I'm currently in the process of moving our company's email from being hosted on-site to being in the cloud.

The first step in that process is to setup a hybrid server which will bridge the gap between on-site and off-site. Recently I did just that and thought I'd share the process. While Exchange 2016 is out, I opted instead to install an Exchange 2013 hybrid server into our existing environment. That existing environment consisting of Exchange 2010, two sites, with a DAG and CAS server in each site. All external email is being forwarded through a smart host.

Here then are the steps I took:

• Install server OS, 2012 R2
• Installed Prerequisites

In Powershell:

Install-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Desktop-Experience, NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface, RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt, RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation, RSAT-ADDS

Installed Unified Communications 4.0 API

Installed Office Filter Pack and Filter Pack SP1

Installed Windows Updates

• Downloaded latest Cumulative Update of Exchange 2013
• Did domain prep. From an administrative command prompt:

setup /prepareschema /IAcceptExchangeLicenseTerms
setup /prepareAD /IAcceptExchangeLicenseTerms
setup /PrepareDomain /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

Note: I believe I had to reboot at one point during the three installs.

• On the Exchange 2010 CAS servers I enabled Outlook Anywhere (we weren't using it previously). Make sure to pick NTLM as the authentication method:

• Installed Exchange 2013. Selected both Mailbox Role and Client Access Role
• Change Autodiscover entry in internal DNS to point to new Exchange 2013 server
• Change the Service Control Point (SCP) on the 2013 server. In EMS run the following where FQDN is the appropriate domain name:

Set-ClientAccessServer -Identity <Exch 2013 servername> -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalURI https://<FQDN>/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml

• Imported Exchange 2010 SAN certificate into 2013
• As the Exch 2013 server is operating as the Hybrid server it is not hosting any mailboxes. Therefore to access the new Exchange console you need to modify the URL as such:

https://<servername>/ecp?ExchClientVer=15

• Organizations installing a Hybrid server need to acquire a specific license key to use. As long as the server is not hosting any mailboxes there should be no licenses needed. Activate Exch 2013 with this key.
• Updated our smart host to direct traffic to and authorize the new server

This is where I encountered the first problem. Email from our other site was not going out to the Internet and was queuing up. After a bit of a scramble I found the solution. I simply needed to add the new Exch 2013 server as an authorized source server on our Internet send connector:

After all this was done I had a functioning Exchange 2013 server. It was proxying client requests back to the 2010 servers successfully. However I noticed a problem when I modified the DNS alias we used for our SMTP mailer type programs and applications to point to the new server. These automated messages weren't going through. Doing some tests with Telnet showed the server was rejecting them.  So I did some digging and found an article which was the solution. I had to create a new receive connector to handle these anonymous emails. I might have been able to modify the permissions on the default connector, but felt it was better to create a purpose specific connector instead. I followed the article exactly, but was still getting errors. Did some more digging and found this article. Once I made that change everything was working.

As mentioned previously, along with a new video card I also got a new monitor. Now, two months later it's finally hooked up.

Like the title says this was a pure test of will. I did not think I'd ever get it done. The main issue was that it used Displayport instead of HDMI. So I had to get a suitably long cable to reach to the equipment rack in the basement. Of course none of the vendors selling these hellishly (~$200) expensive cables would guarantee they would work based on the lengths I needed. So all I could do was order and cross my fingers that they'd be ok.

So how long was the cable I needed? Well I based it on the audio cable I bought off eBay when back when I decided to install a headphone jack in the office. The description in the listing said '30 feet/10 meters'. Based on that I figured I needed a 30 foot cable. So I found a vendor and ordered it from them. It arrived, I hooked everything up at the equipment rack to test and all was good. It was able to operate at the maximum 144Hz at a resolution of 2560x1440. Next up was to run the cable through the pre-existing conduit I had run from the rack to my office. I already had a lead in place and taped the cable to it and tried to pull it up and out the other end. Never having done this before I didn't know how much resistance to expect. So at one point it stopped moving. And in an effort to get it going I yanked fairly hard a couple times on the cable. Sure enough the drywall couldn't stand the strain and broke open. I'm pretty sure my neighbors across the street could hear the resulting screaming and swearing.

