I’ve been very loyal to NetNewsWire for a long time. Whether it be NewsGator (a RSS plugin for Outlook), FeedDamon (an RSS feedreader app for Windows, NetNewsWire on the iPhone, or NetNewsWire on the Mac. In the fall, NetNewsWire was switched to synchronize with Google Reader accounts. I just can’t take the inconsistencies in synchronization that occur when using NetNewsWire on my Mac. I spend an hour or two going through a couple hundred or more news items all for them to reappear as unread items next sync period – sometimes, other times they stay unread. NetNewsWire is a desktop RSS application for the Mac. You can use it for free with embedded advertising, or you can buy it for $20. I’m all about supporting developers who write apps – but I can’t do that for NetNewsWire. The best alternative that I could find for now is an app called…

I needed a quick and dirty method to add database copies to other servers in an Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG).  I had three servers, each with 10 databases.  Each one of those databases should have a copy on the other two servers.  Now, this is painful if you have to use the GUI to do it – not that it takes a lot, but it’s time consuming.  The Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy cmdlet is very helpful in PowerShell, but still I wanted to automate it since my naming conventions were pretty standard. So, I wrote a PowerShell script to automate this process.  Essentially, the script has a few variables and I dome some loop magic to drop everything into place.  $servers = "E2K10MBX01", "E2K10MBX02", "E2K10MBX03" $databases = "DB1", "DB2", "DB3", "DB4", "DB5", "DB6", "DB7", "DB8", "DB9", "DB10"   foreach($database in $databases) { foreach($server in $servers) { foreach($copyserver in $servers) { "Adding…

A couple of months back I wrote a post on how to automatically install pre-requisites for Exchange 2010 on a Windows 2008 (including R2) server. I specifically talked about a method for doing this with ServerManagerCmd.exe, which is included with Windows Server 2008.  However, in Windows Server 2008 R2, ServerManagerCmd is deprecated and the recommended method is to use PowerShell (as pointed out by my buddy, Josh).  The Add-WindowsFeature cmdlet in PowerShell provides the capability to add individual Windows features directly from a script.  You can use Get-WindowsFeature to obtain a detailed list of available features, ones that are installed, and their “official” name if you wish to install them via PowerShell. To install the required pre-reqs for Exchange 2010, from a PowerShell prompt, be sure to add the Server Manager module so the Add-WindowsFeature and Get-WindowsFeature cmdlets are available. Import-Module ServerManager Once you have imported the module, then you…

I don’t normally follow politics, but my own Senator from the state of Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar and other senate colleagues introduced a bill today that would limit the amount of cell phone service provider could charge in early termination fees. The timing is perfect since Verizon recently announced that their customers who were smartphone users would have to pay in upwards of $300 if they prematurely ended their relationship with the provider.  How ridiculous! Several years ago, I did pay Verizon $175 to end our relationship.  “Changing your wireless provider shouldn’t break the bank,” said Klobuchar. “Forcing consumers to pay outrageous fees bearing little to no relation to the cost of their handset devices is anti-consumer and anti-competitive.” I have to agree.  Instead of spending the money on litigation with AT&T, both carriers should put that money towards getting their networks in better shape, especially AT&T.  The iPhone has been…

Compellent Enterprise Manager works great for managing your Storage Center environment and providing reports on volume usage and utilization. I was looking for a little different spin on the information.  I was looking for a cumulative volume count across an entire Storage Center, plus a total count of replays on the system, and how many of the volumes that exist are actually mapped up to a server object. For example, the test system that I ran my script on determined that we had over 900 volumes with over 3,000 replays.  We also realized that we had some cleanup to do when we figured out that only 180 of the volumes were actually mapped up. I did build into the script to collect the page count of each replay so you could tell how large they were if you wanted to; just the calculation needs to be added. # NAME: VolumeInfo.ps1…