HoL1n's Blog

I found a very interesting site from citrix : Citrix EdgeSite Wiki

The EdgeSight Wiki is an environment where users can come to exchange ideas and learn about best practices. Contributions are welcome from all members of the EdgeSight community, including customers, VARs, and internal Citrix personnel. Anyone with a MyCitrix account can edit Wiki articles.

Overview
This article contains information on how to use and contribute to the EdgeSight Wiki, including:

• Editing and Creating a Wiki Article
• Controlling Changes
• Style and Syntax
  Wiki Guidelines

Have fun and report me if you can use this Info.

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In the last two weeks I migrated two AD Forests (2000 and 2003) to a new Windows 2008 R2 Forest. Additionally we wanted to migrate the Exchange Environment, two Exchange Orgs.

Cross-Forest Migration from Windows 2000 / Exchange 2000 is not possible. So we used ExMerge to export all the Mailboxes in .PST Files. This Export tooks ten hours for only 300 files.

The other Exchange Organization was 2003. We are not able to connect the old and the new Forest for the “move-Mailbox” command. So we decided to use ExMerge too. If you want to test the cross-forest migration check this link: http://msexchangehelp.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/cross-forest-move-mailbox-request-from-exchange-2003-to-2010/

 Information: All Links to the Microsoft Technat are reachable on 30. March 2010.

That was not really a problem but now we run in tons of problems with Exchange 2010.

the first thing you have to search is Outlook 2010 64Bit. We installed this Outlook on the new Exchange Server because the known bug with wrong mapi (overridden through outlook setup) will not happend with the new Outlook.

Important: NEVER use “Remove-Mailbox” ! This will delete the Mailbox AND the user!

Microsoft Technet Article Remove-Mailbox: http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/aa995948.aspx

It sounds crazy but the first thing you should do is to delete the Mailbox of the migrated users. The old Exchange is using different user attributes than the new one. That means that different values are migrated and Exchange 2010 is not able to read it and will throw an error.

Disable-Mailbox -Identity AD.Username -Confirm:$False

Microsoft Technet Article Disable-Mailbox: http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/aa997210.aspx

So, the next Step is to recreate a new mailbox for the migrated users.
This will be done with the following command:

Enable-Mailbox -Identity AD.Username -Database "Database.Name"

Microsoft Technet Article Enable-Mailbox: http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/aa998251.aspx

If you use a different language than english you must set the mailbox to that language before the import starts.

Set-Mailbox -Identity AD.Username -language "de-DE"

Microsoft Technet Article Set-Mailbox: http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/bb123981.aspx

Be sure to write the last two digits in UPPERCASE. Otherwise the language will not switch!

After these steps you are prepared to import the .PST files….

The first thing is to try the import for one user:

Import-Mailbox -Identity AD.username -PSTFolderPath C:\PST\AD.username.PST

Microsoft Technet Article Set-Mailbox: http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/bb629586.aspx

This command will import the pst to the specific mailbox…

If you are using a Windows 2008 R2 native environment you will find this error with Import-Mailbox:

Error occurred in the step: Approving object. An unknown error has occurred., error code: -2147221219.

With Windows 2008 R2 GC’s you are NOT able to make a successfully import. This is a bug and also happend to Windows Server 2003 R2! In the future this KB will be available: kb981283
I dont know when Microsoft will release this KBArticle but today it is not available on Technet.

Anyway you must install a Windows Server 2008 SP2 GC in your Forest and tell your Outlook to speak only to this GC when it starts the import. Here is the Step-by-Step Guide:

Configure your Outlook 2010 to use Window 2008 SP2 GC not Window 2008 R2 GC.
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit.exe, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider

Note You may have to create the registry path.
4. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value name: DS Server
Data type: REG_SZ (string)
Value data: FQDN of the global catalog server

This Workaround runs for me!
 
After the import was working i built a script which imported all users from a special OU.

# INITIALIZE CONNECTION
[string]$PstFolder = "D:\PST"
[string]$OU = "/OU=MigrateThisUsers,"
 
$Root = [ADSI]''
$DN = $Root.DistinguishedName
 
# Strip the DC= from LDAP Root name
$Domain = $($DN -as[string] -ireplace "dc=", "" ).Split(",")[0]
$LDAP = "LDAP://$Domain$OU$DN"
 
# Create a selector and start searching from the root
$selector = New-Object DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher
$selector.SearchRoot = $LDAP
 
# -----------------------------------------------------------
# Filter the users with -like "CN=Person*". Note the ForEach loop
[array]$Users = $selector.findall() | where {$_.properties.objectcategory -like "CN=Person*"}
Measure-Command {
 
# IMPORT MAILBOXES
ForEach ($User in $Users)
{
   If (!($User.Properties.proxyaddresses -isnot [Object]))
   {
       If ($User.Properties.proxyaddresses -ne $null)
       {
	   [string]$MailPrefix = $User.Properties.proxyaddresses[0].Split("@")[0].Remove(0, 5)
       }
	if ($MailPrefix -eq $null)
	{
		[string]$MailPrefix = $User.Properties.name
	}
	If (Test-Path "$($PstFolder)\$($MailPrefix).pst")
	{
		Disable-Mailbox -Identity "DOMAIN\$($User.Properties.name)" -Confirm:$False
		Enable-Mailbox -Identity "DOMAIN\$($User.Properties.name)" -Database "DATABASE" | out-null
		Set-Mailbox -Identity "DOMAIN\$($User.Properties.name)" -Language "de-DE"
 
                  Measure-Command {
			Write-Host "Importing Mailbox for user $($User.Properties.name)"
			Import-Mailbox -identity "DOMAIN\$($User.Properties.name)" -PSTFolderPath "$PstFolder\$MailPrefix.pst" -BadItemLimit 1000 | out-null
			} | %{$SingleTime = $_.Minutes}
		write-host -foregroundcolor green -nonewline "User $($User.Properties.name) imported and tooks $SingleTime minutes!`n"
	}
       }
   }
} | %{$LapTime = $_.Minutes}
 
Write-Host -ForegroundColor White "`nComplete Import finished in $LapTime minutes!`n"

I want to thank Martin Zugec and Guido Roock to help me with the Script! Have a look at Martin’s Blog  http://out-web.net

Have fun and a successfully migration of your Exchange Migration.

