Creating a Recurring Email in Windows Server 2008 Using Exchange 2010

On occasion, an organization may have a need to send a recurring email. In the case of one of our customers, there was a need to send a weekly notice to users that patches would be applied to the terminal servers overnight with a friendly reminder to save any work. To set this up is really quite simple. Here is how:

First, open the Task Schedule and choose Create Task. This will open the Task Properties window.

On the General tab of the Task Properties window, fill in a Description. Choose the user account from which you would like to send the email. Finally, choose “Run whether user is logged on or not” and “Run with highest privileges.

On the Triggers tab, click New. Make selections as appropriate for the frequency and be sure to check Enabled.

On the Actions tab, choose “Send an e-mail” from the Action drop-down menu. Fill out the From, Subject, and Text of the message. Add any appropriate attachment and fill in the SMTP server address. If the Scheduled Task is being configured on your Exchange server, you can simply enter 127.0.0.1 for the SMTP server. Click OK to return to the Task Properties window.

On the Conditions tab, specify the conditions under which the task should run.

On the Settings tab, you should choose  “Allow task to be run on demand”.

After clicking OK to close all the Windows, right-click the task, and click Run to test. Ensure that the test email is received by the intended recipient(s).

In some instances, you may need to configure a Receive Connector on your Exchange server which allows anonymous relay. You can find a instructions for doing that on Microsoft’s website here.

How to uninstall newer versions of Internet Explorer

Some web applications are picky about the browser you need to use.  Websites and web-based applications will usually tell you what they are designed for and what you should access them with.  Niche applications tend to be especially picky as smaller development teams can’t optimize complex web-based apps for the gamut of browsers available.

One of the most common issues seems to be Internet Explorer being upgraded through Windows Update causing compatibility problems.  Luckily it’s fairly simple to “downgrade” to a version that works best with what you need to access.  The installation is a little bit tougher to find than most installed programs, but not by much.

First off, go to the Control Panel on your system.  This can be found by clicking the “Start” button, then selecting Control Panel from the Start menu.  From the Control Panel, select “Uninstall a program” if the view is set to Category (default for Windows 7), or select “Programs and Features” from either the Small Icons or Large Icons view.

Now select “View installed updates”

Sort the list by Name by left-clicking on the “Name” tab.

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the list.  The Internet Explorer update will always be at the bottom of the list when sorted by Name.

Select Windows Internet Explorer 10 (or Windows Internet Explorer 9 if going from 9 to 8) and then click on Uninstall.  Your system will need to be restarted, but this will revert you to the previous version if you need to do so for compatibility with websites or web-based applications.

If your print job is “stuck” and you can’t cancel or delete it, try this: manually clearing the print spooler. (Windows)

A little background: when you send the command to print a file, Windows “spools” those files – it creates a temporary copy for the printer’s use.  This allows the printer to access the file at its own rate, and continues the job even if you (hypothetically) close the program or file you have open.  Sometimes, for various reasons that aren’t particularly relevant to this article, printers will fail to successfully complete a job.  Usually, you can just cancel the job or delete it from the printer’s queue – the easiest way to access this is to double-click the icon that looks like a printer in the rightmost area of the Windows taskbar.

The following window will appear showing your print job(s) and their status.  You can right click on these and pause, restart, cancel, and basically manage the individual entries.

When a failed print job cannot be removed this way, or if the job just seems stuck, we can force Windows to remove it and restart the “service” that Windows uses to send data to printers.

To do this, click on the “Start” button, and just begin typing the letters CMD.  Windows will find and present a program called “cmd.exe.”  Right click on this item (the icon is a black window with white letters saying “C:\”) and select “Run as Administrator.”

Copy and paste or type the following commands in this order
(to paste in this command line window, right click on the title bar -> Edit -> Paste)

The commands – be sure to include everything within the quotations:

1. “net stop spooler”
2. “del /F /Q C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*”
3. “net start spooler”

You will see feedback after stopping and starting the spooler, but the second command simply removes all of the temporary “spooled” files in the Windows print system.  CMD.exe will not give you any indication that it performed a task after this line, but it will clear all spooled items.

Lastly, try printing your document again.  It will very likely print successfully.

