Use Group Based Licensing to Activate Office 365 Users

The Story

I got a request to place users into Security Groups for management purposes, The client have already users active but many of those users have left the work place and still have E3 or E1 Licenses which they should not have since this is pricey licenses and backing up users details is the easiest and most cost effective way of handling this.

So, To start (Prerequisites):

The Group based licensing management is a new feature, Was introduced in 2019 and not many people know that it is there however, This feature doesn’t come for free as you know (Since it’s Microsoft) and you must have a license for it or at least have users with E3 licensing model. So the requirements are:

  • – Azure AD Premium P1 or Higher
  • – Office 365 E3 or Higher.
  • – EMS or Higher.

How does it work?

In order for you to get this to work  you need to make sure you have planned from where you want to manage those groups and their licenses, Online? Or On-Premises?

IF Online

If you’re going to do this online, then you need to create a group for each Licensing Model which represents the intended License and its users e.g. Office365-E1 is going to be created as a security group and dedicated to E1 License users.

Office365-E3 will also be created the same way and users of License type E3 will be added to it.

If On-Premises

If you’re going to manage those groups on-premises, Then you must have ADConnect (Azure AD Sync) tool to sync those groups after creating them.

In my case I have created those groups in the following manner:

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After creating those groups, You will need to sync them to Office 365 using ADConnect. To force this to sync immediately fire up Powershell on Azure Connect Server and type

Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType delta

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What If I have users already assigned with License?

If you have users already assigned licenses and want to manage them using Group Based licensing then you’re going to have to get a list of all your users with their Licenses information into a CSV file and Import those users to the groups you created base on the license they have.

I created a PowerShell that would match user’s names and based on the license mentioned in the CSV file would add them to the relevant group but first you need to export Users from Office 365.

Export Users and their license from Office 365

First of all we’ll connect to Office 365 MSOL Service using Online Powershell

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Get-MsolUser -All |Where {$_.IsLicensed -eq $true } |Select DisplayName,UsageLocation,@{n="Licenses Type";e={$_.Licenses.AccountSKUid}},SignInName,UserPrincipalName,@{n="ProxyAddresses";e={$_.ProxyAddresses}}| Export-csv -Path C:ExportlicenseUsage.csv -notype

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So this is how my CSV look right after I exported the users, We need to do some tuning on this CSV file to clean it and get it ready for our PowerShell.

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There are total of 6 columns in this folder, If for whatever reason you wanted to use the ProxyAddress to distinguish users feel free to keep them in the script but in my case I didn’t need them so I deleted the entire column.

So I will keep the following (Remove Spacing between License Type)

  • DisplayName
  • UsageLocation
  • LicenseType
  • SignInName
  • UserPrincipalName

The Value of the License Type is usually formatted like this “TenantName: License” and in order to make this column useful I am going to remove the Tenant name from all the cells.

Find and Replace can easily remove and clean these values for you.

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After cleaning the column, this is how it looks

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This should be useful for us now along with the PowerShell to add the users to their relevant groups.

On Active Directory from an elevated PowerShell

Run PowerShell ISE  from a privileged account and copy + paste this script in ISE,

$ImportedUsers = Import-csv "C:\Users\AD\Desktop\ExportlicenseUsage.csv"

Foreach ($ImportedUser in $ImportedUsers){
$License = $ImportedUser.LicensesType
$E3 = "E3-Office365"
$E1 = "E1-Office365"
$EMS = "EMS-Office365"
$Sam = $ImportedUser.SamAccountName
$ImportedUPN = $ImportedUser.UserPrincipalName

