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March 2005 - Posts

My blog has moved too...

You've probably seen this from several others. I assume that you've updated all of the links and RSS feeds already. Cos you're organised aren't you? Here are the new links: Web: http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown RSS: http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/rss.aspx
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MOM CRM connector

I got an email from Simon today asking all of the MOM gurus to have a look at this. (I thought it said MOM gnu's until i found my glasses... oops). I think it should also be for CRM gurus too though... The MOM-CRM Connector download is now live . The

TechNet Radio broadcasts

I noticed that TechNet radio is delivering an audio broadcast of the Security features of XPSP2 delivered by security wiz Steve Riley. You can listen to it anywhere. Aha... That means it's a podcast doesn't it? But there isn't an RSS feed on the page,

MSN help with passwords and stuff

I've blogged a couple of times about MSN Messenger, when the beta came out for version 7.0 , and I've also blogged about what to do if you lose your password or secret question . These seem to be the posts that generate the most comments, and emails from

Live Meeting Portal

If you use Live Meeting, then there is a new Live meeting portal available for dow nload to allow you to manage Live meeting more effectively. I use it all the time - its great for going through slide decks with the team when we're all sitting at home

Securing MOM 2005

I had a question from Tony over the weekend (he must have had a busy time rolling out MOM!) and he was asking how some security questions.  They had 2 management groups which they planned to connect to the central group using the MOM to MOM product connector and MCF.  He was concerned about privileges of the MOM service and which security accounts needed access to which directories.

I had a search on the web, and found this useful guide which documents how to secure the MOM servers and agents which should keep the security team happy.

Good luck with the security meeting Tony!

 

Windows Server Update Services released to Web

So SUS has changed to US, and it's now available to download.  Here's some of the key features:

Microsoft is also announcing the official name - Windows Server Update Services, or Update Services for short, of the next version of Software Update Services (SUS).  Update Services is a corporate update management offering used by SMB and enterprise customers to update Microsoft software, and is available free of charge to customers of Windows Server (2000 and above).  The Release Candidate of Windows Server Update Services includes new features such as: 

· Replica mode for WS Update Services server hierarchies, making them easier to manage

· SSL connections between WS Update Services servers and clients, providing an even more secure end-to-end environment

·  Automatic Update policy to allow non-administrators to receive update notifications, offering greater flexibility in organizations where logged on users are commonly not administrators

 

How can you obtain the Windows Update Services RC, associated documentation, and tools?

· Go to this site:  

·Register and download the release

It is important to note the following regarding content support for your existing Beta 2 installation:

  • The last update to the beta Microsoft Update service was made on March 8th. As a result, Windows Update Services Beta 2 will no longer receive new updates. We encourage you to download the Release Candidate of Windows Server Update Services as soon as possible to continue receiving updates and testing the product.
  • Existing content on the beta Microsoft Update service will be available for server synchronization until April 22, 2005. After that date, that service will be decommissioned and Windows Update Services Beta 2 installations will not be able to receive any content.

 

 

Modifying Outlook 2003 defaults

I read Michael's comment on my blog the other day about changing the default Outlook view so that it didn't show the default Show All in groups. There are LOADS of links showing how to change the default templates in Outlook when I had a look around the

Restoring SBS 2003

Alex mailed me with a problem he had backing up SBS 2003. Whenever he did a trial restore he got NTOSKRNL.EXE errors. He was concerned that when he had to do things for real, then the restore would go badly wrong. NTOSKRNL.exe errors usually point to

Outlook 2003 cached mode benefits

I was on the train this afternoon, coming back from a meeting and doing all of the catching up that you need to do from time to time, email triage and all of that stuff when the bloke (guy) sitting beside me said: "That's Outlook 2003 isn't it?" "Yes

Restricting inbound Internet mail to Distribution group on Exchange 2003

I've been setting up an alias for a new initiative that we're planning here in the UK, and I need an alias for this on the Exchange server. Now, initially our list has to be internal only, whilst we plan, and then available for external mail when we're

Blogcast: The Exchange team start to demo!

