One of the most popular features of Outlook 2010 is how it can display GAL photos, the pictures of you and your coworkers. Given the popularity of this feature, it’s nice to know you can do it in Office 365 as well. There are posts online about uploading your image to your SharePoint MySite and then seeing images in OWA, but here we are going to load photos into Active Directory so they will be visible in Outlook 2010 and OWA as well. First we need to get photos we can use, then we need to load them into an attribute in AD, and finally, DirSync will push these up to O365. Sounds easy, right?

Yeah, well, it can be, but then again, if it was that easy there wouldn’t be a need to write a blog post, would there?

Why can’t the users do this?

Well, actually they can, but since when could you trust your users to do anything right? Yeah, that is what  I thought. If you want users tending to this themselves, have them log onto OWA, click in the upper right, and click Change Picture.

Okay, show of hands. How many want to leave this to their end users? Okay, you two can skip to the Stones vid at the end. The rest of you, read on.

Image guidelines

Your mileage may vary, but I found the following guidelines to work well for what I needed.

1. Images should be in JPG format.
2. 96×96 pixels works best.
3. Try to keep file size below 10KB. AD can go up to 100KB, but in this case smaller is better.
4. You may want to use headshots or images that are cropped to headshot perspective. At 96×96 it can be hard to recognise people’s faces if the image is wider/further back.
5. If you want to use a tool to automate loading of images, name the files as firstname.lastname.jpg.

You want to load the images into Active Directory, updating the thumbnailPhoto attribute for each user. You can do this through PowerShell, or with various scripts or third party tools.

PowerShell

If you want to update a single user, or build your own script in PowerShell to update multiple users, you certainly can. Here are enough steps to get you started.

1. Log onto a PC in the same domain as your users accounts are in.
2. If this is not a 2008R2 domain controller, you will want to install the AD PowerShell module. Open an administrative PowerShell prompt and run
   
3. Then import the AD module for PowerShell using
   
4. Change to the directory that contains the images you want to use, and run the following command, substituting the correct values for what is in italics.
   $photo = [byte[]](Get-Content C:\Photos\firstname.lastname.jpg -Encoding byte)
Set-ADUser username -Replace @{thumbnailPhoto=$photo}
5. Repeat this process for each user.
6. Either run a manual DirSync process, or wait for the next scheduled run.

And it’s that last bit that keeps me from saying “Yay PowerShell!” because it’s not really scalable, and scripting it is still a bit beyond me. So, here’s what I would suggest instead.

CodeTwo Active Directory Photos

I found a free tool I really like that automates the process of uploading images to AD. It can also resize or crop images as necessary and even convert PNG/BMP/GIF to JPG automatically if needed. It is called CodeTwo Active Directory Photos. This program makes updating a single user’s thumbnailPhoto almost too easy, and it can also “bulk import” images, based on matching filename to user name or other AD attribute. There is a good video on how to use this program, which you can view here.

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers… http://youtu.be/PkdYmuPYujY.

There is also a pretty useful FAQ if you would like to know more about GAL Photos then you ever did before. Check that out here if you wish.

There is another free tool on Codeplex called AD Imageloader which you can get from this link http://adimageloader.codeplex.com/, but I like CodeTwo’s entry and am sticking with it. I particularly liked the narration in their YouTube video. If you didn’t watch it, you missed the bit at 0:45 regarding getting “blood out of stone.” Go back and watch their video, and then you will understand why I am including this unreleased gem from the Rolling Stones in this post.

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://youtu.be/sXivhZmNKzM

If this post helped you out at all, how about a shout out with a comment below, or maybe even a follow on Twitter? It’s costs nothing, and shows the love.

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Run it in full screen, and with audio. Language may be mildly not safe for work. Towards the end, do NOT attempt to drink any beverages while viewing this.

The Chase from Philippe Gamer on Vimeo.
A story about the art of aging….enjoy

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Hosted email security is getting more and more attention in the industry today, as email attacks continue to grow in frequency, and impact. Email is one of the most critical applications on your network, and it is also a favored way attackers seek to compromise your network, whether by malware, phishing or social engineering. Layering your defenses to maximize your protection is prudent, and hosted email security is an easy, effective, and affordable way to improve your security posture. Here are six reasons to consider hosted email security for your organization:

1. Effectiveness

Hosted email security providers have the edge in effectiveness over on-premise solutions. They can run multiple engines easily, without bogging down an email system, since messages pass through on the way to the customer. New signature updates can be instantly deployed to their systems without waiting on a scheduled update, and because they are processing orders of magnitude for more messages than any single customer, they can identify and react to new spam campaigns quicker.

