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Hello readers!    You probably already know, but from the Office SBS Blog, news that the Best Practices Analyzer has been updated.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2010/09/07/sbs-2003-and-2008-bpa-updated.aspx

OK people, as of right now, even though it states on the Sage website that Sage 50 2011 will work with with Outlook 2010, it does NOT!

This is quite unbelievable as a YEAR ago I contacted some people internally in Sage with the then Beta of Outlook 2010 to report that Outlook 2010 X64 edition did not work as was told that they would have this fixed by the next release.

Yet, here we are, again……

I have started a thread with the people in Sage, lets hope the development team get this sorted quickly!  

Right then, another one for the memory banks….

Today we had to install SP2 on Exchange 2007 sitting atop of Windows 2003 X64.   During the installation of Exchange 2007 we got the following error first:

Exchange Server component Unified Messaging Server Role failed.

Unable to remove product with code 84a6e864-10a5-47c0-ac31-426fe71e4906. Fatal error during installation. Error code is 1603. Last error reported by the .msi package is ‘There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected.

Grand, I have seen this before.   It was due to the Unified Messaging Role not actually being correct.   Last time I had this we simply deleted the “Action” and “WaterMark” keys in the registry, reinstalled Exchange SP2 and all was good.   However, not this time!

The errors continued……     On trying to uninstall the UM role from Add/Remove Programs we got this error:

Unable to remote product with code cef60964–21ae-47e0–93c6–611aa8941b7f. Fatal error during installation. Error code is 1603. Last error reported by the .msi package is ‘Could not find any previously installed compliant products on the machine for installing this product’

Joy….   Not.

So….   then I simply figured I would take the following action….   Lets rip this UM role out the hard way….

(BACKUP FIRST!)

Kick up ADSIEdit and go to ADSIEDIT->Configuration -> Services -> Microsoft Exchange -> [Org Name] -> Administrative Groups -> Administrative Group Name -> Servers-> [server name] -> Properties and look for the attribute msExchCurrentServerRoles

Edit this and subtract the UM Role Value (16) from the currently set value (54).   So 54–16=38

Enter that value (38)

Reboot the server….

Reinstall the service pack…..

Worked for me anyway!

Keep the faith people….

Microsoft Flight has been announced.    Read all about it here….   or, in fact, read not MUCH about it and then wonder some more about what is going on…

Before you ask, I don’t know either.

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

OK….    everything is over, but I have a slight issue with Exchange 2010 and RPC over HTTPS.   That is being worked on and won’t be a problem I would expect to see in the shipping product!

Other than that, this beauty is up and running and frankly I am delighted to have all the current technology on the SBS box.   SBS2008, even for a product that is new was beginning to fall behind with Exchange, Sharepoint R2 and the like.

If anything comes up, I’ll post some more!

In the mean time, if you want a great read, Terry Walsh of wegotserved has put up this hands on with Aurora article!
http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/07/12/hands-windows-server-code-aurora/

It shows you……   if you walk away from something for a while, the thing sometimes fixes itself!    The public folder migration from SBS2008 to SBS V7 is now complete!

I ran the nice little script that the SBS migration documents tell me to use to migrate my Public folder data between the two SBS servers again and this time it appears to have worked.  I now have two text files that I can compare side by side to see the data move happening.

Now, the documentation does not say this, but to be sure I have opened up the two text files the exchange script gives me in a free app called WinMerge – http://winmerge.org/downloads/ to compare the files.   This makes it far less likely that I will miss a public folder!

You can see from the screenshot below the yellow lines are different. Of course, the server name and the date and time will be different.  What we expect to see is the bit highlighted in red (the itemcount).

Now, the document told me to wait 24 hours for this migration, but this only took 10 minutes or so to give me this (correct count) output.    Maybe you have to allow 24 hours for larger public folder databases.

Last thing to do was set the default public folder database to the new server. – Check

The sharepoint migration was very very easy.    Upgraded it to the new look and feel and I am very impressed!    How much nicer than Sharepoint 3 is this!  (Excuse the black privacy blocks)

I am also extremely impressed with the completely overhauled Remote Web Workplace.    It seems snappier to!

I especially like the Shared folders section, which makes life easier for remote users…..

I now need to stop playing with new features go back to my Exchange Public folder migration issue……!   Only 21 days to get it fixed!

OK….  its been a bit of a disaster overnight.    Important points to remember….

1. Make sure to give your secondary virtual server more than a single core or you end up with this:
   
2. Make sure that you give your mailboxes time to transfer between the servers before you reboot the source box
3. Make sure to reset the password policy back to that which you know, as doing the migration might change it back to the regular, quite restrictive, out of the box SBS config.   (Unhappy users having to change passwords)

I have kicked off the transfers of the Mailboxes that got horked….   back soon!

OK, so I have a new SBS server on my domain.   21 Days to do the migration, but I prefer 21 hours tops…..

1. So, my next step in this migration is to Robocopy over the redirected folders.   This will be very easy for me, as I hate folder redirection and therefore never enabled it on the SBS2008 box.    I ran the robocopy and it took less than a second to create the empty folders.   I guess with a larger set of data that might take a while!   Of course, if I did have the folder migration enabled, the guide also points me to updating my group policy – and importantly – leaving both servers online until all machines have redirected to the new server!
   
2. Now I run through the SBS Migration list……..
   
3. So far so good, apart from the fact I had to manually setup my DHCP server as it did not like the funky things I was doing with that (other subnets etc).
4. Now comes a scary part….. moving the exchange data.   First thing to do is get rid of the smart host on the existing server.   – Check.   When you do that, mail is now flowing through the new box.   Next, setup the smart host on the new Exchange Server – check
5. Now to move the Public folders – check (Well, I say check, it seems that at this point I should walk away for 24 hours and make sure that the data has migrated, which is exactly what I am going to do…)

back tomorrow…..

Well, here goes….   I am doing a migration on the public build of the SBS Aurora “V7” from my SBS2008 setup.   

Sure, there is a huge migration document….    but lets assume that everything on my network is perfect and see if we can get this down to a few steps….     having the HyperV setup is going to be fantastic here as I can always rollback to my existing SBS server if all hell breaks lose!

1. Backup Server – Check
2. Make sure I have the latest service packs and updates on existing SBS 2008 Machine – Check
3. Migration document tells me to clear down my mailboxes…    ummm…. No!   I haven’t collected my mail since 1995 for a laugh, not about to clear it down now.
4. Download the Baseline Configuration Analyzer (as you need it for the next tool)
5. Run the SBS V7 DVD on the existing server, which run’s ADPrep – Check.
6. Create an Answer File using the SBS Tool – Check.
7. Run the setup on the new server, with the answerfile. – Check
8. Time so far – 1 Hour
9. Now…..   I have been sitting looking at a screen for the next hour while it installs all the features…….
   
10. 2 hours in, and finally I get to this screen…..
    

At this point, I have a server, on the domain, ready for data moves.   That’ll be my next blogpost….

So far, all good!