This particular Deployment Guide is 674 pages long and like no other. It was published by the Microsoft Office System and Servers Team at Microsoft back in October 2012.
It is such a great guide and is packed full of information. Reading through the deployment guide, I discovered some neat little tricks and refreshed myself on some pretty important best practices which are always a good exercise.
The default interval for Windows Azure Active Directory Sync (DirSync) synchronisations is 3 hours. If for instance, your Active Directory has lots of changes you probably want to consider shortening the sync interval.
The schedule can be modified by changing the “Microsoft.Online.DirSync.Scheduler.exe.Config” configuration file. Before proceeding to make any changes to the sync interval you should evaluate how long it takes to complete synchronisation. You can do this by reviewing the application event log for entries that indicate when sync has started and completed.
To modify the configuration file open “C:\Program Files\Windows Azure Active Directory Sync\Microsoft.Online.DirSync.Scheduler.exe.Config” in Notepad. You will then need to modify the value of the “Synctimeinterval” key – the notation of this is Hours:Minutes:Seconds.
Microsoft.Online.DirSync.Scheduler.exe.Config
Save the configuration file and restart the “Windows Azure Active Directory Sync Service” Windows Service (via PowerShell Restart-Service MSOnlineSyncScheduler) to apply this change.
When configuring Windows Azure Active Directory Sync (or DirSync as it was previously known) it’s useful to be able to run various synchronisation tests. The default synchronisation schedule is 3 hours so unless you want to wait you will need to force a full synchronisation using PowerShell.
Start-OnlineCoexistenceSync cmdlet
To do this you need to load the Windows Azure Active Directory Sync PowerShell module and run a cmdlet. Start by navigating to “C:\Program Files\Windows Azure Active Directory Sync” in PowerShell and then run “.\DirSyncConfigShell.psc1” from this directory. This will launch a new PowerShell console with the Windows Azure Active Directory Sync PowerShell module loaded (Add-PSSnapin Coexistence-Configuration). Then to force a full synchronisation you need to run the Start-OnlineCoexistenceSync cmdlet.
You can verify that synchronisation has occurred by reviewing the application event log on the server running DirSync – there should be several items in the log such as “Directory Synchronization, Event ID – 114, Export cycle completed”. There is also a status of the Active Directory Synchronisation on the “Users and Groups” page in the Office 365 admin portal. There are also two other ways to see the status of synchronisation jobs which I will go into in more detail in a later post but these include using the Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) client and Fiddler web debugging proxy.
Office 365 Active Directory Sync status
You can create a shortcut to “C:\Program Files\Windows Azure Active Directory Sync\DirSyncConfigShell.psc1” on the desktop for ease of administration. I, however, take this one step further and create a shortcut to perform a synchronisation as well. Create a shortcut with the following target below.
If you need to check what version of SharePoint server your Office 365 tenant is running especially during the Office 365 and SharePoint Online service upgrade (aside from checking through the Admin Portal via https://portal.microsoftonline.com) then you can add the following /_vti_pvt/service.cnf to the end of your SharePoint site – as shown below.
The page will output two lines of text from which we can determine the version of the SharePoint servers. If the second row starts with 14 then you are running SharePoint 2010, if it starts with 15 then you are running SharePoint 2013.
After the service upgrade, you may be running SharePoint 2010 on SharePoint 2013 servers (technically known as 14 mode) until you upgrade your site collections to SharePoint 2013 (15 mode).
This one’s quick. There are a couple of ways to find out your SQL server version. Firstly the version is listed within the Object Explorer in the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. The second option which provides more detailed information is to run the following query.
select @@version
The version information is returned in the query results section at the bottom. Both examples of obtaining the SQL server version are shown in the image below.
Identifying Microsoft SQL Server version using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
On many occasion, I have been to conferences and on training where the presenter has done a demonstration and used a screen magnifying utility to enlarge part of the display. There are many utilities available that provide this functionality and are typically included with the accessibility option of most operating systems.
Zoom It working
Having asked many a presenter what they were used to magnify the screen, most pointed in the direction the Sysinternals utility ZoomIt which I have since used. More increasingly I am presenting and doing demonstrations on my Mac which leaves without such as useful utility.
After a short time reviewing various Apps available, I decided on Zoom It for Mac for a small price of £0.69 in the Mac App store. It sits nicely in the toolbar and allows you to customise the loupe size, zoom and shape through various key shortcuts or from the toolbar menu.
Zoom It toolbar menu
Zoom It Settings
Enhance your demonstrations and use a utility like either of the magnifying utilities I’ve mentioned – I sure am!
When I started my new job a few weeks ago I decided I was going to introduce some new tools and utilities to help myself and my colleagues be more productive. The first one I brought to their attention was Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) from Microsoft.
Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan)
I’ve known about this tool for almost a year now but it always surprises me how few administrators out there don’t know about this tool. It’s a must-have for any System Administrator using mstsc.exe or Remote Desktop to manage more than one server or computer!
RDCMan manages multiple remote desktop connections. It is useful for managing server labs where you need regular access to each machine such as automated check-in systems and data centres. It is similar to the built-in MMC Remote Desktops snap-in but more flexible.
Please also say a big thank you to Julian Burger the developer at Microsoft who wrote this awesome tool and David Zazzo for working to get it released! You can read about how David discovered Julian’s RDCMan tool within an internal Microsoft repository and worked to get it licensed for external distribution on the Exchange TechNet Blog.
