and how to reconfigure your server farm connectivity verification for HTTPS (instead of the default HTTP). In this post, I'll outline how to configure ISA Server 2006 to authenticate users against Active Directory using LDAPS (LDAP over SSL). Of course, you will need an SSL certificate installed on the ISA Server 2006 server, but as you're publishing OWA over SSL you already have a certificate on the box.

LDAP authentication can be configured in the New Web Listener Wizard when you're initially creating the web listener, or it can be configured on an existing web listener as follows:

Access the Properties dialogue for web listener, then select the Authentication tab.
On the Authentication tab, select LDAP (Active Directory) in the Authentication Validation Method section, then click Configure Validation Servers…
In the Authentication Servers dialogue, click Add…
In the Add LDAP Server Set dialogue, name the LDAP server set. Enter the FQDN of the domain in the Type the Active Directory domain name field, then select the Use Global Catalog and Connect LDAP servers over secure connection options. If you're going to be providing password change capability over OWA, define the user name and password used to access Active Directory in the bottom fields in the dialogue.
Click Add… to add LDAP servers to the server set. In the Add LDAP Server dialogue, specify the FQDN of the GC (or IP address if name resolution isn't configured), then click OK to add it to the server set.
Repeat step 5 to add the rest of the GCs to be used for authentication, then click OK to create the LDAP server set and return to the Authentication Servers dialogue.
In the Authentication Servers dialogue, click Close to apply the settings and return to the web listener's Properties dialogue, then click OK to apply the changes to the Properties dialogue and return to the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 GUI.
Back in the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 GUI, click Apply in the right-hand pane and then click OK in the dialogue advising that your changes have been saved.

And, that's the last of the configurations needed to publish OWA in an ISA Server 2006 workgroup configuration; hopefully you found this of some use. This wasn't an attempt to document the entire process, but simply highlight the changes/additions to the TechNet procedures.

Until next time,

Andy

Exchange Server 2007, OWA and ISA Server 2006 – Part 1

aschan — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:48:00 GMT

Yes, I'm back after another long absence. I thought I'd start up my blogging again by talking about my experiences with publishing Exchange Server 2007 OWA in a DMZ with ISA Server 2006. This has been documented to some extent on TechNet and a few other places, but for my client's scenario I found a few gaps in the recommendations.

First, a brief outline of this client's environment; this is an upgrade from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007, with the primary goal pertinent to this blog post being improving their security posture and reducing the number of mailbox servers in the environment. They presently offer OWA service to their end users through Exchange Server 2003 front-end servers situated in their DMZ, a situation that is being addressed in the new design by implementing an ISA Server 2006 Enterprise array in the DMZ to publish the Exchange Server 2007 Client Access servers situated in the internal network. Traffic will be load-balanced across the CAS servers using ISA Server 2006 rather than Windows NLB or a hardware-based solution. As there are existing firewalls in place, however, ISA Server 2006 will be deployed between the existing firewalls and act just as a reverse proxy by publishing OWA as well as pre-authenticating users.

Publishing Exchange Server 2007 with ISA Server 2006 has been documented on TechNet here, but these procedures assume that the ISA Server 2006 server is acting as your internal firewall as well as publishing OWA, and that the ISA server is a member of your internal domain. Also, this TechNet article doesn't go into details on how to deploy a multiple-server ISA Server 2006 Enterprise array for this purpose- which I'm assuming most Exchange administrators won't know how to do. Overall, these procedures are well documented, so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel- just document the areas where I needed to modify or add to the procedures to get it to work for my scenario.

Installing a Certificate for Authentication over SSL

First, before starting I had to install two SSL certificates on the ISA server. The first certificate was for OWA in the name exchange.companyname.tld and was installed in the Personal certificate store for the local computer (NOT under the user account); the TechNet article describes how to install this certificate on the IIS server. As my 2-server ISA Server 2006 array is configured as a workgroup rather than a member of AD, I needed a second certificate to use for the ISA Configuration Storage authentication. All members of an ISA Server 2006 Enterprise array use the same configuration database, which in my case is installed on the first ISA server in the array. Other members of the array then obtain their configuration from this source, ensuring consistency across the array members. In the case of AD-joined ISA servers, they authenticate to the Configuration Storage server using Windows storage, but if your ISA servers are members of a workgroup they have to authenticate using a username/password you define over an SSL-encrypted channel. The certificate used for this needs to be in the FQDN of the ISA Configuration Storage server; typically, the certificate used for OWA is in a different name.

The SSL certificate for the Configuration Storage authentication needs to be installed using the ISACertTool, which you can download from Microsoft here. Once installed, the syntax is:

Install_path\ISACertTool.exe /st ISA_Server_SSL_cert.pfx /pswd password /keepcerts

Where

ISA_Server_SSL_cert.pfx is the SSL certificate in the FQDN of the ISA Server 2006 computer

and

password is the password for the ISA_Server_SSL_cert.pfx file

NOTE: You need to run this command from the "\Program Files\Microsoft ISA Server" directory, otherwise you'll get an error stating that msfpc.dll could not be found.

