Exchange Exchange

The Windows 7 taskbar

Joel Stidley — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:09:00 GMT

I apologize right up front, this post has nothing to do with Exchange Server.

The Windows 7 taskbar is one of the coolest features of Windows 7. Although there were a number of subtle changes I liked in Windows Vista, the Windows 7 improvements are more useful than features like Flip 3D in Vista. Flip 3D looked great in demos but I just never used from day to day.

Windows Vista introduced the ability to mouse over the running applications in the taskbar and get a little thumbnail preview of what it is doing; however there are three important improvements in Windows 7.

First, as you mouse over grouped applications, Aero Peek will show the active application window and then hide all of the other application windows. This helps to pinpoint the selected application window more quickly. You can see in the following screenshot that as I moused-over one of the Internet Explorer thumbnails, Aero Peek shows the moused-over instance and hides all of the other active windows.

The second improvement, is the Thumbnail Toolbars. Some applications like Windows Media Player and the Zune Player offer a toolbar on the thumbnail, that allows you to interact with the application. As you can see in the screenshot the Zune player lets you pause, skip forward and back, and favorite the current song without having to bring up the full application.

Third, apart from hovering over the applications in the taskbar, some applications have a jump list menu. The jump list menu is accessed by right-clicking on the application on the taskbar and will provide a quick way to perform common tasks. For example the Outlook 2010 jump list gives the option to run tasks like creating a new e-mail message or a new task.

These little improvements and others go a long way to giving Windows 7 a fresh and fun feel, something that Windows has not had for far too long.

If you haven’t had a chance to work with Windows 7 yet, you can download a trial copy here. You can also read more about the interface improvements here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Exchange related programming.

Doing things with arrays (of Exchange databases) - and no, not disk arrays. Collection arrays.

Missy Koslosky — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:40:00 GMT

One of my customers has 18 information stores per server, and our support folks wanted online maintenance to start on a staggered schedule, with six dbs starting online maintenance at 11 pm, another 6 starting at midnight, and the last 6 starting at 1 am. Simple enough to do in the GUI, but I have four mailbox servers, and that's a lot of boring clicking. I don't like clicking.

So first, I needed to create an array of the databases. For simplicity's sake, I'm only going to show you how to do this by using an example set of six databases. In case it's not clear, you use the Exchange Management Shell to do the following steps. Note that the things you do in powershell are bolded here.

$mbdbs = "MBX01\SG01-DB01","MBX01\SG02-DB01","MBX01\SG03-DB01","MBX01\SG04-DB01","MBX01\SG05-DB01","MBX01\SG06-DB01"

I could have identified different servers, or all servers and all databases in the array. But we're keeping it simple here. Note that I did not call out the storage groups above - there's no need to. Now if all databases are named "First Mailbox Database", then you'd need to call out the SG name as well. I couldn't simply use the db names, as the db names are duplicated across the servers. If all of my dbs had different names, that would have made things a little simpler.

Next, I need to identify the servers in batches. Since I've changed the set of dbs from the 18 that I have in reality to the 6 I'm using here, we'll set online maintenance for groups of two, not six, databases at a time. There are a couple things I want to point out here, because if you're not familiar with how you can pull information from an array in powershell, then the below may seem like mumbo jumbo...

What we're doing is:

ForEach --> self-explanatory - for each item I'm calling

($db in $mdbs[0..1]) --> Wait! I didn't identify the $db variable anywhere. But hey, powershell is smart enough to know that, when presented the way I've presented it, an undeclared variable is an item being called. And then there are those funky brackets at the end. WTF? Well, what I'm doing with the numbers in the brackets is calling the first items in the array (note that arrays are weird, and the numbering of items within an array starts at 0, not 1). Because my example is only calling two dbs at a time, I could have used [0,1] in the brackets, but I wanted to show that the .. (dot dot) annotation between the numbers within the brackets tells powershell to call items 0 and 1 in the array. If it were [0..5] in the array (which it was in the original syntax I used), the first six items in the array would have been called.