Windows Server 2012 Licensing – a quick reminder

This came up recently for a customer and while it’s not new news, I thought a quick reminder would be useful. There are a few key points to remember about licensing of Windows Server 2012 in server virtualization projects, these rules apply to XenServer, VMware, Hyper-V, Oracle VM, etc.:

• Licenses are applied to physical servers, never to virtual machines. If you are thinking about how you need a license for the VM you are about to build, you’re probably doing something wrong
• There is feature parity between Standard and Datacenter editions, Enterprise Ed has been dropped
  • The only difference between these 2 major editions is in the number of virtual OSE’s (operating system environments, aka a virtual machine) granted with the license
  • A license covers 2 processor sockets within 1 server, 1 license cannot be purchased to cover 2 servers each containing 1 populated processor
  • The license allows for one bare-metal install of the operating system, but doesn’t require it – as would be the case if your hypervisor is anything other than Hyper-V
  • Virtual OSE grants by edition:
    • Standard: 2 virtual OSE’s per license
    • Datacenter: unlimited OSE’s per license
• More than 1 license of the same edition may be applied to a given physical server to cover additional CPU sockets or additional virtual machines
  • 2 Standard Edition licenses would cover 4 processor sockets and/or up to 4 VM’s
  • 2 Datacenter Edition licenses would cover 4 processor sockets and two * unlimited for the number of VM’s ..that’s like beyond infinity, but 4 CPU sockets.
• The license cannot be transferred more than once every 90 days – yeah, you read that right. This rule is to prevent a license from jumping from one host to another to follow live migration activities
  • This is where most people pause and say “oh..”. That tells me they were purchasing 1 license per VM and just thinking the license moves around with the VM
  • You need to cover the high water mark of virtual OSE’s for a given host
• Licensing math:
  • Standard Ed. list pricing is $882
  • Datacenter Ed. list pricing is $4809
  • The break-even point for Datacenter is at 5.45 Standard licenses; in effect, for a density of more than 10 VM’s (5 std licenses each granting 2 OSE’s), you should use a Datacenter Edition license
• A real world example: New virtualization customer deploying 3 VMware hosts
  • We generally size the environment for N+1, meaning we’re planning that 1 of the servers is a “spare” from the perspective of workload sizing – so all the workload can run on just 2 servers; we’re planning for this and so should you in your licensing.
  • If you plan to run more than 20 total VM’s in this environment, you need 3 Datacenter Edition licenses
    • 20 VM’s running on 2 servers = 10 VM’s/server
    • 10 VM’s requires 5 Standard Edition licenses to have enough OSE grants
    • More than 10 per server, and it’s now cheaper to have just bought a single Datacenter Edition license
      • 6 * $882 = $5292, which is greater than $4809 for datacenter
    • Since you don’t know which host (think of a rolling patching cycle) is going to carry the increase load, all the hosts in the environment should be licensed uniformly to this high water mark
  • Depending on the licensing model, an upgrade from 5 * Standard Edition licenses to a single Datacenter Edition license may not be possible – plan ahead!
  • If you have OEM licenses that came with your old physical server environment, these are likely not transferrable – they don’t follow the P2V action
• With this understanding, while you might have some work to do upfront (or scrambling to get back into compliance now) the long term savings are very real for dense virtualization projects that can leverage the Datacenter Edition license. On a modern 2 socket server with 16 cores/32 threads, 10 VM or greater density is easily achievable

General licensing FAQ:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/D/B/4DB352D1-C610-466A-9AAF-EEF4F4CFFF27/WS2012_Licensing-Pricing_FAQ.pdf

Licensing brief for virtualized environments:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/4/3D42BDC2-6725-4B29-B75A-A5B04179958B/WindowsServer2012VirtualTech_VLBrief.pdf

Beware of the Invisible Installs!!!

Does your internet toolbar look like this? :

Many times advertising companies will seek out software companies to promote their product using software companies many people are familiar with.

Ever end up with a program you don’t use and are not sure how it was installed? Each time you go to install a program you need to use, pay attention to the terms and agreements. Some software downloads include extra additions you may not even be aware of, need or want. Some of these options will even be hidden throughout the install. For example, when going to install Adobe Reader you will see this:

           

If you would like to use Google Chrome, then you can leave the option checked. If not, make sure to uncheck the option.  Some installs can even change your settings:

So next time you need to install a program, please pay attention to each and every step so that you ensure you get just what you need.

