Windows 8 In The Enterprise

The book I read to research this post was Windows 8 In The Enterprise by Andreas Stenhall which is a very good book that I read at kindle unlimited. This book looks at Windows 8 from the business perspective and omits consumer features like media player from the text. There are lots of tutorials like installing windows and removing users abilities to download 3rd party apps. The latter is important because in a business only the administrator should be able to download apps as they can compromise security. There is a windows app store for those who want to install apps and by default users can do this. Windows 8.1 which is the latest version comes in 4 versions which are standard, pro, enterprise and run time. Run time is the tablet version that runs on ARM processors and won’t work with apps made for earlier versions which very much limits what you can download. The enterprise version is the business version and the pro version is for the power user. Installing Windows 8 on multiple machines can be automated with the  Windows Deployment Toolkit a free download from the Microsoft website that also deploys Microsoft Office 2013 and any version of Windows from XP onwards. Windows 8 integrates with Windows Server 2012 with the former on workstations and the latter on a server. Windows Defenders which comes with Windows 8 has a built in anti virus feature and also detects malicious websites. There is also the ability to load drivers on a flash drive called to go drivers that detect relevant hardware and are only activated if that hardware is present. This means you don’t have to check what hardware is installed and don’t have to individually install drivers. Windows 8 is available in 32 bit and 64 bit versions. Finally I think Windows 10 is being released soon if not already. I did really enjoy this book and would recommend but I think would suggest using kindle unlimited especially if you are a regular reader as it works out cheaper.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part F

This is the 6th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course by Infinite Skills of the same name. Much of this course is about the various technologies inherent in one of these networks and the different types of account you have to set up. Set up the accounts etc themselves is quite straight forward. Designing the network and making sure everyone can do their job is the hard part. Exchange 2013 is an email, telephone and maybe instant messaging network with things like back up and archiving emails thrown in. It also has to integrate with software like Sharepoint & Office. A dynamic distribution group is where a message is sent out to a group but a query is executed and only members who meet a certain criteria like being at a location, receive it. You select recipients/ groups and then the down arrow by + and not a – like I said in some of the other lessons and select dynamic distribution group. You then select your criteria for what is similar to an advanced search. A room mailbox is a mail account for a room like a meeting room or conference room where you might have a meeting. You go into EAC, select recipients/ resources then the down arrow by the + button and choose room mailbox & fill in the relevant information to create a room mailbox. If you have trouble finding the room or are going to be late for the meeting the idea is you can contact them. Another benefit when all this is integrated is say you need a room for a meeting at short notice you can find an empty room via Exchange Server. You have to set up a criteria in Outlook Web App in addition to EAC. You can also go into EAC & select recipients and mailboxes and if you have full access rights send a message via someone else’s mailbox either as him or on behalf of him. Those are 2 separate options. A final thing I’ll mention is you should keep the log files and databases on separate hard drives because if your database fails the log files might help with restoring it and finding out what went wrong. Also with cloud computing being so popular it’s recommended you have a RAID 1 or 1+0 to store your data but not essential. But do bear in mind you might have to restore your data and the internet might be down for whatever reason or even your cloud provider might be having maintenance done on their site which might be down.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part D

This is the 4th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 based on what I have learnt doing the video training course of the same name by Infinite Skills. The journaling element of Exchange Server is the copying and backing up of emails. Even if an email is deleted a copy stills exists in back up and this is important for a business in this day and age for legal purposes. Database journaling works with the same interface and there are several other types of journaling.  To configure & create in journaling we use what are called rules. A rule scope is retained by the agent.The person who sends the email. It contains stuff like the smtp address and is put and the name of the recipient’s mailbox. You at the very least when journaling need to set up a mailbox for reports to be sent to. The default size for a mailbox is 2 GB although this can be changed. Archiving which is backing up things like emails does it in a more central way than the mailbox. It’s mostly older stuff that is archived and there is a rule set than if they are older than a set amount they are archived as long as they have been read. This feature that they must be read is called retention hold. When an email is received it will have a delete date displayed. Databases have to be defragmented, compacted and online maintenance has to be carried out by default late at night. Compaction is done to remove empty spaces from tables. If storage space runs out back ups will cease to be performed and you should check every day to see it has been done. You definitely shouldn’t be tempted to set and leave it as problems can arise. If you go into outlook web apps like in outlook clicking new message brings up the message dialog box and send sends it.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part C