{set-mailboxdatabase $db -blah --> here's the important stuff. We've gathered our databases, we've identified which ones we want to take action on, and now we're rolling with it. So for dbs 0 and 1 in the array ("MBX01\SG01-DB01","MBX01\SG02-DB01"), set the mailbox database's -blah. My example uses online maintenance, but whatever. It's getting the syntax right that's key. So here are the additional commands I'd use to complete my task:

ForEach ($db in $mbdbs[0..1]) {set-mailboxdatabase $db -maintenanceSchedule "Mon.11:00 PM-Tue.4:00 AM", "Tue.11:00 PM-Wed.4:00 AM", "Wed.11:00 PM-Thursday.4:00 AM", "Thursday.11:00 PM-Fri.4:00 AM", "Fri.11:00 PM-Sat.4:00 AM", "Sat.11:00 PM-Sun.11:00 PM", "Sun.11:00 PM-Mon.4:00 AM"}

ForEach ($db in $mbdbs[2..3]) {set-mailboxdatabase $db -maintenanceSchedule "Mon.12:00 PM-Tue.5:00 AM", "Tue.12:00 PM-Wed.5:00 AM", "Wed.12:00 PM-Thursday.5:00 AM", "Thursday.12:00 PM-Fri.5:00 AM", "Fri.12:00 PM-Sat.5:00 AM", "Sat.12:00 PM-Sun.12:00 PM", "Sun.12:00 PM-Mon.5:00 AM"}

ForEach ($db in $mbdbs[4..5]) {set-mailboxdatabase $db -maintenanceSchedule "Mon.1:00 AM-Mon.6:00 AM", "Tue.1:00 AM-Tue.6:00 AM", "Wed.1:00 AM-Wed.6:00 AM", "Thursday.1:00 AM-Thursday.6:00 AM", "Fri.1:00 AM-Fri.6:00 AM", "Sat.1:00 AM-Sat.6:00 AM", "Sun.1:00 AM-Sun.6:00 AM"}

For some reason, I originally thought that my problem was that I needed commas to appear when I called the array (to see what I mean, create an array, say $fish = carp,cod,trout,shad. Next, call the array by typing $fish. You should get a list as such, which is not what I thought I wanted. But it is, actually, okay:

carp

cod

trout

shad

Except the list will not have double spacing. :)

But anyway, I thought that my commands were failing because I needed a comma instead of a line break between the items in the array. Not so. When I tracked down the proper syntax (which I've shown you above), I felt like a big dork. But not too big a dork to not share the information. :)

Questions?

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Rollup Update 1 is available for download.

Joel Stidley — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:38:30 GMT

Hopefully you have done your testing and have moved to SP2 on your Exchange servers and are now ready to kill a few more bugs with this update.

You can download the update from here. As always be sure to test this update in your lab before rolling it into production, even if it fixes known issues for you.

Here is a list of a few of the more interesting and compelling updates included in this rollup:

958617 E-mail messages are blocked at the local delivery queue in an Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 environment if a user has Outlook client-side rules totaling more than 32 kilobytes (KB)
969046 E-mail messages are queued when you use the DNS round robin feature on multiple Exchange Server 2007 hub servers
971010 Some databases intermittently do not come back online when a cluster failover occurs in an Exchange Server 2007 CCR environment
971641 After you synchronize your mobile device to work with an Exchange Server 2007 server, the synchronization time and the request time are shown in UTC
972269 The Store.exe process hangs intermittently and all clients accessing the server are blocked in an Exchange 2007 environment
973190 The wrong attendee is removed in Scheduling Assistant when you remove attendees from a meeting request in Outlook Web Access server light version
974640 The whole calendar view is broken and an error message is returned when you view an exception occurrence of a private recurring meeting in OWA

You can find the entire list of fixes that are included in this rollup here.

Exchange exams and others are 15%-25% off

Joseph Nguyen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:58:00 GMT

Prometric is currently offering 15%-25% off for Microsoft exams. Both of the Exchange Technical Specialist exams (2007 and 2010) are 15% off. The Exchange 2007 IT Pro exams are 25% off. Get the vouchers for them and other Microsoft certification exams here, http://www.prometric.com/microsoft/careeroffer.htm.

Windows Mobile 6.5 and Exchange 2010

Missy Koslosky — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:33:00 GMT

I just got a new phone yesterday - an HTC Pure. It's a pretty sweet device. I dig the form factor, and we'll see if I can get used to not having an actual keyboard. Right now my (fairly normal for a girl-sized) fingers feel a little big for the screen-based keyboard. In any case, being the geek that I am, the first thing I did upon having the device activated was to set up ActiveSync for my personal e-mail account, which happens to be hosted by Microsoft on Exchange 2010. Next, I went and switched my facebook, twitter, and other accounts over to the new number (normally I'd have ported my old number, but we recently moved to Maryland from Bend, Oregon, and we wanted local cell numbers).