2. Economies of scale

With tons of server capacity and multiple network connections, they can handle much larger volumes of messaging than any customer could, and do not have the single points of failure most SMBs do with a single Internet connection. If your circuit goes down, hosted email security providers can queue up clean messages, delivering them to you as soon as your connection is restored. Because they spread the costs of all that bandwidth and capacity across all the subscribers, they can afford the largest available connections, ensuring that the next spam bot or virus doesn’t choke off legitimate email.

3. Bandwidth savings

Up to 90% of all email is spam, and by blocking all that noise before it ever comes to your border, you save all that bandwidth for things like customers accessing your website, or your users doing their jobs. A circuit that looks fully utilized today may prove to have tons of available capacity once you start filtering out all the spam and infected messages using a hosted email security provider.

4. Storage space savings

Even when your on-premise solution does filter a message, it has to store it somewhere until it is
manually reviewed, or ages out and is deleted. Quarantine folders can grow to the point where they fill the disk of your on-premise solution, but a hosted email security provider has all the space necessary to store quarantined messages.

5. Subscription cost model

Investing in an on-premise solution can be expensive, and require a large up-front investment. Hosted email security providers typically charge by the user on a monthly subscription basis. You pay only for what you use, and there’s seldom any provisioning costs, and never any hardware, software, or licensing fees involved. You can classify your expenditure on email security as an operational expense and easily reallocate the costs to your other departments on a per user basis.

6. Additional services

Hosted email security can be added onto your existing infrastructure as easily as changing an MX record. Look for services that offer free 30-day trials. You won’t have to add any hardware or install any software, and with a short TTL you can change your mind in an instant. But after you see how effective hosted email security is, you’ll be hooked.

All these reasons make it clear that hosted email security is the way to go for any small to medium-sized business.

This guest post was provided by Casper Manes on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. Learn more about the benefits of using hosted email security.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Have you ever felt like it takes the Exchange Management Shell, like, FOREVER to get from the point where you click it to the point where you get the blinking cursor so you can actually do something? Yeah, me too.

Here’s a little trick that helps speed things up for me. It should do the trick for you too.

1. Open the EMS
2. Enter the command
   Get-ADServerSettings [enter]
3. You should see, well, basically, not so much. Like this.
   
4. Pick a Global Catalog server in the same domain and site as your Exchange server, and enter this command
   Set-ADServerSettings –PreferredServer fqdnoftheGC [enter]
5. Then repeat the first command, but this time pipe it into format-list.
   

That’s it really. Rather than waiting for the EMS to find and bind to a GC, you are saving time by telling it where to go. “Heh-heh, you told it where to go.” The following video merely affirms that at heart, I am twelve years old.

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://youtu.be/t9laOl7cqR4

My taste in humour notwithstanding, if the little trick above helped you out at all, how about a shout out with a comment below, or maybe even a follow on Twitter? If I get ten comments or five follows as a result of this little tip I promise not to use another Beavis and Butthead video ever again!

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As a follow up to my earlier post about the Geek ABC’s, I wanted to share a little story and some humour with you today. I was on the phone with another engineer, using the ITU spelling alphabet but not making a great deal of progress, when my client walked by and said “P as in pterodactyl.”

Well. to be honest, I had to jump for the mute button because I started to bust out laughing. The sheer ridiculousness of the English language, with so many silent letters, started me thinking about creating an alternate, smart-arsed spelling alphabet, but it didn’t take long to find that The Bare Naked Ladies beat me to the punch. I’d only change R, which of course must be for arrrrrgghh!

Enjoy!

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://youtu.be/_dvPhtNZCj0

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1. Now you know your ABCs

So you’ve well on your way towards moving your email to the cloud and you’re loving the awesomeness of Office 365. You have DirSync working, and ADFS up and running, and everything looks great until some yahoo tries to use Chrome or Firefox and gets spanked with a big ol’ DENIED. You probably use those browsers too, and at home, going through the ADFS proxies you have no problem, but further investigation shows that no one can use any browser on the internal network except IE. You do some digging around and have already figured out that its Extended Protection for Authentication that is smacking you down.

