Here is a little background about the week numbers:

Week number according to the ISO-8601 standard, weeks starting on Monday. The first week of the year is the week that contains that year’s first Thursday. The highest week number in a year is either 52 or 53 and outlook is fully compliant to this specification.

Normally, when we configure the outlook profile we do not pay much attention to a very small calendar setting which actually manages all this week number related stuff. Its pretty simple to configure. In common situations the calendar is configured to use the 1 Jan of the year as the first week of the year. Which results in this mismatch of outlook calendar numbering.

 To correct it you can simply go to 

Tools –> Options –> Calendar Options –>

This rollup update has 53 fixes for recently identified bugs in the application. The complete list of fixes is available at Description of Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2

A major difficulty that most of the people  have faced during configuring the OWAVirtual directory on Exchange 2010 servers in co-existence with Exchange 2007 has also been fixed in this rollup update.

Read more about the Rollup Update – Released: Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2

Download the Rollup Update – Microsoft Download Center

 I am glad to present this Rapid Transition Guide From Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.

This guide will walk you through the most important considerations and steps that you need to perform before, during, and after the deployment of Exchange 2010 server.

This guide is written for the IT administrators of an existing Exchange 2003 organization which contains small to medium scale deployments.

This guide mainly focuses on a typical transition of Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 environment which includes the transition of Exchange 2003 backend and front end servers to Exchange 2010 mailbox server role, client access server role and hub transport server role installed using the typical installation method.

You can download this transition guide from Here

I will appreciate your comments and feedback on this guide. Please feel free to drop me an email at geek @ msexchangegeek . com if you think this guide has some important content missing.

In above setup the domain controller is also an Enterprise Root CA. I requested a new certificate from my internal CA and wanted to import it and then enable it for services on my Exchange server 2010 box. Something was going wrong and the certificate didn’t have a private key. After downloading the certificate the certificate had that “You have a private key that corresponds to this certificate.” missing from certificate. Just as shown below

Now the trouble was the pending request in EMC could yet import this certificate but didn’t let me assign it to the services. After spending good 2 hours at my own I found a solution at https://support.comodo.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=1188

So here is the simplest way to overcome this problem.

• Download the certificate and store it at some place on the server.
• Click Start –> Run and then type MMC, press Enter.
• In the MMC Snap In click File Menu and then select Add/Remove Snap-in… 
• Select Certificates.
• Click Add button.
• Select Computer account from the popped up dialog box.
• Click Finish and click OK
• Expand Certificates –> Personal –> Certificates

• Right click in the right hand side pane of the MMC Snap-in and select All Tasks –> Import…

• Specify the file path in the wizard that will pop up and Finish the wizard.
• You should see the certificate that has the little golden key icon missing. The other certificate you may see is the self-signed certificate generated during exchange installation.

• Now double click on the newly imported certificate and select the Details tab.
• Click Serial Number and write down this value or simply copy and paste it into a notepad file. Please note that you will not be allowed to copy using mouse. You can use Ctrl+C instead.

• Open command prompt and type certutil –repairestore my “serial number of certificate” and press enter.

• Now, refresh the Certificates MMC and you should see the private key paired with the certificate.

• In Certificates MMC right click on the same certificate and select All Tasks –> Export…

• Export this certificate into a .pfx file with below options selected during the export wizard.

• Yes, Export the private key on Export Private Key page.
• Include all certificates in certification path if possible on Export File Format page.
• Export all extended properties on Export File Format page.
• Enter the password.
• Select the path where the pfx file will be stored and complete the wizard.

[PS] C:\>Import-ExchangeCertificate -FileData ([Byte[]]$(Get-Content -Path "C:\Users\Administrator.EXCHANGE\Desktop\exchangecert.pfx" -Encoding byte -ReadCount 0)) -Password:(Get-Credential).password

The credentials prompt will pop up. Enter the credentials as the currently logged on user and the password that was specified for the pfx file during export. If the credentials are correct the output should be as below:

Next, you can enable this certificate for the services you want to use it for. Again, simply open the EMS and run Enable-ExchangeCertificate -Server ‘EXCHANGE2010′ -Services ‘IMAP, POP, IIS, SMTP’ -Thumbprint ‘E7DD3356F1DC4359D9AAFD18BC7E36C06C7FC418′

You can download this tool from HP’s website directly. Here is the download location: HP Sizer for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

To read the primary documentation and introduction of the tool you can also logon to http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/us/en/sizers/microsoft-exchange-server-2010.html

It is our great pleasure to announce the formation of Microsoft Unified Communications – User Group, India. “Microsoft Unified Communication User Group – India” is an independent group is focussed on encouraging communication between IT Professionals motivated by self-interest in Microsoft Unified Communication products like…

• Microsoft Exchange Server
• Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS)
• SharePoint Server (MOSS & WSS)

We understand the value of networking & knowledge transfer and would like to take opportunity to assist and inspire all Unified Communication IT Professionals through this platform. This User Group is designed as an Information Resource where Unified Communication Professionals can find:

• Articles,
• How-To(s),
• Technical Videos,
• Unified Communication Industry News,
• Forums (to discuss technical things),
• New Product features and
• Product understanding.

