Items related to messaging services with a focus on Exchange Online (EXO) and Exchange server (on-premises)
Exchange 2016 CU4 has been released to the Microsoft download centre! Exchange 2016 has a different servicing strategy than Exchange 2007/2010 and utilises Cumulative Updates (CUs) rather than the Rollup Updates (RU/UR) which were used previously. CUs are a complete installation of Exchange 2016 and can be used to install a fresh server or to update a previously installed one. Exchange 2013 ha… Read the rest “Exchange 2016 CU4 Released”
The below is a repro of a customer issue where they were unable to RDP to an Azure RM VM from the Internet. Previously this was not something they had setup as connecting to VMs was provided by a site to site VPN. There was no requirement to provide RDP access from the Internet, until they wanted to allow connectivity from one specific business partner to some VMs. The partner is not part of th… Read the rest “Azure RM VM Connect Button Greyed Out”
As mentioned in this blog's previous posts on deploying AD FS, one option is to deploy all or part of the AD FS solution in Azure. This is very valuable if there is insufficient capacity on-premises or if you only have a single datacentre and wish to increase resiliency.
Deploying the AD FS solution or connecting it to Azure is pretty straight forward. However, if you not correctly plan the Azure… Read the rest “Load Balancing AD FS Services In Azure RM”
One of the added features in AD FS 2012 R2 was the ability to leverage group managed service accounts (gMSA) which obviated the requirement to manually change the password associated with the service account. See Getting Started with Group Managed Service Accounts for some background on gMSA. You may also see the term sMSA which is a standalone managed service account.
Managed service accounts and … Read the rest “Change AD FS 2012 R2 Service Account Password”
New? Well some options are not that new really. Others are however!
Sometimes it is the little things in life that can help immensely. Take our venerable friend, netstat! Even though it has been around for many moons folks often get into the habit of using only certain options, switches or parameters. For reference purposes, the Windows XP Netstat options are doc… Read the rest “New Netstat Options”
Like many other customers, the Tailspintoys Canada organization are leveraging Azure as part of their IT solution, and have done so for years. Because of this they have Azure resources in the old Azure model, and wish to transition to the new deployment methodology. In short they need to move from Azure Service Manager to the new Azure Resource Manager.
Azure Service Manager (SM) is also called C… Read the rest “Migrating IaaS Resources to Azure Resource Manager”
This is a follow-up to the initial post on the topic which was based on the original Azure Service Manager (Azure SM) model. Azure Resource Manager (Azure RM) changes the deployment methodology. Take a look at Azure Resource Manager vs. classic deployment: Understand deployment models and the state of your resources for more details. We will take a brief look at the relationship of the networking… Read the rest “How To Get Azure RM VM IP Addresses Using PowerShell”
The below Web Application Proxy (WAP) server had an unexpected issue. When the machine came back up, it had lost the configuration to allow it to communicate to the AD FS farm. This is not specifically an VM/Hyper-V/Azure issue, it is more of a WAP issue.
Fixing the issue is straight forward, though let’s take a look at the symptoms first.
On the affected WAP server the AD FS serv… Read the rest “Web Application Proxy Service Not Starting Due to Malformed Configuration File”
This post is to answer a recent customer question regarding if there is a requirement to perform a directory sync cycle after creating a new remote mailbox enabled AD user object before it could have an Office 365 mailbox created.
They believed that the on-premises Exchange tools were directly reaching out to Exchange Online and immediately creating the necessary mailbox in the service. This is w… Read the rest “Enable-RemoteMailbox – Is It A Chicken Or An Egg”
The below is a quick note for Canadian customers. We are now almost at the end of the window to signup for the GoLocal move where Microsoft will move your North American tenant to the Canadian datacenter region. Note that the message states core customer data is what will be moved. The below message should be in your Office 365 Message Center:
From the above message:
Customers with data residency… Read the rest “Reminder – Signup For Moving Tenant To Canadian Datacenter Region”