Blown capacitor on old board:

Capacitor on newer revision:

Yet another reason why to extend your machines warranty (a maximum of 5 years is possible for HP Proliant servers).

Windows 8 Metro Interface

Well,

Microsoft has released a public preview of Windows 8 upon the world. Keep in mind that the release is not even at Beta status, so hopefully a lot still has to change.

I kind of expected the Metro interface to be a layer that was pasted upon the explorer shell, much like how we’ve always known Windows Media Center to work. Turns out I am  wrong. Metro is in fact part of Explorer in Windows 8. At the time there is no way to use the default Windows Start Menu which we know from Windows Vista / 7. When you click on the Start button you get thrown to the start window of the Metro interface.

The Metro will be a succes on tablet devices. I have no doubt about that. I am however a bit lost on how things will work out for desktop / notebook owners. The issue with Windows 7 on tablets is that it wasn’t designed for the touch interface, with Windows 8 preview it doesn’t seem to be designed for mouse and keyboard input. It’s an upside down world for me. Microsoft has also added extra features to Windows Explorer, which in itself does not run in the Metro interface but on the aero desktop. There is a tile in the Metro interface for the Configuration screen. In it you can adjust various settings, however not every function is available here. If you want to change advanced settings you are directed to the classic configuration screen. It seems to contradict the transition that Microsoft wants to push towards the Metro interface.

I can only conclude that the basic Windows Desktop is still in need of a major overhaul to integrate better with the Metro interface. If it stays the way it is now it will turn out to be one ugly transition for business users. I don’t look forward to instructing them.

Did you actually ever give WebOS a chance? Since the introduction of the Touchpad I have yet to see one in my country. I find it strange that some products never make it across the big pond. Maybe sales would have been better here than in the US…

Or  maybe you shouldn’t have released WebOS on a machine with antiquated hardware?

Honestly… What are you up to HP? The whole WebOs/Touchpad story has turned into a big giant fail…

I hope you aren’t planning on doing anything radical to the reliable Proliant server range!

On a side note: My hosting firm seems to be having issues keeping my blog online…

But everyone will probably forget.

sigh…

SysAdminDay

I decided to test how fast a file transfer went from the old exchange server to the new one. Even whilst browsing the folders on the old server I noticed that it took too long for the folder content to be shown.

The new server was running as a guest on an ESXi server. VMXnet3 was used as a network adapter for this server. I decided to disable all offloading in the driver configuration. Next to disabling it in the driver settings I turned off autotuning and RSS.

netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

After these changes the server was rebooted. Once the reboot was completed speeds were back to normal and I could continue moving mailboxes from the old to the new server.

As you can see the ‘Change’ button is disabled. This behaviour is normal. To connect the server to a domain you need to use the dashboard application.

When you click on ‘Server Settings’ a new window will pop up.

On the domain tab you can fill in the domain name. Once you clicked the ‘join domain’ button you will need to supply the credentials of the domain administrator.

After connection you can select the security group that will be displayed in the users tab of the dashboard.

When the process is completed the server will need a reboot. After the reboot you can see the users from the group in the dashboard. If desired you can change this group under the ‘domain’ tab of the ‘server settings’.

At first I thought there was a hardware conflict between the macbook and my display. Afteral I did not have the issue if I connected my work to another display. The display however wasn’t having issues with a older mac or system.

Usually when I had the screen connected I was listening to music using itunes. When I stopped itunes the lag would also disappear, thus making me leave the hardware compatibility issue track. This had to be a software issue.

I went on a google quest to solve my issue and solve it I did. It turns out that the system tries to push something called HDCP handshaking. My screen does not support HDPC.

The solution was to rename a kext in the /system/library/extensions folder named AppleUpstreamUserClient.kext.

“sudo mv AppleUpstreamUserClient.kext AppleUpstreamUserClient.old”

After renaming the kext you will need to reboot your system. After the reboot everything is working as it should.

