Can the Hybrid Cloud really work?

Hi guys,

On May 4th I will be presenting a live webinar on Hybrid Cloud solutions for Exchange and what it means for your business, your users and your datacentre.

More info on the official Cobweb Blog here: http://www.cobweb.com/learn-now/events/hybrid-cloud-webinar.aspx#oliver

Be sure to sign up as we take you on a journey through an Exchange Hybrid Cloud deployment and you get real world answers both from myself and the customer the solution was catered for.

See you there!

Take Care


Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

Cannot activate a Database Copy because of a corrupt Catalog

Hi,

Recently I had an issue activating a database in an Exchange 2010 DAG.


"An Active Manager operation failed. Error: The database action failed. Error: An error occurred while trying to validate the specified database copy for possible activation. Error: Database cop 'Database02' on server 'xxxxx' has content index catalog files in the following state: 'Failed'.. [Database: Database02, Server: xxxxx]
"

This issue was of course stopping me from activating the copy and performing maintenance on the server currently hosting the active copy. Yes I have more than 2 copies of the database in the DAG, but rather than mounting another copy, I decided to fix the issue.

You are able to update a mailbox copies catalog rather than performing a full database update. You can perform this by simply using the -CatalogOnly parameter for the Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy cmdlet.


Example: Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy Database\DAGServer -CatalogOnly

Once the catalog had updated, I was able to successfully move and activate the database on the required DAG member.

Take Care


Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

Securing Exchange UM with TLS for Microsoft Lync Integration

When integrating Exchange UM with Lync Server Unified Messaging must be running in either TLS or dual mode. For it to run in either of these modes a valid certificate from a CA must be installed on the Exchange UM server, rather than the standard self signed certificate.

However!

Simply adding a valid cert from your internal CA to Exchange UM and assigning it to the UM service using Enable-ExchangeCertificate or the Certificate Wizard UI in the Exchange Management Console does not solve the issue.

What we must do is set the UM service to run in either TLS or dual mode. To do this follow these steps.


1. You have succesfully added a certificate from your internal CA for Unified Messaging, you are now either using Powershell or the UI to assign this cert to your UM service, you then get this error:

2. This means you haven't set the UM service to run in either TLS or dual mode, TLS is enforced and dual mode means it runs allowing both. To set the UM service to the correct configuration fire up Powershell and run:

Set-UMserver - UMStartupMode dual -identity 'UMServer'

If you want to force TLS:

Set-UMserver - UMStartupMode TLS -identity 'UMServer'

If you have multiple UM servers and they all have the relevant certificate already in their certificate store then we could for example run:

Get-UMserver Set-UMserver - UMStartupMode dual/tls (selecting only one here).

3. We can now try and assign the certificate again via either Enable-ExchangeCertificate or via the Exchange Certificate Wizard UI in the Exchange Management Console:

4. Once this configuration change is made we must restart the UM service

Restart-Service MSExchangeUM

The service is now restarted and the UM service is running in either TLS or dual mode with the certificate from your internal CA.

You are now ready to proceed with the next step of integrating UM with Lync. Watch out for the next part of this process coming soon.

Take Care


Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

Installing Zune for WP7 on Windows 2008 R2 SP1

I recently upgraded my workstation to Windows 2008 R2 to take advantage of HyperV and to get to know it better. In doing so I resolved all the usual issues with a Server OS by installing the Desktop Experience a few selected drivers. However I could not install Zune to sync my Windows Phone 7. NOT COOL MAN!

Luckily there are some how to guides on the internet that showed how to get past this block, unfortunately they were all pretty old and the Zune installer has changed since this information was made public.

So, here is the latest guide on installing Zune onto Windows 2008 R2 SP1. This is current for Zune release 4.8.2345.0 and is the current Zune download as of April 2012.

1. Download Zune, once you have downloaded the package, open a command prompt and unpackage the exe with /x

2. Once unpackaged you should see a directory structure like so

3. Locate the relevant install package for you, in my case I am running the 64bit version of Windows 2008 R2 so I selected the x64 directory. From here locate the package folder, and within this is 'zune-x64.msi'. Run this msi file from an elevated command prompt. Notice it is running as administrator. To do this simply right click command and select 'Run as Administrator'

4. Once this is done, Zune will be installed! However... I found that my Windows Phone 7 would not connect to Zune. To remedy this we also need to install another msi file. 'Zunewmdu-x64.msi'

5. You may or may not have to reboot. I didn't have too, once the above msi file was installed I connected my Windows Phone 7 and...


Success!!

Take Care


Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server