$AllUsers = Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties *
Foreach ($User in $AllUsers)
{
$UPN = $User.UserPrincipalName

if($user.UserPrincipalName -eq $ImportedUPN -and $License -match "EMS")
{
Add-ADGroupMember -Identity $EMS -Members $Sam
Write-Host $($UPN) "User has EMS License and has been added to the Group EMS" -ForegroundColor DarkGreen -BackgroundColor White
}
ElseIf ($user.UserPrincipalName -eq $ImportedUPN -and $License -Contains "STANDARDPACK")
{
Add-ADGroupMember -Identity $E1 -Members $Sam
Write-Host $($UPN) "User has E1 License and has been added to the Group E1" -ForegroundColor black -BackgroundColor green
}
ElseIf ($user.UserPrincipalName -eq $ImportedUPN -and $License -Contains "ENTERPRISEPACK")
{
Add-ADGroupMember -Identity $E3 -Members $Sam
Write-Host $($UPN) "User has E3 License and has been added to the Group E3" -ForegroundColor Blue -BackgroundColor White
}
}
}

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Enabling Group Based License from Azure Portal

After this script finishes, I can open Azure Portal

From Azure Active Directory > Licenses > All Products

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I will choose the license which I want to assign to a group of which I have created on my on-premises AD

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Click on the License (Office 365 E1)  and choose Assign from top menu

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Make sure you select assignment options and customize the license according to the products you want your group members to use then click on Users and Groups and select the relevant Group which you’ve created (In my case it’s E1-Office365)

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Here, The group has been assigned

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Click assign and you should be done

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We will do the same for E3 Users

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NOTE

From now on, Removing any user from this group will revoke their license and any service connected to it, You must be very careful when removing users from this group.

Microsoft has done great job covering this thoroughly and in a great detail including Scripts to be able to do many things like grabbing users who have an inherited license from a group or manually assigned. I am writing down the references if you’re more curious into these.

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/users-groups-roles/licensing-groups-assign

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/users-groups-roles/licensing-ps-examples

Upgrade FRS (File Replication Service) to DFSR (Distributed File System Replication) Guide through

Upgrade FRS to DFSR:

You might be searching on how to do this due to many reasons, Migrating your DCs to Windows 2016 or Windows 2019, The steps to do this type of migration is pretty easy and straightforward.

First Let’s explain a bit about what does FRS and DFSR do and what is the difference?

Windows Server 2003 and 2003 R2 uses File Replication Service (FRS) to replicate SYSVOL folder content to other domain controllers.

SYSVOL is a folder shared by domain controller to hold its logon scripts, group policies and other items related to AD.

All the domain controllers in the network will replicate the content of SYSVOL folder. The default path for SYSVOL folder is %SystemRoot%\SYSVOL. This folder path can be defined when you install the active directory.

How does DFS Works?

In Windows server 2008 and later Active Directory uses Distributed File System (DFS) for the replication.  DFS Replication uses a compression algorithm known as remote differential compression (RDC). RDC detects changes to the data in a file and enables DFS Replication to replicate only the changed file blocks instead of the entire file.

Although FRS has been deprecated Since Windows server 2008 most people still looking to migrate to latest version.

Migration Starts Here

In this guide, I am going to explain how to do this kind of migration step by step.

I am going to run the migration on Windows 2008 R2 Servers. however the process is exactly the same on Windows 2012 R2.

To start, I need to check the service console to see which services are running the replication. From run type services.msc and enter

As you can see there, File Replication Service is running

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In the same manner DFS service is also started and functioning, But that doesn’t mean that RFS is not being used.

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Health Check

Before starting any migration, I prefer to do a check on Eventviewer just to make sure nothing critical is being reported. In the same way I would like to see if there any warning being reported.
Below you can see errors are being reported from File Replication Service by the Domain Controller SRV01, So the time is convenient to start this kind of migration as this would fix the errors being reported.

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Prerequirements:

The first part of the process for migrating SYSVOL replication from File Replication Service (FRS) to Distributed File System (DFS) Replication is to raise the functional level of the domain to Windows Server 2008 and to set the global migration state to Prepared.

Make sure your Domain Function Level is raised to 2008 at least for this process to work.

Migration:

To start migration, Run Powershell as an administrator from the DC And type the following command to prepare DCs for the migration.

dfsrmig /getglobalstate

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Preparing to migrate

dfsrmig /setglobalstate 1

When this is done, you might have to wait sometime (5 mins or less for small environments). When done waiting type dfsrmig /getglobalstate to verify that the global migration state is Prepared. The following output appears if the global migration state is Prepared.

