Category Archives: SBS 2008

PowerShell Not Your Father’s Command Line

There is a great 31 part blog post on PowerShell that is in developement (part 23 of 31 at this moment). Everything you wanted to know about PowerShell and some great scripts that can be used.

The main landing page for the blog is here – http://blogs.technet.com/b/matthewms/p/powershell.aspx

Here are the titles.

Part 1 of 31: Why PowerShell?
Part 2 of 31: The Basics on How to Read PowerShell
Part 3 of 31: Where Did All the Good Cmdlets Go?
Part 4 of 31: Who Ya Gonna Call For Help?
Part 5 of 31: What’s in it for Devs?
Part 6 of 31: A Cmdlet By Any Other Name Would Be An Alias
Part 7 of 31: Conjunction Function PowerShell What Are Functions?
Part 8 of 31: Won’t You Take Me To Functiontown?
Part 9 of 31: Another Side of PowerShell Profiles
Part 10 of 31: PowerShell Protecting You From Yourself
Part 11 of 31: PowerShell Providers and You!
Part 12 of 31: PowerShell and The Registry
Part 13 of 31: The Provider Active Directory Style
Part 14 of 31: Sorry I’m Not Home Right Now, Walking into IIS Webs…
Part 15 of 31: ISE, ISE Baby…
Part 16 of 31: PowerShell Take Me Out To The Grid
Part 17 of 31: Who Wants to Manage Active Directory?
Part 18 of 31: So You Deleted A User…On Purpose
Part 19 of 31: Small Business Server, PowerShell, and Me
Part 20 of 31: Hanging with Hyper-V
Part 21 of 31: Knock Knock PowerShell Calling!
Part 22 of 31: Good PowerShell Things Come in Nifty Packages
Part 23 of 31: HUGE Announcements, Disagreements, Best Practices and A Party…Oh My!
Part 24 of 31: PowerShell Did What!?!? How to Mitigate Risk!
Part 25 of 31: Did You Know PowerShell Can Talk VMware?
Part 26 of 31: Start Spreading the News…
Part 27 of 31: It Takes a Community to Raise a Language
Part 28 of 31: What is the .NET Framework?
Part 29 of 31: Demystifying MSDN and PowerShell static syntax
Part 30 of 31: PowerShell Likes the Pretty Blue Eyes of Azure Too
Part 31 of 31: That’s a Wrap and We are Not Done Yet!

SBS2008 and SBS2011 Log File locations

The following is a list of locations for key log files stored in SBS2008 as posted here – http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2008/10/01/key-small-business-server-2008-log-files.aspx. This also applies to SBS2011.

C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs

Console.log SBS Console Log
CTIW.log Logs events of the “Connect to the Internet” wizard
DCPromo_yymmdd.xxxxxx.log DCPromo that ran during SBS install
DPCW.log Logs events of the “Set up your Internet address” wizard
ERRORLOG.TXT Logs any errors that occurred during SBS setup
ExtSchemaTask.log Logs result of SBS AD schema additions
FinishSetup.log Logs the completion of the SBS 2008 install
GPOTask.log Logs the creation of the SBS Group Policy objects
olsignupwiz.log Logs events of the “Set up your Microsoft Office Live Small Business Web site” wizard
pop3connectorinstall.log Install log for the POP3 Connector
SBSHook.log Logs hooking of SBS install shell to Windows install and runonce modification
SBSSetup.log Logs all events that occurred during SBS setup
adduser.log Logs events of the “Add a new user account” wizard
addgroup.log Logs events of the “Add a new group” wizard
CreateUserRole.log Logs events of the “Add a new user role” wizard
CopyConnectComputer.log Logs events of the “Connect computers to your network” wizard
SBCW.log Logs events of the “Configure server backup” wizard
fncw.log Logs events of the “Fix My Network” wizard
AddMultipleUsers.log Logs events of the “Add multiple user accounts” wizard
FaxRoleInstallation.log Install log for Fax
FaxCW.log Logs events of the “Configure the fax service” wizard
MoveData.log Logs events of the “Move Exchange Server Data”, “Move Windows SharePointServices Data”, “Move User’s Shared Data”, “Move User’s Redirected Documents Data”, and “Move Windows Update Repository Data” wizards 
CIMW.log  Logs events of the “Configure a Smart Host for Internet e-mail” wizard
TrustedCert.log Logs events of the “Add a trusted certificate” wizard
VPNCW.log Logs events of the “Configure a virtual private network” wizard


C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\MonitoringServiceLogs

Contains logs for  SBS Monitoring and it’s associated data collection tasks


C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\pop3connector

Pop3service.log POP3 Connector log


C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\WebWorkplace

W3WP.log IIS worker process log for RWW

Logon Type Codes in the Security Logs

With the prevalance of brute force security attempts, it is not uncommon to see EventID 529 appear often in the security logs. When a failed logon attempt is made on the network, the security logs note down the Logon Type among other information. I use this resource quite often – http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Logon-Types.html to work out what the codes actually mean.

