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Benoit HAMET's personal blog
Expert on Microsoft infrastructure technologies (Online Services - BPOS / Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, OCS / Lync, Windows, AD, ForeFront, System Center...)
mai 19
SQL 2012 – Always On feature installation and configuration
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 19/05/2012 19:11
Category: SQL

With SQL 2012, Microsoft has introduced a new high availability functionality called Always On.

This feature allows you to manage high availability for specific set of database called Availability Database.

For those who are familiar with Exchange 2010, this can be compared with DAG feature.

Prerequisites installation

To use Always On SQL feature you must deploy an Enterprise Edition of Windows Server as this is the one which includes cluster technology. Indeed, you still need cluster configuration to use Always On feature.

SQL Server 2012 Installation

First you have to install SQL 2012 to allow cluster services to use and configure SQL cluster services.

As installation option, you must select New SQL stand-alone option (not the clustered one)

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Once setup program has passed all first steps, choose at the Server Role installation step SQL Features Installation to select the features to be installed

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I’ll not detailed all next steps are this is a ‘classical’ SQL installation

Select the features you want to install (at least Database Engine Services must be installed of course) and configure your SQL instance (name it in case of not using the default one, define directory used…)

Cluster Creation

Then you can create the cluster.

From the Server Manager, go to Features section to add Failover Clustering feature

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Then, before creating the cluster, I recommend to run the validation tool to ensure all settings are correct.

Open the Failover Cluster Manager console and click on Validate a configuration

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Then follow the wizard, the only thing you have to do is to enter the server names which will be part of the cluster

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Then choose to run all test and let the wizard work. Results will be shown as web page.

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Once everything is correct, you can create the cluster itself by clicking on Create a Cluster.

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Follow the wizard by adding all servers which will be part of the cluster

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Enter the cluster name (NetBIOS name and this will automatically create a DNS record) as well as the IP address to associated with the cluster

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Quorum Disk

Then create the quorum disk

From the cluster management console, right click on your cluster just created and choose More Actions\Configure Cluster Quorum Settings

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Select the quorum settings you want to apply; in my case I choose Node and File Share Majority

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More details about quorum settings, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731739.aspx, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh270280(SQL.110).aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff929171(SQL.110).aspx

Configure SQL Server to support Always On feature

Launch the SQL Server Configuration Manager console and select the SQL instance from the service node to display his properties

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Go to the AlwaysOn High Availability tab and enable it

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Restart the SQL instance

Create Availability Group

As all prerequisites (SQL and cluster installation and configuration) are now done, we can create availability group.

From the SQL Management Studio console, connect to your SQL cluster. If the AlwyaysOn feature has been correctly enabled, the node AlwaysOn High Availability should be available

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Before adding a database to a group, you must set his recovery model to Full and then perform a Full backup

Right click on it and launch the New Availability Group Wizard if you already have SQL databases defined to be part of it and follow it

Or choose New Availability Group to create an empty availability group

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You will be able to associate database later after creating this empty group by right clicking on the group and choose Add Database

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To add a replica, do the same but choose Add Replica

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mai 02
Office 365 – PowerShell helper scripts package
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 02/05/2012 14:23

Microsoft has published a PS scripts package to help Office 365 administrators to manage Office 365 services using PowerShell.

To use these scripts, you must have installed PowerShell for Office 365 and be an Office 365 administrator.

As part of the scripts provided:

  • Set-MsolUserPasswordFromCSV : permet de gérer les mots de passe depuis un fichier CSV
  • NewRandomPasswordFile : génère des mots de passe aléatoires et les stocke dans un fichier CSV
  • NewDirSyncPowerShellShortcut : vérifie l’installation de DirSync et crée un raccourci
  • GetTotalUsersGroupsContactsInForest : cherche dans Active Directory et calcule le nombre total d’utilisateurs, de groups et de contacts pour chaque domaine
  • GetSyncedObjectCount : retourne le nombre d’objets qui ont été synchronisés avec Office 365
  • GetMsolUserReport : génère un CSV qui contient des informations sur les utilisateurs et les boites aux lettres
  • GetMsolTenantSkuUsage : génère un bilan d’usage des licences Office 365 dans un fichier CSV
  • AssignLicenseByDG : permet d’assigner une licence en fonction de l’appartenance à un groupe de distribution

To get this scripts package go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29568

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avril 22
Office 365 - I'm now certified for Office 365 Deployment
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 22/04/2012 18:14

After being certified as Office 365 Administrator, I'm now certified for Office 365 deployment

I'm now one of the first worldwide certified people on Office 365​

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avril 18
Office 365 - I'm now Office 365 Administrator certified (MCITP)
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 18/04/2012 23:26

​It took a long time but today I had the good news that I passed my Office 365 certification exam (72-323 - Administering Office 365)

I had the opportunity to pass this exam (as well as the other one 72-321 Deploying Office 365) as beta tester.
I'm still waiting for the second result​.

