Right-clicking on the Task Manager’s network throughput graph can give you some nice details on your traffic. This will work on Windows 8, 8.1 and the equivalent Server editions 2012 and 2012 R2. Note that the statistics are only gathered while the Task Manager process is running and are not cumulative. For cumulative results, you can use the Get-NetAdapterStatistics | fl cmdlet.

Say you’re trying to speed up your VM deployments and create a template with Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2, and in the process to clean up some valuable HD space you run something like the following: Get-WindowsFeature | Where-Object -FilterScript { $_.Installed -Eq $FALSE } | Uninstall-WindowsFeature –Remove What that’ll do is remove the binaries off any uninstalled feature and save you a few gigs… BUT you will need the media, or the sources in a share, any time you want to install a feature, which is fine… as long as your template does not get updated. The moment you run Windows Update and go through the motions, your media will no longer work if you want to add features, and installations will fail with something like this: ...

After applying Cumulative Update packages to Lync 2010 or 2013 topologies, there is a required step to update the back-end databases and the Central Management Store (CMS). If you forget because you’re either lazy or rushed, you’ll start noticing some things don’t work as expected, like the Call Park Service and the Response Group Service. Here’s an indication that your DB needs to be upgraded: Event ID 31059 by the LS Call Park Service clearly tells us to Upgrade the databse to CU1. See below for the cmdlets to run, but please refer to Microsoft’s official upgrade documentation for some important considerations: ...

In the days of work anywhere, at any time, from any device, having a reliable bluetooth headset that will integrate with Microsoft Lync and pair with a multitude of devices is a must. The Plantronics Voyager Legend UC is now part of my mobile office and is always in my backpack. Here are the things I love about it: It integrates beautifully into Lync. You can pick up and hang up calls with a single press of a button on the headset. Also, if you press the “mute” button on your headset, it mutes your Lync client so people are aware of your status when in conferences. This integration requires the use of the BT dongle (and of course it is included). Voice and build quality is outstanding for a bluetooth headset, and can play A2DP audio so you can listen to podcasts or music while in between calls. The noise cancelling is excellent and removes most background noise. Tested battery life is about 5 hours if you’re constantly talking (or listening over A2DP), and the headset can charge all the way to 100% in about 30 minutes. Zero effort in PC pairing. Plug in the dongle and you’re set. I have never had a problem with pairing to either cell phone or BT dongle. Can pair with a PC (dongle) and two other Bluetooth devices at the same time. You can pair your Lync client on your laptop and have your smartphone and tablet also paired, simultaneously, with the ability to seamlessly pick up and switch calls. Voice commands to “answer”, “ignore” or “call John Doe” built into the headset make it easy to handle calls without touching the headset, and sensors within enable you to automatically answer calls simply by putting the headset on your ear. The sensors are accurate enough to not trigger if you have the headset in your pocket. The UC edition of the headset comes with a few accessories that the regular non-UC edition lacks, like a nice little docking station for your desk, a portable charge cable which doubles as a micro-USB cable, and probably best of all, a case that holds the BT dongle and the headset with a built-in battery that can give you up to 14 hours of additional talk time! ...

While doing an integration with a Cisco CallManager cluster that was on version 6.1, I realized why Microsoft only supports CUCM 7.0 and above. Earlier versions do not handle E.164 and so calls through the SIP trunk into the Lync mediation pool would not have the nice “+” on the SIP Invites. Fortunately, Lync 2013 lets you do inbound and outbound translations to overcome these situations, although you’d still be running on an unsupported Voice gateway. ...

Lync uses a feature called Comfort Noise that reduces network traffic in moments of silence, but still allows the voice gateways to generate some white noise to avoid the “hello? are you still there?” conversations. If your gateway is not configured to support Comfort Noise, then Lync will throw Event ID 25073 on your calls, saying The Mediation Server service has received a call that does not support comfort noise […] The Trunk does not support comfort noise. ...

Recently I upgraded my single “LAMP” setup with two Apache front-ends, and two MySQL mirrored backends. When moving Wordpress to the new web servers I came across an issue with MySQL connections. The /var/log/audit/audit.log shows: type= AVC msg=audit(1401916568.434:533): avc: denied { name_connect } for pid=31254 comm=“httpd” dest=3306 scontext=system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0 tcontext=system_u:object_r: mysqld_port_t:s0 tclass=tcp_socket type=SYSCALL msg=audit(1401916568.434:533): arch=c000003e syscall=42 success=no exit=-13 a0=10 a1=7fffdda48c20 a2=10 a3=10 items=0 ppid=1685 pid=31254 auid=4294967295 uid=48 gid=48 euid=48 suid=48 fsuid=48 egid=48 sgid=48 fsgid=48 tty=(none) ses=4294967295 comm=“httpd” exe="/usr/sbin/httpd" subj=system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0 key=(null) ...

If you’re missing the nice little graph and metrics that show in your Task Manager’s Performance tab on Windows 8 and 8.1, but not on 2012 and 2012 R2, all you have to do is run: diskperf -Y Before: After:

For a while now I’ve had a server rack hosting my lab environment, but it’s always been exposed to bad temperature conditions. Since moving to our own house the rack has been sitting in the attached garage, where it gets up to 90F in the summer and as low as 20F in the winter. So far all equipment in the rack survived the abuse, but it was difficult to work on stuff during extreme weather, it meant either freezing or sweating during seasons. And that’s not all, the only electrical circuit that went to the garage also ran the outside lights, kitchen and living room outlets, and would trip at least once a week. ...

If you are using Apache as the reverse proxy for Lync, you may experience some issues when signing in using the mobile app (I only tested iOS). Things to look for are: 50/50 chance in sign-ins (first fails, second works, as shown below) Calls (audio or video) fail to establish Signing out of the application produces an error as shown below To resolve, look for the DefaultType directive in your httpd.conf. If it’s set to text/plain, change it to None and reload Apache config. The line should read: ...