Though this User Group is based out of India, there will be no regional boundaries as “Microsoft Unified Communication User Group – India” will host Virtual Monthly Meetings regularly and occasional In-person Events to increase the awareness of Microsoft Unified Communication products. We will also host guest speakers comprising of Experts in the Unified Communications space.

We welcome your contributions and memberships along with your valuable feedback for the site.

Visit @ http://muc-ug.org.in

Register @ http://muc-ug.org.in/index.php/join-us.html

Invite Friends @ http://www.muc-ug.org.in/index.php/invite-friends.html

RSS Feeds

MUC-UG.org.in @ http://feeds.feedburner.com/muc-ug
News @ http://feeds.feedburner..com/muc-ug-news
Events @ http://feeds.feedburner.com/muc-ug-events
Articles & How-Tos @  http://feeds.feedburner.com/muc-ug-articles-howtos

Please feel free to get in touch with us for any of your feedbacks or queries.

Warm Regards,

Leaders @ MUC-UG, India

http://muc-ug.org.in

MS Exchange Team announced the a new tool as a replacement of this and called it ExFolders. ExFolders is just a port of PFDAVAdmin, says Bill Long on Exchange Team blog. The tool is available for download from http://msexchangeteam.com/files/12/attachments/entry453398.aspx

Preserving the old interface of PFDAVAdmin they have added few more features into the new tool and some changes in the way the tool should be used. You can learn more about ExFolders Here

To learn more about EDA you can visit Exchange Deployment Assistant page.

Currently the tool is supporting Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 upgrade path only. Hopefully, other transition and upgrade paths will be available soon.

Please do feel free to comment if I have missed on adding something here.

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Additional Information

Before you install Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft recommends that you review the summary of system requirements and technical information located in the Exchange Server 2010 Technical Documentation Library.

Expiration Notice

This time-limited version of Exchange Server 2010 will end 120 days after installation. 
Learn more about Exchange Server 2010, visit http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010.

So download, install and enjoy testing!!

Before even going to start installation of your Exchange 2010 server you still need to consider few things like; the support for legacy exchange clients like outlook 2003, and the legacy routing server which is supposed to be a bridgehead server in your exchange 2003 organization. Once you have made a decision about these things you can now proceed to installation. In my previous post I said it would be easier for your to go with GUI based installation but if you are planning to install support for legacy outlook clients you will need a public folder database which is not created by Exchange 2010 by default and you have to choose this manually. So, in this case I would prefer and also recommend going with a setup.com command line installer which is full of features (command line options) and can also be scripted if required. A notable thing here is if you really want to enable the legacy outlook support on an exchange 2010 server you must specify when you install the first Exchange 2010 server in the organization. By any chance if you have skipped this stage of defining this requirement you can create a public folder database manually and then replicate Free busy  public folders to this new database on your Exchange 2010 PF database.

So, are you prepared? If you think you are then lets start installing the first Exchange 2010 box in the org. I will do it both ways, the command way and the GUI. Due to restrictions of hardware resources I installed just a server with MBX, CAS and HT roles on it. So here is how I did it.

Command line (cmd.exe) from powershell on Windows 2008 R2 –

Setup.com /mode:Install /roles:CA,HT,MB /EnableLegacyOutlook /LegacyRoutingServer:Exchange2003.msexchanagegeek.com /ExternalCASServerDomain:mail.msexchangegeek.com

Above command line will install CAS, HT, and MBX roles on the box where it is going to enable the legacy outlook support by creating a public folder database on it. /LegacyRoutingServer refers to a bridgehead server in your existing Exchange 2003 organization. You can specify the FQDN of this server after the switch. /ExternalCASServerDomain will be the domain that will be pointing to your Exchange CAS server.

In GUI you get above mentioned options at following screens. Exchange 2010 RC GUI didn’t provide any option to specify the legacy outlook support though.

Now once you have selected these two very important options you can simply read through the GUI wizard and proceed with other steps and start installation.

Once the setup is completed open the EMC and notice the following things. You will see a public folder database generated during installation

and the domain name that you used for your CAS server:

Here is something interesting, if you ever asked yourself a question that why would exchange 2010 setup ask you to provide this information about the external domain name then the answer is below figure. Exchange setup will automatically use this name in the properties dialog box of the OWA website and you don’t need to configure it manually unless there are any changes in your domain name.

The next step is to verify the mail flow between legacy server and the newly installed Exchange 2010 as well as the OWA accessibility. In my current setup I have Administrator’s mailbox on legacy server and the Exchange Geek’s mailbox on Exchange 2010 server.