That was last night. This morning when I went to look at my e-mail, I noticed that all of a sudden the twitter feeds that I've subscribed to, along with facebook comments and such things, appeared in my mailbox. My Exchange mailbox. Odd.

So I went and did some googling (not bing-ing much these days, sorry MSFT) for terms like "forward sms e-mail account" and other too general search accounts. I thought it might be device-related, so I searched for ""HTC Pure" forward sms e-mail". No luck. It finally dawned on me that maybe it wasn't the device, but related to the operating system or new features (I'm quick like that). I've used WM 6.0 and 6.1, but hadn't really paid attention to 6.5, much less its integration with Exchange Server 2010, which has JUST RTM'ed and certainly isn't widely deployed at this point.

Ta-dah - when you set up ActiveSync in WM6.5, you might want to pay attention to the options for the folders you're synchronizing - I didn't pay much attention because I've always left all of the boxes there checked. Turns out that I should have paid more attention -- the newest checkbox is Text Messages - now that I have unchecked the box, my SMS messages stay where I want them, on my phone. I imagine I'd love this feature if a) I got fewer text messages, b) I couldn't have my cell phone with me all of the time, and/or c) I didn't send all sorts of twitter/facebook/etc. messages to SMS.

I think this is a really cool feature, it just isn't what I need today. But I'm glad it's there in case I need it tomorrow. :)

Exchange Server 2010 released to manufacturing

Joel Stidley — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:49:00 GMT

On October 8, 2009 the Microsoft Exchange product group signed off on the release of Exchange Server 2010, which means customer should have access to the build in the next few weeks.

What is new in Exchange Server 2010?

No more confusing choices between LCR/SCC/CCR/SCR, there is a unified HA option known as Database Availablity Group which takes the benefits of each and improves on it.
Self Management portal
Improved disk performance
Real Moderated groups
Mailtips
OCS integration into OWA (now called Outlook Web App)
Online mailbox moves
Calendar Federation (without having to use a product like MIIS aka ILM aka FIM)
And so much more!

Do you have a favorite new feature in Exchange Server 2010? Are you attending a local "New Efficiency" (www.thenewefficiency.com) event to get the low down on Exchange Server 2010?

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) released

Joel Stidley — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:56:00 GMT

This was actually release last month but I am a little behind in my blogging.

What is new in SP2?

Compatibility with Exchange Server 2010
Backup functionality is restored in Windows Server 2008
Auditing changes
Public Folder Quota management

Where can you get it? http://tinyurl.com/nnr58p

Sample Chapter 2: Exploring Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 of MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

Joel Stidley — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:24:00 GMT

Last week I posted Chapter 2: Installing Exchange Server 2007 of MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Exam 70-236. This week we have Chapter 2: Exploring Terminal Services of MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

Inside, find the full coverage you need to prepare for Exam 70-643: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure, Configuring, one of three specializations in the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification track. Inside, you'll find:

Full coverage of all exam objectives in a systematic approach, so you can be confident you're getting the instruction you need for the exam
Practical hands-on exercises to reinforce critical skills
Real-world scenarios that put what you've learned in the context of actual job roles
Challenging review questions in each chapter to prepare you for exam day
Exam Essentials, a key feature in each chapter that identifies critical areas you must become proficient in before taking the exam
A handy tear card that maps every official exam objective to the corresponding chapter in the book, so you can track your exam prep objective by objective

This week's sample is attached to this post. Please, let me know how you like it!

If you are looking to study for either of the exams you can order the books here:

Exchange 2007 70-236 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/TS70-236
Windows 2008 70-643 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/ts70-643

Sample Chapter 2: Installing Exchange Server 2007 of MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Exam 70-236

Joel Stidley — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:23:00 GMT

Last week I posted Chapter 1: Windows Server 2008 Storage Services from the 70-643 study guide. This week we have Chapter 2: Installing Exchange Server 2007 of MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Second Edition.

This study guide covers all of objectives in the 70-236 exam and includes new features introduced in Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1. There are a number of exercises in each chapter to help you gain experience with Exchange as well as numerous review and sample exam questions.

This week's sample is attached to this post. It is Chapter 2: Installing Exchange Server 2007 from the 70-236 book, let me know how you like it!

