I just spent the better part of 3 hours tracking down the CLI commands necessary to clear out any old VPN settings and set just the L2TP VPN server on an Ubiquiti Edgemax device running firmware 1.4.1. I gathered all that in one place here for reference.
1.
Connect via SSH
Open either the webportal and click the CLI option (does not allow you to paste) or better yet just download Putty and connect over SSH that way.
Dglogo_85x95_big
2.
Show Running VPN Configuations
configure
#show l2tp config
show vpn l2tp
#show pptp config
show vpn pptp
3.
Delete VPN Configurations
configure
delete vpn pptp
delete vpn l2tp
delete vpn ipsec
commit
save
4.
L2TP Server Configuration

change eth1 to whatever is the external interface port of the Edgemax

set vpn ipsec ipsec-interfaces interface eth1
set vpn ipsec nat-networks allowed-network 0.0.0.0/0
set vpn ipsec nat-traversal enable
set vpn l2tp remote-access authentication mode local
#Add local users for L2TP
set vpn l2tp remote-access authentication local-users username WhateverUserName password WhatEverUserPassword

Set a range of IP addresses that are not being used by your LAN DHCP

set vpn l2tp remote-access client-ip-pool start 192.168.x.x
set vpn l2tp remote-access client-ip-pool stop 192.168.x.x

Set the DNS servers to give out over DHCP for VPN Name Resolution

set vpn l2tp remote-access dns-servers server-1 192.168.x.x
set vpn l2tp remote-access dns-servers server-2 192.168.x.x

Set the authentication mode for L2TP

set vpn l2tp remote-access ipsec-settings authentication mode pre-shared-secret
set vpn l2tp remote-access ipsec-settings authentication pre-shared-secret ThisIsYourLongPassword
set vpn l2tp remote-access ipsec-settings ike-lifetime 3600

Set the l2tp listening address to the WAN IP and WAN Gateway

set vpn l2tp remote-access outside-address ThisIsYourWANIP
set vpn l2tp remote-access outside-nexthop ThisIsYourWAN-GW-IP

Optional to set the MTU but I do this just in case they end up on DSL or T1

set vpn l2tp remote-access mtu 1492
commit
save
exit
5.
Add The Firewall Rules For L2TP Traffic
Open the web browser of choice and enter the LAN IP of the edgemax to login to the portal.
Go to the Security Tab and then find WAN_Local in the Firewall Rules.
Click Actions on the right and drop down choosing Edit Ruleset
Add a new rule with the following settings:
Basic Tab:
Description = L2TP
Enable = Checked (true)
Action = Accept
Protocol = UDP
Choose the Destination Tab
Ports = 500,1701,4500 (no spaces)
Save
Add another rule in the ruleset
Description = ESP
Enable = Checked (true)
Action = Accept
Protocol = choose by name then choose ESP
Save
Save again to exit the firewall settings
6.
Configure Windows L2TP VPN
On your windows box that needs to VPN into the Ubiquiti you will create a new VPN connect using the wizard and then go to ncpa.cpl and set the properties on the VPN connect. Specifically three settings:
1 – On the security tab of the VPN connection properties change the type of VPN to Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol
Choose Advanced Settings right below that option and set the shared secret you used above when configuring the L2TP server.
Under allow these protocols choose Challenge Handshake and Microsoft CHAP Version 2
Under the Networking tab choose IPV4 then advanced and turn off the option for Use Default Gateway On Remote Network so you can browse the internet locally while connected to the VPN.
7.
Test the connection
Enable the VPN connect and enter the username and password you created when setting up the local users on the Ubiquiti Edgemax box and hit connect. You should now be connected but the tunnel will not come live until you ping across it or try and access resources on the LAN.
Conclusion
In conclusion I found all the information was in bits and pieces scattered throughout the internet and the docs on the Ubiquiti Wiki were incomplete.
Hopefully if someone else needs to configure VPN for your Ubiquiti device this will help.

So you need a simple SMTP relay test for Office 365
Introduction

I have been doing a ton of Exchange migrations lately and setting up internal IIS relays to smarthost to Office 365. In this I have found many issues with firewalls and various settings IT managers like to do to keep email traffic limited. In this I have had to figure out ways to test SMTP from telnet to PowerShell and this one is my favorite so I thought I would share.

Steps (4 total)
1
Open PowerShell
Right Click on PowerShell and Run As Administrator

2
Store your Office 365 Mailbox Credentials
get-credential will prompt you for the Office 365 relay mailbox creds. you need to store this in a variable so you can call it as one bit in the next command line.

$relaycreds = get-credential

3
Use Send-MailMessage PowerShell Command
now we can use the creds above to send a test email message using the Send-MailMessage command. [email protected] to the same user #you just stored the relaycreds in step one. [email protected] to another email address you have under your control so you can see it relay.

Send-MailMessage –From [email protected] –To [email protected] –Subject “Test Email” –Body “Test SMTP Relay Service” -SmtpServer smtp.office365.com -Credential $relaycreds -UseSsl -Port 587

4
Test the SMTP Relay
use the same command with a few changes to test the SMTP relay now.Do this from the server with IIS6 SMTP relay on or change localhost to the FQDN of your choice.

Send-MailMessage –From [email protected] –To [email protected] –Subject “Test Email” –Body “Test SMTP Relay Service” -SmtpServer localhost -Port 25

Conclusion

So really simple way to send emails now and you can see also from this command the ability to email from a scheduled task attached to event triggers. This will help you monitor your windows servers for those specific events that you care about.

