Tag: Server 2008

Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3


Today the Exchange Team released Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 KB2407025. This update raises Exchange 2007 version number to 8.3.137.3.

The List with fixes:
972186 Some functions do not work if you install Security Configuration Wizard on a Windows Server 2008 SP2-based Exchange Server 2007

979046 Attachments are empty when you save them by using OWA after you have applied the update of KB 958881 on an Exchange Server 2007

980038 The Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service crashes intermittently in the Oabgen.dll module on an Exchange Server 2007 server

981602 Event ID: 4999 is frequently generated in a mixed Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2003 environment

982476 The Imap4.exe process crashes intermittently on an Exchange Server 2007 server

982478 Notes URL links in a plain text message are not clickable when you open this message by using OWA in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

2028675 The MSExchangeFDS.exe process occupies lots of memory if there are thousands of OABs created on an Exchange Server 2007 server

2029086 Some characters of an email message are displayed in an incorrect text size when you access your mailbox by using OWA in Exchange Server 2007

2032216 The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service crashes on an Exchange Server 2007 server when you start it or try to mount certain databases

2121536 Exchange Server 2007 cannot index a message

2201236 The "All Day" field is marked with "No" when you access a meeting request that has a duration time that is more than 24 hours by using a mobile client through ActiveSync in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

2203212 Certain mailboxes cannot be moved from an Exchange Server 2007 server to an Exchange Server 2010 server

2210042 A sub contact folder is still visible after you set the "PR_ATTR_HIDDEN" attribute to "True" in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

2230824 The Microsoft.Exchange.POP3.exe process or the Microsoft.Exchange.Imap4.exe process may crash after you enable protocol logging for POP3 or IMAP4 on an Exchange Server 2007 server

2249814 You receive misleading information when you run the "New-TestCasConnectivityUser.ps1" script on an Exchange Server 2007 server

2263342 "The operation failed" error message in Outlook client when a user sends a recurring meeting request with an email message attachment in an Exchange Server 2007 SP2 environment

2276439 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2276439/ ) The Microsoft.Exchange.IMAP4.exe process crashes when an IMAP4 client retrieves a meeting request that includes exception attachments in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

2280234 "Your POP3 server has not responded in 60 seconds." error message when a POP3 client connects to an Exchange Server 2007 Client Access server to access an Exchange Server 2003 mailbox

2282570 "550 5.1.3" NDR message when an Exchange Server 2007 user sends an email message to a recipient

2265306 The Exchange Information Store service stops responding when you perform a search operation on an Exchange Server 2007 mailbox in Outlook

2282746 The "Private" sensitivity status of an occurrence of a recurring meeting request is lost when you edit the occurrence in OWA in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

2286782 The response details are still included in the response email message when you set the "EnableResponseDetails" property to "False" in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

2290105 A shared document cannot be open by using OWA after you install Exchange Server 2007 SP3 on an Exchange Server 2007 server

2290159 The POP3 service crashes on an Exchange Server 2007 server

2344372  You cannot move mailboxes to an Exchange Server 2007 server

2362371 You receive a "Success" response when using the Test-Mailflow command on an invalid or nonexistent external email address in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

2384754 "Unable to identify local server row in Replication state table for this FID" error message when you run the Information Store Integrity Checker tool on an Exchange Server 2007 server

2387915 The ESEBack component does not support ETL tracing on an Exchange Server 2007 server

2388057 The Exchange Transport service crashes on Exchange Server 2007 servers in a mixed Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 environment

2394731 An HTML attachment of a shared mailbox cannot be saved when you set the "BypassOwaHTMLAttachmentFiltering" setting to "True" in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

2424499 Exchange Server 2007 does not support to assign a mailbox with the "Send on behalf" permission of a security group in the EMC or in the EMS

2427297 The created time and the modified time of an attachment are incorrect when you save an email message on an Exchange Server 2007 mailbox

2430674 The "Leave message intact" method in a Folder Assistant rule does not work when you post an item by using OWA in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

Download the hotfix HERE

Blog 2 years online

On 24 july 2008 I started my blog.