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You will be able to see an event ID 8014 showing you the success of this command.  Which means you can move to the next stage.

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Migrate the domain to the Redirected state

From a command prompt or PowerShell window on a writeable domain controller (not a read-only domain controller) in the domain that you want to migrate, type dfsrmig /setglobalstate 2 to set the global migration state to Redirected.

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2. Type dfsrmig /getglobalstate to verify that the global migration state is Redirected. The following output appears if the global migration state is Redirected.

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After doing this, Checking event viewer you can see event ID 8017 showing you the current state, in my case it’s showing DFSR has successfully Migrated the DC to “Redirected” state. so it means we are good to go to the next step.

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Migrating to the Eliminated State

Log on to a writeable domain controller (if you are not logged on already).

Open a command prompt window and then type dfsrmig /setglobalstate 3 to set the global migration state to Eliminated.

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2. At a command prompt, type dfsrmig /getmigrationstate to verify that all the domain controllers are at the Redirected state. The following output appears when all domain controllers are at the Redirected state.

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In the event viewer you can see the state of the DCs reporting that DC will now migrate to the “Eliminated” state. with event ID 8018

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Once everything is finished, You will be able to confirm by two things, First on the Service console the File Replication Service should be disabled since it’s no longer going to be used.

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Second thing is by using Command line or Powershel, Type Net Share an you can see the new Shares being published with new names “Sysvol_DFSR”.

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Ref:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/dfs-replication/migrate-sysvol-to-dfsr

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win7appqual/file-replication-service–frs–is-deprecated-in-windows-server-2008-r2

How to Sync Cloud User to On-premises AD ?

The Story:

I have got this client who constantly keeps on making the mistake of create user from Cloud and provision them with a license in an Exchange Hybrid environment.

Although this is not difficult to fix but it’s not the recommended approach when creating a new user especially in a Hybrid environment since Exchange on-premises won’t recognize this user and most likely will consider any incoming emails from it as spoof or spam.

How to Create a Cloud user from Exchange On-premises?

From Exchange on-premises ECP Admin panel you have the option to directly create user on-cloud which will also create a user object on on-premises AD.

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Second option – Using Powershell

It’s not that much different than the Web UI option but it’s just for people who prefer using PowerShell than GUI

Enable-RemoteMailbox –Identity User –RemoteRoutingAddress user@yourTenant.mail.onmicrosoft.com

The reason to follow those two methods is due to the need of Exchange on-premises being aware of each of those users so mail flow between Exchange on-premises and Online would not get affected and route this users mail to the wrong place or flag it as spammed or spoof …etc.

The Real Question now is: How to Sync Cloud User to On-premises AD ?

If by mistake we created a user on Cloud (Office 365) and we forgot to create an AD User for this account, that user might already have started using his account on Office 365 (Sharepoint, Exchange, Teams) etc.

There also might be the intention of moving users from Cloud to On-premises Exchange in case the company wanted to decrease their spending on cloud users and in this case when Migrating a cloud user to on-premises you will get the following errors:

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test3@domain.com

Status: Failed

test3@domain.com Skipped item details

User status

Data migrated:

Migration rate:

Last successful sync date:

Error: MigrationPermanentException: Cannot find a recipient that has mailbox GUID ‎’03c9764e-8b8e-4f33-94d1-ef098c4de656‎’. –> Cannot find a recipient that has mailbox GUID ‎’03c9764e-8b8e-4f33-94d1-ef098c4de656‎’.

So how do we overcome this situation since syncing a user might require you to delete the cloud user and recreate it on AD?

Solution:

To sync the user from the Cloud to on-premises you will need to follow these steps :

1- Create an on-premises Mailbox where the following attributes would be matching the cloud user

  • UserPrincipalname
  • ProxyAddresses
  • SamAccountName
  • Alias

2- The Location of the OU where the On-premises user is going to be created must be provisioned by ADConnect (Azure AD Connect)

You can look which of these OU are provisioned by Starting AD Connect Sync Manager

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By verifying the user you created in the AD is in the right OU, You can now start AD Sync from PowerShell to speed up the process.

