C550 - The next Smartphone from Orange?

I really really *love* my smartphone.  I take it everywhere and do most of my email triage on it. I'm lost without it,  so I was really pleased to see rumours of the next Smartphone appearing in Marcus' blog this morning.  Then to read that it's going to have GPRS class 10. Oh Heaven...

Or do I wait for the C600?  It  would fit in my handbag (US=purse) more easily!

Oh, decisions, decisions...

TechNet Webcast: Managing Exchange 2003 with MOM 2005

I really wanted to highlight the time of this webcast again, as this management pack for Exchange puts all of the bells and whistles onto Exchange that the old Resource kit tools used to, back in the days of Exchange 4.0 and 5.0.  Take time to have a look at just what you can pull out of the box to manage your Exchange environment, and this, coupled with the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, really makes it simple and intuitive to manage your Exchange environment. 

TechNet Webcast: Managing Exchange 2003 with MOM 2005: Better Together (Level 200)

Friday, March 25, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time

Chris Hallum, Program Manager, MOM, Microsoft

Learn how Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 and the Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack for MOM 2005 can help improve the health and performance of Exchange Server 2003 through specialized, proactive monitoring and alerting. This webcast explores the wide range of valuable tools and knowledge contained in this Management Pack and shows how you can use them to identify, understand, and resolve IT health issues to keep Exchange running and your organization's e-mails flowing.

BlogCast: Configuring the Active Directory connector

Whenever I present at TechNet events I get questions on how to deploy the ADC so that the Exchange 5.5 Server coexists with AD.  There is a comprehensive walkthrough in the Exchange Deployment guide showing how this is done, and I've also created a blogcast on configuring the ADC.

The Exchange team blog covers lots of extra information about the ADC, such as using SRS, extending the schema, troubleshooting NDR's and looking at connection agreements so it's a bit of a hot topic when you're migrating from Exchange 5.5.

You can have a look at other blogcasts here:

mailbox size reports for Exchange 2003

Paul mailed me after my TechNet presentation to ask if we had any solutions for producing statistics for mailbox usage, size of mailboxes etc. He'd had a look around and had a look at Quest MessageStats but was asking if we had anything that would do this out of the box for Exchange 2003.

Well, we do have something out of the box, but it's not the Exchange box.  It's the MOM box.  There is an Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack for MOM 2000 SP1 which provides quite a few reports on Mailbox and folder sizes:

Top 100 Mailboxes by Size,

Top 100 Mailboxes by Message count,

Top Public folders by size,

Top 100 Public folders by message count,

Highest growth mailboxes,

Highest Growth Public Folders

Exchange 2003 error 1018

I received a mail from Ed today who had attended my TechNet session.  He wanted to know if I had any ideas about the errors he was getting in his Exchange 2003 server.

 Information Store (6116) First Storage Group: The database page read from the file "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb" at offset 1000951808 (0x000000003ba95000) for 4096 (0x00001000) bytes failed verification due to a page checksum mismatch. The expected checksum was 1049570905101168 (0x0003ba9444f71370) and the actual checksum was 1049572726996704 (0x0003ba94b18efee0). The read operation will fail with error -1018 (0xfffffc06). If this condition persists then please restore the database from a previous backup. This problem is likely due to faulty hardware. Please contact your hardware vendor for further assistance diagnosing the problem. For more information, click http://www.microsoft.com/contentredirect.asp.

Hmmm.  The giveaway here is the error 1018 code.  Exchange has introduced an algorithm to help correct errors caused by a bit flip.  A bit flip is a transient memory error where a single page in the database has flipped from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa, and causes an error.  Even though a single -1018 error is unlikely to cause extensive data loss, -1018 errors are still cause for concern because a -1018 error is proof that your storage system failed to reliably store or retrieve data at least once. 

1018, 1019 and 1022 errors should be monitored carefully with Exchange as they refer to file level damage to the Exchange database:

1018: JET-errReadVerifyFailure

1019: JET_errPageNotInitialized

1022: JET_errDiskIO

These articles help to understand the 1018, 1019 and 1022 database errors and talks about the new ECC  included with Exchange 2003 SP1.  There's a useful webcast talking about SP1 here too......