Renaming the kext will disable the ability to watch drm protected itunes purchases, this wasn’t an issue for me because I am not a user of the itunes store. If you want to do this you’l simply need to buy a display that supports your system (or use your current display using the VGA connection…). Frankly, I don’t like that…

When you have this update installed you will get an error when you print(preview) a mail in Outlook 2007. The error will recommend you to reintstall your printers. Doing this will not resolve this issue. The only solution is to uninstall KB2509470.

More info on this issue can be found here.

One of the main features in Small Business Server 2011 is Sharepoint Foundation. Sharepoint allows you to manage documents and follow up on them. These files are kept in document libraries, while tasks for users are kept in lists. You can control the flow of these files and tasks with something called workflows. These workflows can be created using Sharepoint Designer 2010.

I decided to have a little fun with the designer. My goal was to create a simple helpdesk site.

The first thing you have to do in SBS 2011 is make sure that sharepoint is able to receive mail. This feature has not standard been configured by default. To enable it you can follow this blog post from the Official SBS Blog. Upon completing this task I created 2 mail-enabled security groups, HelpdeskOwners and HelpdeskTechnicians. In the HelpdeskOwners group I added the manager of the group, the HelpdeskTechnicians group I added the technicians.

In Sharepoint I created a new blank site. On this site I created two groups based upon the ones I created in the SBS Console. The HelpdeskOwners group has full control over the site, whilst the HelpdeskTechnicians only have Contribute rights on the site.

On the new site I created a new document library called Support Requests. This library is mail enabled and has the address ‘support@companyweb’. Be sure to keep a copy of the orignal mail. I also created an issue tracking list called ‘Support list’, it is set to send a mail when ownership has been changed.

Now we need to get mail from outside the network to the sharepoint document library. To do this I created a new user in the SBS console with an email address ‘support@domain.com’. In the Exchange Management Console I created a new contact called support with a default e-mail address ‘support@companyweb’. The mail flow settings of ‘support@domain.com’ were change to delived the mail directly to the contact.

What we’re going to do next is create a workflow for the mail enabled document library. There is however one issue. For security reasons workflows don’t start automatically when a mail is added to a document list. We can enable this with the following command in sharepoint powershell (run as administrator).

stsadm -o setproperty -pn declarativeworkflowautostartonemailenabled -pv true

Next I open up the sharepoint designer and connect to the new helpdesk site. The workflow is set to start when a new item is added to the library.

Next you may edit the workflow. I’ve added a screenshot of the layout in my workflow.

What the workflow basically does is this:

• Create a support ticket title which is saved in the Title field
• Create a new list item in the support list (this list has extra columns containing the mail address and a link to the original mail in the document library)
• Send an email to the Helpdesk Manager notifying him of the new ticket
• Send an email to the customer (you have to add a column to the document library for this. Make it a calculated column, by doing this we can filter the actual e-mail address from the ‘E-mail From’ field. Use the following formula to do this: =LEFT(RIGHT([E-Mail From],((LEN([E-Mail From])-FIND(“<”,[E-Mail From])))),LEN([E-Mail From])-FIND(“<”,[E-Mail From])-1)   I found the formula to do this on this blog. This is basically an excel formula. I copy the value of this field to a field in the new list item created in the second task.

We also need to create a workflow on the tracking list. This workflow will notify the customer of a change to his support ticket.

Set this workflow to run when an item is changed.

This flow basically sends a mail to the customer whenever a value is changed (Ticket assigned to, ticket status, …).

Both lists look like this:

So there you have it. An afternoons work to create a simple helpdesk site (without previous knowledge of sharepoint designer), this without writing a single line of code. I believe this does demonstrate the power of sharepoint, even if it is just the basic foundation version.

Things get even better. You can lay-out workflows in visio and import them into the Sharepoint 2010 Designer. You can get a general insight on it by reading these two blog posts:

• Sharepoint workflow Authoring in Visio Part 1
• Sharepoint workflow Authoring in Visio Part 2