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Below, You can see the user has been successfully synchronized to the cloud without any issue.

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Now we’ll see it from the portal to confirm the user is synced with AD

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Depending on the Source anchor being used in ADConnect there might be a GUID conflict or not, You will get an error similar to when trying to migrate the user in the beginning however you can solve this by replacing the cloud user’s GUID (ImmutableID) with the on-premises user which will force the user to merge with the On-prem user.

Let’s confirm in our case if the user on-cloud has a matching GUID with the one on-premises.

From AD run CMD or Powershell you can use the following command to get the user’s ImmutableID (ObjectGUID) .

ldifde -f c:\Test.txt -d “cn=Test3,DC=Domain,DC=com”

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From Notepad checking the user we just exported you can see the Immutable ID on AD for the User test3 is IkTni9mw7Ee4YefeGpz7IA==

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To be able to see the user on Office 365, We need to logon to MSOL through Exchange Online PowerShell

Connect to Exchange Online’s powershell using your Online ECP.

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Once you click on Configure this should download an executable file that will launch PowerShell Online which allows you to use the Modern Authentication (MFA) to use PowerShell safely.

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Connect-Msoluser will connect you to Office 365 and you’ll be able to get the user’s properties and see if the Immutable ID is matching to the user’s GUID.

Once you’re connect you can use the following cmdlet to get the user’s properties.

Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName test3@domain.com |fl DisplayName,ImmutableID

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You can see they are matching each other, In case there’s a conflict then you can simply set the online user’s Immutable ID to match the on-premises user’s ImmutableID.

Once done, Go and force ADConnect to sync the user and you’ll see if the problem has been resolved. The command for changing the Immutableid is as follows:

Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipleName test3@domain.com -ImmutableID IkTni9mw7Ee4YefeGpz7IA==

Ref:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2956029/migrationpermanentexception-cannot-find-a-recipient-that-has-mailbox-g

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/hybrid-deployment/create-cloud-based-archive

Move Request on Exchange 2019 (During failover) will warn you that it postponed due the move of DB

The Issue:

So while working on a new Exchange Migration project, I have encountered a weird issue where I could see users migration batch status complaining about being stalled due to (Big Funnel).

The error is showing as in the below screenshot and it doesn’t occur instantly after you start the migration of the user but right after it starts.

StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 68.47 MB (71,795,512 bytes) 20

User StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 37.2 MB (39,003,538 bytes) 20

User2 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 14.71 MB (15,421,154 bytes) 20

User3 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 44.2 MB (46,345,009 bytes) 20

User4 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 4.647 MB (4,872,404 bytes) 20

User5 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 14.47 MB (15,169,768 bytes) 20

User6  StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 171 MB (179,280,335 bytes) 20

User7 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 753.4 MB (789,980,880 bytes) 20

User8 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 18.35 MB (19,236,680 bytes) 20

User9 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 205.9 MB (215,951,208 bytes) 20

User10 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 166.2 MB (174,243,238 bytes) 20

User11 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel 13.81 MB (14,481,739 bytes) 20

User12 StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel

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Error Message

Request ‘domain.com/CompanyUSER/Region1/User1’ (b5dbf3ff-21a1-4ec1-a29c-15b794a17386) failed.

Error code: -2146233088

Connection to the Content Transformation Service has failed.

