Stefanos Cloud

Case You have a Microsoft 365 tenant and you need to be able to send legitimate bulk email via Exchange Online. You receive Non-Delivery Reports (NDR) and/or notifications from Exchange Online Protection (EOP) that some emails cannot be delivered for various reasons. Solution The root cause of this case is multi-factor and you need to carry out detailed investigation of your Exchange Online configuration and the email sending scenario you are trying to accomplish. First and foremost, as per Microsoft official documentation , it's difficult to strike a balance between customers who want to send a large volume of email vs. protecting the service from compromised accounts and bulk email senders with poor recipient acquisition practices. The cost of a Microsoft 365 email source landing on a third-party IP block list is greater than blocking a user who's sending too much email.As described in the Exchange Online Service Description , using EOP to send bulk email is not a supported u

Case You are performing a file migration to Sharepoint Online or a Sharepoint on-premises to Sharepoint Online migration. You may be using the Sharepoint Migration Tool (SPMT) for Sharepoint on-premises to Sharepoint Online migration or the Sharepoint Migration Manager tool for on-premise file server to Sharepoint Online migration. The Sharepoint Migration Manager tool installs a local Windows agent on an on-premises machine with full access to the SMB share hosting the files to be migrated. You notice that there is slow performance or disconnections and/or other issues affecting the overall migration tasks. Solution You need to properly plan for the migration and run through the following migration performance checklist: - The target computer where the migration manager agent will be installed must meet the following hardware and networking requirements: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointmigration/mm-prerequisites . - Carry out a full on-premise file data cleansing. You sh

Case You have an Server Message Block (SMB) file sharing infrastructure hosted in any of the following locations: - Windows Server based file server - Azure Files file share - Sharepoint Online site You need to be able to view a list of file handles of all files which are open on the server side at any given moment. This article provides instructions on what is doable and how you can view SMB open file handles in Windows Server, Azure Files and Sharepoint Online. Solution Windows Server based file server Window Server comes with MMC-based tools and Powershell modules which allow you to fully manage all aspects of a Windows file server. One such tool is File Server Resource Manager (FSRM), which can be installed as part of the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) as shown in the example below. In order to access the open file handles and user sessions of a Windows file server, you need the Computer Management tool (compmgmt.msc) or the individual MMC snap-in for "Shared Folde

Case You install Anydesk latest version in Ubuntu Linux 21.10 but the software application cannot start. Solution In most cases, the following two tasks will resolve the issue and let you launch Anydesk latest version successfully on your Ubuntu Linux machine: - Install the libpangox-1.0.0 component by running following command: sudo apt install libpangox-1.0.0 - If the error you are getting is related to the Wayland software components you can try to disable Wayland by editing a configuration file. Wayland is intended as a simpler replacement for X, easier to develop and maintain. GNOME and KDE are expected to be ported to it. To disable Wayland, edit file /etc/gdm3/custom.conf, track WaylandEnable=true parameter and set it to WaylandEnable=false. https://stefanos.cloud/kb/how-to-resolve-anydesk-issues-in-ubuntu-linux/

Case Your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) software installer is stuck at installing phase and the pre-requisites are never installed. Solution This issue usually has a quick solution. First of all ensure that your machine meets the minimum hardware requirements for the CVAD roles you are planning to install. Secondly, install the "Media Foundation" feature before installing your VDA software. If the issue still persists after installing the "Media Foundation" feature on the target machine, then you should manually install the required prerequisites before beginning the VDA installation. You should afterwards relaunch the installer and you should be good to go. https://stefanos.cloud/kb/citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops-stuck-at-installing/

Case You need to configure Multi-Factor authentication (MFA) in your Microsoft 365 tenant, for some or all your Microsoft 365 identities. Solution To increase the security of your Office 365 infrastructure, it is strongly recommended to configure MFA in all Office 365 user accounts. Multi-factor authentication means your admins and your users must provide more than one way to sign into Microsoft 365 and this is one of the easiest ways to secure your organization. You have two options . You can either configure the legacy per-user MFA or enable MFA for all M365 identities by configuring the Security Defaults setting. Option 1: Legacy per-user MFA You can use this option if you need to enable MFA for individual users only. However bear in mind that it is highly recommended to enable MFA for all users using the security defaults option (see below section of this article). First follow the steps below as a Microsoft 365 administrator user to enable the legacy per-user MFA setting: - Log in

Case You need to perform a whois query on a public IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) to understand in which geographical region it is registered and under which service provider. Background information The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is in charge of the Internet Protocol (IP) address space. The IANA authority is responsible for the following tasks: - Managing and maintaining the information of IP addresses. - Root zone management in DNS. The authoritative name servers that serve the DNS root zone, commonly known as the “root servers” or "root hints", are a network of hundreds of servers in many countries around the world. They are configured in the DNS root zone as 13 named authorities. More details can be found at: https://www.iana.org/domains/root/servers . - Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) allocation. An Autonomous System (AS) is a group of one or more IP prefixes (lists of IP addresses accessible on a network) run by one or more network operators that maintain a

Case You need to determine what the domain name registrar of your domain is. As an example, you need to determine the domain registrar for stefanos.cloud. Solution Your domain name registrar allows you to setup the NS records of your domain. The NS records point to the authoritative DNS servers for the DNS zone of your domain name. Managing your DNS zone is independent of your choice of domain name registrar or it can be done by the domain registrar alongside the name registration. In order to determine the registrar of any domain name, follow the process below. - Navigate to the IANA whois tool ( https://www.iana.org/whois ?q=yourdomainnamehere). Enter your desired domain name and check the results. You can cross check the search results with the IANA root zone database at: https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db . In essence each top-level domain (TLD) and generic TLD gTLD is managed by a TLD manager organization. The IANA whois tool and the IANA root zone database will reveal the TLD

