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02 February, 2022

Get List of Videos from Microsoft Stream

Getting a list of videos from Stream, so that you can look to migrate them or just to see what is there is hard. There ...

15 September, 2021

Azure AD Connect v2.0 - Why should I care?

Azure AD Connect (AADC) was released many years ago and has seen many versions over those years. Microsoft fairly ...

19 February, 2021

Conditional Access and Hybrid AD Join

It is quite common to use the Hybrid AD Join device state as part of Conditional Access. Whilst it isn’t as strong a ...

19 February, 2021

Microsoft Gold eight times over!!! - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

We are always striving to be the best, whether that is to our Clients, our Partners or our Vendors and Distributors. We ...

19 February, 2021

Troubleshooting Hybrid AD Join - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Hybrid AD Join is often used for Windows devices that are joined to an Active Directory domain, and that also need to ...

26 July, 2020

Microsoft 365 Licensing - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

We are often asked which components are covered by which of the Office 365 or Microsoft 365 licensing SKUs. Well as ...

22 May, 2020

Three new Microsoft Silver Competencies

We are always striving to be the best, whether that is to our Clients, our Partners or our Vendors and Distributors. We ...

20 February, 2020

PowerShell Get-History - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

One command that I love to use in PowerShell is Get-History. It retrieves all of the commands that you have run in this ...

19 February, 2020

Working with Saved Messages in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is revolutionising how we communicate with a company. It speeds up working together, allows fast ...

21 November, 2019

Efficient Lookups in PowerShell - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

When writing scripts in PowerShell we often need to do a lookup in another dataset. Of course one way is to use an ...

19 June, 2019

Active Directory Replication Issues?

I was working with a client recently who had various Active Directory replication issues. They had a multi-domain ...

28 March, 2019

Protecting Office 365 identities on a shoestring

We hear about identity theft and protection all the time in IT. For Office 365 there are number of things you can do to ...

07 February, 2019

VM troubleshooting in Azure - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Azure is a great service for hosting virtual machines, however sometimes VMs get into trouble and aren’t able to boot… ...

31 December, 2018

SharePoint visible to unlicensed users

As the title says there is a little known ‘feature’ in SharePoint. Basically SharePoint has no licence associated with ...

25 June, 2018

Find differences between two GPO templates

If you’ve been dealing with Group Policy Objects (GPO) for any length of time you’ll know that when a new version of ...

17 May, 2018

Inside Kerberos - 7: Wrap up - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Alright, we’ve covered a lot of ground, but let’s wrap up by grabbing our original questions and answering the

10 May, 2018

Inside Kerberos - 6: Conversations - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

We have covered a lot of ground so far, and we have touched on the Kerberos conversations that go on, but let’s take a ...

03 May, 2018

Inside Kerberos - 5: Tokens - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Alright then, we’ve covered SIDs, SIDHistory, and Tickets. Let’s move onto Access Tokens.

25 April, 2018

Inside Kerberos - 4: Tickets - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Ok I think we have talked enough about SIDs in the previous two parts on SIDs and SIDHistory. Let’s move on to Kerberos ...

19 April, 2018

Inside Kerberos - 3: SIDHistory - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

In this blog we will be exploring SID History, and it follows on from Part 1 which gave an overview of Kerberos, and ...

12 April, 2018

Inside Kerberos - 2: SIDs - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

In Part 1 we set the scene in regards to how Kerberos works at a high level, so let’s now get down and dirty with ...

05 April, 2018

Inside Kerberos - 1: Overview - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

I recently did some work at a client to help migrate them to a new Active Directory. While setting up the migration ...

09 March, 2018

Add open with Notepad as Administrator

So often do I work on my laptop or on servers and I have to open a file in Notepad to edit it, however the file is ...

16 January, 2018

DirectAccess warm standby without IPv6

DirectAccess has come a long way and with Windows Server 2016 it is pretty easy to install as a single site, single ...

21 December, 2017

Securing the Azure AD Connect account

Azure AD Connect (AADC) integrates your Active Directory with Azure Active Directory (and from there with the various ...

23 November, 2017

Nero Blanco becomes a Power365 Certified Partner

Nero Blanco has become a Power365 Certified Partner!

25 October, 2017

Inside the Microsoft Azure Datacenter Architecture

This is a summary of a great session by Mark Russinovich talking about Azure

25 October, 2017

OneDrive - Files on Demand - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Window 1709 (Fall Creators) has a great new feature called Files on Demand. It is a OneDrive feature that we actually ...