This is the 3rd installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 based on the video training course by Infinite Skills of the same name. Your edge transport role server is in what we call the demilitarized zone with a firewall in front and behind and is on the perimeter of your network. The edge transport role server was not originally a part of Exchange 2013 and it was necessary to run Exchange 2010 with service pack 3 to do this job. Of course this changed with Exchange 2013 with service pack 1. If you run the online version of Exchange which is part of the Office 365 suite it works out at only around £4 per client and might be a good choice for small companies. An object is anything in the real world that needs representing within the program and Exchange 2013 has support for 20,000 objects which is a huge upgrade on the 500 of Exchange 2010. The infrastructure of an exchange network is normally to have several sites with a particular object represented in one site to avoid replication which is a new feature of 2013. We call this being web based with each site having its own URL. The links between the different domains or sites we call transitive trusts. It’s always simpler to have one domain but in practice multiple ones are used. A multiple domain is called a tree and several multiple domains is called a forest. A domain controller is a server running active directory directory services on it. A global catalog server is a kind of index of information on the network and microsoft recommends having 2 per domain. Exchange Administration Center handles public folders among other things. I’ll try and do another post in this series tonight.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part B

This is the 2nd installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I’ve learnt on the Infinite Skills video training course of the same name. The 3 types of information for users  stored on Exchange Server are email, calendaring and address books. Exchange stores, routes and delivers email. With the calendars others can see them and see what you have scheduled and make appointments. There is also an address typically for each department ie human resources, sales etc. Outlook is often used in conjunction with this program and there is also outlook web app and this still uses the same acronym OWA but has had the name modified and the program has been considerably updated. It can also route things to mobile devices. The exchange administration center is a new feature combining several different modules in earlier versions. It’s also accessed via a URL which is new. All data is stored in databases. It still uses jet EDB databases but where as these could be unreliable in previous versions in this they have been updated and the problems ironed out. It was rumoured they were using a different form of database in this version prior to its release. Exchange Server works with Windows Server 2008 R2 & Windows Server 2012 and later versions will work with Windows Server 2012 R2. There are 2 server roles in Exchange Server 2013 but 5 in 2010. Each role is a separate server but modern practice is to put several server roles onto one server and partition it. A 3rd role has been added to Exchange Server 2013 SP1 which is edge transport server role. The other 2 roles are mailbox server role and client access server role. Two of the roles in 2010 have been combined. The main reason we have less server roles is the processors are faster and more efficient. The edge transport server role is based on the perimeter of the network and handles all the email coming to and from the organization. I’ll try and do another blog post in this series later tonight.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part A

I am doing a new series of blog posts on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I have learnt doing the infinite skills video training course on the same subject. We are going to start with a bit of history. The first version of what we might regard as this was Exchange 4.0 in 1996 and there were earlier versions but they were for desktops. This was the first server version. Exchange 5.0 ran on NT4 and would integrate with a program called Outlook 97. Exchange 5.5 was a major upgrade and was much more reliable than previous versions. In some places you still see this version still being used. With Exchange 2000 email and network accounts were merged. Exchange 2010 was 64 bit only. Exchange 2013 supports upto 8TB of RAM. There is a standard edition that supports upto 5 mounted databases and an enterprise edition that supports upto 100 mounted databases. Mounted databases are ones that are in use. You can have others that aren’t currently in use and also the figure doesn’t include the recovery database. If you want a free 180 day fully working evaluation version of Exchange do a search for exchange 2013 evaluation. You need a fast connection to do the download as it’s around 30 GB. The file format it uses is NTFS. To install Exchange you need to first prepare your active directory schema which can either be done manually or automatically. Manually is slower but gives you greater control over things like accounts. When you install it at one point if you are running multiple Exchange Server programs you need to install mailbox role and client access role. If running a single instance you only install the mailbox role. I will try and do a 2nd installment in this series later tonight.