ConfigMgr 2012 / SCCM 2012 SP1 Step by Step Guide: Software Distribution - EXE

• installation switches for silent install
• Windows Installer file details - to be used in the detection method.

Unfortunately, if the application is to be installed using an executable file (.EXE) you must carry out some manual steps to configure the above information. We will manually configure a deployment type with the installation switches (we need to know these in advance) and we will manually create the detection method based on the presence of a file.

Microsoft Lync 2010 is an example of an application that is installed using an EXE file

As before right click on Application (or create a custom folder and right click that). Select Create Application.

Select "Manually specify the application information"

Enter Application details

Now we must manually configure the deployment type. This will allow us to enter installation parameters and switches. Click Add to add a deployment type.

This open the Create Deployment Type Wizard (note that the Create Application Wizard is still visible in the background)

Choose to manually specify the deployment type

Edit: ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 has introduced "Script Installer (Native)" as a deployment type. Select this from the drop-down menu. Note that "Manually specify the deployment type" remains selected.

Enter the Application name

Enter the location of the program files and configure the installation parameters. We know that "lyncsetup.exe /silent" is correct from previous testing.

This is where we will manually configure a detection method. In the case of Lync 2010, the presence of the file "communicator.exe" is evidence that the application is installed on a device. We will use this as our detection method. Note that it is a good idea to manually install the application on a test device so that we can browse to it in the next step.

Select Add Clause.

Choose File System as the Type (check out the available choices).

Browse to the test computer and select the path to "communicator.exe"

Detection method is now configured.

Ensure that we are installing for system

The Deployment Type Wizard has now been completed. We have configured the deployment type and detection method.

Click Close to return to the Create Application Wizard (which has been waiting in the background).

Note that our deployment type has been added.

Click Next to finish

The Application has now been created and can be distributed and deployed.

Configure VMware High Availability (VMHA)

Introduction

I am not biased to one virtualization solution or another but I know a great product and amazing features when I see them. VMware ESX Server and the VMware Infrastructure suite has a lot of amazing features that really “set the bar” for other virtualization products. One of those features is VMware’s High Availability feature – dubbed VMHA.
When a physical server goes down or loses all network connectivity, VMHA steps in and migrates the virtual guest machines off of that server and onto another server. This way, the virtual machines can be up and running again in just the time that it takes them to reboot.

Figure 1: VMware High Availability (VMHA) - Image Courtesy of VMware.com
This is a very powerful feature because it means that any operating system and appliance can have high availability just by running inside the VMware Infrastructure.
There are a number of requirements to make this happen and there are both good and bad qualities of VMHA. I will cover all of that and show you how to configure VMHA in this article.
Let’s get started.

What is required to make VMHA work?

There are a number of requirements that you will have to meet to make VMHA work. Those requirements are:

• VMware Infrastructure Suite Standard or Enterprise (no you cannot do it with the free ESXi nor can you do it with the VMware Foundations Suite).
• At least 2 ESX host systems.
• A shared SAN or NAS between the ESX Servers where the virtual machines will be stored. Keep in mind that with VMHA the virtual disks for the VMs covered by VMHA never move. What happens when a host system fails is that the ownership of those virtual machines is transferred from the failed host to the new host.
• CPU compatibility between the hosts. The easiest way to test this is to attempt a VMotion of a VM from one server to another and see what happens. Here is what CPU incompatibility looks like when it fails:

Figure 2: CPU Incompatibility 

If you cannot achieve CPU compatibility between hosts in the HA resource pool, then you will have to configure CPU Masking (see VMworld: VMotion between Apples and Oranges).

• Highly Recommended – to have VMware management network redundancy (at least two NICs associated with the VMware port used for VMotion and iSCSI). If you do not have this, you will see:

Figure 3: Configuration issues because there is no VMware management network redundancy

What is great about VMHA?

