Exmerge v Recover Mailbox Data

My blog yesterday talked about the dangers of writing an email after you've been drinking.  Well Nino has highlighted all the things I got wrong in my blog entry which proves that it's also not a good idea to blog late in the evening after 3 glasses of wine... Oops.  Here's what he said...

Exmerge used to be on the CD in E2000… but with Exchange 2003, it is NOT on the CD anymore but you have to get it off the Exchange 2003 Tools site:
The Recover Mailbox Data does not actually resolve the scenario you mentioned (email removal based on the subject) – Exmerge does. Recover Mailbox Data replaced Exmerge after you restore to a Recovery Storage Group but not when you need to yank the message out of the store. For yanking the message out of the store – you still need Exmerge and you have to use the option to “Archive messages to a target store” – and the document that comes with Exmerge explains how to do so…
 

Oh heck - I'll stick to celebrating the festive season and stop blogging when I'm tipsy.  Happy holidays, and thanks Nino for putting me right.  I now owe you even more beer! 

Exchange 12 Beta 1

So there's now a website where you can follow what's going on in the Exchange 12 world following the announcement. 

Specific server roles -  install the components you need
Completely rewritten graphical management console in Exchange System Manager
Monad - scriptable, command line shell for routine and repetitive tasks to be automated.
Outlook automatic client detection and configuration
Unified messaging system delivering voice mail and faxes to the inbox
Scheduling Assistant to streamline meeting scheduling by visually presenting options for best times.
Built-in anti-spam protection using a multi-pronged approach to block unwanted messages.
Automatic updates for anti-spam filters without requiring administrator intervention.
Anti-virus extensibility allowing messages to be scanned in transport as well as in the mailbox store
Attachment filtering stopping inbound and outbound attachments based on file extension, file name or content type.

(I got this from the overview of Exchange from the web - if you need more details).  I need to download it and have a play with it over the holidays - have a look at some of the new funky stuff in the product... watch this space..

Messaging & collaboration Webcasts - December

Microsoft Webcast: Empower People to Work Better Together with Microsoft Collaboration
Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Jason Bunge, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Empowering individuals to work better together is critical to your organization’s success in today’s more connected, globally integrated world. Microsoft technologies help information workers communicate and collaborate across applications and devices by combining servers, services, and end user software. Join this webcast to learn how Microsoft technologies deliver business benefits such as presence awareness, collaborative workspaces, enterprise search, application integration, and more.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287187&Culture=en-US

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032285147&Culture=en-US
Microsoft Webcast: Cost-Effective and Flexible Team Collaboration Solutions
Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Jason Bunge, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Effective teamwork is critical to the success of your business in areas like product development, human resources, and customer relationship management (CRM). However, keeping team members on the same page across time and distance can be a costly challenge. Team collaboration technologies like Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Groove Virtual Office meet that challenge by providing a range of flexible, cost-effective solutions. For example, individuals in your organization can work better together with team workspaces and document-based collaboration. Join this webcast to hear the success stories that illustrate how the team collaboration technologies from Microsoft can benefit your business.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032286835&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange 2003 Performance Tuning Tips and Techniques (Level 300)
Wednesday, January 18, 2006 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Michael J. Murphy, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
Are you getting the best performance you can from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003? In this webcast, learn helpful performance tuning tips and techniques for Exchange Server 2003. We begin with a look at the tools available for monitoring Exchange performance. We then provide best practices, registry tweaks, and performance monitoring techniques based on extensive, real-world experiences with Exchange 2003.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287234&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Using Third-Party Tools to Migrate Notes Databases to the Microsoft Collaboration Platform (Level 200)
Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time
Gary Devendorf, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Learn how you can migrate your Lotus Notes databases to the Microsoft collaboration platform, based on Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies, quickly and easily. This webcast introduces and demonstrates several tools offered by third-party providers that facilitate the migration from Lotus Notes to the collaboration platform from Microsoft.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032284167&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Best Practice Analyzer (ExBPA) (Level 200)
Friday, January 20, 2006 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Matt Hester, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
The Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool (ExBPA) is an automated health check and troubleshooting tool. ExBPA collects configuration settings and performs network and protocol tests in an Exchange topology. Join this webcast to learn about the new version of the tool that was released in March, 2005. We discuss enhancements such as scheduling and baseline support. See how to use ExBPA with Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005. At the end of the presentation, we talk about future enhancements to the ExBPA tool.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287286&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: How to Write Microsoft ASP.NET Pages That Use IBM Lotus Domino (Level 400)
Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time
Gary Devendorf, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Many developers think that Microsoft ASP.NET pages and the Web capabilities of IBM Lotus Domino are competing technologies. However, by writing ASP.NET pages that use Lotus Domino functionality, you can create a better user experience. This webcast walks you through the steps of writing an ASP page that acts as an interface for Lotus Domino functionality. We will use Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and LotusScript. You can also run the demonstrations yourself if you have Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. The only prerequisite for this webcast is a basic understanding of code.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032283987&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Defense in Depth: Sybari Antigen Solutions for E-Mail Hygiene (Level 200)
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Peter Eicher, Sr. Product Manager, Enterprise Access and Security Products, Microsoft Corporation
Now that 50% of all e-mail is spam and 85% of viruses use e-mail to propagate, comprehensive e-mail protection is critical for overall network integrity. This webcast presents defense-in-depth to strengthen e-mail—and thereby overall network—security. We describe the protection that Sybari Antigen Solutions offers from viruses, worms, and spam. We also discuss content protection technologies that you can combine to eliminate single points of failure and reduce the window of vulnerability for emerging threats. We also cover perimeter defense; layered elimination of unsolicited traffic; multi-engine, server-level threat detection, and incident containment. Learn how you can apply a defense-in-depth strategy to reduce infection rates and maximize performance in e-mail environments.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287452&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Implementing Exchange Server 2003 Security (Part 1 of 2): Securing Services and Messaging Protocols (Level 200)
Monday, January 16, 2006 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Kevin Remde, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
Securing communication over networks is essential to securing your organization from intrusions, overloads, and interruptions of many types. In this first webcast of a two-part series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 security, we describe how to deploy a more secure Exchange 2003 infrastructure and how to secure its server services and messaging protocols.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287339&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft IT Implements Exchange 2003 Anti-Spam Technologies (Level 300)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Konstantin Ryvkin, Microsoft IT Group Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Alexander Nikolayev, Microsoft Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Wouldn’t we all like to improve how we manage spam? This webcast presents how Microsoft does just that, providing an overview of anti-spam technology in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 (SP2) and how the Microsoft Information Technology (IT) department uses these technologies to help control spam. The webcast also provides a complete overview of the anti-spam technologies available in SP2 and explains how the department implements them. Join us to learn best practices, tips, and other useful information for getting the most from the anti-spam technologies in SP2. We conclude with a question and answer session.
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=57276

TechNet Webcast: Implementing Exchange Server 2003 Security (Part 2 of 2): Protecting Against Unwanted E-Mail (Level 200)
Monday, January 23, 2006 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Kevin Remde, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
This second webcast in a two-part series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 security describes how to increase the security of e-mail that flows through an organization's Exchange servers. We also introduce you to Exchange 2003 features such as Real Time Block List support and Intelligent Message Filtering, tools that make it easier to reduce the amount of unwanted e-mail before it spreads through your organization.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287342&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Antivirus and Antispam Managed Services: When and How to Outsource E-mail Hygiene (Level 200)
Thursday, January 26, 2006 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Forrest Hobbs, Senior Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Touted by many as a key component for the future of e-mail security, outsourced messaging protection has become the solution of choice for a number of informed information technology (IT) administrators and service providers. This webcast presents how outsourced e-mail security services provide enterprise antispam and antivirus protection and detail the benefits of such services in terms of cost, efficiency, security, policy enablement, and archiving. We also provide a checklist of considerations that you can use to decide when and how to outsource e-mail hygiene in a wide range of different business scenarios.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287346&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Implementing Messaging Security for Exchange Clients (Level 200)
Monday, January 30, 2006 - 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
To ensure that e-mail messages can be read only by the intended recipients, it is as important to provide security for the clients of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 as it is to secure the server itself. This webcast describes solutions such as using Microsoft Exchange Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Service Extensions (S/MIME) and information rights management to protect e-mail content. We also discuss using remote procedure call (RPC) over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to help secure client connections to Exchange Server 2003 over the Internet. We conclude with a look at controlling access to e-mail attachments and show how to manage and secure Microsoft Outlook Web Access.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287350&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Enabling Secure Remote Access to Exchange Server 2003 (Level 200)
Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Tom Bartlett, ISA Solution Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
As operations become increasingly decentralized and working practices evolve to better suit market demographics, the need for efficient remote access has become increasingly prevalent. In this webcast, we outline best practices for securing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to ensure that network management, policy, and security are not compromised by remote e-mail access. The discussion covers a wide range of topics, such as faster Exchange publishing, more secure remote access, e-mail hygiene considerations, efficient bandwidth management, and enhanced Microsoft Outlook Web Access security. This webcast offers the knowledge you need to provide remote users with efficient, secure, and well-managed access to Exchange.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287354&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Connecting Windows Workflow Foundations to Lotus Notes/Lotus Domino (Level 400)
Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time
Marc Mercuri, Architect Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Gary Devendorf, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundations is an exciting new technology from Microsoft. IBM Lotus Notes/IBM Lotus Domino has been building on the concept of workflow for a long time. Luckily, both systems have standard interfaces that allow them to interoperate. This webcast shows you how to connect a Windows Workflow Foundation workflow with a Lotus Notes/Lotus Domino workflow, including a look at the code that makes the connection.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032285632&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Integrating Microsoft Products with Web Services in Lotus Domino 7 (Level 300)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time
Gary Devendorf, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
IBM Lotus Domino 7 now includes Web services that provide a native way to create and host a Web service on a Domino server. This webcast explains how you can write a LotusScript Web service and call it from Microsoft Visual Studio .NET by using a few lines of code that you wrote in Microsoft Visual Basic .NET.  If you are interested in simple steps that you can take to make your IBM Lotus Notes applications more powerful, join this webcast.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032284164&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 Tips, Tricks, and Shortcuts (Level 200)
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
Your organization is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, and it is stable. What can you do to improve your Exchange operations, customize them, and optimize them to better meet the requirements of your organization? This webcast provides tips on how to customize system messages, address lists, and Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access. We also explain how to control which versions of Microsoft Outlook are allowed to connect to the Exchange server, how to use Mailbox Manager, and how to create catch-all mailboxes.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287288&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 for Exchange Deployments (Level 200)
Friday, January 27, 2006 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Keith Combs, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
In this webcast, we explore the Microsoft Exchange 2003 Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 and show how it can help your organization proactively identify problems. We discuss the monitoring capabilities provided by this management pack and demonstrate how they can help you to identify problems and quickly solve them. We also examine the reporting capabilities provided by this management pack and explain how they can help you avoid problems.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287397&Culture=en-US

Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tips and Tricks for More Secure Communication with Outlook 2003 (Level 100)
Thursday, January 12, 2006 – 9:00 AM-10:00 AM Pacific Time
Andrew Reed, Senior Training Specialist, Pacific Technical Consulting (PTC)
Learn the fundamentals of security, auditing, privacy, and protection with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. Find out how to choose more secure passwords, create profiles, limit viruses and junk e-mail exposure, create more secure attachments, and incorporate encryption and digital signatures into your e-mail. This webcast shows how you can reduce vulnerabilities and enhance reliable communication within and outside your organization by implementing Outlook 2003 in combination with Microsoft Exchange Server. This webcast illustrates these techniques through demonstrations that represent typical interactions between employees and their team.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032287352&Culture=en-US

The Admin tool for OWA

I found this over on the SBS support blog and thought I'd mention it here...

OWA Admin Tool
In the past, if you needed to customize features in OWA, such as hiding Calendar or Journal, you had to edit the registry and add some not-very-intuitive values. Now we have a GUI-based tool, the OWA Administration Tool. The same complicated changes you previously had to make via regedit, can now be done with a check box.
The tool is easy to install and requires no configuration. You can download the OWA Admin tool here..   To access the tool once it is installed, go to Start, All Programs, Microsoft Exchange, Outlook Web Access Administration Tool. This will bring up a SharePoint type web page.  You can also access the tool by going to https://servername/OWAAdmin
Here is a link to an article that has a map to the links from the main OWA Admin page.

And if you want to customise the skin for your users, Kristian has done an excellent blogcast on how to change the OWA skin into the XBox theme...

How to connect to a specific Global catalog (GC) with Exchange 2003

John has been doing a series of blogcasts showing how to create a secure, well managed infrastructure, and he's up to the stage where Exchange is fully installed and functional.  He's been getting several mails asking him questions about Exchange which he passes over to me.  Here's an example of a recent query

We have an exchange 2003 infrastructure running in a windows 2003 server AD environment across.  We have 6 campuses, each with their own GC/DC and Exchange server.  The problem we are experiencing is that all of the exchange servers are only seeing one of the GCs... i.e. Exch Server on Campus 3 will hop across the wan link to access the GC on Campus 1 instead of using it's own GC on campus 3. 

Well, you can force an Exchange client to connect to the nearest Global Catalog Server, or you can set your preferred GC in the Registry.  Here are the 2 ways you can go about this...

How to set the closest global catalog server
Use the following steps to force Outlook to identify and use the closest global catalog server.

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit.exe, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider
Note You may have to create the registry path.
4. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value name: Closest GC
Data type: REG_DWORD
Radix: Hexadecimal
Value data: 0x00000001 
5. Quit Registry Editor.

How to set a specific global catalog server
To force Outlook to use a pre-defined global catalog server, use the following steps to set the following special registry parameter to point to the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). Doing this overrides any setting in the MAPI profile.

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit.exe, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider
Note You may have to create the registry path. 
4. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value name: DS Server
Data type: REG_SZ (string)
Value data: FQDN of the global catalog server 

You can find out all about how the GC works here and there is a description about how you can customise which GC Outlook connects to in the KB here...

And don't forget the 4:1 rule if you're planning your Exchange infrastrucuture.  4 Exchange processors to 1 GC processor. THen you'll get optimum GC performance...

The IMF and SP2

James, who was at the Exchange Unplugged roadshow last week asked me about the IMF and Exchange SP2 and that the IMF no longer seemed to be working after SP2 had been installed.  One potential issue to be aware of with Exchange 2003 SP2 is that you will have to reconfigure your IMF settings if you already have that component installed.  If version 1 of the IMF is installed prior to running SP2 setup, you may receive an error message during the install that tells you that you have to uninstall IMF v1 first before completing the service pack install. 

 IMF v2 is automatically included as part of the SP2 install. Have a look at the SP2 Release notes for more information
Once SP2 is installed, you then have to reenable the IMF in both message delivery (Exchange System Manager -> Domain name (Exchange)-> Global Settings -> Message Delivery -> Right-click, properties -> Intelligent Message Filtering) and on the SMTP virtual Server (Exchange System Manager -> Domain Name (Exchange) -> Servers -> Server Name -> Protocols -> SMTP -> Default SMTP Virtual Server -> right-click, properties) -> General tab -> 'Advanced' button -> Edit -> Apply Intelligent Message Filter).

Microsoft Exchange Intelligent Message Filter is integrated with the Sender ID feature in the Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). Note that, for Exchange Server 2003 SP2, Intelligent Message Filter is built into the product and is considered to be version 2. Version 1 of the Intelligent Message Filter was a stand-alone tool.
Intelligent Message Filter helps companies reduce the amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE), also know as spam, that can be received by users.
Installation Tips
If Intelligent Message Filter version 1 is detected as being on the target server computer when you start the upgrade to SP2, a flag is raised and you must uninstall version 1. After the SP2 upgrade, Intelligent Message Filter version 2 is automatically installed on the server. However, the administrator still must enable version 2 on the Virtual Server Instance (VSI).
Note:
Do not install Intelligent Message Filter version 1 after the upgrade to Exchange Server 2003 SP2. Version 2 has been installed automatically with SP2.
For information about Version 1 of Intelligent Message Filter, see the Microsoft Exchange Intelligent Message Filter Deployment Guide.
During the upgrade to Exchange Server 2003 SP2, the server will not be available. When the server becomes available again, the administrator must enable Intelligent Message Filter immediately. Or, the server must be taken offline and Intelligent Message Filter enabled, if more time is required. Otherwise the server will be subject to spam attacks.

 Thanks to Mark for the link...

IMF Archive Manager 2.0

Guy came to our Unplugged presentation in Chesterfield yesterday (his colleague won the funky I-mate that Expansys were giving away at the end of the day).  I was talking about spam and phishing and how the IMF deals with spam, and how the Exchange team have written a little tool that exposes the SCL (spam confidence level).

Guy pointed me to a tool on Gotdotnet, which is looked after by the amazing Betsy called the IMF archive Manager.  He'd been talking to one of the guys about IMF and the subject of setting the best level for the SCL came up.
He told him about an app that he found really useful when gauging where to set the level on his server.  It's a C# app which displays filtered messages along with their SCL rating.  It's called IMF Archive Manager and is a Microsoft .Net Community tool on the GotDotNet.com site (a Microsoft site).  Read what the Exchange team have to say about it here...

I haven't had time to play with this as I'm still running around like a headless chicken at the moment, coping with my day job, my managers job, and all of the tour dates is much harder than I'd anticipated.  So have a play with the tool and let me know what you think of it... I'd love to know...

Moving mailboxes using the Move mailbox wizard in Exchange 2003

Mohammed has been following our trail on the unplugged tour and sent me a mail

Thanks for your wonderfull article regarding migrating delegates & permissions, however i want to know if this can work too when you migrate from an Exchange 2000 Org in forest A to an Exchange 2003 Org in forest B?
shall i use ADMT to migrate the resource mailbox with all of its delegates to the new forest then use the MigWiz to migrate the resource mailbox with all of its delegates and thus all delegations & permissions will be retained???
i will apprectiate your response soo much, Thanks

Well Mohammed, all you need to do for this one is to run the Move Mailbox wizard and you'll be sorted here - nice and simple.  Read here and here for an explanation of the Move mailbox wizard...