Citrix has recently announced the following new Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops features in Microsoft Azure. - Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) for Microsoft Azure — Citrix and Microsoft engineers have worked together to deliver Citrix PVS to Azure, targeted for general availability December 2021. - Citrix Ready validation for Virtual Apps and Desktops service and Azure Stack HCI — Citrix Ready has validated Azure Stack HCI for Windows and Linux virtual machines (VMs) hosted on Azure Stack HCI . - Citrix Image Portability Service for Azure — A preview of Citrix Image Portability Service is available for Azure. This service simplifies the management of images across platforms, making it easy to manage images between an on-premises resource location and on Azure. - Citrix provides support for Azure VMware Solution — Today VMware customers can benefit from Citrix’s official support for Azure VMware Solution . - New Citrix products are on Azure Marketplace — New Citrix products inside t

Having attended the recent Microsoft Azure Virtual Datacenter Tour webinar , a series of highly interesting announcements were made around upcoming Microsoft Azure cloud technologies. Many of these technologies stem from Microsoft Research projects and are very promising in terms of changing the way we perceive the daily functions of the fundamental pillars of an IT infrastructure, namely compute, networking and storage. This blog post outlines some of the most important aspects of technologies already used in Azure and promising technologies soon to be introduced. If you need to find out more about the Azure Global Infrastructure technologies and ongoing research projects, please navigate to: https://msdcinfo.azurewebsites.net/ . Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC) The Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC) is a tailored-built mobile datacenter for customers who need cloud computing capabilities in hybrid or challenging environments, including remote areas. The MDC can give customers a path to mi

Having attended the recent Microsoft Azure Virtual Datacenter Tour webinar , a series of highly interesting announcements were made around upcoming Microsoft Azure cloud technologies. Many of these technologies stem from Microsoft Research projects and are very promising in terms of changing the way we perceive the daily functions of the fundamental pillars of an IT infrastructure, namely compute, networking and storage. This blog post outlines some of the most important aspects of technologies already used in Azure and promising technologies soon to be introduced. If you need to find out more about the Azure Global Infrastructure technologies and ongoing research projects, please navigate to: https://msdcinfo.azurewebsites.net/ . Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC) The Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC) is a tailored-built mobile datacenter for customers who need cloud computing capabilities in hybrid or challenging environments, including remote areas. The MDC can give customers a path to mi

Case You have an Exchange Online mailbox or distribution list and you try to enable email forwarding to an external recipient. After a message is forwarded you receive a Non Delivery Receipt (NDR) with following error message: '550 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding. Please contact your administrator for further assistance. AS(7555)'. Solution In Microsoft 365 default anti-spam policies, the anti-spam outbound policy (Default) policy must be edited to turn "automatic forwarding" setting to On - Forwardin is enabled. Alternatively you can create another policy in which automatic forwarding will be enabled for all users and keep the default policy with automatic forwarding disabled for specific users or groups. https://stefanos.cloud/kb/how-to-resolve-ndr-error-in-exchange-online-email-forwarding/

Case You are running "Group Policy Update" on an OU inside the Group Policy Management Console in Active Directory but you are receiving RPC errors from your servers or domain-joined workstations, as shown in the example below. After a Group Policy Update, you come across Group Policy error codes 8007071a and 800706ba. This means that the local Windows Firewall is not configured properly to allow Group Policy (GPO) traffic. GPO traffic an be either remote GPO update or remote GP Resultant Set of Policy (RSOP) operations. Solution Option 1 Run gpedit.msc and create a new local group policy object which implements the following policies under Local Computer Policy --> Computer Configuration --> Windows Settings --> Security Settings --> Windows Defender Firewall --> Inbound Rules : The full configuration is shown below. After the above local group policies are configured on each domain server and workstation, you can start applying group policy objects to the dom

Case You have a Microsoft 365 license allowing you to install Microsoft 365 apps on your supported device. Solution Microsoft provides step-by-step guides on how to install Microsoft 365 apps, such as Microsoft Outlook, on any device. Refer to the guide applicable to your device and operating system as per the below links: - Download and install Microsoft 365 apps on a PC or Mac . Also if you are using a Surface Pro tablet, you can install Office and email as you would on a desktop computer. - How to set up email on Outlook for PC - Set up Microsoft 365 on Android mobile devices - Set up Microsoft 365 on iOS devices - How to set up email on a BlackBerry - Install Microsoft 365 mobile apps on Chromebooks - How to set up email on a Nokia (Symbian OS) phone - How to set up email on Windows Mobile 6.5 - How to set up email on other Internet-capable phones and tablets Note If you are accessing Microsoft 365 cloud services from an IP network in China, you need to follow special instructions

Case You have a broken or malfunctioning keyboard key in your Linux or Windows machine and you need to permanently remap it to another key. Solution Linux In the case of Linux you can achieve this via the Key Mapper software. Key Mapper is a free and open-source tool written in Python 3. You can download it from https://github.com/sezanzeb/key-mapper/releases . You can install key mapper using following command in ubuntu, after having downloaded the .deb package: sudo apt install ./Downloads/key-mapper*.deb An example of Key Mapper is shown below. Windows Using PowerToys, you can make any key on your keyboard act like any other key and even remap shortcuts. You can download Powertoys from https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/ . Make use of keyboard manager (part of PowerToys) as per the official documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/keyboard-manager . https://stefanos.cloud/kb/how-to-change-keyboard-mappings-in-linux-and-windows/