ErwinBierens.com | Sharing Knowledge

Let’s Encrypt and Skype for Business

14/08/2017 No Comments

For my home lab I’m using the free certificates from Let’s Encrypt (Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority).

The certificates from them have 1 big limitation, they are only valid for 3 months but you can renew them “almost” automatically.

As explained In my blog last week about “Skype for Business environment running with just one public IP” I’m running my Reverse Proxy with IIS ARR (Application Request Routing). I’ll try to explain how to request and assign the free certificates for your homelab.

Skype for Business Online

What’s fixed in Cloud Connector Edition 2.0.1

12/08/2017 No Comments

In Cloud Connector Edition 2.0.1, the following fixes were made:

Restarting Virtual Machines sometimes caused the service to stop if the restart order determined by Hyper-V was incorrect. This has been fixed.
Calls for download security checks in remote PowerShell sometimes caused calls to the New-CsOnlineSession cmdlet to fail. This issue has been fixed.

During automatic updates, switching to a new version sometimes caused the running version to fail. This issue has been fixed

You can download the new Cloud Connector Edition 2.0.1 is now. If you have not yet upgraded to 2.0.1, You can find the installation file at https://aka.ms/CloudConnectorInstaller

Skype for Business

Skype for Business environment running with just one Public IP

11/08/2017 2 Comments

For quite some time I’m running a home lab, first on a big server (HP Proliant DL360) and since beginning of this year I have a Intel Nuc, saves a lot of energy costs 😂

Domain Controller and CA on Windows 2016 Core Edition
Skype for Business Front-End Server on Windows Server 2012r2 standard
SQL 2014 std for monitoring and persistent chat on Windows Server 2016
Exchange 2016 on Windows Server 2016
Skype for Business Edge on Windows Server 2016
IIS ARR (Reverse Proxy) on Windows 2016
PBX on Windows Server 2016

This lab was great for testing purposes but the problem was always, no connection to the outside world with Skype because of the requirement for at least 2 external IP’s with the use of Skype for Business.

*** To be clear, DON’T use this for production environments, this is not supported by Microsoft ***

So I started searching on the internet, could not find much about setting up a Edge Server with just one nic or 2 nic’s in the same subnet.
Only on the site from Mark Vale I saw a blog article that he did the same setup with 2 nic’s and 1 public IP. The missing part for me was the Edge server configuration. How do I need to configure my networking. Check below to find out!

Powershell

Powershell Enable / Disable / Set / Show Windows Web Proxy

08/08/2017 No Comments

I’m currently working for a company where I have to set up a web proxy to connect my laptop to the Internet. Because I’m a little bit lazy to enable/disable this every morning when i come in, or when i open my laptop at home, i use these two oneliners in powershell:

EnableProxy:

set-itemproperty 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings' -name ProxyEnable -value 1

DisableProxy:

set-itemproperty 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings' -name ProxyEnable -value 0

Complete Script:

I also created a simple menu script with all the options to Enable, Disable, Set and Show. You can download the script from Technet Gallery
If you have any questions or suggestions, please let me now 🙂

Skype for Business