After calming down I tried it again later in the day and was able to get it pulled through - but it was too short! By about 3 feet. Frustrated I pulled it back out and ordered a longer cable from them. After it showed up I hooked everything up at the equipment rack and it didn't work at all. I'd get an image for a few seconds but then it would drop, come back for a few seconds and drop again. Obviously the run was to long for the signal. So I found a different vendor online and ordered the correct length (30 feet) from them. It showed up, I tested it and everything was good, so I ran the cable through the conduit - and it was too short again!!!

What the hell was going on? So I double checked the original eBay description and it finally dawned on me. 30 feet is NOT 10 meters. 33 feet is! I went and looked at a number of listings on Amazon, eBay etc. and they all said '30 feet/10 meters'. More screaming and swearing ensued. The thought of suing them all briefly popped into my head. So I ordered a 35' cable from the last vendor, it showed up, and it sorta worked. But I could only get it to run at 85Hz. While better than my old monitor's 60Hz, it was still a far cry from the maximum supported rate the monitor could display.

At this point I started considering moving my rackmount PC out of the equipment rack it was in and buying one of those 6U wallmount racks and installing it all on the other side of the room. That would have solved all my problems, but I really didn't want to do that as it'd interfere with all the shelving I had already installed for all my movies.

In a last desperate attempt I searched and found a third cable vendor. After communicating with them they assured me their cable lengths were truly 10 meters or 33 feet and I ordered from them. A few days ago it showed up. I tested it and was able to get 120Hz - at that point I was ecstatic, no it wasn't the max, but considering all the crap I went through up to that point I was ok with it. I ran the cable, but had issues fishing it the last bit to the outlet and was ready to start smashing things again when the wife in her quiet, soothing way was able to calm me down and we managed to get it through. I hooked the monitor up in the office and everything worked.

The only downside, is the cable is still (of course) a little bit to short. Everything is connected, but it's pretty tight. I had to move the rack over a few feet to be able to connect the PC. But I'm happy with the result. Surprisingly the physical size of the monitor seems to be less than my old monitor, likely because the old one had a much wider bezel. I bumped up the text size to 125% as I found the default size to be a little bit small for my crappy eyes. The only issue I found is that older apps aren't able to tie into the system wide setting and still show text in the smaller size. But for any relatively modern app they display properly.

I recently bit the bullet and took advantage of Microsoft's free upgrade to Windows 10 before the deadline expired.

Surprisingly, the upgrade was seamless and I didn't encounter any issues. I went through and ran various programs and they all ran fine. Frankly the whole experience was a bit underwhelming. I mean come on! Give me something to complain about...

Well ok. I did notice that whenever I'd walk into my office on any given evening that the system wasn't sleeping. The screen was off, but the keyboard would be lit up so I knew something had woken it out of it's blissful slumber. So the first thing I did was to go into the Control Panel, Security and Maintenance, Automatic Maintenance, Change maintenance settings, and turn off 'Allow scheduled maintenance to wake up my computer at the scheduled time'. The thinking was for whatever reason it wasn't going back to sleep after maintenance ran.

But that didn't fix the problem. So I did some digging and came across a neat command line that pointed me in the right direction.

With winter here in a few months my thoughts turned to how I was going to manage my upcoming hibernation and I decided that spending hours and hours and hours in a virtual world hunting Deathclaws would do the trick.

So I ended up ordering the Pip-Boy edition of Fallout 4.

Of course with a new game comes new beefy hardware requirements. While I recently built my new gaming computer I decided at the time not to upgrade my graphics card, instead I bought a 2nd identical card and used ATI's Crossfire connector to squeeze some extra life out of what I had. And for the most part it worked well. Each card would 'draw' every other line on the display and it allowed me to play some of the newer games with higher details and decent frame rates. However in the past few weeks an odd issue popped up - essentially I'd randomly get digital snow flickering on the screen. Not sure if it was the card or my (equally dated) monitor I figured I'd solve all of my issues at once by getting both a new video card and monitor.

The Nvidia GTX 1080 had just came out and was getting rave reviews and although hellishly expensive I rationalized it by the fact that I wouldn't have to upgrade again for several years by installing such a powerful monster of a card. As I'm partial to Asus, I sourced it from them. Of course such a high end card requires an equally high end monitor so I splurged for Asus's latest and greatest gaming monitor, the PG278Q.