Exchange 2003 Troubleshooting and Disaster Recovery

here are the links I referred to during my TechNet presentation last night.  I've also included the link the a previous blog entry about hardware failure and recovery.  here's the link to the BlogCast on the Recovery storage group also if you want to run through the procedure again...

Recovering hard deleted items

TechNet events and Errors message centre

Disaster Recovery Operations Guide

Setting up SMTP Domains for inbound email

Troubleshooting mail flow and SMTP

Exchange 2003 Recover mailbox data feature

How Recovery Storage Groups work

Exchange transaction logging

Exchange Best Practices Analyser Tool

Hardware failure and recovery with Exchange 2003

If there is anything I've missed, feel free to coment, and I'll update the list as I go....

Checklist for upgrading to SMS 2003 SP1

Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Upgrade Checklist

This document outlines the steps you should take to upgrade from Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 to Microsoft SMS 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). 

For a complete discussion about planning for an implementation or upgrade of SMS, especially if you are deploying a new installation of SMS 2003 SP1 rather than an upgrade, review the Scenarios and Procedures for Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003: Planning and Deployment guide, which is available for download from the SMS Product Documentation Web page.

Video conversations on your Pocket PC

I was having a look at some of the fantastic stuff to come out of Microsoft research today and I came across this prototype that they've released called Microsoft Portrait.  So now you can have a video conversation with a buddy from your buddy list in MSN messenger.  Microsoft Portrait supports SIP too, and its great that the main research website has an RSS feed so I can keep up to date... 

BlogCast: Populating Active Directory using the Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT)

I've been asked a few questions on the ADMT recently and how well it works in Exchange 5.5 upgrade scenarios, so I've created a blogcast on how Active Directory is populated using the tool.  This blogcast is 1mb and runs for 6mins 30 seconds. you can also have a look at the Interactive simulation or read therough the kb article on using ADMT v2. 

I'm impressed with the guys over at myITforum too.  After my initial request to Rod, Brian has stormed ahead and is offering free hosting for SMS blogcasts.  Nice one Brian, I look forward to seeing them all.  My colleague Ian is preparing some MOM management pack and other MOM blogcasts for me ( I like the Scottish accent too!)

you can see other BlogCasts here - or just search for them...

Exchange Error 0X8004010F - The Operation failed. An Object could not be found

Funny isn't it?  Exchange errors are like buses. Nothing for ages and ages and then 2 come along at the same time.  I was doing a Q&A for an customer in Education yesterday.  They have lots of schools in their care, and were upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003.  They were concerned about the usual messaging things, auditing, archiving, directory harvesting, blocking MSN Messenger through the firewall, using LCS 2005 for archiving and they had this error 0X8004010F whenever they tried to sync the Offline Address list.  I answered their question, went back to my desk to an email from David G. about exactly the same thing.  Obviously worthy of a blog entry then.

Windows mobile white papers

I found this collection of White Papers and Strategy papers about Windows mobile in the Enterprise, and thought that they were worth sharing.

 Mobile E-mail access for the Enterprise

Windows Mobile based Devices and Security

Pocket PC Systems Management

SMS and MOM Webcasts for March

TechNet Webcast: Using the SMS 2003 Administrator Feature Pack (Level 200)

Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM Pacific Time

Wally Mead, Program Manager, SMS, Microsoft

The Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 Administration Feature Pack includes tools that can help make administration of an SMS 2003 site more efficient. In this session SMS veteran Wally Mead will introduce the tools and describe ways to improve administrator efficiency through the use of the tools.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032267544&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Introduction to System Center Reporting Manager 2005 (Level 200)

Monday, March 21, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time

Barend Brink, Program Manager, Microsoft

Are you looking for a way to consolidate your change and configuration information from System Management Server 2003 and your event and performance information from Microsoft Operations Manager 2005?  System Center 2005 can give you easy access to the reports you need to manage your enterprise.  This webcast provides you with an overview of System Center Reporting Manager 2005 key features and architecture. Learn more about the enterprise-class reporting tool that will enable you to integrate your operations management data and generate reports quickly and easily.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=42377

