leedesmond’s blog

Due to an unforeseen event, Marc thepowershellguy.com will not be able to moderate the PowerShell Script Club session as part of the Swiss IT Pro User Group every 1st Tuesday monthly event.

Same time, same place (Tue 6 Jul 10 from 1815 hrs UTC+2) in its place, I shall be delivering a presentation on the following topic. The other session on Communications Server “14″ First Look will go on as planned.

PowerShell Script Club – Introduction to PowerShell Remoting

Windows remoting is a new feature in Windows PowerShell and widely deployed in many Microsoft enterprise applications from Exchange 2010 to the new Communications Server “14”. What is actually the fuss about? What do I need to start using this advanced feature? This presentation will walk you through with a basic introduction to this essential topic.

The entire team and community looks forward to seeing you in person!

Technorati tags: PowerShell, LCS/OCS/CS14, Community/User Groups, Communications Server 14

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Rather than opening individual RDP sessions to your back-end servers with Remote Desktop Connection, consider deploying Microsoft’s internal tool that goes by the name “Remote Desktop Connection Manager”, RDCMan. It offers more flexibility than the Remote Desktops MMC snap-in. For instance, the administrator can group servers into regions or by server roles. On the work pane itself, a live thumbnail view of all connected servers is shown.

This free tool at version 2.2 is now available for public download here.

Technorati tags: Tools/Utilities

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Running natively on Windows Server 2008 R2 is now supported with the release of Service Pack 3 for Exchange Server 2003 (link). In addition, SP3 adds support for running the Exchange Management Tools on Windows 7. The version of SP3 is 8.03.0083.006 and is available for x86 as well as x64 bits.

CDO for Exchange (CDOEx) users should consult KB982720. System requirements for SP3, release notes, and “how-to” install SP3 on Small Business Server 2008 are described here.

Technorati tags: Exchange Server, Windows Server 2008 R2

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The Swiss IT Pro User Group’s next every first Tuesday monthly evening event will take place as usual in Zurich on 6 July 2010. We shall have a first look at Communications Server “14″ and the PowerShell Script Club by our very own resident MVPs!

A brief abstract of the breakout sessions is outlined here:

Script Clubs are like a hands on lab with no set topic or teacher. You bring an idea for a script, and ask your fellow PowerShell users for help getting the script written …

The full feature set of Communications Server “14″ was officially disclosed at the recent TechEd North America 2010 conference in New Orleans. Come hear about the exciting changes in areas of functionality, deployment, management, virtualization and PowerShell support, among others …

Free registration and more information here. See you there!

Technorati tags: PowerShell, LCS/OCS/CS14, Community/User Groups, Communications Server 14

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Technorati tags: Community/User Group

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To have the ability to recover individual files and folders in a guest virtual machine hosted on Hyper-V RTM / R2, the protection group must specify Disk as the backup media (short term).

The DPM agent only needs to be installed on the physical Hyper-V host. It is not a prerequisite to setup the DPM Agent in each and every VM. Doing so, however, enables the administrator to define separate and complementary backup schedules with added flexibility in recovery, both at the VM (as seen from Hyper-V) and application (child partition’s viewpoint) levels.

Additionally, the Hyper-V server role must be installed on the DPM 2010 Server. This requires Windows Server 2008 RTM / R2, which in any case is the only supported x64 operating system for DPM 2010. It is not sufficient to just install the Hyper-V Manager.

Technorati tags: System Center, Data Protection Manager, Windows Server 2008 R2

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New in Communications Server 14 is the ability to manage, administer and automate the Unified Communications infrastructure with the CS PowerShell Management Console.

In earlier implementations of OCS 2007 RTM and R2, administration using PowerShell can be achieved by calling into the WMI repository via the Get-WmiObject cmdlet. This can target local and remote machines.

With CS 14, the WMI model is no longer available. Instead, you can now use native cmdlets exposed via the CS 14 PowerShell Module (not PSSnapin). In fact, the CS 14 management interface and Communications Server Control Panel (CSCSP) are all built to run on PowerShell*.

To help you get up-to-speed, the all new Communications Server 14 Powershell Blog is now open for business. To quote - “this blog is going to be your one-stop shop for all things Communications Server 14 PowerShell”. Go check it out today!

PS: I am typing away at the just concluded “WSV401: Advanced Automation Using Windows PowerShell 2.0″ breakout session at Auditorium B (New Orleans Morial Convention Center).

* see UI-to-PowerShell Mapping

Technorati tags: LCS/OCS, OCS 2007 R2, TechEd, PowerShell

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With the official announcement of Communications Server 14 at Tech.Ed North America 2010 (New Orleans), attendees are learning first hand from product group experts, partners, vendors and the community (MCT, MVP) the many CS 14 feature detail sets in breakout-, interactive-, TLC- sessions and Hands-on-Labs.

