Cortex Release Notes
High Level summary document outlining all enhancements, system fixes that have been implemented in Cortex 2010.1 (version 9.1).
1.
Contents
1.
CONTENTS
3
2.
RELEASE OVERVIEW
4
2.1 Pre-Requisites 4
3.
ENHANCEMENTS
5
3.1 Cortex User Interface Changes 5
3.2 Microsoft Exchange (all versions) 6
3.3 Exchange 2003 6
3.4 Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting 6
3.5 Exchange 2010 SP1 Enterprise 7
3.6 CloudMark CloudFilter 7
3.7 Citrix XenApp 6 7
3.8 SharePoint 2010 8
3.9 Cortex AD Sync 8
3.10 Mail Archiving – Global Relay 8
3.11 Windows Web-Hosting 8
3.12 Microsoft SQL Hosting 9
3.13 HyperV (Virtual Machines) 9
3.14 CortexAPI 10
4.
DEFECT FIXES
11
5.
CORTEX COMPONENTS
14
5.1 Core components 14
5.2 Service Specific Components 14
5.3 Release 9.1 Tools 15
Copyright 2010 EMS-Cortex Limited. This document is the property of EMS-Cortex Ltd and may not be disclosed or copied to a third party, other than to any wholly owned subsidiary of EMS-Cortex Ltd, without
2.
Release Overview
Please read these Release Notes and advise EMS-Cortex if there are any aspects of the upgrade that you do not require on your instance. EMS-Cortex will at all times, attempt to meet your specific requirements. This may incur additional costs to the quoted upgrade costs. A revised work quote will be reissued for your approval before commencement of any of the upgrade tasks.
Any calls raised post upgrade re: change of system functionality affecting existing business processes and resolution of issues will be charged at normal support rates.
To arrange for your Cortex instance to be upgraded to the new Cortex 2010 release, please contact our support team on [email protected] to arrange a suitable date.
2.1
Pre-Requisites
Windows PowerShellWindows PowerShell 1.0 must be installed on the Cortex Provisioning server(s).
Exchange 2010
SP1 must be installed on your Exchange 2010 servers
BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5
3.
Enhancements
3.1
Cortex User Interface Changes
3.1.1 Users Details – Country Property now supported
The User Details screen on the Control Panel has been updated with a new Country property. This is located by default under Additional User Properties >> Addresses. User Administrators will select the country from a drop down list. The User Create provisioning request will update the user’s active directory account, updating the country (the co attribute) and it’s corresponding AD attributes: c (country abbreviation) and countryCode (ISO3166-1 numeric code).
3.1.2 Bulk User Import
The bulk user import method has been extended to support additional user active properties. The User Administrator can append additional columns to the standard import, ensuring that the column heading matches the property name on Cortex. The method will import these values onto the user account in the Control Panel.
3.1.3 Restricted Domains
A new control has been added to the Panel that allows the Service Provider/Reseller Administrator to specify domains that cannot be applied to customer accounts (e.g.
google.com). Once set at a customer level, the restricted domain will be applied to the customer and its sub-customers. Domains configured at the top root customer will be applied throughout the Control Panel. When an end user attempts to add the domain to the account, they will be advised that the domain is restricted and cannot be added.
3.1.4 Email Notifications
The email notification screen has been updated to display all recipients that have been
configured to the email template in one central table rather than having to select the different recipient types. This has improved the usability of this function.
3.1.5 Branding
Content added to the Add Brands page advising the Service Provider that any Brand created at the top customer level will be accessible by all resellers/customers. It directs the Service Provider to impersonate the Reseller Administrator when creating a Brand for a reseller.
3.1.6 Provisioning Status Icon
The provisioning status icon has been updated to dynamic icon, improving the end-user’s visibility that the provisioning request is underway and being processed.
3.1.7 Server Connections
Enhancement made to the Server role property. Only server connection components will appear in the drop down list for selection.
3.2
Microsoft Exchange (all versions)
3.2.1 Validation to prevent non-MAPI users from being assigned with MailArchiving and BlackBerry accounts
Validation has been added to the User Services screen to stop a non-MAPI user from being provisioned with a mail archiving and/or BlackBerry user account. When provision is selected, the Control Panel will advise that the user does not have the required MAPI function configured to their mailbox account.