 The above resource lists the various logon codes with explanations of what they are.

The most common codesI have seen are:

  • Logon Type 2 – Interactive – when someone attempts to logon to the server console.
  • Logon Type 3 – Network – when failed attempts are made inside the network to shared resources on the server. These errors coupled with IIS attempts could also mean attempts are being made on the SMTP service or HTTPS service. Unfortunately, no IP data is logged on these types of attempts. This has to be manually found from the SMTP or Web logs.
  • Logon Type 10 – RemoteInteractive – Attempted logins to Remote Desktop or Terminal Services. This is often accompanied by useful IP information, which can be used to isolate the offending attacker.

The other codes are described in the article.

Move or transfer certificates to another server

In a migration scenario, one of the key steps is to ensure that you keep your trusted SSL certificate. Self-issued certificates which were common in SBS2003 cannot be moved. However, you might need to retain the existing SBS2008 certificate when migrating to a new server.

To export a trusted certificate:

  1. On the Source Server, click Start, click Run, type mmc.exe, and then press ENTER.
  2. On the console, click File, and then click Add/Remove Snap-in.
  3. Click Add, choose Certificates from the list, click Add again, and then click OK.
  4. On the pop-up window, click Computer Account, click Finish, and then click OK.
  5. Expand Certificates, expand Personal, and then click Certificates.
  6. Right-click the certificate that is issued to your Web site (for example: remote.contoso.com), and then click All Tasks, and then click Export.
  7. In the Certificate Export Wizard, click Next.
  8. Ensure Yes, export the private key is selected, and then click Next.
  9. Ensure Include all certificates in the certificate path if possible and Export all extended properties are selected, and then click Next. Do not select Delete the private key if the export is successful.
  10. Type a password to protect the certificate file, and then click Next.
  11. Choose a location to save the .pfx file (for example, C:\trustedcert.pfx), and then click Next.
  12. Finish the wizard.

Transfer this .pfx file to the new server. To import the trusted certificate:

  1. On the Destination Server, click Start, type mmc.exe, and then press ENTER.
  2. On the console, click File, and then click Add/Remove Snap-in.
  3. Choose Certificates from the list, and then click Add.
  4. On the pop-up, select Computer Account, click Finish, and then click OK.
  5. Expand Certificates, expand Personal, and then click Certificates.
  6. Right-click Certificates, click All Tasks, and then click Import.
  7. On the Certificate Import Wizard Welcome page, click Next.
  8. Browse to the location of the saved .pfx file, and then click Next.
  9. Type the password that you typed in the Export procedure, ensure that Mark this key as exportable and Include all extended properties are selected, and then click Next.
  10. Ensure that the certificate will be imported to the Personal folder, and then click Next.
  11. Finish the wizard.

Once the trusted certificate has been imported to the new server, you can run the Add a Trusted Certificate wizard, and select the installed certificate.

For more information, refer to the following Technet article – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc527486(WS.10).aspx

Small Business Server 2008 – Migration Resources

I keep having to refer people to this site, so I might as well publish the link here.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/small-business-server-2008-migration-resources.aspx

This is an excellent resource when considering your options for a SBS2003 to SBS2008 migration. And I would definitely recommend Jeff Middleton’s Swing Migration as it provides a relatively risk free migration path that doesn’t leave you in a crisis should a problem surface during the migration.

IT Security revisited

I was just reminded of the 10 Immutable Laws of Security (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722487.aspx)

Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it’s not your computer anymore Continue reading IT Security revisited

Exchange 2007 stops receiving external emails

On many of my early installations of SBS2008, I had the unfortunate situation of not allocating enough hard drive space on the C: drive. My opinion has always been to move data and other system information out of the C: drive to other drives, and keeping the C: drive to a reasonably small size. I though that size was 60GB. I was wrong. I would recommend setting the C: drive to at least 80GB or more.
 