TechNet Webcast: Introduction to Security Patching Using Windows Update Services (Level 200)

Monday, March 21, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM Pacific Time

Jason Leznek, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft

This webcast presents an overview of Windows Update Services (WUS), formerly known as SUS 2.0. WUS provides the features administrators need to manage and distribute updates through a Web-based tool.  Administrators are able access this tool on any Windows computer in their corporate network.  Join us as we look at the new features, offer planning and deployment guidance, and demonstrate the technology found in Windows Update Services.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=42392

TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft IT Microsoft Develops an Operations Manager 2005 Custom Management Pack (Level 200)

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time

Mark Pohto, IT Senior Technologist, Microsoft

The Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) group supports internal line of business (LOB) applications. To improve monitoring of these applications and to help reduce downtime, Microsoft develops custom management packs for the LOB applications and deploys them to Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) servers inside Microsoft IT. This session examines the process that Microsoft IT uses and recommends to plan, develop, and deploy custom MOM management packs.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=42378

Exchange Webcasts for March

TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft IT Does Storage Design In Exchange Scale Up Deployments (Level 200)

Tuesday, March 01, 2005 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time

Dave Lalor, Senior IT Operations Engineer, Microsoft

This webcast will examine the storage design deployed within Microsoft to support the large-scale clusters utilized for the worldwide Exchange consolidation. Experts from Microsoft IT will outline best practices learned during the deployment and provide methodologies that will help you gain an understanding of what is required to deliver an optimized storage design.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032267609&Culture=en-US

Office Webcasts for March

Discover Today’s Office: Learn tips and tricks for increased productivity
Live and on-demand webcasts available now

Discover how to get the most out of Microsoft Office System to save time and be more productive. Tune in to these live and on-demand webcasts to learn time-saving tips for optimizing your use and your team’s use of today’s Microsoft Office System. Explore products such as Microsoft Outlook 2003, Word 2003, Excel 2003, OneNote 2003, InfoPath 2003, and PowerPoint.
 

Office Tips and Tricks for Administrative Assistants: Learn shortcuts you can use right away

Live and on-demand webcasts available now

In today’s fast-paced environment, administrative assistants are faced with new challenges. Beat information overload and collaborate with your team using Microsoft Office 2003. Learn steps you can take today to better manage Outlook, and new ways to manage documents and meeting notes, coordinate schedules, and support your team.

Microsoft Office System Webcast Calendar

Microsoft Office System webcasts listed in an easy-to-use calendar format.

Real Time Collaboration webcasts for March

Real-Time Collaboration: Enable next-generation productivity

Live and on-demand webcasts available now

Learn how Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2005 provide an extensible, real-time collaboration solution that enables organizations to increase responsiveness, enhance workforce productivity, improve customer relationships, and reduce operational costs.

Technical Roadshow 2005 - UK dates.

We've just released the dates and locations for the UK Technical Roadshow this year.  I'll be presenting at each location talking about Exchange (Day 1) and Live Communications Server (Day 2).  Here are the links for registration:

BlogCast: The Intelligent Message Filter

Ewan has really got into the spirit of blogcasting and has done some amazing recordings for me which I'll be posting over the coming weeks.  Todays blogcast is about the IMF. Thanks Ewan, you're doing a really fantastic job with these..

It’s an overview of the Intelligent Message Filter for Exchange 2003, showing how to configure the IMF and examples of it in action, including exposing the SCL value in Outlook and in the SMTP header of the message.

MSI tools for SMS 2003

Details of an upcoming Webcast...

Web-Seminar: New Tools for SMS 2003 Admins in using the Windows Installer Service

More and more customers are using MSI as their standard installer technology on Windows.  This session will cover some new free tools for SMS 2003 administrators from Macrovision (formerly InstallShield) that will help better repackage and deploy applications, as well as some of the new features of SMS 2003 to better manage MSI content.  Visit this link to register for this web-seminar which will take place on Thursday, March 3^rd 2005 at 10am (Pacific time.)