Rock Star Lifestyle - no thanks...!

So this touring lifestyle is starting to get to me.  It's Thursday today and I've been in 4 different hotels, in 4 different locations throughout the UK.  I'm spending an average of 11 hours in each hotel I stay in which is just enough time to lose a different personal item at each place.  So far, I'm down one sock, a hairbrush (I look like a wild man today), and a can of hairspray (which isn't actually all that important as I didn't brush my hair today so didn't need the spray)

But exhausting as it is, every venue brings different questions and customer challenges.  There are some common themes though.

RPC over HTTP.  It's amazing just how few people haven't yet taken the plunge and implemented this - and it's fantastic for any of your team who are out on the road like me.  I haven't VPN'd in all week - it's not necessary when all I want to do is keep up with my email.  So I've written a blog entry over on the tour blog, detailing all the steps you need to take to get RPC over HTTP implemented and running.  And when you want to troubleshoot it - have a look at my blog entry from a couple of months ago stepping through things you need to be aware of when troubleshooting.

Now what do I do with my other sock?  keep it and hope that sock numnber 1 turns up when I get home and empty the bag to wash?, or do I take the plunge and throw sock number 2 away knowing that sock number 1 is under the bed in some hotel somewhere in the UK.....?  Surely a real Rock Star wouldn't have this dilemma....

Exchange Server support tools

I've been so busy out on the road at IT forum,  then out of the country on holiday and now out on the road with the Exchange Unplugged tour (here's the tour blog by the way) that i havent had any chance to keep up to date with anything at all, so I've been dealing with the backlog of stuff for the past 2 weeks.  Fortunately Blake has reminded me of the new set of support tools for Exchange Server that ave been released, and he gives a good explantion of what each tool does.  I've also blogged about features of each tool too... 

Exchange 2003 migration resources

So, as promised yesterday, here are a collection of the resources and documents I talked about during the Exchange Unplugged tour gig in London yesterday

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

Blogcast series on upgrading to Exchange 2003

The Active Directory Migration Tool Overview  (originally written for Windows 2000, but the concepts still apply...)

The Active Directory Connector

See you in Coventry on Monday :-)

Exchange Unplugged - we're now officially on tour...

So our Exchange Unplugged tour has finally started and we're on the road.  Totally packed venues, and an absolute deluge of questions from people attending

Q: "What about migrating delegates?" A: "Migrate both accounts at the same time"

Q: "Does Windows Mobile actually do all this stuff?" A: "Yes....."

And lots more questions like that.  The tour even has a blog where anyone can ask questions that will be answered by one of the tour presenters (who never get a chance to eat lunch, or drink coffee during the breaks - Aargh!)

But the best bit of the tour? The T-shirt! -and I get a lot of branded T-shirts too - but this one is fantastic :-).

I'll blog about all the questions I got - with the answers and links tomorrow...

64bit Exchange - a correction to my blog entry...

Well I've been a bit busy dealing with questions and comments from my blog entry about 64bit Exchange  the other day, and responding to (generally positive) mails and articles.  There certainly seems to be lots of interest about this decision.     But I made a mistake in my original blog. I totally misheard something.  So I've been corrected by the Exchange team (who will be blogging about E12 in 64bit soon - honestly)

What I said was:

   I also unserstand that during the betas, there will be both a 32 bit and 64 bit version of Exchange 12 so you can compare the performance gains.

But the correct reason for doing this was to ensure that early beta testers who have not yet moved to 64-bit hardware can begin to evaluate the feature set of Exchange 12 (and not related to perf testing)

So apologies for misleading you.  I was caught up in the excitement of the announement on Tuesday and completely got this wrong.  Sorry...

Exchange 12 - 64 bit only!

So I'm sitting in the keynote at ITForum listening to Bob Muglia's keynote talk on our Windows Server roadmap, and noticed  a couple of interesting things.  Firstly, our 64 bit plans.  We're going to support 32bit Windows until 2017 and then 32 bit support will only be available via custom support, but the thing that really caught my eye was the statement about Exchange.  Exchange 12 (E12) will only be made available in 64 bit.  Yes, I said only.....

The product team have been testing E12 on 32 bit and 64 bit, and have found some significant gains and a reduction of IOs per second which results in really good performance gains.  They tested Exchange on 64 bit and found almost a 75% reduction in IOs per second compared with Exchange 2003. 
This could result in almost a 4X increase in the number of users on the same disks or require 1/4 the disks to support the same users from a throughput perspective.  If you think about this, it's quite significant since it will proportionately decrease the investment in storage which accounts for ~80% of the capital cost of Mailbox servers.  And thats worth noting.
 
I also unserstand that during the betas, there will be both a 32 bit and 64 bit version of Exchange 12 so you can compare the performance gains.  The other useful thing is that when you're upgrading to 64bit Exchange 12 you won't need to upgrade your global catalog servers to 64 bit as well.   It's a good idea to do the upgrade though and take advantage of the massive IO reduction.   And as E12 will support mixed 32 bit and 64 bit environments including legacy Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2000 servers. You can also connect to either 32 bit or 64-bit Outlook.

So quite an interesting keynote... I'm looking forward to the rest of IT forum!

PS - Mark has poiinted to the official press release here...

posted by Eileen_Brown with 9 Comments

Exchange Standby Clusters are now supported

I've just read this on one of our internal newsletters  - really good news... The long-awaited ability to use “standby” Exchange clusters is finally completed testing and documentation with its addition to the Disaster Recovery Operations Guide This is one of those topics that have come up again and again over the years, and there was never any good (supported) solution for it. Well, over the past few months the Exchange team went through all the requisite testing and documentation, and now this is a fully-supported DR solution
What does this mean?  It means you can now “recover” your clustered Exchange 2003 EVS to a totally different cluster server (potentially in a different physical or AD site, with different IP, etc). See the updated DR Ops guide for more details.

Exchange - from the Inside

Nino has been producing Technical bulletins on a weekly basis for internal consumption for quite some time now - they're now available on the web for you to have a look at.  I've been using them to expand my knowledge for quite some time now, and picking up undocumented tips about the product that I can't find anywhere else.  I've been hoping that these would be released for everyone for ages... And now they're on Microsoft.com. Download them here...

Great job Nino!, I look forward to your Exchange 12 documents :-)

Which account has been locked out?

Chris had a problem with SMS last week.  He was using SMS 2003 in standard security and found that the the SMS service account was being locked out intermittently. He was using one account to do most things.  It was driving him mad and he was desperate to find out which server and which location (e.g. service account, client installation account, network access account) was at fault or would he have to go through all of his sites and actually reset all of the accounts.  He was going crazy trying to troubleshoot this.

And I remembered that there's a really good tool called the Account Lockout Status tool.  I like this - as it's got a GUI interface as well as a command lie tool and it displays lockout information about a particular user account.  It collects information from every domain controller that it can actually contact in the user account's domain.  So you can very quickly find the troublesome account.

A great tool to have in your troubleshooting inventory and well worth downloading and noting.  You know, we really need to have a page with links to all of the useful tools in a consultants armoury.  Much easier than trying to remember all of these great tools you may need one day.  What do you think would be on there then?

Viewing Exchange 5.5 GAL from Exchange 2000

Romain mailed me with his exchange problem.  We'd been chatting at one of my technet evenings - I'd been talking about blogging - not Exchange incidentally, and I'd mentioned that Exchange was my favourite Microsoft product (in conjunction with Outlook of course - what's yours by the way?)

He had the following problem. The company, He works for for is running Exchange 2000, while the group which has acquired the company, is running Exchange 5.5.  While they are likely to have to upgrade soon, they have no information as to when this is going to happen.

The key problem people are complaining about is the inability to view other members of the group emails and reciprocally for them to find email addresses. The ability to schedule meetings and other exchange features are not viewed as critical until they upgrade.
1) In the interim, is there a way to keep both global address lists updated, say every fortnight, with the other group emails?  What would be the most elegant solutions? Any gotchas we should know about.
2) Alternatively is there a path for us to go back to Exchange 5.5, here again only migrate the emails, until we all upgrade to 2003.
3) Any other comments welcome.

Sounds like a job for the Active Directory Connector.  I've blogged about this a few times recently, recorded a blogcast on how this is configured, and talked about how to configure the 2 way connection agreement.  Here's how to configure the ADC by the way.

Tools to analyse Exchange

I've noticed that these tools have recently been made available for download.  I've been using the ExBPA for over a year now, and I'm really impressed with the wealth of information that it provides, so these new tools complement the ExBPA really well.  They're all free to download - so have a look at them for your organisation - they're well worth investigating.  Here's the info from the web...

Microsoft Exchange Server Analyzer Tools Now Available
Download the latest versions of the Microsoft Exchange Server Analyzer Tools and start to identify and help resolve potential configuration, performance, and disaster recovery problems in an Exchange Server messaging topology.
·         ExBPA 2.5.  This is the next version of the widely used Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, containing enhancements to the user interface and additions to the best practices database.
·         ExDRA 1.0.  This is the first version of the Exchange Disaster Recovery Analyzer, designed to help an administrator through the process of disaster recovery.  V1 focuses on the task of log file replay.
·         ExPTA 1.0.  This is the first version of the Exchange Performance Troubleshooting Analyzer, designed to help an administrator troubleshoot performance problems.  V1 currently targets the RPC popup dialog box issue.
·         PFDAVAdmin 2.4.  This is the first official release of this Public Folder Administration Tool that includes several tasks that are related to public folder management and some major performance improvements.
More information on all these tools can be found here as well as the Exchange Tools page.  A wealth of information and tools are also available to you at the Exchange Server TechCenter  also..

Blogcast: Switching to Native mode

So this is the last in the blogcast series showing how to upgrade your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast talks about switching your organisation to Native mode from the properties of the organisation and warning you about the possible problems that will occur if you make this permanent step.  Finally cleanup steps are taken to remove connection agreements from the Exchange 5.5 organisation  This blogcast runs for 1 minutes and 31 seconds.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

8: Checking the Migrated User accounts

9: Creating a connection agreement

10: Verifying synchronisation

11: Starting to Install Exchange 2003

12: Using the Public Folder migration tool

13: Moving user mailboxes

14: Verifying mailboxes have moved

15: Removing the last Exchange 5.5 Server

So now you have all of the demo walkthroughs showing you how to migrate and upgrade to Exchange 2003.  Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the series.  Many thanks to the TechNet team in Redmond for taking the time to record these blogcasts.If you want to have a look at other blogcasts, there are some on Microsoft.com for you to browse through as well as the excellent infrastructure series that John Howard has been recording...

Blogcast: Removing the last Exchange 5.5 Server

Well, we're up to part 15 of this blogcast series in upgrading your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast steps through how to remove the last Exchange 5.5 server in the organisation.  There is a recap of steps so far, stopping all of the services on the Exchange 5.5 server, disabling all of the services and then deleting the server from the Exchange 5.5 Administrator console. The blogcast runs for 3 minutes and 46 seconds.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

8: Checking the Migrated User accounts

9: Creating a connection agreement

10: Verifying synchronisation

11: Starting to Install Exchange 2003

12: Using the Public Folder migration tool

13: Moving user mailboxes

14: Verifying mailboxes have moved

Blogcast: Confirming mailbox moves

Part 14 of this blogcast series which runs through how to upgrade your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003 confirms that the move mailboxes operation has been sucessful.  This blogcast only runs for 37 seconds so be warned!.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

8: Checking the Migrated User accounts

9: Creating a connection agreement

10: Verifying synchronisation

11: Starting to Install Exchange 2003

12: Using the Public Folder migration tool

13: Moving user mailboxes

So what does "out of free support mean"

I’ve been answering a lot of questions recently about the fact that free support for Exchange 5.5 ends on December 31st.  Probably brought on by the fact that I blogged about our Exchange unplugged tour last week, and set a few thought processes in motion.  There seems to be a lot of different thoughts about what this means.  A couple of years ago we introduced a support roadmap for all of our products called the Software Support Lifecycle which enabled you to plan your upgrades and refreshes.  When a product is released i.e. Exchange 5.5, then that product remains under full support for a period of 5 years from the date of product release (or 2 years after the date of release of the 2nd successor product, whichever is longer).  Essentially, most products will receive at least 10 years of online self-help support.  Details about this support lifecycle plan and product support information can be found here.

Blogcast: Moving User mailboxes

Part 13 of this blogcast series which runs through how to upgrade your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003 shows you how to move mailboxes.  This blogcast runs for 2 minutes and 38 seconds.  This blogcast talks about moving mailboxes from theExchange 5.5 server so hat the server can be decommissioned.  The Exchange task wizard is used to transfer the full content from one server to the other.  View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

8: Checking the Migrated User accounts

9: Creating a connection agreement

10: Verifying synchronisation

11: Starting to Install Exchange 2003

12: Using the Public Folder migration tool

Blogcast: Using the Public Folder migration tool

Well we're now onto part 12 of the blogcast series which shows you how to upgrade your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast runs for 6 minutes and 28 seconds. Exchange 2003 with SP1 has been installed, and there's a look at the post installaion checklist and tools.  The integrity of the instalation is checked and ADCConfigCheck isused to check that all items hae been replicated.  The PFMigrate is used.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

8: Checking the Migrated User accounts

9: Creating a connection agreement

10: Verifying synchronisation

11: Starting to Install Exchange 2003

Exchange unplugged tour

Well we're going on the road talking about Exchange 5.5 upgrades to Exchange 2003.  Support ends on December 31st this year by the way.  We're going to 9 venues in under 3 weeks.  it's a bit of a rock tour  - well if I'm going to be a rock star, then I hope we get to travel in a tour bus or something :-).

We'll be talking about the different types of Exchange architectures (Ewan - guitar man), then talking about the tools to upgrade, and actually upgrading to Exchange 2003 (me), Then Jason (and his amazing Technicolour devices) will be talking about how you can get mobile, and John will be talking about how messaging hygeine can be implemented.

You can register here for your chosen date, and come over and chat.  We're all  going to be there and  we're looking forward to helping you sort out any Exchange challenges you may have.  

 

Blogcast: Starting to install Exchange 2003

Part 11 of the blogcast series which has been talking about upgrading your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast runs for 5 minutes and 45 seconds. We're finally onto the stage in Deployment where we can install Exchange 2003.  There are a couple of tools to run through first though, similar tools that have already been ran, but are still important to check that all of the network and connectivity checks are still satisfactory befrore setup starts.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

8: Checking the Migrated User accounts

9: Creating a connection agreement

10: Verifying synchronisation

Blogcast: Verifying synchronisation

Part 10 of the blogcast series which has been talking about upgrading your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast runs for 1 minute and 39 seconds. It talks about how you can verify that the connection agreements have been set up and configured correctly, and that the user properties have now been replicated into the Exchange 2003 environment.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

8: Checking the Migrated User accounts

9: Creating a connection agreement

Blogcast: Creating a connection agreement

Part 9 for this blogcast series for upgrading your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast runs for 2 minute and 35 seconds and talks about creating a staging area for objects to be migrated and the connection agreement for each side of the system (NT and AD). The CA wizard is shown  View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

8: Checking the Migrated User accounts

Download Exchange SP2

Well, after all my talk and all of the tantalising glimpses aboutwhat you can do with SP2, you can go and try it for yourself.  If you're running Exchange 2003, just download the upgrade from the Download centre. And if you missed all of the hype about SP2, go and have a read of all of the documentation on SP2 here... and of course on the Exchange home page...

Release notes are here:

Bugs fixed in SP2 here...