As part of the celebration, the all new Communications Server 14 website has also been launched. From news and reviews, business highlights, customer stories, partner contacts to technology coverage, do not miss out on the Community section. This leads to additional technical resources covering Events and Webcasts, Forums, Microsoft and CS team member blogs, and MVP Highlights with even more community resources.

Together with MVP peers Jeff Schertz, Mike Stacy and Keith Kabza, I am very honored to be recognized as one of the top (English) online contributors for the most recent quarter! Come by and check it out here today!

See also:
Microsoft Communications Server Technical Reference Hub (DrRez)
Twitter DrRez
Unified Communications Group Team Blog

Technorati tags: LCS/OCS/CS14, TechEd, Community/User Groups, Communications Server 14

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Live from TechEd 2010 North America (New Orleans) keynote session. The full feature set of Communications Server “14″ is officially disclosed with an interative live demo by Gurdeep SinghPall (Corp Vice President). Some of the key new feature highlights of Communicator “14″:

• Communication Server (Wave 14) tightly integrated with corporate Active Directory, SharePoint and Exchange infrastructure
• display picture for personal Contacts pulled from SharePoint, AD or user-specified URL
• powerful aggregated search feature by name or skill against SharePoint backend (by expertise for instance sales)
• hover over name/picture to expose the Contact card with corporate information from AD, org chart (reporting structure)
• playback voice mail directly in Communicator (or Outlook for more)
• High Definition video playback directly in Communicator (HD cameras from Microsoft and partners controllable by policy)
• direct data collaboration à la Live Meeting right in Communicator client (powerpoint, desktop sharing, whiteboarding)

If you are attending TechEd this week, make sure that you check out the exciting line-up of UNC breakout sesions (more here). Take this opportunity to visit us on site at the Technical Learning Center (TLC) and experience Communications Server 14 live! Stop by and say hi

Stay tune for more on CS 14 … By the way, do not forget to check out the Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Public Beta - download available here.

Technorati tags: LCS/OCS, OCS 2007 R2, TechEd, Events

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If you deploy SCVMM to manage your virtual infrastructure, navigating to DPM / Protection Group and expanding the <clusterName> on the “Select Group Members” page will present you with the opportunity to pick from a list of virtual machines prefixed with <SCVMM> for backup.

Assuming that you have a clustered VM resource named Exchange, it will read “SCVMM Exchange Resources” below “<clusterName> (Cluster)”. Drill down to “HyperV” and put a check against “Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\Exchange”. Complete the remaining steps to finalize your backup requirements (backup media, goals, schedule, etc.).

For the reverse procedure (data restore), click on the Recovery tab and move to the Browse tab. On the left hand pane, expand “Recoverable data” and choose the node representing the Active Directory domain name. Instead of the <clusterName> name, you will find “SCVMM Exchange Resources (<clusterNameFQDN>)” along with other protected servers and resources (SQL, SharePoint, etc.).

In order to recover the entire VM - virtual hard disks (vhd), Virtual Machines folders, XML/bin/vsv files, etc. - it is imperative to first select “All Protected HyperV Data” in the tree view (Protected Data) on the left hand side. Be aware that these files do not show up as individual items for selection.

On the list pane to the right, highlight “Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\Exchange” and locate the desired recovery point, date, time and backup media using the calendar. Click on Recover where you have a choice on the “Recovery Type” page to perform restore using one of the options:

Recover to original instance
Recover as virtual machine to any host
Copy to a network folder
Copy to tape

For restoration of just the associated vhd files of the VM, double click “Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\Exchange”. You can only pick a single vhd for recovery one at a time. The recovery target in this case is limited to “Copy to a network folder”. Should you attempt to replace the vhds using this approach, VMM may fail to start the VM and complain with the error:

Error (12711)
VMM cannot complete the WMI operation on server <clusterNodeNameFQDN> because of error: [MSCluster_Resource.Name=”SCVMM Exchange”] The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested operation.

(The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested operation (0×139F))

To learn more about a cluster and its nodes under DPM, simply hover and pause the mouse over the entity to see the corresponding tool tip:

<clusterName> consists of multiple servers, which may have unclustered resources. Unclustered resources are listed separately under server names. Since this list is sorted alphabetically, server names may appear somewhere else in this tree view.

<clusterNodeName> is part of a cluster. Unclustered resources on this server are listed here. Clustered resources belonging to the same cluster are listed under cluster name separately. Since this list is sorted alphabetically, cluster name may appear somewhere else in this tree view.

Environment
Hyper-V R2 in a 2-node Fail-over Cluster with Cluster Shared Volume, CSV*
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, v2.0.4273.0
Data Protection Manager 2010 RTM*

*  Windows Server 2008 R2

See also:
Restore of hyper-v VM’s on DPM 2010 in Data Protection Manager

Technorati tags: System Center, Data Protection Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Windows Server 2008 R2

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