MOM 2005 Management Pack for ISA Server - now available

The ISA Server Management Pack monitors ISA Server events and alerts. With detailed alert information you can quickly identify and troubleshoot ISA Server issues, minimizing time-to-resolution when problems occur. Collect and analyze performance trends and metrics. Performance information allows you to manage bottlenecks, identify capacity requirements, and proactively manage your ISA Server configuration to resolve issues before problems occur.

The ISA Server Management Pack provides the following:

• View state monitoring to quickly assess the overall availability and health of your ISA Server deployment.
• Monitor alerts identifying ISA Server configuration issues. Check the availability of ISA Server services, and critical dependent services such as Network Load Balancing, Routing and Remote Access, and ADAM.
• Monitor capacity and performance. Monitor performance counters to track trends in ISA Server components such as cache, Web proxy, and Firewall. Thresholds based on performance counters trigger alerts for critical issues.
• Get detailed information for troubleshooting alerts and events.

MOM and SMS documentation - does it meet your needs?

The documentation teams doe MOM 2005 and SMS 2003 want to know what you think about the documentation for the management products.  Take this 15 minute survey - and tell them how well the documentation meets your requirements.

Exchange Best Practices Analyser - the Virtual Consultant in your organisation

I went to a TechNet evening hosted by Paul and Brett on the Exchange Best Practices Analyser (ExBPA).  What a wealth of information this tool gives.  You know how frustrating it is when you call technical support with the problem you've encountered, only to hear "It's a known issue".  Wouldn't it be better if everyone with problems with their Exchange environment could gain the knowledge about these "known issues" as they're discovered.  I mean, if you're successfully sending and receiving emails, you know that Exchange is working, the Global Catalogs are working, DNS is working, which means that Active Directory is working.  But what if something further down the line fails?  How do you troubleshoot which component is causing the problem?  Wouldn't it be good if there was a tool to walk you step by step through the process offering advice, tips and knowledge base articles?  A tool like a Virtual Exchange Consultant?  Well the Exchange Best Practices Analyser tool does just this. 

ExBPA reads a configuration file that tells it exactly what settings to look for and what rules to use to analyse them.  It processes data from Active Directory, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the registry, Internet Information Services (IIS) metabase, performance monitor counters, files on disk, system ports, and Domain Name System (DNS). The ExBPA.Config.xml file lists the objects and settings for collection and defines the rules that test the returned values.  But the best thing is that it has in built knowledge about what to do when a warning or error situation is returned.  It checks for updates to the knowledge base articles every two weeks, so that articles are always up to date.  And it doesn't judge you about the state of your servers, instead it just gently guides you into optimising your Exchange environment giving you the ability to increase availability of your Exchange servers.

Wouldn't it be great if, some day all diagnostic tools will be made this way...

Nokia licenses Exchange Active Sync

I noticed this post  from the Windows Mobile Team this morning about Nokias plans to license Exchange Active Sync for synchronisation between Exchange and Nokia series 60 and series 80 devices.  Fantastic!

So now there's another good reason to upgrade to Exchange 2003 - on the road sync with Exchange mail, contacts and calendar is one of the most useful productivity tools I've ever used.  Beats everything else hands down!...

BlogCast: Customising themes in OWA

I was over in Seattle in January at dinner with some of the Exchange team, and over a glass or two of Merlot, I managed to persuade Kristian to do this really cool blogcast for me.  It runs for 8 minutes, is 3mb in size and demos how to change the default OWA theme in your organisation to something really different.  The blogcast is here, and the files to replicate creating the theme are here, with a sample colour theme downloadable here.  There is also some documentation here which details how you can customise OWA in your organisation.

I noticed that my last blogcast was noticed by Robert Scoble who has also talked about them on Channel9 before.  Thanks Robert for staying up so late and watching my posts as they roll in.  Now do I get an "'I've been Scobelized" icon to put on my blog? ( a bit like the stickers I get after donating blood ("Be nice to me, I gave blood today").  Now, you give those funky little Channel 9 guys out - don't you have an icon of your own so that bloggers who've been Scobelized can boast about it....