As Michael pointed out in his blog , the Exchange team have created lots of blogcasts, 5-10 minute demos of Exchange. Lots of stuff about Upgrading from 5.5 to 2003, Fighting spam, and Disaster recovery. They're certainly worth bookmarking if you ever

Blogcast: Customising your Outlook calendar

Allister has taken blogcasting to heart and has produced 2 blogcasts on customising the Outlook calendar and published them on his blog . The blogcasts covers the sort of stuff that we should already know - but tend to ignore as we get stuck into a pattern

ExBPA 2.0 now released

It's now on the web... http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads/2003/exbpa/default.mspx Announcing the second version of the highly popular Exchange Server Best Practices Analyser tool (BPA). To date over 200,000 customers have downloaded and run the

MOM Webcasts for April

Only one this month.... TechNet Webcast: Monitoring Active Directory with Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (Level 300) Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM Pacific Time Mas Libman, Program Manager - Directory and Identity Services, Microsoft

Real Time Collaboration Webcasts for April

TechNet Webcast: Using Live Communications Server 2005 Technical Troubleshooting Tools and Resource Kit (Level 200) Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM Pacific Time Dhigha Sekaran, Software Design Engineer, Microsoft This session explores the

Exchange Webcasts for April

TechNet Webcast: Implementing Exchange Server Security (Part 1 of 2): Securing Services and Messaging Protocols (Level 300) Monday, April 04, 2005 - 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Pacific Time Harold Wong , TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Securing communication over

Sharepoint webcasts for April

Microsoft Executive Circle Webcast: 10 Key Decision Points to Achieve an Outstanding SharePoint Deployment Wednesday, April 06, 2005 - 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time Bill English, CEO, MindSharp A successful portal deployment within your organization

Mobility Webcasts for April

Microsoft Executive Circle Webcast: Microsoft in the Mobile Enterprise Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 2:00 PM - 2:30 PM Pacific Time Steve Conn, Product Manager, Microsoft Microsoft Windows Mobile software is a key component of the Microsoft platform for the

Office System Webcasts for April

Microsoft Executive Circle Webcast: Improving New Product Development and Introduction with Microsoft Office 2003 Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time Rory Granros, Vice President of Product Managment, Formation Systems To address

Office Communicator 2005

I downloaded the latest build of Office Communicator 2005 (Istanbul) to play with last week, and Im seriously impressed with the functionality of the new client. you know, its the little things that make such a difference. Like the fact that my status

Message size limits in Exchange 2003

Did you know that there are four separate places where you can set message size limits in Exchange? If any one of them has a lower size limit than another, then that restriction applies. So you can set size limits at the following levels: Globally At

MOM management pack for ExBPA

Oooh! this is interesting. Whenever we talk about the Exchange Best Practices analyser , we get asked where it fits in with MOM and MOM's management pack and guide for Exchange. Well here's the thing that effectively connects MOM and the ExBPA . You can

Blogcast: Hints and tips on managing Exchange 2003

We regularly get asked about hints and tips for managing Exchange 2003, so Ewan has created a blogcast on managing Exchange 2003 and using MMC snap ins to customise the Administrative environment. its only 2mb in size and runs for 8mins 50secs. If you

Using URLScan with Exchange 2003

I had a mail over the weekend from John who was having problems opening his mail using OWA. He sent me the subject title of the mail, and I did a search about non standard characters. There are some issues if you use the URLscan utility in Exchange 2003,

Troubleshooting LCS connections with SIP Parser

Mike contacted me to ask if there was anything he could use to troubleshoot connections in LCS. The Netmon SIP parser from the LCS 2005 Resource kit allows you to capture SIP traffic in the network to verify how the call flow is working. It uses UDP,

Managing Exchange and Active Directory with MOM 2005

Ian delivered a really good TechNet session last night – managing Exchange and AD with MOM. Here are some of the resources he referred to during the session: Cluster nodes are referred to as managed nodes How to configure Event log replication in Windows

