Microsoft have continued the trend of going x64 all the way and 2008 R2 is 64bit only. The first thing we need to do is install the pre-requisites via a privileged PowerShell; Import-Module ServerManager Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,ADLDS -Restart Once the machine has restarted you will need to ensure you set the machine name and a DNS suffix. Assuming the checks all work you can click install and off you go; Once all is installed the next step is to prepare a config bundle / auth package (I can't quite remember what Microsoft call ...

I recently had the opportunity to provide Internet connectivity to the first Airsoft Arms Fair so the Stall operators could show YouTube videos, Retailers could utilise Paypal and so media outlets could do Live blogging or upload high resolution pictures throughout the day. The core of this setup was a series of 3G Modems linked up with 3G to ethernet devices such as the Solwise NET-3G-3GWIFIMRW. These were backed off onto a server running Squid and BIND with DHCP containing all the relevant proxy auto config data (plus some IPTables magic for those that didn't play nice). Couple ...

With my new Exchange 2010 environment working quite happily it was time to remove the old 2007 stuff from the setup. This is extremely easy to do but I haven't posted anything in a while so I thought I'd document the process. To start just load up the Programs and Features section of Control Panel, choose Exchange and select Uninstall. The first screen is utterly pointless At the next screen you need to deselect the options you no longer require. Ideally as I'm Uninstalling and not Modifying the installation I'd have thought you'd select that which you want to ...

With Exchange 2010 available on MSDN I decided to take the risk and jump straight into a migration as the only thing as fun as a well planned migration is shooting from the hip on full auto. Exchange 2010 cannot co-exist with Exchange 2007 unless it is SP2. The Exchange 2007 SP2 install was exceptionally pain free (It was so easy I may not sleep properly tonight) and with that done it was time to start preparing my new Exchange 2010 server. A base copy of Windows Server 2008 (non R2) will have the following pre-requisites; .Net 3.5 (SP1) PowerShell 2.0 Office 2007 System ...

As I was updating to the latest Wordpress (2.8.6) I noticed that the About page still showed my old setup. I moved to a shiny 'new build' flat a year or so ago and unfortunately my old Compaq 9000 Rack Cabinet wouldn't have fitted up the stair case :/ so I bought a nice flat pack 28u Rack Cabinet and set about virtualising all my legacy stuff. VM Hosts Using the 2 S411 cases I already had I installed; 2x ASUS P5B-VM 2x Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 8x Corsair 4GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 2x Hiper 880W 85% Efficient PSU 4x Adaptec 1430SA 4Port PCI Express SATA II RAID Card 16x Western ...

One of the common issues that appears when integrating a hybrid vision of Hosted Exchange with someones existing infrastructure (so not really Hosted Exchange at all!) is synchronising credentials between the Exchange Server and the local machines or for the more tech savvy the 'hackiness' of having disparate forests. Cross Forest trusts are a possibility and merging one with the other (i.e having the Hosted Exchange solution bound to the existing domain) is another but there are many issues with that (mostly political). What I intend to do is utilise the 'Branch office' concept that ...

I mentioned a while back that I am working on / experimenting with Cloud Storage and whilst studying the bandwidth graphs / YSlow / FireBug output on one of my websites I wondered if utilising Mosso's CDN would improve response times / reduce the time Apache spent serving content that never changes. After some initial experimentation with their frontend app and the API I had moved all the content for one of my project sites to the 'Cloud' and (I hope) through to the CDN. The Setup: The configuration for the experiment is as follows: 2x LAMP Server [ Core2 1.86GHz / 4Gb RAM / RAID 1 ...

Recently I've been looking at CleverSafe's Storage Cloud product and as part of the research I noticed that a small scale DSNet provides more than enough IOPs for small scale mailbox installations. I took a selection of decommissioned mid-range [Pentium Dual Core / SATA I Disks etc] Workstations to which I installed CentOS 5.0 and the CleverSafe software. 4 IDE SliceStores and an Accesser provides enough IOP throughput for around 50 mailboxes. Ramping this up to 6 SATA SliceStores and there is enough IOP throughput for 70 mailboxes. We're obviously not talking about large scale ...

When I heard the news that McColo had been pulled I wondered if we'd actually see a drop in Hostile traffic and Spam. Turns out that there has been a massive drop in Spam levels coming through some of the filters I have dotted around the place. C&C or Spam Hosts? I wrote a little script to see what percentages of machines that had made incoming connections that were then classified as spam were still alive. The majority of hosts were still contactable in some way shape or form but weren't listening on known SMTP ports, some were alive and actively listening on SMTP ...

With the initial tests over it was time to actually move over to 'real' IPv6 addresses. After applying for a tunnel from SixXS it was time to set it up. Unfortunately none of my JUNOS or Cisco IOS images have IPv6 support so rather than buying another 2600XM I decided to use the Windows Server 2008 server that performs IPv6 DHCP as the router. The advice for setting up a tunnel on the Wiki only covers up to Windows Server 2003 and is below: netsh interface ipv6 install netsh interface ipv6 add v6v4tunnel SixXS [Your IPv4 Endpoint] [PoP IPv4 Endpoint] netsh interface ipv6 add ...