3.2.2 Search Function added to Contacts, Distribution Groups and Resource Mailboxes
The Contacts, Distribution Groups and Resource Mailboxes screens have been updated with a new search function, allowing the end-user to locate a specific object effectively. The search function is located on the left side of the screen.
3.2.3 Contacts – Mail Aliases
The Contact screen has been updated to allow a mail alias to be assigned to a contact object.
3.2.1 Exchange Summary screen
The business logic has been updated on the Exchange Summary screen. POP3 server and log-on details will be displayed for users that are attached to a service access level that has POP3 enabled.
Entourage server details will be displayed when the user’s service access level has MAPI and/or IMAP protocols enabled.
3.2.2 Resource Mailboxes – additional configuration properties
Properties “Location”, “Telephone” and “Capacity” can now be configured against a resource mailbox on the Control Panel.
3.3
Exchange 2003
The distribution group features “Send As Permissions” and “Require Sender Authentication” have been removed from the user interface for Exchange 2003 distribution groups as these are not supported by Microsoft Exchange 2003.
3.4
Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting
Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting is now supported in the Cortex Control Panel, using the “Exchange Multi tenanted” service. Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting must be managed in its own Active Directory Forest and Cortex supports the ability to host your existing AD setup as well as managing a new Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting environment by adding an additional location to your Cortex settings.
The control panel allows you to set up Exchange Service Plans using a user friendly interface. These plans are configured to the standard Service Access Levels, allowing easy monitoring of mailboxes that have been allocated to users for billing.
Exchange 2010 introduces the new concepts of “Programs” and “Offers”. Creating a new customer in the Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting environment requires the selection of a Program and Offer in order to create a new customer.
The management of contacts, distribution groups and mail disclaimers is now available in the OWA application and therefore these management screens will not be available in the Control Panel for the Exchange Multi-tenanted Service Administrator.
PST Export/Import has been simplified; there is no longer a requirement to install the Cortex Exchange web service on the server that host the .pst files.
Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting does not support public folders or unified messaging
Note that BlackBerry Enterprise Server is not currently compatible with Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting.
3.5
Exchange 2010 SP1 Enterprise
3.5.1 PST Export/Import
Exchange SP1 removes the dependency of Outlook 2010 being installed on the server that will host the .pst files.
3.5.2 Distribution Group Owner(s)
Multiple mail enabled user objects can be added to a distribution group’s owner property . Once an owner(s) have been assigned to a mail enabled distribution group, at least one owner must be assigned to the group.
3.6
CloudMark CloudFilter
Integration with CloudMark’s CloudFilter service is now supported on the Cortex Control Panel. The CloudFilter service is a hosted anti-spam/anti-virus filtering service. Through the Control Panel, the Service Provider can retrieve, add and manage Class of Services before they are assigned to a customer’s domain. Class of Service is used to define the actions that CloudFilter will perform against the incoming mail.
To ease the management of blacklist/whitelist entries, Cortex has introduced Domain Groups, where multiple domains can be assigned to a Domain Group and the blacklist/whitelist entries are managed at Domain Group level rather than at individual domains level.
3.7
Citrix XenApp 6
Cortex 2010.1 adds supports for Citrix XenApp 6. The Control Panel integrates directly with the XenApp 6 server to retrieve all published applications and display them online for configuration.
These applications can then be provisioned to customers and users. Once provisioned with an application, the application will be available for the user on their desktop.
This version of Cortex does not support streaming applications. Additional XenApp 6 enhancements are planned for the next release.
3.8
SharePoint 2010
3.8.1 DNS Provisioning
The SharePoint 2010 service now supports the adding of a DNS record (A, CNAME) when the Sharepoint site is created. There is a pre-requisite that the customer account is provisioned with the DNS service and the domain is already managed as a DNS zone.
Unlike the IIS service, there is no link to the SharePoint service from the DNS record. De-provisioning and deleting a SharePoint site will not remove the DNS record from DNS server or Cortex. These additional features have been noted in the Cortex Enhancements database and will be scheduled for a future release.