In two years time a get al lot of visitors.

Some stats till now in totally:

Hits 556.775
Unique visits 308636

Hits (bots) Hits 164201
Unique visits 93724

This year a get al lot of new visitors:

Hits (+282069) 2009: 137353 2010: 419422 still growing

Unique visits (+190172) 2009: 59232 2010: 249404 still growing

I’m very pleased with this numbers. I means for me that I do a good job.

I Red heart blogging.

Still writing nice about nice Stuff. I have not enough time to write every thing.
Next week have some days off. I will write some nice articles. Please if you have Questions let me now.

With kings regards,

Ward Vissers

Data Protection Manager 2010 Operations Guide

DPM2010Logo

Microsoft released a nice manual for monitoring and managing DPM servers and tape libraries, and protected computers that are running Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft Virtual Server, or the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. This guide also provides instructions for setting up protection of data on desktop computers that are connected to the network, and portable computers that are connected to the network intermittently, and for setting up disaster recovery.

Download the Manual

Exchange 2010 SP1 Prerequisites

Some day’s ago Microsoft Releases Exchange 2010 SP1. When you install Exchange 2010 SP1 you need to install some hotfixes. The Exchange Team have made a nice over view witch hotfixes you need for the OS.

Hotfix Download Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows 7 & Windows Vista
979744
A .NET Framework 2.0-based Multi-AppDomain application stops responding when you run the application		 MSDN
or Microsoft Connect		 Windows6.0-KB979744-x64.msu (CBS: Vista/Win2K8) Windows6.1-KB979744-x64.msu (CBS: Win7/Win2K8 R2) N. A.
983440
An ASP.NET 2.0 hotfix rollup package is available for Windows 7 and for Windows Server 2008 R2		 Request from CSS Yes Yes N.A.
977624
AD RMS clients do not authenticate federated identity providers in Windows Server 2008 or in Windows Vista. Without this update, Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) features may stop working		 Request from CSS using the “View and request hotfix downloads” link in the KBA | US-English Select the download for Windows Vista for the x64 platform. N.A. N.A.
979917
Two issues occur when you deploy an ASP.NET 2.0-based application on a server that is running IIS 7.0 or IIS 7.5 in Integrated mode		 Request from CSS using the Hotfix Request Web Submission Form or by phone (no charge) Yes N. A. N. A.
973136,
FIX: ArgumentNullException exception error message when a .NET Framework 2.0 SP2-based application tries to process a response with zero-length content to an asynchronous ASP.NET Web service request: “Value cannot be null”.		 Microsoft Connect Windows6.0-KB973136-x64.msu N.A. N. A.
977592
RPC over HTTP clients cannot connect to the Windows Server 2008 RPC over HTTP servers that have RPC load balancing enabled.		 Request from CSS Select the download for Windows Vista (x64) N.A. N. A.
979099
An update is available to remove the application manifest expiry feature from AD RMS clients.		 Download Center N. A. Windows6.1-KB979099-x64.msu N. A.
982867

WCF services that are hosted by computers together with a NLB fail in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

 MSDN N. A. Windows6.1-KB982867-v2-x64.msu (Win7) X86: Windows6.1-KB982867-v2-x86.msu (Win7)
x64: Windows6.1-KB982867-v2-x64.msu (Win7)
977020
FIX: An application that is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 and that invokes a Web service call asynchronously throws an exception on a computer that is running Windows 7.		 Microsoft Connect N. A. N. A. x64: Windows6.1-KB977020-v2-x64.msu

X86: Windows6.1-KB977020-v2-x86.msu

Some of the hotfixes would have been rolled up in a Windows update or service pack. Given that the Exchange team released SP1 earlier than what was planned and announced earlier, it did not align with some of the work with the Windows platform. As a result, some hotfixes are available from MSDN/Connect, and some require that you request them online using the links in the corresponding KBs. All these updates may become available on the Download Center, and also through Windows Update.

These hotfixes have been tested extensively as part of Exchange 2010 SP1 deployments within Microsoft and by our TAP customers. They are fully supported by Microsoft.