If you are looking to study for either of the exams you can order the books here:

Exchange 2007 70-236 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/TS70-236
Windows 2008 70-643 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/ts70-643

Sample Chapter 1: Windows Server 2008 Storage Services of MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

Joel Stidley — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:02:00 GMT

Last week I posted Chapter 1: Preparing for the Exchange Installation from the 70-236 study guide. This week we have Chapter 1: Windows Server 2008 Storage Services of MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

Full coverage of all exam objectives in a systematic approach, so you can be confident you're getting the instruction you need for the exam
Practical hands-on exercises to reinforce critical skills
Real-world scenarios that put what you've learned in the context of actual job roles
Challenging review questions in each chapter to prepare you for exam day
Exam Essentials, a key feature in each chapter that identifies critical areas you must become proficient in before taking the exam
A handy tear card that maps every official exam objective to the corresponding chapter in the book, so you can track your exam prep objective by objective

For two more weeks I will be posting a sample chapter from either MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Second Edition or the MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

This week's sample is attached to this post. It is Chapter 1 from the 70-643 book, let me know how you like it!

If you are looking to study for either of the exams you can order the books here:

Exchange 2007 70-236 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/TS70-236
Windows 2008 70-643 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/ts70-643

Sample Chapter 1: Preparing for the Exchange Installation for MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Exam 70-236

Joel Stidley — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:27:00 GMT

MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Second Edition was released this week.

With Exchange Server 2010 in development today, now is a great time to use what you already know to become Exchange certified.

For the next four weeks I will be posting a sample chapter from either MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide Second Edition or the MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-643.

This week's sample is attached to this post. It is Chapter 1: Preparing for the Exchange Installation from the 70-236 book, let me know how you like it!

If you are looking to study for either of the exams you can order the books here:

Exchange 2007 70-236 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/TS70-236
Windows 2008 70-643 study guide: http://tinyurl.com/ts70-643

Exchange 2010 Beta 1 News

Joel Stidley — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:59:00 GMT

Wow, the Interwebz is all a flutter with the tax day release of Exchange 2010 beta 1!

Here is a list someone else compiled of the press coverage:

Reviews

Microsoft Exchange 2010 Beta Looks Solid from Core to Cloud
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Includes Welcome Improvements) – eWeek
First look: Exchange 2010 beta shines – InfoWorld

News

Broader Office 14 testing coming by fall - CNet
Next Exchange features e-mail 'mute' button - CNet
Microsoft Brands Office 2010, Releases Exchange Beta – PC World / IDG
Microsoft fends off Google with Web browser-friendly Exchange 2010 - Computerworld
Microsoft to release Exchange 2010 beta on April 15 - ZDNet
Microsoft Exchange 2010 to address annoyances & mobility – Seattle PI
Next version of Microsoft Office coming in 2010 - AP
It's Office 2010: First technical previews due in Q3 - BetaNews

Exchange Server 2010 Beta Available

Joel Stidley — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:55:00 GMT

Wow, I echo a few of my fellow bloggers feelings that being able to blog about Exchange 2010 has been a long time coming. And the news comes on the day that Exchange 2003 goes into extended support. My company has been working with and running E14 for a number of months now and can tell you that it is a truly compelling version of Exchange.

If your company is still hanging on to Exchange Server 2003, you will want to consider moving to Exchange 2010 when it is released.

Why do I say that? Well there are still portions of the product that are NDA but the things that I can mention that are exciting:

Full multi-browser OWA support (see pic below)
Even lower I/O requirements (yes even lower than Exchange 2007)!
Better High Availability Options (more details to come)
Self-service options with Exchange Control Panel (ECP)
PowerShell 2.0 Support

You can download beta 1 of Exchange 2010 from Microsoft here. If you have questions be sure to vist the ExchangeExchange forums or the official TechNet forums for help.

Who says there are no jobs?

Joel Stidley — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:21:09 GMT

The company that I work for is still trying to find qualified people for some key positions within the company. To help find the right people, they are having an open house April 16, 2009 in Plano, TX. If you are in the area, a tech person and looking to work for a company (yes I know you might have to deal with me), please register to attend! The official invitation is below:

Terremark Worldwide invites you to join us for an Open House on Thursday, April 16, 2009 in Plano. We are celebrating our revolutionary cloud computing platform, The Enterprise Cloud™, which gives unprecedented control and flexibility to provision computing resources for your own mission-critical applications in minutes, not days. Come find out what Terremark is all about, meet our leadership from across the country, see live demos of The Enterprise Cloud™, and talk to our team about how you can go beyond the grind and work with top technology minds in the industry. Terremark Worldwide (NASDAQ:TMRK) deploys the latest technology in managing mission critical infrastructure and online applications to government, enterprise, and Web 2.0 customers. We offer a comprehensive suite of solutions including managed hosting, colocation, cloud computing, network, and security services. Open House will be held from 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. at
Marriott Legacy Town Center 7120 Dallas Parkway Plano, TX 75024 San Jancito Ballroom

