CAWJames

After some long hours running around the more 'codier' parts of the net, I have a solution: $dtoday = get-date -format "dd-MM-yyyy" New-Item \\srv-id-009\MonitorArchive$\$dtoday -type directory -Force New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox Email_journal_user -FilePath \\srv-id-009\MonitorArchive$\$dtoday\$dtoday.pst while ((Get-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox Email_journal_user | Where {$_.Status -eq "Queued" -or $_.Status -eq "InProgress"})) { sleep 60 } Get-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox Email_journal_user | Remove-MailboxExportRequest -Confirm:$false Get-Mailbox -ID Email_journal_user | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery 'subject:"*"' -deletecontent -force Both parts with a while loop in the middle. It still left about 17 emails in the box afterwards, but they are probably just things archived after the fact and the odd bit not covered by -SearchQuery 'subject:"*"'. Bold bits are the bits to change as they point to my system. Thanks, and hope this helps others, James

I am trying to build this script in 2010 SP2, so have managed to adjust the command to use the new New-MailboxExportRequest but they have deprecated the -deletecontent command and moved it seemingly to the Search-Mailbox command. Which is all well and good for single operations. How do I mix this up into a script, as I assume if i call the first command and then the second, it wont wait for the export and just delete it all! Any help appreciated, I just want to export our journal mailbox out to pst once a month, and then clear down the mailbox. I thought about doing one command one day and then the other the next, but I'm always going to have some tween mails that happen between each command. This is doing my head in! Thanks James

It looks like you have mounted md0 as /raid1, so that 'directory' you can see, that 1.8tb is the personification of your RAID drive. Just treat /raid1/ as the root of md0 James

Do you have AD user profiles on that server by any chance? If these are set for explicit user only permissions, you won't be able to see the space used. This was head scratcher from last year, as in missing space on our file server. James

Still involves buying equipment! I have a spare PRI card for the NEC, just don't have the neccesary hardware for the new box. I think I will end up going down the A400E/P route, and just reuse it to power the fax machines later on! Thanks James

Thanks for the reply. It's buggy, but not broken, as I can hook up x-lite to it over sip, and a host of other sip softphone, functionality varies though! Some wont call each other, but will ring normal extensions, some dont work, some are intermittent, etc. I would say NEC added SIP quickly and not very well to gain a few accolades as a hybrid switch. Definitely EOL and newest firmware. I will have to try and wireshark it, when I get some time to plug a server into a monitoring port on the switch. Thanks again James

Hi all, Wild shot in the dark here, but I thought I'd ask. I am playing with an Elastix system, and would greatly like it to integrate with our old NEC Aspire system over SIP. Mainly so I don't have to buy an FXO card, that will become obsolete when I beat, ahem, persuade our BDM into going fully VOIP across our centres. For those that don't know, or want to know, the FXO card would let me connect analogue extensions from the SLIU card in the NEC and register them as extensions on the Asterisk box. Therefore using a 4 port FXO PCI-Express card in the Asterisk server and 4 of the analogue extensions on the NEC, I get 4 'trunks' between the systems. These cards though are not cheap, running £150 ish for a clone to multiple hundreds for the proper asterisk compatible card. This is the usual way to connect legacy PABX to Asterisk, but as both systems are supposedly IP(levelling that comment at the NEC), they should talk over SIP. (Suppose I could buy the card with FXO modules, and then buy FXS modules later on and use it for fax machines etc, a bit of justification!) Anyone tried this? I keep getting a 400 Bad Request from the NEC box when I try and add it as a trunk. Although this problem is nothing compared with me always typing Asterix instead of Asterisk when Google searching! Thanks James

Thanks for the link, but that's not OVS/EES pricing, that's retail, as far as i now. Thanks again James