I'm off to play with the remote wipe function again - after I've rebuilt my blank XDA after wiping it unintentionally :-)

Blogcast: Checking the migrated user accounts

Well, on to part 8 for this blogcast series for upgrading your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast runs for 1 minute and 17 seconds and looks at the acocunt names that have been migrated from Exchange 5.5.  There is a discussion of placeholder accounts and migrated accounts viewed from the properties dialogue box.  View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

7: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

Messaging & collaboration Webcasts for November

Microsoft Webcast: Bring Innovation to Messaging with Microsoft Exchange Server (Level )
Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time
Ed Wu, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Do you think that e-mail is just another boring commodity? This webcast provides an overview of the current features in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and the exciting ways that organizations are currently using this messaging software. You will also learn about new features in the next release of Exchange Server that innovate in areas like mobility, content filtering, and collaboration.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032283914&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 3 of 14): Managing Recipient Objects (Level 200)
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
In this webcast we will cover recipient objects in Exchange Server 2003, starting with a look at the types of recipient objects available-User, Contact, Group, Public Folder, and InetOrgPerson. From there, learn how to create, configure, and manage them. We also cover the information store as it relates to these objects and the address lists for locating these objects.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281701&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 4 of 14): Public Folders (Level 200)
Friday, November 4, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 offer great storage flexibility, and with it, potential complexity, which could make storage management difficult to administer. Start off right with this webcast about the basics of public folders in Exchange Server 2003. First, get an overview and architectural view of public folders. From there, learn about the overall management of public folders-creating them, setting and managing public folder permissions, replication, referrals, and storage requirements. The webcast concludes with tips on monitoring public folder status and mail-enabling public folders.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281706&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 5 of 14): Virtual Server Components (Level 200)
Wednesday, November 9, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 offers quite a few virtual servers, and you have to decide which ones to use, and know how to configure them. This webcast covers what virtual servers are and how Exchange Server 2003 integrates with Microsoft Internet Information Services to provide them. Learn about the five main virtual servers—HTTP, POP3, Internet Message Access Protocol version 4rev1, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and Network News Transfer Protocol—with some coverage of Remote Procedure Call over HTTP. Going beyond technical descriptions, this webcast shows how to create and configure the various settings of each server.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281710&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 6 of 14): Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (Level 200)
Friday, November 11, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
The more you know about Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), the better you can configure Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. The SMTP protocol is core to Exchange 2003 and Exchange Administrators require a sound knowledge of the protocol. Join this webcast to gain an in depth understanding of SMTP. Topics addressed include commands and ports for both SMTP and Extended Set of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, how to configure Domain Name System for SMTP, Relays, and Smart Hosts. This webcast includes an important segment on security, which explains how to configure and secure SMTP, firewall requirements, and what makes traffic secure.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281714&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 8 of 14): Backup, Restore, and Recovery (Level 200)
Friday, November 18, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
This webcast covers the critical tasks of backup, restore, and recovery, broken down into their three separate processes. The backup section explains what needs to be backed up both on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and the operating system, types of backups, the role that logs can play in backup strategies, verification, and volume shadow copy. The restore section covers the different restore needs that may arise, from an entire server down to a mailbox, and public folder restoration. The webcast concludes by showing how to recover Exchange servers, focusing on recovery groups and mailbox recovery.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281716&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 9 of 14): Monitoring, Performance, and Tuning (Level 200)
Wednesday, November 23, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
To get the most performance out of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, you must be able to monitor its performance and tune it. This webcast covers the various Exchange Server 2003 monitoring tools and techniques: basic monitoring practices such as event logs and queues, and events and queue issues to monitor; Exchange Monitors that monitor queues, services and disk space; recommended Exchange counters to use and what to look for. The webcast discusses the use of Microsoft Operations Manager as a management tool. The tuning segment present tips and information that can help tune the Exchange Servers.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281725&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Using Third-Party Tools to Migrate Notes Databases to the Microsoft Collaboration Platform (Level 200)
Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time
Gary Devendorf, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Learn how you can migrate your Lotus Notes databases to the Microsoft collaboration platform, based on Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies, quickly and easily. This webcast introduces and demonstrates several tools offered by third-party providers that facilitate the migration from Lotus Notes to the collaboration platform from Microsoft.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032284167&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 10 of 14): Troubleshooting (Level 200)
Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Troubleshooting tools can actually complicate your life if you don't know when to use which tools, and the sequences in which to use them. This webcast covers various Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 troubleshooting tools and the scenarios where the tools are used. Examples include using DCDiag and Netdiag to troubleshoot network and Domain Controller Connectivity issues, RPC Ping Utility to check Remote Procedure Call connectivity, isinteg to check database integrity, and ESEUTIL for various database tasks. This section also recaps the firewall information about what ports to open and how to look for issues in firewall logs.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281775&Culture=en-US

Microsoft Office System: Using Mission Control and Microsoft Outlook to Eliminate E-mail Overwhelm (Level 100)
Tuesday, November 08, 2005 – 9:00 AM-10:00 AM Pacific Time
Doug Fisher, President, Mission Control
If you receive more than 20 or 30 emails a day (the United States average is 56, according to a recent Microsoft survey), you are probably experiencing some degree of e-mail overwhelm. In this webcast, learn how Microsoft Office Outlook can help you get relief from the stress of e-mail overwhelm by establishing a new set of protocols and best practices to help you effectively manage your email, instead of allowing it to manage you.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032282708&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Secure Your Exchange 2003 Server with ISA Server 2004 and Antigen (Level 200)
Thursday, November 03, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Tim Armstrong, Technology Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
Learn how to use Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 and Sybari Antigen to protect your servers running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 from a variety of externally based attacks. You will learn about best practices for the most common deployment scenarios from product managers on the ISA Server and Antigen teams. The speakers will emphasize configuring and tuning both products. If you are a technical professional or an executive who has a basic understanding of ISA Server 2004 and Antigen, this webcast can help you take your knowledge to the next level.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032283980&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Take Advantage of New Enhancements for Mobile Devices in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (Level 100)
Thursday, November 17, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Chris Smith, solutions specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Does your business have all the advantages of secure, flexible, and affordable mobile access? This webcast describes the mobility enhancements in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 that connect users to e-mail and other data from a range of mobile devices. Learn how your business can take advantage of new functionality such as the Always-up-to-date Notification feature, PIN lock settings, the ability to wipe a mobile device clean from a remote location, the ability to configure soft certificates to access Exchange, and more.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032284046&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Choosing High Performance Storage Options for Exchange Server 2003 (Level 200)
Monday, November 28, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Evan Morris, Senior systems Engineer - HP Microsoft Solutions Alliance Engineering, HP
This webcast provides an overview of storage options for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, including storage area networks (SANs), network attached storage (NAS), and Internet Small Computer System Interfaces (iSCSIs). Compare the advantages and disadvantages of the SAN, NAS, and iSCSI storage types, and gain insight into the different options that you can choose to configure a high performance Exchange environment.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032284066&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Configuring Exchange and VPN Connectivity Using ISA Server 2004 (Level 200)
Wednesday, November 02, 2005 - 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM Pacific Time
Michael Murphy, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
This webcast shows how you can use Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 to give users and partners access to e-mail and other resources while helping to secure your network. Learn how to publish resources such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 for Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, Microsoft Outlook clients, and Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) servers. We also show how to use ISA Server 2004 to create secure virtual private network (VPN) connections, enable and configure VPN for roaming clients, configure VPN Quarantine Control, and create a site-to-site VPN connection between a central office and a remote branch office.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032284295&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: A More Secure and Well-Managed Infrastructure (Part 9 of 18): Securing the Exchange Environment (Level 300)
Friday, November 11, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Keith Combs, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
E-mail servers are the primary conduit for viruses entering information technology environments. Large quantities of spam can devour server space and network bandwidth through sheer volume. This webcast presents features and techniques that can help the Microsoft Exchange Server environment achieve strong, layered security. The first topic is the Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer. We examine how this tool sets the baseline for the Exchange environment. The Best Practices Analyzer is crucial because ignoring the best practices for Exchange might negate any other practices used to secure Exchange. Next we examine how to secure Exchange, using the server hardening guidance for Exchange, integration with the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Public Key Infrastructure environment, certificates, digital signatures and client protection.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032282185&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: A More Secure and Well-Managed Infrastructure (Part 10 of 18): Sybari Antigen Overview (Level 300)
Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Kai Axford, Security Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
This webcast looks at how the Sybari products can be used to provide extra security for Microsoft messaging environments. See how Sybari products mitigate the issues that unwanted or malicious messages can cause.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032282345&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Securing Exchange Servers Against External Threats with Antigen (Level 200)
Monday, November 28, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Peter Eicher, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Learn how to use Antigen antivirus to protect your Microsoft Exchange 2003 Servers against external viruses, worms, and spam. This webcast covers Antigen's multiple engine scanning methodology for identifying the latest virus and worm threats, its combination of anti-spam filtering techniques, as well as updating, configuration, and management capabilities that can help stop threats before they reach critical systems. This webcast is intended for information technology professionals who have a surface-level understanding of Antigen antivirus and anti-spam, and who are interested in expanding their technical knowledge.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032283946&Culture=en-US

Blogcast: Configuring the Active Directory Connector

Upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003

This is the seventh in the blogcast series for upgrading your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast runs for 4 minutes and 3 seconds and talks about migratig the user accounts from Exchange 5.5 after installing the Active Directory Connector.  There is a look at the tools and the error logs produced when replication occurs.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

6: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

Blogcast: Using the Active Directory Migration Tool

Upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003

This is the sixth in the blogcast series for upgrading your Exchange Organisation from Exchange 5.5 to 2003.  This blogcast runs for 7 minutes and 12 seconds and talks about installing the Active Directory Connector.  The blogcasts also discusses the options for leaving the user accounts in the original NT 4 domain (the ADC creates a placeholder account) or moving the NT4 accounts directly to Windows 2003 Active Directory.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

5:Preparing Active Directory

Blogcast: Preparing Active Directory for Exchange 2003

Upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003

This is the fifth in the blogcast series for upgrading your Exchange Organisation.  The blogcast runs for 2 minutes and 41 seconds and runs through phase 2 of the deployment tools that you can use.  The blogcasts talks about running Forest prep and Domain prep and looking at the output logs created by these tools.   View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

3: Assigning appropriate rights

4:Exploring Deployment tools and checklists

System Center Capacity Planner 2006 now available

The chaps in the Windows and Enterprise management division have certainly been busy with names.  We've had RepMan, CapMan and now CapPlan is now available to download.  Thats System Center Reporting Manager, Capacity manager and now Capacity Planner... It's an open beta release, but you have the opportunity to provide direct feedback through the discussion forums.

I had to go and read up a bit more about Capacity planner as the original internal announcement passed me by.  It allows you to model and plan your MOM and Exchange 2003 deployments and brings the option of what-if analysis that if you plans change you can run the model again.  You can perform different types of what-if scenarios: 

• Proactive performance planning: Helping an organization meet their service level goals consistently, now and in the future.
• Infrastructure planning and optimization: Plan for IT purchases to optimize cost.
• Help to ensure success of Microsoft Exchange 2003 and MOM 2005 deployments: Use to plan correct amount of infrastructure needed for a new application to meet service level goals.
• Performance analysis and predictive reporting: Automatically report performance trends and bottlenecks to manage current and future performance issues.
System Center Capacity Planner 2006 (Beta) is designed to help you create a system architecture model for deploying a Microsoft server application, such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or MOM 2005. A typical system architecture model consists of the following information:
• Topology: Site locations, types of networks, network components, and network characteristics (bandwidth, latency)
• Hardware: Server distribution and characteristics, server and network mapping
• Software: Server role and service mapping, file and storage device mapping
• Usage profiles: Site usage and client usage
After you create a model, you can run a simulation that provides a summary and details about the performance of the application and its supporting components.

Think that this one is going to be really useful if you're planning a migration to Exchange server 2003 and want to get things right and plan for flexibility after the migration.  A useful tool...

Blogcast: Assigning appropriate rights

Upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003

This is the third in the blogcast series for upgrading your Exchange Organisation.  The blogcast runs for 3 minutes and 21 seconds and talks about creating appropriate permissions between the NT 4 domain and Active Directory.  View the blogcast here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

2:Creating the trust 

Blogcast: Creating the trust between Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2003

Upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003

This is the second in the blogcast series for upgrading your Exchange Organisation.  The blogcast runs for 5 minutes and 34 seconds and talks about creating a trust between the NT 4 domain and Active Directory.  View it here...

Other blogcasts in this series:

1: Reviewing the Exchange Organistion

Blogcast: Reviewing Exchange 5.5 Organisation

This is the first in the series of blogcasts showing how to upgrade your organisation to Exchange 2003.  This is the first in the series showing all of the tools, and how they can help you migrate frm Exchange 5.5.

The first blogcast is 1:51 minutes long, and sets the scene for migration.  View it here...

If you don't know what a blogcast is... It's a mini webcast, typically about 5 minutes long, and shows a visual demo of the technology.  Audio is embedded along with the .WMP file and you can view this on demand over and over again.  It differs from a podcast in as much as a podcast is audio only, and has enclosures that means that you can subscribe to a podcast feed to receive updated audio boradcasts when they are available.  Blogcasts (cast out, from a blog, typically) show short targetted demos and they're visual.  Some have powerpoint, some only show the interface...

You may also want to have a look at Johns series of blogcasts on Infrastructure essentials which walks you through how to configure and secure ISA server, apply certificates, and use OWA securely...

Exchange 12 - Roadmap for Developers

If you're an Exhange fan, likes new features, and a it of a developer (sounds like you John then!), have a look at this article that Terry blogged about the other week which covers a few of the architectural changes that will be happening in Exchange 12.  Interesting to note that bot CDOExM and WMI will be replaced (what the heck do cmdlets do then?).  so how the heck will the mailbox reconnect and mailbox moves work?

Interesting stuff though...

Find out how to migrate from Notes to Exchange

Dave Thompson, who is the VP for Exchange in corp. is coming over to speak at an event in London, Docklands next month.  The event is: Understanding the Microsoft Platrform for Notes Organisations.  I quite often talk to customers about their challenges when they migrate from Notes to Exchange, and some customers are concerned that they don't have sufficient knowledge to hand before they start.  So this event brings together Microsoft Expertise, with customers and partners who have already migrated so you can ask questions about the tools used, and about any burning issues you may have.  Here's the link to register. 

Here's what the day will look like.  I pinched the copyof the invite below...

How Notes companies can get more value from Microsoft solutions
We are pleased to invite you to a very special event that looks in depth at the steps required to evaluate moving from Notes/Domino to the Microsoft platform.  Brought to you by Microsoft's expert speakers, this session will give you an understanding of the collaboration market and Microsoft's vision and strategy. Our experts will show how Microsoft Collaboration solutions work together with a "Day in the Life" demo using Microsoft collaboration technologies.

With in-depth drill-downs into the solutions that make up an effective collaboration infrastructure and a detailed overview of the transition project and Messaging/Directory Fundamentals, this full-day session will provide answers to many of the burning questions you face like:

• What does a typical migration process look like? 
• What are the best practices and learnings from previous experiences? 
• How can I complete an application assessment? 
• What's best for my applications: migration or coexistence?
You will also get the opportunity to hear from UK partners that have delivered Collaboration solutions and customers that have made the switch.

Day's Agenda:
8.30–9.00  Registration 
9.00–9.15 Welcome and Introduction
9.15–9.30 Directions on Collaboration
9.30–10.30 Microsoft’s Collaboration Story and Demo of “A Day in the Life” of using Microsoft Collaboration Technology
10.30–11.00 Break
11.00–12.00 Technical Solution Drilldown
12.00–12.30 Customer Case Study
12.30–1.15 Lunch
1.15–2.00 Overview of the Transition Project + Messaging/Directory Fundamentals
2.00–2.45 Application assessment, migration and coexistence
2.45–3.00 Break
3.00–3.30 Hear from UK Partners about their experiences
3.30–3.45 Summary and Close 

I'll be there - so it would be good to see you and have a chat during the day...

Exchange Free / Busy message size

I saw this on an internal mail the othe day, and thought that this information was too good not to share around.  I only wish I'd had this level of detail available to me when I was an Exchange administrator.  So I'm sharing it.  Just in case you also want to know more ... There's a good document on TechNet that talks about how to Manage Free/Busy Folders  expecially on how Outlook handles Free/Busy but this is a nice edition to the document. 

If you want to change the amount of time published by Free/Busy - how much extra traffic would be generated?  Say for example you wanted to double the free busy schedule - how many bytes on the wire?  How large are the messages, and what would be the load on the free/busy server after the change had been made?

Jeffrey and Dave responded that you can get a good estimate by looking at the current PR_MESSAGE_SIZE and PR_CONTENT_COUNT values of the Schedule+ Free Busy folder for the site or Administrative Group.  You'll then have to divide the size by the count to get a per user average.  Assuming that user's currently have the default setting of 6 months, you can extrapolate the impact of changing the number of months published.
For example, in the sample  F/B folder:
PR_MESSAGE_SIZE = 18,499,128
PR_CONTENT_COUNT = 16,530
Based on this calculation, the average free/busy message size is approximately1119 bytes.

Free Busy data is pretty small.  The data is stored as an array of pairs 16-bit words – each being the number of minutes into the month for the beginning and end time of each busy range. The maximum number of busy ranges can be forced by making every other minute in the month busy. 1440 minutes in a day, 720 marks every other one. 31 days in a month… leads to just shy of 90k per month in the worst possible case. Actual values will be substantially smaller than that. As more calendars get more and more booked, the amount of data stored actually goes down as the busy ranges get merged together.
The Free Busy server will experience pretty much the same load overall (“Open message, stream in data, close message”). The extra data is likely going to cause maybe one extra RPC operation. Also if you’re replicating the Free/Busy data to another Public Folder server, it’ll double the amount of replication traffic.