There are links to other BlogCasts here.

Migrating to Exchange 2003?

If you're thinking about migrating or upgrading to Exchange 2003, why don't you have a go at these 90 minute hands on guided lab sessions? 

There are 7 Exchange Modules:

• Controlling Junk e-mail with Exchange 2003 and the Intelligent Message Filter
• Configuring Microsoft Windows Server 2003 RPC Proxy
• Disaster Recovery with Exchange Server 2003
• Managing Exchange and Active Directory with MOM 2005
• Migrating from Exchange Server 5.5 Windows NT 4 Server to Exchange Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 Part 1
• Migrating from Exchange Server 5.5 Windows NT 4 Server to Exchange Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 Part 2
• Patching Exchange with SMS 2003

There are also labs on SMS, MOM and others here.

.

LCS 2003 hotfixes

If you're deploying LCS 2003 and want to know all of the current hotfixes available - I've listed them here.  All of the supporting documentation for LCS 2003 is here.

KB833331 - Updated scripting files available to migrate from Exchange 2000 Server Instant Messaging to Live Communications Server 2003 

KB839436 - User communication is interrupted in Live Communications Server 2003 when daylight-saving time begins

KB831420 - You cannot activate users or move users between Live Communications Server home servers

KB885342 - A user cannot sign in to Live Communications Server after you configure their user account with the SIP URI of a deleted user account

I'll try to blog about LCS 2003 a bit more as I usually blog about LCS 2005 but I get the most questions about LCS 2003.  I tend to get really fired up about all the new features about a product and want to talk about them - but I'll try to get some balance - and save myself the extra emails!

How to find the size of mailboxes on Exchange Server

John P is trying to consolidate his Exchange 2000 servers and migrate to Exchange 2003.  He's also looking at implementing a SAN for the consolidated mailboxes.  I found this useful KB article which shows how you can programatically obtain the size of mailboxes by using scripts.  I won't reproduce any of the scripts here as they're a bit scary for a platforms person like me, but they work for Exchange 5.5 and 2000, and can be written in VBScript, Visual Basic, Visual C and Visual C++.

So go ahead John, you've got all of the resources now - even the bits about the storage!  

Hotmail Statistics

I've enjoyed reading Mikes blog for a while - its how I found him and persuaded him to present at our internal event last month, but he knew about me already due to the referrals from one of my previous entries.  He's categorised on my RSS reader under kitties as he and Larry have some fantastic pictures of their cats on their blogs..

So read the blog entry that Mike found about hotmail statistics - fascinating...

Common ports used by Exchange

I can never remember most of the ports that Exchange uses - apart from Ports 25(SMTP), 389 (LDAP) and 443(SSL) which seemed to be burned into my brain somehow.  It's funny, as I used to be able to remember almost all of the ports in the file in NT4's Winnt\system32\dtivers\etc\services file off by heart (blush).  So I was geting quite irate trying to work out why my global catalog wasn't servicing any requests (it listens on ports 3268 and 3269)  It took me AGES to find out this information, and I finally found it on the Exchange Transport and Routing guide.  so I've copied the table here, as much for my benefit as anything else - so I can find it again :-)

Table A.3 lists the ports commonly used by Exchange. For more information about which ports need to be opened internally or externally, see the book Using Microsoft Exchange 2000 Front-End Servers (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=12055).