Does anyone know pricing on Lync server? Thanks James

Thanks for that, not the cheery news I was after to be honest, but that's life and wiring protocols! I saw this http://www.transition.com/MyTNConnection/?p=120 and thought it looked like the solution. Running SM fiber through a concrete sub structure between different floors makes me ill just thinking about it! Cant move the WG down to the other cabinet, as it needs to be in the comms room to receive the server connections to the optional interfaces. SMT won't authorise a switch and SPF's just for this(I shouldn't think), so that's out. Was really hoping media conditioners would be the way forward as the run is so short Just had a look on the Watchguard and it is showing 48 errors on the trusted interface, 6 on one of the optionals, and none on the others including the external interface connected to the BT equipment. I suppose it is the middle of the night though! Maybe it isn't the mixed fiber causing a problem. I will have to initiate a large http download tomorrow and see what happens. Thinking about it, its mainly the MS VLSC I have problems downloading from, with download manager and browser. Its probably an MS problem knowing my luck! Doesnt explain crap voice in BBB though, but that could be a multitude of other things entirely. Thanks for the reply James

Evening all, I have been thinking about our internet connection set-up and need some input/advice. Our main centre has a multi-mode fiber backbone running through it, connecting our various switches/pbx and leased line. BT I think use single mode runs on their equipment, so our setup at the moment sees the incoming fiber(from the white tray) going into a fiber patch panel and then sent up to the main comms room, so single mode cable(if BT do indeed use single) into a multi-mode patch and in the comms room, what I assume is a single mode cable to the BT NTE(BT engineer provided this patch lead). Only a short run though, probably less than 20m, but then again, who knows what route it takes, could be 30m if it goes around the houses first. We didn't install it, Nokia did, who owned the building before us(was their UK HQ at one point). Now this works and provides our 100mbit connection, but I do see problems on its usage, such as downloads failing and having to constantly retry, until we hit a 'sweet spot' and it downloads, and 'applications' such as the BigBlueButton being useless for voice. I assume it works because the fiber runs are so short in the big scheme of fiber lengths. I have no fiber testing equipment, so can't actively go checking for errors. (Gaffer taping a 8p8c tester and a maglite to the fiber end doesn't work for some reason ) Should I be using mode conditioning cables at either end of the patch panel to convert single to multi and back again? (I know not perfect, but I can't rip out the multi and replace with single, nor do I want to try and find the routes to run a single mode fiber just for the leased line) Are my problems something that can be caused by this setup(crc errors etc)? I have read that setups like our current one lose a lot of power with the wrong type fiber, but havent had any definitive feedback, BT toe the party line and say that anything not to their guidelines isn't supported, so wont help or look into it(Thanks BT). We pushed the engineer to connect it up like this, so our(read:my) problem! I'm only now coming back to it, now i've got more time to see if it can be done better, you know how it is, need to get a building up and running quickly, no time to troubleshoot as long as it works. Day to day running seems fine from a user point of view, but things are mostly light, its just the little things like large(sometimes not though) downloads and the BBB voice thing, which would be nice to be ruled out as a fiber issue, so I can move on to other avenues of enquiry. Any input from people who know more about fiber would be helpful. I may just buy some conditioners and test it out, but some of those things can be £50 - £100 for 3m. I have seen some cheaper ones, but not sure on quality, to be honest. Thanks James

The current server is a dual Xeon Dell 2950, admittedly with only a couple of gigs of ram, but we are literally getting bad audio from a point to point session, ie only 2 people, one on a BT Leased line - 100mbit, and the other on a BT EFM - 4mbit. I even tried loading up a VM with 12GB of RAM and a couple of vCPU's and still the audio was choppy and out of sync. Even had the user wear a madonna headset!!

Afternoon all, We are looking for a video conferencing system to take us into the realms of blended learning and staff communication to cancel out all the other stuff like fuel for getting to meetings etc. We have tried BigBlueButton, but SMT are not happy with the voice aspect of it, in their view it is just not good enough. I am hoping to use this in the future when 1.x etc come out, but at the moment, it just isnt passing muster. We licence the Enterprise CAL suite, which included Lync server cals, so I am asking what is Lync? and can it do a simple video conference and collaboration? or is just too 'enterprise'? Do we need proper software, or for example, can I use Office 2010 for staff and some kind of web connector for external? What licencing other than the CAL do we need, if this sound like a good solution? Thanks James (I will drag this college into the 21st century! We didn't even have wi-fi until I came along a year or so ago!)