The TechNet article Exchange 2010 Prerequisites is updated with the hotfixes and install the prerequisites required for your server version (the hotfixes are linked to in the above table).

You can use the Install the Windows Server 2008 SP2 operating system prerequisites on a Windows 2008 R2 server. Only you have to run the following powershell command: Import-Module ServerManager

Installed Exchange 2010 SP1 on a Windows 2008 R2 Server with problems. I feels that the MMC is faster. Tomorrow upgrading a DAG/NLB cluster to Exchange 2010 SP1.

Your account in Microsoft Exchange Server does not have have permissions to synchronize with your current settings 0x85010004 or Eventid 1053 Exchange ActiveSync doesn’t have sufficient permissions to create the user container under Active Directory user "Active Directory operation failed on domain controller.

Error: Your account in Microsoft Exchange Server does not have have permissions to synchronize with your current settings.

Afb0021

Eventlog:
image

Exchange ActiveSync doesn’t have sufficient permissions to create the "CN=ward,OU=Users,DC=wardvissers,DC=local" container under Active Directory user "Active Directory operation failed on DC2008-03.ad.local. This error is not retriable. Additional information: Access is denied.
Active directory response: 00000005: SecErr: DSID-031521D0, problem 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS), data 0
".
Make sure the user has inherited permission granted to domain\Exchange Servers to allow List, Create child, Delete child of object type "msExchangeActiveSyncDevices" and doesn’t have any deny permissions that block such operations.

Because my account has domain admins rights the security settings will be reset every hour by
AdminSDHolder

Each Active Directory domain has an object called AdminSDHolder, which resides in the System container of the domain. The Admin-SDHolder object has a unique Access Control List (ACL), which is used to control the permissions of security principals that are members of built-in privileged Active Directory groups (what I like to call “protected” groups). Every hour, a background process called SDPROP runs on the domain controller that holds the PDC Emulator operations master role. It compares the ACL on all security principals (users, groups and computer accounts) that belong to protected groups against the ACL on the AdminSDHolder object. If the ACL lists aren’t the same, the ACL on the security principal is overwritten with the ACL from the Admin–SDHolder object. In addition, inheritance is disabled on the security principal.

Temporally Solution:

1. Active Directory Users and Computers

image
2. Enable Advanced Features
image
3. Search the User and go to the Security tab.

image
4. Advanced
image

5. Include Inheritable permissions from the Object’s parent
image

Source: Blog

Remote Desktop Services Component Architecture Poster

This poster provides a visual reference for understanding key Remote Desktop Services technologies in Windows Server 2008 R2. It explains the functions and roles of Remote Desktop Session Host, Remote Desktop Virtualization Host, Remote Desktop Connection Broker, Remote Desktop Web Access, Remote Desktop Gateway, RemoteFX and Remote Desktop Licensing.

To Download: Click on the picture.

image

Exchange 2007/2010 Performance settings on vSphere.

When install a Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 Server on vSphere there are some settings that will increase de performance.

– Use de VMXNET 3 Adapter
– Use per Disk a SCSI Controller
– Store the Log & Database files on physical Lun on a SAN
– Use the LSI LOGIC SAS controller for Windows 2008 & 2008 R2
– Use the VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) Controller for Every physical Raw Device Mapping (RDM).

Another TIP.  Exchange 2007 & Exchange 2010 needs a lots of Memory. When choosing the size for the OS partition, swap file need also al lot of space.

MDT 2010 Importing automatically the right driver

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 has some nice improvements to handle drivers. I will describe how I like to manage drivers in MDT 2010.

Some time I wrote i article about how to get the Name & Model from a computer. This is very important when you want to import only the right drivers automatically.

First we have to build the ‘Out-of-Box Drivers’ folder structure and import drivers. I have subdirectories for each architecture, brand and model.  This is what my folder tree looks like:

MDT 2010 - Out-of-Box Drivers

However, you can build your own structure, as long as you respect the proper model & brand (make) name of the vendors.