Messaging & collaboration Webcasts for October

Microsoft Webcast: Unlock Lotus Notes Using Microsoft Collaboration Technologies
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Cliff Reeves, General Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Gary Devendorf, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Jim Bernardo, Enterprise Technical Strategist, Microsoft Corporation
With advancements in technology, and major new software releases on the horizon from Microsoft and IBM, IBM Lotus Notes/Domino customers are re-examining their readiness for collaboration.  In this webcast we discuss how customers can extend their Notes and Domino investments with Microsoft technologies, and why now is the right time to evaluate solutions for integrating your Notes applications within the Microsoft collaboration platform.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032282319&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Overview of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Administration Features (Level 300)
Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Malvin M. Seale, Technical Lead, Microsoft Corporation
Get an overview of the new administration features for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). This webcast covers changes to the 16GB limit and database size management, Public Folder management enhancements, and improvements to the Offline Address Book in Exchange Server 2003 SP2.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281974&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Accessing Exchange Server from Your Mobile Device Using SP2 (Level 300)
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Max Ciccotosto, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Does your organization have all the mobile access it could use in the areas of security, flexibility, and affordability? This webcast discusses and demonstrates how Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 provides secure and affordable remote and mobile access to e-mail and Personal Information Manager information across a range of mobile devices. Explore the new mobility enhancements in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2, including the new always-up-to-date functionality, configuring personal identification number lock settings, remotely wiping a device, configuring soft certificates to access Exchange, and other new mobility enhancements.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281773&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 1 of 14): Deployment Planning (Level 200)
Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
How do you effectively plan and deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2003? Start with this first webcast of the Exchange Server 2003 Series, where we examine the planning phase of any Exchange deployment. Learn the basic consideration for deployment, including hardware and software required to support one or more Exchange servers. From there we examine the infrastructure requirements, covering basic services such as Domain Name System, Microsoft Internet Information Services and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Finally, we explain the biggest infrastructure requirement, Active Directory directory service. Covering integration and deployment paths, the presentation shows how Exchange and Active Directory are linked and how to deploy this critical service.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281666&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Server 2003 In Depth (Part 2 of 14): Coexistence and Migration (Level 200)
Friday, October 28, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Harold Wong, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Does migration have to be a headache? Not if you create a clear path and follow it. This webcast examines coexistence and migration scenarios when moving from Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Connecting a Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 environment to Active Directory as a starting point, the webcast shows how to connect the two directory services and troubleshoot them if they stop performing. With the Active Directory service established, learn how to integrate Exchange Server 2003 into this environment. The webcast concludes with a look at the upgrade path for Exchange Server 2000 deployments to Exchange Server 2003.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032281671&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Securing E-mail and Collaboration Servers (Level 100)
Thursday, October 06, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Chris Ertz, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Security is a critical element in keeping e-mail and collaboration systems available and performing optimally. Downtime and network bottlenecks caused by viruses, worms and spam threaten the very productivity these applications are designed to enable. Sybari antivirus and anti-spam solutions provide a layered defense strategy that can help significantly reduce the impact of these threats to Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server. Attendees of this webcast receive a technical overview of the Sybari solutions that includes a live demonstration of Sybari Antigen along with a discussion of multiple-scan engine management, balancing performance with detection rates, and using frequent updates to minimize windows of vulnerability.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032282266&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Exchange Server Sizing (Level 100)
Thursday, October 27, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Steve Tramack, Senior Engineering Manager, HP Solution Alliances, HP
Successful Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 deployments depend upon properly sizing and configuring your server environment and storage subsystem. A solid understanding of the business needs and technical constraints of these systems is critical to providing a configuration that offers performance at the service levels demanded by your organization. This webcast outlines a six-step methodology for performance planning that provides best practices related to the key sizing resources for sizing Exchange 2003 back-end servers. We identify available tools and resources from Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft for planning a successful messaging environment.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032282366&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: A Comprehensive Look at Anti-Spam Technologies in Exchange 2003 SP2 (Level 300)
Monday, October 17, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Mihai Costea, Program Manager, Exchange Server, Microsoft Corporation
Alexander Nikolayev, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
To keep your information technology infrastructure safe, you must be up-to-date on the latest threats and the countermeasures to block or mitigate them. This webcast presents the complete view of the anti-spam techniques in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2. It includes descriptions and technical drill-downs for features that originally shipped in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, plus the additions in Service Pack 2. The webcast concludes with tips and tricks for fighting spam.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032282011&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: E-mail Authentication: Importance in Your E-mail Hygiene Strategy (Level 300)
Friday, October 21, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Craig Spiezle, Director, Microsoft Corporation
Harry Katz, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
E-mail authentication is as essential to e-mail hygiene strategy as it is to building online trust. This webcast outlines the myths and realities of Sender ID, an industry-wide approach to dealing with the problem of e-mail spoofing and phishing. In this webcast we show how the results of Sender ID must be included in the overall e-mail trustworthiness score. Learn the importance of adding reputation to identity, and see how this improves deliverability of legitimate mail, detection of phishing exploits and reduces the occurrence of false positives. This presentation includes a review of industry momentum and progress around anti-spam and anti-phishing efforts. The webcast also shows examples of creating records, and discusses various complementary e-mail authentication approaches.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032282082&Culture=en-US

Send SMS messages from your mobile phone using Outlook 2003

John has found this fantastic little download from Microsoft that lets you send SMS messages from your cell phone by using Outlook.  A boon to those of you who have big thumbs and those of us who blame your poor spelling on the predictive text feature in the phone. (The number of times I've typed that I'm sitting at home with wind instead of wine.....). There are other howlers too in predictive text that escape me at the moment...

Download it and give it a try... here's the info

This download will enable you to send SMS text messages through most GSM mobile phones connected to your PC using Outlook 2003.
You can enter your SMS text within a Outlook-type entry form and have it sent to your mobile phone for delivery through your mobile phone network service. There is no requirement to install third-party software or to subscribe to additional mobile network services if your mobile phone can be connected to your PC. This is typically via an infrared connection, Bluetooth technology, or a USB/serial cable.
The SMS messages can be saved as a draft, grouped, and forwarded like standard Outlook 2003 e-mail.

Additional Features:

• Manage SMS messages just like emails – Save drafts, Sent items, Print
• Forward as email and SMS
• Lookup and resolve phone numbers to your existing Outlook contacts
• Use spelling and proofing tools
• Cut and paste text from other applications

Exchange 2003 SP2 - whats in it?

I noticed that Gerod has posted a link to the release notes for Exchange SP2 (they weren't with the original bits).  They're now on the web. (I mentioned that you could download them in a previous blog entry).   I'd missed the bit about pausing replication of Public Folders which Gerod picked up.  A very useful feature when your bandwidth starts to creak at the seams...

Copying your SMTP relay list to another computer

Godfrey mailed me with an Exchange problem tht was causing him quite a bit of work

We have a large number of IP addresses in our SMTP "relay list"
It's a real pain to have to enter them into each new exchange server.
There must be some way of copying them across - do you know a way ?

Nope - I didn't - I had to ask arround.  Fortunately Simon came up with this neat little tool which allows you to programmatically set the relay IPs (and allow/deny IPs) for an SMTP VSI in an Exchange org.  It is a COM object with sample VBscript so you can tailor it to suit your requirements. 

You can use the SMTP Internet Protocol Restriction and Accept/Deny List Configuration to programmatically set or view Internet Protocol (IP) restrictions on an SMTP virtual server and to add or remove IP addresses from your global accept or deny lists.  Exchange 2003 provides connection and relay control for its Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) virtual servers. Additionally, Exchange 2003 provides connection filtering that allows you to configure IP addresses from which you want to accept connections or from which you want to always deny connections. These settings are configured in global accept and deny lists in Connection Filtering. An administrator can use these controls to limit the computers that can connect to a virtual server or that can relay e-mail to outside the Exchange organization.  

I forgot to add that there’s a common misconception about the use of that feature – you don’t need to put the IP’s of all your other Exchange Servers in the relay list to secure things,  Exchange Servers don’t ‘relay’ to each other. Some people think that this is the way to be ‘secure’ by doing something like this. So you don't have to that at all and you're just using that field to allow non exchange servers to relay, as that’s what it’s there for.

It's also a great idea to have a look at Part one of the Exchange Transport and Routing guide that has quite a few extra bits on SMTP and relays if you want some background information - especially on correctly configuring your SMTP Server for relays which is *really important* so I've reproduced some of it here...

Setting Relay Restrictions
Relaying is the ability to forward mail to domains other than your own.  More specifically, relaying occurs when an inbound connection to your SMTP server is used to send e-mail messages to external domains. By default, your Exchange server accepts mail submitted by internal or authenticated users and sends it to an external domain. If your server is open for relaying, or if relaying is unsecured on your server, unauthorized users can use your server to send unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam). Therefore, to secure your SMTP virtual server, it is crucial that you set relay restrictions.
It is important to understand the difference between authenticated relaying and anonymous or open relaying:
Authenticated relaying:  Authenticated relaying allows your internal users to send mail to domains outside of your Exchange organization, but requires authentication before the mail is sent. By default, Exchange allows only authenticated relaying.
Anonymous relaying:   Anonymous relaying allows any user to connect to your Exchange server and use it to send mail outside your Exchange organization.

The following examples demonstrate how Exchange Server 2003 accepts and relays mail by using authenticated relaying: 
An anonymous user connects to the SMTP virtual server and attempts to deliver mail to an internal user in the Exchange organization. 
   In this situation, the SMTP virtual server accepts the message because it is destined for an internal domain and because the user exists in Active Directory.
An anonymous user connects to the SMTP virtual server and attempts to deliver mail to an external user in an external domain. 
   In this situation, the SMTP virtual server rejects the mail because it is destined for an external domain for which the Exchange server is not responsible. Because the user is not authenticated, the SMTP virtual server does not relay this mail outside of the Exchange organization.
A user connects to the SMTP virtual server using a Post Office Protocol (POP) or Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) client (for example, Outlook Express), authenticates, and then attempts to send a message to a user in an external domain. 
   In this situation, the e-mail client connects directly to the SMTP virtual server and authenticates the user. Although the message is destined for a remote domain, the SMTP virtual server accepts and relays this mail because the user is authenticated.

By using the relay control features of Exchange Server 2003, you can prevent third parties from relaying mail through your server. Relay control allows you to specify a list of incoming remote IP address and subnet mask pairs that have permission to relay mail through your server. Exchange checks an incoming SMTP client's IP address against the list of IP networks that are allowed to relay mail. If the client is not allowed to relay mail, only mail that is addressed to local recipients is allowed. You can also implement relay control by domain. However, this approach requires the implementation of reverse DNS resolution, which is controlled at the SMTP virtual server level.

Microsoft and Frontbridge

As I've  mentioned before, Microsoft have now completed the acquisition of Frontbridge technologies.  here's the info from the presspass site, and news comments are starting to appear...

The acquisition of FrontBridge allows Microsoft to deliver services for enforcing compliance through archiving, ensuring e-mail availability in the case of a disaster, and improving protection of employee inboxes from viruses and spam.  FrontBridge, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, will continue to offer managed messaging services for multiple e-mail platforms such as Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and other SMTP-compliant servers currently supported by FrontBridge.

I think that this is a really Interesting compliance offering for Exchange...should be good to see what happens moving forward.

You've probably seen this already on the Exchange blog already.  Nino is much more efficient than me :-)

Troubleshooting RPC/HTTP

RPC/HTTP is a fantastic solution to accessing your mail without using a VPN, and since we enabled it here at Microsoft, I hardly ever log on using the VPN and smartcard when I just need to send emails. (General emal triage is done as and where on my smartphone to avoid the Aaargh! feeling when I get back to my mails after a few days out and about.

The problem is when something along the way goes wrong with your RPC/HTTP connection.  Where to start... Well you need to be aware of how RPC over HTTP works... and how RPC/HTTP configured

1. The RPC proxy server establishes and maintains a connection to the Exchange 2003 computer.
2. The RPC proxy server sends RPC requests to the Exchange 2003 computer.
3. The RPC proxy server sends the replies over the Internet to the client program.
4. The Exchange 2003 computer responds to the RPC requests from the RPC proxy server.

To successfully connect to an Exchange 2003 computer by using RPC over HTTP, an Outlook 2003 connection process must follow this procedure:

1. The client computer must resolve the RPC proxy server name by using DNS.
2. The client computer must use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to connect to the RPC proxy server.
3. The Microsoft Internet Explorer program on the client computer must process the security certificate that is issued by the RPC proxy server.
4. The client computer must authenticate a connection to the RPC proxy server.
5. The RPC proxy server must contain the computer name of the destination computer. For example, the RPC proxy server must contain the name of the Exchange 2003 computer.
6. The RPC proxy server must resolve the computer names of the destination computers by using DNS.
7. The RPC proxy server must establish a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection to the destination computer.
8. The user's account credentials must be authorized by the domain.
9. The RPC proxy server must send the user's account credentials to the Exchange information store and then log on to Exchange 2003 computer.

Quite a lot to troubleshoot eh?  So here are the high level troubleshooting steps

Step 1: Verify that RPC over HTTP support is installed
Step 2: Verify that the World Wide Web Publishing Service is started
Step 3: Verify that an SSL certificate is installed on the RPC proxy server
Step 4: Connect to the RPC proxy server by using an SSL connection
Step 5: Verify that the RPC proxy server has basic authentication configured
Step 6: Verify the client computer configuration
Step 7: Verify the Outlook profile configuration
Step 8: Verify the Exchange 2003 port configuration

The detailed steps if you want to drill in to troubleshooting the above is here...

posted by Eileen_Brown with 2 Comments

Deploying the Offline Address book (OAB) with SMS

I blogged about deploying Windows 2003 SP1 with SMS last week, and completely missed this document that went up on the TechNet site recently.  Fortunately Benjamin mailed me and reminded me that you can deploy the Exchange 2003 OAB using SMS.  Now this is a really useful document if you have problems with users all trying to download the OAB over a WAN.  It's a good idea to have a look at OAB best practices and how the new version of the OAB works with SP2.

Thanks to Benjamin for the link -  I missed it completely...

Exchange SP2 public beta - the CTP

Even though Harold blogged about this last week, and the Exchange team have covered all you need to get onto this beta of Exchange SP2, Here's the link to the download and also have a look at the release notes

Key bits that I've pulled out of the release notes (as I get lots of questions on these)

Increase in Database Size for Standard Edition
For the Exchange Server 2003 Standard Edition, the hard-coded licensing database size limit has been increased from 16 GB to 75 GB. The administrator will be able to set a protective database size limit (prevent unintentional database size growth). The default value will be 18 GB in SP2 for Standard Edition and the default of 18 GB can be overwritten by editing the "Database Size Limit in GB" registry key.
The database size calculation will be that of the logical database size — empty space is not counted. Limit checks will be performed regularly and controlled by the store process, not by Jet. Intervals for checking will be defined in the local registry and defaults can be overwritten by editing the registry. If there are no registry settings, the default time of 24 hours is used.
There will be an early warning threshold so that warnings will arrive at set intervals. Additionally, there will be better feedback to administrators when the database size limit is reached. Administrators will be able to manually mount databases in Exchange System Manager (ESM).

Improvements in Offline Address Book Performance (and see the Exchange blog for a great post on this and on the OAB v4 itself)
The offline address book (OAB 4.0) has been improved for performance.
Note   You must have Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) installed to realize this enhanced performance.
In cached mode, with the improvements, there will be fewer situations that could result in a company-wide, full OAB download.
Specific features of OAB 4.0 include the following:
Significantly reduce the size of the OAB.
Differential OAB update files use a generic, binary compression technology (BinPatch).
You now can have customizable properties and indexes.
OAB indexing will be based on the locale setting (language and country) of the client. This enables users on the same server (with different local settings) to correctly view the OAB, sorted based on their locale setting and not the servers.

Mobility Enhancements
There are some important mobility enhancements for both the mobile device user, and the mobility administrator.
Important   To use the mobility features, you need a mobile device with Windows Mobile™ 5.0 installed. For most of the other features to work, the Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0 must be installed also.
Direct push is a new Exchange technology that maintains an open connection between the mobile device and the server. When new items arrive, they are automatically "pushed down" to the device.
Remote wipe is a new feature that enables administrators to erase sensitive data from a lost or stolen mobile device. The administrator receives an acknowledgement that the device has been wiped after the task has been completed.
Global address list (GAL) lookup enables users to receive contact information for users in the global address list from a mobile device. This feature helps users search for a person quickly, based on name, company, and so on.
Policy provisioning allows administrators to make supported policies, such as device passwords, more secure by enforcing them in one of two modes:
Allowing only devices that have policies to synchronize (Windows Mobile 5.0 and Microsoft Feature Pack)
Allowing all devices, including older devices, to synchronize
Support for certificate-based authentication
Use of S/MIME to sign and encrypt mail

Watch out for the caveat though:

Exchange Server 2003 SP2 CTP is unsupported pre-release software distributed for feedback and testing purposes only, and is not supported by Customer Services and Support (CSS). 

Apart from that - enjoy playing :-)

Monitoring Outlook in cached mode

So I've been rather remiss answering mails that come in with technical questions concerning Exchange or LCS.  Usually the questions involve just a quick search and a reply mail straight back with the link to the document /white paper/ kb article.  Some of these mails are failry complicated - descriptions of architectures, and quite complex queries.

But this one had me stumped for a while. Rachel asked if it was possible to find out how she could monitor Outlook users and identify those running in cached mode.  Additionally she wanted to identify the top ten users fr sending and receiving messages.  I recommended the usual perfmon counters but then I remembered something today that took me down a different route. The SQL reporting pack for Exchange which fite quite nicely with Quests tool for managing Exchange

This Report Pack includes the following reports:

Messaging & collaboration Webcasts for September

Microsoft Executive Circle Webcast: Messaging and Collaboration Security: Meeting the Challenge
Thursday, September 08, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Joe Licari, Director, Product Management, Microsoft Corporation
Business systems are interconnected in order to get maximum value from the information technology (IT) infrastructure and to enable efficient employee collaboration. As a result, messaging and collaboration servers that enable e-mail, document sharing and instant messaging have become mission-critical infrastructure components in business environments around the world. Attend this webcast to understand the threats facing these servers and how you can protect them with Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server and Sybari Antigen. This 100-level session is appropriate for business and IT managers who want to learn what solutions Microsoft offers to help them protect messaging and collaboration servers.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279889&Culture=en-US