However I should have done a bit of research before ordering as once I went to set everything up I realized I had a problem. The monitor only has a Displayport connection instead of a HDMI connector. If my PC was in the same room as my monitor that wouldn't be an issue. But instead, it's in an AV rack in a different room (floor) roughly 25' away. After doing some furious Googling of the Displayport standard it appeared at first glance that I wouldn't be able to get a cable long enough which would still give me the resolution and refresh rate that I wanted.

However I did find one vendor that according to their specs may or may not work. The only way to know for sure is for me to try. So I plan on ordering the cable and then testing. If it works then I'll have to get my AV guy to come out and replace my existing HDMI wiring with the new Displayport cable. Thankfully when I had everything built I had them run conduit from my AV rack to my office.

Awhile ago I picked up a Wii U. We had just moved into a new house and were getting a media room built and as part of that process I wanted to incorporate Nintendo's latest gaming system into that space. In the end it didn't end up there as I was paranoid my fancy Panasonic plasma would suffer burn in from gaming - instead it's final destination was to be in the garage, over a year after I bought it.

We previously had the original Wii and really enjoyed it. So at the time it made sense to upgrade to the newer, more powerful version. Probably the main selling feature was the Wii U's high definition resolution, outputting up to 1080p. The other nicety was supporting the faster wireless-N standard. Finally, it still worked with all the original Wii games and accessories. A guaranteed winner right?

Sadly, during the time it actually took me to buy one and hook it up it hasn't exactly been the success Nintendo had hoped. Sales compared to the other big two, Xbox and Playstation, are abysmal - in fact they've only sold a 10th the number of systems as the original Wii. The amount of new titles coming out has dwindled to literally a handful in the past year. Nintendo has now shifted focus to their next generation console instead.

I'm not sure exactly why it's been such a failure, my only guess is its because of the lack of 3rd party titles. Sure, we all love playing Mario Kart or Super Mario World but how many iterations of basically the same game can you go through before you get bored with it. Fallout 4 is out for the PC, Xbox, and Playstation, but not the Wii - and that's a huge problem.

Despite all that, having spent a few days playing around with everything, I do really like it and think it's a solid upgrade from the original. Our old games all play fine on it (the only limitation is the GamePad only works with Wii U titles) and our old controllers work fine as well. I've also heard various opinions on if the old games are upscaled or not. All I know is that the old titles looked fine to me. Although you could probably make the argument that they will automatically look better by virtue of using an HDMI connection versus the old component hookup. As for the GamePad, its essentially a self contained system that you can use to play games using its built in screen. Most of the kids I've seen playing seem to prefer using it to using the TV as their display. It also has a built in camera which you can use to take a picture of yourself and morph into onto the face of your Mii character. I haven't had time yet to explore all the various options, but I did spend some time playing with the built in browser. Unlike before, it's actually fairly usable now. And like almost all devices these days (TV's, blu-ray players etc.) it also includes Netflix. The couple of new games I tried were fun and the visual upgrade appreciated.

You know those EULA agreements that you just click on to dismiss every time there's a new product update? The one's you never bother to read before you agree to them? Perhaps you should actually go through them occasionally...

First up is news that Facebook will record and analyze sound through your iPhone's microphone whenever you use it to do a status update. So for instance, say you're listening to Taylor Swift on the radio while posting adorable videos of your cat. Soon after you start getting ads in Facebook for her new album which just dropped. Or alternatively, you're yammering away to your girlfriend about what hotel you should stay at during your Hawaii trip, and coincidentally next time you log on to Facebook you're helpfully shown ads for the Waikiki Hilton. Now you know why. Once word got around of this latest 'feature' of course Facebook cheerfully reminded everyone that you have to enable it as it's disabled by default. Strangely though, both my phone and the wife's had it enabled - and yet we never turned it on. Personally I don't like having my life analyzed so as to further bombard me with enticements to spend more of my money. To turn off, got into Settings, Facebook, Settings, and deselect Microphone.

Apple also is up to similar shenanigans with it's latest 'feature' in Spotlight. Introduced with OS X Yosemite and present in the latest version El Capitan, by default whenever you do a search on your computer your search terms are sent to Apple which then distributes them to third parties including Microsoft. All ending up in one massive database for all eternity to be analyzed and mined at will.