Build Out-of-Box Drivers tree

To build up the folder structure you have to know the model name of your hardware. To retrieve the proper computer name execute at powershell command prompt: ‘Get-WmiObject -Class win32_computersystemproduct | fl Name,Model,UUID,Identifyingnumber,Vendor’, to get the exact name WMI queries to determine the computer model. In my case the computer name is “Latitude D830”.

Now that we have drivers imported in our Deployment Share, it’s time to move on.

1. DriverGroups

DriverGroups existed in MDT 2008 already, although the MDT Team added subdirectory support in MDT 2010.

At deployment phase MDT uses WMI to query the proper computer model and only the current model drivers will be injected. In order to get this working properly, you have to use the EXACT model name in your Out-of-Box Driver tree.

Inject the correct drivers in your Task Sequence

Add a new step in your Task Sequence to inject the correct drivers. MDT will query the computer name and inject the drivers which corresponds with the computer name from the Out-of-Box folder structure, right before applying the image at deployment.

MDT 2010 - Set Task Sequence Variable (Add Task) MDT 2010 - Set Task Sequence Variable (DriverGroup)

I use ‘DriverGroup_001’ as Task Sequence Variable, and Win7×64\%Make%\%Model% as value for my Windows 7 x64. You have to adapt this to your Out-of-Box tree.

MDT 2010 - Set Task Sequence Variable

As I use a DriverGroup I’ve disabled the ‘Inject Drivers’ task.

Customsettings.ini

As my Task Sequence handles everything, there isn’t anything needed here.

If you don’t like to use a new Task in your TS, you can add DriverGroup variables in customsettings.ini like this:

DriverGroup_001=%Make%\%Model%

DriverGroup_002=Printers

2. Selection Profiles

New in MDT 2010 are DriverSelectionProfiles. These are easy for new MDT admins, very straight forward and easy to use.

Overview:

MDT 2010 - Selection Profiles Overview

First you have to create a Profile (or use one of the default profiles):

MDT 2010 - Selection Profiles, select folders

You can even select Packages and Applications, use it for “bad drivers” aka driver setup packs.

Select what drivers you want to add to the profile;

MDT 2010 - Selection Profiles, add profile

After making the profiles you can use them in your Task Sequences. The default ‘Inject Drivers’ settings are on the left, the customized one on the right:

MDT 2010 - Selection Profiles, task sequence MDT 2010 - Selection Profiles, task sequence

You can add  Selection Profiles for drivers/packages or whatever you want. Just add an extra step in your task sequence like above.

Customsettings.ini

As with DriverGroups you can choose to handle the DriverSelectionProfile in customsettings.ini or in your TS.

Example:

DriverSelectionProfile=Dell Latitude D520 x64

VMware vSphere 4.1 Released

WHAT’S NEW:

Installation and Deployment

Storage

  • Boot from SAN. vSphere 4.1 enables ESXi boot from SAN (BFN). iSCSI, FCoE, and Fibre Channel boot are supported. Refer to the Hardware Compatibility Guide for the latest list of NICs and Converged Adapters that are supported with iSCSI boot. See the iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide and the Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide.
  • Hardware Acceleration with vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). ESX can offload specific storage operations to compliant storage hardware. With storage hardware assistance, ESX performs these operations faster and consumes less CPU, memory, and storage fabric bandwidth. See the ESX Configuration Guide and the ESXi Configuration Guide.
  • Storage Performance Statistics. vSphere 4.1 offers enhanced visibility into storage throughput and latency of hosts and virtual machines, and aids in troubleshooting storage performance issues. NFS statistics are now available in vCenter Server performance charts, as well as esxtop. New VMDK and datastore statistics are included. All statistics are available through the vSphere SDK. See the vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide.
  • Storage I/O Control. This feature provides quality-of-service capabilities for storage I/O in the form of I/O shares and limits that are enforced across all virtual machines accessing a datastore, regardless of which host they are running on. Using Storage I/O Control, vSphere administrators can ensure that the most important virtual machines get adequate I/O resources even in times of congestion. See the vSphere Resource Management Guide.
  • iSCSI Hardware Offloads. vSphere 4.1 enables 10Gb iSCSI hardware offloads (Broadcom 57711) and 1Gb iSCSI hardware offloads (Broadcom 5709). See the ESX Configuration Guide, the ESXi Configuration Guide, and the iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide.
  • NFS Performance Enhancements. Networking performance for NFS has been optimized to improve throughput and reduce CPU usage. See the ESX Configuration Guide and the ESXi Configuration Guide.

