Lync 2010 Publish Topology Crash
Last week I installed Lync 2010 and made it all the way to the end where you are supposed to publish the topology. Unfortunately, I didn't think to install the databases to a new instance and overwrote my existing Live Communication Server databases. Needless to say, LCS didn't like that very much.
After spending a few minutes restoring the old databases and bringing LCS back up, I tried to add the new instance to my topology and publish. The moment I clicked publish, I received a "target invocation exception" error and the MMC crashed. Oops.
After reinstalling Lync several times - even creating a new one (thank you virtual machines!), I figured out that the Lync configuration couldn't possibly be stored on the server itself. Turns out it's stored in Active Directory:
Default naming context > DC=YourDomain > CN=System, CN=Microsoft, CN=RTC Service, CN=Topology Settings
Delete the string in there CN=random GUID.
Voila, you can now publish your topology.
But wait! There's more. You will need to install the database again (even after publishing). Right click on your Site and go to topology > Install Database.
Hope that helps, there isn't a hole lot of documentation out there yet.
Need to move mailboxes quickly?
I'm supposed to have this week off for our company's annual winter break, but like most sysadmins I will end up having to work when everyone else doesn't.
I get the pleasure of moving about 250GB worth of mail around in an effort to get rid of 2 corrupted mailstores. Mailstores that even Microsoft can't fix. I have spent about 15 hours on the phone with Microsoft since Friday - it is now Monday. The original call was to remove a couple of mailboxes that weren't being deleted normally. Somehow a user (it's always the users fault... right? 
) of mine managed to create a looped folder in her deleted items box. Imagine a folder structure like this:
Deleted Items
A+
B+
A+
B+
A...B...A...B... for eternity.
I tried everything. Moving the mailbox, disconnecting and reconnecting the mailbox, mfcmapi, pfdavadmin, screaming and pounding on the keyboard. Nothing worked. Microsoft couldn't figure it out either. I now believe that this may be the cause of my latest BackupExec issues alluded to in my previous blog post- a belief that is strong enough that I have actually halted publishing it until I'm sure. Don't get me wrong though, Symantec hasn't made a good product in years...
Microsoft's solution is the same one that I had come up with before I had called them. I have to move all of my mailboxes off the affected mail stores. Which means about 400 mailboxes and 250GB.
Not wanting to sit there and manually move one mailbox at a time, I decided to seek out a powershell script to do the moving for me. I needed something that could read from a CSV file and do a multithreaded (more than one a time) moves. The multithreaded part turned out to be the big problem. Writing a powershell script to move 1 mailbox at a time is something that takes no real effort, but multithreaded requires a little bit more complexity. Since I'm never one to reinvent the wheel, I turned to Google and stumbled (after way too much keyword manipulation) to find a MSExchangeTeam blog article on it.
It allows you to import a CSV file with the following format (I'll save you from trying to find it in the documentation):
Identity,targetmbserver,targetmbsg,targetmbdb
Bob Smith,mailserver,storagegroup,mailboxdatabase
Jane Doe,mailserver,storagegroup,mailboxdatabase
It will then move 4 at a time and display the progress. Perfect. Now if only they could move faster...
Windows 7 is not bad.
Windows 7 - what a breath of fresh air!
I've been using Windows 7 since the beta was released on Technet and like a lot of people I believe it's everything Vista should have been. My only real problem with it is it's a couple years late.
Whoever Microsoft has in charge of usability did a really good job. The interface improvements have increased my efficiency, and more importantly (and very much unlike Vista) the improvements are far beyond cosmetic. For example, being able to effectively split screen applications by dragging them to right/left sides and the stacked taskbar with thumbnails.
For my home environment, I have found that homegroups are a great way to share media, such as music, between rooms and my HTPC. Remote desktop and various other applications that remember the last connection or documents you have opened in the past.
At my job, there are even more improvements. I chose to skip Vista, we will not be skipping Windows 7. Bitlocker - good bye PGP whole disk encryption? That alone will save us $150 per FTE. DirectAccess could potentially replace our Cisco ASA firewalls. The search feature may actually mean that I don't have to deal with employees installing Google Search and the associated privacy issues.
Oh, and it's faster too.
I guess it goes without saying that if Windows 7's launch went as bad as Vista's Microsoft would have been in a heap of trouble. I think that Microsoft not only dodged a bullet, but managed to create a great product.
Well done!