Remote Desktop Services: RDS Sizing Calculations
KB ID 0001753 Problem This is a horrible subject to find any decent information on. Microsoft are typically ‘vague’ and most people are stuck with using trial and error, or massively overestimating hardware to be on the safe side. I get asked this occasionally and, just like Microsoft, it’s a question I don’t like to answer! People are reticent to tell you that you need ‘x’ amount of CPU and...
Exchange Stopped Working?
KB ID 0001749 Problem I see various posts in online forums, and the process is held up because a lot of techs can’t do basic troubleshooting on their Exchange deployments. So I thought I’d put together some basic ‘first steps’ for you to do when your ‘Exchange Stopped Working’ This way you can at least get an error code to search for or a better idea of what’s going on. Exchange Stopped...
How Many Users in AD? (User Count)
KB ID 0001748 Problem I had to get some stats from a number of customers earlier today, one of the stats I needed was the user count from within their respective Active Directories. If you have a tedious job to do, there’s usually a PowerShell command to help! Getting Object Numbers From Active Directory User Count (Get-ADUser -Filter *).Count Computer Count (Get-ADComputer -Filter *).Count Group Count (Get-ADGroup -Filter...
Enable Remote Desktop (Remotely)
KB ID 0001747 Problem Let’s say you want to RDP to a remote server (imagine such a thing!) But some doofus didn’t enable RDP? Well you can enable Remote Desktop via group policy and wait a while. I used to connect to the registry remotely and change the key that enabled RDP, but now you can do it with a simple PowerShell command. Not only will it enable Remote Desktop, it will also allow RDP on the Windows firewall (if...
Azure Traffic Manager (DNS Failover)
KB ID 0001740 Problem Why Azure Traffic Manager? I had to price up a hardware load balancer (ADC) a couple of weeks ago for a client. I wont mention the vendor, (though I’m sure you can guess). Over 3 years it was going to cost (for a pair) about £100k, (so about 33k a year). That included the global DNS failover, this was so they, (the client) could fail over their services between multiple data centres. OK there are other ADC...
Free Exchange Certificate
KB ID 0001739 Problem A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about getting free certificates for IIS with ‘Let’s Encrypt’. Last week the renewal for my ‘test’ Exchange server’s certificate came though. So I thought “Why don’t I try and get a ‘Free Exchange Certificate’?” Free Exchange Certificate Before we start let’s take a moment to take a look at our existing...
Leave Domain: “A general network error occurred’
KB ID 0001738 Problem After a recent lab on the test bench, I ended up with a 2008 x32 standard server. It took me a while to get this setup and running, so I wanted to keep it (or turn it into a VMware template should I ever need another). But first I needed to ‘remove it’ from the domain it was in. However, when attempting to do so this happened; Computer Name /Domain Changes The following error occurred validating...
O365 with Duo MFA (Without a P1 License?)
KB ID 0001737 Problem Working for a cloud service provider, (and a Duo partner). I get a lot of queries about Duo MFA for Office 365. Typically (I think) the best solution is to enable Azure Conditional Access and couple that with Trusted sites, so clients get challenged when out on the road, but not in the office. The drawback of this is Azure Conditional Access requires a P1 License, at time of writing that’s about $6 a month...
Free Certificate for IIS with Let’s Encrypt
KB ID 0001736 Problem I’ve been aware of Let’s Encrypt for a while, they are a non profit Certification Authority, who will provide you with a free certificate, and you can use them for most things you want to secure with a digital certificate. The only reason I’ve never used them in the past is, their certificates have a short (3 month) lifespan, and I see enough things breaking when people forget to renew 12 month...
Outlook URL Shortening?
KB ID 0001735 Problem Outlook URL: I first noticed this a few weeks ago, When copying and pasting a URL into an email it shortens the URL and gives it the pages title. At first i thought my firms Devs had changed the way our CRM works, but then I noticed it happening with SharePoint URLs as well, this is what I mean; I don’t have a problem with it, in fact I much prefer it! However I got an email this morning from someone...