3.9
Cortex AD Sync
3.9.1 ProxyAddresses AD attribute
The AD Sync tool has been enhanced to support the ProxyAddresses AD attribute. Values that are set in this property will be passed through the AD Sync tool and corresponding email addresses will be created against the user in Cortex. If a proxy address is added with an uppercase “SMTP:” the address will become the user’s primary email address.
AD Sync also supports the Mail AD attribute. If no SMTP: proxy addresses are configured, the Mail attribute will be set to the user’s primary email address.
These values will only be passed through if the email address’ domain is configured to the customer account. If the domain is not configured, an error will be logged in the remote domain advising that the user’s email domain does not belong to the customer.
3.10
Mail Archiving – Global Relay
3.10.1 Compliance Archiving
The “Global Relay Compliance Archiving” service property has been moved from service
properties to package template properties. This allows the Reseller to differentiate whether the customer is enabled with the compliance feature by selecting a configured package. Cortex 2010.1 introduces two new additional default package templates for Global Relay that can be enabled for your service offering. These are “Global Relay – Compliance” & “Global Relay- Journaling”.
3.11.1 External IP Address
The Windows web hosting customer service screen has been updated to display the configured server’s external IP address when no bindings with IP addresses are saved to the service instance. On IIS Manager, the external IP Address is displayed on the Advanced Tab of the web site’s settings.
3.11.2 DNS Provisioning
Cortex now manages DNS (A, AAAA, CNAME) records for customer’s web sites. There is a pre-requisite that the customer account is provisioned with the DNS service and the domain is already managed as a DNS zone. Multiple DNS records can be set up for the web site. In DNS the record is clearly marked that it is linked to a service and the user can select a hyperlink to navigate to the IIS services page.
DNS records can be de-provisioned and deleted using the DNS feature within the IIS service iframe. DNS records will be added when additional site bindings are added via IIS Manager.
3.11.3 Disable/enable application pool and web site management
Two new properties have been added to the Windows Web-Hosting service package template. These properties determine whether the IIS Service Administrator can manage the application pool features (recycle, stop, start) and/or the web site features (start/stop) for an instance.
3.11.4 IIS Disk Usage Monitoring
The IIS Disk Usage Monitoring tool has been updated so that the Service Provider can define whether the scheduled data results are saved as a .csv file on the IIS server or in the GenData table in OLMReports. This is an add-on feature to the standard IIS web service configuration please contact Cortex Support for installation.
3.12
Microsoft SQL Hosting
A new property has been added to the service settings (Available Authentication Methods) which determines what authentication methods are available when provisioning a user to the SQL database. Authentication can be set to Windows Authentication only, SQL Authentication only or both.
3.13
HyperV (Virtual Machines)
The following enhancements have been made to the HyperV service:
Resource fix for adding additional disk drives
Multiple disk drives can be added per provisioning request
Timeout issues when we create fixed disks have been resolved:
o Cortex will also convert disks from fixed to dynamic or dynamic to fixed depending on the settings configured in the package template
o Expanding the size of a fixed disk may timeout because asynchronous processing is not supported in SCVMM
o Administrators are likely to see a failed “Convert virtual hard disk” job in the job list when multiple disk drives converted. This is because SCVMM does not allow us to run multiple job groups for expanding multiple disks. For example, 2 disks have to be converted therefore 2 jobs are created. While job 1 is running, job 2 times out while waiting to acquire a lock on the VM. Cortex will detect the lock and restart job 2. Restarting a job will create a new job entry in the job list. Provisioning should succeed even though there are failed “Unable to perform the job because one or more of the selected objects are locked by another job” entries in the job list.
Multi-threading support for VM provisioning
o If the bulk queue on the provisioning engine supports multi-threading, multiple VMs can be provisioned simultaneously per customer. This is ideal when long running tasks such as expanding disks jobs are running.
Mounting DVD images using SCVMM
o With the latest MS updates, DVD images can be mounted using SCVMM, Cortex no longer needs WMI access to the host machine.
