Recently Microsoft have changed the licensing structure of Office 365, and you are now (under certain licenses) able to install Office 2013 Pro Plus on your TS server. Its not a straightforward clicky the button and install, rather you’ll need a couple of batch files, some changes to the configuration file, and a bit of patience.
- First thing you’ll need is the Office Deployment Tool
- Copy this to a location with plenty of space (about 1.2 GB), running it should extract out the setup.exe file and a configuration file.
- Create a share to that location
- Edit the configuration file to look something like this (where the servername is the name of the server your on, and sharename is the share created above.
<Configuration>
<Add SourcePath=”\\servername\sharename\” OfficeClientEdition=”32″ >
<Product ID=”O365ProPlusRetail”>
<Language ID=”en-us” />
</Product>
</Add> <!– <Updates Enabled=”TRUE” UpdatePath=”default\” /> –>
<Display Level=”None” AcceptEULA=”TRUE” />
<Logging Name=”OfficeSetup.txt” Path=”%temp%” />
<Property Name=”SharedComputerLicensing” Value=”1″ />
</Configuration>
The “SharedComputerLicensing” is the key section, by setting that section we can install and run Office 2013 Pro Plus on the RDP machine and each user will need to activate using their account.
- Next we need a couple of Batch files, one to download the files for a local setup, the second to run the installation
\\servername\sharename\setup.exe /download \\servername\sharename\configuration.xml
\\servername\sharename\setup.exe /configure \\servername\sharename\configuration.xml
- Run both of these in order, and your Office 2013 Pro Plus will be installed.
- Each user will be asked to activate the first time they use the RDP server.
I recently configured an SQL Server which we ran in trial to make sure it was what we wanted, after we had tested everything the decision was made to purchase the license. Given tight time frames we were hoping to be able to just get the license key and plug it into the Upgrade Wizard and everything would be sweet. Sadly not the case. We received an OPL from Microsoft, but when you access the licensing portal that doesn’t contain the key because its embedded in the ISO which you can download.
I gave MS Licensing a call and to cut a long story short, they couldn’t provide me with the key and said my only option was to install a new Server. While this was an option it was a long way from my preferred one, due to time and Budget restraints.
I did a bit of reading, and found that to get your CD key if you have an OPL version you can run the installer and it shows you the key when you get to the licence key section of the install. I haven’t tested whether you can do this on the live box without incurring downtime, but I have tested it on another dev box, and I was able to retrieve the key and upgrade successfully.
I’m not sure why the upgrade option is included in the trial if its not a supported option.
UPDATE – Tried to update the key on a Trial machine which had DB’s restored onto it, couldn’t put the key in, got the error please verify the key you are using etc… However if you mount the ISO the run the upgrade from the ISO it will add the key into the machine, without any down time to the environment that I could see. I have used this method on two installations and both worked successfully.
I’ve been having some problems with an Exchange 2010 box filling up its disk space very quickly, resulting in an event ID 15006 in the logs. The log looks like this
Microsoft Exchange Transport is rejecting message submissions because the available disk space has dropped below the configured threshold.
The following resources are under pressure:
Queue database and disk space (“C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\data\Queue\mail.que”) = 97% [Medium] [Normal=95% Medium=97% High=99%]
Queue database logging disk space (“C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\data\Queue\”) = 97% [Medium] [Normal=94% Medium=96% High=98%]
Physical memory load = 91% [limit is 94% to start dehydrating messages.]
The following components are disabled due to back pressure:
Inbound mail submission from the Internet
Mail submission from Pickup directory
Mail submission from Replay directory
Content aggregation
The following resources are in normal state:
Version buckets = 0 [Normal] [Normal=80 Medium=120 High=200]
Private bytes = 5% [Normal] [Normal=71% Medium=73% High=75%]
Batch Point = 0 [Normal] [Normal=1000 Medium=2000 High=4000]
Submission Queue = 0 [Normal] [Normal=1000 Medium=2000 High=4000]
This results in no new messages coming into the system from external sources. Most of the items I read pointed to just clearing up some space, which was done, but within a few days that extra 10GB was all being used, and we are only talking a small environment < 15 people. This morning the problem was back again, so we gave the vm another 15gb on the fly, and rather than working perfectly in Windows Server 2008, I got a parameter incorrect error when increasing the Disk Space with Disk Management. We restarted the machine which then showed the correct amount of new disk space, but it had also cleared up another 40GB which I’m assuming was being held in the message logs. I’ll do some more investigation and try to find why for those who are interested.
If you don’t want to delete anything or can’t add more space to the system, you can move the location of the logs as detailed on the Sinking Ducks, so credit is due there, but I’ll include it here to save you clicking…
- Edit the EdgeTransport.exe.CONFIG file, which if installed to the default location should be “C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin”
- Find the following lines .. and change the path to be the new location you want to use.
<add key="QueueDatabasePath" value="C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\data\Queue" />
<add key="QueueDatabaseLoggingPath" value="C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\data\Queue" />
- Create that folder, and restart the Exchange Transport Services