Context:

——–

Operation: IMapiFxProxy.ProcessRequest

OpCode: TransferBuffer

DataLength: 31680

——–

Operation: IMapiFxProxy.ProcessRequest

Operation: IMapiFxProxy.ProcessRequest

OperationSide: Target

b5dbf3ff-21a1-4ec1-a29c-15b794a17386 (Primary)

OpCode: TransferBuffer

DataLength: 31680

——–

Operation: IMailbox.ExportMessages

Operation: IMailbox.ExportMessages

OperationSide: Source

b5dbf3ff-21a1-4ec1-a29c-15b794a17386 (Primary)

Flags: SkipItemValidation

PropTags: (null)

——–

>>>> Scheduled WorkItems: EnumerateFolderMessages(P:29792,R:0,S:0,C:14); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:29807,R:0,S:0,C:24,Cnt=3); WriteFolderMessages(P:0,R:0,S:0,C:686); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:30554,R:0,S:2,C:55); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:30612,R:0,S:0,C:36,Cnt=2); WriteFolderMessages(P:3,R:0,S:0,C:301); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:30975,R:0,S:1,C:21); WriteFolderMessages(P:2,R:0,S:0,C:97); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:31094,R:0,S:0,C:18,Cnt=6); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:31279,R:0,S:0,C:19)

————–

The Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication service was unable to save changes to request.

Request: ‘9a444721-80e2-4cf8-8c81-8a3afe3dc775’ (bbc2c66e-857e-4ba6-8462-9d66da73d400)

Database: DB01

Error:

The request has been temporarily postponed because a database has failed over. The Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication service will attempt to continue processing the request when capacity becomes available on the new server hosting the database.

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Looking at the event ID number 1114 it mentions there seems to be an issue with the request seems there might be an issue with the mailbox being moved.

To dig deeper I am going to search some of the users reporting the same error by using their GUID

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The property “DisplayName” with value “User LastName” is invalid. The value can’t contain leading or trailing whitespace.

Solution: (For a single user)

To resolve the problem, I am going to remove the trailing space in the end of the display name. You can safely use the below Powershell script to solve this problem however, if you don’t trust yourself or you’re not familiar much with Powershell, You can try it on a lab or a single test user for instance.

Get-Mailbox -Identity USER | Foreach { Set-Mailbox -Identity $_.Identity -DisplayName $_.DisplayName.Trim() }

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Solution: (For all users)

Get-Mailbox | Foreach { Set-Mailbox -Identity $_.Identity -DisplayName $_.DisplayName.Trim() }

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Some relevant errors you might encounter as you’re moving users to Exchange 2019

Error code: -2146233088

Connection to the Content Transformation Service has failed.

Context:

——–

Operation: IMapiFxProxy.ProcessRequest

OpCode: TransferBuffer

DataLength: 31680

——–

Operation: IMapiFxProxy.ProcessRequest

Operation: IMapiFxProxy.ProcessRequest

OperationSide: Target

eecb073e-e694-4bbc-8652-54dc05a351ea (Primary)

OpCode: TransferBuffer

DataLength: 31680

——–

Operation: IMailbox.ExportMessages

Operation: IMailbox.ExportMessages

OperationSide: Source

eecb073e-e694-4bbc-8652-54dc05a351ea (Primary)

Flags: SkipItemValidation

PropTags: (null)

——–

>>>> Scheduled WorkItems: EnumerateFolderMessages(P:14014,R:0,S:0,C:13); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:14029,R:0,S:0,C:15,Cnt=2); WriteFolderMessages(P:1,R:0,S:0,C:132); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:14192,R:0,S:0,C:17); WriteFolderMessages(P:1,R:0,S:0,C:48); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:14259,R:0,S:0,C:12,Cnt=4); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:14320,R:0,S:1,C:15); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:14337,R:0,S:0,C:20); WriteFolderMessages(P:2,R:0,S:0,C:126); EnumerateFolderMessages(P:14485,R:0,S:0,C:30)

FREEPBX (ASTERISK NOW) WITH SKYPE FOR BUSINESS INTEGRATION

In my earliest article about Lync with Asterisk Now (FreePBX) I have written step by step guide on how to integrate Lync and FreePBX but since Skype for Business came out and the new version of Free PBX 13.0.84 I thought it would be good idea to try the integration between both of them ..

In Skype for Business server I am using the latest CU version 6.0.9319.0.

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The steps are very similar to the original article except with some UI changes.. 

In the following article I will be only showing the main steps which I have taken to integrate Skype for Business with FreePBX and will show the steps that have been done on the FreePBX side only not on the Skype for Business server as it is very similar to the original article.

