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Quick Tip–Adding Same ISO DVD Image To All Hyper-V Lab VMs

When building out a lab, you might need to attach the same ISO to multiple VMs.  In this case I was installing multiple Exchange 2016 severs, and wanted to easily add the same ISO file to each of the VMs.

This was on my Windows 10 laptop which makes quick work of the task since we can use PowerShell.

The VMs to target all have the same naming convention.  The VMs for the Exchange 2016 lab start with… Read the rest “Quick Tip–Adding Same ISO DVD Image To All Hyper-V Lab VMs”

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Automating Enable-Remote Mailbox

While operating in an Exchange hybrid model, users expect to see a consistent GAL no matter if they or other people to be contacted are on-premises or in Exchange Online.  In order for the Exchange on-premises servers to be able to build up a complete GAL there needs to be at least some mailbox information added to the AD user object.  If Exchange Online mailboxes are added by simply assigning an … Read the rest “Automating Enable-Remote Mailbox”

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Script To Check Exchange NTFS Cluster Size

An issue came to light when onsite recently with a customer.  The design specifications from the Exchange team were not being correctly implemented.  In this environment there is a separate Windows team who are responsible for managing the underlying server OS and hardware.  They are to follow the prescribed process and steps laid down by the application owner but this was not consistently happeni… Read the rest “Script To Check Exchange NTFS Cluster Size”

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Blog Code Examples Not Running Due to Smart Quotes

During an excellent trip to see a local customer *, it was noted that some of the script examples on the blog were not working as expected.  The post we were looking at was the Check Exchange 2013 Schema and Object Information in AD.  When the sample commands were copied, the Exchange administrator was not able to immediately use them, even after editing to suit their environment.

The sym… Read the rest “Blog Code Examples Not Running Due to Smart Quotes”

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Create Azure RM VM Using Existing VHD

TailspinToys Canada have been busy upgrading their on-premises, Azure and Office 365 infrastructure.  Previously Azure resources were moved from classic (Azure Service Manager) to the new Azure Resource Manager (Azure RM).   The VMs, storage accounts and VHDs were migrated.   One of the migration blockers was that multiple availability sets were previously present in one of the cloud services.  Th… Read the rest “Create Azure RM VM Using Existing VHD”

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Exchange Management Shell Pipeline Not Executed Because a Pipeline Is Already Executing

When running operations in the Exchange Management Shell, you may run into the situation where the commands do not complete and the error “Pipeline not executed because a pipeline is already executing” is reported.  An example of this is shown below.

This is an Exchange 2010 SP3 RU15 lab server.  In this case a PowerShell one-liner was used to iterate through the Exchange 2010 servers, and to start… Read the rest “Exchange Management Shell Pipeline Not Executed Because a Pipeline Is Already Executing”

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Remote PowerShell – PSSession WhoAmI

For those who worked with NT and Novell Netware many, many moons ago they became familiar with a handy function– who am I.  Windows folks may also recall it when working with the Client and Gateway Services for Netware, and whoami.exe was also added to the NT Resource Kit.  Remember the days of all the fun res kit tools? *

The whoami command does exactly what you would expect, it tells you who you … Read the rest “Remote PowerShell – PSSession WhoAmI”

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Script To Start Exchange Services

Running scripts to start and stop services has been a task long associated with Exchange.  For those who pre-date Exchange 2000, do you remember the fun issues with the increased WaitToKillServiceTimeout value?  By default in ye olde days HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlWaitToKillServiceTimeout was 20,000 ms (20 secs).   Installing Exchange increased that to 600,000 ms (10 minutes). … Read the rest “Script To Start Exchange Services”

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Script To Automate Exchange Health Manager Service For Monitoring Mailbox Reset

This is a quick tactical script to help Exchange administrators when resetting Exchange Monitoring mailboxes.  Exchange 2013 introduced managed availability which is responsible for evaluating the health of Exchange 2013 and 2016 Exchange servers.  Yes it does also probe downlevel servers, but let’s not get bogged down in that in this post.  In order to do the synthetic user tests, mail and tests … Read the rest “Script To Automate Exchange Health Manager Service For Monitoring Mailbox Reset”