I've been wanting to swap a SSD drive into my 24" iMac (2006) for awhile now but have held off due to concern over how much a pain the process would be and fear of breaking something.

Recently however my screen started to display graphical glitches occasionally which in all likelihood is a result of the thermal paste being old and cracking/no longer adhering properly. So I decided since I needed to deal with the video card I might as well do the hard drive at the same time. Never having done this before though, I figured I'd tackle the hard drive first as with it you don't need to completely remove the logic board like you have to with the video card. I managed to find a brand new Nvidia 7600GT card off eBay which is amazing considering how rare they are. But I think I'll keep it as a spare and instead remove and re-apply the thermal paste on the existing card.

But first, the task of replacing the hard drive...

I ordered the drive from Crucial as I've used them in the past to buy memory upgrades and their website will certify various drives to work with various Apple computers. I ended up picking a 500GB model they listed as compatible with my vintage iMac. I also ordered a 3.5" to 2.5" drive carrier converter bracket. I know a lot of people simply use velcro tape to affix the SSD, but I wanted to do it properly.

Once everything showed up it was time to start the upgrade. I went online and watched literally a dozen videos on YouTube on how to do the upgrade. In each video they showed the person opening the case using a credit card inserted through the vent slot. This is done to unlatch the bezel allowing it to be removed. And here we had my first major frustration.

I could not get the thing to open. I then found out there's a specific Apple tool for this process and ended up ordering it. Not long after I stumbled across a video where someone showed you how to make your own simply by taking a rewards type plastic card and using boiling water to soften it and then bend it into shape. So I did that, but again, i could not get it open. I then tried it on my 17" iMac and after only a few tries got it to work. So what was going on?

Well it turns out that Apple in it's infinite wisdom decided to use a different method to open a 24" iMac. Everything online that shows them using one of these cards only works on the 17" and 20" models!!! The only reason I found this out is after stumbling across the official Apple service manual - which in hindsight I probably should have looked at first.

It's actually super easy to open the larger model, you simply unscrew the memory slot holder and the bottom screws, remove the memory, squeeze together the plastic memory guide clips and lift up the bezel. You are then supposed to remove the cable for the camera and microphone and while I was able to detach one of the cables easily the other one was all taped together. It looked pretty delicate so I decided against messing with it and instead simply leaned the bezel against the wall and left it connected.

From there it was a matter of unscrewing a couple screws on the LVDS cable and popping it loose and then removing the inverter cable. Now here was where I encountered my second frustration. The inverter cable is very brittle and I would bet anyone trying to pry it off by pulling on the cable itself would rip off the leads and end up ruining your iMac in the process. So instead I carefully worked the connector prying each side up bit by bit until it finally popped off. There was then eight screws to remove around the display and two pieces of aluminum tape on each side that I had to carefully peel back. And with that I was able to remove the display.

Then it was a matter of disconnecting the existing drive. First I removed the SATA and power connectors and squeezed down on the metal clip at the top of the drive carrier which popped it open and allowed me to swing open the carrier and remove it - there was also a connector for the attached thermal sensor which was easy to remove. I removed the two screws on the one side of the drive holding the clip and then the two 'posts' on the other side and attached them to the SSD with it's converter bracket. I then carefully pried off the thermal sensor from the old drive and thankfully there was enough glue still attached that I was able to affix it to the new drive. Then I re-attached the drive cables and sensor cable and put everything back together again.

I powered on the system and was relieved when I got the familiar chime. Holding down the option key I had it boot into the Startup Manager. I then selected the USB boot key I had previously created which had an install of OS X Lion -  which is the last supported OS for that system. A bit of panic ensued when I saw that the SSD wasn't recognized. Then I realized it had to be formatted first and I looked up the required settings to do so. Once that was done the drive was recognized and I was able to install Lion onto it.

Got a call recently from a colleague at work who was having an odd issue.

Every time he got an email in Outlook it would immediately go into his Deleted Items folder. He works in IT and deals with Outlook on a regular basis so he knows more than the typical user. As such he went through and checked all the obvious things - He didn't have any rules turned on, tried with both cached mode on and off, had turned off his iPhone, and also encountered the same problem when just running Outlook Web Access (OWA). As it was also doing it in OWA I knew that meant it wasn't an Outlook issue, but was instead related to his account. And as no one else was having the problem I knew it wasn't something systemic to Exchange.