Once this is confirmed that both users can send and receive email to each other its time to configure something that can allow users to connect to their legacy mailboxes even after using the https://mail.msexchangegeek.com/owa domain name. Exchange 2010 OWA will not open the legacy mailboxes for you yet it can help you with redirection to the legacy exchange OWA URL. To set this run

[PS] C:\>Set-OwaVirtualDirectory -Identity "owa (Default Web Site)" -Exchange2003Url https://mail.msexchangegeek.com/exchange

To perform this operation you must have SSL enabled on your Exchange 2003 OWA website as well as the form based authentication configured.Though the redirection will take place automatically on Exchange 2010 you must configure your ISA boxes or firewalls for this redirection.

In next part I will write about rest of the stuff about configuration like OAB and Free/Busy information and other. Till then do let me know if you find any kind of documentation bug or mistakes in the posted entries.

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Though it can be installed with the legacy version of Exchange there are certain pre-requisites you must fulfil. In this post we are trying to uncover the installation method of Exchange 2010 in an existing Exchange 2003 Organization. So, even before you start installing Exchange 2010 you have to do some preparation on your Exchange 2003 side. Very important and must be understood fact about Exchange 2010 is it can not be installed with any other version of Exchange prior to Exchange Server 2003 SP2. So, if you have an Exchange 2000 Server and planning to transit to Exchange 2010 you must upgrade it to Exchange 2003 SP2 first. Following table illustrates the supportability of co-existence:

Once you have understood the supportability of the Exchange 2010 setup and you think that you are good to go, you will have to work a little bit on your Exchange 2003 organization first of all. So, this work out will contain raising the AD DFL, AD FFL and Exchange 2003 org functional level.

1. The first step would be raise your AD Forest Functional Level and AD Domain Functional Level to Windows Server 2003 at least. After changing the DFL or FFL you may need to wait till the replication in your entire AD forest completes.

2. You must change your Exchange 2003 org to operate only in Native Mode. That means it simply discards the support to any Exchange 5.5 servers in your Exchange 2003 org. If you are still running Exchange 5.5 site with your Exchange 2003 it must be migrated over to Exchange 2003 and then decommissioned before changing your Exchange 2003 org mode. To change your Exchange 2003 org to native mode, right click on your Org Name in ESM and select Properties. The Org Properties dialog box appears. Click on the Change Mode button. You will be warned that this setting is irreversible.

3. Considering your AD health, replication and DNS are working absolutely fine you can now think of starting for Exchange 2010 preparation. So what we need here to install Exchange 2010 is either Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 which is available only in 64 bit flavour and of course powerful enough hardware to install a 64 bit architecture OS on it. The minimum and recommended system requirements can be found at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/aa996719(en-us,EXCHG.149).aspx

4. Assuming that you have already setup a Windows Server box installed Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 on it, its time to configure it to install Exchange 2010 on it. Here, you might notice that Exchange 2010 will still support Windows Server 2008 but it must be installed with SP2. Exchange 2010 can support both of these operating system versions. Yet, the OS configuration part varies due to changes in architecture of both versions. Though the software component prerequisites remain the same on both versions they have their own ways to configure these components. Microsoft already has a publication on technet which talks about the ways to install these software prerequisites. They can be found at Exchange 2010 Prerequisites. It is highly recommended that you should run Windows Update before starting an install of Exchange 2010. Windows update will download all the latest updates for the software components.

Natively, Exchange 2010 will require following software installed on a Windows box:

1. .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 – Exchange code base is built on .Net Framework 3.5 where the Exchange 2007 had it built around 2.0 (Not required to be installed on Windows 2008 R2)

2. Windows Remote Management Tools 2.0 and Power shell V2 (Not required to be installed on Windows 2008 R2)

3. 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack. (Required to be installed on the servers hosting mailbox server role or hub transport server role)

Apart from these additional software below is the list of required software components need to be installed:

5. As you already have an Exchange 2003 organization setup and running, its now time to setup your first Exchange 2010 server in co-existence. If you have already worked a Exchange 2007 setup you might have been knowing to run the legacy exchange permissions preparation. Yes, in Exchange 2010 you still need to run that switch with setup.com to prepare the legacy exchange permissions. There is a known issue detected when Exchange 2007 was a RTM release that the direct install of Exchange 2007 will break the RUS permissions on Exchange 2003. Which results into RUS not stamping email addresses on new Exchange objects. The detailed information is give at Preparing Legacy Exchange Permissions

6. Wait for replication to complete and then you can go ahead with another step of preparing the forest schema. Indeed that’s again similar to Exchange 2007 /PrepareSchema.

You can see the new schema objects being inserted into the Schema partition while the setup goes on or after its completion.

7. Once you are done with all above steps now its time to install Exchange Binaries which actually form a Windows Server 2008 box to an Exchange server. At this stage you can either chose to go with the GUI based installation or simply with the command prompt. GUI based installation is always simpler method to go with as it avoids confusions many times. I prefer using command like but for those who are not very comfortable with powershell or command line tools its a good practice to use GUI as far as possible.

Now, before you start installing make sure that you have met all the software component prerequisites on the exchange 2010 box. Again, you may refer the link Exchange 2010 Prerequisites

In the next part of this post I will explain on how to install and what to configure on Exchange 2010 side as there isn’t much that you have to modify in an existing Exchange 2003 server. So stay tuned and do post your comments and your opinion about this post.