23 October, 2017

Sysmon Configuration with DSC - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

As part of a project I’m working on I was asked to install and configure Sysmon on all servers using DSC (Azure ...

18 October, 2017

Azure Automation DSC Composite Configurations

While working on DSC for a client I came across the need to use Composite Configurations, however it needed to work ...

02 October, 2017

Nero Blanco - Gold Cloud Platform - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

At Ignite this year Nero Blanco has reached another milestone in achieving Gold Cloud Platform status with Microsoft! ...

02 October, 2017

Allowing # and & in OneDrive for Business

At Microsoft Ignite 2017 they mentioned that OneDrive does now allow # (hash) and & (ampersand) but it needs to be ...

20 September, 2017

Microsoft 365 - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Microsoft recently released a new subscription called Microsoft 365. It is available in Business, Enterprise E3 and ...

20 September, 2017

Nero Blanco - Silver Cloud Platform - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Nero Blanco has reached another milestone in achieving Silver Cloud Platform status with Microsoft! Thanks to all of ...

20 September, 2017

Office 365 new Inactive Mailbox Licenses

Important: Microsoft has decided not to go ahead with the plan. One of the advantages of gathering at Ignite is the ...

20 September, 2017

Get all possible AD Attributes for User or Group

I recently had to work out what the full set of attributes was that could be set against a user or a group in Active ...

05 September, 2017

Windows Server 2016: Access Denied for Admin Shares

We recently had an issue that started of with a problem promoting some domain controllers in Azure. We’d set up the ...

26 July, 2017

Summarizing GDPR - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

You may well have heard about GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) but do you know what it means for you? The ...

14 July, 2017

Introducing a new product Microsoft 365

At Inspire there was the announcement of a new product ‘Microsoft 365’. At the enterprise level this replaces ‘Secure ...

26 May, 2017

Backup GPO Settings with retention

Backing up Active Directory should be part and parcel of creating a forest, however an often overlooked area is GPO ...

22 May, 2017

Outlook now asks for attachment type

A new feature is coming in Outlook which will make some of you very happy indeed… If you have been using Outlook with ...

17 May, 2017

Free Windows 10 upgrade offer via CSP

Most of us know that there was an offer from Microsoft to upgrade from Windows 7 and 8.1 back in 2016, however most of ...

17 May, 2017

Leveraging Microsoft Online Subscriptions on-premises

I know that sound like a weird title right? How can you leverage Microsoft Online Subscriptions on-premises? After all ...

07 April, 2017

Exchange Federation to Office 365 without Hybrid

Exchange Federation has been around a long time, but of course more recently any time you talk about integrating with ...

15 March, 2017

Windows Firewall not writing to its logfiles

As part of Group Policy Management guidelines from the Centre of Internet Security (CIS), the recommendation is to turn ...

07 March, 2017

Exchange Server 2016 Unable to determine file version PowerShellEngine

After installing Exchange Server 2016 CU4 on Windows Server 2016, the Exchange Management Shell would fail to connect ...

05 March, 2017

Week 5 - Advanced Windows Security Course

Firstly apologies for taking this long to get back to doing the week 5 blog. It has been a manic couple of months and ...

10 February, 2017

Microsoft Changes MCSE/MCSD... again...

As you will probably know, a few years ago Microsoft changed MCSE so that the qualifications would no longer have a ...

02 January, 2017

Week 4 - Advanced Windows Security Course

Happy New Year to you all, 2017 is here! I’m spending the first week of 2017 catching up on the 4th week of course ...

30 December, 2016

Week 3 - Advanced Windows Security Course

Wow the first two weeks have whizzed on by, in fact together with my normal workload I’m struggling to keep up with the ...

12 December, 2016

Week 2 - Advanced Windows Security Course

Week 1 is behind us and we covered some great material! It has already been a real eye opener to see how easy it is to ...

30 November, 2016

Week 1 - Advanced Windows Security Course

This week marks the start of a course I am attending called ‘Advanced Windows Security Course for 2017‘ run by Paula ...

23 November, 2016

Autodiscover exposed - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

for Exchange & O365 Autodiscover is a fundamental technology in Exchange and Office 365. When Outlook first starts ...

21 November, 2016

O365 Groups, Teams, Distribution Lists or Yammer

In Office 365 there are now many similar options available for collaboration. You now have the traditional Distribution ...