Integration of AsteriskNow (FreePBX 13.0.84) and Skype for Business Server

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Creating Trunk for Skype for Business

First I will start by creating a new trunk for S4B and configure it. To configure the trunk (Skype for Business trunk for outgoing calls from Asterisk to S4B)

Click on Connectivity >>  Trunks and follow the below screenshots.

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Under the SIP settings (Outgoing) tab type the followinghost=10.10.124.120
transport=tcp
port=5060
insecure=very
type=friend
context=from-internal
promiscredir=yes
qualify=yes
canreinvite=yesIn the incoming tab make sure you delete everything and then submit changes


Configure the Trunk with an outbound route
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While creating the Outbound route, this route must be associated with the Trunk that I have created earlier in the trunk sequence as in the below screenshot..

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In my case the pattern NXXX should be enough as it’ll route the call to my S4B’s 4 extension users (5000)

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==========================================

Click on Connectivity >>> Inbound routes

Click add inbound route

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==========================================

Now the most important is the SIP settings

Configuring Asterisknow to accept TCP calls from S4B

From the Settings menu ->> click on Asterisk SIP settings then choose Chan SIP settings and do the same configuration like the one below

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Scroll further down to the “Advanced General Settings”

Enter the two “Other SIP settings” fields below and submit changes.

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Conference with 2 Extensions on Asterisk now with s4B

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I can call from S4B to Asterisk extensions and vice versa without any issues.

Search and Delete certain Items/Folders from a Mailbox

The Story

During a project of Hybrid migration from Exchange on-premises to Exchange online, I was almost about to finalize the project by moving the last remaining users mailboxes however had an interesting issue to deal with where a user was failing with the following error:

The Error after migration:

Error: MigrationPermanentException: Mailbox dumpster size 50.87 GB (54,620,074,576 bytes) exceeds target quota 30 GB –> Mailbox dumpster size 50.87 GB exceeds target quota.

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After some research it turned out that you can clean the dumpster using search-mailbox PowerShell cmdlet, Sync the user’s object with ADConnect and then continue the migration from the last failure.

To solve the issue, Go on your Exchange on-premises and launch Exchange Management shell

Solution applied:

First, Let’s see the user’s dumpster and recoverable items

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity “User” -FolderScope RecoverableItems | Format-Table Name,FolderPath,ItemsInFolder,FolderAndSubfolderSize

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To Delete the dumpster only use this

Delete dumpster only

Search-mailbox -identity User -SearchDumpsterOnly –DeleteContent

To delete a certain email with certain subject in the dumpster use the following:

Get-mailbox “user”| search-mailbox –searchquery “Subject:’*'” –DeleteContent –SearchDumpsterOnly

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The cmdlet will search and delete

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Reference:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/search-for-and-delete-messagesadmin-help

Deleting Old Skype for Business or Lync server from ADSI

The story

I had a project few weeks ago where my client wanted to install Skype for Business 2019 but had installed Lync before and removed the server without doing proper decommissioning which kept dirty records in AD database and had to be removed manually in order to make a new clean installation of Skype for Business 2019

To do so:

There are two days of doing so, One is using ADSIEdit and ADUC to remove Computer Objects and Users related attributes and Security Groups.

I normally would prefer PowerShell but since we can demonstrate both ways for people who like to work with GUI

Starting with GUI

Removing Legacy Lync server from the AD Schema

Prerequisites

  1. Using a domain or enterprise admin
  2. Access to the ADSIEdit.

Goal of removing Legacy Lync server from your AD environment.

  1. Preparing AD schema and domain for a new deployment after you improperly deleted Lync Servers without uninstalling them.
  2. Cleaning Users’ Lync related attributes for the new deployment.

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Step#1: Remove permissions

This step removes the original Lync permissions from the active director.