 Related Posts:

Installing Exchange Server 2010 in Mixed Mode Environment – Part 2

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Though this feature is good for security reasons it may be annoying for many users who use OWA regularly and they may not want to enter the password several times after the time out. This can settled down with a simple registry tweak on the CAS box that runs your Internet facing OWA site. This can be done by following registry modification.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeOWA

Name: PublicTimeout

Type: DWORD

Value: {value in minutes} (This value is 15 minutes by default)

The above suggestion applies only when the user selects the Public Computer option from the OWA logon screen. For the user who select the Private Computer from the logon screen you might want to modify:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeOWA

Name: PrivateTimeout

Type: DWORD

Value: {value in minutes} (This value is 8 hours by default)

If you don’t see the DWORD values named, PublicTimeout and PrivateTimeout then you have create then manually.

As we all know that System Attendant mailbox was used to publish the free/busy info and the link monitoring service in earlier versions of Exchange. In Exchange 2010 it the mailbox object for System Attendant has been removed. Yet, you can locate the directory object for System Attendant in Active Directory. Per a post published by Dave, the mailbox object for system attendant has been removed but can be seen in AD. This change was done due to the new high availability architecture of Exchange 2010. They observed problems in failovers while having the mailbox object for System Attendant.

How will this affect:

If you are running an application that uses System Attendant to connect to the servers/databases you will still be able to connect but not logon. That means you wont be able to open the system attendant mailbox anymore as the actual related mailbox doesn’t exist.

The way around it:

1. Use the per mailbox database System mailbox (See Additional Resources for more information about this mailbox).

2. Change your application to rely on a user created account and mailbox.

This has been described pretty well at he System Attendant mailbox has been removed from Exchange 2010

And do read the additional resource section to understand the facts about special mailboxes in Exchange.

These recommendations have few more additions since Exchange 2007 and a bit for Exchange 2010 too. Due to the x64 architecture of both products and the platform’s capacity to address more memory along with Exchange’s its own bifurcated server roles it is necessary to review it. Well, the recommendations per server role for Exchange 2010 are below:

Table 1

Apart from above recommendations you still need to maintain the ratio of processor cores per server role to each other below is another table which talks about it.

Table 2

Again, the old days still have their importance in life. Domain controllers providing services to an exchange organization should still maintain the 4:1 ratio if you have a domain controller running a 32 bit operating system. This scenario changes a little bit for a domain controller running a 64 bit operating system. The ratio for an domain controller with 64 bit OS is 1:8. Here the exchange server’s CPU cores are for every server role. That means if you have a 3 different servers named MBX – mailbox server role, CAS – your CAS server role, HT – your HT server role, and UM – your Unified messaging server role having 4 cores in each which should be 16 cores in total then you should have at least one domain controller running 2 cores of CPU. For more information on choosing a right CPU for your 64 bit infrastructure you can refer the supported processor manufactures websites. Intel or AMD

Addition to this, each mailbox server should have 4GB of memory plus 2-10MB per mailbox, based on if the mailbox is in light, average, or heavy use. To calculate the memory requirement and storage requirement for the mailbox server role you can always refer the mailbox storage calculator: http://msexchangeteam.com/files/12/attachments/entry453145.aspx

References:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346701(EXCHG.149).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346699(EXCHG.149).aspx

Today, I had a problem with my lab installation of Exchange 2010. The setup is pretty simple of a mixed mode organization having an Exchange 2003 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP2 32Bit, and an Exchange 2007 RC1 setup in it.

After installation I noticed that, when I open EMC on Exchange 2010 server and click on Client Access server role under server management node I get a weird error as below:

The EMS on Exchange 2010 server showed up the red lines of death too.

PS] C:\>Get-OwaVirtualDirectory |FL
An IIS directory entry couldn’t be created. The error message is Access is deni
ed.
. HResult = -2147024891
    + CategoryInfo          : NotInstalled: (GLEX2007\owa (Default Web Site):A
   DObjectId) [Get-OwaVirtualDirectory], IISGeneralCOMException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : 46C81F27,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemCon
   figurationTasks.GetOwaVirtualDirectory

Turns out, if I have Exchange 2007 server in co-existence with Exchange 2010 the security group “Exchange Trusted Subsystem” needs to be a member of Local Administrators group on an Exchange Server 2007 box.

And, that should be it. The error went away as soon as the security group Exchange Trusted Subsystem was added to local admins group on Exchange server 2007.

Thanks to Henrik for helping me out on this.

First of all locate the database locations on the physical drive.

Your indexing catalogs are located within this folder.

Now if you multiple databases homed within the single folder you may find more than one Catalogs created.

In such case I use the built in script GetSearchIndexForDatabase.ps1 to find out which catalog belongs to which database. The script uses the path of index catalogs to help you determining the name of its associated database. See figure below.

Once you are done with determination of associated database you can simply stop the Microsoft Exchange Search service and then remove the appropriate catalog based on the output of the script and then start the Microsoft Exchange Search service again.