Here are some of the great features of VMHA:

• Provides high availability for all virtual machines at a low cost (compared to purchasing a HA solution on a per machine basis).
• Works for any OS that runs inside VMware ESX. That means that even if I create a Vyatta virtual router running inside ESX Server, that ESX Server is in a HA resource pool, and the server it is running on goes down, then that Vyatta virtual router OS will migrate and have it reboot on the ESX host system.
• VMHA is easy to configure. If you have the right equipment, licenses, and VMware Infrastructure already set up, you can configure VMHA in just a few minutes.
• Works with DRS (distributed resource scheduler) such that when a VMs are going to be brought to other hosts in the resource pool due to host failure, DRS is used to determine where that load should be placed and to balance that load.

What is “not so great” about VMHA?

Just like with any solution, there are some features of VMHA that are not as great. Those features are:

• CPUs on each host must be compatible (almost exactly) or you will have to configure CPU masking on every virtual machine.
• Virtual machines that are on the host system that goes doem WILL have to be restarted.
• VMHA is unaware of the underlying applications on those VMs. That means that if the underlying application data is corrupt from an application crash and server reboot, then even though the VM migrates and reboots from a crashed machine, the application still may be unusable (not that this is necessarily VMware’s fault).

How do I configure VMHA?

Configuration of VMHA is easy, just follow these steps:
Note:
The following assumes that you already have two ESX Server host systems, the VMware Infrastructure Suite (VI Suits), the CPUs on the host systems are compatible, you have a shared storage system, and all licensing related to VMHA and the VMHA feature is in place.

1. In the VI Client, Inventory View, Right-click on your datacenter and click on New Cluster.

Figure 4: Adding a New HA Cluster

2. This brings up the New Cluster Wizard. Give the Cluster a name and (assuming you are only creating a HA cluster), check the VMware HA cluster feature.

Figure 5: Naming the HA Cluster

3. Next, you will be given a chance to configure the HA options for this cluster. There is a lot to consider here – how many hosts can fail, if guests will be powered on if the proper amount of resources is not available, host isolation, restart priority, and virtual machine monitoring. To learn more about these settings, please read the VMware 3.5 Documentation.

Figure 6: Configuring HA Options

4. Select the swapfile location – either with the VM on your shared storage or on the host. I recommend keeping the swapfile with the VM on your shared storage.
5. And finally, you are shown the “ready to complete” screen where you can review what you are about to do and click Finish.
6. Once the HA cluster is created, you need to move ESX host systems into the cluster by clicking on them and dragging them into the cluster. You can also move VMs to the cluster in the same way. Here are my results:

Figure 7: HA Cluster created with ESX Server hosts and VMs inside

7. At this point, you should click on the cluster to see if there are any configuration issues (as you see in Figure 3). Also, notice how the cluster has its own tabs for Summary, Virtual Machines, Hosts, Resource Allocation, Performance, Tasks & Events, Alarms, and Permissions.
8. Even though I had configuration issues (no redundant management network), my VMHA cluster was still functional. To get around the “insufficient resources to satisfy configured failover level for HA” error message when powering up a VM, I changed the HA configuration to “Allow VMs to be powered on even if they violate availability constraints”.

Let’s test it.

How do I know if VMHA worked?

To test VMHA, I had two low end Dell Servers in my cluster. I had one Windows Server 2008 system running on ESX host “esx4”. To perform a simple HA test, I rebooted host “esx4” without going into maintenance mode. This caused the Windows 2008 Server to move from “esx4” to “esx3” and be rebooted. Here is the “before and after”:

Figure 8: Before causing the failure of server ESX4

Figure 9: After the failure of server ESX4 – proving the VMHA was successful
In this test, we saw that the Windows 2008 VM was moved from “esx4” to “esx3” when “esx4” we restarted.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned what VMware’s High Availability solution is and how to configure it. We started off with the requirements to use VMHA. From there, you saw what was good and what was not so good about VMHA. After showing you how to configure VMHA, I demonstrated exactly how it works in a real server failure. VMHA is really the leader when it comes to virtualization high availability.