14 November, 2016

Tenant Isolation in Microsoft Office 365

I have often wondered how Microsoft have architected their cloud solutions to ensure that there is no cross-talk ...

08 November, 2016

Office 365 Persistent Chat (Microsoft Teams)

A common complaint from people who are used to using Skype and who are moving to Skype for Business is where is ...

25 October, 2016

UC and Cloud Day Summary - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Birmingham hosts UC and Cloud Day Neil and myself travelled to Birmingham to attend the UC and Cloud Day. It was a ...

19 October, 2016

Wrapping up Ignite 2016 - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Ignite 2016 is once again behind us, farewell Atlanta! Our team again travelled to Ignite to try to see as many ...

13 October, 2016

Enabling Remote Administrators for O365

By Carl Baumann, CEO 4ward North America, and Twan van Beers, Nero Blanco The administration tasks for an Office 365 ...

19 September, 2016

Azure network error 1233, error 53 path not found

If you have an Azure VM that is suddenly getting errors including

16 September, 2016

What are Windows and Surface as a Service?

In recent months you may have come across the terms Windows as a Service and Surface as a Service. What exactly do they ...

08 August, 2016

What is Microsoft Cloud and Azure?

What is Cloud? The term Cloud is very common place now, but what does it actually mean? Are you already using ‘Cloud’? ...

21 July, 2016

WPC 2016 download via PowerShell

Hi all!!!

20 July, 2016

EMEA Partner of the Year 2016

Binary Tree has awarded Nero Blanco the honour of EMEA Partner of the Year 2016. We are humbled to receive this award ...

23 June, 2016

A journey through Microsoft

I thought I’d write about the various programs that are available through Microsoft and Nero Blanco’s journey so far… ...

06 June, 2016

Reaching Gold Cloud Productivity

Our aim for 2016 was to reach Gold Partner status with Microsoft, in particular in the Cloud Productivity competency, ...

23 May, 2016

Exchange Online or On Premise for SMBs - The Costs

Exchange Online is of course part of Office 365 and people are migrating to it in droves. The attractions from a ...

06 May, 2016

How can I reduce SPAM for my domains?

As any mail administrator will know SPAM is rampant on the Internet. I’ve work in organizations where over 95% of all ...

15 April, 2016

What is an SPF record?

What is an SPF record? An SPF record, or Sender Protection Framework record, is a DNS entry that allows a receiving ...

13 April, 2016

Winners at the UK Cloud Awards 2016

Nero Blanco are proud to announce that they were awarded the Best Newcomer award at the UK Cloud Awards 2016. We would ...

11 April, 2016

Free Office 365 Setup & Migration

Free Office 365 Setup, Migration and Support too good to be true? No it is a real offering from Nero Blanco, and we ...

08 April, 2016

What is this signed by onmicrosoft.com? DKIM

tenant.onmicrosoft.com What is this signed by onmicrosoft.com? Microsoft has introduced a new feature called DomainKeys ...

31 March, 2016

We Are An UK Cloud Awards Finalist

Nero Blanco has been shortlisted in the Best Newcomer category for the UK Cloud Awards! We are thrilled to have been ...

14 March, 2016

Your Partner of Record for Office 365

Nero Blanco as your Office 365 Partner of Record By designating Nero Blanco as your Office 365 Partner, we receive ...

15 January, 2016

The BEST reason to keep a Hybrid Exchange Server

We are often asked about should I have a Hybrid Server (be that for administration only or for full Hybrid) and so last ...

23 October, 2015

Microsoft Silver Cloud Productivity - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

A very quick announcement to say that as well as being Microsoft Silver Messaging Partners, Nero Blanco has now also ...

09 August, 2015

How private are private items in Exchange

We sometimes get asked how private are private items? The short answer is not very… private items is an Outlook and OWA ...

24 July, 2015

Links and Backlinks in Active Directory for Exchange

In Active Directory (AD) there is the concept of objects, attributes and links between objects.

17 July, 2015

Convert Mailbox to Linked Mailbox - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

When performing an AD migration it is sometimes necessary to make the mailbox a linked mailbox so that the migrated ...

10 July, 2015

SMART AD Migrator Architecture - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

This week we will look more deeply into the Binary Tree SMART AD Migrator software’s architecture, and how to scale up ...

02 July, 2015

Merge a MailContact with a User - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Often when doing migrations some form of GalSync has taken place or where admins have manually created mailcontacts in ...