After deleting the catalog files the service may take some time to enter the started status.

Well, I updated this post because someone pointed out an irrelevant infomration here. I would like to thank Jack who spent his time and corrected me on this. Thanks much, Jack

Exchange 2010 offers an additional feature that can allow moderation of emails sent to a particular DL. This would be a useful feature to most of the managed DLs which are critical and emails sent to them should be authentic and scrutinized before they hit the DL member mailboxes. Let’s take a look at the configuration of this feature.

1. Open EMC and locate the DL to be set for moderation settings. Right click on the DL you wish to be moderated for email messages sent to it and click Properties. A dialog box pops up, then select Mail Flow Settings Tab on the properties dialog box. Select Message Moderation option.

2. After selecting Message Moderation option from the properties dialog of DL you see another propertied dialog where you can specify the actual moderator of the messages sent to this DL. Here you can do 2 things,

First, you can assign a moderator to review all emails and then approve them to be delivered to DL members and then some exceptional senders who wont require an approval from moderator of the DL. One thing common between both these options is only a user having exchange mailbox can be added to these lists. and then, the last section is to specify the moderations notifications. If you want to let email senders know the status of their sent emails whether they were approved or declined you can configure it using “Notify all senders when their messages aren’t approved”. If you want the senders to know about the status only when the message was not approved then you can select the option to “Notify senders in your organization only when their message is not approved” and the last option can be chosen so that nobody gets an approval or denial notifications.

3. Once this is configured you can test it by sending an email to this DL. In my case I had the administrator as a moderator to the DL named “All Users” (The name of moderator isn’t visible on the dialog box above).

4. The moderator of this DL gets an email asking the approval. The moderator can preview the original message in the preview pane of OWA.

5. The moderator can open the original message which is sent as an attachment along with the approval request. Please see the mouse cursor in above screen shot. When the “View original message”

 option is clicked the original message will open up in another window. Here in the original message window you get options to approve or reject the message delivery. You will notice that the sender of this message is not the original sender. The sender name appears “Microsoft Exchange Approval Assistant on behalf of AD RMS SVC”

6. Now depending upon the settings you have chosen in step 2 the approval or rejection notices will be sent to original sender of the message.

Here is something that you would like to know before you consider configuring message moderation for distribution lists, if you have your exchange 2010 servers installed in a mixed mode environment then message moderation may not work correctly sometimes. This may be because of the DL’s expansion server. Exchange 2010 Transport is also rewritten with many new components in it and message moderation is one of them. Exchange 2007 and 2003 transport wont understand this configuration as this is an Exchange 2010 specific feature. So, if you want to use this feature for any DLs in your organization  you must set your Exchange 2010 server as an expansion server for the DL or all of them.

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Exchange 2003 and 2007 provided the HA based on Windows Clustering where the whole server as an object used to failover to another node of the cluster. However with the exchange server 2010, things have changed dramatically. Now the failover wont occur at the server level instead of that the store schema has been re-structured in such a way that the failover can occur at the database level only. This is possible with the help of Database Availability Group which is commonly known as DAG.

In short, DAG is a group of servers and databases which will provide the high availability. It still uses the Microsoft Clustering Services but do not rely on it completely. Instead of using the server level failover the clustering services are used to only group the nodes of a cluster. What will failover is the only a problematic database. Article Understanding Mailbox Database Availability provides an overview of how this whole stuff works. If you read the above linked article you will understand that a database will have multiple copies on one or more servers which will be passive copies and will not be used for production connectivity. However, these copies are continuously in-sync with production copy of them and are always updated. When a failure on  production copy of database is detected, one of the passive copies are activated and start working as a production copy for the clients. This is known as  failover.  On the other hand, if one of the passive copies are activated manually by an administrator the process is known as swithover.

As far as swithovers are concerned the administrator knows which copy to bring online. But, if the failure occurs and the administrator is not available to monitor or recover the situation then what? Don’t you worry about that. The failover is managed by the exchange store itself.

Exchange 2010’s Exchange Replication Service which monitors the databases time to time and determines their health if some sort of database failure is detected then the process of failover is started. To failover the databases in stead of the whole server a component called Active Manger is added as a part of Exchange Replication Service which replaces the cluster’s server level failover behavior. Now, when a failover occurs and you have more than one copies of a single database added to multiple servers; exchange has to decide and choose the best copy available to mount among all. This process is known as Best Copy Selection. How Best copy selection works is on a simple basis of choosing the best available copy among all database copies of a particular information store. But, hold on. This selection process includes 10 different criteria which are used to select a best of copy. Again, the one and only Active Manager manages all this stuff. Let’s see how does Active Manager decides which copy to pick up and activate.