New package template options
o Added support for dynamic and high performance synthetic network adapters Once a network adapter is added, Cortex will not change the type from
dynamic to synthetic or vice versa. This is done by design since a change could potentially require the machine to be stopped. High-performance synthetic devices require a virtualization-aware guest operating system on the VM.
o Added support for network optimised NICs
This option can only be set once the network is connected. This feature improves network performance for VMs with network adapters that support virtual machine queue (VMQ) or TCP Chimney Offload. VMQ enables
creating a unique network queue for each virtual network adapter. TCP Chimney Offload enables network traffic processing to be offloaded from the networking stack.
o Added support for VMs hosted on highly available cluster servers
This setting only applies to new VMs. Once a VM is deployed, the highly available option cannot be changed.
3.14
CortexAPI
The CortexAPI now supports the provisioning of the following additional services to customers and users (where applicable):
- Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting (Exchange Multi tenanted) - CloudFilter
Service instances (SQLHosting, Windows Web Hosting & SharePOint 2010) can now be deleted using the CortexAPI.
4.
Defect Fixes
This table includes all defects that have been identified in Cortex versions prior to Cortex 2010 and have been fixed in this release.
Ticket Reference
Ticket Description Service Affected
10970 DNS – Unable to add AAAA records
The Control Panel was rejecting invalid IPv6 addresses. Fix applied and IPv6 addresses can now be added and managed via the Control Panel
DNS
10922 Cannot add Unicode Customer names
The two stored procedures used to create and update customers did not contain nvarchar parameters causing any Unicode characters present in the Customer name to be converted to the Ascii equivalent. The stored procedures have now updated with nvarchar parameters.
10877 (1156)
Cortex API – cannot delete a SQL Hosting instance
The API has been updated to support the deletion of SQL Hosting / Windows Web Hosting and SharePoint 2010 instances.
Note: Cortex API does not support the deletion of SharePoint (WSS3) and CRM4 instances. This functionality will be delivered in 2011
Cortex API
10810 (1041)
User’s Display Name contained lead and trailing spaces
The Control Panel allowed the user’s display name to be saved with leading/trailing spaces. This caused issues when setting up the user with an hosted exchange account. Fix applied to remove all leading/trailing spaces from First Name; Last Name and Display Name.
10768 HyperV Reports time-out
10729 Public SQL hosting not available for customer service provisioning
Public SQL instances (available to all customers) were not being passed through to the customer service screen. Fix applied and public instances are now available for selection when provisioning a SQL database
SQL Hosting
10719 Cortex Home Page not updated with Brand’s content 10661 Diacritics are being saved in e-mail addresses
When the customer’s exchange account is configured with “Force customer wide primary address” enabled, the
customer’s users email addresses are created with diacritics present. This causes issues with Exchange. The Control Panel has been updated to remove the diacritics from the user’s email address if they are present in the user’s name.
10642 Contact creation fails if brackets exist in Contact Name
If brackets are present in either the First Name or Last Name of a contact, the save request will fail as the portal is attempting to add the brackets to the contact’s alias. Fix applied which will drop the brackets when generating the mail alias for the contact. Example: Contact “Bob Smith (Office)” will have a mail alias of BobSmithOffice.
Exchange - All versions
10619 Contact creation ignores display name
The display name is populated when creating a contact was being ignored and overwritten with the contact’s First Name and Last Name when the contact was saved.
The Contacts screen has now been updated with the following improvements: - Display Name is not overridden when the contact is saved
- Display Name will be auto populated with the contact’s first name and last name as the user enters the data - Properties First Name / Last Name has been re-ordered
- Tab order for the screen has been updated, focusing on the data input of the mandatory properties
Exchange – All versions
10553 SQL Hosting – Automatic Server Selection ignores configured server collection
If no server was specified during the customer service provisioning request, Cortex would add the SQL database to the first server that the customer was configured to for SQL Hosting. It ignored whether this server was within the server collection that was configured in the package template. Function has been updated to so that the database is assigned to the first server within the package’s configured server collection.
Note: The automatic server selection property does not load balanced the SQL databases.
SQL Hosting
10401 Customer Search
The presence of brackets in a Customer’s Full Name caused the Search function to display the wrong customer values. Function updated to accept brackets in name and return the correct customer details.
10358 SharePoint Backups not recognizing ‘https’ sites
The scheduled SharePoint backup task did not recognize and backup sites that were configured with https. The
SharePoint (WSS3) web service has been updated to recognize this type of site. This process is dependent on the service property “IIS Port” to be configured as a blank value.