You’ve probably also found the TechNet article on turning that off with what appears to be a simple PowerShell command. Did you waste an hour trying to debug the error message before you realised you have to import the PowerShell cmdlets for ADFS first? Did you then try to figure out why the article tells you to run it on every server, only to hit an error telling you it only has to be run on the primary? Want to know how to fix it for realz?

So here’s a couple of assumptions you want to make sure you’re square with. If not, YMMV. In my environment, I deployed an

• ADFS WID farm using the O365 version of ADFS
• Installed it on 2008R2
• My FS-Ps are also running 2008R2. Publishing through TMG applies here to.
• ADFS is running with RU1
• I am running several federated namespaces with -SupportMultipleDomain
• Using IE, everything works as expected
• Using Chrome and Firefox, neither of those browsers could authenticate internally. They get the authentication pop up repeatedly until cancelled, then the unauthorized page.
• Externally, Chrome and Firefox work just fine. So too does IE.

First, I tried the instructions here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh237448(WS.10).aspx. That article says to run this PowerShell command

Set-ADFSProperties –ExtendedProtectionTokenCheck None

on each server in the farm. After opening PowerShell and importing the ADFS cmdlets, the cmd appears to work. If I then do a Get-ADFSProperties | fl I can see that the setting for EPA token check is none. When I try to run it on the other servers (per the instructions) they error that it only needs to be run on the primary. Testing, users with FF or Chrome still hit the endless loop of auth prompts…the setting didn’t take effect. Restarting ADFS, performing an iisreset, even rebooting…no effect.

Below is what to do, at least on the O365 version of ADFS running on 2008R2. This is quick, instant, and only needs to be done on the ADFS servers, not on the proxies.

1. Log onto the ADFS server with administrative credentials.
2. Launch the IIS Management Console
3. Browse down to Default Web Site, adfs, ls.
   
4. Select ls, then double-click on Authentication, select Windows Authentication, then click Advanced Settings…

5. From the drop down box for Extended Protection: select Off.

6. Click OK. This setting takes effect immediately. No iisreset, no restarting ADFS, it just works. Yay.

Try out those third party browsers, and squee with delight that they work! Now, in all seriousness, EPA is a good thing, and you really ought to consider requiring it, and telling users internally to use IE for access to O365 services, but if that won’t cut it, this is the next best thing. You might even say it’s the sweetest thing.

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://youtu.be/5WybiA263bw

Did this solve your boggle? Leave a comment to let me know, and if you tweet, how’s about a follow? It costs you nothing, and keeps the voices in my head from yelling at me too much.

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What do you get when you mix one part dystopian future, three parts vampire, one part kung-fu, a pinch of Catholic school induced guilt, one part Karl Urban, and two parts awesome? Priest. This Korean graphic novel inspired vampire hunter yarn is just simple fun; no moralistic story telling (despite the Catholic Church’s presence throughout,) no attempt at complex dialog or deep character development, just some really bad-ass priests killing some really bad vampires. Tons of fun, lots of great special effects and stunts, and Karl Urban owned every scene he was in.

If you’re looking for a great action film with a lot of fun, and don’t mind some comic book gore and a little bit of fright thrown in, Priest is just the ticket for you.

Best quote: Black Hat: [With an evil smirk] After all, if you’re not committing sin… you’re not having fun.

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://youtu.be/-VNczhWD2ao

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1. 42 second movie review:Contagion
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An all star cast, a disaster of epic proportions, a big budget…Contagion had all the hallmarks of a blockbuster. I really expected this to be the next great epidemic movie; the latest in the proud tradition that includes The Andromeda Strain, Outbreak, Twelve Monkeys, and all but the last 30 minutes of The Stand. Instead, I got a flat, disjointed movie that felt like it tried to use big names to make up for a poor script, and a story that jumped all over the place. For example, Gwyneth Paltrow got top billing, and is essentially an under-five, and the normally Oscar worthy Jude Law was not even two dimensional. Matt Damon has been getting progressively better over the years and is one of my current favourites, but he phoned in this performance while half asleep. It’s a shame when I consider how great this movie should have been just how bad it was. Redbox this one…if there’s nothing else to watch. Maybe they blew the budget on the cast, and had to cut screenwriting to a half day on a plane.

Best quote from the movie: Dr. Ian Sussman: Blogging is not writing. It’s just graffiti with punctuation.

