Sometimes you may have the discussion if it is supported to place these files on fileserver so they can be accessed via a LAN/WAN connection. The answer for this is no, it isn’t officially supported by Microsoft. But when you will try it in your environment it will work, so what are the reasons it isn’t supported?

The PST, OST and PAB files will be accessed by a method called file-access-driven. With this method special file access commands will be offered by the OS to read and write files. For writing files to local disks this is an excellent method but when writing to a fileserver via a LAN/WAN another method is used. This method is called network-access-driven and uses specific command from the OS to send/receive data from/to other systems which are connected to the network.

But what does Outlook when a PST is located on the network? Outlook will first try to use the file-access driven commands to read/write to the file. Because the file is not on the local disk but on the network, the OS will send the network-access-driven commands to the server where the file is located.

This will cause a lot of time  for the process to be completed because of all the extra steps.

Besides the performance issues you might  get there are some other things which you should keep in mind:

• files can get corrupted caused by network issues
• writing- can take 4 times longer then read actions

If you want to get more information after reading this have a look at the sides below:

Ask the Performance team: Network stored PST files …. don’t do it! open
Configuring Outlook for Roaming Users open

Gepost in Exchange ~ Geen Reactie

Because Microsoft hasn’t released the new version of the Exchange Supportability Matrix I decided to create my own updated version. This “new” version is created using the information found on Technet. If your missing something please let me know so I can update it:

Release Model

Supported Operating System Platforms

* only for Exchange Management Tools
** only for Exchange 2000/2003 System Manager
*** only with Exchange 2003 System Manager for Windows Vista

Supported Active Directory Environments

* Only Rollup 9 or higher for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1, or later

Supported Web Browsers

* Requires Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
** Requires the hotfix that is described in Knowledge Base article 963664
*** Requires the hotfix that is described in Knowledge Base article 911829
**** Safari 3.1 only for Mac OS

Supported Web Browsers for using with smime

* Hotfix Knowledge Base article 963664 required
** Rollup 8 voor Exchange 2007 SP1 required
*** Hotfix Knowledge Base article 924334 required

Supported clients

* Enable encryption on Outlook profile
** WebDav: Contacts, Events, IMAP: Mail
*** WebDav
**** Rollup 4 for Exchange 2007 SP1 required

Supported .NET versions

* .NET Framework 2.0 Post-RTM Rollup required
** Only applicable when upgrading from .NET 2.0
*** .NET Framework 3.5 and 3.5SP1 contain the supported .NET versions

Supported Powershell versions

Supported MMC

Supported Windows Installer

Gepost in Exchange ~ Geen Reactie

Today I had a nice issue at a customer site who tried to install Exchange in a test environment. First I will give a short introduction. Let’s say you have an AD forest which contains a child domain where you want to host Exchange in. You first will need to do some things in the forest before you can install Exchange in the child domain. You will start with the schema upgrade followed by the forest prep. As last step you will prepare the child domain and you could start the Exchange setup to install Exchange.

Normally you will use the same media for all servers, but in Exchange 2007 this can be different. This because Exchange 2007 had a 32-bit version which could be used in test environments or to prepare the schema/forest on a 32-bit DC.

You may think aaahhh that happened ?? Everything was done via the correct steps but when starting the Exchange installation via the GUI the following errors were displayed in the log:

[2/7/2010 11:30:46 PM] [0] Setup has chosen the local domain controller dc.ota.company.corp for initial queries
[2/7/2010 11:30:46 PM] [0] PrepareAD has either not been run or has not replicated to the domain controller used by Setup. Setup will attempt to use the Schema Master domain controller dc.company.corp
[2/7/2010 11:30:46 PM] [0] The schema master domain controller is available

So first checked if the servers can connect to eachother which was no issue. After trying some things we decided to move the schema master to the child domain to look if that would help. But this was also a no go and gave the following warnings:

[2/8/2010 3:32:34 PM] [1] [ERROR] PrepareDomain for domain ota has partially completed. Because of your Active Directory site configuration, you must wait for forest-wide replication to occur, and then run PrepareDomain for ota again.
[2/8/2010 3:32:34 PM] [1] [ERROR] Active Directory operation failed on dc.ota.company.corp. This error is not retriable. Additional information: The specified group type is invalid.
Active directory response: 00002141: SvcErr: DSID-031A0FC0, problem 5003 (WILL_NOT_PERFORM), data 0

Waiting for 15 minutes didn’t fix the issue so we reversed all changes and I decided to start the Exchange setup via the GUI on the schema master. Then I saw the issue immidiatly the files used on the schema master were files for Exchange 2007 RTM and not for Exchange 2007 SP1. After using that files it worked without any issues.

