Exchange 2013 – Working with and Managing the OAB
Nov17

Exchange 2013 – Working with and Managing the OAB

KB ID 0000745  Problem Exchange 2013, has changed the way Offline Address Books are handled, with previous versions only one server (the first server holding the mailbox role) was responsible for generating the OAB. With 2013 however multiple servers generate the OAB, In fact every server that has a special arbitration mailbox called an organization mailbox will create a copy. This is better for fault tolerance and resilience, and you...

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Windows Group Policy – Disable The Local Windows Firewall
Nov06

Windows Group Policy – Disable The Local Windows Firewall

KB ID 0001090 Problem I’ve got nothing against the Windows firewall, it’s certainly a lot easier to manage now than it was back in the XP SP2 days. But I find a lot of clients still just ‘want it gone’ and, providing they have a decent corporate firewall in front of them that’s fair enough. Solution 1. On a domain controller or a client running the remote administration tools > Windows Key+R >...

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Windows – Stop the Welcome to Internet Explorer from launching via GPO
Oct14

Windows – Stop the Welcome to Internet Explorer from launching via GPO

KB ID 0000459 Problem If your’e logging on as a new user and Internet Explorer has not yet been ran, then it wants to run the “Setup Windows Internet Explorer Wizard”. On just one machine with one user that’s fine, but if you are logging in all over the place, with multiple credentials, this can get quite annoying. Also you might not want your domain users having to do this at all, for security reasons....

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Group Policy Preferences and Client Side Extensions
Oct05

Group Policy Preferences and Client Side Extensions

Group Policy Preferences KB ID 0000389 Problem Group Policy Preferences (GPP) first came in with Server 2008 and were enhanced for Server 2008 R2, To be able to apply them to older Windows clients, you need to install the “Client side Extensions” (CSE), You can either script this, deploy with a group policy, or if you have WSUS you can send out the update that way. From windows 7 onwards they are already installed....

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VMware vSphere – How to Import and Export OVF and OVA Files
Sep17

VMware vSphere – How to Import and Export OVF and OVA Files

KB ID 0000562 Problem I prefer to think of OVF Templates as “Zip” files for Virtual Machines and Virtual Appliances. Where as the OVA file is the complete appliance pre packaged. There are two things you will want to do with an OVF Template; 1. Export a VM to an OVF Template 2. Import an OVF Template (Note: VMware call this “Deploy an OVF Template”) Note: There are tools for OVF templates for other VMware...

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