Table A.3   Ports used by Exchange

Protocol	Port	Description
SMTP	TCP: 25	The SMTP service uses TCP port 25.
DNS	TCP/UDP: 53	DNS listens on port 53. Domain controllers use this port.
LSA	TCP: 691	The Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine service (RESvc) listens for routing link state information on this port.
LDAP	TCP/UPD: 389	Lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) used by Microsoft Active Directory® directory service, Active Directory Connector, and the Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 directory use this port.
LDAP/SSL	TCP/UDP: 636	LDAP over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) uses this port.
LDAP	TCP/UDP: 379	The Site Replication Service (SRS) uses this port.
LDAP	TCP/UDP: 390	This is the recommended alternate port to configure the Exchange Server 5.5 LDAP protocol when Exchange Server 5.5 is running on an Active Directory domain controller.
LDAP	TCP: 3268	Global catalog. The Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 Active Directory global catalog (a domain controller "role") listens on TCP port 3268.
LDAP/SSLPort	TCP: 3269	Global catalog over SSL. Applications that connect to TCP port 3269 of a global catalog server can transmit and receive SSL encrypted data.
IMAP4	TCP: 143	Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) uses this port.
IMAP4/SSL	TCP: 993	IMAP4 over SSL uses this port.
POP3	TCP: 110	Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) uses this port.
POP3/SSL	TCP: 995	POP3 over SSL uses this port.
NNTP	TCP: 119	Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) uses this port.
NNTP/SSL	TCP: 563	NNTP over SSL uses this port.
HTTP	TCP: 80	HTTP uses this port.
HTTP/SSL	TCP: 443	HTTP over SSL uses this port.

Developing Applications for Pocket PC

If you're intrerested in developing applications for a Pocket PC then these new articles have been released on to the MSDN Library: 

How to Create a Database Browser Application for Pocket PC in C# by Using Visual Studio .NET 2003
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnppc2k3/html/intro_winmobile_csharp.asp?frame=true
Article Summary: The objective of this lab is for you to learn how to display data from a Web service on a Pocket PC device using C#. This exercise will take approximately 30 minutes to complete. (9 printed pages)

MOM 2005 Management Pack Documentation for Active Directory in French, German and Japanese

Now released:

This document provides a detailed technical reference for Active Directory Management Pack (ADMP) for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005.  ADMP is designed for administrators who are responsible for maintaining a healthy Active Directory service.  This document provides an overview of ADMP, and it explains how ADMP defines “health” for Active Directory components. This document also contains information about the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) providers and the algorithms that are used by ADMP monitoring scripts, which perform much of the work involved in monitoring Active Directory.

This document is now available in French, German, and Japanese.

MMS 2005 in Las Vegas - registration open

Ron and Rod have been blogging about MMS for a while now and Martin has been tracking the event and questions.  If you haven't registered - here's the link.  There is also a one day pre-event for SI's.  here's the text:

Announcing One Day Pre-Event for System Integrators held at Management Summit 2005

This year the Microsoft Management Summit (April 18-22, Las Vegas) is adding a one day briefing held April 18th to help System Integrators deliver value to their customers in the areas of compliance, line of business, asset management, and heterogeneity. These sessions will cover the integration efforts and value of adding 3rd party tools for MOM 2005 and SMS 2003 into your management deployments and compliment your service portfolios. The event is FREE to system integrators only. Registration is required to a limited seating capacity. To register you must email  (this address) to receive nomination form. We look forward to your attendance in Las Vegas!

Protecting messaging from viruses and spam.

I talk a lot about the anti spam and anti virus features in Exchange whenever I present about messaging security at events, so I was intewrested to read that we had signed definitive agreements to acquire Sybari software. Customers are always interested in how they secure their messaging infrastructure and how we secure our infrastucture internally.

So this news is interesting especially for Exchange and our antivirus / anti spam efforts...

BlogCast: Exchange 2003 Deployment tools

My BlogCast today talks about the Deployment tools available for Exchange 2003 which walk you through the upgrade to Exchange 2003, either from Exchange 5.5 or 2000.  You can download the tools and the associated documentation from here. 

The BlogCast runs for 5:44mins and is 1mb in size.  I'll run through further steps of the Deployment tools such as configuring the Active Directory Connector and using the Active Directory Migration tool in future BlogCasts.  I'll post the blogcast that Kristian has done for me on customising themes in OWA next (when I've found the supporting documentation links). 

You can view other BlogCasts here.

Clustered Exchange 2003 Servers

I've been meaning to blog about Exchange and clustering for some time now, and have flagged a few resources ready to include.  Usually a comment from a customer, or someone I meet at an event usually provides me with the impetus to start writing.  But I'm a bit stuck.  The Exchange team, and Evan Dodds usually cover all of the questions that I get asked anyway... So here are all of the resources I've been saving for a rainy day, useful, and now good to have in one place...

