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BlankMan's BlogMy name is Nicolas Blank, I'm an Exchange MVP and enjoy sharing what I know about managing AD, Exchange, OCS and anything else I'm working on. |
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July 03 [0xC3EC7823] The specified Office Communications Server 2007 server is not installed on this machine.Tried installing OCS Standard, but failing spectacularly every time. This didn’t make any sense to me for a while, since the components were installed, but the installer refused to activate the product. The MMC didn’t show that services were installed either. How I resolved this was by uninstalling each OCS component from the add/remove programs in the Control Panel, and running iisreset on the command line. After this OCS installed cleanly. June 24 Windows 2008 SP2 missing gateway painThere seems to be a lot of pain out there right now over missing default gateways when Windows 2008 SP2 is applied. A hotfix is not available yet at the time of writing. For now you have one of two options a) don’t use SP2 b) if you need to use SP2 backup the DefaultGateway and DefaultGatewayMetric registry keys from HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Tcpip/Parameters/Interfaces/%CLSID% and re-apply them after rebooting from SP2. If you are installing SP2 remotely then you WANT to reapply these values as part of a MACHINE startup script, or you will loose connectivity to the machine. Vista SP produces identical results at this stage, so the same fix applies. June 01 Redirecting from / to /owaLets assume that you have a webmail.domain.com that you’d like to redirect to webmail.domain.com/owa and you don’t want to use IIS redirection. How do you do it in HTML?
Simple, create a text file called “default.asp” and place it in the virtual directory that is handled by webmail.domain.com and place the following code inside it. Just Remember to replace domain.com with your own domain name.
May 27 PowerShell for the rest of usAlso known as: PowerShell for developers.
Tonight Myself, Zlatan Dzinic and Daniel Van Wyk are presenting on three different aspect of using PowerShell. We’ll be talking and showing demos about the PowerShell object mode as well as covering the basics, leveraging PowerShell inside managed code AND how to take advantage of the Common Language Runtime CLR in PowerShell 2.0 to execute C# natively inside PowerShell scripts. If all goes well we may convert a few developers yet to the magic of the “one line”…. There’s more detail on times and locations on http://www.sadeveloper.net/ May 25 Comparison of 32-bit and 64-bit memory architecture for 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and drifting over to parallel computingI’m glad 32 bit is dying, I really am. 32 bit TCP stacks are a pain since they suffer from port exhaustion, 32 bit databases can only grow so large, and wile some of this article IS motivated by the joys of seeing how Exchange and other applications can scale in a 64 bit environment ( from network edge to OS to application to desktop), there’s a lot more in terms of server and desktop that wins from being unbound from the 32 bit limit. And while there IS a lot to be said for small tight code that’s handcrafted in assembler and runs in 32k of RAM – those days are SO over. KB294418 is a great article to read. Why? Well there’s a few things to unlearn when moving over to 64bit land, which KB294418 also discusses. For example the “/3GB” switch in the boot INI is dead since 64 bit versions of Windows don’t have the same balancing act with PTE (Page Table Entries) that 32 bit OS’s do. a 32 bit app on a 64 bit OS will still “see” only 4 GB’s of RAM at a maximum, but bear in mind that it’s not competing with the rest of the OS and other 32 bit apps like it did on a 32bit OS. The logical address limit on 64bit machines is 16 terabytes, to put that in perspective against the rest of the memory components on a 32bit OS, I have quoted the table from KB294418 that outlines the differences between the 32bit and 64bit addressing models:
The Multicore and Parallel Computing website is a really good place to start if you’re interested. Asaf Shelly created this site to create a community around this interesting topic. If you’re into .NET and want to write code that can execute in parallel as opposed to multithreaded, he’s a REALLY good person to talk to. Are 64bit applications really THAT pervasive? I think so. Network appliances have been 64bit well before we started shifting Microsoft servers into this space. Unix and Linux have been 64bit for a while and even humble little SBS (Small Business Server) ran into it’s memory limits often enough to benefit from an architecture re-fit. I’m loving where Microsoft and the rest of the world are going: 64 bit and fewer limits for a little while ;) May 22 Update Rollup 8 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 has been releasedAgain as in most rollups, product improvements as well as bug fixes were addressed. KB 968012 addresses *60* bugs that were fixed along with a really important update for Server 2008, where disabling kernel mode authentication on CAS servers isn’t a manual process anymore. Expect this Rollup to trundle down via Windows Update on or after May 26, depending in your time zone.
