Monthly Archives: July 2013

Lync Server 2013 - Cannot find any suitable disks for database files. You must manually specify database paths. error

Symptom: You receive the following error while running Step 2: Setup or Remove Lync Server Components under the Lync Server 2013 - Deployment Wizard.

Install-CsDatabase: Command execution failed: “Cannot find any suitable disks for database files. You must manually specify database paths.”

Solution: Verify you have at least 16GB of free disk space on the partition you are installing Lync Server 2013.

Dell PowerConnect 5548 - Enable port mirroring/monitoring via command line

To enable port mirror/monitoring on the Dell PowerConnect 5548 series switches, please follow the following steps:

  1. SSH or Telnet to the switch
  2. Login to the switch
  3. Execute the command: enable
  4. Execute the command: config
  5. Execute the command: interface gigabitethernet 1/0/##
    1. In this case, use the port number of the device that will be getting the traffic to analyze.  This is the interface your "wireshark" machine would be connected to, to do a packet capture.
  6. Execute the command: port monitor gigabitethernet 1/0/##
    1. In this case, use the port number of the device you want to see the network traffic/activity on.  For example, if my device that I wanted to monitor was on gigabit port 1/0/5, I would use that, not the machine that is going to receive the traffic (not your "wireshark" machine).

Once you are done with the forward, you can disable port monitoring/mirror by executing the following command after running through steps 1-5 again: no port monitor gigabitethernet 1/0/##

Last, if you want to see the status of your mirrored/monitored port, you can do so by executing the following command after repeating steps 1-3: show ports monitor

[Office 365] - Forwarding email from one mailbox to another with ADFS turned on

Synopsis: Employee leaves on personal matters for a month and their department lead requests for mail to be forwarded to their manager.  Typically, mail forwarding would be setup inside of the Exchange console, however, in this case, Exchange is managed by Office 365 (not a hybrid exchange deployment) and the users are being federated to Office 365 via ADFS.  When trying to enable mail forwarding, as outlined in the this help document by the Office 365 team http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/exchange/how-to-forward-email-in-office-365.aspx, I would receive an error message.

Symptom: When enabling mail forwarding for the user inside of the Office 365 Exchange portal, I received the following error message:

The action 'Set-Mailbox', 'EmailAddresses', can't be performed on the object 'Firstname Lastname' because the object is being synchronized from your on-premises organization. This action should be performed on the object in your on-premises organization.

Solution:

Personally, I think this is a bug in Office 365, but they say it is because we are on premise (if all of exchange is managed by them, how can they not enable mail forwarding?).  Any who, the work around is to manage the user's mailbox and set forwarding up as if they would.  See the steps below to achieve the same result:

  1. Login to your Office 365 admin portal.
  2. Click on the Admin dropdown and select Exchange
    Exchange
  3. Once in the Exchange portal, click on your username and select Another user...
    Exchange - Another User
  4. Type in the mailbox you want to edit and click ok
    Select Mailbox
  5. On the "Managing on behalf of" screen, select Forward your email
    Exchange - Forward Your Email
  6. Scroll down to forwarding and type in the email address of the user you want all emails to go to and click start forwarding.  You can optionally select if you want to leave a copy for the user's mailbox or have them silently forwarded.
    Exchange - Start Forwarding
  7. That's it! 🙂