DNS Traffic Management Policies

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This awesome new Server 2016 feature can be used to create a DNS policy which responds to a query for the IP address of a web server with a different IP address based on the source subnet of the client.

Let’s take an example; we have ADFS configured in Azure using the following settings:

Hostname: sts.misstech.co.uk
Internal IP: 192.168.9.11
External IP: 57.119.128.179 (this is made up so don’t try and go there!)

There are 2 sites, London and Manchester. London has a VPN link to Azure, however Manchester has no route to Azure. Both sites are connected to each other and the Domain Controller is located in London.

This means that London users (on 192.168.10.0/24) can access ADFS, however Manchester users (on 192.168.11.0/24) cannot access ADFS using the internal IP. We need to route Manchester users to ADFS via the external ADFS IP, but how to do this when they are resolving DNS records via the same Domain Controller? Host files can do this but that is complex and doesn’t allow for mobility. Enter Traffic Management using Server 2016.

To do this, the following steps need to do performed.

·       First, add the subnets which you want to use for traffic management.

Add–DnsServerClientSubnet –Name “Manchester” –IPv4Subnet “192.168.11.0/24” –PassThru

·       Next, add the subnet associated zone. The zone must already exist for this command to work.

Add-DnsServerZoneScope -ZoneName “eacsdemo.online” -Name “Manchester” -PassThru

·       Add the DNS Resource Record

Add-DnsServerResourceRecord -ZoneName “eacsdemo.online” -A -Name “sts” -IPv4Address “52.169.178.129” -ZoneScope “Manchester” -PassThru

·       Add the Traffic Management Policy to route Manchester requests through to

Add-DnsServerQueryResolutionPolicy -Name “ManchesterPolicy” -Action ALLOW -ClientSubnet “eq,Manchester” -ZoneScope “Manchester,1” -ZoneName “eacsdemo.online” -PassThru

These policies are very versatile, allowing you to combine multiple parameters (using AND/OR) such as client subnet, protocol, or time of day to create complex policies which can help you direct clients to the correct location.

I’ll finish this post with a small tip; if you want to remove or get the policy, make sure you specify the zone name or a null value will be returned. For example:

Get-DnsServerQueryResolutionPolicy -ZoneName “misstech.co.uk” -PassThru

remove-DnsServerQueryResolutionPolicy -ZoneName “misstech.co.uk” -PassThru

 

Azure Classic to Resource Manager Migration – Validation failed

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I am starting to investigate the migration of resources from Azures Classic deployment mode into the shiny Azure Resource Manager mode.

The first step for me was to attempt to validate the VNET which I wanted to migrate to see if it was compatible. I ran the command listed on the following website (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-windows-ps-migration-classic-resource-manager/)

    Move-AzureVirtualNetwork -Validate -VirtualNetworkName $vnetName

As I expected (nothing is ever simple is it?!) I received an error as shown below. The problem was that the validationmessages shown was limited and didn’t really show me any detail. In my case all it showed me was the name of my VNET.

Validation failed.  Please see ValidationMessages for details

In order to get some more detailed information out of the cmdlet, I ended up saving the validation command to a variable and then calling the variable, as shown below:

$validate = Move-AzureVirtualNetwork -Validate -VirtualNetworkName $vnetName -Verbose

$validate.validationmessages

This gave me lots of detail and I discovered that I had typed the VNET name incorrectly. D’oh! I forgot that when you create a Classic VNET in the new portal, the actual name of the VNET is not what you see in the new portal. You need to have a look in the old manage.windowsazure.com portal to see the actual name.

Hopefully this helps some folk out there!

Azure RMS – File Classification Infrastructure Fail

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I’ve been doing a bit of work recently with Azure RMS and FCI (using FSRM) to protect files located on traditional file servers.

One issue I came across whilst following various pieces of guidance which I found online was related to file classification. When attempting to run my File Management Task I was seeing no results.

I attempted to run the RMS protection script manually from PowerShell ISE (called RMS-Protect-FCI.ps1 in my case) and this returned an error as follows:

RMSProtection module not loaded

I had followed all the instructions I had seen so far, and luckily this error is quite descriptive. All I ended up having to do was to install the RMS Protection Tool, which can be found here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=47256

It’s important to remember to install the pre-requisites for this too, as otherwise you will receive another error about failure to connect using bpostenantid. The key element I missed out was the RMS Client, found here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38396

Essentially I didn’t read the fine print and got lost in Powershell without installing the software I needed!

