Key Managment Service on Windows 2008 R2

Some may not know that Key Managment Service is already installed with Windows 2008 and 2008 R2. All you have to do is activate your server with your key. This can be confusing because if you download the package from Microsoft meant for 2003 server versions, you will receive the error "There is not enough storage space to complete the command". Horrible error as it points you in all the wrong directions!

Just drop to the cmd and hit 'slmgr' and the options will display for you on screen... That simple!

Office Communication Server - Stress you can handle!

I finally got Office Communications Server 2007 R2 up and running after fiddling around with it for 3 days! I am super excited- the public IM connectivity is functioning just as it was before the upgrade / domain move-

I really dig the new management abilities Microsoft built into OCS 2007 R2. You have an easier to use, more granular ability to control users and the behavior of the pool.. Please take note, however, you DO need to install the management tools on a domain computer in order to provision users. The management tools are a seperate install all together from the core / base roles of operation.

I would have completed this in a day if it was not for a tiny oversight I made on the core installation. MAKE SURE you add the local computer name to the Subject Alternate Name on the certificate for the Pool Cert. My Edge and Front End were not connecting until I regenerated the certificate with the computer name in the SAN.. If it was not for that, the 2 days off and on of troubleshooting would have been non-existent..

Exchange 2010, Administrator Accounts and ActiveSync

Apparently there is an issue with Exchange 2010 and Administrative accounts. When you are an admin in AD it will remove the inheritable permissions from your account. When you do not have inherited permissions, Exchange is unable to write meta-data to your account. This created a mind boggling issue for me when I updated to Exchange 2010 and tried to attach my phone for over the air activesync. I kept recieving error 0x85010014, regardless of what I tried to fix the issue - including a phone wipe!

Once I removed my account from the domain admins and allowed my user object to inherit parent permissions, my phone joined up and sync'd immediatly!

Site to Site VPN with Cisco PIX and Pfsense

A quick note that when creating a pfsense to cisco pix site to site vpn tunnel, main mode should be used opposed to aggressive. After this small change, ping a host on the other side of the tunnel and it should come right up!