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avril 05
Office 365 – Certification exams are now live
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 05/04/2012 14:56

Microsoft has officially launch the certification path for Office 365.

2 exams are available:

This covers the following items

This covers the following items

    • Administering Microsoft Office 365
    • Administering SharePoint Online
    • Administering Exchange and Lync Online

Good luck if you are planning to take one or two of these exams.

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avril 05
SharePoint – No search results if one way trust relationship is in use
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 05/04/2012 11:31
Category: SharePoint

On my last project, we had to deploy SharePoint within a specific AD forest while users and groups were located within another AD forests.

We have implemented a One Way Trust between the SharePoint AD Forest and the users/groups forests; everything was going fine except for the search results.

Indeed, all search performed were returning no results while we knew we should have results.

After some analysis, we discovered user accounts within the SharePoint forest were able to get results while users from the trusted forests not.

We finally found a Microsoft KB article which explains the reason and provide solution (KB 2344518 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2344518)

According to this KB, this due to how the Search Service Application is performing security trimming.

The solution was to force the search service application to store ACL’s in Claims format (even if we were not using Claims authentication for web applications):

$SearchApp = Get-SPServiceApplication
$SearchApp.setproperty(“ForceClaimACLs”, 1)

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avril 04
SCVMM 2012 – Allow access to virtual machines through portal
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 04/04/2012 21:46
Category: System Center; Hyper V

For those who were already using System Center Virtual Machine Manager, you already know that you can provide access to VM’s (and self service VM creation) through a portal.

The only things are to install and configure access to the Self Service portal and assign ownership to VM’s.

With SCVMM 2012, this has a little bit change has setting ownership is not enough to provide VM’s access through the portal (as you can see below).

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Indeed, you need to create a cloud and then associate VM’s to this cloud (in addition of others settings such as granting portal access or settings ownership).

Create the cloud

  • Launch the SCVMM console
  • Go to the Clouds section located at the VM and Services section

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  • Hit the Create a cloud button and follow the wizard; I’ll not detail the cloud creation steps here as this is pretty simple and clear

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Associate VM’s with clouds

  • Once your cloud has been created, you have to associate VM’s with this cloud. To view all VM’s at once, click at the All hosts level (or if you want to select VM according to a specific host, click on the host name)

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  • Right click on a VM and go to Properties. Then change the Cloud property to select your cloud

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Grant cloud access and use to users

Create a cloud and associate VM’s with the cloud is not enough. You must also grant cloud access (and use) to users.

  • Right click on your cloud and choose Assign Cloud

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  • At this step, you can re use existing user role (if already created it) or create new user role; in this post, I already have created my user role for the self service portal

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  • Once you have selected the user role, the user role properties window is shown to allow you to select additional cloud (in case of multiple clouds exist) – called Scope. As only one cloud has been created, you just have to confirm the association

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  • Et voilà

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avril 02
System Center – System Center 2012 products suite are now available
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 02/04/2012 21:03
Category: System Center

The new edition of the System Center suite – monitoring, deployment and configuration, management… – is now available (at least for TechNet and MSDN subscribers).

System Center 2012 is composed by:

  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager: to manage Hyper V and VMWare virtual machines, On Premises and Online (Hyper V Azure)
  • System Center Operation Manager: to monitor systems
  • System Center Configuration Manager: to deploy OS and software and manage configuration compliance
  • System Center Service Manager
  • System Center App Manager: new in 2012 edition
  • System Center Orchestrator: new in 2012 edition
  • System Center Data Protection Manager: to manage systems backup and restore (includes SharePoint, Exchange, Hyper V, SQL…)

 

To know more about this solution go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/datacenter-management-capabilities.aspx

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mars 26
Office 365 / SharePoint – Migrate your On Premises SharePoint content to SharePoint 2010 Online – Part 2 – Connection to Office 365
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 26/03/2012 22:10

UPDATE - April 5th

Will writing this post, I discover an issue while migrating blog content to SharePoint Online. The issue was pictures associated with blog posts published using Live Writer (and so stored as attachments on SharePoint) were not migrated.
This issue is not really a product bug as this way of blog posting is using specific SharePoint API's.

I'm really impressed by the quality and the responsiveness of AvePoint Support team. Only a week was needed to have confirmation of repro, details about the issue and get a fix. Whaou!!!

 

 

 

Following my previous post (http://blog.hametbenoit.info/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=365) related to the migration tool installation,  now it’s time to start the migration to SharePoint Online.