So now as you already know that Active Manger will select the best copy and initiate the failover it looks for healthy database copy first of all, DisconnectedAndHealthy, DisconnectedAndResynchronizing, or SeedingSource, and that meets all of the following sets of criteria:

• It has a content index with a status of Healthy
• It has a copy queue length that is < 10 log files and
• It has a replay queue length < 50 log files

If Active Manager finds no copy meeting any of the above criteria, then it will try to locate a database copy that meets the next set of criteria:

• It has a content index with a status of Crawling
• It has a copy queue length that is < 10 log files and
• It has a replay queue length < 50 log files

If Active Manager finds no copy meeting any of the above criteria, then it will try to locate a database copy that meets the next set of criteria:

• It has a content index with a status of Healthy and
• It has a replay queue length of < 50 log files

If Active Manager finds no copy meeting any of the above criteria, then it will try to locate a database copy that meets the next set of criteria:

• It has a content index with a status of Crawling and
• It has a replay queue length of < 50 log files

If Active Manager finds no copy meeting any of the above criteria, then it will try to locate a database copy that meets the next set of criteria:

• It has a replay queue length of < 50 log files

If Active Manager finds no copy meeting any of the above criteria, then it will try to locate a database copy that meets the next set of criteria:

• It has a content index with a status of Healthy and
• It has a copy queue length < 10 log files

If Active Manager finds no copy meeting any of the above criteria, then it will try to locate a database copy that meets the next set of criteria:

• It has a content index with a status of Crawling and
• It has a copy queue length < 10 log files

If Active Manager finds no copy meeting any of the above criteria, then it will try to locate a database copy that meets the next set of criteria:

• It has a content index with a status of Healthy.

If Active Manager finds no copy meeting any of the above criteria, then it will try to locate a database copy that meets the next set of criteria:

• It has a content index with a status of Crawling.

Even after doing so much of matching with defined criteria if Active Manager fails finding any copy meeting above criteria then it will try to activate any database copy with a status of Healthy, DisconnectedAndHealthy, SeedingSource, or DisconnectedAndResynchronizing. At the end if Active Manager does not find any copy that meeting any of the criteria the automatic activation (failover) will not occur.

Another good question may come up asking what if Active Manger find more than one copy which matches the above criteria? Answer would be, if more than one database copy meets all of the above criteria, then the configured value for ActivationPreference is consulted, and the database with the lowest value is activated and mounted.

I would like to thank Scott for presenting this information in his introductory video and my friend Amit for suggesting me to write up on it. Thanks both!

P.S.: The download seems to unavailable currently however you can expect it available in some time. Download link page will land you to Microsoft’s Download page at this moment where you cant find the downloadable file. Wait for a while more and you should be able to download the latest version of Exchange 2010. Keep rocking and enjoy testing.

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If you are seeking to build your own labs and deploy 2 or more AD sites in it also running low on resources. You may find FreeSCO very useful.

This is an open source utility you can use with a Linux or a UNIX box. If you are thinking that you are hardcore Microsoft guy and you wont be able to use it on a character user interface system like Linux and Unix then you really don’t need to be scared about that. Its a fairly simple installable program that can be configured using given documentation on www.FreeSCO.org What all you need is a little bit of knowledge of Linux and you should be good to go. I tested it on my VMware 6.5 labs and it really works great!

Thanks to the guys who developed it.

Download it from: FreeSCO’s Downloads Page

Due to design limitations outlook and exchange together wont allow to send emails using the secondary email address on some user account. There are some third party utilities like IvaSoft which will allow to use secondary email address as a primary or to send emails. Here I am explaining the way to use Exchange Server 2007 features to achieve this.

In a scenario; user Administrator has an his primary email address as administrator@cassicrm.com and secondary email address as jsmith@contoso.com . For business reason Administrator needs to be able to send emails using both email addresses however this wont be possible due to restrictions in Exchange design. Here are steps to work around this problem;

1. Remove email address jsmith@contoso.com  from user account Administrator.

2. Create a new in AD using ADUC and mail enabled user account using EMS or EMC. Make sure the removed secondary email address from Administrator account is used as a primary email address on new user.

3. Use ADUC again to assign Send As permissions to Administrator user account on newly created user account. Here, you need to consider that you will be using this user account to send emails so you may not want to have the display name different than the user having send as permissions on this user account. In stead of creating a new user account named Joe Smith the display name should be Administrator or the name of the user you are assigning Send As permissions to.

4. Configure a transport rule on HT to have emails redirected to administrator@cassicrm.com once an email is received for email address jsmith@contoso.com

5. Use outlook to send as new email address. Now in this step when you create the user account you need to make sure that the new user’s display name need to be same as the Administrator’s display name in GAL.

6. Check if the recipient received an email sent using alternate email address.

This work around will work for Exchange 2003 as well but with a limitation that recipient of email sent using secondary email address wont be able to reply as there is no mechanism in Exchange 2003 that can understand where to put the received email.

-

To complete installing a new certificate on your Exchange Server 2010 server you first need to obtain a certificate from CA within your organization or from a third party CA. As stated in last post the New certificate wizard generates a request in a .req file.

