Microsoft has released an important update to resolve some issues experienced when using the Hybrid Configuration Wizard to create  a new or manage an existing hybrid deployment with Microsoft Exchange Server 2013.

In order to know more about this including a FAQ section please follow the below link:

https://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2014/07/30/important-update-available-for-exchange-server-2013-hybrid-deployments.aspx

Keep Safe!!!

It seems Microsoft has released another couple of updates for our beloved product:

2966012 - Update Rollup 7 for System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager SP1

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2966012

2966014 - Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2966014

Keep Safe!!!

The Microsoft Exchange Team just published an amazing document on Office 365 and SPAM. Apparently these will be a series, so we have a lot to look forward on this.

Here is the first one…

https://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2014/07/25/spam-email-and-office-365-environment-overview.aspx

Keep Safe!!!

Did you like MEC 2014?

https://channel9.msdn.com/events/mec/2014

Guess what, we've announced the 2015 dates!

The news on this one is that it converges a series of events into one. If you've attended Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC), SharePoint Conference, Lync Conference or Project Conference, this event is for you! Head over to Office Blogs for more.

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For those of you with DPM 2012 who have attempted to restore the DPMDB, the restore operation may fails with the following error message:

Error ID: 470
DPM database is not present in the instance of SQL Server. Check that the DPM database is present in the given instance of SQL Server.
Detailed Error: Invalid object name 'dpmdb.dbo.sysfiles'.

In order to fix this please check:

KB2968666 - "Error ID: 470" when you run the dpmsync -restoredb command in Data Protection Manager 2012 https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2968666

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You may say, here it comes another agent deployment troubleshooting idea, and you’d be absolutely right! In this case is specifically developed for the error 319:

Install protection agent on name.domain.com failed:
Error 319: The agent operation failed because of a communication error with the DPM Agent Coordinator service on name.domain.com.
Error details: The RPC server is unavailable (0x800706BA)
Recommended action: 1) Verify that name.domain.com is remotely accessible from the DPM server.
2) If a firewall is enabled on name.domain.com, make sure that it is not blocking requests from the DPM server. Refer to the DPM Deployment Guide for more information on configuring the firewall for DPM.

Additionally, the DPM-Alerts event log displays the following event:

Log Name: DPM Alerts
Source: DPM-EM
Date: <date>
Event ID: 370
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: name.domain.com
Description:
Agent operation failed. (ID: 370)
The agent operation failed because of a communication error with the DPM Agent Coordinator service on name.domain.com. (ID: 319)

In order to fix this please check:

KB2981833 - System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager agent installation fails with error 319 (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2981833)

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We have great news… Finally we can AGAIN protect our Windows Server 2003 boxes even using DPM 2012 R2…

In order to do that we will need to:

• Install the re-released Update Rollup 2 for DPM 2012 R2 as a starting point.
• Besides this Windows 2003 requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 and Microsoft .NET 3.0 to be installed. The DPM 2012 R2 UR compatible DPM agent for Windows 2003 servers does not require Microsoft .NET 4.0 or VCRedist 2010 to be installed.
• The agent version used to support Windows Server 2003 computers is that of DPM 2012 Service Pack 1 UR6 which is 4.1.3441.0 and not the DPM 2012 R2 UR2 version of the agent. This means upgrades from DPM 2012 SP1 with UR6 to DPM 2012 R2 with UR2 will be seamless.
• You cannot perform a push install of the Windows Server 2003 compatible agent from the DPM console. You must perform a manual agent installation on the Windows Server 2003 computer using the DPMAgentInstaller_Win2K3_xxx.exe installer.
• You cannot uninstall the DPM agent from the DPM console - you must use the Remove-ProductionServer.ps1 PowerShell command.
• Secondary protection is supported for Windows Server 2003 supported workloads.

In order to see the all process in detail jump in the amazing step by step written by Michael Jacquet…

Thanks a million for your time reading my blog…

Recently I had been helping a customer in a migration from Exchange Server 2010 to Exchange Server 2013. All went pretty normal, actually some of the steps were easier than I thought they would be, but there was a tiny little (and very annoying) surprise – the DAG creation kept failing…

Basically I just assumed that all would be good and would be pretty much next, next, finish… And that I’d not need to do nothing manually.

CNO Pre Staging is something that I assumed that would not need to do, however that was the only way to make it work…

Basically I run New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup and all went well… After that was the time to do start adding members, and when doing it was getting the bellow failure:

A server-side database availability group administrative operation failed. Error The operation failed. CreateCluster errors may result from incorrectly configured static addresses. Error: An error occurred while attempting a cluster operation. Error: Cluster API ‘”CreateCluster() failed with 0×5. Error: Access is denied”‘ failed.. [Server: MBX1.fabrikam.int]

Only way to fix it was either:

• Disable CNO, assign “Full Control” to ETS on the DAG object and remove mailbox server from permissions list on CNO. Add mailbox server to DAG.
• Delete CNO from AD and pre-stage CNO using process described in https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff367878(v=exchg.150).aspx. Add mailbox server to DAG.

After that all was good…

Bottom line here is, and after some good email threads with some colleagues, the CNO for a DAG should always be pre staged regardless of Exchange version, Windows version, or AD version.  It greatly reduces the failures due to access denied for the many other reasons that can cause access denied.

After running into this, I’ll pre stage regardless of version used from now on, save a lot of headache.

Thanks a million,

This update rollup was re-released on May 20, 2014 to resolve a "DPMAMService" crash that occurred if the original update (KB 2958100) was applied.

If you already installed Update Rollup 2 (UR2) on your Windows Server 2003 servers, you do not have to reinstall the UR2 agent that is required for Windows Server 2003 communication for this re-release. Additional updates after this re-release will install and work as expected.

KB2963543 - Description of Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

For the GUI lovers we have something really cool here…

Migrate DPM Disk / Data Source (GUI)

Below are some screenshots of how it works:

I have SQL auto protect and co-location enabled, so I have a single replica and RP volume on Disk 1.

Now I want to migrate that setup to be across Disk 2 and Disk 3 so I launch the MigrateDPMData.ps1. Here you enter C to migrate an entire disk or O to migrate a data source. I entered O for one data source.

And you get a separate popup screen listing the protection groups. I only have one to select from.

Once selected – it will list all the data sources in that PG to choose from.

Since my DBs are all co-located, migrating one DB will automatically migrate all – that is the way MigrateDataSourceDataFromDPM.ps1 works under the covers.

The next screen allows me to select one or more disks to migrate to. Here I selected Disk 2 and Disk 3 by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting.

Below shows the migration was successful and the two new volumes were created on the specified disk, one for the replica on Disk 2 and one for the recovery point on Disk 3.

Note the post-recovery jobs running that copy the replica data from the original replica to the new replica.

Pretty Awesome!!

Big Thanks to Michael Jacquet for sharing the screenshots…