Microsoft Executive Circle Webcast: A Conversation with Avanade: Business Justifications for Modernizing Your Collaboration Platform
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time
Rita Seroski, Director of Infrastructure Solutions, Avenade
How are companies getting the most out of their IBM Lotus Notes investment? Find out by joining us for this webcast. We discuss the real-world experience of a partner that has helped companies migrate from Notes or coexist with a Notes and Microsoft Windows server environment. Learn how a partial or total migration that is virtually transparent to customers and partners is achieved while the value of information currently on Domino Servers is maintained.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279547&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Performance Monitoring Analysis and Tuning (Level 300)
Thursday, September 15, 2005 - 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM Pacific Time
Paul Bowden, Program Manager, Exchange Server Development Team, Microsoft Corporation
Are you getting all the performance out of Exchange Server 2003 that you'd like? During this session, which was highly rated when presented at Tech•Ed 2005 in Orlando, Florida (TechEd ID: MSG368), we explore all aspects of performance tuning for Exchange server 2003, covering Windows, Exchange, and system resources. Understand and learn best practices, registry tweaks, and performance monitoring that can help your Exchange environment run more smoothly.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032277520&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Defining and Monitoring Desired Configuration Across a Messaging Service (Level 300)
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Edhi Sarwono, SYSTEMS DESIGN ENGINEER, Microsoft Corporation
Robbie McAlpine, SR PROGRAM MANAGER, Microsoft Corporation
Do you consider it a challenge to monitor a configuration across a messaging service? This webcast presents a new solution: the Desired Configuration Monitoring (DCM) Solution Accelerator, which will be released in September. Learn about the DCM Solution Accelerator, how configuration manifests are generated, how the configuration check is processed and about the resulting reports of non-compliant services. The Solution Accelerator provides tools to alert users of differences or non-compliance between their present configuration and baseline or desired configuration. It also provides environmental configuration data to aid configuration management.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280068&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Securing Your Exchange Server with Antigen and ISA Server (Level 200)
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Peter Eicher, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Every enterprise needs inter-site communication, but it opens conduits for everything from bandwidth-gobbling spam to malicious attacks that can cripple your organization. This webcast shows how to use Sybari Antigen and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server to protect Microsoft Exchange Server from viruses, worms, spam and external attacks. Product managers from the ISA Server and Antigen teams discuss best practices for common Exchange deployment types, emphasizing configuration and tuning Antigen and ISA Server. This session is appropriate for information technology professionals who have a surface-level understanding of ISA and Antigen, and are ready to take their knowledge to the next level.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280058&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange 2003 Disaster Recovery Solutions (Level 300)
Thursday, September 22, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Rand Morimoto, Author, President, Convergent Computing
Are you encountering problems with Microsoft Exchange Server failures, database corruption, site failures or LAN/WAN failures? To deal with these and similar problems, join Rand Morimoto as he presents best practices for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 clustering, dial tone Exchange recovery strategies, non-Microsoft software replication utilities, snapshot Storage Area Network solutions and geo-clusters. Learn how to determine the best recovery solution for your needs. Gain tips, tricks, and best practices for these technical solutions, and see how other technical solutions improve Exchange Clustering for disaster recovery.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279693&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Message Hygiene with Exchange Server 2003 (Level 300)
Tuesday, September 27, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Scott Schnoll, Technical Writer, Exchange User Education Team, Microsoft Corporation
Viruses, worms, spam and other unwanted email have become a destructive reality that many administrators of Microsoft Exchange routinely face. This session, one of the top-rated breakout sessions (MSG342) from Tech•Ed 2005 in Orlando, Florida, provides recommendations and guidance for slowing and stopping the unwanted messages entering your Exchange 2003 environment. Learn how the Exchange Intelligent Message Filter supplements existing anti-spam features in Exchange 2003, as well as how Virus Scanning API 2.5 provides greater protection and administrative flexibility against malicious and harmful messages.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032278516&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Exchange Best Practice Analyzer (Level 300)
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Kevin Remde, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
The Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool (ExBPA) is an automated health check and troubleshooting tool. ExBPA collects configuration settings and performs network and protocol tests in an Exchange topology. Join this webcast to learn about the new version of the tool that was released in March 2005. We discuss enhancements such as scheduling and baseline support. See how to use ExBPA with Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. At the end of the presentation, we talk about future enhancements to the ExBPA tool.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279695&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Managing Exchange Service Levels with the SLA Scorecard Solution Accelerator (Level 300)
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Sanjiv Sharma, SYSTEMS DESIGN ENGINEER, Microsoft Corporation
Karri Alexion-Tiernan, PROGRAM MANAGER, Microsoft Corporation
Learn about the solution and architecture of the service-level agreement (SLA) Scorecard Solution Accelerator for a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 environment. The solution accelerator can set SLAs, administer outages, and analyze performance and trend reports across the messaging services. During this webcast we introduce a solution accelerator that leverages MOM 2005 data to create management-level availability reports and manage outages. We also look at long term trend analysis that compares predefined SLA levels to actual availability.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280070&Culture=en-US

TechNet Support Webcast: Lotus Notes Connector Configuration (Level 200)
Wednesday, September 21, 2005: 10:00 A.M. Pacific time
Gayle Heizer, Support Engineer, Microsoft Corporation
This Support WebCast discusses the directory synchronization (DirSync) process between Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Lotus Notes. This WebCast discusses common issues that occur when Microsoft Exchange Connector is configured for Lotus Notes. This WebCast also discusses how to troubleshoot these issues. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=906114

Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tips and Tricks for More Effective Meetings: Anytime, Anywhere (Level 100)
Thursday, September 08, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Andrew Reed, Senior Training Specialist, Pacific Technical Consulting
Is your definition of a team meeting “wasted time?” Learn how the Microsoft Office System can help dramatically increase meeting effectiveness and maximize quality time with your colleagues and customers. Take a brief walk-through of key Microsoft Office System products such as Outlook 2003, OneNote 2003, and Live Meeting—Microsoft’s Web conferencing service that helps you run and participate in interactive meetings around the world in real time. Learn new ways to schedule meetings, share related documents, take and repurpose meeting notes, and stay on top of meeting-related tasks and action items.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279514&Culture=en-US

Microsoft Office System Webcast: Top 10 Tips to Save Time in Outlook (Level 100)
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Evan Archilla, Senior Training Specialist, Projectline Services
Improve the way you manage information, communicate with others and organize your work using a single resource. The new and improved features of Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 work together to help you effectively manage and organize your e-mail and share information. Join us for this informative webcast to learn some of our favorite tips and tricks for getting the most out of Outlook 2003.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279812&Culture=en-US

Microsoft Office System Webcast: Scheduling Tips for Increased Productivity and Results with Outlook and Mission Control (Level 100)
Thursday, September 15, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Brian Stuhlmuller, Executive Vice President, Mission Control
Do you want to leave work earlier? Learn to use Mission Control's principles and practices for scheduling with Microsoft Office Outlook. Schedule yourself in a whole new way that enables you to be more focused and productive. In this webcast, discover how your familiar and common habits for scheduling can actually become obstacles to productivity. Learn how to build new scheduling habits that enable you to accomplish what is most important to you and deal effectively with the demands of the current work environment.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279823&Culture=en-US

Microsoft Office System Webcast: Top 10 Tips to Save Time in Excel (Level 100)
Tuesday, September 27, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Evan Archilla, Senior Training Specialist, Projectline Services
Use Microsoft Office Excel 2003 to analyze, communicate, and share your results. Improve the way you turn data into information. Excel 2003 offers new technologies and features while improving upon existing and familiar tools. Join us for this informative webcast to learn some of our favorite tips and tricks for getting the most out of Excel 2003. Learn how to use the improved tools of Excel 2003 to facilitate effective and efficient collaboration and information sharing.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279829&Culture=en-US

Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tips for Improving Sales Productivity Results using Outlook with the Mission Control System (Level 100)
Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Brian Stuhlmuller, Executive Vice President, Mission Control
Are you ready to blow the lid off your quota? Discover the award-winning Mission Control approach to productivity that produces a dramatic increase in sales results. This webcast introduces you to an entirely new way of thinking about, organizing, and managing your sales activities in Microsoft Office System Outlook. Learn to build new work habits that give you more confidence with prospects, become more focused in your sales activities, and most importantly, be more effective at hitting and exceeding your sales targets.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279836&Culture=en-US

Small Business Webcast: Small Business Accounting 2006 and the Tight Integration with Office 2003 (Level 100)
Friday, September 9, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Carl Preston, Business Development Manager, Microsoft Corporation
In this webcast, learn how Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006 makes it easy for you to do financial tasks and care for customers. The integration between Small Business Accounting and Microsoft Office System 2003 is powerful and important. Find out just how beneficial this new office product can be for your small business.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280007&Culture=en-US

Small Business Webcast: Using Microsoft Word 2003 to Your Advantage (Level 100)
Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM Pacific Time
Lara Pryor, Business Development Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Sure, you've been using it for a while. Now, learn how to use Microsoft Office Word 2003 more effectively to share documents, send for review, track changes, and even add clip art to add spice to your documents. In this webcast, we discuss how to create templates and how to use the power of Word to your advantage.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280012&Culture=en-US

Small Business Webcast: Integrating Small Business Accounting 2006 with Microsoft Office Programs (Level 200)
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Krim Stephenson, Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Learn how you can significantly increase productivity and produce more accurate and insightful financial data. You can integrate Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 with Microsoft Office programs such as Microsoft Office Word, Excel and Outlook 2003 with Microsoft Business Contact Manager Update. Such integration extends the value of the accounting features and services. This webcast is focused for accounting firm professionals. We show you how to share financial history, manage and track billable time, forecast and analyze financial scenarios and create professional-looking, customized documents.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032278548&Culture=en-US

Small Business Webcast: Create Great Presentations Using PowerPoint 2003 (Level 100)
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM Pacific Time
Jeff Lin, Business Development Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Learn how to create great presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 in just 30 minutes. Find out how to create and use animations effectively. Learn how to share your presentation, and the do's and don'ts of effective presentation techniques.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280039&Culture=en-US

Small Business Webcast: Using the New MSN Search Toolbar to Find Work on Your Desktop (Level 100)
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM Pacific Time
Darin Browning, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Are you constantly switching between applications looking for documents, e-mails or information on the Internet? The new MSN Search Toolbar makes finding information on your computer a simple task. Join this webcast and learn tips on using this new search tool to help you find what you need when you need it.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280050&Culture=en-US

Small Business Webcast: Integrating Small Business Accounting 2006 with Microsoft Office Programs (Level 100)
Friday, September 30, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Bob Lewis
Krim Stephenson, Senior Marketing Manager/Accountant Relations
PRODUCT MANAGER, Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Corporation
Learn how you can significantly increase productivity and produce more accurate and insightful financial data. You can integrate Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 with Microsoft Office programs such as Microsoft Office Word, Excel and Outlook 2003 with Microsoft Business Contact Manager Update. Such integration extends the value of the accounting features and services. This webcast is focused for accounting firm professionals. We show you how to share financial history, manage and track billable time, forecast and analyze financial scenarios and create professional-looking, customized documents.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032278744&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Creating Business Value Through Collaboration (Level 100)
Tuesday, September 6, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Bill Malone, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
What is collaboration and how can it help your business? In this webcast, we look at collaboration as a means instead of an end. Collaboration tools, and more specifically a collaboration environment, can lead to dramatic increases in business value. Collaboration facilitates more effective business processes and decreases information technology support requirements and costs.  Attend this webcast to learn more about the Microsoft approach to collaboration and the innovations Microsoft brings to the market to help organizations work together more effectively.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279463&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Creating Business Value Through Collaboration (Level 100)
Monday, September 19, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Matt Berg, Solutions Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
What is collaboration and how can it help your business? In this webcast, we look at collaboration as a means instead of an end. Collaboration tools, and more specifically a collaboration environment, can lead to dramatic increases in business value. Using collaboration as a means facilitates more effective business processes and decreases information technology support requirements and costs.  Attend this webcast to learn more about the Microsoft approach to collaboration and the innovations Microsoft brings to the market to help organizations work together more effectively.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280137&Culture=en-US

Microsoft Executive Circle Webcast: Messaging and Collaboration Security: Meeting the Challenge (Level 100)
Thursday, September 08, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Joe Licari, Director, Product Management, Microsoft Corporation
Business systems are interconnected in order to get maximum value from the information technology (IT) infrastructure and to enable efficient employee collaboration. As a result, messaging and collaboration servers that enable e-mail, document sharing and instant messaging have become mission-critical infrastructure components in business environments around the world. Attend this webcast to understand the threats facing these servers and how you can protect them with Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server and Sybari Antigen. This 100-level session is appropriate for business and IT managers who want to learn what solutions Microsoft offers to help them protect messaging and collaboration servers.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279889&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Securing Collaboration Beyond E-Mail (Level 200)
Thursday, September 15, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Neha Sharma, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Is your implementation of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services safe? SharePoint benefits your organization because you can share information and documentation, and can reduce messaging overhead. But SharePoint can also allow users to bypass traditional antivirus and content scanning, and could provide an exploitable network security vulnerability. To ensure comprehensive network protection, your organization must adopt a layered defense strategy that encompasses communication policy, user training, and consistent application of security technology. Attend this webcast to understand existing and potential threats to corporate networks, and how to deploy practical protection for Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279973&Culture=en-US

Exchange SLA scorecard

I didn't notice this pop up as I've been focusing on MOM and mobility recently (funny how your day job affects the topics you notice to blog about) and I noticed that Tony has got this gem of a post about the Exchange SLA scorecard. 

He's got all the info about it you need so I won't repeat it here - just visit his blog..

Password protecting PST's

Gosh!  My post last week about PST files started some discussion... They seem to be such an emotive subject don't they?  Apart from the comments on my blog entry (which are always really good to see, as they prompt discussions from people with much better ideas than I have), I've had several mails from people who weren't comfortable with leaving a comment (and some flames too..) about why the heck do I recommend PST's in the first place, corporate policy and procedures and all...)

Well here's something that'll inflame you further...

One of the emails I received talked about password protecting .PST files.  Now don't shout at me, he wanted to put something in place at his company for a minimal level of protection for his pst's.  so here's some info from the Office team on why you would or wouldn't do this.  Don't forget that securing data in PST's should be done by Encrypting the File system where the PST is stored.  The encryption setting in the Outlook dialog box isn't very strong and is designed to prevent casual snooping - not a determined attack...

So be aware of the issues about PST's and - I'm not advocating their use - just telling you to take care if you do use PST's  - as I do... :-)

ExBPA 2.1 and the MOM Management Pack

Exchange mobility articles

I've found a collection of Exchange and mobility related things that I want to share with you - things that will ease the adoption of windows based smartphones and pocket PC's for you..

How to Configure Always Up-To-Date Notifications

Exchange Server 2003 ActiveSync Architecture

Top 10 KBs for Exchange Server Mobility Old but still useful...

How to add root certificates to Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone and to Windows Mobile 2002 Smartphone

How to start services using a script

OK, so I'm not a scripting person - but even this isn't beyond me... Here's a script that allows you to start "auto start" services that have stopped... so if your server gets a bit busy sometimes with all thats going on at startup and a service gets forgotton, you can restart the service using this script from the script centre..

I found this when I was browsing the scripting for Exchange introduction as more and more admins script Exchange with WMI scripts and I needed to get my head around the concepts.  So if you want to find out which GC an Exchange server is using, you can script it using WMI...

AUTD for Windows mobile

I was in Jasons mobility session last week at our conference listening to the ehancements for Windows Mobile provided by Exchange SP2, talking about scalability, remote wipe, push emails and all of the other features that are coming out of the box with Exchange SP2.  I've also found a list of resources from an email the other week that lists them in detail, so I'm reproducing them here as there seems to be a bit of misunderstanding on whether we do push email, password policy and have the ability to wipe the data from the device if the device is lost...

Exchange direct push technology document explains how this feature works, and there's a nice bit about how remote wipe works:

Remote wipe is a new feature added in SP2 that enables administrators and help desk professionals to erase sensitive data from a lost or stolen mobile device. After the remote wipe has been completed, the administrator will receive acknowledgement that device has been wiped.

Useful that you're actually notified that the device has actually been wiped so you can stop worrying whether your sensitive data is in the wrong hands or not...

There's also a bit about the GAL lookout (view the blogcast  (5 minute webcast demo) on how it works...).  the Exchange team have also written some great posts about push technology and how it works too..

Exchange SP2 introductory post:
Links to TechEd Videos demoing RemoteWipe, enhanced security and DirectPush
Exchange SP2 Remote Wipe:
Exchange 2003 SP2 Direct Push Technology

So now you know...

Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

I get asked about this a lot, and even though I've blogged about this in the past, people still think it's OK to put your PST's on the network somewhere.  Well don't!  I've dug out the kb article that explains why we don't support them.  These sort of things will happen...

All operations take longer.
Write operations can take approximately four times longer than read operations.
Outlook has slower performance than the Exchange Client.
For the reasons mentioned above, Offline Folders (.ost) files and personal address book (.pab) files on a network share that are accessed remotely are also unsupported configurations.  If you do have roaming users, have a look at the link to the Office resource kit for some tips on strategies for Outlook roaming, and configuring roaming users for Outlook..

Microsoft to acquire FrontBridge

I saw this on the newswires the other day, and didn't get around to blogging about it as I was in transit to Atlanta, then Steve Ballmer talked about it during our internal global briefing, so I went back and had another look at the news article.  This is quite something, this aqcuisition.  This means that the prevention of email bourne virii spam etc will be handled by this fully managed service - reducing the load on the Administrators.   and managing the mail before the mail gets to you... 

Dave Thompson summed it up nicely:

It’s a great opportunity for our partners to provide an additional offering that their customers have been seeking - a fully managed service for e-mail archiving, spam filtering, virus scanning, encrypted e-mail, policy enforcement, and disaster recovery. In turn, FrontBridge has strong relationships with many telecommunications and OEM industry partners who resell the service. We expect this merger will offer many new opportunities to partners.

certainly something to keep an eye out for...

Exchange 2003 - Deleting Badmail items

Jasons Exchange server is causing him major issues.  I'd called in to see him for lunch before I flew out to our conference the other day and  I caught him at just the wrong moment.  He was in despair..

He had just noticed that his badmail folder had thousands upon thousands of items in. He couldn't move them and they'd been there in the queue for quite a while.  He was worried about deleting them, and also worried about the badmail folder filling up again.  Well I sat down and had a browse around the web for him and found this amazing utility which will effectively put a quota size on the badmail folder, and automatically archive them off or delete them.  So he didn't have to do anything once he'd downloaded the tool. It only delayed us by 30 minutes - and lunch was on him... :-) 

About time too Jason - it was your turn anyway...

Exchange Server cookbook

John has been nagging me to blog about this as he's from an Exchange developer background and gets excited about whizzy things that you can do with scripts and the like.  He can't stop himself scripting (like an addict) and blogged about backing up Exchange a couple of weeks ago.

So have a look at the Exchange Server cookbook and the companion site for the book which contains the scripts you need in zip files - saves a heck of a lot of typing - and you can also add comments and feature requests for future revisions...