Backing up clustered servers at Microsoft

How to upgrade Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 A/P clusters by doing a clean install of Windows 2003

Don't cluster Front End Exchange Servers

Microsoft Support for clusters

Support for Exchange on clusters

Cluster HCL

SMS - how the client calculates network saturation

I was looking through the SMS 2003 Planning guide from the documentation library.  I was looking for references to slow networks and how the client worked out whether the network bandwidth was saturated or not.  I found this interesting snippet:

MSN Search for blogs

I followed the instructions exactly and now you can search my blog.  And it worked. Totally amazing.....(I cant write code!) Thank you VERY much Evan.    

Exchange 2003 Intelligent Message Filter (IMF) updates

There is an update to the IMF with improved filters available.  Download it here.  I'd been searching for it on the web, and found it from the TechNet "whats new" page... Great link!

TechNet - What's new

This is a fantastic link to all of the new stuff thats gone up onto the TechNet website with links to previous additions to the site.  Now can we have one on Microsoft.com please. What a time saving link.  Thanks TechNet team! 

How to secure your SMS 2003 environment

How to get secure and stay secure with SMS 2003 (updated for SP1 also).  An evolving subject - not a set and forget option.  I was reading through the KB article as I'd been playing around with ExtADsch.exe  and messed up my security settings when I installed SMS, and was trying to troubleshoot the issue. I'd forgotten that it was all about the Systems container in AD.   so from the KB:

To grant the appropriate permissions to the System container, follow these steps:

1.	Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
2.	On the View menu, click Advanced Features.
3.	Expand your domain tree, right-click the System container, and then click Properties.
4.	On the Security tab, click Add.
5.	Click Object Types. If SMS 2003 is configured to use Advanced Security, make sure that the Computers check box is selected. If SMS 2003 is configured to use Standard Security, make sure that the Groups and Users check boxes are selected. Click OK.
6.	If Advanced Security is turned on, type the name of the site server's machine account, click Check Names, and then click OK. If Standard Security is turned on, type the name of the SMS service account, click Check Names, and then click OK.
7.	In Group or user names, click the account that you added in step 6.
8.	In Permissions for Enterprise Admins, click to select the Full Control check box, and then click OK.

Restart the SMS Site Component Manager service to start updating Active Directory. You can monitor the Sitecomp.log file to see the status of the update.

 

Optimising your Storage architecture for Exchange 2003

Yes we all know that Exchange likes I/O, lots of it.  And I've been telling customers for ages, spindles spindles spindles whilst waving my finger in the air knowledgeably, and chatting confidently about LUNs and SANS.  Well, I've found this guide which documents how to Optimise your Storage for Exchange, and removes that finger in the air feeling.  It's heavy going if you're not too strong with maths, but goes really well with the Performance and Scalability guide for Exchange - they should be joined at the hip and there should really be a link to each document from each other document on the website - some of our stuff isn't too easy to find and I often find that someone has blogged about it already (thanks Mark  and Paul by the way). 

I found these 2 entries using MSN search which really flies and I don't even use Google any more to check if there are other resources.  Changing my ingrained google habit hasn't been as hard as I'd imagined...

Exchange 2003 messaging security

I was reading a dicsussion thread about a customer who has an interesting problem concenring messaging security in Exchange:  They needed to find information on how to use Window 2003 Certificate Authority to auto install digital certificates in active directory for each user to use with Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003.   They wanted to validate the source of their e-mails as originating from their own Exchange Server and wanted to be able to ignore or delete the mail unless it had been given a digital signature.

The messaging security guide for Exchange has info on protecting email messages, but there are several other aspects of security that should be taken into account.  I've blogged about some of these features before - but the same questions seem to come up regularly...

You should also have a look at these resources for Certificate Services to go down to the fine detail..  

