A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post here covering how to deploy Azure Active Directory Connect 1.1. Due to popular demand, today I'm going to circle back and review some of the advanced configurations of AAD Connect as well as some troubleshooting tips to cover you in case you run into a hitch with your AAD Connect deployment.
Since there is a lot to cover, and I have limited space in which to do it, I’m not going to go super deep into each of these topics. Instead I’m going to give you a high-level overview. I’ll try to link to resources where you can get more information on each topic as appropriate, and you can reach out to me via the comments below or on Twitter if you’d like me to answer any specific questions.
Read moreIn Part 1 of this series we started to explore the auditing functionality natively available within Exchange Online as part of your Office 365 tenant. If you’re not caught up, go back and read that blog post first. If you’re all caught up, then let’s get to it.
Read moreSpam is the bane of all messaging administrators, as well as a major pain for all email users. Using email means a consistent battle against spam, malware, and unwanted nonsense flooding your inbox. There are a number of different tools and tactics we, as administrators, can use to reduce the impact of these attacks and recently Microsoft has added another one to the toolboxes of Office 365 customers. In this blog post I'm going to explain what DKIM is, and how you can use it to help make the world a safer place for legitimate email messages.
Read moreActive Directory Synchronization for Office 365 and Azure has been a vital, but fairly straight forward, part of Office 365 migrations for almost 5 years now. DirSync was updated to Azure Active Directory Sync, and AAD Sync was updated to Azure Active Directory Connect. In this blog post, I’m going to cover everything you need to know about deploying the newest version of AAD Connect
Read moreJohn Oliver recently did a piece on encryption explaining why it's a really bad idea for Apple to "help the FBI get into just this one phone".
He said it better than I have, so I'll just link to the piece. Watch it. It's important. You have 20 minutes to kill.
Read moreFind out how Microsoft Office 365 makes it possible for information workers, who were formerly required to work in an office building, to do their jobs from anywhere with an internet connection. O’Bryan covers the major features in Office 365 including:
- Groups
- Planner
- SharePoint Online
- OneDrive for Business
- Skype for Business
- Office 365 mobile apps
- Mobile Device Management (MDM)
- InTune
- Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS)
Read moreIn Part 1 of this series, we covered the basics of setting up filtering for AAD Connect and the details of setting up domain filtering. In Part 2, we covered up the process of setting up OU filtering for AAD Connect. In Part 3, we’re going to cover setting up attribute filtering.
Read moreIn Part 1 of this series, we covered the basis of setting up filtering for AAD Connect and the details of setting up domain filtering. In this part of the series we’ll get into setting up OU based filtering.
Read moreAs DirSync evolved to AAD Sync, and AAD Sync evolved to AAD Connect, there have been significant changes to the way we accomplish tasks with these tools.
With the recent release of Azure Active Directory Connect v 1.1, Microsoft has made several updates to how various aspects of the process of syncing your on-premises Active Directory accounts into Azure Active Directory. There have been some pretty significant changes in a couple of areas, with one of those being sync filtering. In this series of blogs posts, I’m going to walk you through the options and processes for filtering your sync jobs.
Read moreI am an IT consultant. My job is to advise and inform organizations on how best to manage their IT infrastructure. In doing that job, I often talk about security and encryption. In lite of the current news about the “FBI vs Apple”, I’d like to talk about security and encryption here.
Read moreIf you've even participated in an Exchange Online migration at almost any level, it's likely you've run into the issue of cross-forest delegation. You know that Exchange allows you to delegate rights from one mailbox to another, allowing users to access other mailboxes. When you do an Exchange hybrid migration, there are some special considerations you have to take to keep these delegated rights working. Depending on who you ask, you'll get all kinds of different answers about what works when. In this blog post I will explain the confusing case of cross-forest delegation, and what you can expect to work or not work.
Read moreMany Office 365 customers I talk to are concerned about how to audit changes to their organization’s mailboxes within Exchange Online. How do I track changes to the administrator roles in my tenant? How do I know if someone’s mailbox has been accessed by another person? How do I verify Litigation Hold is working? Read on and all shall become clear.
Read moreContainers are a new Microsoft technology coming with Server 2016 that functions like a virtual server, but are faster to deploy. You can read Part 1 of my Containers series here.
In Part 2 of this servers, we’re going to start looking at Hyper-V Containers.
Read moreThe Exchange team, or more specifically Jeff Mealiffe, has recently published a blog post detailing the sizing guidance for Exchange 2016. The short version is there is very little changed in the sizing guidance from Exchange 2013, but let’s take a closer look just to make sure we’re all on the same page.
Read moreI like to think I am a fairly smart guy. More than that, I know I work with a bunch of really smart people. Given this, I found it interesting to find that pretty much no one on my team has any idea what “containers” are, what they do, or how they work. All we know for sure is that Mark Russinovich thinks they are a nifty new feature of Server 2016 and Windows Azure.
I decided it was time to figure this stuff out, so I dove into a search on Channel9. Here’s a Q&A I had with myself after I watched a few of those videos.
Read more