So go on - buy the book :-)

Messaging & collaboration Webcasts for August

TechNet Webcast: Mastering Exchange Server Scripting (Level 300)

Tuesday, August 09, 2005 - 9:30:00 AM - 10:30:00 AM Pacific Time

Don Jones, Microsoft MVP, Book Author, and Founder of ScriptingAnswers.com

Jeffery Hicks, Contributing editor to ScriptingAnswers.com, Principal Consultant, JDH Information Technology Solutions

Tackle one of the toughest customers in the scripting world: Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. This webcast examines the Microsoft technologies that make Exchange script-accessible, including Collaboration Data Objects (CDO), CDO for Exchange Management, Windows Management Instrumentation, ActiveX Data Objects, and Active Directory Service Interfaces. Get an in-depth look at scripts capable of monitoring and managing Exchange, and learn about the capabilities and limitations of Exchange Server scripting.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032276550&Culture=en-US 

Small Business Webcast: Using Microsoft Exchange Server in Small Business Server 2003 (Level 100)
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Pacific Time
Chris Smith, Business Development Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Learn how to get the most out of your Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 investments. This webcast shows you how to open shared calendars and contacts, along with many other valuable tips and techniques that can help you work more efficiently. Find out how to make these solutions work for you.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032278742&Culture=en-US 

TechNet Webcast: Implementing Messaging Security for Exchange Server Clients (Level 200)
Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Kai Axford, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation
To ensure that messages can be read only by the intended recipients, it is as important to provide security for the clients of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 as it is to secure the server itself. Join this webcast to learn about solutions such as using Microsoft Exchange Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension and Information Rights Management to protect email content. We will also discuss remote procedure call over HTTP to help secure client connections to Exchange Server 2003 via the Internet. We conclude with a discussion about controlling access to email attachments and how to manage and secure Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032278552&Culture=en-US
 

Outlook 2003 junk mail filter update: July

I noticed there's an update for the junk mail filter which has been published on Technet.  have a look at the KB article and download it here...

Email authentication and Sender ID in messaging

I was scanning the Technet newly published articles today looking for something on how our new anti phishing feature is going to work when SP2 comes out and I found this article which explains really clearly how sender ID works.  Unfortunately I didn't find this document in time for the email authentication implementation summit, sorry, but I know a bit more about sender ID.  Still haven't found anything on the antiphishing technology yet - if you find a link could you add it below please?

Deleting the First Storage Group on a Front End Exchange server

One of the more interesting conversations at the Ask the Experts area at TechEd last week was about Front Ends and Back Ends.  Exchange Servers that is...

Peter and I got into quite an in depth discussion about deleting the Storage groups on a front end server.  When you create a front-end server, do not delete the "First Storage Group" object in Exchange System Manager. The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service (and its related services) depends on the "First Storage Group" object."  So as you should have deleted the databases on a Front End server anyway, why the heck would you still need the First Storage group.
Well, the IS won't start if the First SG is removed, then you won't be able to make any configuration changes via Internet Services Manager at all.  There's a useful KB article that goes into a bit more detail here or in the topology guide here. 

It was really great to  meet up with so many people at TechEd last week. I had a great time catching up with my fellow bloggers who had taken the time to stop me and say hello.  That's one benefit of having my photo on my blog I suppose. (Rui - where were you?  I carried Jam around all week for you!)  It was also great to chat to Maarten - a real mobility enthusiast. His blog often points to things I've missed as I've been focusing on other stuff.  Things like Google earth that I downloaded on Friday night and have been amazed by the details in some locations around the world - even the undersea tectonic plates!.  I can even see cars in the car park close to where I live.  Amazing indeed.

Viewing hidden mailboxes in Exchange 2003

Michael mailed me with another question:

I did the e2k3 course last week and we couldn't find the box that shows hidden mailboxes/distribution list. How do you do this? Do you have to write your own ldap query?

Well it's not as easy as it used to be in Exchange 5.5 when you clicked on View-hidden recipients (we were really spoilt with this option).  In Exchange 2003 you need to run the following query against the GAL in Active Directory users and Computers.
1. Open Active Directory Users & Computers.
2. Right-click the domain name, choose Find.
3. In the Find dialog, select Custom Search.
4. Click the Advanced tab.
5. Paste in the following LDAP query
(&(objectclass=user)(msExchHideFromAddressLists=TRUE))
6. Click Find Now.
This will display the hidden mailboxes.

Come on Exchange Team - can't we have a nice GUI feature like before?  I'm getting lazy in my old age...

IMF and POP3 connections

Kerry was at the compliance event last week and asked me about the IMF.

I recently (last week) attended the Exchange Compliance and Disaster Recover presentation.
I have setup the IMF recently and have been collecting email via POP3 under SBS 2K3.
I have noticed through monitoring, that the IMF did not recognise all spam emails until I swapped to SMTP delivery at our site.  When using
POP3 it did not detect and did not move any emails into the junk folder, I current have the SCL set to 'Do nothing' when emails are categorised as I want to monitor the volumes and get the correct SCL/UCE in place.

Well Paul did a great blogcast on troubleshooting the IMF the other week but didn't talk about POP3 limitations.  The thing about the IMF is that the IMF only works on smtp connections where the IMF is installed.  The reason that the IMF doesn't work on the POP3 connector is that the sbs2003 POP3 connector puts the POP3 email into the pickup folder, and this bypasses normal smtp. 

So I've blogged about this just in case anyone else is trying to get the IMF working with POP3, and if you want an introduction to the IMF, Ewan did a great introductory blogcast on how the IMF works...

Disabling mobility services for Active Directory users

I was talking to James the other day about using mobility features with users  He wanted to be able to disable certain individual user accounts access to all Mobile Services provided by Exchange 2003 without going to the Exchange Features tab in the account properties in Active Directory.  He wanted to disable or enable access to ALL users within an OU or Domain without going to each individual user account?  He asked whether there's a script around that can do it, but couldnt find one.

I had a look around, and asked a few colleagues and came up with AD modify which will allow you to do this.  Have a look at this article written by Henrik for a step by step article on how this is done.  Seems like this will save James quite a bit of time (he works in a rather large organisation).

Exchange 2003 SP2

After Steve announced SP2 at TechEd Orlando and Terry blogged about it (and so did I), I've had quite a few questions about when SP2 would be released (2nd half of 2005 by the way), and some of the features in it.  Well here's the link to the page documenting the features, things like the Windows mobile 5.0 messaging and security features pack, and some of the mobility management, mailbox improvements and anti phishing technologies that will be included with SP2.

There is also an FAQ about SP2 here.

posted by Eileen_Brown with 3 Comments

Automatically forwarding mails to external mailboxes

Allister called me from his event yesterday with a query from one of the attendeed who asked if it’s possible to block rules in the Outlook client to prevent users from having emails forwarded to an external mailbox. In this instance, the rule blocking would need to be initiated from the server as the clients have already been deployed with this functionality enabled and the customer doesn’t want to have to touch all the desktops. He’s keen to do this to prevent employees from inadvertently forwarding content that may be obscene or inappropriate from inside the organisation to the outside world.

Wel this has been around since Exchange 5.5 and caused us an issue in a previous company after one of the Sales people left suddenly and had enabled this rule (and we didn't disable his NT account in time - but thats another story - and a process issue too)

Here are the kb articles for Exchange 2000 and for Exchange 2003 which documents how to override the setting for selected users, and a useful explanation about how message formatting, auto forwards and responses happen in Exchange 2000

I'm surprised Allister even needed to ask me this question - his blog is the place I go to for all my Outlook tips and facts..!

Exchange compliance and archiving

I co-presented with Veritas at an event this morning about the features of Exchange 2003, Exchange consolidation best practices from MSIT, the IMF and the ExBPA.  I had several questions about PST files and Public folders and their management for compliance and archiving.  Well I've blogged about backing up PST files, and best practices for PST files, and have touched on the subject of Public folders before.  So here's a few of the links that I mentioned this morning:

How to add age limits to Public folders

Configuring Outlook 2003 for RPC/HTTP

Configuring Exchange for RPC/HTTP

Messaging hygiene at Microsoft

Using Exchange Server 2003 Recovery Storage groups

Veritas Enterprise Vault

What did I miss?  add a comment if you asked me a question and I didn't include it here...

Sharing SMTP address spaces in Exchange 2003

Mike mailed me with the question of the day... 

 If the "This Exchange organization is responsible for all mail delivery to this address" option is not selected on an Exchange recipient policy then will Exchange forward mails to a smart host if it cannot find an Exchange mailbox associated with an email address or contact?

So I had a look at the KB articles on Setting up SMTP domains for inbound and relay and about sharing SMTP address spaces.  Exchange treats e-mail messages differently depending on whether Exchange is authoritative or non-authoritative for a particular SMTP address space. To view this setting:

1. Open the properties on a recipient policy, click the Email Addresses tab, click an SMTP address, and then click Edit. 
2. Examine the setting for the This Exchange Organization is responsible for all mail delivery to this address check box. If this check box is selected, Exchange is authoritative for the SMTP domain. If this check box is not selected, Exchange is non-authoritative.  Exchange must always be authoritative for the primary SMTP address (the one in bold) on the default recipient policy. Otherwise, local mail flow may not occur. When you share selected SMTP address spaces, a shared address space is set as non-authoritative in Exchange. If the address space that you want to share is not the primary address on the default recipient policy, click to clear the This Exchange Organization is responsible for all mail delivery to this address check box for that domain.

If you share all Address spaces then Exchange becomes authoritative for all address spaces... here's what the kb says:

This configuration is much simpler, but much less flexible. In this configuration, Exchange is authoritative for all address spaces. You cannot have any contacts in your directory that have a target address that matches a domain that Exchange is authoritative for. To apply this method:

1. Open the properties on the default SMTP virtual server.
2. Click the Messages tab.
3. In the Forward all messages with unresolved recipients to host box, type the FQDN or the IP address, in square brackets ([]), of the server that will receive unresolved mail.
4. Click OK.
5. Repeat this procedure for the default SMTP virtual server on all Exchange servers except for any virtual server that is acting as an inbound gateway for the other system. Microsoft recommends that no mailboxes reside on this server.
Note that this setting only affects authoritative domains. Therefore, for any authoritative domains, messages that are sent to unresolved addresses are forwarded to the server that is specified on the SMTP virtual server. Any domains that are non-authoritative in Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 are not affected by this setting. Messages that are sent to unresolved addresses in non-authoritative domains are routed to a matching SMTP connector if a matching SMTP connector is present. If no matching SMTP connector is found, the message is sent to the server that is specified in the MX record that is found in DNS.

So its a simple matter of ticking the box... but make sure you know what domains you're authoritative for - or you won't get mail!

Microsoft and Sybari - products

Well, Microsoft announced that the acquisition of Sybari has been completed today and talked about all the products that would be offered:

"Microsoft will offer Sybari products for the Microsoft Windows platform, including Antigen for Microsoft Exchange, Antigen for Microsoft SharePoint® Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services, Antigen for Instant Messaging, Antigen for SMTP Gateways, Sybari Enterprise Manager, Advanced Spam Manager, Advanced Spam Defense and Antigen for Domino on Windows NT" 

There are lots of links a bout the acquisition up on the Windows Server System site, with the press pass page, and the product overviews for Anti virus and anti spam solutions.  But the topic I get asked about the most is messaging hygiene and how we do it at Microsoft. I've talked about this topic quite a bit in past blog entries so won't dwell too much on it here.. but it's worth having a look at our Intelligent message filter for Exchange if you haven't done so already.  Greg talked about this during the TechNet evening last week and his buddy Paul has done an amazing blogcast (with Powerpoint too) showing how to troubleshoot the IMF.  If you haven't seen the IMF at all, here's a blogcast showing an overview of the IMF 

Some reading for me to do then....I've got a goal to get one of my posts onto Rui's 'weekend reading' list each week - so what can I write about that's noteworthy enough? 

Messaging and collaboration Webcasts for July

Approaches to fighting spam in an Exchange environment

Greg presented this Technet evening for me last night.  The topic was all about fighting spam - the bane of the messaging administrator and Gred did a sterling job.  here are some of the references that he referred to during the presentation.  There are another set of links that I referred to when I last presented a session on messaging security at Microsoft and stopping viruses which may be useful.   Also, the Exchange team bloged about tarpitting. 

He mentioned Paul's blog (and said that he should be his b****y agent!),  Evans stuff about IMF, junk mail folders etc.

Fighting spam with Exchange 2003

Download the IMF

IMF management pack for MOM

Microsoft safety (phishing and spam)

Fighting spam blog article

If there's something I missed, please let me know, and I'll update the links...

posted by Eileen_Brown with 4 Comments

Adding disclaimers to outbound SMTP messages

Jim sent me a question about adding disclaimers to outbound SMTP messages. 

"So with the steps as described in 317680 complete I fail to see the code operate in response to outbound public email.  My question is how to get in and debug/discover what goes on?  I stepped through smtpreg.vbs after editing it into Excel VBA form. The binding results seem reasonable. I don't see the event sink code run. My host environment is exchange 2003 standard edition on server 2003 (no sp1 for 2003)."

Well, If this is a single server then it is to be expected - there used to be an article Q288756 - which has been pulled now it seems, which used to describe a way of forcing messages out of a local smtp virtual server, back into another, then sending on - to get the event to fire. Basically, unless you has another smtp bridgehead to install the sink on it won't work in the form we provide it. (as far as I know....)

We would suggest one of two things - Exclaimer has for a nice tool - or - even better - GFI mail essentials, which lets you do this for free when the trial of their MailEssentials software expires, according to the terms of their freeware license - you will need to  check thoroughly etc etc to make sure you're covered.

Both are, if you're not a developer, a lot easier. (and lots of thanks to Greg in MCS for help with this one... ) 

Exchange SP2 IMF blocks phishing attempts

Now this is interesting (and I missed this when reading all of the Exchange SP2 announcements) Gerod's blog alerted me to the fact that SP2 IMF includes a blocking mechanism for phishing. 

"Updated and integrated Exchange Intelligent Message Filter. Based on the same patented SmartScreen filtering technology developed by Microsoft Research and now incorporated in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, MSN Internet Software and Services, and MSN Hotmail, SP2 will incorporate the latest data and updates to the Exchange Intelligent Message Filter. Improvements to this filter ensure a continued focus on identifying spam and reducing false positives. These updates include new capabilities in the fight against spam including blocking phishing schemes. Phishing schemes attempt through deception to fraudulently solicit sensitive personal information by masquerading as legitimate Web sites."

Now thats impressive...

(you can also listen to Steve Ballmers TechEd Orlando keynote speech here...)

Exchange database limit increase

Damn... I was going to post about the massive increase to the Exchange database today after my roadshow presentation, but the Exchange team and KC beat me to it.  Then Ewan beat me to it with a comment on my blog entry too. Appears to be good news too judging by the comments...

Aah - the challenges of time zones eh?  I was in the bar when the post came out...

So I'll console myself with pointing you to all the links that I talked about during my presentation on Exchange and the AD instead.  Not quite as exciting as TechEd Orlando - but I'll see you all in TechEd Europe as I've managed to persuade Betsy to come over and talk about blogging with me in Amsterdam....

Watch this space.    

Maximum number of mail attachments

The blog entry that Ewan wrote the other day has got me thinking.  I'm still staggered at the maximum size of the attachments that you can send via an email.  2.4Gb!  What the heck were they sending?  The whole of the starwars DVD?  How long did it take for the message to leave the Outbox?  How long did it take to deliver? and how much did the whole network slow down?

some amazing sizes quoted on the comments to the blog too...

Well, I know that you can limit the maximum size of messages and attachments that you can send, you can limit the public folder note attachment size but can you limit the maximum number of attachments?  Well, here's what i've found....

The clients can open 100 attachments in a mail, so that's the default.  Here's the article that explains this.

How big is your mailbox?

Ewan has written a thought provoking post on the Exchange team blog.  He talks about organisations with huge mailboxes.  I mean really huge.  We have a reasonable quota allocated here at Microsoft which suits me, but it wouldn't suit some methods of working.

Just how large is your mailbox?  Just how large are the attachments that you need to send?  And how much space do you need for the mailbox store?  Does the 16Gb limit on the store really restrict your methods of working? 

Ewan would love to know, and asks you to post a comment on the blog.  Or tell me...

Exchange Active sync - Server issues solved.

I've been trying to catch up with the backlog of mails I've had whilst I've been out of the office (scuba diving, then at the TechNet roadshow in Harrogate) and I came across this gem of a mail from Daniel.  Daniel has a blog of his own, but he hasn't blogged about this rich collection of articles that he's found.  So I thought I'd share them with you.

These are a whole load of error 500 messages that you may get when trying to set up Exchange Active sync and these error messages may point to a whole host of issues.  Here are some links to the kb articles that may help you troubleshoot the server issues and get EAS working.  Thanks Daniel!

You receive an HTTP_500 error message when you synchronize your mobile device with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
 
Exchange ActiveSync and Outlook Mobile Access errors occur when SSL or forms-based authentication is required for Exchange Server 2003
 
Server ActiveSync Fails with HTTP_500 If SSL Is Enabled on Exchange Server Virtual Directory
 
XCCC: Valid SSL Certificate Is Required When You Use Server ActiveSync
 
Exchange ActiveSync and Outlook Mobile Access errors occur when SSL or forms-based authentication is required for Exchange Server 2003
 

Filtering contacts from the GAL

How to create Exchange folders with a script

I've found a web page which is quite useful if you have to create numerous folders in Exchange and would prefer to script the creation of the folder.  The Exchange SDK has quite a few scripts starting at this page that will give you a start.  The creating folders scripts are here.

Useful if you have a distributed organisation with similar folder heirarchy requirements.

Exchange support in Virtual Server

John blogs about Virtual Server (his favourite cool toy), and I blog about Exchange  -one of my many cool toys :-).  But I've got the question about whether we support Exchange in a virtual environment.

The short answer is no. (we don't support Sharepoint or ISA server either).  Here's our support policy.

Customising OWA to the Xbox theme

I've just noticed that the zip files to customise the OWA theme to an Xbox skin are now on Microsoft.com.  Good job that Kristian did a blogcast for me demoing just how easy it is to do this.

