Test External Exchange Connectivity 200X

This new Microsoft site lets you test you Exchange 200x remote connecttivity.

You can choose the following tests:

• ActiveSync Test
   This test will simulate the steps a mobile device uses to connect to an Exchange Server using Exchange ActiveSync.
• ActiveSync AutoDiscover Test
  This test will walk through the steps a Windows Mobile 6.1 device (or another AirSync licensed device) uses to connect to the AutoDiscover Service
• Outlook 2007 AutoDiscover Connectivity Test
  This test will walk through the steps Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 uses to connect to AutoDiscover
• Outlook 2003 RPC/HTTP Connectivity Test
  This test will walk through the steps Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 uses to connect via RPC/HTTP
• Inbound SMTP Email Test
  This test will walk through the steps an Internet e-mail server uses to send inbound SMTP email to your domain

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

Installing ASP.NET 2.0 (IIS)

Process

ASP.NET can be re-registered with IIS. The specific method depends on the operating system being used. For more information on ASP.Net and the IIS Registration tool, see the related links below.

Windows 2000/XP

To fix this on Windows 2000 or Windows XP, run this command from the Start>Run box or a command prompt (assuming the system directory is C:\Windows):

.Net 1.1: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

.Net 2.0: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Windows 2003

On Windows 2003, ASP.NET must be both installed and enabled.  To install ASP.NET:

1. On the taskbar, click the Start button, point to Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs.
2. In the Add or Remove Programs dialog box, click Add/Remove Windows Components.
3. In the Components box in the Windows Components Wizard, click the Web Application Server check box, and then click Next.
4. When the Windows Components Wizard has finished configuring Windows Server 2003, click Finish.

To enable ASP.NET, run this command from the Start>Run box or a command prompt (assuming the system directory is C:\Windows):

.Net 1.1: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_regiis.exe -i -enable

.Net 2.0: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i -enable

Software based iSCSI target software for Windows

MySAN™ iSCSI Server 
Free vendor-agnostic iSCSI target software for Windows  
 
    
Turn Windows into an iSCSI Storage Appliance
With MySAN software, anyone can create an IP SAN in seconds using their existing server and storage hardware. MySAN works by turning any Windows partition (such as a hard drive, internal RAID array, external storage system, or even Fibre Channel storage) into an iSCSI target. This storage can then be assigned to any computer on an Ethernet network using iSCSI, giving users a vendor-neutral IP SAN instantly.  

MySAN allows you to build an IP SAN using the servers and storage you already have. It works in tandem with Microsoft’s free iSCSI initiator in a traditional client/server fashion, as shown above. 

Download… 

I’ll be installing it in the next week or so and i’ll post some more info. There is also another solution that I have tried named StarWind.

StarWind is an advanced, full-featured software-only iSCSI Target for Windows that enables anyone to quickly install and configure an IP SAN solution with immediate benefits allowing storage to be virtualized consolidated and centrally managed.

Download… 

 

Scriptless approach to getting information on nested group memberships.

One of the biggest challenges it seems many administrators have is keeping tabs on group membership. This is even more of a problem now that we can nest groups. A popular script is one that queries group memberships recursively. But you don’t need a single line of VBScript. You can get all the information you need with the DSQuery and DSGet commands.
 
There are two parts to the ultimate solution but I want you to understand how they work. At the command prompt, type:
 
Dsquery user -samid yourlogonname
 
You should get the distinguished name of your user object. The beauty of the DS commands is that the output of one command can serve as the input for another. Try this:
 
Dsquery user -samid yourlogonname | dsget user
 
You’ll end up with a little more information about your user account. You can use DSGet to return other information, but for our purposes we want to get at group membership. Run this command:
 
Dsquery user -samid yourlogonname | dsget user -memberof
 
You should be rewarded with the distinguished names of all the groups the user account belongs to. If you want to check for nested group membership, use a command like this:
 
Dsquery user -samid yourlogonname | dsget user -memberof -expand
 
Now you have a longer list of group names. You can’t tell where a group is necessarily nested, but you’ll at least know which group membership is affecting the user. You can also search for more than one user this way:
 
Dsquery user -limit 0 | dsget user -memberof -expand
 
This expands the group membership for all user accounts in the domain.
You can also come at this from the group angle:
 
dsquery group -samid “Sales Staff” | dsget group -members
 
If you want to expand nested group membership you can use -expand as I did earlier:
 
dsquery group -samid “Sales Staff” | dsget group -members -expand
 
By the way, if you don’t know the complete group name, wild cards are allowed:
 
dsquery group -samid “Sales*” | dsget group -members -expand
 
Finally, want to build a membership report for all users? Try these commands:
 
dsquery group –limit 0 >groups.txt for /f “tokens=*” %g in (groups.txt) do @echo %g

>>membership.txt & echo Members: >>membership.txt & dsget group % -members >>membership.txt & echo

**************************************** >>membership.txt