Encrypting Online Storage with EncFS

Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, SugarSync, Box, iCloud and dozens of other online storage providers all make sharing content online for access from multiple devices fast and convenient. How sweet it is to take a picture or create a document on your phone or tablet and have it automatically uploaded to “the cloud”.  You no longer have to worry about the data being lost if something happens to your mobile device, right?

It’s great until your mobile device falls into the wrong hands, somebody hacks into your online account, or the online storage provider suffers a privacy breach.  Depending on the data you stored online, that sweet solution could leave a sour aftertaste.  One solution is to encrypt the data before it is stored online using EncFS, a tool that encrypts an entire folder structure, but file by file, as opposed to a single container like TrueCrypt.  Because it stores data encrypted and decrypts only when mounted using a password, the data residing on mobile devices and in the cloud is securely encrypted if lost or compromised.

EncFS is a mature, decade old solution with broad platform support, including Linux, Windows, Macintosh, iPhone/iPad, Android, and a variety of online storage platforms.  Apps that make use simple include:

• BoxCryptor – Windows, Windows RT, Linux, OS X, Android, iOS, Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, SugarSync, Box.net
• Cryptonite – Android
• Cryptkeeper – Linux
• MacFUSE – OS X
• OSXFUSE – OS X
• BoxProtect – iPhone, Macintosh, and Dropbox
• encfs4win – Windows, Dropbox
• Cloudfogger – Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive
• Grive – Google Drive, Linux, Android
• EncFS – good Windows and Linux tutorial

Managed Services customers: Submitting a help desk ticket from the desktop

If you’re one of our Managed Services customers, there’s an easy way to submit a help desk ticket to us by using our management agent’s system tray menu. In your system tray (the lower right corner of the Windows task bar), there is an icon for our agent which looks like a little blue ball with white stripes.

If you click on this icon, a menu will pop up and one of the options will be Create Service Ticket.

Clicking on this option will open up your email client with our helpdesk email filled in. Just tell us what the issue is and hit send. We’ll take it from there.

Getting online when the only DNS server is not

Although best practice is to have redundant DNS servers, not every small business has the luxury of being able to afford a second server. There are however cases when the server is down but users need to get online and work (or look up ways to solve the server’s issues). Fortunately Google has provided a solution in the form of a pair of publicly accessible DNS servers. While these servers will NOT provide address resolution for local LAN devices such as file shares, printers or local e-mail systems, they do allow for name resolution for any public site on the Internet.

The process is as simple as opening the IP setting for a system’s LAN card and entering the IP address of one of the public DNS server, 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4.

For more details look at Google’s instruction page at https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using

Managed Services Customers: Capturing error messages for submitting tickets to the help desk

If you’re one of our Managed Services customers and you submit a helpdesk ticket because an error message popped up on your screen, it is generally very helpful for us to be able to see the full text of that error message. Rather than writing down the entire message which can sometimes be very lengthy, you can capture the information and send it to us using our management agent.

In your system tray (the lower right corner of the Windows task bar), there is an icon for our agent which looks like a little blue ball with white stripes.

If you click on this icon, a menu will pop up and one of the options will be Screen Capture.

Clicking on this option will send us a current capture of your screen, complete with whatever error message is on screen at the time.

Then when you submit the helpdesk ticket by calling us or emailing support@lewan.com, just mention that you sent us a screenshot. We’ll be able to find it in our management interface.

LabTech Reboot Messages

If you are one of our Managed Services customers, one of the services provided to you is scheduled patching of your computers . Microsoft releases patches on a regular basis as do some other application vendors and our remote management software (LabTech) will apply these patches to your machines as needed and as approved by our staff.

Once patches are applied to your machine, if those patches require a restart of the computer you will be prompted by LabTech to reboot your computer with the dialog box below.

If it is inconvenient for you to restart your computer at the time the reboot is requested, you can simply dismiss the dialog  by clicking the No button. The dialog box will count down from 90 seconds and if no response is given during that time the dialog box will dismiss itself and not restart the computer. This is to prevent loss of unsaved data should you be away from your computer and not able to answer the question in a timely fashion.

If the dialog box is dismissed it will pop back up hourly to remind you that a reboot is needed. Since the patches will not be effective until after the restart, it is a good idea to save any unsaved work and allow the reboot as soon as possible.