Its one of the most popular blogcasts too - don't you want anything deep then?  Just fun stuff!

Exchange SAN allocation size

Sean has been configuring his SAN for his Exchange 2003 implementation and wondered about our disk allocation unit sizes.  His SAN vandor insisited that he had to use 64k which puzzled me a little so I did some research.   From the Optimising storage for Exchange document, 4k is the recommended unit size.  it sounds like his disk is a bit hungry, so Sean needs to do some performance analysis on the disk subsystem.  That's probably why he's been recommended to use 64k.  He may also need to plan how many disks are used per server and test the perormance of the SAN using Jetstress from here

TechNet Showtime

So now you don't even have to get out of your chair to watch your favourite presenter speak.  TechNet UK have created IT's ShOwtime, where you can watch on demand presentations.  We're going to be adding to these presentations month after month, so the site is definately worth bookmarking.

So if you get an hour spare, and want to learn something (and didn't manage to get to the original presentation at TechEd or IT forum) then here's your chance to listen to them again...

Messaging and collaboration Webcasts for June

The Microsoft Platform: Leverage your Notes investment
Live and on-demand webcasts available now

Tune in and learn how you can get more out of your Lotus Notes investment by combining it with the Microsoft collaboration platform. Discover how communication and collaboration offerings are evolving and what is possible with Microsoft technologies, with a particular focus on solutions for information workers that integrate with existing Notes infrastructures.

Office Communicator 2005 on the web

I got a mail over the weekend letting me know that Office Communicator 2005 has been released to manufacturing. I got quite a lot of mails after I'd blogged about this last time. You can download an eval version here.  Rex has some good screenshots here too...

Static port mapping for Exchange 2003 and Outlook

I got into a bit of a heated discussion in the pub the other evening about how Outlook communicates with Exchange.  Daft isn't it, how innocent statements get turned into full blown arguments (I suppose thats how some wars get started too).  Anyway the consultant I was arguing with couldn't see the reason why Outlook and Exchange used random ports to communicate with each other (it's the way that RPC works).  He wanted to set up a system so that the port ranges were fixed and static. I started off with a full explanation about RPC etc. etc. But he dug his heels in and wanted to fix the port ranges. I said "Exchange doesn't work like that"

Well, after a bit of searching <blush> Tony, here's how you do it.....

Locate, and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM

.,....\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeSA\Parameters
Add the following entry for the Microsoft Exchange SA RFR Interface:
Value name: TCP/IP Port
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: Port number to assign

Watch out for the limitations for port ranges though.  There is a problem too with mail notification which is received through a random UDP port, and this port can not be mapped in a static manner.  So if you're using a firewall between clients and servers you need to turn on RPC polling. 

You must also manually create the following keys to override the ForcePolling registry value that is set by Windows XP SP2. To do this, follow these steps.
Locate and then click to select the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft
On the Edit menu, click Add Key, and then typeOffice. The class is None.
Click the Office key,click the Edit menu, click Add Key, and then type 10.0. The class is None. 
Click the 10.0 key, click the Edit menu, click Add Key, and then type Outlook. The class is None.
Click the Outlook key, click the Edit menu, click Add Key, and then type RPC. The class is None.
On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then type ForcePolling. The data type is REG_DWORD, and the value is 0.

So sorry Tony - I was wrong about the mappings.  Drinks are on me next time I'm in London :-)

Moving the Public Folder hierarchy in Exchange 2003

I've been asked about this twice this week, so I thought it was worth a blog entry.

How do you move public folders to another Administrative group?  Well firstly you need a Public folders container

To create a Public Folders container and move a Top level hierarchy to it:

1. Open the Exchange System Manager snap-in.
2. Click to select the new Administrative Group.
3. Right-click the Administrative Group, click New, and then click Public Folders Container.
4. Navigate to the public folder tree that you want to move.
5. Drag the public folder tree to the Public Folders container that you created in step 3.

Information is in this KB article... and any problems you may get might be covered here...

Organising recipients in Exchange 2003

Mike asked me if there was a way to organise recipients in Exchange 2003.

He wanted to have the structure of the GAL so that when the GAL displayed in Outlook it would look like this:

• Organisation name
  • Company name   
    • Region
      • Country
        • City
          • Office name
            • User

(Fairly comprehensive display eh? )

It's possible to change the GAL using the information here which covers how to nest address lists and configure them for appropriate access.

Exchange mailbox size limits

Scott mailed me with some questions about the Exchange stores, the differences between standard and Enterprise edition and how to upgrade from standard to enterprise edition.

Well with standard edition you are:

• Limited to 1 mailbox store database per server
• Limited to 1 MAPI public store database per server

The limit for database size in standard edition is 16GB.  This means you can only create a single public or private store, each of which can only grow to 16GB in size.  Have a look at this section in the deployment guide for more information.  You can have additional public folder stores however, each are associated with a general purpose folder tree (read the KB article for an explanation of the tree types). Each store has it's own set of database files (.edb, .stm) and transaction logs.  There's a good explanation about how public folders work on the Exchange team blog too...

If you're struggling because your standard edition database has reached the 16GB limit, there is a temporary workaround (a registry key entry Temporary DB Size Limit Extension ) that you can use to increase the size of the DB to 17GB, clean up files, and upgrade to Enterprise edition.

Oh, and to upgrade from Standard edition to Enterprise edition?  Put the CD in and select the reinstall option!...

Exchange performance monitor wizard

I found this tool  on the web the other day when I was looking for something else (that's always the way isn't it?)  Not only does it help to troubleshot the OS, but you can also use it for Exchange too.  It's a nice handy thing to work alongside the Performance analyser for Windows 2003.

Now what was it that I was originally looking for? I've been around so many other places on the web, I've forgotten where I originally wanted to be! Some trips around the Internet are like that though.  I need to go with the flow more often, and see what turns up.  Something fascinating like the history of the internet in a timeline) or totally useless like the end of the internet

Nope I've forgotten - must be my age...

Get a list of all .PST files on a computer

I get a lot of comments about what a nightmare PST's are to manage effectively and how out of control they seem to be in lots of organisations.  I've had my own challenges with PST's too, so my sympathies are with every IT manager who has this problem.

Well I've found a little script that finds out how many different PST files are on a PC, so you can export the results to a CSV file and beg the powers that be for an archiving solution.

There are a couple of options about PST's you could try having a look at the Solution Accelerator guide and make yor decision about what to do about them....

Installing Exchange 2003 into a new site

Jemima mailed me with a question:

If I have a mixed mode Exchange 2003/5.5 environment of one site, can I install a second Exchange 2003 server into a new site? (and how)  Or do I have to change to native mode to do so?

Chapter 6 of the Exchange Deployment guide  details the following about mixed mode…
Switching from Mixed Mode to Native Mode
Because Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 are structured to take advantage of Active Directory functionality, there are some limitations when Exchange 2003 coexists in the same organization with Exchange 5.5. When Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 servers coexist with Exchange 5.5, your organization must run in mixed mode.
Running in mixed mode limits the functionality of Exchange 2003. Therefore, after migrating from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003, it is recommended that you switch from mixed mode to native mode. This section discusses the advantages of a native-mode Exchange organization and provides the steps that are necessary to switch from mixed mode to native mode.
You are ready to change your Exchange 2003 organization to native mode if:
 
• Your organization will never require interoperability between your Exchange 2003 servers and Exchange 5.5 servers in the same organization.   
• Your Exchange 5.5 servers exist in an organization that is separate from your Exchange 2003 servers. 
   Note
After you switch your Exchange 2003 organization from mixed mode to native mode, you cannot switch the organization back to mixed mode. Make sure that your Exchange 2003 organization will not have to interoperate with Exchange 5.5 in the future before you switch from mixed mode to native mode.
First, however, you should determine in which mode your Exchange organization is currently running.

Jemima didn't say whether she still needed to keep connectivity with the 5.5 servers or not.  If not, then follow the steps in chapter 4 of the deployment guide

There are also some useful tips in Chapter 3 of the Planning an Exchange server messaging system To create a new site for Exchange read how we did it at Microsoft:

Hope this helps a little...

Restricting mail to a distribution group in exchange 2003

We recently created an email alias for the Industry Insiders forum and we were talking about whether to restrict inbound emails to the alias as we wanted to minimise any potential influx of spam.  The email alias is for Insiders to submit articles and biographies for inclusion on the forum and the TechNet web site.  So we had a look at how we could do this.  There's a kb article detailing how to restrict the users who can send inbound internet mail to another user or distributon group in Exchange 2003.

We've left the setting empty of course so you can send us your articles for publishing.  If you're interested in becoming an Insider have a look here, and find out what the Insiders do.   David and Jeremy have also included their pictures.  So I now know how to get images hosted somewhere in cyberspace, so send me your photo with your biography and article.  I've even managed to get a picture of me on my own blog so my fan can see my picture (thanks Dad...) 

Exchange 2003 ADC

Michael emailed me with a problem he had with his Exchange 5.5 organisation talking to Exchange 2003.

Whenever he sent email from the 5.5 server to Exchange 2003 the email does not arrive in the 2003 email account until he clicked on a public folder on the 2003 client.  It seems that this makes 2003 talk to Exchange 5.5 to see the public folders and then 5.5 says, "that is where you are and here is your mail".  The 5.5 is in an NT domain with a two way trust to the AD and they are using the Exchange Active Directory connection tool to link the two servers.

Well, the problem appears to be that the ADC can't find the Exchange 5.5 server.  When you configure a 2 way connection agreement for Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2003 you need to ensure that the 2 servers can talk to each other in the first instance.  Start with ping and work your way up the DNS stack.  It may be something simple like an IP config issue, or a DNS error.  This is easier than trying to troupbleshoot using RPCping or MAPI. Then you need to correctly configure your Recipient Connection agreement and your Public folders connection agreement.  Have a look at the blogcast on how to do this.  THe Connection Agreement wizard should take you though all of the steps you need to set this up.

•	Recipient connection agreements -  replicate recipient objects and the data they contain between the Exchange directory and Active Directory.
•	Public folder connection agreements - replicate public folder directory objects between the Exchange 5.5 directory and Active Directory.
•	Configuration connection agreements:  During your initial Exchange 2003 installation, Exchange 2003 Setup creates a configuration connection agreement between Active Directory and your Exchange 5.5 site. Configuration connection agreements replicate Exchange-specific configuration information between the Exchange 5.5 directory and Active Directory. These agreements allow Exchange 2003 to coexist with Exchange 5.5.

You can also have a look at how to migrate from Exchange 5.5 in the Exchange 2003 Deployment guide...

Well after all of this, Michael mailed me back to tell me it was a DNS error.  Grrr!

Microsoft Exchange Server User Monitor

I found this on a forwarded mail the other day.  Its a previously internal only tool.   You can use the Microsoft Exchange Server User Monitor to gather real-time data to better understand current client usage patterns, and to plan for future work. Administrators can view several items, including IP addresses used by clients, versions and modes of Microsoft Office Outlook, and resources such as CPU usage, server-side processor latency, and total latency for network and processing with Outlook 2003 version MAPI.

I wish I'd had this tool when I migrated everything from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000.  It would have sorted out so many problems.....

Ratio of Exchange 2003 Admins to number of Exchange servers

I noticed a question from a customer who was curious to know how many mailboxes we had at Microsoft, and how many sites, servers and admins we used.  Mark answered the question with a set of links that tells all...

Deploying a Worldwide Site Consolidation Solution for Exchange Server 2003 at Microsoft

Exchange Server 2003 Design and Architecture at Microsoft

Messaging Operations at Microsoft

If you don't get round to reading all the documents, we've got lots and lots of mailboxes, several servers, a few sites and not many admins at all... 

Messaging and collaboration Webcasts for May

Microsoft Executive Circle Webcast: Optimize and Enhance Your Lotus Notes Collaboration Environment

Wednesday, May 04, 2005 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time

Harry Wong, CEO, Casahl Technology, Inc.

Collaboration platforms are mission-critical and must be optimized like any other pivotal corporate asset. Organizations must take inventory and re-evaluate their existing collaboration systems; reducing costs by removing duplication and waste. By utilizing new technologies your organization already owns, enterprise assets can be further consolidated and integrated.  Thus allowing you to find new products to fill the gaps in your existing collaboration system and grow with future trends. This webcast discusses optimization and enhancement opportunities within your Lotus and Domino environment.  We will give you an overview of the process and tools, such as Application Analyzer and CASAHL ecKnowledge, to identify and implement these types of opportunities in your organization.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032272705&Culture=en-US

Exchange 2003 backups

Bryan came to my Technet evening on the 22nd and  mailed me with quick question regarding backing up Exchange 2003. 

He uses Veritas for backup on all of his client sites and has the option to back up the mailboxes individually or the Information Store. He reckons that all they need to do is backup the information store as Exchange will keep any deleted mailboxes for 30 days anyway and also asked if he could just get an individual mailbox out of the backed up information store like I demonstrated at the TechNet presentation. However his colleague seems to think/argue that they need to backup each mailbox individually.

I've covered backups in detail in a previous post so won't repeat myself again.  However, brick level backups are covered in the excellent article by Daniel Petri and this article by the Exchange Team.  Suffice to say, the Recovery storage group and Exmerge will ease your restore pain...

posted by Eileen_Brown with 0 Comments

Exchange 2003 - Restricting message sizes

I've been clearing out my mailbox as I've had a copule of warning messages that I'm up to my size limit in Exchange, and if I ignore these messages then I can't send any mails - just when I need to send that urgent mail of course.  So that I can easily find out which messages to trash, I use the configurable options for the  search folders feature in Outlook 2003 to find out which messages have the largest attachments.  Then, I can then either delete just the attachment or delete the whole message.  Well, I noticed an extra large attachment, which led me to realise that we'd had our message size limits increased for messages sent internally.  I was convinced that the message size limit isn't this big at our SMTP gateway.  So I had a look artound and found an article showing how you can configure different message sizes  globally, at the Connector, and at the SMTP virtual server.  

Now you can set different thresholds for messages at different parts of the system.  And confuse everyone if you want.  hee hee.

By the way, after some digging around, our message limits are the same internally and externally so I was wrong about that too. I've cleared most of the junk out of my mailbox - but I'm running out of disk space now!! Oh well...

Exchange 2003 Databases and the Exchange store

I'm playing around, trying to tweak Exchange 2003 to get the best possible performance in my Virtual machine demo environment so that my demos look good, and I've been reading the Optimising Storage document on TechNet.   There's a table in this document which talks about the stored and their impact on disk I/O which I thought was worth reproducing here.  I tend to get asked for this quite a lot so here it is...

Table 2   Exchange store components and corresponding impact to disk I/O
Component	Why it impacts disk I/O
Jet database (.edb file)	The Jet database is used to store all data submitted from MAPI clients. All client activity generated by a MAPI client causes updates to the Jet database.
Streaming database (.stm file)	Stores attachments and data submitted from IMAP4, NNTP, Microsoft Outlook® Web Access, or SMTP. Pointers are saved in the Jet database so the data can be delivered to MAPI clients upon request. Stores incoming SMTP mail. If the data contains MAPI information, the SMTP message is then transferred to the Jet database. All internet protocol client activity causes updates to the streaming database.
Transaction log files (.log files)	All changes made to the database are first committed to transaction log files. This means that any time a user sends or reads a message, and any time a user modifies data stored in their mailbox, that change is written to the transaction log file. The change is immediately committed to the in-RAM database cache, and then copied back to disk when the system’s load permits. Transactions are also read back when a database is mounted.

Free busy in Exchange 2003

Jeremy has been browsing my blog and asked a few questions about Exchange free busy after reading my blog entry.  But the link I gave him didn't give him enough information.  Well  did some digging around and came up with a couple of articles that go into the process of how free busy works in a little bit more detail. So as I've already done the research, I thought I'd share it with you - just in case... There's some good info about Free busy on the Exchange team blog too.

Chapter 6 - working with the exchange store  

Preview: managing free/busy folders  

Clustering and Disaster recovery

I don't tend to blog much about Clustering as Rodney, Paul and Evan do such a storming job on their blogs, but I was going through the swathes of messages that I havent had time to look at whilst I've been at the Technet Roadshow this week, and I came across this fantastic set of links about Clustering with regards to Disaster rewcovery situations.  So its thanks very much to Adis and Chuck for compiling this amazing set of resources which I've reproduced here:

Exchange integration with Active Directory

After my session at the TechNet roadshow yesterday, I  promised I'd make available all the links to the documents I'd been talking about during my presentation to save everyone scribbling down URLs's like crazy (URL's are getting so complex now - thank goodness for search engines!)

Preparing to Administer Exchange 2003 using CDOEXM

Special groups in Exchasnge EDS and EES

Planning a split permissions model in Exchange 2003

Planning for Global catalogs and failover

DSAccess and topology discovery

Viewing the Exchange schema using ADSIEdit

If I've forgotten anything let me know, and I'll update this post with more links...

Do you want to be a Case study?

Allister Frost, the Microsoft’s UK Product Manager for Exchange Server asked if I would do him a favour and post this on my blog. He’s such a nice bloke, I couldn’t refuse. He's been amusing me with his blog for a while, and providing me with a blogcast or 2.  So here it is:                                                                         

Golden opportunity to tell your Exchange Server 2003 success story

At Microsoft we’re always on the look out for new customer success stories. If you’ve deployed Exchange Server 2003 in your organisation and are already experiencing the great business value this brings, we’d love to know. And, if your experience is suitable we may be able to write it up for you for publication in our worldwide case study library. This not only helps promote your business to your customers and shareholders but also demonstrates your commitment to delivering business value through new technology. So that’s kudos for your organisation and kudos for you! If you’d like your story to be considered for inclusion, please send an email to UK_Case_Studies@write-image.co.uk including your organisation name, contact details and a short summary (max 200 words) of how you are using and benefiting from Exchange Server 2003. All submissions received by 31^st May 2005 will be reviewed by the UK Product Team and successful entrants will be invited to have their story compiled by a professional writer for worldwide publication. The effort required from you is minimal but the rewards can be huge!

We welcome all submissions but this month we are particularly keen to hear from customers in the following categories:

§         Exchange 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003 migration delivering TCO benefits

§         Hosted Exchange for a medium-sized business

§         Lotus Notes to Exchange Server 2003 migration

§         Exchange Server 2003 supporting remote workers and ‘anywhere access’

So if you feel like telling us your story - just contact us using the link below.....

Back up your PST's with Outlook 2003 Addin

Noooo! I hear you yell.  She shouldn't be telling anyone how easy it is to back up PST's automatically when we're trying to implement a centralised e-mail archiving solution and educate the users. 

But I'm as bad, or maybe worse than you.  I use PST's and I burn them off to CD once a year.  Aaargh! Not a good mechanism to keep hold of my data.  Well it'll be my fault if I have a hard drive fail one month before my annual backup. So I found this on the web.  It's been around for a while, but my sloppy back up procedures meant that I've never bothered looking before today. yes - you've guessed it.  I've lost something fairly important and I've got a sneaking suspicion that I've deleted something from my new PST and - I don't have a backup of it.  Grrrr...... 

My only bit of email discipline is that once a year I completely empty my mailbox, move everything into last years PST file and start over again.  I also delete all of my rules, and all of my folder structure in my mailbox.  So for a few weeks at the start of the year I have a lovely clean mailbox and I can create all of my folders and organise my rules again.  Deleting my rules also puts all of the mails that used to be moved by rules back into my inbox, which reminds me to either create a new rule into the new folder, or remove myself from the mailing list.  It allows me to prune all of the mails that I really don't need to track any more and makes my email less busy.

At least it makes me think that I'm organised - once a year!.....

Windows mobile 2005

I noticed that Engadget had a screenshot of Windows Mobile 2005 Magneto the other day.  Heck I'm not running it yet, and covet the fact that Ewan is. He was giving me a tour of the new features over coffee this morning.   Grrr!   I'm really impressed with the interface and the new contacts interface.  Now I need to get myself organised and try to get one to trial...

Tracking messages in Exchange 2003

I've been playing around with mesage tracking today, and I've lost a couple of mails.  I've been getting 1021 errors which have been driving me crazy.  Well I've finally found out what's been happening.  There's this great kb article that I've found that documents all of the tracking error messages.

Now I've only got to work out how the heck I'm sending bad mails all the time.  At least I know where they're going now though! 

I found some other useful articles during my quest.

How to enable message tracking 

Exchange 2003 message tracking

Think I'll turn tracking off and do something else instead now.  I've spent too much time on this...

Modifying Outlook 2003 defaults

I read Michael's comment on my blog the other day about changing the default Outlook view so that it didn't show the default Show All in groups.  There are LOADS of links showing how to change the default templates in Outlook when I had a look around the knowledge base, but not too much about the Show in Groups feature.  Unfortunately you can't turn these views on or off, but you can customise them to display as collapsed by clicking the CTRL - key. But that doesn't help when the public folders are being rendered...

There are lots of ways to improve the Admin of public folders in Exchange 2003 but I can't find much information for Outlook...

Now there must be a way to do this programatically so you can set this as a policy?  I had a look around the ORK and couldn't find out if this is possible?  It's only a bit of script isn't it?

Any ideas?

Outlook 2003 cached mode benefits

I was on the train this afternoon, coming back from a meeting and doing all of the catching up that you need to do from time to time,  email triage and all of that stuff when the bloke (guy) sitting beside me said:

"That's Outlook 2003 isn't it?"

"Yes it is, why do you ask?"

"Well we've been evaluating it in our company and we can't see any benefits over the last version"

Oh heck, < put Microsoft hat on, launch into business value mode >

Well how did I justify the benefits?  I went into the functionality, how cached mode is a great way to improve the experience for users.

So how does this work?  Cached mode can cope with interruptions to service caused by network issues. Users work with a local copy of the data, so they probably would be unafected by these interuptions to service.  If these interruptions are significantly longer, the user community won't suffer significantly. Tools like calendaring, Email, and tasks will still work, however sending and receiving email will be delayed, but won't interupt the basic flow of the users dily work. 

This business view seemed to appease him and he left the train really enthused about continuing with the pilot.  But I'd have much rather have convinced him over the all of the fantastic new techy features and gone into a description of how cached mode really works.  But his eyes glazed over and I knew I'd lost him then.  Obviously not a techy at all.....

At least this I'd sat next to someone interesting, and not one who just wants to show off all of his mobile gadgets (which are newer / better / bigger / more functional than mine) like some bizzare game of poker.... They're just a bit wierd... It's probably related to the car thing...

Restricting inbound Internet mail to Distribution group on Exchange 2003

I've been setting up an alias for a new initiative that we're planning here in the UK, and I need an alias for this on the Exchange server.  Now, initially our list has to be internal only, whilst we plan, and then available for external mail when we're ready to "launch" this initiative.  So I had a look around the kb's for how to restrict mail coming into an organisation - this article explains how...

You may find it useful if you get unwanted mails sent to "All users" or whatever...

Blogcast: The Exchange team start to demo!

As Michael pointed out in his blog, the Exchange team have created lots of blogcasts, 5-10 minute demos of Exchange.  Lots of stuff about Upgrading from 5.5 to 2003, Fighting spam, and Disaster recovery.

They're certainly worth bookmarking if you ever need to configure the IMF or something similar, and like Michael, they've saved me a job...

There are quite a few blogcasts now - just see whats out there!

ExBPA 2.0 now released

It's now on the web...

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads/2003/exbpa/default.mspx

Announcing the second version of the highly popular Exchange Server Best Practices Analyser tool (BPA).  To date over 200,000 customers have downloaded and run the tool.  Exchange Server Best Practices Analyser automatically examines an Exchange Server 2000 or 2003 deployment and determines if the configuration is set according to Microsoft best practices.

New in the Exchange BPA V 2.0 release:

· Support for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005

· Available in all server languages:  French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese simplified, Chinese traditional, Korean

·  And much more…DNS collector, new export capabilities, improved scanning scope, command line flexibility, group expansion collector, last backup times collector, permission checking infrastructure, perf sampling, scheduling capabilities

Maintaining the health and optimal performance of a Microsoft Exchange Server deployment just got easier. You might think of this tool as a “Microsoft engineer in-a-box”. By pairing our infrastructure expertise and Microsoft’s tool, we will analyze the configuration and health of your entire deployment, or even a specific server, and offer step-by-step guidance to help resolve issues.

Tool Highlights:

· Generates a list of issues, such as suboptimal configuration settings or unsupported options

· Judges the overall health and captures a summary of the entire Exchange environment

· Helps troubleshoot specific server deployment problems

· Points you to self-updating help documentation to get to a resolution fast

For more information see: www.microsoft.com/exchange and www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads

There will be a Webcast on 10 May, 2005.

The original Webcast was posted to http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032259582&CountryCode=US and the May 2005 Webcast will be linked from http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/tnexchangeserver.mspx

Exchange Webcasts for April

TechNet Webcast: Implementing Exchange Server Security (Part 1 of 2): Securing Services and Messaging Protocols (Level 300)

Monday, April 04, 2005 - 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Pacific Time

Harold Wong, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft

Securing communication over networks is essential to securing your organization from intrusions, overloads, and interruptions of many types. In this first session of a two-part series on Exchange Server Security, we describe how to deploy a more secure Exchange Server 2003 infrastructure and how to secure its server services and messaging protocols.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=43587

Message size limits in Exchange 2003

Did you know that there are four separate places where you can set message size limits in Exchange?  If any one of them has a lower size limit than another, then that restriction applies.  So you can set size limits at the following levels:

• Globally
• At the connector.  You can configure different message sizes for each connector.
• at the SMTP Virtual server
• and at the individal user level

There's a good example in the KB article which explains how it works and helps to troubleshoot issues and stops you going round and round in circles.  But be aware of the conditions that can prevent message delivery:

In this example, the following size limits have been configured:

•	The global setting is set to 5 MB.
•	The Exchange SMTP connector is set to 3 MB.
•	The SMTP virtual server is set to 4 MB.
•	The user mailbox setting is set to 2 MB.

Because of these settings, users in the Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 organization can send and receive messages that are a maximum of 5 MB. Users can send messages through the connector that are a maximum of 3 MB. All mail that passes through the SMTP Virtual Server (sending or receiving) is limited to 4MB. The individual user, whose mailbox setting is 2 MB, is also limited to sending and receiving messages that are a maximum of 2 MB. 

MOM management pack for ExBPA

Oooh! this is interesting.  Whenever we talk about the Exchange Best Practices analyser, we get asked where it fits in with MOM and MOM's management pack and guide for Exchange.  Well here's the thing that effectively connects MOM and the ExBPA.  You can even now deploy ExBPA using MOM.  Download it here

Blogcast: Hints and tips on managing Exchange 2003

We regularly get asked about hints and tips for managing Exchange 2003, so Ewan has created a blogcast on managing Exchange 2003 and using MMC snap ins to customise the Administrative environment. its only 2mb in size and runs for 8mins 50secs.

If you like the concept of this bite sized demo based training, why don't you have a go at creating your own blogcast?  Once you've set things up initially, a blogcast doesn't take very long to produce at all, and there must be lots of topics, hints and tips that you'd love to share with the rest of the blogging community.  After my pleas to Rod about creating blogcasts for MOM and SMS, Brian Tucker has created a storming web site  where you can upload your efforts.  He's created an amazingly useful site if you need just in time training and it's well worth a look at the site.

So now - It's my turn to do some more - it's about time I got my microphone out again.....

There are links to other Exchange blogcasts here... 

Using URLScan with Exchange 2003

I had a mail over the weekend from John who was having problems opening his mail using OWA.  He sent me the subject title of the mail, and I did a search about non standard characters.  There are some issues if you use the URLscan utility in Exchange 2003, and there is a really useful kb article explaining how to deal with these in OWA.

Basically, if there is a mail with any of the characters listed below in the subject line, then URLScan won’t allow the message to be opened.

[DenyUrlSequences]
..  ; Do not permit directory traversals.
./  ; Do not permit trailing dot on a directory name.
\   ; Do not permit backslashes in URL.
%   ; Do not permit escaping after normalization.
&   ; Do not permit multiple Common Gateway Interface processes to run on a single request.

You can download URLScan here…

Active Directory and Exchange 2003 - Separate Administrators

Pete mailed me after attending a couple of my evening Exchange sessions at Reading and also the event in Birmingham.  Last year, he migrated his internal systems from GroupWise to Exchange 2003.  However, his Technical director was concerned that anyone who has admin rights on the domain can, in theory, give themselves rights to anyone else’s mailbox.   He wondered if there was any way to restrict this right. 

The administrative model prescribed by the default configuration of Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory, may not fit with the security and administrative roles defined by an organisation. For some organisations, the helpdesk-level administrators that create user accounts are not the same administrators that administer mailboxes.  However, the default configuration of Exchange and Active Directory requires that mailbox administrators belong to the "Account Operators" security group, and that members of the "Account Operators" group have read-read access to Exchange objects.

You can configure permissions in Active Directory to correspond to your administrative model.  This granular level of permissioning is referred to as a split permissions model. Chapter 4 of the Working with AD permissions with Exchange guide which explains how to set a split permissions model to your AD organisation and segregate your AD administrators from your Exchange Administrators.

Modifying users information in the GAL

I was sent this question recently and I’m stumped for the answer – so I thought I’d turn to the blogging world for assistance.  It’s about modifying information in the GAL.  GALMOD allows users to modify their "own" information in the GAL.

But is there a way to set permissions in Exchange or AD for a certain security group to change other's info as well?  Like being able to access the GAL from the Outlook Client instead of having to go into AD?

If there was a company with hundreds of external contacts in the GAL who do not have access to our global address list to change their own information  as they do not log on to the system.   Could some of the HR Admins be given permission to change general employee information in the GAL from the Outlook Client.

The only thing I could think of was a solution based on an auto provisioning tool like the hosted solution for an ISP and described here.

Has anyone got any other ideas??

Microsoft to buy Groove Networks

I've just seen this interesting article on cnet about Microsoft and Groove Networks.  This should be interesting for the future of our collaboration software...

The acquisition will add Groove's products to the lineup of Microsoft Office System products, servers and services, as well as bring the development talent and technology leadership of top Groove executives to Microsoft. Groove founder Ray Ozzie, the creator of IBM's Lotus Notes, will become Chief Technical Officer of Microsoft, reporting to Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates.

Link to Microsoft Press article here...

Exchange 2003 mixed mode and native mode

Daniel mailed me about his Exchange 5.5 migration which isn't going too well and he was getting in a bit of a mess with mixed mode and native mode. Here are a few of the differences.... 

Exchange 2003 support for Groupwise 6

i noticed this new kb article when I was looking through all of the new Exchange 2003 KB's published this week. The Notes and Groupwise migration and co-existance FAQ had stated that it was on its way.   and the kb now says:

Novell GroupWise version 6.x and Novell GroupWise version 6.5x are now supported when the Connector for Novell GroupWise is running on Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or when using the Migration Tools on Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 1. There will be no support for these versions of Novell GroupWise with the Connector or Migration Tools from other versions of Microsoft Exchange Server.

This is going to please the customer I've been working with recent;y who has been using this and telling me that it works just fine - now it's supported.  Nice work to the Exchange team...

Exchange: number of mailboxes per information store

I blogged about how to find out mailbox use using MOM and the management pack the other week but if you don't have MOM in your environment this doesn't help you much.  So I did some digging and found out that you can return information about the Exchange store using WMI and the Exchange_Mailbox class from the Exchange 2003 SDK.

here's an example of the VB script (copied from the SDK, not created by me!)

The following example shows how to retrieve a list of Exchange_Mailbox instances, and how to retrieve all the associated properties.

'===============================================================

 ' Purpose: Display each Exchange_Mailbox found for Exchange server, ' and show all properties 

on the Exchange_Mailbox ' objects ' 

Change: cComputerName [string] the computer to access ' 

Output: Displays the name of each Exchange_Mailbox and properties 

'=============================================================== 

On Error Resume Next 

Dim cComputerName 

Const cWMINameSpace = "root/MicrosoftExchangeV2" 

Const cWMIInstance = "Exchange_Mailbox" 

cComputerName = "MyComputerNETBIOSName" 

Dim strWinMgmts ' Connection string for WMI 

Dim objWMIExchange ' Exchange Namespace WMI object 

Dim listExchange_Mailboxs ' ExchangeLogons collection 

Dim objExchange_Mailbox ' A single ExchangeLogon WMI object 

' Create the object string, indicating WMI (winmgmts), using the 

' current user credentials (impersonationLevel=impersonate), 

' on the computer specified in the constant cComputerName, and 

' using the CIM namespace for the Exchange provider. 

strWinMgmts = "winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!//"& _ 

cComputerName&"/"&cWMINameSpace 

Set objWMIExchange = GetObject(strWinMgmts) 

' Verify we were able to correctly set the object. 

If Err.Number <> 0 Then 

   WScript.Echo "ERROR: Unable to connect to the WMI namespace." 

Else 

' 

' The Resources that currently exist appear as a list of    

' Exchange_Mailbox instances in the Exchange namespace. 

Set listExchange_Mailboxs = objWMIExchange.InstancesOf(cWMIInstance) 

' 

' Were any Exchange_Mailbox Instances returned? 

If (listExchange_Mailboxs.count > 0) Then 

' If yes, do the following: 

' Iterate through the list of Exchange_Mailbox objects.

 For Each objExchange_Mailbox in listExchange_Mailboxs 

Wscript.Echo"" 

Wscript.Echo"" 

' 

' Display the value of the AssocContentCount property. 

WScript.echo "AssocContentCount = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.AssocContentCount)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.AssocContentCount 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS property. 

WScript.echo "DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the DeletedMessageSizeExtended property. 

WScript.echo "DeletedMessageSizeExtended= "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.DeletedMessageSizeExtended)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.DeletedMessageSizeExtended 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the LastLoggedOnUserAccount property. 

WScript.echo "LastLoggedOnUserAccount = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.LastLoggedOnUserAccount)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.LastLoggedOnUserAccount 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the LastLogoffTime property. 

WScript.echo "LastLogoffTime = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.LastLogoffTime)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.LastLogoffTime 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the LastLogonTime property. 

WScript.echo "LastLogonTime = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.LastLogonTime)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.LastLogonTime 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the LegacyDN property. 

WScript.echo "LegacyDN = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.LegacyDN)&"] "& _ objExchange_Mailbox.LegacyDN 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the MailboxDisplayName property. 

WScript.echo "MailboxDisplayName = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.MailboxDisplayName)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.MailboxDisplayName 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the MailboxGUID property.

WScript.echo "MailboxGUID = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.MailboxGUID)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.MailboxGUID 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the ServerName property. 

WScript.echo "ServerName = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.ServerName)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.ServerName 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the Size property. 

WScript.echo "Size = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.Size)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.Size 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the StorageGroupName property. 

WScript.echo "StorageGroupName = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.StorageGroupName)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.StorageGroupName 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the StorageLimitInfo property. 

WScript.echo "StorageLimitInfo = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.StorageLimitInfo)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.StorageLimitInfo 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the StoreName property. 

WScript.echo "StoreName = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.StoreName)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.StoreName 

' 

' 

' Display the value of the TotalItems property. 

WScript.echo "TotalItems = "& _ 

" ["&TypeName(objExchange_Mailbox.TotalItems)&"] "& _ 

objExchange_Mailbox.TotalItems 

' 

Next 

Else 

' If no Exchange_Mailbox instances were returned, 

' display that. 

WScript.Echo "WARNING: No Exchange_Mailbox instances were returned." 

End If 

End If

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....

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.

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

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.

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.

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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!  

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.

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

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! 

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