HoL1n

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Outcome phase II Project VRC: latest generation virtualization technology doubles Terminal Server workload capacity

PQR and Login Consultants combine their strength in Project VRC, to benchmark workloads for Terminal Server (TS) on the latest hardware and virtualization software

De Meern/Amsterdam, 1 February 2010 – PQR and Login Consultants launch the results of phase II of the independent research project ‘Virtual Reality Check’ (VRC). Based on 150 new tests, Login and PQR present their findings on the influence of hardware and virtualization software on the performance of TS and Citrix XenApp, in a new whitepaper: ‘Project VRC: Phase II’.

The Research & Development project ‘Virtual Reality Check (VRC), the Platform Performance Index’ was started early 2009 by Login Consultants and PQR. Goal of the project is analyze the developments in the application and desktop virtualization market and to present the outcomes as objective as possible.

Initiators Jeroen van de Kamp, CTO Login Consultants, and Ruben Spruijt, Technical Officer at PQR, now present – as a result of 150 additional tests – the latest findings in the whitepaper ‘Project VRC: Phase II’.  The document shows the impact of Terminal Servers on the performance of the latest hardware and hypervisors in the (virtualization) market. Spruijt comments: ‘During the second phase of the VRC project, I was surprised by the significant economies of scale, which was made possible by the new processor architecture. Without any change in the hypervisors, this lead to the a 100% increase of possible concurrent users. This is very promising for the future! Van de Kamp adds: “We see that hardware plays a significant part in the increase in scale. A little under two years ago we were careful to virtualize Terminal Servers and XenApp, but this has changed fundamentally. Project VRC’s outcomes substantiate that.

Phase I of the project did not compare hypervisors, but described their behavior in separate whitepapers. The market obviously did compare the outcomes of the different whitepapers, which is why we decided to take up the outcomes of Phase II in one single document. The hypervisors VMware vSphere 4, Citrix XenServer 5.5 and Microsoft Hyper-V2.0 have been tested on HP ProLiant DL380G6 servers equipped with Intel ’Nehalem’ Xeon 5500 processors. The Virtual Session Indexer (VSI) 2.1 made this possible. This product independent benchmark tool for  Terminal Servers  and Virtual Desktop Infrastructures, indexes the performance, base4d on the number of simultaneous working sessions on 1 machine (either virtual or physical; the number of operating systems is leading) . By doing so each platform is tested in an identical way.

People who have an interest in the project can, besides comparing the test results, also execute the tests by themselves. The used testing environment and methods are covered in the whitepaper. The VSI 2.1 tool is freely downloadable through the Login Consultants website

The Whitepaper ‘Project VRC: phase II’ is available for download via www.virtualrealitycheck.net.

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Login Consultants today released VSI 2.1. Login VSI 2.1 is  a specifically designed benchmark for SBC and VDI environments. VSI loads the system with simulated user workload, and focuses on how much users can run on the system before it saturates. VSI is platform and protocol independent, and configuration is simplified and automated where possible. As a result, VSI is a turn-key benchmark: perform tests within days instead of weeks, there is no need to create the workloads first. VSI is intended to be used by VDI/SBC engineers/admins, a degree in testing methodologies is not required. The free version is called “VSI 2.1 Express”, the advanced version is “VSI 2.1 PRO”.

Changes in VSI 2.1

• Updated VSImax 2.0 to 2.1 to improve accuracy (e.g. VSImax is reached when CPU is around 100%)
• Switch from launching calc.exe to notepad.exe in response time measurement (calc.exe footprint is much bigger in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2)
• New VSI PRO workload “MediumNoFlash” which disables the CPU intensive Flash app used in Internet Explorer
• VSI.exe is now running native 64-bit instead of x86 when running on x64 Windows, still 32-bit IE is launched because of flash support
• Citrix XenApp 6 support
• Custom scripts added to the VSI PRO workload can use VSI settings through environment variables
• It is now possible to specify a custom interval for session intervals
• New VSI customization framework with image detection (VSI Foundation only)

Fixes in VSI 2.1

• VSI does not generate an event when the workload is finished before logoff
• AD Setup now generates a GPMC missing warning when running on Windows 2003×64
• AD Setup now requires Admin right to prevent UAC errors
• Slave Launchers can be started before the Master launcher
• When launchers are finished, active session cleanup is performed only after choosing OK.
• Launcher now fully supports x64 Windows
• The CSV used with the custom command line CSV now supports a comma (,) and (;)
• Launcher installation now work on other partitions than the systemdrive
• Added the ability to specify a custom (language dependant/older versions) adobe windows title (PRO feature)

VSI can be downloaded from Login Consultants tools section of http://www.loginconsultants.com/downloads.

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I found a very cool whitepaper how to set up a HA desktop virtualization environment with xen products including GSLB with Netscaler.

download it here.

Highly Recommended!

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some friends and colleagues told me to change the language to english, so here it is.

i killed my last Blog because i want to do a real new start. i tested enough the last months

Enjoy!

HoL1n

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