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27 December 2018

Save disk space - Compact - NTFS compress your folders

In the ever ongoing search for disk space on Exchange servers it is possible to compress certain folders with NTFS compression.
You could do this through the file explorer and click yourself silly, or you can turn to PowerShell.
Actually it's just an old command prompt program, but we'll use it in PowerShell.

Now first things first:

DO NOT USE THIS ON YOUR MAILBOXDATABASES!!!

This may seem like a no brainer but I don't want to hear that someone used it because I didn't warn them.
The only thing you can safely use this for is on log files, temp files, etl files and blg files.
If you've read my previous blog post about cleaning up certain logging folders used by exchange (which can be found here:
https://vanbrenk.blogspot.com/2018/02/clean-iis-log-files-blg-and-etl-files.html)

Here are the directories you can compress safely:
As always with scripts/code found on the internet, test it yourself on a test environment.

.\compact.exe /C /S /A /I "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\*"                        
.\compact.exe /C /S /A /I "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\ETLTraces\*"                        
.\compact.exe /C /S /A /I "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\Logs\*"                        
.\compact.exe /C /S /A /I "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\FIP-FS\Data\ProgramLogArchive\*"                        
.\compact.exe /C /S /A /I "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\FrontEnd\Connectivity\*"                        
.\compact.exe /C /S /A /I "C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\HTTPERR\*"

14 December 2018

Get-CsWebTicket : Failed to logon with given credentials. Make sure correct user name and password provided.

When trying to login to Skype Online through PowerShell or the Skype for Business control panel you receive the following error:
The WinRM client cannot process the request. Basic authentication is currently disabled in the client configuration. Change the client configuration and try the request again.

Or this one:

Get-CsWebTicket : Failed to logon with given credentials. Make sure correct user name and password provided.

Then the search begins, and brought me to this:
View the current winrm settings to check whether "basic authentication" has been disabled or not.
winrm get winrm/config/client/auth
Auth
    Basic = true [Source="GPO"]
    Digest = true [Source="GPO"]
    Kerberos = true
    Negotiate = true
    Certificate = true
    CredSSP = false

For me it was set with a GPO.
Trying to set it with this:

winrm set config/client/auth/ @{basic="true"}

Update:
Set-Item WSMan:\localhost\Client\Auth\Basic -Value 'True'

Error: Invalid use of command line. Type "winrm -?" for help.
That didn't go as planned.
The tried to set it in the registry with this:
Open regedit as admin and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WinRM\Client

Simply change the DWORD from 0 to 1 and then restart the PowerShell console

Well that's nice but no solution.

Then searched for the other error, the one with the Get-CSWebTicket error.
Which led me to this:
Since Skype for Business Control Panel don’t support two-step verification we will need to to set up an “app password” for our Office 365 admin account that has MFA enabled.

Oh, really...and yes I just enabled the force MFA option policy in Azure: "Baseline policy: Require MFA for admins (Preview)".

Created an app password an pasted it in my SkypeOnline PowerShell module and voila I was in once again.