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://youtu.be/4sYSyuuLk5g

Did I just save you from dropping $20 on the DVD at Target? Kept you from wasting the bandwidth watching this on Netflix? A follow on Twitter is a nice and free way to say thanks!

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3. 42 second movie review: 2012

 

What can I read to get more information?

Try these links:

• Wikipedia’s articles on SOPA and PIPA
• Statement from Wikipedia editors announcing decision to black out
• Wikimedia Foundation press release
• Blog post from Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner
• Electronic Frontier Foundation blog post on the problems with SOPA/PIPA

As of 6AM PT, January 18, Google has more than 4,600 articles about the blackout. Here are a few:

• Why is Wikipedia staging a blackout and what is SOPA?, from the National Post
• Wikipedia joins blackout protest at US anti-piracy moves, from the British Broadcasting Corporation
• Wikipedia blackout over US anti-piracy bills and FEATURE: Websites blackout over ‘SOPA censorship’, from Al Jazeera
• Wikipedia, Craigslist, other sites go black in SOPA protest, from the Los Angeles Times
• Google Rallies Opposition to Murdoch-Backed Anti-Piracy Bill, from BusinessWeek
• SOPA protest: The Net strikes back, from Politico
• Wikipedia blackout a ‘gimmick’, MPAA boss claims, from the Guardian
• Wikipedia 24-hour blackout: a reader and Why we’re taking Wikipedia down for a day, from the New Statesman
• Internet-wide protests against SOPA/PIPA are kicking up a storm, by the Hindustan Times
• SOPA, PIPA: What you need to know, from CBS News
• Protest on Web Uses Shutdown to Take On Two Piracy Bills, from the New York Times
• Protesting SOPA: how to make your voice heard, from Ars Technica
• Why We’ve Censored Wired.com, from Wired

Am I worried that I have violated someone’s copyright by posting the stuff above? No. Wikipedia content is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, and TheOatmeal told me to pirate the shit out of this animated GIF. Am I worried that SOPA and/or PIPA will ruin the Internet? Most definitely. Have I written my elected officials? You betcha! Why don’t you? hint…click that link, fill out the email to your Senator, then scroll down to do the same for your Congressional Representatives.

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Well it’s been a long time since I posted a new reference, but having recently been confronted with the need to translate build numbers into human-sensical versions of Exchange for about 85 servers, I felt it was high time to get a chart I could refer to at need. So, here. The hyperlinked versions in the table take you to the product support lifecycle for the version if it is still in mainstream support.

