Running SBS2003 to SBS2011 migration

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  1. Do the following Pre-Checks to make sure you won’t have problems during the migration:

 

  • Make sure you are running a Class C subnet (255.255.255.0) – Migration is not supported on other subnets.
  • It is recommended that you only have one NIC active during the migration – No external NIC active (I have done successful migrations with the External NIC active though).
  • Uninstall ISA before you do the migration. This could prevent certain issues that might arise. We had problems with ISA every time we ran the migration with it still on. ISA will definitely cause problems with the mailbox moves (Even if you try the MS workarounds).
  • Ensure event viewer clean – Especially replication and DNS issues.
  • Make sure you don’t have a single label domain name (The domain name has to have a suffix Eg. test.local).

 

  1. Install pre-requisites

 

  • Powershell 2.0
  • MS baseline config analyser

 

  1. Make a backup of system state. You will be able to start over again from this backup should things go wrong.
  2. Run migration preparation tool (From SBS2011 disk) – This will raise functional level and run the necessary steps to prepare the source server for migration.
  3. When done it will scan the source server for problems – Resolve these problems before you continue.
  4. Create the answer file.
  5. Make sure the answer file is on a disk (Flash drive or hard drive) that is connected to the new SBS2011 server (Destinations server) and run the migration from the SBS2011 disk.
  6. Run through all the steps (The migration process can take a couple of hours to complete).
  7. Log in with an admin account but not the built in administrator account (You can’t run the migration step with the built in administrator account).
  8. Run the migration steps (This includes moving the mailboxes, installing the certificate etc.)
  9. Move all data and re-create shares.
  10. Install 3rd party apps.
  11. Configure backups.
  12. Decommission the old server.

Running out of space during Mailbox Move Exchange 2010

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A lot of times when you are busy doing a mailbox move you will see that the transaction logs can actually grow just as big as the size of the Database. So what can happen is you can run out of space on your database drive and the mailbox move will stop.

To work around this issue you can temporarily enable Circular Logging that will keep deleting the transaction logs while the mailbox move in progress.

To achieve this do the following:

1. Open Exchange Management Console – Go to Organisation – Mailbox

2. Select the Mailbox Database you are performing the move on. Right click – Properties

3. Enable Circular Logging

4. Restart the information Store Service for changes to take affect. (Please note this will temporarily disconnect your users)

After this please be sure to enable it as the Transaction logs assist in recovery situations.

 

Terminal Server – Users logging in with temp profiles

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After you have migrated your terminal servers or configured Session Broker with roaming profiles you might find that some users are being logged in with temporary profiles. Below describes the steps to resolve this.

  1.  Request the user to log off from the TS session.
  1. Log in as the user and detect if the profile is problematic – It should give you a pop up telling you that you are logged in with a temp profile. To make sure, open command prompt and see if it shows the correct users profile in the first line or if it shows a temp profile.
  1. If you are using Session Broker (High availability terminal servers) – Go to command prompt, type hostname and see on what server you are experiencing the temp profile issue for the specific user (The problem might only be on the specific terminal server).
  1. Log off as the user and log on with an admin account.
  2. Go to regedit, locate the user and delete the users profile registry key.

HK_LOCAL_ MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows NT -> CurrentVersion -> ProfileList.

Right-click on ‘ProfileList’, click on ‘find’, type the name of the user, you will be directed to the users registery key, delete it (if there’s a duplicate, delete both). It usually creates a .bak registry entry if the profile is problematic.

6.  Copy the users pofile to a backup location (Moving the users profile out of the roaming profile location).

6.  You can now log in as the user – It will create a new profile for the user.

7.  Copy the old profile’s data to the new profile.

The user should now be able to continue working without being logged in with a temp profile.

Terminal Server – printing redirection

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For server 2008 Terminal Servers you can use Easy Print – You don’t need identical drivers on Server and client.

For server 2003 Terminal Server you would need identical drivers on Server and client.

For Easy Print to work on Windows XP machines you would need SP3 and .Net Framework 3.5 installed.

Make sure ‘printers’ are selected on local resources of clients DRP connection.

Get Mailbox Sizes Exchange 2010 powershell.

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I always struggle to find a straight forward command for getting Mailbox sizes in Exchange 2010. Although there is a lot of information out there, they all seem to over complicate things and don’t just give you what you require.

This is all you need:

Get-MailboxStatistics -Database “Mailbox Database*” | Select DisplayName, ItemCount, TotalItemSize | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -Descending | Export-CSV C:\MailBoxSizes.csv

This command will get the mailboxes sizes for all Databases beginning with Mailbox Database, Sort them according to size and export to a csv file.

Cannot browse with IE 32 bit but can browse with IE 64 bit

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I picked up a strange issue with a Win 7 64bit laptop that could not browse at all. I checked all the network settings and was able to resolve DNS as well as ping websites. What was even stranger was that after installing Firefox I could not browse using that either.

After struggling for more than an hour I tried the 64 bit version of Internet Explorer and browsing was working.

After much research and trying every possible option like browser reset and even uninstalling IE 9. I found the following commands which solved the problem:

ipconfig /flushdns

ipconfig /registerdns

netsh winsock reset catalog

netsh int ip reset reset.log hit

I assume it was a Adobe Reader update that caused it as the client told me Adobe asked him to update and after that he computer just hanged. That is when the problem occurred.

RPC Server is unavailable when try to RDP to server

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I once got the below message when trying to remote to a server after removing Active Directory from a server using dcpromo.

The reason I got the error message was because the server was configured to look at itself as a DNS server and because the DNS was also removed with the DCpromo command it could not find an Active Directory server for authentication.

The workaround I found was to add the following Dword to the registry:

In the folder:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server

Add the following key:

IgnoreRegUserConfigErrors =Dword:1

This will allow you to remotely log into the server. Just take note that it might take a while for the first logon to go through.