High Resolution Photo in Lync for Office 365

My organization uses Office 365 for Exchange and Lync service, although Lync has recently been set up as on-premise.

For a while now the low-resolution photo of Lync has been bothering me, so I set out trying to find a way to use a high resolution photo instead.

Microsoft allows a 648×648 photo to be stored in an Exchange 2013 mailbox, which is then used for Lync.

To begin, set up your environment to connect to Office 365 with Powershell:

$NPO = New-PSSessionOption -ProxyAccessType IEConfig
$cred = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionURI https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/?proxymethod=rps -Credential $cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection -SessionOption $NPO
Import-PSSession $Session
Import-Module MSOnline
Connect-MsolService -Credential $cred
  • Using Powershell, run the cmdlet
  • When prompted for credentials, enter your Office 365 administrative credentials
  • Now use the following Powershell commands:
$photo = ([Byte[]] $(Get-Content -Path "C:\Users\jmiles\Desktop\IMG_0067_Lync.jpg" -Encoding Byte -ReadCount 0))
Set-UserPhoto -Identity "Jeff Miles" -PictureData $photo -Confirm:$False
Set-UserPhoto -Identity "Jeff Miles" -Save -Confirm:$False

Replace the photo location and the identity name in the commands above.

 

That’s it! Now your photo should be nice and clear when in a Lync call.

 

Sources:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj688150.aspx

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25199254/automated-script-to-change-user-photos-in-microsoft-exchange-2013-powershell/26150403#26150403

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj151815.aspx#bkmk_installmodule

Microsoft Ignite – Approval

I’m going to Microsoft Ignite!

 

In early May I’ll be traveling to Chicago for a week, and am extremely excited that my request to attend was approved by my company.

I have never been to a large conference like this, although I have attended a smaller single-vendor conference in 2013. At this point I don’t really know what to expect, but I’m most looking forward to the following areas:

  • Networking and discussions with companies and IT experts who see the same struggles I do
  • Using Hyper-V in real world scenarios
  • Server 2012 R2 features like DirectAccess and Remote Desktop Services

Having never been to Chicago, and not knowing what to look for in accommodations I took a stab in the dark and will be staying at the “Hotel Rush”.

I hope that my attendance this year proves very valuable to my company, so that justification in 2016 is stronger; with Windows 10 and Server vNext coming in late 2015 I anticipate Ignite 2016 to be even more exciting.

DPM syncronization failure on Secondary Server

I now have an environment of Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 set up as a replacement for Backup Exec 2010.

Despite the lack of some features, it has been performing quite well. However I recently started receiving email notification of errors and it relates to my secondary DPM server.

The primary DPM server exists in the head office, and provides back up of Hyper-V VMs from my main cluster. The secondary DPM server exists in a branch office 300KM away and provides back up of the primary DPM server.

 

I started receiving errors like the following from the Secondary server to individual resources on the primary:

Synchronization for replica of \Online\servername(servername.clustername) on PrimaryDPM failed because the replica is not in a valid state or is in an inactive state. (ID 30300 Details: VssError:The writer experienced a non-transient error.  If the backup process is retried,
the error is likely to reoccur.
 (0x800423F4))

 

Every time I tried to perform a consistency check on these resources, it would begin and then end within 30 seconds.

To be honest I didn’t have a lot of time to troubleshoot this one. I tried restarting both DPM servers as well as the Hyper-V host and VM itself, and none of that seemed to have an impact.

At some point I noticed that the resources giving the errors on the Secondary server hadn’t had a recovery point on the Primary server in quite some time.

I forced an Express Full Backup of the VMs on the Primary server and allowed it to complete (successfully). I then initiated a consistency check on the Secondary server protected resources, and it too completed successfully!
Where I’m still confused is why didn’t I receive alerts from my Primary DPM server that recovery points were being missed?

Server 2012 R2 Upgrade and BSOD

I’m currently in the process of upgrading a standalone Server 2012 machine running Hyper-V to Server 2012 R2.

Due to resource constraints, I’m performing an in-place upgrade, despite this server residing 800km away from me. Thank goodness for iDRAC Enterprise.

 

However, during this process, during the “Getting Devices Ready” section I received a Blue Screen Of Death, with the error message:

whea_uncorrectable_error

 

After it hit this BSOD twice, the upgrade process failed out and reverted back to Server 2012. I was unable to find a log file of what occurred in any more detail, and was worried that I would be stuck on Server 2012.

Thankfully, I discovered a log file on the iDRAC with the following message:

A bus fatal error was detected on a component at slot 1.

This triggered my memory, and I recalled that we have a USB3 PCI-E card installed for pre-seeding an external drive with backup info.

I used the BIOS setup (Integrated Devices > Slot Disablement) to disable Slot 1, and then retried the upgrade with fingers crossed.

Success!

 

Microsoft TechEd 2014 recorded sessions

Image from http://channel9.msdn.com
Image from http://channel9.msdn.com

I have never attended Microsoft TechEd, but I REALLY want to, especially after seeing the sheer number of sessions that are relevant to me in 2013.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the TechEd website for some time after the event closed, watching for the posting of the recorded sessions, and now they are up, all 60 something pages of them.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2014#fbid=

 

I’ve gone through the list of every session, and collected a link list of 59 of them I want to watch, with some standouts like:

  • Windows PowerShell unplugged
  • How many coffee’s can you drink while your PC starts
  • DFSR 2012 R2 enhancements
  • Storage Efficiency with Dell and Storage Spaces
  • Mark Russinovich on Cloud Computing
  • Upgrade your IT skills and Infrastructure: Cloud Computing
  • Performance Optimize your ASP.NET
  • O365 Identity Management
  • What’s new in Windows 8.1 Deployment
  • Hyper-V Recovery Manager
  • Backup Strategy for Private Cloud

And so much more…