Product name Release date Build number Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 SP2  February 13, 2012 14.02.0283.003 Exchange Server 2010 SP2 October 27, 2011 14.01.0355.002 Update Rollup 6 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 October 27, 2011 14.01.0355.002 Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 August 23, 2011 14.1.339.1 Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 July 27, 2011 14.1.323.6 Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 April 6, 2011 14.01.0289.007 Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 December 9, 2010 14.01.0270.001 Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 October 4, 2010 14.1.255.2 Exchange Server 2010 SP1 August 23, 2010 14.01.0218.015 Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2010 December 13, 2010 14.0.726.0 Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 June 10, 2010 14.0.702.1 Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 April 13, 2010 14.0.694.0 Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 March 4, 2010 14.0.689.0 Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 December 9, 2009 14.0.682.1 Exchange Server 2010 November 9, 2009 14.00.0639.021 Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 SP3 September 21, 2011 8.03.0213.001 Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 SP3 May 28, 2011 8.03.0192.001 Update Rollup 3-v2 for Exchange Server 2007 SP3 March 30, 2011 8.03.0159.002 Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 SP3 December 10, 2010 8.03.0137.003 Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 SP3 September 9, 2010 8.03.0106.002 Exchange Server 2007 SP3 June 7, 2010 8.03.0083.006 Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 SP2 December 7, 2010 8.2.305.3 Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 SP2 April 13, 2010 8.2.254.0 Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2007 SP2 March 11, 2010 8.2.247.2 Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 SP2 January 22, 2010 8.2.234.1 Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 SP2 November 9, 2009 8.2.217.3 Exchange Server 2007 SP2 August 24, 2009 8.02.0176.002 Update Rollup 10 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 April 13, 2010 8.1.436.0 Update Rollup 9 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 July 16, 2009 8.1.393.1 Update Rollup 8 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 May 19, 2009 8.1.375.2 Update Rollup 7 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 March 18, 2009 8.1.359.2 Update Rollup 6 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 February 10, 2009 8.1.340.1 Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 November 20, 2008 8.1.336.1 Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 October 7, 2008 8.1.311.3 Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 July 8, 2008 8.1.291.2 Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 May 9, 2008 8.1.278.2 Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 February 28, 2008 8.1.263.1 Exchange Server 2007 SP1 November 29, 2007 8.01.0240.006 Update Rollup 7 for Exchange Server 2007 July 8, 2008 8.0.813.0 Update Rollup 6 for Exchange Server 2007 February 21, 2008 8.0.783.2 Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 October 25, 2007 8.0.754.0 Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 August 23, 2007 8.0.744.0 Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2007 June 28, 2007 8.0.730.1 Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 May 8, 2007 8.0.711.2 Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 April 17, 2007 8.0.708.3 Exchange Server 2007 March 8, 2007 8.0.685.25 Exchange Server 2003 post- SP2 August 8, 2006 6.5.7654.4 Exchange Server 2003 post-SP2 March 8, 2006 6.5.7653.33 Exchange Server 2003 SP2 October 19, 2005 6.5.7683 Exchange Server 2003 SP1 May25, 2004 6.5.7226 Exchange Server 2003 September 28, 2003 6.5.6944 Exchange 2000 Server post-SP3 August 8, 2003 6.0.6620.7 Exchange 2000 Server post-SP3 March 8, 2003 6.0.6620.5 Exchange 2000 Server post-SP3 August 4, 2002 6.0.6603 Exchange 2000 Server post-SP3 April 4, 2002 6.0.6556 Exchange 2000 Server post-SP3 September 3, 2002 6.0.6487 Exchange 2000 Server SP3 July 18, 2002 6.0.6249 Exchange 2000 Server SP2 November 29, 2001 6.0.5762 Exchange 2000 Server SP1 June 21, 2001 6.0.4712 Exchange 2000 Server November 29, 2000 6.0.4417

In modern versions of Exchange, you can drop to an EMS and run

Get-ExchangeServer | fl name,edition,admindisplayversion

to determine the version.

Rumour has it that Rollup 1 for Exchange 2010 SP2 will ship soon. I will try to update this table when that hits, and going forward, but it is unbelievably hard to do styled tables without getting the text into Excel, and then pasting it into Word to apply the theme, and then that brings all the formatting garbage over into WLW…oh well. It’s a labour of love. Speaking of rumours…

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://youtu.be/-_uchIyNIvc

Found this post useful? Follow me on Twitter to gain positive karma, show your friends how cool you are, and to encourage me to keep this sort of thing coming! Oh, and I do lurve comments!

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 Midnight in Paris is one of the best movies I have seen in years. Woody Allen’s movies may be an acquired taste, but even if you have never enjoyed one of his earlier works, you owe it to yourself to see this one. Owen Wilson (who nails the first serious role I have ever seen him attempt) is a disenchanted Hollywood screenwriter who dreams of living the life of an ex-pat writer in Paris. His fiancé, her disingenuous friends, and her family are all suffocating him while driving him further into a life he truly does not want.

He goes for a midnight stroll in Paris, and finds himself in a world that, rather that being beyond his dreams, might just be considered his actual dream.

Like most Woody Allen movies, the ensemble cast is full of stars, and Adrien Brody is a genius…his portrayal of Salvador Dalí should net him another Oscar. Best dialogue exchange from the movie…

Man Ray: A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!
Luis Buñuel: I see a film!
Gil: I see insurmountable problem!
Salvador Dalí: I see rhinoceros!

Here’s the trailer…trust me, you’ll love this movie.

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://youtu.be/atLg2wQQxvU

You might also enjoy:

1. 42 second movie review:Contagion
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In this post I explain how email archiving software solves many of the inherent problems that exist with the current email servers and email server setups. As you will see, storage space, the need to use PST files, performance and compliance are big issues for companies that do not invest in email archiving software.

When email was invented, the vision was to be able to instantly transmit simple, plain text messages across the globe. This vision was quickly brought to life and email usage soared. Almost immediately however, email users wanted to do more. They wanted to send emails with rich formatting using fonts, colors and images, and they also wanted to send file attachments along with the message. These rich features turned a simple message from a few bytes in size into a complex package consisting of multiple email bodies in different formats and large attachments.

This caused several problems:

1. Storage space: A lot of new storage capacity was required on both the email servers and the clients that download them.

2. PST files: Email clients, such as Outlook, were storing emails in databases that worked well with small messages, but performed poorly as the PST file grew larger.

3. Performance: Sorting and searching email on the client became very slow and inefficient and did not always yield useful results.

4. Compliance: Compliance laws – such as those that require email retention – further compounded all the problems above because companies had to hold on to emails for much longer, and required a fast and efficient way of accessing those emails.

Email archiving software was designed to address these issues; here’s how:

1. Storage Space

There are two main strategies for holding emails; download and store every email on the client, or keep all emails on the server and let the clients access them from there. Both these strategies are disastrous because neither the client nor the server were designed to hold large volumes of email and so they lack both the robustness and efficiency required to sort and search through the load. Ideally all emails should be saved in a separate database designed with email storage and retrieval in mind. These are the types of databases that email archiving software solutions offer.

1. PST Files

Microsoft Outlook stores emails inside PST files which are typically stored on the email client. Every user is responsible for storing his/her own emails so a central strategy for email is lost. A large email that was sent to multiple users will be stored multiple times on every recipient’s machine and backing up PST files is a nightmare and very rarely successful – especially in large organizations. With email archiving software in place, PST files can be removed whilst still giving users access to all their old or deleted emails

1. Performance and Compliance

By eliminating the storage problem, both on the client and on the server your company will see big gains in performance. Employees will not need to deal with overloaded and sluggish email clients, and administrators will easily handle the burden that email puts on their servers. Achieving email compliance also becomes much easier thanks to email archiving software. To comply with most email retention regulations, email must be stored in a central database and must be retrievable with ease. Email archiving solutions make all this possible, so apart from increasing performance, you are also addressing compliance – hitting two birds with one stone.

At first it is easy to overlook the need for email archiving software, however as your organization grows, acquires more users, and accumulates more emails, the need for an email archiving solution becomes very evident. System administrators should think early and implement email archiving as soon as possible rather than wait for things to deteriorate.

This guest post was provided by Jeremy Pullicino on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. Read all you need to know about email archiving software.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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2. howto://improve your Exchange performance
3. Six Reasons to Consider Hosted Email Security

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7217A09A83D56449

A few of my favourite Christmas tunes to run in the background. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and my Best wishes for the New Year!

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I was working with a client today to configure a couple of NLB pairs for ADFS. The design called for a pair of federation servers (FS) on the internal network, and a pair of federation server proxies (FS-P) in the DMZ. Both pairs would need to be load balanced using Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB, or WLBS if you prefer) to provide redundancy. Something like this…

Setting up NLB on the first FS-P server went well, but when we tried to add the second server to the NBL cluster, it would join and then after resetting the network interface, show as misconfigured in the console, with the error message “the interface is misconfigured (double-click for details) in the output screen. Doing the obvious showed and error like this (addresses redacted to protect the innocent.)

Cluster IP address w.x.y.z not added to TCPIP properties
Port rule virtual IP address w.x.y.z not added to TCPIP properties.

That singularly unhelpful error messages turned up a lot of hits on both the major search engines, but none of the links really told me much…the exact error text never even showed up in the text of most of them! We tried a couple of different combinations, using the second server as the first node, driving from the admin console of the other server, etc. and each time we hit the same problem. Finally, I got the inspiration to just go into the properties of the NIC and add the cluster ip.addr as a second address for the NIC. It went in without a problem, a quick F5 on the NLB management console, and NLB was working. Both servers showed green, and repeated testing with stopping and starting each node was successful. For whatever reason, it just needed the cluster ip.addr added manually. So if you see the error

Cluster IP address w.x.y.z not added to TCPIP properties
Port rule virtual IP address w.x.y.z not added to TCPIP properties.

1. Access the properties of the NIC on the problem server.
2. Double-click Internet Protocol Version 4.
3. Click Advanced.
4. In the IP address window, click Add… and enter the cluster ip.addr and subnet mask.
5. OK your way out of that.
6. Hit F5 on the NLB management console.

And you’re done. I hope this helps someone save an hour or so of troubleshooting. Take that time I just saved you, and enjoy this classic from Pink Floyd that was playing as I finished this post. I think there’s some irony in there somewhere, since this is a classic howto post. You be the judge.

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Squeee! It’s a Doctor Who Christmas episode tease! I’d hate to be all smithereening.

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