error when migrating users to Live@Edu user UserPrincipalName is not valid SMTP address #msexchange #office365

Symptoms: you are synchronizing users using FIM 2010 and OLSync to Live@EDU domain, everything is configured and when you run the MA you get:

Metaverse object 1%: The expected generated Windows Live ID 2% is invalid. Reason: The UserPrincipalName of MetaVerse object “MV GUID” used to generate a Host WindowsLiveId ‘@domain.edu’ is not a valid Smtp Address.

Solution: make sure that the account used in synchronization is member of domain admin group permissions.

 

The error is 100% not related but that solved the problem.

Mahmoud

you might get an NDR 550 550 5.4.1 Relay Access Denied (state 13). when you move to office 365 #office365 #msExchange #microsoft

you might have seen that error, or you might get it if you deleted your domain from Office 365 and migrated it to a new account, or recently created your domain, or it has been a period of de-activation, the reasons might vary but here is the solution:

- follow the steps here to connect powershell remotely, http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/cc952755.aspx

 

- issue the following command: set-acceptedomdain <domainname> –outboundonly $True followed by set-acceptedomdain <domainname> –outboundonly $flase

you will have to wait 30-45 minutes for information to propagate to Edge servers cloud @ Microsoft.

have fun.

Microsoft MEA Academic Center Tech-Talk Sessions schedule #mvpbuzz #Mea #techtalk #Egypt

If you would like to some really classy Technical sessions, MVPs from MEA are grooving every month to deliver the highest levels of technicality through the Microsoft Academic Center in MEA.

I will be speaking in 3 events in June, July and September, below is the schedule of my sessions as well as other MVPs’ sessions, invitation links will be posted later

Month	MVP name	Session Name	Day	Date	Time (Amman Time)		Language		Session Description
March	Emad Alashi	ASP.Net Webforms	Wednesday	7-Mar-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic		Introduction to ASP.NET MVC, the essential concepts anyone should know in order to get started with ASP.NET MVC
	Kimberly Voltero and Arkady Retik	Microsoft Faculty Programs 101	Wednesday	21-Mar-12	6:00 – 7:00 pm		English
April	Pavel	WP7	Wednesday	4-Apr-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English
	Emad Alashi	HTML 5	Wednesday	18-Apr-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic
May	Mohammad Saleh	Understanding Cloud Platforms: A Rational Comparison	Wednesday	2-May-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic
	Robert MacLean	Visual Studio Lightswitch	Wednesday	16-May-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English
	Marwan Tarek	SharePoint	Wednesday	30-May-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic
June	Ahmed Bahaa	Test Case Management using Microsoft Test Manager	Wednesday	13-Jun-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic
	Mahmoud Magdy	Introduction to Private Cloud with Hyper-v and System Center 2012	Wednesday	27-Jun-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic		Introducing Private Cloud
July	Mahmoud Magdy	Introduction to Lync 2010	Wednesday	11-Jul-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic		Introducing Lync 2010
	Wissem habboub	Business Intelligence using SQL Server and SharePoint- genral presentation	Wednesday	25-Jul-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/French/Arabic		Introduction to Business Intelligence: Concepts and MS BI Solution components
August	Wissem habboub	Business Intelligence- OLAP and Data mining using SSAS	Wednesday	8-Aug-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/French/Arabic		Introduction OLAP Implementation and Datamining Analysis with SQL Server Analysis services
	Wissem habboub	Business Intelligence- Reporting using SSRS and Performance management using Performance Point Services	Wednesday	22-Aug-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/French/Arabic		Introduction to Reporting using SQL Server Reporting services and dashboarding  using Performance Point Services
September	Mohammad Saleh	Understanding SharePoint As A Development Platform.	Wednesday	5-Sep-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English		Understanding how to use Team Foundation Server 2010 and SharePoint 2010 in Application Lifecycle Management for getting control of the application development lifecycle from planning out investment in application work, to developing and managing those applications.
	Mahmoud Magdy	Introduction to High Availability Concepts	Wednesday	19-Sep-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic		Introducing High Availability Concepts
October	Mohammad Saleh	A Look at Productivity Suites in the Cloud: Office 365.	Wednesday	3-Oct-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic
	Mohammad Saleh	Understanding Composite Development	Wednesday	17-Oct-12	3:00 – 4:00 pm		English/Arabic

 

See you there

NetApp and VMware View 5,000-Seat Performance Report #Netapp #vmware #vdi

I got evolved in the past few months in designing and implementing large VDI solution, that will be weird for an Exchange MVP but I love the virtualization technology and couldn’t resist the temptation.

one of the most ugly parts of the VDI project is the storage design, in fact every VDI architect knows that storage sizing is one the painful aspects and one of the most critical parts for the VDI deployment success.

I spent hours trying to figure out the best model for the IOPs and Storage calculations for best and optimum user experience, and through hundreds of documents from Citrix, Netapp and Microsoft I found my method.

to start here is a nice link that will help you understand how things will go and spare the time of re-explaining the process

http://blogs.citrix.com/?s=Finding+a+Better+Way+to+Estimate+IOPS+for+VDI&submit_button=Search

to better know Citrix’s Side of the story (watch out, the CTX holds a lot of netapp’s data although that it doesn’t use or recommend netapp) http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130632

and finally we see a closer look to storage performance from netapp, I have to say that this is one of the most well written documents concerning storage, storage performance and storage reporting, the document can be read here

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3949.pdf

 

what I really loved that the report says that storage performance goes into several stages of its life cycle within the VDI project. the biggest IOPs hits are received during the first login attempts which is displayed in table 11 in the TR:

what made me excited that I developed my own IOPs predictor that I used for my projects, gladly my calculation were less than 1000 IOPs difference than the actual testing WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO

I will put the calculator under further testing and it should be published later this month.