Hi all, I've been let loose to buy myself a decent do it all PC. I decided on an FX-6100 6-core Black edition. 2 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM P5A97 Asus Uefi motherboard 600w PSU Usual DVD-RW,7200rpm Hdd I've got it all together and the 3.3v line runs as low 2.9 and up to 3.6, fluctuating wildly. The other voltages move about a bit as expected, but never out of tolerance, only the 3.3v Any hardware boffins got any suggestions? Duff MB, Dodgy RAM, crappy PSU? The PSU is a generic one, RAM is Kingston Hyper-X, MB is Asus. The PSU used to run my old AMD AthlonX2 6000 with no problems, although come to think about it, it did crash once in a blue moon, but nothing as bad as this, it will boot, but will lock up when you try and do something, like run the system rating wizard. Ive got a stick of 8GB DDR somewhere I will test with, and Im going to visit the local computer shop to try another PSU, MB does seem unlikely, but will RMA as a last resort. Thanks James

With EES, you only pay for full time staff (FTC) so that includes any staff who have use of a computer for their day to day work, so you can probably discount Catering and Janitorial. Current pricing for the Enterprise Desktop Platform is around £40 per FTC, so say 58 x 40 = £2320. There is a standard desktop platform too, still with W7 and Office, but less CALS, not sure on the price of this though. This would give you Windows 7, Office 2010 Pro Plus and all the enterprise CALS(exchange, sql, windows server, windows rights management, System center client, etc) you need for all your OEM licenced PC's(you have to have some kind of licence already on the computer, cant just build or buy computers with no licence). You then add licences for any server products you need, circa £25 for windows server standard, circa £80 for Enterprise and Datacenter(both per processor, Datacenter better if using for Virtual Hosts) This doesnt have to be FTC, just per Server/Processor This is a per year fee, so you would have to do the maths if it outweighs the price of 460 copies of Windows7, Office etc. They will also let you pay a 3 year as well. I've just done this for our college, so any questions just ask James

The activation count isn't necessarily the amount of computers/devices activated, as KMS activated clients report back multiple times to the server. You may just be seeing the full count, not the actual count. James

Ah well! Anyone got any other proof? Sorry if this has p****d on anyone's cornflakes, but it's annoyed me too Time to shave down the VM's or see if I can free some budget for DC licences(we pay 80ish for an enterprise, so hopefully DC isn't much more for our 2 single proc and 1 dual proc R710's, we are on OVS) or we will have to wait until the end of the agreement and do DC next year. James

That's what I thought, but we need proper MS documentation to back it up. Both RM and a Dell partner we use have told us it is 4 only, Linux or Windows. Even the virtualisation calculator on the MS website, states that if running non-Microsoft or 3rd party, pick windows server from the list Thanks James

Hi all, Me and my Development Manager have been doing our yearly license count, and an interesting question has arisen. According to 2 suppliers, the Windows Svr 2008R2 Enterprise licence covers the host and 4 VM's (if the Host OS only supports the VM's on it), but what we didn't know, is that is the maximum amount of VM's allowed, we can't install as many Linux Vm's as we want on top for example, without buying more Windows 2008R2 Enterprise licences to add another 4 VM's. The 4 instance is for windows and linux. This sounds absurd to me, I would have thought the 4 instance is for Windows Server, and if we wanted to run a bunch of Red Hats or Ubuntus, we should be able to under there respective licences. Anyone want to confirm or deny this? Or even(hopefully) have some official MS documentation to the contrary or to confirm. Everything I can find for R2, is ambiguous at best and makes mention of non-windows servers, but no definitive, you can do this or you can't. This has really annoyed me, I now have to move my little support linux VM's to other older servers, running hyper-visors that are free! My 3 R710's with their 72GB of RAM, now sit happily running 4 VM's each, hardly even breaking a sweat! And yes, we will probably licence Datacenter next year, instead of Enterprise, but I've seen some other ambiguous documents saying that DC is not available for single processor servers! It never ends! Thanks James

It doesn't matter if its a management server or a managed server. You buy the licence that covers the instances/processors. Minimal VM's - Standard, More than the prescribed - Datacenter. Server licenses for the management servers are implied in the ML's. As far as I can work out anyway! Thanks James

If you are managing a server, be it SCOM, SCVMM etc, it will need one of the SC2012 packs, be it Datacenter or other. From what I can see, virtual server hosts will probably want DC, and normal servers, the standard. I 'think', from my conversations, that the packs cover installing management servers AND all SQL technology, reasonably needed for that purpose. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAL's for the 'normal' clients are covered in the Enterprise CAL pack at the moment. This may change when 2012 actually is released, but I can't see it being much different, you pay for the Enterprise CAL pack, you get Enterprise CALs! All licensing at the moment covers the 2007-2010 versions of SC, as SC2012 is only RC at the moment. Thanks James