Current and future opportunities companywide include:

Windows/Unix Support Engineers (Dallas)	Security Admin (Miami)
Implementation Manager (Dallas)	Security NOC Engineer (Miami)
Team Lead/Manager, Escalations (Dallas)	Federal Hosting Sales (Herndon)
User Experience Engineer (Dallas)	Federal Contracts Manager (Herndon)
.NET Developer (Dallas)	Federal Proposal Manager (Herndon)
Hosting Product Line Manager (Dallas)	Federal Financial Analyst (Herndon)
Facilities Engineer (Santa Clara)	Data Center Technicians (Santa Clara)

For more information and to register, please visit www.terremarkregistration.com/openhouse. Registration is not mandatory but is strongly encouraged. No third party vendors or recruiters, please.

Webcasts: Clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Getting started with clustering

Joel Stidley — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:19:00 GMT

There is a flurry of information over at the Microsoft clustering blog. I'm a little late posting this as some of the sessions have been given, however all of the webcasts will be available to watch on demand. If you are new to clustering you may find one of these sessions useful:

Introduction to Failover Clustering (Level 100)

Presenter: Symon Perriman, Program Manager, Clustering & HA

Air Date: March 18^th | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407190&Culture=en-US

Overview: High availability, disaster recovery, fault tolerance. If these words are not in your IT department's vocabulary, your organization is probably unprepared to deal with the inevitable—server downtime. Attend this webcast to learn about Windows Server 2008 R2 failover clustering, a high-availability solution from Microsoft. Failover clustering connects servers and monitors the health of the servers and the applications running on servers. In the event of a server failure, applications can fail over to another server and continue running with minimal interruption to your mission-critical applications. We cover the basics of failover clustering in this webcast, and we provide the information to help you get a failover cluster configured and deployed in a matter of hours.

High Availability Basics with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V (Level 200)

Presenter: Steven Ekren, Senior Program Manager, Clustering & HA

Air Date: March 19^th | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407222&Culture=en-US

Overview: Virtualization is a hot topic on customers' minds. But what happens if you consolidate a number of servers into virtual machines, put them on a single host computer, and that computer fails? All your eggs are in one basket, so to speak, and users may not be able to access critical information. To avoid scenarios like this, high availability has become part of the virtualization discussion for organizations of all sizes, not just large Fortune 500 companies. Be sure you have the necessary knowledge to discuss high availability and virtualization with your customers. If you are new to failover clustering, this webcast is for you. We provide step-by-step instruction on configuring a highly available virtualization solution with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and failover clustering features.

Or if you are wondering what's changing in Windows Server 2008 R2 you may want to attend/view these:

Failover Clustering Feature Roadmap for Windows Server 2008 R2 (Level 300)

Presenter: Elden Christensen, Senior Program Manager Lead, Clustering & HA

Air Date: March 26^th | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407235&Culture=en-US

Overview: Come and learn about all the new Failover Clustering enhancements that are going to be delivered in Windows Server 2008 R2 code name "Windows Server 7" operating system. In this webcast, we drill into incremental improvements from Windows Server 2008 to the cluster validation tool, Windows PowerShell support, the new cluster configuration program, and other exciting features.

Innovating High Availability with Cluster Shared Volumes (Level 300)

Presenter: Steven Ekren, Senior Program Manager, Clustering & HA

Air Date: April 2^nd | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407238&Culture=en-US

Overview: In this webcast, we provide an overview of the new Cluster Shared Volumes code name "Centipede" failover clustering feature in the Windows Server 2008 R2 code name "Windows Server 7" operating system. Join us to learn how the Windows Server cluster storage architecture is innovating to enable Hyper-V virtualization technology, a new and significant enhancement planned for "Windows Server 7" that is creating a lot of excitement. This is a session you don't want to miss.

Multi-Site Clustering with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (Level 300)

Presenter: Ahmed Bisht, Senior Program Manager, Clustering & HA

Air Date: April 9^th | Air Time: 10am-11am PST

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407242&Culture=en-US

Overview: As the Windows Server operating system becomes more accepted in large-scale, high-end, mission-critical IT environments, the requirements for disaster tolerance and business continuance become more and more important. In this webcast, we discuss how you can build a fault-tolerant, high-availability server solution with Windows Server 2008 failover clustering that also facilitates disaster recovery.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2009/03/18/9488114.aspx