MSN Messenger - lost or stolen password (or secret question)

I get quite a few emails on this after my posts about MSN Messenger 7.0 beta (or 7.o betta as some people call it J ) Usually the mail consists of either the password being lost or stolen, maybe forgetting or losing the secret question , or an inability

Active Directory and Exchange 2003 - Separate Administrators

Pete mailed me after attending a couple of my evening Exchange sessions at Reading and also the event in Birmingham . Last year, he migrated his internal systems from GroupWise to Exchange 2003. However, his Technical director was concerned that anyone

Modifying users information in the GAL

I was sent this question recently and I’m stumped for the answer – so I thought I’d turn to the blogging world for assistance. It’s about modifying information in the GAL. GALMOD allows users to modify their "own" information in the GAL. But is there

Web sites and services Management pack for MOM 2005

My colleague Ian just pointed me to this which I thought was worth sharing if you have a web site that needs monitoring... It has a recorder type package that you use to monitor what you are doing on the web, and turns your navigation clicks into a monitoring

Tape Backup trauma

I loved this blog entry , with the link to the John Cleese sketch - and felt very sheepish as I once lost $100,000 of data due to a faulty tape. Very close to my heart. Thanks Dave. P.S. I did press the third button....

Microsoft to buy Groove Networks

I've just seen this interesting article on cnet about Microsoft and Groove Networks. This should be interesting for the future of our collaboration software... The acquisition will add Groove's products to the lineup of Microsoft Office System products,

Exchange 2003 mixed mode and native mode

Daniel mailed me about his Exchange 5.5 migration which isn't going too well and he was getting in a bit of a mess with mixed mode and native mode. Here are a few of the differences.... Exchange 2003 Considerations for Mixed and Native Mode After you

Exchange 2003 support for Groupwise 6

i noticed this new kb article when I was looking through all of the new Exchange 2003 KB's published this week . The Notes and Groupwise migration and co-existance FAQ had stated that it was on its way. and the kb now says: Novell GroupWise version 6.x

Troubleshooting SMS 2003

When I worked with SMS 2.0 I used the troubleshooting flowcharts extensively to work out what was going on when a packet or a status request went missing. I found them really invaluable, and I've continued to use them with SMS 2003. The problem is, that

Exchange: number of mailboxes per information store

I blogged about how to find out mailbox use using MOM and the management pack the other week but if you don't have MOM in your environment this doesn't help you much. So I did some digging and found out that you can return information about the Exchange

SMS 2003 running in Virtual Server

Just noticed this article which states that SMS 2003 server roles are not supported when running in guest operating systems something to watch out for.....

Deploy SharePoint for access from the Internet

You can set up a team site so that your colleagues can access from the Internet via a browser. I have my own site which allows me to share files with people. I find it useful when I need to get a large powerpoint presentation to a partner, and it is bounced

MSN music and MediaBay - download historic radio shows

I noticed this on the Microsoft press site yesterday: REDMOND, Wash. -- March 3, 2005 -- More than 1,400 programs from the Golden Age of Radio are available for download for the first time thanks to an exclusive alliance between MSN® Music and MediaBay

Reducing MOM traffic between client and server

I'm in the middle of an email dialogue with a customer who is deploying MOM using the Deployment guide and had some questions on advanced MOM deployment and deployment of Agents across slow links . He was concerned about setting the Agent control level

Blogcast: Managing your emails

I'm a user of Outlook - not a power user so I welcome any tips on how to improve my email experience, so when I find something useful, I'm really keen to share them. Things like finding my important mail , managing meetings , using search folders in Outlook

Promiscuous Network cards

This caught my eye from my NT4 days and made me giggle. Promiscuous network cards would accept packets from any address, not packets just destined for them. They now could indicate that there is a network sniffer around on your network. Well there is
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Securing Instant Messaging with LCS 2005

I had to talk to a journalist recently about the massive rise in the use of Instant Messaging as a corporate tool, and the risk of intellectual property (IP) leaving the company as people chatted to their friends using MSN Messenger with the possible