1. To obtain a certificate from a third party CA or your internal CA, your first need to copy the contents of the .req file and paste it to the web console of your certification authority. For my internal Enterprise CA the picture looked like below. Please see carefully that the Certificate Template used for this certificate request is Web Server.

2. Once you are done with above interface by pasting the contents of .req file and choosing a correct template you will be presented with another page in your browser to download the certificate. This interface may vary depending upon the configuration of your CA. You may need to wait till the certificate is approved and issued by CA administrator if configured so. You can now download the certificate in DER encoded format or Base 64 encoded format and save it to some location on your desktop or server. You will also need to download the whole certificate chain if the issuing authority is not a trusted CA by your server.

3. Now, as you have downloaded the certificate to the server. You will need to complete the pending certificate request in your EMC. Select the complete pending request by right clicking on the pending certificate request in EMC.

4. A new interface asking you the path to the certificate will pop up. This wizards will ask the location for newly downloaded certificate. Click on the Browse button, select the newly downloaded .cer file and click on complete button.

5. You may recall, Exchange 2007 to have the imported certificate to be enabled before it can be used actually used exchange services. E14 is not an exception to it but you don’t need to use Enable-ExchangeCertificate this time. You can do it using  GUI easily. Now that you know, you have a new certificate imported correctly. You need to assign it to the services those will be using it.

Again, locate the new imported certificate in EMC and right click on it. Select Assign Services to Certificate… from the context menu.

One quick difference you may notice between the step 3 and now. That is the certificate status. It changes from Pending to Valid and icon in front of the certificate gets blue colored check mark on it.

6. Assign Services to Certificate… will list the services on a window those will be assigned to use this certificate. Select the services you want to use this certificate with and click on Assign button. In my case I did not have the UM role installed on the server so the Unified Messaging check box is grayed out.

7. You may notice a pop up asking your consent to assign this certificate to SMTP service on the server as the default certificate will be replaced if you have selected Simple Mail Transport Protocol to use the new certificate in step 6. Click Yes and your default self signed certificate created and assigned to SMTP during server  install will be replaced with new one.

Click Finish in the wizard and you are done.

In some cases you may end up with a warning message; warning you that this certificate will not be used for TLS connections. Something like below:

Here you need to really understand the configurations you choose at the time of new certificate request. If you want to use this new certificate for a connector which provides a TLS connections, you will have to mention that during the New Certificate Request Wizard.

Few things to note:

• You must make sure that you have chosen the option to use new certificate for TLS connections during the request generation.
• You must have the root CA and the entire certificate chain installed your Exchange Server as well as clients if you are using your internal CA for new request processing. Outlook as well as Outlook Anywhere and other web based services may be affected otherwise.
• You must back up the certificate as soon as it is enabled on the server. I will write about it in Part-3 of this series.
• I recommend backing up and removing any old certificate from the server as soon as the new certificate is active and fully functional.

I appreciate your visit. You can come back and check the updated information.

Thanks

Paul discussed the demand versus availability of Exchange Server 2010 32 bit management tools very well in his post.

Bottom line of the post talks about zero expectations to see a 32 bit management console for Exchange Server 2010. Only Microsoft can tell how difficult is it for them to write a 32 management console code.

Personally, I would do a favor for a whole new x64 architecture offering a more memory addressing capabilities and performance. Yes, it does include cost to upgrade the hardware and software both but sticking back to legacy versions of hardware and software holds you back from upgrading your skills yourself.

Companies do have budgets for their IT infrastructures and may not tend to spend more money towards upgrade. But an upgrade may also help the heldesk and support teams to perform their jobs easily and much faster than they used to do. Normally, an Exchange support engineer needs to have a well equipped computer with troubleshooting tools where he/she may also need to work with some tools which demand more memory and high performance systems.

Also, if you are favoring to have a 32 bit Exchange 2010 application for your test labs then you probably need to understand that testing a performance of application on a 32 bit platform will be drastically different than having it tested on fully functional 64bit platform.

Read more about this story at Exchange 2010: No 32-Bit for You

Considering all above aspects and few more highlighted by Paul in his article probably many people may think of changing their thoughts on demanding a 32 bit management tools or the whole software for test labs.

Though this feature is greatly helpful in many scenarios it becomes a concern when users share their mailbox folders, calendars or contacts with folks who are not supposed to see the information and the information is also sensitive enough to be confidential. For many other reasons like server performance, IT department may not want their users to have the ability to share mailbox contents with others (though delegation may not cause heavy performance impact on servers compared to other things).

Now the question is how to disable this for users in bulk? Delegation is an outlook feature and exchange supports it with few attributes on the delegated as well delegate’s user account in AD and rules in both mailboxes. Outlook deployment within your network is the only place where you can control this. But the trouble in doing so is that administrative templates in group policy for outlook and other office products do not have any provision for this. Here are few steps to make it possible:

1. According to KB 948894 for a single user you can edit few registry keys and make it happen":

A point to be noted here before proceeding is if you have outlook 2003 then you must, must have hotfix package 948893 installed. This hotfix provides some new policies in the form of new registry settings which will later needs to be created and modified.