As with most rollups, you want to grab them while they’re hot since most of them address bugs and or critical issues.. Exchange 2001 SP 1 still has a number of issues so I recommend you look the list of issues detailed in KB 968012 and see how they apply to your configuration. Happy patching! Chalk and CheeseLet’s talk about large mailbox performance, one of my favourite topics! Exchange has been getting better and better at servicing larger mailboxes over the years. Since Exchange 2007 SP1 we’ve been able to design larger, more redundant configurations on cheaper storage, however the client experience has lagged somewhat. Since Office 2007 SP2 my personal experience has been dramatically improved. I deal with several mail accounts in my Outlook profile on a daily basis which include Exchange OST and POP/other mail to PST. After an initial upgrade the performance for both offline files and PST’s has improved remarkably. This improvement is just in time as well. Seeing the performance improvements in Exchange 2010 on slow disks – 91% at this stage compared to Exchange 2003 – were set for much larger mailboxes being the order of the day. I’m not only talking of the occasional power user who may have an Exchange mailbox in excess of 2GB, but the entire user base. Irrespective of the version of Exchange or how large OR small your mailboxes may be, Outlook 2007 SP2 has brought much required improvements on PST and OST performance. May 15 Tech-Ed Africa Website Goes LiveAnd what a good-looking site it is too! Speaker bio’s, sessions information and agenda's are up as well as the 19 tracks, which should present something for everyone. I’m expecting more detail on the site closer to the time but it’s looking great already! Were going to have 7 type of sessions, including Breakout Sessions, Whiteboard Sessions (also known as Chalk and Talks) , Hands on Labs (HOL), Keynotes, Ask The Experts, Instructor-Led Labs and Tech-Ed online talks. Talking of presenting, I will be speaking this year again, and since I’m literally sitting in Exchange 2010 training in Dusseldorf while I type this, I’ll have a LOT to say about Exchange 2010, Power Shell 2.0, Role Based Authentication, High Availability and DR and more when the time comes around. Checkout Tech-Ed, Facebook and Twitter for more details and hope to see you there – literally! MVP’s and other speakers will be easy to find and if we’re not presenting or manning an ask the experts booth, we’ll be hanging around in the community lounge ready to answer questions or meeting people. Exchange Show & Tell at TechEd LATech-Ed LA:
The Exchange team were finally able to talk about a bunch of features in public. Makes for exciting viewing - that's if you're into Exchange of course ;)
April 15 Exchange 2010 Beta ReleasedWhat’s Exchange 2010 – Exchange 14 of course, or the public name for the next version of Exchange. I’ve picked a few things to talk about in this post and more will follow in due course. Two links that will be immediately interesting are the download link and the beta documentation link. Download the Beta here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1898ed2c-2f88-48ac-824e-d3d20fad77d7 and find Exchange Beta documentation here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124558(EXCHG.140).aspx The documentation gives you a great starting point. While a lot of the topics are headings only at this stage, even the headings give you a clue as to where things are headed. Here’s a look at one example: Since SCC isn’t supported in 2010 anymore, knowing how to transition from SCC (Singe Copy Cluster) to DAG (Database Availability Group) based HA and DR is a big deal. Planning and deployment | Deploying Exchange 2010| Transitioning to Exchange 2010| Transitioning from Exchange 2007 LCS/CCR/SCR/SCC to Exchange 2010 is a fantastic example of a header which shows you that the Exchange team isn’t building new features without showing you how to get the a new end state.