Morning all, It's a Sunday, but the brain never stops planning more ways to make days easier! With SCCM 2012, there is no PXE option for Branch Distribution Points. The 'preferred way' is to send out bootable media to your branch offices/centres and then do the install from them. Now I don't know about you lot, but I wouldn't trust a lecturer to go round a load of computers and boot them from a memory stick or cd! Not that I'm putting them down, just that their skill sets lie in other areas! I want to have the BDP in each centre, and then have the computers onsite PXE boot to the main SCCM server at the main site, and then use the BDP at its own centre. Is this possible? We have VPN's with leased lines ranging from 5MB to 100MB between centres, so bandwidth isn't too much of a problem, just not enough for a full deploy. In my mind, changing the DHCP 66/67 options on each branch server to point to the HQ SCCM server will do it. Is it that simple? or am i being incredibly naive! Any help appreciated(psychiatric especially welcome ) Thanks James

Ok an update, After intense toing and froing with our reseller, we have licensed our college for SCCM, SCOM, SCDPM and SCVMM plus the full enterprise desktop platform for around 5k a year, on OVS-ES. Over 3 years, it will cost us around £800 more in total to do this than have Symantec Protection suite for all our computers. In my eyes(and SMT's), paying 7k for 3 years for what in reality is just one product(ok, SPS does have antispam and a few other technologies, but really it's just client AV) against the 5k a year for a whole range of software and technologies is something of a win!(bearing in mind we have 2k a year of OVS-ES anyway) 80 OVSEntE DsktpEdu ALNG LicSAPk OLV E 1Y INS EntCAL - Enterprise Desktop Platform(FTE) 10 OVSEnt E SysCtrMgmtSteEnt LicSAPk OLV E 1Y Acad AP - ServerML(Server count) 1 OVSAdd E SysCtrCnfgMgrSvr LicSAPk OLV E 1Y AP - Management server license for SCCM 1 OVSAdd E SysCtrOpsMgrSvr ALNG LicSAPk OLV E 1Y AP - Management server license for SCOM SCVMM and SCDPM Management server licences come as part of the CAL included in the Enterprise Desktop Platform/ServerML We also have a few server licences, Exchange, SQL Proc license. All in all not too bad! Thanks for all your help, much appreciated. (ps, I use an including VAT price mostly when saying figures)

Excellent, the fogs are clearing, making sense now. We are planning a DR suite, which is why all this is coming in, so while we shouldn't need to migrate VM's all the time, part of the strategy is that we have an offsite virtual host that will come into play if the main site goes down, not zero downtime, but the ability to get things up and running fairly quickly at the DR site if needed. Hopefully DPM will keep the offsite VM's up to date, and ready to be brought up when needed. Although i'm still working on how im going to do that, and if DPM can keep offline VM's updated from an online one at another site. Will probably just have a DPM server at the DR site, and retrieve the VM's from strorage if needed. Good job I have multiple 10's of TB's of DAS at each site! On another note, anyone know if the enterprise CAL suite is available seperately from the desktop platform and how much that would be per FTE? I've got to sell this to the powers that be, and I may not be able to get the whole desktop platform passed this year until Windows 8 is finalised and them sold on it. Thanks again James

Right! Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the kitchen! We have 3 virtual hosts, all R710's, 2 with a single processor and one with dual. So 4 datacenter licenses to cover them, plus an enterprise for each of the others, so 7 enterprise, 4 datacenter to cover the 10 servers. Sound about right? If we wanted to licence SCCM, SCDPM and SCVMM, that would be 2 server licences needed for the management servers, 1 for SCCM and another for a standalone SCDPM server, and as SCVMM is included we dont need a seperate license for it, we can just run that on the same server as SCCM? In the case of 2012, our 7 enterpise and 4 dc, would transfer to 14 standard 2012 and 2 datacenter, meaning we would just need an extra 2 datacenter added on? or could we use the 4 extra standards to cover the single processor virtual hosts? Thanks for the clarification, its appreciated. James