Microsoft Exchange 2013/ 2016/ 2019 shows blank ECP & OWA after changes to SSL certificates

This issue is described in KB2971270 and is fixed in Exchange 2013 CU6. I published this blog post in July 2015 and it is still relevant. The feedback for this blog post was incredible, and I’m not joking when I say: I saved many admins weekends. ;) It has shown, that this error still occurs with Exchange 2016 and even 2019. Maybe not because of the same, with Exchange 2013 CU6 fixed bug, but maybe for other reasons.

Supported Active Directory environments for Microsoft Exchange

It is time for some words of wisdom, in regard to Exchange and the supported Active Directory environments. It is the same as with the supported. NET Framework releases: Latest release does not automatically mean “supported”. To be honest: I nearly nuked a customer environment with ~ 300 users yesterday by preparing the domain for the first Windows Server 2019 Domain Controller. Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0 First things first: Everything is fine!

What’s new in Vembu BDR Suite v4.0.1

Vembu Technologies was founded in 2002, and with 60.000 customers and more than 4000 partners, Vembu is a leading provider with a comprehensive portfolio of software products and cloud services to small and medium businesses. In December 2018, Vembu announced the fourth major release of their BDR Suite. Vembu BDR Suite 4.0.1 is now out for production setups with enhanced performance and bug fixes. Vembu BDR Suite v4.0.1 is an intermediate patch update that addresses the customers reported issues and other support issues on the previous build of v4.

VCAP6.5-DCV Design - Objective 1.3 Determine risks, requirements, constraints, and assumptions

This blog post covers objective 1.3 (Determine risks, requirements, constraints, and assumptions) of the VCAP6.5-DCV Design exam. It is based on the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 6.5 in Data Center Virtualization Design (3V0-624) Exam Preparation Guide (last update August 2017). The first objective of the exam prep guide has covered the business requirements. Now we have to do similar for the affected applications. The necessary skills and abilities are documented in the exam prep guide for the older VCAP6-DCV Design exam (3V0-622).

NetScaler Gateway - Cannot complete your request

A customer reported a weird problem with his NetScaler Gateway. Upon the first load of the website, they got an error “Cannot complete your request”. After clicking OK the error disappeared and does not occured again after reloading the website. Only after closing and re-opening the browser. I got this message in Firefox and Internet Explorer, but not from a remote machine, e.g. my PC at the office. Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.

VCAP6.5-DCV Design – Objective 1.2 Gather and analyze application requirements

This blog post covers objective 1.2 (Gather and analyze application requirements) of the VCAP6.5-DCV Design exam. It is based on the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 6.5 in Data Center Virtualization Design (3V0-624) Exam Preparation Guide (last update August 2017). The first objective of the exam prep guide has covered the business requirements. Now we have to do similar for the affected applications. The necessary skills and abilities are documented in the exam prep guide for the older VCAP6-DCV Design exam (3V0-622).

Out of space - first steps when a datastore runs out of space

This is a situation that never should happen, and I had to deal with it only a couple of times in more than 10y working with VMware vSphere/ ESXi. In most cases, the reason for this was the usage of thin-provisioned disks together with small datastores. Yes, that’s a bad design. Yes, this should never happen. There is a nearly 100% chance that this setup will fail one day. Either because someone dumps much data into the VMs, or because of VM snapshots.

User vdcs does not have the expected uid 1006

Sorry for the long delay since my last blog post - busy times, but with lots of vSphere. :) Today, I did an upgrade of a standalone vCenter Server Appliance at one of my healthcare customers. The vCenter was on 6.0 U3 and I had to upgrade it to 6.7 U2. It was only a small deployment with three hosts, so nothing fancy. And as with in many other vSphere upgrades, I came across this warning message:

Poor performance with Windows 10/ 2019 1809 on VMFS 6

THIS IS FIXED in ESXi 6.5 U3 and 6.7 U3. See KB67426 (Performance issues with Windows 10 version 1809 VMs running on snapshots) for more information. TL;DR: This bug is still up to date and has not been fixed yet! Some user in the VMTN thread mentioned a hotpatch from VMware, which seems to be pulled. A fix for this issue will be available with ESXi 6.5 U3 and 6.7 U3.

Make your life easier - KeeAgent for KeePass

Using a password safe, or password management system, is not a best practice - it’s a common practice. I’m using KeePass for years, because it’s available for different platforms, it can be used offline, it is Open Source, and it is not bound to any cloud services. Keepass allows me securely store usernames, passwords, recovery codes etc. for different services and websites, and together with features like autotype, Keepass offers a plus security and convenience.