Network

Availability

  • Windows Failover Clustering with VMware HA. Clustered Virtual Machines that utilize Windows Failover Clustering/Microsoft Cluster Service are now fully supported in conjunction with VMware HA. See Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service.
  • VMware HA Scalability Improvements. VMware HA has the same limits for virtual machines per host, hosts per cluster, and virtual machines per cluster as vSphere. See Configuration Maximums for VMware vSphere 4.1 for details about the limitations for this release.
  • VMware HA Healthcheck and Operational Status. The VMware HA dashboard in the vSphere Client provides a new detailed window called Cluster Operational Status. This window displays more information about the current VMware HA operational status, including the specific status and errors for each host in the VMware HA cluster. See the vSphere Availability Guide.
  • VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) Enhancements. vSphere 4.1 introduces an FT-specific versioning-control mechanism that allows the Primary and Secondary VMs to run on FT-compatible hosts at different but compatible patch levels. vSphere 4.1 differentiates between events that are logged for a Primary VM and those that are logged for its Secondary VM, and reports why a host might not support FT. In addition, you can disable VMware HA when FT-enabled virtual machines are deployed in a cluster, allowing for cluster maintenance operations without turning off FT. See the vSphere Availability Guide.
  • DRS Interoperability for VMware HA and Fault Tolerance (FT). FT-enabled virtual machines can take advantage of DRS functionality for load balancing and initial placement. In addition, VMware HA and DRS are tightly integrated, which allows VMware HA to restart virtual machines in more situations. See the vSphere Availability Guide.
  • Enhanced Network Logging Performance. Fault Tolerance (FT) network logging performance allows improved throughput and reduced CPU usage. In addition, you can use vmxnet3 vNICs in FT-enabled virtual machines. See the vSphere Availability Guide.
  • Concurrent VMware Data Recovery Sessions. vSphere 4.1 provides the ability to concurrently manage multiple VMware Data Recovery appliances. See the VMware Data Recovery Administration Guide.
  • vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) Enhancements. VADP now offers VSS quiescing support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. This enables application-consistent backup and restore operations for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 applications.

