DirectAccess, Essentials 2012 and the mystery of DNS Failures

August 30, 2013 by 3 Comments

I am writing this post in order to try and highlight the issues people are having with DA, and suggest a course of action. Rather than simply reply to comments about various bits not working.

It was October last year when i posted my process for enabling DA on Essentials 2012, and at the time i was really excited about the new OS and the possibilities that having a supported DA configuration for SMB would bring. If you are not on-board with DA and what it can bring your customers – you need to consider it. Just like PowerShell i think DA is a really important technology for people to be picking up and deploying for small businesses.

Unfortunately, it is not working as smoothly as i had hoped, and, Microsofts response so far has not been ideal and has sapped a lot of the passion i had for this product.

Read more of this post

Filed under Essentials, General, WSE Tagged with , , ,

Unravelling the mystery of Client DNS with Essentials family Servers

June 17, 2013 by 31 Comments

Logo1Probably the best title for a blog post ever right? Having seen and read about a lot of people struggling with DNS resolution problems with their clients on Essentials (2011/2012) networks, and also some dubious advice being given out  for how to ‘resolve’ these problems i thought i would try and get into some deep level explanation of how, and why Essentials does what it does.

Read more of this post

Filed under Essentials, General, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with , , , , ,

Update Rollup 2 for Windows Server 2012 Essentials

June 13, 2013 by 1 Comment

Logo1You may have seen that Microsoft have released Update Rollup 2 for Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

The update resolves some issues documented in the KB here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2824160

If you deployed the beta of UR2 you will need to remove that before you install the full version.

If your client computers show offline after installing this update you may need to reboot the server and the clients.

Filed under Essentials, General, WSE Tagged with , ,

Enabling WSUS on Windows Server 2012 Essentials

May 31, 2013 by 22 Comments

metroSkipping over the usual boring intro on the whys and wherefores of a subject i write about i thought id just crack on and tell you how to get this done.

First on your Essentials Server you will need to install this hotfix. After you install this hotfix the WSUS Role is available.

That is correct, WSUS is a ROLE not something you need to download as it was previously.

Read more of this post

Filed under Essentials, General, PowerShell, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with , ,

Windows Server 2012 Essentials : Media Streaming Problems?

May 3, 2013 by 2 Comments

Lumia 820I recently got myself a Nokia Lumia 820, and one of the benefits of having this Windows phone, (apart from looking like the coolest kid in school) is that i get to use the very funky My Server App. This App is nothing new of course, and SBS Essentials (and lest we forget, Home Server) also had similar Apps, very useful they are too, if like me, you are completely unable to function unless you have access to your server, from everywhere. The 2012 Era App has some differences over the 2011 version, but my post today is not really about the App itself. I was just using the App as a nice way to show off about my new phone.

So, to business. I was reading a forum question about Media Streaming, and how to go about troubleshooting.

Read more of this post

Filed under Essentials, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with , , , , , ,

Windows Server 2012 Essentials : After Transmog SILSVC Error

May 2, 2013 by 5 Comments

TransmogBack in November, a chap in the Forum had dipped his toe into the world of Transmogging, and encountered an error that was being thrown up in the logs after the process had completed.

The SILSVC should be started automatically but it is stopped.

Read more of this post

Filed under Essentials, General, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with , , , ,

Windows Server 2012 Essentials, An Error prevented the Dashboard from opening

April 29, 2013 by 37 Comments

Windows Server 2012 Essentials LogoThis is an issue that has caught me out once or twice in my testing and general messing about with Essentials over the last age, and also someone in the forum just posted a question along these lines so i thought it worth a post. I have been struggling with a bit of ‘writers block’* recently and this seemed to be something easy to get back into blogging again with.

* I do not consider myself to be a writer, merely a lazy admin who had nothing interesting to say.

Read more of this post

Filed under Essentials, PowerShell, SSL, WSE Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →