Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2

Microsoft System Center is one of the three pillars of Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision that will transform the traditional datacenter environment, help businesses unlock insights in data stored anywhere, enable the development of a wide range of modern business applications, and empower IT to support users who work anywhere while being able to manage any device in a secure and consistent way. The other two pillars of the Cloud OS are, of course, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Azure, and Microsoft Press has recently released free Introducing books on these platforms as well.

The free eBook is available for download from the following link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2013/12/16/free-ebook-introducing-microsoft-system-center-2012-r2.aspx

Microsoft IT-Camp on Hyper-V and Systemcenter

Friday the 13th has an attitude to some people, for me actually it was an interesting day. Attending the Microsoft IT-Camp in Walldorf, Germany there where a lot of interesting information about System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Hyper-V, SMB 3.0 and Azure Pack. So here are just a few impressions.

Removing a corrupted search service from SharePoint 2010

Removing the SharePoint 2010 Search Service can become quite a pain. Especially when the removal hasn’t work out the way it should have. So what do you do when the removal failed and your attempts to reinstall the search service are failing as well? I suffered from the same pains and therefor I’ll go thru the step I took to get my search service back online in this blog article.

The Retro Powershell - Looking good in 8-Bit | Part 1

I wrote a little script that, when placed in your PowerShell Profile, will print a message similar to the old boot message you got from your breadbox.

Like a lot of people out there I started my IT career with a Commodore 64. It is still today a class of its own and amazing to see what people are capable to do with this incredible machine. Not only was the Commodore64 the best selling home computer of all times, it still has a huge fan base today. So why not get back the good old feeling back into your PowerShell?

Help! My ULS Logs are empty. What shall I do?

A few weeks ago we added a new dedicated application server to an existing farm. Everything seemed fine so far until a coworker called and informed me that the ULS wasn’t writing information to the log files. In fact the files were created but in the end no content was written to them.

After a short investigation in the Windows Event Logs I find a lot of these entries:

Privacy settings in SharePoint

Not only since it became clear to the public how deep the NSA digs the rabbit hole, privacy has always been a great issue in Germany. There is even a law that makes it mandatory for enterprises to assign personnel to make sure the company doesn’t violate privacy laws.

As an IT-Professional in Germany you therefor must meet the requirements to implement SharePoint in a manner that complies with these privacy laws. Keeping track of all the settings can be painful. Lucky for us, Microsoft has published an article on TechNet how to manage the most important privacy features in SharePoint.

TechNet article: Managing privacy (SharePoint Server 2010)

Alternate Access Mapping (AAM) explained in less than 5 minutes

Do you have trouble to understand how Alternate Access Mapping (AAM) works? Well, here's a great YouTube video from LessThan5Min that explains just that in a very easy way. Check it out.

Why should you prefer A-records over CName in SharePoint

You might have heard that somebody was suggestion to use A-records for DNS instead of CName for your SharePoint installation. This question is often asked to me when I’m in class.

The reason for this is an authentication issue you might experience when using Kerberos and SharePoint. And since SharePoint 2013, were NTLM is deprecated, this issue might hit you when planning an update of your farm. More details can be found in the following Technet article: