I See UC

The Last Post

2011-03-04T22:25:00.000Z

Since, as from Monday, I'm now a consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services here in the UK, I won't be updating this particular blog any more (other than to perhaps point out where the new blog will be!).

Offline Access to Exchange 2010 Docs on TechNet

2011-02-24T15:42:00.003Z

There was a discussion on an Exchange mailing list recently about how getting access to the Exchange technical documentation online obviously assumes that you are connected at the time. Naturally, Microsoft releases regular updates to the documentation and at the same time it also provides a separate CHM file that you can download. For example, the latest version is here.

Aside from the official Exchange 2010 product documentation, Microsoft also produces technical articles that you can access from the TechNet site, as you can see here:

You can obviously print these articles to PDF or similar. There is also another option available to you to get offline access to this information. With a program called PackageThis, you can create CHM files of topics found on TechNet and/or MSDN. Here's how:

First, download PackageThis from here.

Note in the "Prerequisites" section the part about downloading the .chm SDK, which is required when creating CHM files. If you don't have this installed, use the link in the prerequisites section. The installation of this component is very simple and doesn't need documenting here.

Next, run PackageThis.exe. On the main screen, click Library and then TechNet Library. You should now see a screen similar to this one:

If you want to create small CHM files of your favourite section of the Exchange 2010 online documentation, you can expand the nodes and select what you want. For example, we could select just the High Availability section:

However, what about all those wonderful technical articles that have been published? Let's say we want to create a CHM file on the "Autodiscover and Exchange 2007" topic that is online. We simply select the topic:

Next choose File / Export to CHM File :

Click OK and your CHM is created!

Two New Exchange 2010 "Tested Solutions" Papers

2011-02-23T08:23:00.000Z

Microsoft has released two new "tested solutions" whitepapers for Exchange 2010. If you've not seen these before, they are whitepapers that, according to Microsoft, "provide examples of well-designed and cost-effective Exchange 2010 solutions deployed on hardware offered by some of our server, storage, and network partners".

Previously, Microsoft released papers for 500, 9000 and 16000 mailbox solutions on hardware such as Dell servers, F5 load balancers, etc. There are now papers for 15000 and 20000 mailbox solutions:

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 15000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Unisys ES7000 Servers and Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 Family

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 20000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Dell R910 Servers, EMC CLARiiON Storage, and Brocade Network Solutions

Rights Management Server and Exchange 2010 Integration - Part 4

2011-02-15T12:07:00.000Z

The fourth part of my article series on Rights Management Server integration with Exchange 2010 has today been published here. This part of the article series looks at configuration testing, using OWA with RMS and also RMS templates. I've finished writing the series now - it's only 8 parts long so we're half-way through!

Rights Management Server and Exchange 2010 Integration - Part 3

2011-02-01T16:45:00.000Z

The third part of my article series on Rights Management Server integration with Exchange 2010 has today been published here. Having installed RMS in part two, we now get around to completing all those additional fiddly configuration elements required in order to get things to work.

Book : Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices

2011-01-26T16:02:00.001Z

I have just about finished ploughing my way through a review copy of the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices book that O'Reilly kindly sent me, and although I still have a couple of chapters to read, I thought I'd write a brief note on what I think of it.

In all, I think this is an excellent book and there are many reasons for this. First, the book was written for Exchange 2010 SP1, which is obviously a good thing as quite a lot has changed with this release as opposed to the RTM release. I personally don't tend to get the first Exchange books available as they can sometimes be based on beta code, which of course can change before the product ships. That's not to say that things don't change before SP1 ships, because they sometimes do. Also, this book contains many sidebars that not only include "notes from the field" insights from experienced professionals, but also include inside track information from members of the product group. These contain invaluable informaton.

The book is comprehensive in its approach, starting out with an introduction to Exchange 2010, followed by useful information on planning and delivering an Exchange 2010 implementation project. It then moves onto the environment considerations, such as Active Directory, certificates, namespace planning, networking, and so on.

Part two of the book is focussed on designing Exchange 2010, and uses a chapter per Exchange 2010 role such as the CAS, Hub Transport, Mailbox and Edge Transport. These chapters delve nice and deep into the topics and give you food for thought. For example, do you want to understand (or refresh your memory) on Autodiscover and the AutodiscoverSiteScope parameter? The CAS chapter is the place to be. Additionally, there are detailed chapters on compliance, unified messaging, federation, high availability, backup/restore and hardware sizing. Finally, other important topics are covered such as upgrading from legacy Exchange and troubleshooting.

I found this book to be very much in the style that I like and I must say I've picked up quite a few useful tips along the way. The book is literally packed full of best practice information, hence the book contents do the title justice. If you don't have a copy of this book, hang your head in shame!

Next up is Tony Redmond's book, Exchange 2010 Inside Out which should be another great read. I've got all of Tony's Exchange books somewhere, including his original Exchange 4.0 book.

OAB Delta Changes

2011-01-21T15:34:00.000Z

I've just been troubleshooting an issue involving the OAB on Exchange 2010. Scenario : on a single Exchange 2010 SP1 UR2 server running the Mailbox, Client Access Server and Hub Transport roles, an administrator creates a new distribution group that is urgently required, updates the OAB in the Exchange Management Console and then informs the end-user to download the OAB from within Outlook. The result? The distribution group is still not showing in Outlook. The end-user confirms that he can see the group in OWA. Why is this?

Well, I have written a long 4-part article on the overall OAB process that you can access here. The short answer is not to forget the process that copies the updated OAB files from the Mailbox role to the Client Access Server role ready for web-based distribution. Even though the administrator has updated the OAB within the Exchange Management Console, Exchange still has to copy these files to the OAB virtual directory folder where the Outlook client will pick them up. Of course, I'm assuming that the Outlook client is capable of web-based distribution here, rather than public folder distribution.

By default, this copy process runs every 480 minutes. To see this, run this cmdlet:

Get-OabVirtualDirectory | fl poll*

This will show the PollInterval parameter for all OAB virtual directories and you should see 480 minutes as the default setting. You can change this value of course, or you can run a one-off copy process via this cmdlet:

Update-FileDistributionService -Identity {server} -Type OAB

That will force the Microsoft Exchange File Distribution service to copy the updated OAB files generated by the Mailbox role to the OAB virtual directory location. Then get the end-user to download the OAB again.

UAG Delegation to Exchange Forms-Based Authentication

2011-01-13T13:51:00.000Z

One of my work colleagues is Jason Jones, who's also a ForeFront MVP. If you're interested in ForeFront Edge concepts, I strongly recommend that you check out Jason's blog Closer To The Edge.

Jason has advised myself and other team members this morning that although Unified Access Gateway (UAG) delegation to Exchange forms-based authentication technically worked pre-UAG SP1, it was not supported by the UAG product group. In fact, the GUI has now been amended to prevent it as shown from the figure below. Hat tip to Jason.

Rights Management Server and Exchange 2010 Integration - Part 2

2011-01-13T13:42:00.000Z

The second part of my article series on Rights Management Server integration with Exchange 2010 has today been published here. In this part, we get around to actually installing the RMS role onto a Windows 2008 R2 server, ready for use in subsequent parts of the article.

Error Differences in Outlook and OWA

2011-01-12T22:50:00.001Z

When you have a problem in Outlook, it can sometimes be a good troubleshooting step to see if the same thing happens in OWA.

Here's an interesting tale of how an error is presented differently in Outlook 2010 as opposed to OWA 2010, and how using OWA helped track down the issue. I recently noticed that the Unified Messaging Play on Phone option in Outlook 2010 was producing an error when selected. The error message was "Contact with the server has temporarily failed, please try again later". This doesn't exactly help narrow down what the issue might be.

By chance, my colleague attempted the same operation in OWA 2010 - namely to click the Play on Phone button. This time, though, he got a different error message. It read "The number cannot be dialed because it does not comply with the policy of your organization".

That's more like it! A descriptive error that led my colleague to examine the UM policy properties in the Exchange Management Console where he found that the option titled "allow calls to extensions" was not selected. Why it wasn't selected is another story, though.

Exchange 2010 OWA Spelling Language Issue

2011-01-12T09:51:00.002Z

One of my colleagues discovered this issue. He moved lots of users from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 SP1 and one of the users noticed that OWA 2010 was using the English (United States) dictionary rather than the UK dictionary. Specifically, in OWA, the user went to Options / See All Options / Settings / Spelling. Here, the "Use this dictionary to check spelling" option was set to English (United States).

The user confirmed that the workstation locales were set to UK. Also, in OWA, the user confirmed on the Regional tab (Options / See All Options / Settings / Regional) that the language was set to English (United Kingdom).

My colleague has also confirmed that a different deployment has also experienced this issue - this particular deployment is running Exchange 2010 RTM, so clearly it's not unique to Exchange 2010 SP1. It appears to be the result of moving the mailbox from legacy versions of Exchange.

The fix is quite simple. Just set the mailboxes to use the correct language dictionary with this cmdlet:

Set-MailboxSpellingConfiguration -DictionaryLanguage EnglishUnitedKingdom

Operations Manager : Exchange 2010 Management Pack CHM Download

2011-01-07T08:16:00.000Z

I just spotted this on the Microsoft downloads site. It's the Operations Manager management pack procedures used to resolve Exchange 2010 issues, in CHM format. In other words, the knowledge of the Exchange 2010 management pack in handy offline format. That's got to be worth having on your laptop when troubleshooting issues onsite!

Grab it here.

Rights Management Server and Exchange 2010 Integration - Part 1

2010-12-23T16:19:00.000Z

Part 1 of my article on RMS integration with Exchange 2010 has just been published over at MSExchange.org - you can find it here. This is quite a long multi-part article and so in the first part I lay the groundwork and outline what was in my test lab. Nothing fancy in the lab, but it was nice to set this all up and work through the features.

Update Rollup Confusion

2010-12-21T12:38:00.000Z

Before applying update rollups to an Exchange server, the administrator can sometimes review the relevant KB article associated with that update rollup. This is, of course, a good thing and is entirely recommended. However, if this is, say, the second time that the administrator is about to install an update rollup, there can sometimes be associated questions and confusion on the update process. Let me explain why.

The KB article for Update Rollup 2 for Exchange 2010 SP1 is here. Towards the end of this KB article lies the Prerequisites section that says the following:

The following list contains prerequisites for the Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1:

* Install Exchange Server 2010 SP1 on the computer before you apply this update rollup.
* Remove all interim updates for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 before you apply this update rollup.

It's normally the second bullet point that causes confusion. It's quite common for an administrator to assume that they need to uninstall the previous update rollups before applying the latest update rollup. For example, if the administrator has already applied Update Rollup 1 and is now about to install Update Rollup 2, they assume that they must uninstall Update Rollup 1 as that's what the second bullet point says, right?

Actually, if you read the text closely, it says interim updates which are very different to update rollups. You only need to uninstall interim updates and not previous update rollups. Interim updates are specific updates from Microsoft PSS that have been released to customers that have called in with a particular issue; these updates are therefore designed to fix this specific issue only. You will therefore almost certainly know if you have had an interim update installed as you would have involved Microsoft in the issue resolution process.

Also, remember that update rollups are cumulative. In other words, Exchange 2010 SP1 Update Rollup 2 contains all the fixes found in Exchange 2010 SP1 Update Rollup 1.

Exchange 2010 "Tested Solutions" Documents

2010-12-19T22:43:00.000Z

I've just been catching up on the latest information posted to the Microsoft downloads site and I came across these three documents:

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 500 Mailboxes in a Single Site Running Hyper-V on Dell Servers
Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 16000 Mailboxes in a Single Site Deployed on IBM and Brocade Hardware
Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 9000 Mailboxes in 2 Sites with Hyper-V on Dell M610 Servers & Storage with F5 Load Balancing

According to the downloads site : "In the Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions white papers, Microsoft provides examples of well-designed, cost-effective Exchange 2010 solutions deployed on hardware offered by some of our server, storage, and network partners"

These documents come in PDF format and they're not small as they range from between ~60 to ~100 pages each. I have downloaded them and shall take a look - but maybe not over the upcoming holiday period!

Outlook 2003 and 2007 Updates

2010-12-14T20:38:00.001Z

It looks like there have been a few Outlook updates issued at the Microsoft download center on 13th December 2010:

Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (KB2412171)
"This update provides the latest fixes related to stability and performance improvements for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007"

Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (KB2449798)
"This update (KB953432) resolves an issue where Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 behaves unexpectedly in some circumstances"

Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB2466074)
"This update provides the Junk E-mail Filter in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with a more current definition of which e-mail messages should be considered junk e-mail"

Exchange 2010 SP1 UR2

2010-12-14T20:26:00.000Z

It is nice to see that Microsoft has today released several update rollups for Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010. I won't repeat the information here that you can find on the Exchange Team blog, but I did want to say that it's great to see the fix for the public folder database issue covered here.

New Books For Your List

2010-12-10T16:05:00.000Z

I had an email from O'Reilly that detailed three recently available books that are relevant to us in the Exchange world. They are:

Deploying Microsoft Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server
Deploying Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010
Deploying Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010

At 92, 88 and 172 pages respectively, we should be able to fit them in during our lunch breaks next week!

New Article Ideas

2010-12-10T08:58:00.004Z

It's time for me to start thinking about new article ideas for MSExchange.org and Simple-Talk.com. What would people like to see?

Resource Mailboxes in Exchange 2010 (Part 4)

2010-12-09T15:22:00.000Z

The 4th and final part of my article looking at resource mailboxes in Exchange 2010 has been published over at MSExchange.org. You can reach the full article here.

PowerShell Bug?

2010-11-28T09:33:00.013Z

A customer of mine had an interest in automatically sending a welcome email to newly created mailboxes. They had found Pat Richard's script to do just this, and asked me to test in a lab environment.

On running the script manually to test functionality, I received the following error:

Get-Date : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name '11/28/2010 08:55:45'

What I noticed straight away is that the date format wasn't in UK format, even though I confirmed that the server was set to use this format.

Digging deeper, I found out that the issue only occured when the script used either the New-ItemProperty or Set-ItemProperty cmdlets to manipulate the registry. Pat's script had the following line in it, to create a new registry key used to determine when the script was last run:

New-ItemProperty -path HKLM:\Software\Innervation\$strScriptName -Name "LastRun" -Value (Get-Date) -propertyType String Out-Null

As you can see from this line of code, the value of the registry key is set to the output of the Get-Date cmdlet. I opened regedit and looked at the value stored:

That's definitely not in UK format even though I knew the server was configured accordingly. It would seem that this is a bug with PowerShell. My workaround was to change the format of the Get-Date cmdlet in the script such that the 'value' parameter was set like this:

-Value (Get-Date -Format G)

I had to make this change in the script for the line that used the Set-ItemProperty cmdlet. Once I'd made the change I deleted the registry key that had been created earlier and re-run the script. The result was:

I've no idea why PowerShell does this and can only assume it is a bug. There's certainly nothing wrong wih Pat's script - it works just great!

Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer

2010-03-22T14:10:00.002Z

Hooray for the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer. If you've not seen this, then check out the tool here. This is a tool for checking that an existing environment is ready for Exchange 2010. I ran this tool recently and it discovered a couple of Active Directory issues that I probably wouldn't have spotted.

Specifically, the tool reported a permissions inheritance block on 3 separate OUs, one of which was the Domain Controllers OU.

Definitely a tool to run before you hit Exchange 2010 setup.

OCS 2007 & Event Log 61013

2009-11-18T21:30:00.003Z

Today I was installing an OCS 2007 Standard Edition server and had to use a certificate from a 3rd party Certificate Authority. The certificate came with an intermediate certificate that was duly imported into the Intermediate Certificate Authorities store on the OCS server. The certificate wizard was used to import the server certificate and all OCS services then started just fine. In fact, a two-way IM conversation was performed and all looked well.

However, I noticed that a 3-way IM conversation failed, as did the validation wizard, as did the LiveMeeting console. There were many events logged into the event log that had an event ID of 61013 and contained text such as:

"The process DataMCUSvc(7580) failed to send health notifications to the MCU factory at https://{FQDN}:444/LiveServer/MCUFactory"

The problem had "3rd party CA issue" written all over it and so this was the focus of the investigation. As it turned out, the fix was relatively simple when known. The 3rd party Certificate Authority actually had a different intermediate certificate which was required for use when using either Exchange 2007 or OCS 2007. Once this was obtained from their website, imported and the old intermediate certificate removed, the problems disappeared.

Exchange 2010 Forums @ MSExchange.org

2009-11-06T14:04:00.002Z

Has it been that long since I posted here? Whoops! Anyway, just a quick note to let you know that there are now a whole load of new forums for Exchange 2010 over at msexchange.org - the direct link is here.

CCR/SCR and Event 2082

2009-09-14T09:21:00.002+01:00

I had an annoying event log being recorded on the active node of a CCR environment on Exchange 2007 SP1 and Windows 2008 SP1. The event was :

Event: 2082
Category: MSExchangeRepl
Description: The Microsoft Exchange Replication Service was unable to create a network share named {transaction log folder name} for {storage group name}. Please verify that a network share with this name does not already exist.

This event was logged about 9 or 10 times an hour on average for every storage group on the CCR environment. The event was only logged when SCR was also used in conjunction with CCR. It was noted that this issue appeared to be benign in that there was no apparent loss of functionality and no other related issues recorded.

Believe me when I say that everything was verified in the troubleshooting, such as deleting the replication share names and letting CCR re-create them, checking CCR health, checking SCR health, etc, etc, etc. This system was on Update Rollup 7 for Exchange 2007 SP1 at the time, due to support requirements of other 3rd party archiving software being used.

As it turned out, the solution was fairly simple: apply Windows 2008 Service Pack 2. It looks like the actual problem is an RPC issue within the operating system that causes Exchange 2007 to log the 2082 event log.

If you're seeing this event being logged on the active node of your CCR environment, try upgrading to Windows 2008 SP2.

MSExchangeFBPublish 8207 Error

2009-08-05T15:58:00.003+01:00

I had an interesting error last week that had me pondering for a while. Basically the error was this:

EventID: 8207
Source: MSExchangeFBPublish
Level: Error
Description: Error updating public folder with free/busy information on virtual machine {servername}. The error number is 0x80004005.

Now, there are a ton of Internet posts on this particular error. The thing that was different for me is that this error was occuring approximately every 100 minutes on an Exchange 2007 server that only had a mailbox database on it. In other words, there was no public folder database on this server even though the server name was referenced in the event log description and the error referred to the free/busy public folder.

To cut a long description short, this Exchange 2007 server was installed into an existing Exchange 2003 environment. Public folders were present in Exchange 2003. Dedicated Exchange 2007 public folder servers were also installed and the public folders had been replicated from the Exchange 2003 servers to the dedicated Exchange 2007 public folder servers. The mailbox server that was reporting this error was used solely to house mailboxes for journaling/archiving software and these mailboxes had not been logged into by the archiving software. So, why on earth would a mailbox server be reporting this error relating to free/busy public folders?

To cut a long solution short, the journal mailboxes were moved to another server temporarily and the mailbox database deleted. The mailbox database was then re-created and the journal mailboxes moved back. The problem went away.

Summary : something strange must have happened when the original mailbox database was created. Not the technical solution that some would want, but hey, it fixed it nonetheless!

Cluster Continuous Replication Network Design Article

2009-07-08T14:01:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago my latest article for simple-talk was published, called Cluster Continous Replication Network Design. In this article I talk about the options available for the configuration of redundant networks for log shipping and database seeding. If you're about to design a new CCR environment, it might be worth checking this article out to make sure you've addressed this important aspect of the design.

Enable-ContinuousReplicationHostName Error

2009-06-11T17:12:00.002+01:00

Tim McMichael from Microsoft has an excellent blog post about errors you might see when installing a CCR environment or enabling continuous replication host names. The post is:

http://blogs.technet.com/timmcmic/archive/2009/02/24/permissions-required-for-the-cno-cluster-name-object-in-windows-2008-for-exchange-2007-sp1-setup-operations.aspx

I just wanted to note that recently I was enabling a continuous replication host name via the Enable-ContinuousReplicationHostName cmdlet when I received this error:

Cluster Common Failure Exception: Failed to bring cluster resource Network Name (name) in cluster group (name) online. The event log may contain more details. Cluster Common Failure Exception: The cluster resource could not be brought online by the resource monitor. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007139A)

Although Tim's blog post covers a slightly different error message and error code, this appears to be the same problem as manually creating the computer account and setting the required permissions as per Tim's blog post solved the problem.

That Old SeSecurityPrivilege Error

2009-04-02T18:49:00.002+01:00

I had an interesting problem the other day when installing a Hub Transport server. Basically, the installation failed with the classic error message of "The process does not possess the 'SeSecurityPrivilege' privilege which is required for this operation". As it turned out, this error was also seen when running the Move-TransportDatabase.ps1 script provided by Microsoft and also when installing the Client Access Server role.

I ran the policytest.exe file that you can find in the \setup\serverroles\common folder from the Exchange 2007 source media. This program confirms whether the SeSecurityPrivilege right has been found on the domain controllers in the Active Directory site. This right is set on the Domain Controller Security Policy by the setup.com /PrepareDomain process. Specifically, the process grants the Manage Auditing and Security Log right. Policytest.exe confirmed that the right was present on all domain controllers.

I scratched my head for a while but it turned out that the Manage Auditing and Security Log right wasn't present on the local server's policy for the account that I was using to install the Exchange 2007 server. I added the right to my account via membership of a group and the installation proceeded just fine.

To Mount Or Not To Mount?

2009-03-19T08:44:00.002Z

This question came up recently and it reminded me that I, too, had recently forgotten how to do this. Consider the scenario where you are trying to determine, via Exchange Management Shell, whether the databases are mounted or not. Ordinarily you'd run a cmdlet such as:

Get-MailboxDatabase fl

This returns all properties for a mailbox database, of which there are quite a few. You can filter the output to return only properties containing the string 'mount':

Get-MailboxDatabase fl *mount*

As you can see from the text below, this returns us the MountAtStartup and Mounted properties:

MountAtStartup : True
Mounted :

However, you will notice that the Mounted property has no value. To determine whether the database is actually mounted or not, use the -Status parameter. I've also included the filter to show the name of the database as there are 5 databases on this test system:

Get-MailboxDatabase -Status fl name,*mount*

Name : SG1DB(E2K7)
MountAtStartup : True
Mounted : True

Name : SG2DB(E2K7)
MountAtStartup : True
Mounted : False

Name : SG3DB(E2K7)
MountAtStartup : True
Mounted : False

Name : SG4DB(E2K7)
MountAtStartup : True
Mounted : False

Name : SG5DB(E2K7)
MountAtStartup : True
Mounted : False

UR7 For E2K7 SP1

2009-03-18T22:05:00.002Z

I've just noticed the latest update rollup (7) for Exchange 2007 SP1 is available. Enjoy. :)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2074fefd-fa1a-4c3e-bf72-94585e454150#tm

February 2009 MMMUG Meeting

2009-01-23T09:01:00.001Z

Here are the details of the February 2009 MMMUG meeting.

This event will be held in London at the MSFT offices in Cardinal Place near Victoria.

This month we have a evening about managing and automating Exchange led by Jonathan Medd from Hampshire County Council and Will Rawlings from Truconsulting. We will start with an introduction to PowerShell and then discuss how you can use PowerShell to manage Exchange 2003. After the break, we will dive into how to ensure your PowerShell scripts don't do any damage and look at how PowerShell can be used to manage large Exchange environments.

The meeting will be held on Wednesday 18th February.

To sign up, or for more information see the link below:
http://www.mmmug.co.uk/forums/thread/26352.aspx

Rollup Update Logging

2009-01-08T14:12:00.004Z

I saw this tip posted by someone from Microsoft on a forum recently so I thought I'd call it out here too. If you are applying one of the update rollups to your Exchange 2007 installation and you have any issues, note that you can increase the logging produced by the installer by adding a few extra bits to the command line. For example, take this command to install Update Rollup 5 for Exchange 2007 SP1:

Exchange2007-KB953467-x64-en.msp /lxv* c:\953467.log

This creates a detailed log file called c:\953467.log (or whatever you want to call it of course). On my test lab, I installed Update Rollup 5 and noted after the installation that it created a whopping 46MB log file. Now, I'm not saying you will need to know or even understand everything in the log, but it could help to shed some light on why the problem has happened. Or, perhaps the PSS engineer assigned to your call will request this file anyway. :)

The picture below should give you an idea of the output.

Moving Specific Users via the Exchange Management Shell

2008-12-22T08:40:00.002Z

About a year ago I published a two-part article over at msexchange.org on moving mailboxes in Exchange 2007. You can find part one here and part two here. In part two I covered how you can use the Exchange Management Shell to move mailboxes via the Move-Mailbox cmdlet. One of the examples I gave was how to move all the users from one mailbox database to another via the following cmdlet:

Get-Mailbox –Database “DCEXCH\First Storage Group\Mailbox Store (DCEXCH)” Move-Mailbox –TargetDatabase “E2K7\First Storage Group\Mailbox Database” –MaxThreads 10

Here you can see that all users on the database called Mailbox Store (DCEXCH) are moved to another database called Mailbox Database. The -MaxThreads parameter with a value of 10 means that 10 mailboxes are moved at a time.

This cmdlet is great if you really want to move all users on a database at the same time. I recently received an email asking how you can move a list of users at the same time, which admittedly is more likely in a migration scenario. For example, you may want to move just a manager and his secretary at the same time. Let's say you have three users that you wish to move, who could be located on completely different source databases. The key here is to use the array feature of the Exchange Management Shell and put the aliases of the mailboxes to move into the array. A sample script is:

$UsersToMigrate = "user1", "user2", "user3"
ForEach ($SingleUser in $UsersToMigrate) {Move-Mailbox -Identity $SingleUser -TargetDatabase "server\storage group\database" -Confirm:$false}

Here we create an array called $UsersToMigrate, which contains the aliases of the three users. We then loop through the array one user at a time, identifying a single user as $SingleUser. For each user, we run the Move-Mailbox cmdlet and move each mailbox to the desired database which is identified in the server\storage group\database name format. It's as easy as that.

TechNet Exchange Forums

2008-12-18T16:14:00.003Z

Last week the Exchange forums on TechNet moved to a new URL. The old forums have links in them, but you can get to the root level for all Exchange forums by going here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/exchangeserver/

Update Rollups and Adding a Role

2008-12-16T11:27:00.001Z

Assume you've built your new Exchange 2007 CAS server and applied the latest update rollup. All is well. Then you decide you need an additional Hub Transport server in your organisation so you add the Hub Transport role to the server currently running the CAS role. The question is: do you need to re-apply the update rollup? In fact, the question is really whether you need to re-apply the update rollup after adding any additional Exchange role to a server?

The answer is apparently 'no' as everything should be just fine. Fingers crossed, then.

Exchange 2007 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

2008-12-09T10:04:00.002Z

At long last it looks like Microsoft has released a new native management pack for Exchange 2007 for System Center Operations Manager 2007. The old version was, apparently, ported from MOM 2005 and so this new version will be specifically for Ops Manager 2007.

You can grab it here.

How Many Clicks?

2008-11-28T08:19:00.002Z

I can't believe it has been a week since I last posted here. That's terrible! Oh well, must try harder.

I was messing around with Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 yesterday trying to get the autodiscover service running through ISA Server 2006 in the lab yesterday. I managed to get it all working but at one stage I had a problem with the certificate that I was using on ISA. This resulted in the autodiscover process failing but during several attempts at this process I became rather annoyed at how many clicks I needed to do in order to cancel the Outlook profile setup!

Say you're trying to create a new profile by running Outlook and it fails, repeatedly prompting you for domain credentials. OK, let's cancel out of the setup process ready for another go later when we've resolved our certificate problem. That shouldn't take long...

Click 1 - cancel the new domain credentials password prompt.
Click 2 - click OK to the warning prompt stating "The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable..."
Click 3 - now the generic window is presented where you normally fill in your Exchange server name and mailbox name. Click the cancel button here.
Click 4 - click OK to another copy of the warning prompt stating "The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable..."
Click 5 - now the generic window where you normally fill in your Exchange server name and mailbox name is presented again. Click the cancel button here.
Click 6 - now the Add New Email Account window is displayed stating that it cannot log onto the server. Click cancel here.
Click 7 - now I'm presented with another window advising me on how I can create a profile with no email accounts. Click the cancel button again.
Click 8 - now I'm presented with an information box saying that no profiles have been created, etc. Click OK here.
Click 9 - finally I'm advised with another prompt that Outlook cannot be started. Click OK here.

Wow, 9 prompts to cancel an action!

Exchange 2007 SP1 Update Rollup 5

2008-11-21T08:10:00.002Z

Update Rollup 5 for Exchange 2007 SP1 has been released and you can find it here. There are quite a few fixes within this rollup, which are detailed in KB953467. Perhaps one of the main fixes within this rollup is the one that fixes the problem where the CAS cannot copy the Offline Address Book in a CCR environment, detailed in KB954197. Get applying!

RedGate Exchange Server Archiver

2008-11-20T17:22:00.002Z

I had an email from Michael at Red Gate Software a couple of days ago informing me that their new Exchange archiving product (Exchange Server Archiver) is now available for beta testing. As I've been busy for the last couple of days, I'd not managed to write about this but here goes.

Yes there are many archiving products already out there but the following statements from the beta page may best serve to inform you as to the "why?" for this particular product:

"Exchange Server Archiver is a cost-effective alternative to adding additional Exchange servers, archive storage is cheaper than primary storage, and no additional expensive database servers are required. Exchange Server Archiver is fully scalable and works out-of-the-box - it is easy to install, configure, and maintain. Nothing is installed on your Exchange Server, letting you keep mission-critical systems running without interference."

If you are interested in having a look at the beta version you can find the necessary information here.

Exchange BPA Rule Update Problem

2008-11-18T14:51:00.004Z

I was reading a few online forums this morning when I came across a thread that talked about an issue that had been raised by the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer. To cut a long story short, the text of the error read as follows:

Test-SystemHealth : The value for the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) transaction log file size has changed on server {server}. This configuration is not supported. Current log file size is 5120 KB. Default log file size is 1024 KB.

Our own Exchange 2007 system reported this error overnight. Manually running the Test-SystemHealth cmdlet produced the same result. Clearly with a pure Exchange 2007 environment I knew that our log files were still being generated as 1024KB.

It has since been confirmed that this is a known problem with the ExBPA rule update and is being looked into at the moment. No administrative action is required.

"What's New in OCS 2007 R2" Videos

2008-11-13T15:47:00.002Z

I have been re-reading some of my notes that I made during the OCS 2007 R2 sessions at TechEd EMEA IT Professionals in Barcelona last week. I've supplemented that with taking another look at the videos available on TechNet Edge. In case you haven't seen them, here are links to the individual videos:

What's New in Group Chat with Office Communications Server 2007 R2
OCS and the new Attendant
What's New in Office Communicator, Communicator Web Access, and Devices with OCS 2007 R2
What’s New in Conferencing with Office Communications Server 2007 R2
What’s New in Mobility and Anywhere Access with Office Communications Server 2007 R2
What New in Administration and Management with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

TechEd EMEA 2009

2008-11-12T15:38:00.001Z

At TechEd EMEA 2008, it was announced that the 2009 event is to be held in Berlin, Germany. I've just noted from the TechEd 2008 website that the dates have been confirmed as November 9-13 with the event being held at Messe Berlin. A quick search reveals the event location's website, which could be useful for a bit of forward planning!

http://www1.messe-berlin.de/vip8_1/website/Internet/Internet/www.messe-berlin/englisch/index.html

Communicator Mobile November 2008 Update

2008-11-12T10:36:00.002Z

I was just having a rummage on the Microsoft Premier Support site when I noticed an update to Communicator Mobile that had been released just last week. The KB article that describes the update and allows you to download the updated MSI installer is 954767.

The reason for this update is to fix the following issues:

1. Communicator Mobile 2007 suppresses HTTPS certificate errors when it fetches the NOO icon for the federated contacts. KB 954768.

2. You cannot log on to Communicator Mobile 2007 in High security mode. KB 954769.

Great Example of UC in Action

2008-11-11T08:25:00.003Z

During one of the OCS 2007 R2 presentations at TechEd, the presenter talked about a firefighting organisation in the UK that had made great use of instant messaging to deal with a chemical spill.

It just so happens that one of the members of the Unified Communications group that I'm a member of on LinkedIn, Mike England, posted the details of this story to the group. It makes interesting reading. I can imagine instant messaging being much more useful than trying to hear someone on the other end of the phone whilst there are sirens and other loud noises all around you. You can find the story here.

Back to Blogging and November Exchange 2007 Help File Update

2008-11-10T13:16:00.002Z

There has been a distinct lack of blog posts here for a couple of weeks, due largely to the fact that I was at TechEd EMEA in Barcelona last week. Believe it or not, I had a laptop-free week as I attended the event without it - this was planned! I shall collate my notes and type up what I can over the next few days or so.

I noted on my return that the November edition of the Exchange 2007 help file has been released. It contains a few new sections

1. ActiveSync and Mobile Device Access Issues
2. Dynamic Distribution Groups are not Visible in GAL After Migrating from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2007
3. Error Message When You Use the New-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory Cmdlet: A Failure Occurred While Trying to Enable the ISAPI Filter
4. Event ID 490: Error Occurs When You Try to Mount the Mailbox Database or the Public Folder Database
5. HTTP 400 Bad Request Error When You Access an Exchange 2007 Mailbox
Registry-related Error Message When You Run an Exchange 2007 Cmdlet

It also contains updates to the following sections:

1. Data Path Security Reference
2. Database, Storage Group, and Information Store Service Issues
3. Exchange Management Console Errors and Issues
4. How to Create an Organizational Forms Library in Exchange 2007
5. How to Enable Anti-Spam Functionality on a Hub Transport Server
6. How to Install Exchange 2007 in an Existing Exchange Server 2003 Organization
7. Offline Address Book, Address List, and Recipient Issues
8. Outlook Web Access Issues
9. PBX Configuration Notes Tested by Microsoft or IP Gateway Vendor Partners
10. Standby Continuous Replication
11. Telephony Advisor for Exchange Server 2007
12. Transport Rule Actions

If any of the above sections are of interest to you, I'd recommend obtaining the latest version of the help file from the link above.

JetStress Documentation Error

2008-10-28T16:38:00.002Z

When you download and install the JetStress tool, one of the accompanying files is Microsoft Exchange Server JetStress.chm which is, of course, the associated help file for the tool.

Within the documentation, under the section titled "Testing for CCR, LCR, and SCC Configurations" there is the following text:

"Run the same Jetstress configuration (for SG/DB count, database sizes, and threads) against both nodes of the CCR cluster. The number of Jetstress threads should be increased to simulate the 3x I/O related to the CCR log replay overhead. For adequate performance, each cluster node must be able to achieve 3x the I/O of the expected user profile within the expected latency (20 ms)."

This refers to the Exchange 2007 RTM issue whereby the passive node of a CCR environment required 2-3x the I/O of the active node. This issue was addressed in Exchange 2007 SP1 and so the above text is not relevant for SP1.

Hopefully this text will be changed during the next documentation update.

Exchange Toolbox Command Line Parameters

2008-10-28T08:37:00.003Z

I found out something useful yesterday relating to the toolbox that you find in the Exchange Management Console. Have you ever wondered how the Exchange Troubleshooting tool (ExTRA) goes straight into Message Tracking mode if you select Message Tracking from the toolbox options? Or how ExTRA goes straight into the Mail Flow Troubleshooter if you select that option?

On your Exchange 2007 server, bring up the registry editor and navigate to:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\v8.0\AdminTools\Toolbox

Under this key you will see various other keys for the toolbox options, such as the key called ExTRA-MsgTrack for the Message Tracking tool. Within this key you will see two string values called Command and CommandParameters. The Command string shows you that the ExTRA.exe program is launched and the CommandParameters string shows you the parameters that are used, such as -AS -PS LaunchMessageTracking.

So now you know that selecting the Message Tracking option from the Toolbox runs:

ExTRA.exe -AS -PS LaunchMessageTracking

The picture below shows this example.

Office Communicator 2007 Hotfix Released

2008-10-27T08:04:00.002Z

I've just spotted that Microsoft has just (24th October 2008 according to the download site) released a hotfix for Office Communicator 2007 that is detailed in knowledgebase article 957707.

You can find the hotfix here. It's 4.88MB in size and consists of a single file, communicator.msp, which you can directly run. Don't forget to exit from Communicator if it's running, otherwise you'll be prompted to do so during the installation of the hotfix.

RFC 5321

2008-10-20T08:27:00.003+01:00

Fellow Exchange MVP Michael B. Smith recently advised that RFC 5321 replaces RFC 2821. You may also remember that RFC 2821 replaced the original RFC 821. This RFC is for the specification of SMTP and is therefore useful to read if you desire to understand this.

The RFC can be found here: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.txt

Transport Log Search Service on a Standby Cluster

2008-10-14T19:24:00.003+01:00

On a recent project a disaster recovery site was configured with a single-node standby cluster. This standby cluster was configured as the SCR target, the source being a CCR environment at the production data center. I noted the following event log entry that was logged on a regular basis on the standby cluster node:

Source: MSExchangeTransportLogSearch
Category: General
EventID: 7005
Description: Exchange couldn’t read the configuration from the Active Directory directory service because of error: Microsoft.Exchange.Common.ExClusTransientException...etc

The error goes on to reference ExCluster.GetActiveCMSOnNode. Clearly there is no Clustered Mailbox Server (CMS) on the single passive node of a standby cluster so this event log can be safely ignored. Of course, if you want to stop the noise being generated in the event log you should disable the transport log search service on this node. However, do remember to re-enable this service in a site resilience scenario.

Exchange 2007 SP1 Update Rollup 4

2008-10-07T20:25:00.002+01:00

I see that the latest update rollup for Exchange 2007 SP1 has just made its offical release onto the Microsoft Downloads site. Note that this update is for SP1 and not the RTM version of Exchange 2007. It contains plenty of fixes and so it's recommended that you deploy it.

Of course, if you were one of the people that downloaded and installed the version of this rollup that was mistakenly released last month, you should uninstall that version and install this one.

MVP Award

2008-10-02T17:04:00.003+01:00

I have been re-awarded the title of Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Exchange Server which is now my 6th consecutive year. That's not bad, but still quite some way behind some of the other UK MVPs who have clocked up 11 or more consecutive years now. Still, I'm not complaining as it's always an honour to be awarded by Microsoft.

My company, Silversands, now has another MVP within its ranks as my colleague Jason Jones has just been awarded the title of MVP within the Forefront Architecture category. This is well deserved as Jason is a very knowledgeable guy who has shared this knowledge in books, forums and blogs.

Exchange 2007 SP1 - Updated Help File

2008-10-02T08:13:00.004+01:00

The October 2008 release of the Exchange 2007 SP1 help file has just been made available on the Microsoft downloads site. I recommend that you download the updated help file as it contains updates to several topics:

* Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 RFC and Support for Standards
* How to Enable Users to Access Public Folders from Outlook Web Access
* Import-ExchangeCertificate fails with "the source data cannot be imported or the wrong password was specified"
* Recipient Properties > Mailbox Settings Tab > Messaging Records Management (RTM)
* Planning for Standby Continuous Replication
* How to Perform a Dial Tone Recovery Using and Staying on an Alternate Server for the Dial Tone Database
* PBX Configuration Notes Tested by Microsoft or IP Gateway Vendor Partners
* Outlook Anywhere Client Connectivity Issue Because of TCP/IPv6
* Understanding Journaling in a Mixed Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 Environment
* Recipient Properties > Mailbox Settings Tab > Messaging Records Management

TechEd EMEA 2008 IT Professionals

2008-10-01T09:12:00.000+01:00

I'll be at TechEd in Barcelona again this year, working the Ask The Experts booth for Exchange. If you are at the event please do pop by the booth and say hello! I'm not sure what dates and times I'll be on the booth yet, so I'll post those details as and when I receive them.

MMMUG November Meeting

2008-09-26T13:59:00.003+01:00

Nathan Winters sent me this information last week but since I was planning on moving blogs I've only just got around to typing it up.

