Microsoft has released a new and very useful whitepaper on deploying certificates in OCS 2007.
Certificates with OCS has always been a bit tricky and documentation on OCS and certificates has always lacked, until now.
Rick Kingslan, with the help of a series of excellent people, has now created a whitepaper called “Deploying Certificates in Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2”.
This whitepaper includes links to learning resources for the basics of certificates/PKI, but more importantly very specific OCS 2007 / R2 deployment information (and command lines) and it is certainly worth a read (95 pages of good technical info).
Whitepaper: Deploying Certificates in Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2
Reference: msgoodies (thx for the info, Dennis)
Microsoft has released SP2 for Exchange 2007. SP2 is a pre-requirement for co-existence with Exchange 2010. It also includes a lot of new features, listed below:
Enhanced Auditing – New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository. This simplifies the auditing process and makes review of audited events easier by segregating audited events in a dedicated location.
Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality - A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool. Exchange Server 2007 didn’t have this capability on Windows Server 2008 and additional solutions were required to perform this task.
Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation – The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don’t exist in the AD schema.
Public Folder Quota Management – SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.
Centralized Organizational Settings – SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
Named Properties cmdlets – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.
New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging- SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.
Download it here.
Yesterday the Exchange Team announced the release of the Exchange 2010 RC (Release Candidate).
The Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate is now feature complete and available for download – (even though the download link from Microsoft didn’t work to begin with – works now though!!).
Here’s a highlight of new things in the Release Candidate:
Support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2: The Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate is now supported on the 64-bit versions of the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
In place upgrade from Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate to Exchange Server 2010 RTM: You can start planning and deploying your Exchange Server 2010 environment today knowing that it will be possible to perform an in place upgrade with the final version expected to be available later this year. You won’t need to reinstall your servers or reconfigure your Exchange settings once you have deployed the Release Candidate. This will save you time while allowing you to start evaluating the latest product capabilities now.
Co-existence with Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2003: If your current environment is Exchange Server 2007 or Exchange Server 2003, Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate is able co-exist with either of the two versions. This will enable you/your company to start planning your upgrade, test critical scenarios and experience the benefits of the latest version of the product. For Exchange Server 2007 co-existence, Service Pack 2 (SP2) is required, and will be available later this month.
For additional technical details, please visit “What’s new in Exchange 2010″ on TechNet.
Download the Exchange 2010 RC here – when link again is working.
A while back I needed to remotely reset the password of an iLO (LightOut adapter) on a HP server and found this great blog post, that described how to:
http://blog.netnerds.net/2006/04/ribcl-reset-administrator-password-on-ilo/