Management

  • vCLI Enhancements. vCLI adds options for SCSI, VAAI, network, and virtual machine control, including the ability to terminate an unresponsive virtual machine. In addition, vSphere 4.1 provides controls that allow you to log vCLI activity. See the vSphere Command-Line Interface Installation and Scripting Guide and the vSphere Command-Line Interface Reference.
  • Lockdown Mode Enhancements. VMware ESXi 4.1 lockdown mode allows the administrator to tightly restrict access to the ESXi Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and Tech Support Mode (TSM). When lockdown mode is enabled, DCUI access is restricted to the root user, while access to Tech Support Mode is completely disabled for all users. With lockdown mode enabled, access to the host for management or monitoring using CIM is possible only through vCenter Server. Direct access to the host using the vSphere Client is not permitted. See the ESXi Configuration Guide.
  • Access Virtual Machine Serial Ports Over the Network. You can redirect virtual machine serial ports over a standard network link in vSphere 4.1. This enables solutions such as third-party virtual serial port concentrators for virtual machine serial console management or monitoring. See the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide.
  • vCenter Converter Hyper-V Import. vCenter Converter allows users to point to a Hyper-V machine. Converter displays the virtual machines running on the Hyper-V system, and users can select a powered-off virtual machine to import to a VMware destination. See the vCenter Converter Installation and Administration Guide.
  • Enhancements to Host Profiles. You can use Host Profiles to roll out administrator password changes in vSphere 4.1. Enhancements also include improved Cisco Nexus 1000V support and PCI device ordering configuration. See the ESX Configuration Guide and the ESXi Configuration Guide.
  • Unattended Authentication in vSphere Management Assistant (vMA). vMA 4.1 offers improved authentication capability, including integration with Active Directory and commands to configure the connection. See VMware vSphere Management Assistant.
  • Updated Deployment Environment in vSphere Management Assistant (vMA). The updated deployment environment in vMA 4.1 is fully compatible with vMA 4.0. A significant change is the transition from RHEL to CentOS. See VMware vSphere Management Assistant.
  • vCenter Orchestrator 64-bit Support. vCenter Orchestrator 4.1 provides a client and server for 64-bit installations, with an optional 32-bit client. The performance of the Orchestrator server on 64-bit installations is greatly enhanced, as compared to running the server on a 32-bit machine. See the vCenter Orchestrator Installation and Configuration Guide.
  • Improved Support for Handling Recalled Patches in vCenter Update Manager. Update Manager 4.1 immediately sends critical notifications about recalled ESX and related patches. In addition, Update Manager prevents you from installing a recalled patch that you might have already downloaded. This feature also helps you identify hosts where recalled patches might already be installed. See the vCenter Update Manager Installation and Administration Guide.
  • License Reporting Manager. The License Reporting Manager provides a centralized interface for all license keys for vSphere 4.1 products in a virtual IT infrastructure and their respective usage. You can view and generate reports on license keys and usage for different time periods with the License Reporting Manager. A historical record of the utilization per license key is maintained in the vCenter Server database. See the vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide.
  • Power Management Improvements. ESX 4.1 takes advantage of deep sleep states to further reduce power consumption during idle periods. The vSphere Client has a simple user interface that allows you to choose one of four host power management policies. In addition, you can view the history of host power consumption and power cap information on the vSphere Client Performance tab on newer platforms with integrated power meters. See the vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide.

Platform Enhancements

  • Performance and Scalability Improvements. vSphere 4.1 includes numerous enhancements that increase performance and scalability.
    • vCenter Server 4.1 can support three times more virtual machines and hosts per system, as well as more concurrent instances of the vSphere Client and a larger number of virtual machines per cluster than vCenter Server 4.0. The scalability limits of Linked Mode, vMotion, and vNetwork Distributed Switch have also increased.
    • New optimizations have been implemented for AMD-V and Intel VT-x architectures, while memory utilization efficiency has been improved still further using Memory Compression. Storage enhancements have led to significant performance improvements in NFS environments. VDI operations, virtual machine provisioning and power operations, and vMotion have enhanced performance as well.

    See Configuration Maximums for VMware vSphere 4.1.

  • Reduced Overhead Memory. vSphere 4.1 reduces the amount of overhead memory required, especially when running large virtual machines on systems with CPUs that provide hardware MMU support (AMD RVI or Intel EPT).
  • DRS Virtual Machine Host Affinity Rules. DRS provides the ability to set constraints that restrict placement of a virtual machine to a subset of hosts in a cluster. This feature is useful for enforcing host-based ISV licensing models, as well as keeping sets of virtual machines on different racks or blade systems for availability reasons. See the vSphere Resource Management Guide.
  • Memory Compression. Compressed memory is a new level of the memory hierarchy, between RAM and disk. Slower than memory, but much faster than disk, compressed memory improves the performance of virtual machines when memory is under contention, because less virtual memory is swapped to disk. See the vSphere Resource Management Guide.
  • vMotion Enhancements. In vSphere 4.1, vMotion enhancements significantly reduce the overall time for host evacuations, with support for more simultaneous virtual machine migrations and faster individual virtual machine migrations. The result is a performance improvement of up to 8x for an individual virtual machine migration, and support for four to eight simultaneous vMotion migrations per host, depending on the vMotion network adapter (1GbE or 10GbE respectively). See the vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide.
  • ESX/ESXi Active Directory Integration. Integration with Microsoft Active Directory allows seamless user authentication for ESX/ESXi. You can maintain users and groups in Active Directory for centralized user management and you can assign privileges to users or groups on ESX/ESXi hosts. In vSphere 4.1, integration with Active Directory allows you to roll out permission rules to hosts by using Host Profiles. See the ESX Configuration Guide and the ESXi Configuration Guide.
  • Configuring USB Device Passthrough from an ESX/ESXi Host to a Virtual Machine. You can configure a virtual machine to use USB devices that are connected to an ESX/ESXi host where the virtual machine is running. The connection is maintained even if you migrate the virtual machine using vMotion. See the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide.
  • Improvements in Enhanced vMotion Compatibility. vSphere 4.1 includes an AMD Opteron Gen. 3 (no 3DNow!™) EVC mode that prepares clusters for vMotion compatibility with future AMD processors. EVC also provides numerous usability improvements, including the display of EVC modes for virtual machines, more timely error detection, better error messages, and the reduced need to restart virtual machines. See the vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide.