26 June, 2015

Convert Mailbox to Mailuser - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

I was asked to convert a mailbox to a mailuser, and funny enough although the reverse is true, you can’t just call ...

19 June, 2015

Introducing SMART AD Migrator from Binary Tree

We’ve just had two days of training using the revamped SMART AD Migrator software from Binary Tree. They’ve had an AD ...

12 June, 2015

Bandwidth Latency's Relationship to Throughput

This post aims to explain bandwidth and latency individually and then look at how they relate to throughput. It came ...

03 June, 2015

Deleting Folders - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

from an Exchange Mailbox with PowerShell I was given an escalation at a client where somehow a user managed to create ...

29 May, 2015

Sending TLS mail to Exchange from the command line

Before we look at sending TLS mail to Exchange, let’s talk about using a command line to send mail without TLS.

22 May, 2015

Demystifying AD Schema Extensions for Exchange

Now most people who have been around Active Directory (AD) will understand about the AD schema and that some ...

15 May, 2015

Microsoft Ignite 2015 - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Back from Microsoft Ignite, great conference but to be honest it was a bit too big really. 25,000 attendees and the ...

30 April, 2015

Setting up a new Office 365 Tenant - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

Setting up a new Office 365 tenant may seem daunting, but actually it is a pretty simple process. In this blog we will ...

17 April, 2015

Design for an enterprise scale Exchange 2013 OAB

Today we will be discussing how to design your Exchange 2013 Offline Address Book (OAB) for an enterprise scale client. ...

20 March, 2015

OABGen encountered file error ffffffff

The problem started with users reporting that their Offline Address Book (OAB) was missing some recent new starters, ...

05 December, 2014

Exchange PowerShell Quickstart - Bonus

Over the past 5 episodes we have been covering all sorts of aspects of Exchange PowerShell fundamentals. This week I ...

28 November, 2014

Exchange PowerShell Quickstart - Part 5

Over the past four parts we have covered connecting to Exchange and discovering cmdlets in part 1. We explored the ...

21 November, 2014

Exchange PowerShell Quickstart - Part 4

Over the past three parts we have covered connecting to Exchange and discovering cmdlets in part 1. We explored the ...

31 October, 2014

Exchange PowerShell Quickstart - Part 3

Over the past two weeks we have covered connecting to Exchange and discovering cmdlets in part 1, and we explored the ...

24 October, 2014

Exchange PowerShell Quickstart - Part 2

Last week in part 1 we looked at the background on PowerShell, explored terminology and some basic commands. This week ...

17 October, 2014

Exchange PowerShell Quickstart - Part 1

Background As we know Microsoft is firmly banking on PowerShell to be THE way to manage all of their operating systems ...

03 October, 2014

Cross forest in Exchange - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

How to open a mailbox cross forest in Exchange We often migrate users between Exchange organisations/forests, or need ...

19 September, 2014

Exchange Cascaded Folder Permission

If you have ever done delegation in Lotus Notes and were then migrated to Outlook you would have noticed one big ...

05 September, 2014

Restoring a Disconnected Mailbox - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

in Exchange I came across an issue at a client where for reasons as yet unknown about 15 users across various ...

29 August, 2014

Exchange Copy-MailboxFolderPermission

Are you sometimes asked by VIPs to get Folder Permissions sorted out in Outlook when they get a replacement PA?

22 August, 2014

Exchange Replication over a Split Network

Let’s start off by explaining what I mean by Exchange replication over a split network. I am talking about a DAG split ...

15 August, 2014

Active Directory Authentication - Part 2

In part 1, we talked about authentication via NTLM and how the domain controllers that are used to authenticate you are ...

08 August, 2014

Active Directory Authentication - Part 1

Today we are deviating away from the more Messaging related threads and we will be looking at authentication.

18 July, 2014

Optimizing Autodiscover - Nero Blanco IT Migration Specialists

The Outlook/Exchange autodiscover process has been well documented by Microsoft ...

04 July, 2014

TEN good reasons to keep a Hybrid Exchange Server

Numerous companies are now looking at the cloud for their mail system. Office 365 migrations are happening everywhere, ...

06 June, 2014

Global Address List Not Showing in Outlook

We’ve had reports from users who are using Outlook QuickSteps and find that when they look for a contact within the ...

30 May, 2014

Summarizing Message Tracking Logs

Exchange does a great job at logging all kinds of information, some by default and some can be switched on or extended. ...

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