Active Directory: Best Practices Workbook

This is a checklist for technicians performing Active Directory assessments. It is broken down by category and best practice. Some items listed are not really a best practice, but rather something which you may find in an environment which should be rectified (as part of an audit perhaps).

Exchange 2010: Changing an invalid DNS suffixed server

I ran into an interesting Exchange 2010/2007 co-existence issue today. After a new Exchange 2010 (all-in-one) server was introduced into the environment traffic would only flow from the 2010 server to the 2007 hub/cas server and not the other way around. The mail queues stated the last error to be

“Initial error: 451 4.4.0 dns query failed. The error was: SMTPsend.dns.nonexistentdomain; nonexistent”

Exchange 2010 One-liner: Get All Network Interface Information

Here are a few quick powershell one-liners to get all the network interface information in your exchange environment:

$ExchServers=(Get-ExchangeServer); @(foreach ($Srv in $ExchServers) {Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -Filter IPEnabled=TRUE -ComputerName $Srv.Name | select @{Name="Server";Expression={$Srv.Name}},@{Name="DNS Host Name";Expression={$_.DNSHostName}},@{Name="Server Role";Expression={$Srv.ServerRole}},Description,@{Name="IP Address";Expression={$_.IPAddress}},@{Name="IP Subnet";Expression={$_.IPSubnet}},@{Name="Default Gateway";Expression={$_.DefaultIPGateway}},@{Name="Mac Address";Expression={$_.MacAddress}},@{Name="DNS Suffix Search Order";Expression={$_.DNSDomainSuffixSearchOrder}},@{Name="DNS Server Search Order";Expression={$_.DNSServerSearchOrder}},FullDNSRegistrationEnabled}) |Export-Csv -NoTypeInformation "C:\Temp\Exchange-network.csv"

If you just want interface information for Exchange 2010 servers:

$ExchServers=(Get-ExchangeServer | where {$_.ServerRole -ne "None"}); @(foreach ($Srv in $ExchServers) {Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -Filter IPEnabled=TRUE -ComputerName $Srv.Name | select @{Name="Server";Expression={$Srv.Name}},@{Name="DNS Host Name";Expression={$_.DNSHostName}},@{Name="Server Role";Expression={$Srv.ServerRole}},Description,@{Name="IP Address";Expression={$_.IPAddress}},@{Name="IP Subnet";Expression={$_.IPSubnet}},@{Name="Default Gateway";Expression={$_.DefaultIPGateway}},@{Name="Mac Address";Expression={$_.MacAddress}},@{Name="DNS Suffix Search Order";Expression={$_.DNSDomainSuffixSearchOrder}},@{Name="DNS Server Search Order";Expression={$_.DNSServerSearchOrder}},FullDNSRegistrationEnabled}) |Export-Csv -NoTypeInformation "C:\Temp\Exchange2010-network.csv"

Exchange 2010: A Few More Migration Tips

Here are a few more notes from the field to consider when you are planning your Exchange 2010 deployment and migration. Some of these items are good to know even after you have completed your migration and may help with overall system stability.

Active Directory: Essential Tools

During my many years of working with active directory I’ve used several tools. Here are some of the best that I’ve used which are not baked into windows. Good thing about this list is that most of these tools are fee! Another bonus is that most of the information gathering tools don’t require elevated rights as, by default, domain users have read-only access to active directory.