  1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers
  2. Right click on your top level domain being cleaned and select Properties
  3. From the Properties windows, select the Security tab.
  4. Remove all security users titled RTC*
    These are usually
    – RTCUniversalServerReadOnlyGroup
    – RTCUniversalUserReadOnlyGroup
    – RTCUniversalUniversalServices
    – RTCUniversalUserAdmins

From <http://blog.armgasys.com/?p=320>

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  1. Repeat the same steps for each of the following AD Folders and

    OUs
    NOTE: Not all RTC permissions will exist in each AD Folder or OU, but these three OUs do:
    – Domain Controllers
    – System
    – Users

Domain Controllers

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Systems

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Users

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Step#3: Additional AD cleanup

  1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers
  2. Drill down as follows
    [Your Domain] \ Program Data \ Distributed \ KeyMan
  3. Delete LyncCertificates
    NOTE: This may not exist in all scenarios.
  4. Drill down as follows
    [Your Domain] Users
  5. Delete all RTC* and CS* users created by Lync
    I.E. CSAdministrator, CSHelpDesk, RTCComponentUniversalServices, Etc.

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Deleting users from the User OU

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Deleting CS Users

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Step#4: Cleanup existing users

This steps resets Lync attributes for any domain users and contacts.

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The Second way: Using PowerShell

get-aduser -filter {msRTCSIP-PrimaryUserAddress -like “*”}|set-aduser -clear msRTCSIP-PrimaryUserAddress,msRTCSIP-PrimaryHomeServer,msRTCSIP-UserEnabled,msRTCSIP-OptionFlags,msRTCSIP-UserPolicies, msRTCSIP-DeploymentLocator, msRTCSIP-FederationEnabled, msRTCSIP-InternetAccessEnabled

Result:

Users attribute are clean and AD has nothing left over of Previous installation of Lync or Skype for Business .

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In Exchange MRSPROXY.SVC FAILED BECAUSE NO SERVICE WAS LISTENING ON THE SPECIFIED ENDPOINT.

Symptoms

In Exchange MRSPROXY.SVC FAILED BECAUSE NO SERVICE WAS LISTENING ON THE SPECIFIED ENDPOINT. THE REMOTE SERVER RETURNED AN ERROR: (404) NOT FOUND

Exchange 2010 / 2013

You get an error when you’re trying to setup Hybrid configuration between your Exchange On-premises or Online.

After I had one issue like this I did some research and used Fiddler / Wireshark to check for traffic I noticed that the traffic on the server is not encrypted and testing the Migration Server Availability was reporting that the MRS service was not listening on the supposed port which is 443.

CAUSE


This problem may occur if the ExchangeGUID property of the Exchange Online MailUser object does not match the ExchangeGUID property of the on-premises mailbox. To successfully move a mailbox, the value of the ExchangeGUID property in the Exchange Online mailbox and in the associated on-premises remote mailbox must match.

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In this case the solution was pretty easy, but still you’ll have to make a hard choice of choosing to place Exchange behind a load balancing with SSL Offloading on or not.

In my case I had to turn off the SSL Offloading on the Load balancer and that alone was enough to get this working.

Resolution:

Make sure that SSL Offloading is disabled on OWA/OA and Load balancer if there’s one.

Other resolutions:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3065754

Powershell script to audit users who authenticated against DC servers

The story:

I have got a request from a client asking to find out which server(s) is using which domain admin or a highly privileged account as a service.

To find this I already wrote a powershell script that does this, Search the non standard/(Domain only users) and show the services and name of the servers where those accounts are configured on utilizing Remote powershell to do so and the use of a Domain Admin user.

You can refer to this link to see this article by clicking here

Creating the script process:

The same client wanted to also know which of those accounts did authenticate and wanted to know from which server/Computer did the request originate from and to which DC did it go.

I have started thinking of the process of doing so by again utilizing remote PowerShell to check against certain security events on AD to check which user among the Domain admin members did authenticate.

After sometime and with the help of some forums I managed to get script ready which looks in all Domain Controllers for users that are members of the Domain Admin groups who triggered an event ID 4624 and from which Computer did this request came from.

