Today, I have stumbled upon a fact that is worth being documented.
TL;DR: Use the “Windows Srv 2016 DataCtr/Std KMS” host key (CSVLK), if you want to activate Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016 using KMS. Or use AD-based activation. For more information read the blog post of the Ask the Core Team: Windows Server 2016 Volume Activation Tips.
A customer wants to deploy Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016. A Windows Server 2012 R2 is acting as KMS host, and successfully activates Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Office 2013 Professional Plus.
Sometimes you have to check when the last backup of an Exchange mailbox database was taken. This is pretty simple, because the timestamps of the last full, incremental and differential backup is stored for each mailbox database. You can check these attributes using the Exchange Control Panel (ECP), or you can use the Get-MailboxDatabase cmdlet.
Backup successful, but no timestamp? Take a look at this output. As you can see, there’s no timestamp for the last full, incremental and differential backup.
When you use Microsoft Outlook in cached mode, what I always recommend, and you add additional mailboxes to your outlook profile, you will notice that the OST file will grow. Outlook will download the mailbox items (mails, calendar entries, contacts etc.), and store them in the OST file. This is the default behaviour since Microsoft Outlook 2010. If you want to disable this behaviour, you have two options:
Edit the registry Use a group policy object (GPO) Edit the Windows registry The easiest way is to use a reg file.
Edit: If you have already installed .NET 4.6.1, check this blog post on how to remove it (You Had Me At EHLO…)
Microsoft Exchange heavily relies on Microsoft .NET Framework. Because of this, Microsoft provides a matrix for the supported Microsoft .NET Frameworks. Mostly unknown is the fact, that Exchange doesn’t support the every Microsoft .NET Framework, and this is causing trouble sometimes. Some admins simply install the latest .NET releases because “it doesn’t hurt”.
After deploying a new Microsoft Exchange organization with Exchange 2016, or after deploying a Microsoft Exchange 2016 into an existing organization, you might notice a strange behaviour regarding the Offline Address Books (OAB).
[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-OfflineAddressBook Name Versions AddressLists ---- -------- ------------ Standard-Offlineadressliste {Version2, Version3, Version4} {\Globale Standardadressliste} Standard-Offlineadressliste (Ex2013) {Version4} {\Globale Standardadressliste} Huh?! Where does this Exchange 2013 OAB come from? As you can see in the cmdlet output, there’s no Exchange 2013 in this organization.
Another bug in Exchange 2016 CU2. The Role of a new receive connector is greyed out. You can select “Front-End-Transport”. This is a screenshot from a german Exchange 2016 CU2.
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
Solution Use the Exchange Management Shell to create a new receive connector. Afterwards, you can modify it with the Exchange Control Panel (ECP).
[PS] C:\Windows\system32>New-Receiveconnector -Name "Client Frontend Dummy" -RemoteIPRange ("192.168.200.99") -TransportRo le "FrontendTransport" -Bindings ("0.
Sometimes it’s necessary to have two DNS servers that are authoritative for the same DNS namespace. This is the case if you use the same namespace for your web site and your internal Active Directory domain, e.g. terlisten-consulting.de. Or that you have created the zone terlisten-consulting.de in your Windows DNS to point specific hosts to internal IP addresses. The DNS servers at your ISP would be authoritative, and the domain controllers of your Active Directory would also be authoritative for the same domain.
This is not a specific problem of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) OmniSwitches, but I’m affected by this behaviour and it’s really, really annoying. It’s not a problem with the switch, but with the device handling of Windows.
ALE delivers a micro USB-to-USB cable with each OmniSwtich 6860E. This cable is used to connect to the console port of the switch. Each time you connect the cable, Windows will discover a new USB-to-UART bridge and creates a new COM port.
As any other environment, my lab needs some maintenance from time to time. I use a Windows 2012 R2 VM with the Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) role to keep my Windows VMs up to date. Like many others, I was surprised by KB3148812 (Update enables ESD decryption provision in WSUS in Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2), which broke my WSUS. But the fix was easy: Uninstall KB3148812 and reboot the server.
A load balancer is an integral component of (nearly) every VMware Horizon View design. Not only to distribute the connections among a number of connection or security servers, but also to provide high availability in case of a connection or security server failure. Without a load balancer, connection attempts will fail, if a connection or security server isn’t available. Craig Kilborn wrote an excellent article about the different possible designs of load balancing.