As I mentioned above SCC and LCR do no longer exist and are replaced by Database availability groups (DAG). Why is DAG more highly available than SCC? Well fore one thing, depending on the failover rules, a single database will fail over to another host if it’s disk fails, as well as allowing up to 16! copies of the same database to be hosted around your network including on the other side of a WAN link. What helps here is that Databases are no longer connected to the server and will now be managed as an object on the organizational level as opposed to the server level. Here are a few more points of interest in the storage arena:
I’ve picked on a few areas of interest so far, however Exchange 2010 is a major release will a load of new features and one blog post cannot do it justice; The transport stack has been improved, RMS in OWA is awesome, RMS in the Transport Layer is awesome, wait until you see the new OWA interface, content management and Exchange manageability has gone up several notches, just to name a FEW, so all in all I’m massively excited by the new version of Exchange. More post on particular features coming soon. April 06 [0xC3EC7921] Invalid meeting content directory set for IIS virtual directoryThis error can occur when setting up OCS 3007 without much direction as to what caused it or how to fix it. Since not everyone’s moving to 64bit immediately, I thought it worth it to post about this issue. Actually the full error reads as follows:
The OCS prerequisites for IIS were installed and working however when trying to find root cause on this, I couldn’t find it. The install logs are rather ambiguous, leading me to the conclusion that SOMETHING is missing on the IIS end. The only fix I have working so far is to:
When watching the install process you should see the Activate Web Components Server stage move from failure to success. April 02 Large Mailboxes again... - Not the last time eitherWhile Exchange becomes better and better at handling large mailboxes and more importantly being able to recover from disasters should they happen, it's time that Outlook starts catching up and offering MUCH better support for larger mailboxes. Performance beyond the 1 GB mark has always been a bit iffy but much more so when Office 2007 RTM'd. New code in Service Pack 2 makes life MUCH more bearable, but wait! It's available in separate patches as well, meaning you won't have to wait for SP2 to release before having the benefit. After installing you need to give Outlook a moment or 3 to adjust the contents of your files to the newer format (suggest not to switch off right then). There's a really nice matrix summarizing the performance gains here: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/03/24/450881.aspx and the patch is available for separate download here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968009/. Performance metrics are published around the 5, 10 and above 25 GB mark, although I think having a 25 GB PST or OST is RATHER brave, especially since we all know that PST's are nasty when they break and OST's on laptops at 25 GB's....... enough said! This brings back the argument for high availability and the perceived cost being to high. CCR drops the barrier to entry on highly available mailboxes, and while I'm aware that disks are never as cheap as when YOU have to buy them, Direct Attached Storage (DAS) is considerably cheaper than SAN storage - which is normally perceived to be the barrier to entry on any kind of clustering. CCR is different to traditional (SCC) clustering since the hardware may be dissimilar (different vendors) as well as having cheaper storage - DAS and not SAN storage becoming a major option. If you'd like to look at something you can take to the bank or the finance department ;) I suggest you checkout Missy's white paper on the subject. She outlines where the costs are and makes a stunningly good argument for CCR, especially when it comes right down to it: where do you spend your hard earned cash! Continuous Cluster Replication and Direct Attached Storage: High Availability without Breaking the Bank While this patch DOES make life simpler and more bearable for those of us who DO stay mobile with a lot of mail, or even desktop users in remote offices who depend on cached mode to get ANY mail, it should not be more of an excuse to slack off on mailbox limits if you're not running some form of high availability. I'm hoping that a combination of more High Availability (HA) options in Exchange 2007 as well as better code in the Outlook client will allow you to service the need for larger mailboxes as well as securing the mailboxes themselves. March 27 Hyper What?I've encountered a fair amount of confusion around Hyper-V and what you need to obtain Hyper-V. Hyper-V is available as a Role inside Server 2008, however it is ALSO available as a stand alone Hyper Visor platform without a surrounding Host OS GUI. Have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/how-to-get.mspx for download locations and comparisons between the different editions of Hyper-V as a role built into Server 2008 and Hyper-V Server 2008 as a stand alone FREE product. Nope that you wont find information on Hyper-V 2.0 here yet, since Hyper-V 2.0 is part and parcel of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta. For More information on Hyper-V 2.0 please visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/R2.aspx and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/R2-virtualization.aspx How does Exchange fit into that? Here's a really good place to get started: Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments which discusses the realities of sizing your parent and guest OS. Announcing the release of Exchange Server Remote Connectivity