The November 2008 meeting of the UK Microsoft Messaging and Mobility User Group will take place in London at Microsoft's offices in Cardinal Place near Victoria. Nathan says:

"This month we have a topical session led by Clive Watson, Brett Johnson and Julius Davies from Microsoft. We will be discussing the new support statements surround the issue of Virtualising your Exchange environment. Having understood which pieces of Exchange are now supported we will look at some of the key design issues facing those Virtualising Exchange."

The meeting will be held on Tuesday 11th November and starts at 18:30.

For more information and to sign up please see the link below:
http://www.mmmug.co.uk/forums/thread/23926.aspx

Exchange Storage Calculator Operation

2008-09-25T13:48:00.009+01:00

I was doing some work with the Exchange Storage Calculator recently when I noticed something that left me wondering why the calculator operated the way it did.

Enter 4000 'average' users into the calculator, give them 512MB mailbox quotas and ask for a restore LUN. The LUN Requirements tab of the calculator shows that you need 11 storage groups with the database LUN size specified as 298GB whilst the transaction log LUN size is specified as 28GB. The Restore LUN size is shown as 312GB which is approximately what you'd expect given the sizes of the individual database and transaction log LUN sizes.

Now change the mailbox quotas to 1024MB. The number of storage groups changes to 21 which is no real surprise, whilst the database and transaction log LUN sizes change to 306GB and 16GB respectively. That makes sense. What can be confusing, though, is that the Restore LUN is now shown as 923GB which is clearly well above the size of any single storage group.

Why is this? Well, the calculator takes into consideration that with more and more storage groups there exists an increased probability that there will be multiple failures and therefore the calculator increases the Restore LUN size to allow for multiple simultaneous restores to occur. A nice touch I thought.

Clustered Mailbox Server Setup Error

2008-09-24T21:08:00.002+01:00

On a recent implementation of a CCR environment, I received the following error during the Clustered Mailbox Server portion of setup:

Cluster Common Failure Exception: The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested operation. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007139F)

As far as I could make out this error is caused by latency in Active Directory replication. That certainly fitted in with the customer's multiple domain controller environment. The fix that worked for me was to exit out of the Exchange 2007 setup program, drop to a command prompt and execute this command:

setup.com /newCMS /CMSname:{name} /CMSIPaddress:{IP address}

This manually creates the CMS that was not created during the original run of setup.

OCS 2007 Management Pack for SCOM 2007

2008-09-23T14:55:00.002+01:00

I was actually thinking of making the title of this blog post "OCS 2007 MP 4 SCOM 2007" so that no actual words appeared but that's just plain silly.

Last week Microsoft released the OCS 2007 management pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007. I've not had chance to have a look at this yet but hopefully it'll be along the same lines as the LCS 2005 management pack whereby you receive important alerts such as your certificates expiring, or the service account passwords expiring, etc.

You can grab the management pack here.

More Update Rollup Fun

2008-09-22T21:42:00.002+01:00

More update rollup fun today, but this time it has nothing to do with ForeFront.

Today I've been performing a Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) failover test for a customer. Basically this customer has both CCR and SCR and wanted to prove that the SCR copy is in good working order. I got to the point where I was running setup.com /recoverCMS on the SCR server when I received the following error:

"You must perform disaster recovery using the same version of Exchange as the last installed version. The current installed version is 8.1.278.2; the last installed version is 8.1.240.6."

This puzzled me somewhat as I was running setup.com from the Exchange 2007 SP1 source files which was the version installed on both the CCR and SCR systems. After a bit of research I discovered that Update Rollup 2 for Exchange 2007 has a version of 8.1.278.2, which is what this customer was running. Further research revealed that the error was actually a known bug with Update Rollup 2 for Exchange 2007 SP1. The solution can be found on this thread. Remove the update rollup before running setup.com /recoverCMS, then re-apply the update rollup before mounting the databases.

I can confirm that this worked! The joys of disaster recovery...

Forefront for Exchange 2007 SP1 Rollup 3 Installation Issue

2008-09-19T12:56:00.003+01:00

Let's get the technical stuff on this blog started with an issue that one of my colleagues has seen this week.

My colleague was unable to install Forefront for Exchange 2007 SP1 Rollup 3 (KB 951629) on either nodes of an Exchange 2007 CCR environment based on Windows 2008. The same rollup had successfully installed on the Hub Transport servers, though.

The error message that was received was "The data is invalid". The installer then tried to uninstall the rollup but this failed with the same error message. The net result was effectively a half-installed rollup that you cannot complete or remove. Not good. From the log files generated by the installer, the following information was seen:

17.644: Copied file: C:\Windows\system32\fscperfmonitor.dll
17.660: DoInstllation: UpdSpCommitFileQueue for FileQueue failed: 0xd
17.707: The data is invalid.
23.744: Message displayed to the user: The data is invalid.
23.744: User Input: OK
23.744: KB951629 installation did not complete. Select 'OK' to undo the changes that have been made.
29.157: Message displayed to the user: KB951629 installation did not complete. Select 'OK' to undo the changes that have been made.

Let's cut out the long story of pulling one's hair out and get straight to the solution. It's a simple solution actually. Just stop and disable the WMI service prior to installing the rollup. Once the rollup has been applied, re-enable the service and start it back up. I say disable the service because you may find it getting started again before you apply the rollup.

Credit to my colleague Richard for supplying this information.

Not my first post

2008-09-19T08:30:00.003+01:00

This may well be the first post on this blog but it's not my first blog post as I was contributing to the Exchange blog since 2003. I created this blog site some time ago but only now am I getting it up and running. Why? Although the Exchange blog has been great, I wanted something that I own personally and also somewhere that I can put OCS notes from the field as well as Exchange, in addition to the odd personal statement. Or rant, of course.

So, here goes. Another blog on Unified Communcations!