Microsoft is offering free exam vouchers for 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2013/01/15/we-re-giving-away-2-000-free-administering-office-365-for-small-businesses-exam-74-324-vouchers-here-s-how-to-get-yours.aspx
The supply is limited, so don’t wait too long.
Also be sure to take a look at : Jump start videos for the new exam 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses.
[edit 25-01]
Another code can be found here: http://www.digitalwpc.com/GetInvolved/MSPartnerPerspectives/TrainingSpotlight/Pages/Training-Spotlight-Small-Business-Competency-Announcements.aspx?mtag=mpntraining_tw_SBCompAnnouncements#fbid=gbfFqtdRaxn
[edit 25-01]
As some of you might know, at the 31st of January some special Windows 8 related offers are ending:
Last sunday I warned about a major vulnerability in Java.
It wasn’t expected that Java would come have an update available this quickly, but it is good that they did. So be sure to update to Java 7 Update 11 : http://java.com
[EDIT 14-01-2013]
Oracle release Java 7 Update 11 to fix this security issue. Be sure to update: http://java.com/
[EDIT]
Normally when I read about security vulnerabilities, I don’t really get a sense of urgency.
With the current Java vulnerability however, I do feel like people have to act quick because there are so many respected companies and even countries actively taking action:
Apparently this vulnerability is actively being exploited already and Oracle hasn’t released a Java fix yet. You might want to consider a combination of the options below:
Personally I like the way FireFox is handling the issue because it blocks by default, but allows users to easily override this behavior for specific sites. Also I’m getting quite fed up with all these Java security vulnerabilities lately 😦
I’d like to know what you’ll be doing. Have you or are you going to disable Java ? Which methods will you use ? Why ?
As a passionate ICT person, I work with multiple virtualization products including Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.
At home I’m running Server 2012 with Hyper-V in my home lab and even though it works perfectly, I miss the option to be able to run multiple other hypervisors beneath it like by example multiple Hyper-V, VMware ESXi or Citrix XenServer instances.
With VMware products like VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation you can enable this with only a couple of minor adjustments as described in these great articles:
For me personally, I’ll stay with my Hyper-V based home server and my Windows 8 Client with Client Hyper-V installed. For testing purposes however, I’ll have to use VMware Workstation 9 on my Windows 8 machine. (even though I have Client Hyper-V installed). This way I can still run other hypervisors when needed.
I still hope though that Microsoft will add a similar feature to Hyper-V in the future.
In yesterday’s post I showed some commands to protect all or specific Active Directory objects from accidental deletion.
In some situations (by example preparing for a change) you might want to know which objects are protected from accidental deletion and which are not. Also when multiple people make changes in an Active Directory it might prove difficult to keep track of the changes.
To determine the protection status of AD objects, I use a script that checks the ACL of the AD Object. When Everyone is explicitly Denied access, it is protected from accidental deletion.
In a previous blog post I explained how to enable the Active Directory Recycle Bin which allows you to restore deleted active directory object.
But even though it’s great to be able to restore objects, it is even better to prevent accidental deletion. What accidental deletion basically does, is modify the permissions on an AD object to Deny Everyone so you won’t be able to delete it by accident.
More information about protection from accidental deletion can be found in “Preventing Unwanted/Accidental deletions and Restore deleted objects in Active Directory” and “Windows Server 2008 Protection from Accidental Deletion“.
In Windows Server 2012 with all the new cmdlets, it has become much easier to enable protection from accidental deletion.
By example, you could use these commands:
#Get-ADobject class names
get-adobject -filter * | select objectclass | group objectclass
#Protect specific AD object classes from accidental deletion
get-adobject -filter * | where{($_.ObjectClass -eq “container”) -or ($_.ObjectClass -eq “organizationalunit”) -or ($_.ObjectClass -eq “user”) -or ($_.ObjectClass -eq “group”) -or ($_.ObjectClass -eq “computer”)} | Set-ADObject -ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true
#Protect all AD organizational units from accidental deletion
Get-ADOrganizationalUnit -filter * | Set-ADOrganizationalUnit -ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true
#Protect all AD objects from accidental deletion
Get-ADobject -filter * | Set-ADObject -ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true
I created this script to automate extracting English only MSP files from CAB files in the SCOM 2012 Update Rollup 3 (UR3) files. By default it will delete extracted non-English versions. With some minor modifications it can be used for any CAB file though, not just SCOM 2012 Update Rollup 3. It includes a lot of comments, so it is manageable and can be used for getting to know PowerShell better.
SCOM 2012 Update Rollup 3 can be downloaded here : http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/search.aspx?q=2750631
The issue with SCOM 2012 Update Rollup 3 is that after downloading you’ll end up with a total of 41 CAB files. The large number of files is because they are for different components and in multiple languages. And what is even worse, is that the file names do not show which file is for which language.This script will extract all cab files to a subfolder and will then removes the non English ones. Below are some of the example files in Update Rollup 3 to give you an idea about the nondescriptive file names:
Deploying SCOM 2012 components and updates to them can be done in multiple ways: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh551142.aspx
Most of the work while updating will probably be updating the agents. Basically for SCOM 2012 there are 2 major ways to install agents:
With Update Rollup 3, it is now possible to leverage WSUS / Microsoft Update to deploy updates (not the inital agent) to all SCOM 2012 components. I predict this will probably become the preferred way of updating SCOM 2012 for most companies:
+ It does not require many ports on your firewall to be opened.
+ Better bandwidth management (local WSUS, BranchCache, BITS).
+ Auto detects components on systems (component updates are not forgotten).
+ Still in control of when which updates are deployed/approved.
+ Leverage existing patch/update management procedures and systems WSUS/SCCM (standardization).
– Initial agent installation cannot be performed using WSUS.
PS: Also check these great blog posts when deploying Update Rollup 3:
In a previous blog post I explained how to use PowerShell remoting to determine OpsMgr Components File Versions.
As an alternative you can also use a local PowerShell script. And what is even easier in my opinion, is creating an agent task. This means you can run the the script against multiple targets and show its result all from within the SCOM 2012 console.
The local PowerShell script can be found here. A management pack containing the agent task and the PowerShell script can be found here.
Based on internet info,these are the version numbers:
SCOM 2012 Cumulative Update 1 / Update Rollup 1 version = 7.0.8560.1021
SCOM 2012 Cumulative Update 2 / Update Rollup 2 version = 7.0.8560.1027
SCOM 2012 Cumulative Update 3 / Update Rollup 3 version = 7.0.8560.1036
SCOM 2012 SP1 beta = 7.0.8925.0
Thanks go out to Derek Har for his blog post that helped me to embed the PowerShell script in the SCOM 2012 management pack.
To give you an idea what the output looks like in SCOM 2012, here are some screenshots:
Bjorn_Tasks_Powershell-Get-SCOMfileversions_01
Bjorn_Tasks_Powershell-Get-SCOMfileversions_02
blog.bjornhouben.com 