Note: SharePoint 2010 backups are not currently supported in Cortex
SharePoint (WSS3)
10353 Short Domain Names
The Control Panel did not allow short domains to be added to a customer account (e.g. x.dk). Cortex has been updated to accept these types of domains, including the email validation
9269 9523
Citrix Application Access Screen
No sort order was being applied to the users on this screen, making it difficult to find a user. The screen has now updated to sort all of the provisioned Citrix users by i) Display Name followed by ii) UPN.
Citrix
The mail attribute was not being populated on the active directory and caused the offline address book to error. Fix applied to Cortex Provisioning Rules that populates the mail attribute with the resource mailbox’s email address. 8424 Deleted customer domains not removed from Exchange Server
The customer provisioning action was removing the domain from the customer’s object and DNS but not from the exchange server. Fix applied to the customer provisioning action to delete the domain from the exchange server when a domain is removed from the customer account.
Exchange – All versions
5.
Cortex Components
5.1
Core components
The table below details the current core components and whether they are upgraded, replaced or left alone. It also shows new core components being added.
Component Name Type Description Upgrade Status
CortexWeb ASP.NET Web Application(Framework 3.5) Administration interface for Cortex customers & administrators UPGRADE
Cortex Provisioning Engine Windows NT Service Back-end provisioning service UPGRADE
Cortex SQL SQL Databases Cortex system SQL Server databases. Scripted changes UPGRADE
CortexDirectoryWS .NET Web Service (Framwork 2.0) Web Service for Active Directory manipulation UPGRADE
CortexShopWS ASP.NET Web Application (Framework 3.5) CortexShop application UPGRADE
Cortex API API for Cortex UPGRADE
Cortex Migration Tool Tool for migrating customers / users onto Cortex
Reports SQL reports Reports assigned through permissions system UPGRADE
CortexDemoWeb ASP.NET Web Application (Framework 3.5) Web Service for setting up trial customer accounts UPGRADE
5.2
Service Specific Components
Component Name Service Type Description Upgrade Status
CortexExchangeWS Exchange 2003,
2007 & 2010 Enterprise & Hosting
.NET Web Service (Framework 2.0)
Web service for exchange management & PST Import/Export UPGRADE
CortexSharePoint2WS SharePoint 2.0 .NET Web Service (Framework 1.1)
Web Service for SharePoint 2.0 management CortexSharePoint3WS SharePoint 2.0 .NET Web Service
(Framework 2.0)
Web Service for SharePoint 3.0 management UPGRADE
2010 Foundation Service (Framework 3.5)
CortexCitrixFarmWS Citrix .NET Web Service
(Framework 2.0)
Web Service for Citrix management (CitrixMetaframe 4.5 and XenApps 6)
UPGRADE
CortexBlackBerryWS BlackBerry .NET Web Service
(Framework 2.0)
Web Service for query BlackBerry user information UPGRADE
CortexIISWS IIS6 & IIS7 .NET Web Service
(Framework 2.0)
Web Service for IIS Management UPGRADE
CortexVirtualMachineWS HyperV .NET Web Service
(Framework 2.0)
Web Service for HyperV management UPGRADE
CortexMySQLWS MySQL .NET Web Service
(Framework 2.0)
Web Service for MySQL management UPGRADE
CortexWindowsMobileWS Exchange .NET Web Service
(Framework 2.0)
Web Service for creating SMS messages UPGRADE
MailboxStats Exchange 2003 .NET Command-line
application
Collects Exchange 2003 mailbox stats
PublicFolderStats Exchange 2003 .NET Command-line
application
Collects Exchange 2003 public folder stats Exchange 2007 Mailbox
and Public Folder Stats update
Exchange 2007 PowerShell Scripts Collects Exchange 2007 mail box and public folder stats
Exchange 2010 Mailbox and Public Folder Stats update
Exchange 2010 PowerShell Scripts Collects Exchange 2010 mail box and public folder stats
Ideal CortexShop Third Party Payment Provider Integration. Setup files for Ideal
5.3
Release 9.1 Tools
Component Name Service Type Description
IIS Disk Usage Monitoring IIS6/7 Application Gathers disk usage data per web site. Data can be saved to a .csv file or to the GenData table in OLMReports.