It was a nice jigsaw after all.

Gepost in Exchange 2007 ~ Geen Reactie

I had a nice issue during the installation of Forefront for Exchange 2010. It began with an issue with the pre-release which caused the Exchange Transport service to stop after a failed update of Forefront. This had as result that several Forefront services didn’t start anymore. As the Exchange Transport service is dependent on the Forefront service this had as result that this service didn’t start anymore also. Which caused no mails could be send and received.

As the RTM is released it was a nice moment to install that one. So first removed the pre-release so this couldn’t cause any issues. After this the problems began, the first steps went OK till I reached the prerequisite check. This gave the following error:

First I checked the group membership of the user, these were:

• local administrator
• domain administrator
• Exchange organization management groep

So this couldn’t cause issues because this should be enough. So I tried to connect to the domain controller on specific ports which was no issue at all. You may ask why does the setup needs to reach the domain controller? Well during the setup the computeraccount needs to be added to the Exchange Hygiene Management group. Because we had to make some changes in the firewall so the servers could reach some other domain controllers in another location.

As last step I wanted to show a collegue the issue and was surprised when the setup continued. So we started to investigate the issue. The problem was that the Exchange server couldn’t reach the domain controller which had the PDC and RID Master FSMO roles.

Now everything is fixed I can look back at a good learning moment en why the pre-release installation worked ? All servers where in the same location when that happened.

Gepost in Exchange 2010 ~ Geen Reactie

Microsoft has released rollup 2 for Exchange 2007 SP2, this rollup contains several fixes among which:

• CAS server becomes slower when a user access a folder with a lot of content
• Meetings will be displayed as all day events while this is not the case when synchronized via a mobile device
• log and database increase abnormally
• mails which need to be send to remote domains get stuck in the queue

These are a few of the fixes in Rollup 2 for a complete overview you can visit the following site.

open

Gepost in Exchange 2007 ~ Geen Reactie

Almost all software vendors have updated their backup software so it can backup Exchange 2010. Because there are a lot of packages I decided to create a small overview:

Gepost in Exchange 2010 ~ Geen Reactie

Since Exchange 2007 it’s possible to use your OCS and Exchange together. First you had only the option to use your OCS environment with the Exchange UM server which let you use the voicemail, subscriber access and auto attendant features from Exchange in OCS

The latest addition to this is a limited OCS client integrated in OWA. This gives you the ability to send IM messages via OWA and gives you the option to see precense information.

In this tutorial I will explain how you can install this new feature.

open

Gepost in Tutorials ~ Geen Reactie

E-mailaddress policies always funny to work with them, sometimes you will have to puzzle a bit. Since Exchange 2007 you will have the possibility to use a wizard to create an e-mailaddress policy. Within the wizard a few templates are created which you can use. But sometimes you might want to create your own template. In that case you can use the following parameters:

• %s : surename
• %g : givenname
• %i : initials
• %d : display name 
• %m : Exchange 2003 alias
• %rxy : replaces the character after the r with the last character, in this example x is replaced by y.

As you can see you can use several parameters but what if you would like to use only the first 2 characters of the givenname. This can be simply done by adding the number 2 before the g, so %2g. Let’s give some examples, our user has the following name Piet van der Kolk.

• %d : pietvanderkolk@domain.com
• %g.%s : piet.vanderkolk@domain.com
• %1g.%s : p.vanderkolk@domain.com
• %g.%r .%s : p.van.der.kolk@domain.com

If you would like to have more examples then have a look at the site below. The site is made for Exchange 2003 but the parameters can still be used in Exchange 2010:

Technet – How to modify an SMTP E-Mail Address by Using Recipient Policies open

Gepost in Exchange 2010 ~ Geen Reactie

In Exchange 2010 the transport rules functionality have been expanded, as the configuration of Hub servers is saved in the AD transport rules will also be saved there. This has an advantage that multiple Hub servers in the same Exchange organization can use these transport rules.

When having an Edge server this is a little bit more complicated because the Edge is not a member of the AD and has a local ADLDS which makes replication not possible. If you have one Edge it’s not a very big problem to configure the transport rules again. But if you have multiple Edge servers this can be a very time consuming job. In this case you can use the commands Export-TransportRuleCollection and Import-TransportRuleCollection. You can run both commands on both the Hub and Edge transport servers.