 

have a nice VDI sizing.

Automating #Linux Machines #provisioning on #Microsoft Hyper-v #Cloud using #opalis #hyperv

I was assigned the task by one of my customers to automate their Linux machines provisioning on their Hyper-v cloud they are running, they still evaluating the Hyper-v Cloud capabilities, and they were wondering if they can automate the Linux machines provisioning into Hyper-v Servers.

They currently still evaluating it, so the process for the request and automation still not clear in their mind, but the question and request was simple, we want to automate the process of copying and configuring the machine, specially that they are running lots of Linux virtual machines.

the setup:

- 2 Hyper-v nodes running in cluster, each with 128 GB of memory, SCCM,SCOM, SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1, DPM 2010.

- request will come from a help desk or purchasing system, this is not clear yet.

before we start here is some notes for Microsoft guys working on that:

- I spent couple of days trying to figure out how sysprep can be done on the Linux machines and how to script it, the important note that Linux doesn’t has SID related information bounded to the machine, so copying the machine and renaming it will bring a totally new machine to the cloud. reference here.

- the machine name for Linux can be placed and configured in several places, keep in mind that if you used the command hostname to set the Linux machine host name it will be changed to the default name after the restart, to set it permanently, you will need to set the host name on /etc/sysconfig/network file.

- to execute commands remotely you will need to SSH on the machine.

now let us rock n roll:

I have no experience on Linux scripting so steps mentioned here are just guidelines and placeholders for others to use and kick off their implementations, however I don’t claim that those are the best way to do it.

the workflow you will configure will require the following:

- Create a template Linux virtual machine by creating a normal machine on any hyper-v Host.

- Install the Linux Integration components for Hyper-v, the main factor to note that you will need to install the development tools on the machine so it can successfully compile the source.

- after the integration tools installation you will need to assign a static IP to the machine (this will be used by Opalis later to SSH to the machine and run the configuration commands).

- Shut down the machine, from the SCVMM 2008 R2 admin console, copy the virtual machine to the library (if the hyper-v hosts located in different forest or DMZ this can be done by copying it).

now let us start:

- Install Opalis, best video can be found here.

- Import the SCVMM 2008 R2 Integration pack.

- Create the provisioning work flow as following:

the work flow will do the following:

- Create a random name that will be assigned to the machine, this is just a placeholder, the machine can be retrieved from text file, SQL DB..etc

- Create a VM from the VM template from the SCVMM 2008 R2 Server, and assign the name generated by the previous task to it, the name will be Linux-randomtextvalue

to assign the name linux-randometextname, in the vmname field you can pass the results of the previous task by typing, linux- then right click in the field and choose subscribe and choose published data and choose random text results from the previous step.

- the next step will get the vm, make the name as the name linux-randometextname same as previous step.

-the next step will start the vm, and pass the VM ID retrieved by the “Get VM” task, since this task requires VM ID, use the subscribe and published data to pass the VM ID from the “Get VM” Task.

- the link between the “start VM” and next SSH command will wait for 300 seconds or 5 minutes to allow the machine to fully start.

- the next ssh command will ssh to the static IP of the machine, and change the name by altering the file /etc/sysconfig/network and searching it for the default name “localhost.localdomain” and change it with the random text results:

the command will be : sed -i ‘s/localhost.localdomain/Linux-{Randome Text from “Generate VM name”}/g’ /etc/sysconfig/network

- the next step will configure the machine to use DHCP commands, same SSH step the command will be: sed -i ‘s/none/dhcp/g’ /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

- the next SSH command will restart the VM to apply the settings.

and you are done.

again you can play with the workflow and create you own flow, there is some guides on the internet to automate the request that came from SCSM into Opalis..etc but this article to give you an idea about how generally the Linux machine configuration will be done.

#Microsoft #Hyper-V #Cloud Fast Track with #Dell technology

Curious about Cloud ?

• Should you use public cloud offerings from providers, build your own private cloud, or develop a hybrid of both?
• What cloud-based services are right for you?
• What are the best practices and proven process for implementing cloud technologies that minimize risk and maximize success?

Microsoft in partnership with Dell

Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track is a reference architecture for building private clouds that combines Dell technology, including servers, networking and storage, with Microsoft software, technical guidance and validated configurations.

Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solutions offer a turnkey approach to delivering scalable, preconfigured, validated infrastructure platforms for on-premises private cloud implementations. With local control over data and operations, your IT can dynamically pool, allocate, secure and manage resources for agile IaaS. Likewise, business units can deploy line-of-business applications with speed and consistency using self-provisioning and automated data center services in a virtualized environment.

Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solutions offer:

• Faster deployment — Rich features and support make private clouds easy to deploy.
• Reduced risk — Validated configurations mean you can implement with confidence.
• Dell advantage — Dell provides business-ready configurations for virtualization that are optimized for Microsoft Hyper-V.

Dell Business-Ready Configurations for Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track

Dell offers a range of pre-engineered, business-ready configurations that conform to Microsoft’s Hyper-V Fast Track reference architecture:

• Business-Ready Configurations: Hyper-V, Rack Servers, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) Internet SCSI (iSCSI)
  Designed for large-enterprise deployments using 10 GbE iSCSI storage
• Business-Ready Configurations: Hyper-V, Rack Servers, iSCSI Storage
  Designed for small and medium deployments
• Business-Ready Configurations: Hyper-V, Rack Servers, PowerVault Internet SCSI (iSCSI)
  Designed for small, medium and remote deployments
• Business-Ready Configurations: Hyper-V, Blades, Fibre Channel (FC) Storage
  Designed for a range of deployment sizes using FC storage

Source http://virtualisationandmanagement.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/microsoft-hyper-v-cloud-fast-track/