Launch DocAve control either directly from the server using the shortcut created on the Dektop/Start menu or using your web browser from your workstation (URL to use has been defined during the Control service installation – default is https://<servername>:14000)

This will launch a Silverlight console; off course, the first you have to do is to login onto the DocAve site (default login is admin/admin – it’s recommended off course to change it immediately after the first login).

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Configure the connection to Office 365

As we will migrate from On Premises to Office 365, the first thing is to configure the connection to your Office 365 tenant. To do this, you have to define an agent group (which contains SharePoint servers) and then the connection to SharePoint Online.

Go to the the Control Panel shown on the left part.

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Click on Agent Groups

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You already have a default agent group created but it’s not usable in our migration context, so create a new one.

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To select SharePoint servers which must be part of this agent group, you have to select to related SharePoint farm thanks to the Farm drop down menu.

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You can close the Agent Group configuration.

Then click on Office 365 Instance Manager.

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If you have already connections defined, it will be shown here; if not, click on the Create button.

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You have to define few settings such as domain name – which is your SharePoint Online URL without the HTTP or HTTPS (looks like <your Office 365 tenant>.sharepoint.com) – and then select the agent group you want to use.

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At this time, there is NO connection with your SharePoint Online.

You have to define a user account to use for SharePoint Online authentication and connection; click on the Manage Remote Site Collection and then on the Add button

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Type the site collection URL – default is set to the URL you define at the previous step, and the username/password to use. It is off course recommended to define a specific user account (equivalent to service account for SharePoint On Premise) with a complex and never expire password.

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Then you should be able to manage your SharePoint Online site collection remotely.

To check if the communication with SharePoint Online is working fine, close the Control Panel window and go to Content Manager at the Administration section.

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On this window, there are 2 section:

  • on the left part, you will see all of your SharePoint On Premise farm managed with AvePoint
  • on the right side, you will see the same AS WELL AS your SharePoint Online (below Remote SharePoint tree)

If you open the sub tree below Remote SharePoint, you should see all site collection content.

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Migrate the content

Then, to migrate your content from your On Premise farm to SharePoint Online, you have to select the content from the left part and then choose to Copy or Move the content to SharePoint Online.

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An action summary is displayed. At this stage you can still edit the operation, preview the actions or execute the migration.

If you edit the operation, you change few settings such as apply some content filter, backup the destination before, copy the security…

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If you preview the operation, the system is emulating the migration to show you the structure at the destination side.

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Once you are happy, run the migration job by hitting the Run Now button.

The migration job will copy/move the content and automatically enable SharePoint features used at the SharePoint site source.

A job has been created and you can access it by clicking on the link provided; note job monitor can be accessed through the Job Monitor from the home page.

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You will be able to see the progression.

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Content Migrated

For this post I created a dedicated SharePoint Online site collection based on default Team Site template.

The content migrated from SharePoint On Premise is based on Blog template; I choose to copy my blog onto SharePoint Online for this purpose.

This will show you the migration will be able to overwrite existing content.

The good point is your destination site is already accessible while the content is migrated.

SharePoint On Premise SharePoint Online before migration SharePoint Online after migration
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For information, it took a little bit more than 45 min to migrate all my blog content (about 51 Mo composed by 341 posts, 33 categories and 53 comments with an outbound bandwidth of 1 Mbps).

Once the migration job has finished, you can see logs by clicking View Details button.

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On my next post, we will see how to synchronize content between Online and On Premise sites.

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mars 26
Office 365 – GUI tool to create shared mailbox
by  Benoit HAMETNo presence information  on 26/03/2012 20:19

To manage Exchange Online, you have various options available:

  • PowerShell – you have to install first Microsoft Online PowerShell
  • Exchange Management Shell
  • Exchange Control Panel

However, even if the most complete tool is PowerShell, this tool is not very easy to use for everyone.

Moreover, many operations can be done only through the PowerShell.

So to assist customers in managing Exchange Online, Microsoft has provided a GUI tool to create shared mailbox – the most requested (and in some way the most difficult) mailbox management operation.

Currently, this tool is granting permission to the shared mailbox to a security group.

To know more about this tool and how to use it http://community.office365.com/en-us/w/exchange/1712.aspx

To download the tool http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/183/t/45006.aspx

The 'classic' way to create shared mailbox http://help.outlook.com/en-us/beta/ee441202.aspx

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Benoit HAMET 

Welcome to my blog.

You will find usefull information about Microsoft technologies.

Feel free to post a comment, I will be happy to discuss.

This blog is hosted by myself, using SharePoint 2010 and Office Web Applications.

 
 

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