Exchange Server 2013 installation steps

 In this article let us take a look at how to install exchange 2013 SP1, which is the latest exchange application from Microsoft. Before staring the step by step installation let us go through some improvements that Microsoft had done in this latest version.

• EAC: The Exchange Administration Center, as the word suggests it give the admins a lot to manage the exchange organization from the web console. This features gives us the opportunity to manage our server from anywhere in the world with an internet connection using any browser, I am not telling that we can do each and everything using this wonderful tool, but we can do basic configuration using EAC,but unfortunately the traditional console EMC is replaced by this GUI.
• Exchange management shell: There is an advanced management shell in exchange 2013 which supports a lot of new cmdlts.Around 13 clts has been removed from the previous 2010 exchange but much more has been added to this great tool.
• DLP: Data Loss Prevention is something in in Exchange 2013 transport rule which helps the admins a lot in securing and retrieving data.
• Architectural changes: We know that there are five server roles in the legacy version of Exchange, but in 2013 we have two roles (The exchange mailbox role and the Client access role) we can of course use the Edge transport role in the new SP1.

These are only some main changes and the real number counts a lot.

Now let us look at the installation steps of Exchange 2013 in server 2012 64 bit.

Please refer the Microsoft url for system requirements: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/aa996719%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

Preparation

Let us prepare our server 2012 for the exchange,i am assuming that you have an Active directory in place and the server we are working on is a member server.

Step 1

Launch PowerShell as administrator for installing the features required for Exchange, for this copy paste the below shell command and hit enter.

Install-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Desktop-Experience, NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation, RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface, RSAT-ADDS

It will take some time for the completion and will ask for a restart.

After the restart we have all the features installed and are ready to go for the installation of a couple of dependencies.

Microsoft Unified Communications API 4.0

Please download the package from the below Microsoft URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=34992

 Filter Pack installation

Please download the package from the below Microsoft URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=17062

It is a good idea to run a system update before proceeding to the next step.

Control panel – Windows update and check for updates. There might be a restart once the updates are downloaded.

Now let us move to Exchange Server installation.I am adding a series of screenshots rather than words.

I am assuming that you have downloaded the Exchange installation media

• Once  extracted double click setup.exe

•  Will get an option to choose the latest update download from the internet.

• Now it is time to accept the license agreement of Microsoft.

• Choose recommended.

•  Here we need to choose which roles we have to install in this server.If you can going to compliment a test environment check Mailbox and Client access role,in production Microsoft recommend to install these roles in different servers.In Exchange 2013 service pack 1 you can also select Edge role(Has to install in a separate server)

• Just choose the installation directory.

•  Specify the Exchange organization name.

•  Here you can choose whether to opt or opt-out the malware filter.

• Now we have to wait some time to complete the readiness checks.

•  If you have all dependencies installed you will get no error and sometime a couple of warnings only.
• Click Install

• Now the setup process has been started here you can see 15 step process,but it will vary depends on what roles you have chosen for installation.

• If everything went find you will get the installation completion screen,similar:

• Now login to owa/ecp to check everything is ok.

Outlook address book error 0x8004010F

Outlook address book error 0x8004010F

Some of you might have faced the error code 0x8004010F while updating the Global Address List in your outlook client from Exchange Server. The issue might be to all users or some users

Solutions

First of all let us try to manually update the Global address List from Exchange server for this issue the following command in Exchange Management Shell.

Update-GlobalAddressList -Identity "GALName"

Note: Please use your GAL name inside the quotes.

If the update finish successfully, try to manually update the address list in outlook client.

If you see a similar error:

Let us do some tweaks in ADSI in Active directory.

• ·         Login to Active Directory Server.
• ·         Run - Adsiedit.msc.
• ·         Browse to the mentioned object in the tree.

• ·         Delete the specified objects in the warning message.

·         Run to update the GAL in Exchange management shell again

It is successful now. You will not get any message that the task is succeeded, but will not throw any error/warning.

Wait for 5-10 mins and try to update the address List in Outlook.

Hope now the address book updates without throwing any error.

Your comments are welcome.