Some of the resources I used to configure this are listed below. All in all, FCI is a very powerful tool for protecting File Servers with RMS, but it has a lot of configuration steps and can appear (on the surface) very complex indeed!

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/information-protection/rms-client/configure-fci
https://technet.microsoft.com/library/hh847874.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/mt433202.aspx
http://simon-may.com/setup-azure-rms-file-protection-encryption-file-classification-infrastructure-fci-prem-file-servers/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/information-protection/deploy-use/configure-servers-rms-connector#configuring-a-file-server-for-file-classification-infrastructure-to-use-the-connector

 

 

 

Public Folder Migration Fail #2

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Another day, another Public Folder migration failure. This time, on testing your Public Folder migration to Office 365, they appear to be unavailable and are not visible in the Outlook client.

I always follow the wonderful guide provided by Microsoft on how to migrate your Public Folders from Exchange > Office 365 (I’m not being sarcastic, it is actually a good guide) available here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/dn874017(v=exchg.150).aspx

The last two times I have run through this process, I have attempted to test the PF Migration on a single user prior to going live for all users. Microsoft suggest the following command for doing this:

Set-Mailbox -Identity <Test User> -DefaultPublicFolderMailbox <Public Folder Mailbox Identity>

However since the Exchange 2016 wave of Office 365 has gone live, this command no longer appears to have the desired effect. What seems to happen is that because the -IsExcludedFromServingHierarchy parameter is set to $true, the command does not fully enable the Public Folders for that user.

In both situations, I have taken the plunge and enabled Office 365 Public Folders for all users by running:

Get-Mailbox -PublicFolder | Set-Mailbox -PublicFolder -IsExcludedFromServingHierarchy $false

The end result (after a little patience) is that Public Folders become available for all users. I’m not sure if this is a general bug or a result of the Exchange 2016 backend of Office 365, but I’d be interested to hear your experiences!

 

Public Folder Migration Fail

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The above title isn’t a surprise for anybody working in IT, but unusually for Public Folders, this one has a fairly simple fix!

The situation is thus; when attempting to complete a Public Folder migration to Office 365, you come across the following error:

Before finalizing the migration, it is necessary to lock down public folders on the legacy Exchange server (downtime required). Make sure public folder access is locked on the legacy Exchange server and then try to complete the batch again.

Public Folder migration error

The problem with this error is that you have already locked down Public Folders on the legacy Exchange Server by running:

Set-OrganizationConfig -PublicFoldersLockedForMigration:$true

So what’s an admin to do when they’ve already run the command they are being told needs to be run?! Some googling may lead you to the idea of rebooting the server, or restarting the Information Store. Both of these will work, but a much simpler solution is simply to dismount the Public Folder database/s, and then mount them. The PFs are already locked so are unavailable to the users so there is no negative impact of doing this.

TL;DR – turn it off, and turn it on again.

 

How many users are in my AD group?

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Nice simple three liner here. I often want to check how many users are in a particular group, and find it a bit annoying that ADUC doesn’t show this in the Group Properties. So to find out, run this from a Powershell window on a DC:

Import-Module ActiveDirectory
$group = Get-ADGroupMember "group name" -recursive | Select-Object name
$group.count

The second line puts all the members into a variable called $group, and if you didn’t already know, putting .count after any variable will enumerate the objects in that variable 🙂

Happy days!

Add X500/X400/SMTP address for a list of users

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This process can be reused to add (not overwrite, just append) any type of email address to a list of users. All you need is a simple CSV file with 2 rows, SamAccountName and the new email address. The example I’ve used is an X500 address, but this could be X400: or SMTP. Remember when adding an SMTP address, case sensitivity matters!

smtp:bruce.wayne@wayneenterprises.co.uk = secondary email alias
SMTP:batman@batcave.co.uk = primary email address

SAM EMAIL
brucewa X500:/O=WAYNE ENTERPRISES/OU=First Administrative Group/cn=Recipients/cn=brucewa
harleyqu X500:/O=WAYNE ENTERPRISES/OU=First Administrative Group/cn=Recipients/cn=harleyqu
poisoniv X500:/O=WAYNE ENTERPRISES/OU=First Administrative Group/cn=Recipients/cn=poisoniv

Once you have your lovely CSV file in a location on the Exchange server, crack open the Exchange Management Shell and run this command:

Import-Csv C:\migration\x500.csv | ForEach-Object{
  $name = $_.SAM
  $proxy = $_.email
  Set-Mailbox -Identity $name -EmailAddresses @{add= $proxy}
}

Tada!