IT Operations

A Microsoft Word Document Template For Disaster Recovery Planning

by Alexander Windel

Let’s say you want to create a disaster recovery (DR) plan for a common, shared enterprise IT service such as e-mail or document collaboration in your organization. One of the results of the plan will surely be a document outlining the DR strategy for that service. But where do you start? What should be part [...]

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What you need to check when Outlook fails to download the OAB

by PFE EMEA Messaging Engineers

Throughout the last weeks I have seen two different issues that prevented Outlook clients from downloading the OAB (Offline Address Book). One affected public-folder based OAB distribution and the other affected web-based distribution. I want to provide some hints on things that need to be checked in order to follow the OAB generation and publishing [...]

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Windows Server 2003: Restore and Reanimation of Tombstoned Group Membership Links

by Liju Varghese

The Issue Performing an authoritative restore on a Windows Server 2003 domain controller of a group results in the reanimation of tombstoned group membership links. The Impact If an Organizational Unit containing Users and Groups was deleted, the authoritative restore of the OU will result in users being re-added to groups they were removed from. [...]

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What You Need to Know About Microsoft Support Terminology

by Rod Fournier

When discussing the meaning of Microsoft Support terminology with my customers, there are several terms that come up almost daily in conversations. Here are some hopefully helpful definitions for you that I use: Supported – When we (Microsoft) state we support something, it really means we have tested that scenario and that is works as [...]

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What You Need To Know About Exchange 2010 DAG Failover Behavior

by PFE EMEA Messaging Engineers

In this article, I’ll provide some insight into changes in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG) failover behavior. The Exchange 2010 mailbox server which is part of the DAG uses windows clustering in a different way than previous versions and many administrators who are familiar with previous versions of Exchange may have incorrect [...]

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Microsoft Mediaroom Performance Monitoring Using the PAL Tool

by Pri Patel

Over the past year I have been looking at the various ways of analysing performance of the various types of Mediaroom Servers.  Being involved in various support cases and issues I have seen in the field, this is a critical area which network operators have an opportunity to improve and become more comfortable.   Although we [...]

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The IT Back Out Plan: How NOT to get caught with your pants down

by Mark Farrugia

You have all seen it a million times on the silver screen, our hero is caught, trapped and/or facing impossible odds, and all of a sudden they make a miraculous escape.  It seems the whole entire time while I would have been saying my prayers, our hero had a back out plan to get them [...]

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Is Your IT Environment Healthy?

by Kip Ng

Operating an IT system nowadays is a no doubt daunting task. As a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer (PFE), I have the honor of working with different customers of different sizes in different industries. I fully understand how overwhelming things can get. What I find it interesting is that while many companies are working towards adhering [...]

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Extending the Cross Platform Monitoring Agent in Operations Manager 2007 R2

by Neil Harrison

When System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 (OpsMgr) was released, one of the most interesting new features was the addition of Cross Platform monitoring or, in other words, Unix/Linux monitoring. Having been involved with Enterprise monitoring for almost a decade now I was really intrigued by what OpsMgr could do in this area. It turns [...]

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6 Steps For Managing Risk in IT Operations

by Mark Farrugia

BusinessDictionary.com defines Managed Risk as the following: Identified probability of loss, or exposure to a danger, that has been minimized to an acceptable level through careful planning and implementation of effective countermeasures. What Exactly Does That Mean? We all manage risk everyday through our everyday actions. For example, when walking down a staircase, most people [...]

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IT Configuration Monitoring: What is it, and why do we need it?

by Kip Ng

Most companies today have some form of monitoring mechanism implemented to monitor different components of their IT system. There are various monitoring solutions out there. Some are more sophisticated than others, and, in general, there are different levels of monitoring available. I personally categorize most monitoring needs into the following five areas: Of course, I [...]

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How To Build A Simple and Efficient Windows Monitoring Solution (DTW)

by Samuel Drey

In this article, I’ll provide a quick reference guide and an Excel-based tool that allows you to build monitoring consoles using HTML without being a scripting star.  I call it the Document-Tool-Walkthrough (DTW). This is a new concept document/tool built using Excel that can help you to build System Monitor consoles that are centrally stored [...]

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Planning MS Exchange Disaster Recovery using the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)

by Dan Erelis

As a Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft, I find myself in many different customer environments in just about every major industry sector in Canada. Although every customer is different, the same recurring challenge to implementing Microsoft Exchange disaster recovery exists and that is they don’t know what they are really asking for. As business relies [...]

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