Live Communications Server 2005 - Chinese simplified and Korean

I was chatting to a customer yesterday who still use Exchange IM in their organisation and is reluctant to move to LCS.  They're quite a large organisation who had been toying with hosted services.  I'd been through all of the differences between the 2 products, the features,  and differences between versions of LCS showed them a demo and told them to have a play with the product in the VIrtual Lab that we host.  They still were enthurisatic but not completely convinced.

I went through the client options, deploying Windows Messenger, and all of the great stuff we've got planned for the Istanbul client, and although they seemed very interested - no dice.  But my final comment did the trick.  "The Chinese simplified version will be released soon". In fact the Chinese simplified and Korean versions went to manufacturing (RTM) yesterday. 

So now we're talking implementation and projects.  Why didn't I cotton on immediately from the company name.....

Applying Exchange service packs

I've been building an Exchange 2003 server for an event that I'm doing in a couple of weeks time, and going round and round the loop of service packs and hotfixes. Grrr.   I noticed this kb article detailing how to apply service packs and got a bit worried.  I've been applying hotfixes and service packs for years - even on clustered systems, and haven't exactly been doing things correctly.  Gulp.. No wonder my ADC BlogCast took me so long to prepare today.  I hadn't read the KB about the ADC - I just steamed ahead and installed everything when I felt like it.  I really should have read Kevin's blog  entries first - which would have saved me quite a bit of time!   

I'd better go back and modify the BlogCast though due to "User error".  Why is it that you always type the password in wrong when you're doing a demo, either live or recorded when it works perfectly fine every time when you're alone...  It's Sod's law as we say in the UK.

New to email?

No, most of us aren't.  It really seems to be the ball and chain that keeps us tied to our desks doesn't it - unless we're really disciplined (how can I be desciplined when that piece of toast pops up in Outlook 2003 with an interesting subject title!).  Well I found this article on the office web site which gave me some tips that I'd never thought of - especially in the keyboard shortcuts training. I learned lots of stuff that I'd forgotten about years ago! However, I do wish that the meeting requests section  included training on how to update meeting requests effectively.  When I send a meeting request to lots of people, and some decline the initial meeting, those people don't want to be bothered by numerous updates to the original meeting if they've declined the meeting in the first place.  Well if you right click on the envelope to the left of the attendee name in the Appointments scheduling tab you can decide whether to send updates to them in the future. And not annoy them with trivia like room changes, schedule times and stuff like that.

So simple isn't it?  and yet hardly anyone uses this little known feature.  Now that would be a good "how to" on the office site - save us lots of extra mails...

Do you want a career as an Outlook Web Access developer at Microsoft?

Kent has published a post looking for an OWA developer to  work in Redmond, USA.  Have a look at his blog entry. I've been excited about OWA since I discovered that you could customise the look and feel of the interface, and Kristian had promised to deliver a blogcast for me soon showing how this is done, (so no pressure there Kristian!)

So its over to Kents blog...

BlogCast: Removing an Orphan ntdsDSA Object from Active Directory

I’ve finally been persuaded to record my own blogcast instead of persuading Ewan to talk for me.  I’ve been asking my colleagues in the product team if they’d like to do some blogcasts, and they've told me that they'd be glad to – but only after I've actually recorded one!   So here it is…

I used the settings that John Howard blogged about to get the file size down.  I've created a 4 minute blogcast and the file size is 400k (thanks John!).  John has done several blogcasts with incredibly low file sizes...

This topic today is how to remove an orphaned server from Active Directory by using the ntdsutil metadata cleanup utility.  Metadata cleanup allows you to remove the NTDS settings object of the failed server.  This utility allows you to replace a failed Exchange server in your organisation with another server and use the same name as the failed server.  This is really useful in disaster recovery scenarios.  it's a bit of a dry subject though, and the demo is all in the command prompt - but it's important all the same.  I now need to think of something more zingy for my next one! Exchange database maintanance.  Now that will get you going! 

There are links to other blogcasts here. 

Using SMS 2003 for hardware inventory of your Dell

I've been scanning through my mails whilst preparing to record my next blogcast and noticed that we've released a new tool that scans Dell servers and is now available for download.  Here's the blurb...if you haven't noticed it already on Jonathan or Rods blog