Configuring Authentication over SSL

Once the certificates are installed, install ISA Server 2006 and create your array. Once your array is created, you'll need to configure authentication over SSL for the Configuration Storage server as follows:

Start the ISA Server Management GUI from Start - All Programs - Microsoft ISA Server.
In the left-hand pane of the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 GUI, expand Arrays then right-click the server_name entry and select Properties from the context menu.
In the server_name Properties dialogue, select the Configuration Storage tab.
On the Configuration Storage tab, click Select… to open the Select Authentication Type dialogue. Select Authentication over SSL encrypted channel, then click OK to return to the server_name Properties dialogue.
Click OK to close the server_name Properties dialogue.
Back in the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 GUI, click Apply in the right-hand pane of the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 GUI, and then click OK in the dialogue advising that your changes have been saved.

Configuring Server Farm Connectivity Verification

The next issue I ran into was in defining a server farm in ISA consisting of my Client Access servers. Defining a server farm and adding your CAS servers to it allows you to load balance using ISA; traffic is distributed evenly across the server farm members. To ensure no traffic is directed to a CAS server that is down, I defined Connectivity monitoring for the server farm. The TechNet article simply states to select Send an HTTP/HTTPS GET request in the wizard while creating the server farm, but I found that this didn't work for me. This was because by default, this configures the GET request to use HTTP, while my CAS servers were configured to accept only SSL (HTTPS). I had to configure the connectivity verification as follows:

Access the Properties dialogue for the server farm
Select the Connectivity Verification tab and click Configure…
Change the verification URL from http://*/ to https://*/

Finally, when adding other servers to the ISA array, when you select to join an existing array since my ISA servers are in a workgroup I was prompted to select Configuration Storage options. In a workgroup deployment, you need to select the Authentication over SSL encrypted channel option; windows authentication can only be used for a domain-joined ISA array.

A final caveat regarding the ISA Configuration Storage; in an AD-joined ISA array, you can replicate the Configuration Storage across multiple array members, but this is not possible in a workgroup deployment.

So, these are some of the "gotchas" I found when deploying an ISA Server 2006 Enterprise array in a DMZ for publishing OWA. Another issue I encountered was how to configure my ISA web listener to authenticate the users to Active Directory using LDAPS, since my ISA servers were in a workgroup rather than joined to the forest, but that's going to be the topic of my next blog post.

Andy

Exchange 14, didn't we just get Exchange 2007?

Joel Stidley — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:53:00 GMT

This week we received the brief preview of the next version of Exchange, codenamed E14. This preview was given in the form of a video of KC Lemson and Jim Lucey from Microsoft talking about so of the "big rocks" (I hate that term, but use it anyway) that E14 will tackle and how they have used Exchange Labs to improve the product.

I know many of you are just getting started deploying Exchange 2007, which is great. Don't scrap your deployment plans just yet. If you have problems that you want resolved in E14 post them in the comments!

View the full video here: http://edge.technet.com/Media/announcing-Exchange14/

Exchange and Notes in the Enterprise

Joseph Nguyen — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:42:00 GMT

This is about a discussion last summer but I thought it was interesting as I didn't see much of it until I ran into some posts by Ed Brill from IBM. There's always been a back and forth between IBM and Microsoft with Lotus Notes and Exchange server on who has a bigger market share, who is more relevant, has better commercials, etc.

A Ferris study released last January 08 sparked some more debate between some IBM and Microsoft spokesmen\bloggers. Jim Bernardo from Microsoft and Ed went at it for a bit until someone, Volker Weber, decided to see if he could find some truth to the debate. He put up a wiki to gather as much factual information as he could get to see who was right. And like most truths, it was somewhere in between. You can see Volker's post here and the wiki here.

I'm not surprised that there isn't any open source, Sun, Oracle, or other POP\IMAP system, but I was surprised there was only one Groupwise left. And that was #113 on the global list. And that's right folks, no Gmail, Hotmail or AOL.

How to Install Drupal on IIS 7.0 (screencast)

Joel Stidley — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:30:00 GMT

I took it as a challenge a few weeks ago to configure Drupal on a Windows Server 2008 machine. (Unfortunately due to some technical problems with my laptop, I missed the deadline by almost an entire day).

It started off as something to do but it turned into a real learning experience. I first thought that there was no reason to run PHP on Windows, when you can do it pretty easily on Linux or even Apache on Windows. It turns out to be pretty easy on IIS. IIS 7 also has some really powerful management features that make it a good choice especially for those already familiar with Windows or need to run ASP.NET applications.

I created some scripts and recorded a video. (Updated Video on 12/17 @ 10:31pm)

Its my first trip into screencast territory, but if you find it useful please let me know and I will start planning my Exchange screencasts.

FastCGI Update for IIS 7: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d0343911-1775-4aef-8c99-5f13862ac386&DisplayLang=en

Source Video File is here.

Online PowerShell training with Paul Robichaux

Joel Stidley — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:32:47 GMT

Microsoft has had a 3-day instructor lead PowerShell course available for a few months now. (6434: Automating Windows Server 2008 Administration with Windows PowerShell). I can say with authority that it is an excellent course with a ton of detail. I highly recommend it.

I ran across another PowerShell course, this one is given by Paul Robichaux. The other cool thing about this is that he is giving it online and its only $99! His next session is next Thursday, so you’ll have to hurry. Sign up here: http://windowsitpro.com/elearning/index.cfm?fuseaction=dynamic&v=5153&p=5185&code=&eventid=29