Partner Ecosystem

  • vCenter Update Manager Support for Provisioning, Patching, and Upgrading EMC’s ESX PowerPath Module. vCenter Update Manager can provision, patch, and upgrade third-party modules that you can install on ESX, such as EMC’s PowerPath multipathing software. Using the capability of Update Manager to set policies using the Baseline construct and the comprehensive Compliance Dashboard, you can simplify provisioning, patching, and upgrade of the PowerPath module at scale. See the vCenter Update Manager Installation and Administration Guide.
  • User-configurable Number of Virtual CPUs per Virtual Socket. You can configure virtual machines to have multiple virtual CPUs reside in a single virtual socket, with each virtual CPU appearing to the guest operating system as a single core. Previously, virtual machines were restricted to having only one virtual CPU per virtual socket. See the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide.
  • Expanded List of Supported Processors. The list of supported processors has been expanded for ESX 4.1. To determine which processors are compatible with this release, use the Hardware Compatibility Guide. Among the supported processors is the Intel Xeon 7500 Series processor, code-named Nehalem-EX (up to 8 sockets).

You can download VMware vSphere 4.1 HERE

Exchange 2007 SP3 is released

What’s New in SP3 for Exchange 2007


Windows Server 2008 R2 Support

Exchange Server 2007 SP3 supports all Exchange 2007 roles on the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system.

Windows 7 Support

Exchange 2007 SP3 supports the installation of the Exchange 2007 management tools on a computer that is running Windows 7. Additionally, Exchange 2007 SP3 provides support for the installation of the Exchange 2007 Management Tools together with the Exchange Server 2010 Management Tools on the same Windows 7-based computer.

Improved Password Reset Functionality

Exchange 2007 SP3 introduces password reset functionality for Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.

To enable the password reset feature

  1. Log on to the Exchange server that is running the CAS role by using an account that has local administrator rights.

  2. Start Registry Editor, and then locate the following registry subkey:

    HLKM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchange OWA

  3. Create the following DWORD value if it does not already exist:

    Value name: ChangeExpiredPasswordEnabledValue type: REG_DWORDValue data: 1

  4. Exit Registry Editor.

 Updated Search Functionality

Exchange 2007 SP3 includes updates to the Exchange Search (MSSearch) component. MSSearch provides support for creating full text indexes for Exchange stores. Exchange 2007 SP3 updates the MSSearch binary files to MSSearch 3.1.

Schema Changes

Exchange 2007 SP3 includes Active Directory schema changes for certain Unified Messaging (UM) mailbox attributes. For more information, see Active Directory Schema Changes (SP3).

Support for Right-to-Left Disclaimer Text

Exchange 2007 SP3 includes support for Right-to-Left text in e-mail message disclaimers in a right-to-left language, such as Arabic. In earlier versions of Exchange, when you use a transport rule to create a disclaimer in a right-to-left language on an Exchange 2007 Hub Transport server, the text appears incorrectly when you view it from Outlook 2007.

Exchange 2007 SP3 adds functionality to the transport rule setting to fully support right-to-left text in disclaimers.

Download here SP3 for Exchange 2007

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