However, if you do have a 60GB partition on the C: drive, one of the first signs of trouble is when the free space on C: drops below 2GB. Exchange 2007 stops receiving external emails. This is caused by a condition known as Back Pressure. This is described in more detail here – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201658(EXCHG.80).aspx
 
The easiest way to remedy this situation is to immediately free up disk space. Fortunately, there are some great articles on how to do this.
Other things, which should have already been done via the SBS Console is moving the Exchange database, Windows Update Repository and Sharepoint database out of the C: drive. They can be found here.
 
 

Adding network locations to Windows7 Libraries on a SBS Domain

With the plethora of Windows 7 laptops and PCs connecting to the SBS networks, one of the new features – Libraries – is causing some problems. The issue is the inability to add a network location to the libraries unless the network location is cached using offline files. This caused some problems for me and for some of my clients. Perfectly normal 80GB-160GB hard drives were running out of space, due to the large amount of network information being cached. This also caused some slow network connection issues as the offline files were cached and maintained.
 
For SBS2003, the solution is solved by installing Windows Search 4.0 on the server. It is an automatic update, or can be manually downloaded here – http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/5/0/250db18d-30b9-4129-b2ce-282bc2f65c1f/WindowsSearch-KB940157-Srv2K3-x86-enu.exe
 
The Microsoft Search 4.0 product page can be found here – http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/default.mspx
 
For SBS2008, there was no option to install this, as it was not supported. There is another similar product from Microsoft called Microsoft Search Server Express, which works for Windows 2008 servers. DO NOT USE THIS on SBS2008, as it will cause issues, particularly with Sharepoint.
 
The solution for SBS2008 was provided in a recent blog by the SBS team – http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2010/04/05/find-items-faster-with-windows-search-and-libraries.aspx
Turns out that it was right under our noses all the time, but not switched on.

SBS2008 Repair Guides

There is an excellent technical guide on fixing up problems that might be encountered while running SBS2008. I recently used the information on one of these guides to fix up an Exchange issue.
 
 
Contents from the guide are:
  • Manage Windows Small Business Server 2008 applications
  • Repair access of administrator account to Windows SharePoint Services
  • Repair client deployment issues
  • Repair e-mail anti-spam software
  • Repair e-mail programs and Microsoft Exchange Server services
  • Repair folder redirection and shares
  • Repair Forefront Security for Exchange Server
  • Repair Microsoft Exchange Server roles in Windows Small Business Server 2008
  • Repair monitoring and reporting features in Windows Small Business Server 2008
  • Repair Office Live for Windows Small Business Server 2008
  • Repair Remote Web Workplace
  • Repair the Move Exchange Server Data task
  • Repair the POP3 Connector
  • Repair the Windows SBS 2008 Console
  • Repair Users and Groups features
  • Repair Windows Live OneCare
  • Repair Windows Server Backup
  • Repair Windows Server Update Services
  • Repair Windows SharePoint Services
  • Repair Windows SharePoint Services after moving the databases
  • Synchronize the DSRM Password with the Windows SBS 2008 Network Administrator Password
  • How to reinstall the Certification Authority role

Setting Message Size Limits in Exchange 2007

I received an email from a client a few days ago.
 
“Does the server have a limit on the size of emails it will accept? I seem to recall a 5mb limit.
Can I ask that we review this in the light of modern ways of doing things whereby we send large files, audio and video, via email?”

 
For many organizations, a limit is imposed on attachments in emails to “save bandwidth” since data is counted for broadband in Australia. I found an excellent blog which listed the various places to look at when making changes to enable attachments beyond the default 10MB limit which is set in SBS2008.
 
All these options are located in the Exchange Management Console.
 
1. Setting Organizational Limits. This affects the global settings. In an organization with multiple servers, this will affect all servers. Open up properties for Transport settings as shown. Change the settings as required.
 
2. Setting Receive Connector limit. This affects incoming messages received by the server. Change the desired Receive Connector properties.
     a. Default SBS – For internal client connections
     b. Windows SBS Internet Receive SBS – For incoming emails outside the network
 
3. Send Connector limit. This setting affects outgoing emails. Edit the settings for the Windows SBS Internet Send SBS connector.
 
4. Mailbox limit. Finally, if you really want to, you can set a user to have additional settings, different to the organizational limits. Note that this only affects internal messages. not external incoming or outgoing messages. Change the properties for the Message Size Restrictions (which is not set by default).