AnalyzerOn Wednesday the Exchange team released the Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer tool. You can find it here: https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/. Yes I know it still says Beta, but it is released, which means that the test are MUCH more usable than before. This tool was written by support professionals FOR support professionals, so don't expect an award winning GUI, rather expect simple screens and work flows that add value ;) March 19 Update Roll-up 7If you don't know you do now. Roll-up 7 for SP1 has been released and you should get it asap here. If you use SCR and IMAP, then you definitely want to get it, but simple fact is - if you're running Exchange then patch! don't believe me? roll-up patch 7 fixes 50 separate issues that may be affecting you. Exchange 2007 SP1 offline helpExchange 2007 help is now available for offline browsing allowing you to read and search help and shell based help. Offline help files are severely useful under many circumstances including server sizing and shell syntax lookups, especially when you don't have Exchange 2007 admin tools installed or an Internet connection anywhere close to refer to. Download then and keep them close ;) Should You Virtualize Exchange 2007 SP1 ?REALLY good question - I'm glad you asked. The question isn't really SHOULD you anymore, however under what circumstances should you virtualize. Microsoft has released some great guidance as to why and under what circumstances virtualization is a good idea and under some circumstances why it should be actively encouraged. 4 Scenarios are discussed which include: The technical checklists at the end of the article are of great value as well, even if you're not considering any kind of virtual hardware but want to deploy physical hardware instead. Remember that you should never virtualize a workload on physical hardware that's not up to the task, and while I hear you say "DUH", I see it more often than not..... March 05 How to find mailboxes by sizeSo you need to find mailboxes that are larger or smaller than a certain size - how do you do it? In this example you need to find mailboxes smaller than an arbitrary number, maybe 450MB Quite simply by running the following Powershell command:
Powershell is really good at automatically converting the 450MB as 450 Mega Bytes and comparing it to "totalitemsize" by by default returns a number in bytes.
Finding oversized mailboxes is equally simple:
Notice that the only thing I changed what the -le (less than or equal to) switch to the -ge (greater than or equal to) switch. How can you find out what all the switches are?
After that you can export to csv, change all the mailbox settings all at once, etc,etc by simply piping the result into another commandlet, e.g.
March 02 Windows 2008 R2 - MoreIf you like my last blog post on the Active Directory Recycle Bin feature in Windows 2008 R2, then Aviraj Ajgekar's blog is for you. Avijar writes on Windows 2008 topics such as the Recycle bin, Offline Domain joins, Hyper-V in R2 etc. You may want to check out the rest of his blog as well...... February 24 Active Directory Recycle BinIf you don't know about this feature in Windows 2008 R2, then this may save your job one day. By Default the Active Directory Recycle Bin is switched off, and once enabled cannot be disabled - may want to think about that and the impact it has on replication and DIT sizes - However if you DON'T have cool third party tools to do your AD undeleting for you then you want to know about this. TechNet talks about this in two flavours, undeleting via LDP (yawn), or undeleting via PowerShell (Yaaaaaaaay). Think about it, undeleting 1000 objects in a gui that less then friendly, or having a greater measure of control via a script....... I don't think it'll be too long before the guys at PowerGui will have an awesome snap-in to make your lives easier! In the meantime, checkout the article: Active Directory Recycle Bin Step-by-Step Guide February 11 TechNet "How Do I?" VideosThe TechNet "How Do I?" Videos represent a huge amount of work on various topics, covering everything from Exchange, to Fore Front, OCS, PowerShell, Active Directory, Windows Server, Hyper-V and more. They certainly are worth a browse and you may even find me on one or two of them ;). Have a look at them here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/cc138021.aspx Update Rollup 6 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 ReleasedA few things in this rollup, but none as important as Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-003 - Critical . This bulletin actually covers a vulnerability that affects Exchange servers 2000, 2003 AND 2007 and is a relatively big deal, as specially crafted messages could cause remote code execution....... Anyone remember that SQL worm? January 14 Exchange 14 VideoGo see it here: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/01/13/450397.aspx Know this is a short post, but stop reading my post and go watch the video! December 18 Microsoft Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer
https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ is a Microsoft owned site which allows the testing of the following:
Note that not everything is working yet, I've had a few issues when testing the site, however it's definitely worth keeping an eye on. Thanks Microsoft! December 03 Updates to Exchange Server 2007 Mailbox Server Storage Cost CalculatorAn update to the Mailbox Server Storage Cost Calculator was published today. This brings the current version up to Version 4.0 If you spend any time building Exchange 2007 solutions, this should be part of your toolkit! Here's a snapshot of the post:
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