Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Blank Screen in VMware vCloud

I kept getting a black screen when trying to console a virutal machine in a vCloud environment. It would just hang saying Connecting...



To fix it I simply added the vcloud HTTPS address as a trusted site in Internet Options.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Remove Office 365 AD/FS 2.0

When setting up a Hybrid Exchange deployment, AD FS 2.0 is required for single signon (SSO) to ensure the on-premises Active Directory credentials can be used on both Office 365 and on-premises Exchange. The AD FS 2.0 deployment required for Office 365 Hybrid deployments is different to the AD FS 2.0 build that comes with Windows Server 2008 R2.

As a result, after installing AD FS 2.0 it does not appear as enabled in Server Manager roles in Windows Server 2008 R2.



Also it does not appear in remove programs under control panel.



So how do you remove it?

Under programs and features click view installed updates.



It will now appear int he list for you to remove it.



After you uninstall it, you also need to clean up the IIS Web Server role. Ensure IIS is not doing anything else before uninstalling it from Server Manager.

Lastly you have some additional cleanup tasks to perform as documented under http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982813

How to make RDC / MSTSC open on the secondary monitor when it connects

An annoying problem you may have is getting the Remote Desktop Client or mstsc.exe opening on a secondary monitor when it connects. We have validated the following procedure works:

1. Run the client and get it set up the way you prefer, or Open your saved RDP file
2. On the Display tab, choose a non-fullscreen resolution.
3. On the General tab, click "delete these credentials", if possible.
4. Click Connect .
5. You will immediately get a local login dialog. Leave it blank and click OK .
6. When you are connected and the remote login dialog appears, drag the window to the desired monitor.
7. On the remote login dialog, click Cancel . The settings dialog should reappear locally.
8. On the Display tab, you can now choose fullscreen.
You can now save your session with the Save button on the General tab, as well as save your login credentials.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Changing the RPCClientAccessServer - How Outlook Behaves

When an Outlook client goes to connect to an Exchange 2010 database, it looks at an attribute associated with the mailbox database called RPCClientAccess to determine which client access server/client access server array to use for connectivity.

There may be a time in where you need to change which RPCClientAccess server your clients use for connectivity on the Exchange mailbox database. The problem is, if you change the RPCClientAccess on a mailbox database to a different Exchange 2010 client access server/client access server array without "moving" the mailbox, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 clients do not pickup this change automatically.

Further more, if you perform an Outlook Profile repair process, it will update with the new RPC endpoint for the users mailbox database defined under the RPCClientAccess attribute. But guess what, Outlook reverts to a Working Offline mode. Creating a new outlook profile will resolve the issue, however if you remove the Host A record for the old client access server in DNS, Outlook will resume working as normal again.

Outlook only updates to a new RPCClientAccess value smoothly when moving users to the mailbox database. If you want to transition users smoothly to another client access server or client access server array, you can create another database, set the RPCClientAccess as desired, then move users to the database. This will allow the outlook profiles to update without issues.

Other then moving mailboxes there is one other thing you can do to get Outlook to update to the new RPCClientAccess value. If you remove the "Host A" record from the old client access server in DNS, this will cause Outlook to forcefully repair itself and update its profile.

Lets hope Microsoft makes it easier in the next release of Microsoft Outlook.

For additional reading about this problem, please look at the following links:

http://www.outlookforums.com/threads/84315-Outlook-goes-offline-after-changing-RPCClientAccessServer-parameter-on-mailbox-database

http://www.shudnow.net/2010/04/18/creating-databases-and-the-rpcclientaccessserver-database-parameter/

http://www.scottfeltmann.com/blog/2010/06/28/outlook-profile-not-updating-after-creating-cas-array/

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff626260.aspx