With the command below we ensure that we make an export of the transport rules to the export directory which is located on our local harddrive.

$file = Export-TransportRuleCollection
Set-Content -Path “C:\Export\TransportRules.xml” -Value $file.FileData -Encoding Byte

Next step is to copy the xml file to the other Edge servers and run the import command.

[Byte[]]$Data = Get-Content -Path “C:\Import\TransportRules.xml” -Encoding Byte -ReadCount 0
Import-TransportRuleCollection -FileData $Data

This will import the transportrules.xml on the server.

When you make a lot of changes to transport rules it might be usefull to create a script which exports and imports the transport rules.

Below an example script to export the transport rules. This script uses a batch and a Powershell file, the batch is used in the scheduled task to automaticaly run the export, you can also choose to copy the complete command from the batch and place it in the scheduled task. The scheduled task can then be executed every hour or every day depending on your needs. When the command has been executed an entry will be made in the application log. One remark on this script is that you will need to share the export folder and give the account who executes the scheduled task the correct permissions on it:

exporttransportrules.cmd
PowerShell.exe -command “. ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\bin\RemoteExchange.ps1′; Connect-ExchangeServer -auto; C:\Export\exporttransportrules.ps1″

exporttransportrules.ps1
$file = Export-TransportRuleCollection
Set-Content -Path “C:\Export\TransportRules.xml” -Value $file.FileData -Encoding Byte
$evt=new-object System.Diagnostics.EventLog(“Application”)
$evt.Source=”Export transport rules”
$infoevent=[System.Diagnostics.EventLogEntryType]::Information
$evt.WriteEntry(“Transport rules have been exported”,$infoevent,70)

OK now we have the export part we also need to import part:

importtransportrules.cmd
PowerShell.exe -command “. ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\bin\RemoteExchange.ps1′; Connect-ExchangeServer -auto; C:\Import\importtransportrules.ps1″

importtransportrules.ps1
[Byte[]]$Data = Get-Content -Path “\\sourceserver\export\TransportRules.xml” -Encoding Byte -ReadCount 0
Import-TransportRuleCollection -FileData $Data
$evt=new-object System.Diagnostics.EventLog(“Application”)
$evt.Source=”Import transport rules”
$infoevent=[System.Diagnostics.EventLogEntryType]::Information
$evt.WriteEntry(“Transport rules have been imported”,$infoevent,70)

The import part is almost the same, only the export-transportrulecollection has been changed to import-transportrulecollection and the path to import has been changed to point to the source server.

But what happens in a co-existentse environment where you have transport rules in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010. As described earlier these transport rules are saved in the Active Directory for Hub servers, in Exchange 2010 this is another location as for Exchange 2007. During the setup the transport rules will be converted and placed in the right location. When the installation has finished both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 have the same set of transport rules. But when you like to make changes to the transport rules you will need to make this change in both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.

To export the Exchange 2007 transport rules only on a 2010 Hub server execute the following command:

$ file = Export-TransportRuleCollection -ExportLegacyRules
Set-Content -Path “C:\Export\LegacyRules.xml” -Value $file.FileData -Encoding Byte

If you like to have more info about the commands then have a look at the sites mentioned below:

Technet Export-TransportRuleCollection open
Technet Import-TransportRuleCollection open

Gepost in Exchange 2010 ~ Geen Reactie

Last months you may receive spam which looks like to be sent from an account from your own domain. When you investigate the issue you will discover that this it not the case. But why does Exchange doesn’t do something with this kind of spam. I found the answer on Exchangepedia blog. Each mail which is received from the internet will be accepted with the anonymous user, when removing this user from the connector you won’t be able to receive mail from the internet. This account has some rights which are needed, one of these rights is the Ms-Exch-Accept-Authoritative-Domain-Sender which ensure that every session which contains a message from an authoritative domain will not be checked.

To prevent this you will need to remove some rights from the connector by using the following command:

Get-ReceiveConnector “Internet” | Get-ADPermission -user “NT AUTHORITY\Anonymous Logon” | where {$_.ExtendedRights -like “ms-exch-smtp-accept-authoritative-domain-sender”} | Remove-ADPermission

Please keep in mind that this also will have some consequences for other applications/devices which will use this connector using the anonymous user. For this application/devices you will need to create a separate connector.

Gepost in Exchange 2007 ~ Geen Reactie