MSOnlineExtended Powershell Module

Something weird happened to me earlier. I was working on my O365 tenant with Powershell, and couldn’t remember the exact verbiage of a cmdlet that I needed. So, I did what any good sys admin would do; consulted the help! After clearing my Powershell console of many, angry looking red and yellow words (Powershell didn’t seem to be happy about me guessing at cmdlets), I ran “get-command *msol*”. Much to my surprise, I saw that many of the cmdlets were duplicated in the output:

What gives? Well, if you take a look at the column furthest to the right, you will see that there are two different Powershell modules being called; msonline and msonlineExtended. But why are there two modules? And what is the difference? I can’t find any explanation for this mystery module. It seems there are other people who are just as confused as me:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/besidethepoint/archive/2012/10/23/getting-started-with-azure-active-directory.aspx

 

Do YOU know the purpose of the MSOnlineExtended module? If so, please leave a comment!

Error When Reinstalling DirSync

Today is just not my day! After a failed attempt at installing/configuring DirSync, I removed it and tried to install and configure again. This time did not prove any more successful. I was getting this error midway through the install process:

I was able to figure this out after a little while and wanted to sure what I learned. If you are seeing this error message after removing DirSync and trying to reinstall, here’s what you need to do:

• Uninstall Windows Azure Active Directory Sync tool and reboot

• Remove this directory and all subfolders: C:\Program Files\Windows Azure Active Directory Sync 

• If you created a domain account to use for DirSync, remove it. Also remove the Office 365 account you created.
• Delete the Group accounts that the DirSync wizard created. Their names all begin with “FIM”

• Uninstall MSSQL
• Delete the MSSQL directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\
• Reboot!
• You should be able to install and configure DirSync now.

Failed to Mount Exchange 2010 Database

Recently, one of my users’ came to me and said he was missing two months worth of email. This was just after migrating to Exchange Online. We were using Exchange 2010 with System Center DPM for backups.

I restored the database that the users’ mailbox was on from a backup then copied it over to the Exchange server from the network share I restored it to. All was going well, until I tried to mount the darn thing.

I was getting this error and could not for the life of me decry-pt the meaning of it. There is obviously some type of IO issue/file not found. But what could it be?

I figured I’d better kick this one off with some basic troubleshooting. First, I checked the health of the database and made sure it was clean. Passed that test…

Then ran a repair on the database, to no avail.

After racking my brain for a good thirty minutes, and a few failed Google searches, I found the solution. It was so simple! I created the log file directory in the folder with the database, and voila, the database mounted without a single error!

I was able to see the ‘supposed’ location of the log file by opening the Exchange Management Shell and running the ‘Get-MailboxDatabase’ cmdlet, like so:

Get-MailBoxDatabase –Identity <Recovery DB Name> | FL Name, ServerName, EDBFilePath, LogFolderPath

                                           

I’m not sure why the database mounting process isn’t capable of creating the log file directory… I think Microsoft would have thought and planned for a situation like this. Hope this helps!