So we both wracked our brains for a bit and took to Google for possible solutions.

Eventually we came across an article that mentioned in some instances that the mailbox gets its AutomateProcessing flag messed up. For resource mailboxes you want them set to AutoAccept and normally it won't allow you to set a user mailbox to AutoAccept. But sometimes (the reason why wasn't entirely clear) a user mailbox will get set that way which causes the behavior of automatically moving incoming email to the Deleted Items folder.

The articles then detailed that to fix you simply ran the Shell and punched in the following command:

So the proper command is:

Set-CalendarProcessing <username> -Automateprocessing AutoUpdate

We use DFS Replication to copy redirected folders off our tablets onto a file server in another site for disaster recovery. Recently, however we started getting errors in the event log complaining that we were exceeding the staging quota:

Event ID: 4208
Severity: Warning

The DFS Replication service detected that the staging space usage is above the staging quota for the replicated folder at local path (path). The service might fail to replicate some large files and the replicated folder might get out of sync. The service will attempt to clean up staging space automatically.

Ok great, but what size to set the quota to be??? After doing some digging I found a handy Powershell script which will go and search through the target folder and add up the largest files and give an appropriate value you can enter in the Staging properties:

$big32 = Get-ChildItem c:\temp -recurse | Sort-Object length -descending | select-object -first 32 | measure-object -property length –sum

$big32.sum /1gb

Obviously you can edit the value to make is search more than the top 32 files, however for Windows 2008 R2, 32 is the recommended search value.

Once you have that value, all you need to do is to go into the DFS Management console, click on the Replication group under the Replication node, on the memberships tab right click on the replicated folder and select Properties. Click on the Staging tab and update the quota value to match the one returned by the script. Changes will take place during the next DFSR polling cycle.

Now those pesky event errors should go away and replication work more smoothly.

Now that the basement is mostly done, I found some time to work on my arcade games. Sadly they've been neglected ever since we moved a couple years ago. I finally decided to work on my Tron upright as I thought it'd be a straightforward fix.

The issue with it was that ever since I had it, the MCP translite (lit graphic at the back, above the monitor) didn't light up. I never thought much of it initially as I figured the light bulb was simply burnt out. So I cracked open the manual, looked at the various parts and diagrams and saw that it used an 18" fluorescent tube assembly. I guessed all I had to do was simply grab a replacement bulb from Home Depot and pop it in and it'd be good as new. However when I finally got around to opening the back up - I found that the entire lighting assembly was missing. Not broken, entirely gone!

Not only that, but after temporarily shining a light through the back I noticed that the translite had a tear through the middle that the previous owner had tried to fix by simply taping over it. So I went online and found someone selling one that was in much better condition. Now I just had to figure out the lighting issue.

According to the manual I needed the tube, ballast, and a starter. I made some inquiries on KLOV which led me to a website that sold various arcade and pinball parts. After contacting the owner he said to simply grab one from Walmart for $10. At first I thought he was being a smart ass, but after questioning him on it I realized what he was talking about. You can now get fluorescent lights that come in one integrated piece. No need to buy all the separate components - and they run off a regular plug-in outlet which there just happens to be at the bottom of the game.

I picked one up and thankfully the power cord was just long enough to reach the outlet. There is a wood strip that goes along the back so I simply used a couple of tie wraps to affix the light to it. I then went to fire up the game and got that sick feeling when it didn't power on. After looking closer I noticed a piece of wood from the cabinet had fallen inside and ripped out some of the wiring from the monitor to the power supply. The wires in question were from the AC outlets of the supply so I took a gamble that there was no polarity and that I wouldn't fry things by connecting the wrong wires together. I tied the wires together, tried it again and success! Everything powered on.

Next I ripped out the old translite and replaced it with the newer one I had bought. Unfortunately there's some speckling on the plastic shroud itself which despite my best efforts I couldn't get out. Still, as you can see from the picture it looks pretty sharp. Last thing I did was to tweak the vertical hold of the monitor as there was always a slight shimmering line to the right of the screen. Now that's gone and the image looks rock solid.

Time to fire up the Light Cycle!