The Script :

# Get domain admin user list
$DomainAdminList = Get-ADGroupMember -Identity 'Domain Admins'
# Get all Domain Controller names
$DomainControllers = Get-ADDomainController -Filter * | Sort-Object HostName
# EventID
$EventID = '4624'
#
# Get only last 24hrs
$Date = (Get-Date).AddDays(-3)
# Limit log event search for testing as this will take a LONG time on most domains
# For normal running, this will have to be set to zero
$MaxEvent = 100

# Loop through Dcs
$DALogEvents = $DomainControllers | ForEach-Object {
    $CurDC = $_.HostName
    Write-Host "`nSearching $CurDC logs..."
    Get-WinEvent  -ComputerName $CurDC -FilterHashtable @{Logname='Security';ID=$EventID;StartTime = $Date} -MaxEvents $MaxEvent |`
    Where-Object { $_.Properties[5].Value -in $DomainAdminList.SamAccountName } |`
    ForEach-Object {
        [pscustomobject]@{SourceIP = $_.Properties[18].Value; SamAccountName = $_.Properties[5].Value;Time = $_.TimeCreated;LogonEventLocation = $CurDC}
    }
}
$DALogEvents

How to run:

The Script must be run on DC with a privileged account in order to get the write results, The default time interval is set to 3 days but you can choose to increase that.

You can also change the default group where you want to search for members by changing Domain Admin groups to something else.

Screenshot of the result

Slow Migration – Office 365

The story:

In office 365 when you’re working on Exchange 2010,2013, 2016 or 2019 in a hybrid environment things might look easy but in a big enterprises where Internet security is something being taken into account very seriously. It might cause many issues that you don’t expect at all.

One of my clients whom I was doing Exchange Migration for had an issue with the Migration. The error was as follows:

Error occurs after Office 365 Exchange online connects to Exchange on-premises 2010 mailbox server

Error in Office 365

         : 20.

                                           27.04.2016 08:03:17 [DB3PR05MB0778] Transient error DataExportTransientExcep

                                           tion has occurred. The system will retry (2/1280).

                                           27.04.2016 08:04:53 [DB3PR05MB0778] The Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replicati

                                           on service ‘DB3PR05MB0778.eurprd05.prod.outlook.com’ (15.1.466.25 caps:03FFF

                                           F) is examining the request.

                                           27.04.2016 08:04:55 [DB3PR05MB0778] Connected to target mailbox ‘lcwonline.o

                                           nmicrosoft.com\ec96e315-1059-4710-b358-1c4b42f3edeb (Primary)’, database ‘EU

                                           RPR05DG049-db131′, Mailbox server ‘DB3PR05MB0778.eurprd05.prod.outlook.com’

                                           Version 15.1 (Build 466.0).RequestExpiryTimestamp                   : 03.04.2116 07:42:38

ObjectState                              : New

Troubleshooting:

To troubleshoot issues, You need to put so many things into account! The architecture of the infrastructure of where you are doing the project is very important and the need of knowing how things are working matters.

Things that could always come in mind and handy are what you will need to start your troubleshooting:

– Bandwidth Limitations or Performance:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn592150(v=exchg.150).aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200581(v=exchg.150).aspx

– Exchange Configuration (MRS)

To troubleshoot the MRs, You need to know what kind of error you’re getting and to see this you can use the following powershell after you connect to Office 365 powershell.

Get-MoveRequest {email} | Get-MoveRequestStatistics -Diagnostic -IncludeReport | Export-Clixml c:\logfile.xml

The resultant report will reveal the error and shows you where is the exact culprit.

– Disk Latency
– Firewall Configuration (IPS/IDS)

From Exchange 2016 to 2019 or 2013 to 2016 The transient error might be related to MRSProxy or at least this is the case with me 90% of the time. To resolve this issue you will need to change the MRSProxy values on the target server and depending on the error might also be the Source server too.

SOLUTION:

===========

1. Some instability was detected in communications as well as saturation by the size of the link.
2. The procedure to increase the timeout for the service through the file MRSProxy

File: MsExchangeMailboxReplication.exe.config

Object / line: DataImportTimeout.

New Value: 00:10:00

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New Configuration

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