Good luck

Well if you need more detail then you need to uninstall the AD Manager and install AD Audit
http://www.manageengine.com/products/active-directory-audit/download.html

Download AD manager from Manage Engine and run the AD reports you seek.
Install this on one of your DC's
http://www.manageengine.com/products/ad-manager/download.html
Free to use for up to 100 users which I find is plenty for most.

Report back if you need more.

What is happening is the mapped drive is sitting idle for 15 min and then disconnecting to free up resources. DB applications such as yours get these errors because this connection is not persistent as g.jacobse has eluded to with the /persistent:yes command. This will keep the drive mapped but does not stop the idle timeout from occuring which will continue your error.

Do this on the machines in question: (also can be deployed via Group policy script)

Open CMD then right click and run as administrator

net config server /autodisconnect:-1

This will set the autodisconnect to never disconnect and you should not see this error any more.

Give it a try and report back your findings.

Yep they pretty much did away with this as it was a feature that was never really used and was a big security hole... If you have Exchange 2007 it is available... This all runs on WebDAV as far as I can tell.

Please note this feature has been discontinued in Exchange 2010 sp1 and newer
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998911.aspx

What version of Exchange are you running?

MS Office 365 is really good about data retention and you should not lose anything when messing with Licensing.
We recently moved from Paid subscriptions to ones provided by our partner program and did a similar switch and it was seamless and not disruptive in anyway.

Yes this is really the difference between versions of ActiveSync... 2007 is the old school way and now they are using Outlook Anywhere which is different enough to cause your troubles. Exchange 2007 is already nearing the end of life (April 11 2017) so this is your wake up call to start thinking about a migration to Office 365 or Exchange 2013 in-house.

In the mean time you will be forced to use 2011 for your email.

http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/31/new-outlook-mac-available-office-365-customers/

You can yell at Microsoft here.
https://support2.microsoft.com/contactus/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1539

@scottalanmiller ok I am going to try that now

I really want to try the legacy nic but I want someone to second that...

@scottalanmiller I made sure that the second line is only active during failover. All speed tests are way higher then the second ISP can provide so I am confident this is all over the FIOS line.

The ESX host is very overloaded and I fear that would introduce a hole new can of worms that will need to be addressed. Especially if all I need to do is switch over to the legacy adapter on the existing setup and be done with this...

Advice?

I feel like the Legacy Adapter is the way to go on Hyper-V and I think I am going to try and add the legacy adapter to the existing Elastix and remove the other advanced adapter and see if it plays nice. I would like confirmation again that switching out a NIC on CentOS is as straightforward as doing it on Windows?

We have a client who recently upgraded from Fortivoice appliance to a Elastix PBX VM running on Hyper-v. Call quality is very bad with lots of jitter.

Edgemax Lite running 1.6.0 With QoS settings as per this how to https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX-Configuration-Examples/EdgeMAX-Quality-of-Service-for-Voice-Over-IP-QoS-for-VoIP/ta-p/529077

Two NetGear GS748tV5 switches with Auto VOIP turned on for all the ports
Separate NIC for just this Elastix VM with bandwidth reserved as high as it can go
VM specs are 4GB RAM with 2 Cores and I also went to the trouble to reserve disk I/O for just this VM

Jitter buffer turned on in FreePBX and played with the millisecond buffer and buffer resync settings for a good two hours last night. Thought I found the sweet spot but this morning under load jitter is bad enough you cannot really hear.

I also found a setting for the QoS / CoS that will look for DSCP tags and prioritize that traffic but I cannot for the life of me find where to set that in the FreePBX. A networking friend of mine told me to set this in the VOIP phones and match that tag on the Switches so that they know it is high priority / expedited forwarding but I cannot find in the phone interface where to set that.

At this point I am way out of my comfort zone and need some advice on how to proceed to get call quality locked down and acceptable.

I feel like this is a network driver issue and the article about small business PBX below states I should use the legacy network adapter which I did not do on the setup... just accepted all defaults. If that is truly the fix I need someone with Elastix / CentOS experience to tell me if replacing the NIC on the VM will mess up the Elastix box and force a rebuild.
My other thought was to completely rebuild the Elastix VM with the legacy adapter and export then import the settings from the old one to the new and test.

Internet Pipe is Verizon FIOS with 100/100 so I know that is not a issue unless I am not setting MTU correctly for the FIOS?

Articles I have tried already
http://kb.netgear.com/ci/fattach/get/80/1261136566/redirect/1/filename/QoS_on_Netgear_Switches.pdf

http://kevinjmorse.ca/articles/small-business-pbx-part-2-elastix-hyper-v

not sinippingtool.exe just snippingtool without the extention

http://www.windows-commandline.com/launch-snipping-tool-command-line/

report back if you need more.

Check for stored credentials in Control Panel / Credential Manager and delete as needed. Restart the workstation and test.

Report back your findings.

A few days ago I was working on an Azure VM host and trying to repair the AD role on one particular server. After removing the AD and DNS roles the server became unresponsive due to what was now bad DNS entries on the NIC card. No console session to get in an reset this and so I went to asking my buddy Craig at MS about this. His advice was to change the size of the VM which would reset the NIC and get it back to DHCP. We tried this and it actually works!

Just wanted the community to be aware of this quick fix to a headache with Azure VM's

If you can you might consider just doing a direct migration from the MSP Exchange to Office 365 if that is your end goal by using a service like MigrationWiz that will be the intermediary and allow you to transfer server to cloud in one step.

http://www.bittitan.com/migrationwiz

Just a another thought

Report back