Once you have the above mentioned hotfix installed for an outlook 2003 client you can create and enable the registry settings written by this hotfix. The settings those need to be modified are below:

Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

Microsoft Exchange Team announced the launch of Service Pack 2 for Exchange Server 2007 to be expected in third quarter of 2009. Few things you can expect from SP2:

• Exchange Server 2007 Auditing features:

For those who have already started working on / testing Exchange 2010 Beta it may not be a new concept. Yes, they are offering the auditing features on Exchange 2007 as well. This is a great feature when you operate a giant environment and you need to keep track of what your administrators and helpdesk folks are doing with mailboxes and server configurations. Exchange 2010 has it built in already and it works well. It would be nice feature from the compliance and security perspectives. This feature will offer a performance based model and will make sure that the logs generated by auditing should go into a separate repository.

• Added Backup facility:

One of the most critical aspect in the day to day administration is to have your exchange databases backed up regularly. Like NTBACKUP on legacy versions of Windows could backup exchange databases. Windows Server 2008 backup tool was not efficient enough to understand exchange stores correctly. SP2 will add an extended functionality in the form of a plug in for Windows Server 2008 users to allow them backing up their databases with native windows tools itself. This will be a great added advantage for smaller companies who can not invest more money into backup solutions.

• Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation:

The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don’t exist in the AD schema.

• Public Folder Quota Management:

SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.

• Centralized Organizational Settings:

Exchange Server 2007 SP2 will have new PowerShell option added that enables centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.

• Named Properties cmdlets:

Named properties sometimes are headaches for Exchange Administrators. Applications may also loose the connectivity to stores. SP2 will allow the administrators to monitor the named properties quota per database.

• New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging:

One of the options that Exchange 2007 did not have was the diagnostics logging options in its GUI based console though diagnostics logging related tasks can yet be done using EMS. Exchange 2007 SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.

Exchange team talks more about this at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/05/11/451281.aspx

You can click on above link and get to Exchange team’s official blog to read more.

Though not with exchange 2007, Exchange 2010 Beta offers some extended functionality of creating, removing and managing certificates using GUI.

To create a new certificate you can choose the following options;

1. Select Server Configuration from left hand side pane in EMC and Exchange Certificates tab in left hand pane.

2. Right click in free space in left hand side pane of Exchange Certificates tab and select New Exchange Certificate

3. Selecting New Exchange Certificate from the context menu will bring up the introduction screen.

Here at this screen you are prompted to enter a friendly name for the certificate that will appear in EMC as a primary reference for management of certificates if you have multiple certificates created for multiple websites.

4. Once you have specified a friendly name for the certificate you are taken to the next screen upon clicking the Next button. This New Exchange Certificate screen will now gather the actual required information where you get a chance to choose among the options to use this certificate for various services.

Services like IIS based web services including Autodiscover, OWA EAS and other services like POP/IMAP, Outlook Anywhere and UM.

You can observe the screenshot below and notice that you get an option to write the URL of the service locations for OWA, EAS, Federated Services, SMTP transport, Etc. These URLs will be used in the certificate request which will be further used to write the SAN certificate information.

5. here the wizard collects the Organization related information like company name, department, location, etc. At this stage the wizard has collected almost all the information it needed. You may notice that the path right beside the Browse button is the path to the certificate request file path.

6. Next screen summarizes the information you entered.

7. And there you go with the final screen of the wizard where it displays the powershell command it will be attempting to generate the certificate request. Once you hit the Finish button the wizard completes the certificate request.

8. Here a point to be noted is; the wizard does not create an actual certificate. It will simply generate the request and keep it accessible via EMC. So when you are done with the wizard you have to manually send this request to the online CA within your Exchange/AD premises.

Limitations of New Exchange Certificate Wizard:

1. The new Exchange Certificate Wizard does not send the request to the online CA directly unless you manually complete the pending request.
2. Renewals of expired certificates can not be done using Exchange Certificate Wizard. You still have to user EMS for renewal of certificates.
3. New certificates created using New Exchange Certificate Wizard does not get assigned to IIS directly though you do specify the certificate utilization for Exchange Web Services and other IIS integrated exchange services. (You may refer Permanent Link to How to renew a self signed certificate in Exchange Server 2007 for renewal of certificates)

Outlook, LDAP and MAPI offer a great feature of delegation of mailboxes to a particular user within the organization. It works almost the same way in all version of Exchange Server 200x family. I am not pretty sure about Exchange 2010 yet because never had a chance to look at it so closely.

Well, though the delegation feature is a great facility provided to end users it becomes a pain for administrators sometimes. One of the most annoying situations I always come across is when someone reports that he/she sent an email to some distribution list and then got an NDR that indicates that the email was not delivered to a user which has been deleted recently and does not work for the company anymore. and the NDR looks like:

From: System Administrator
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 10:06 AM
To: Geek, Exchange
Subject: Test Meeting Request

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: Test Meeting Request
Sent: 4/28/2009 10:06 AM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

Geek, Exchange on 4/28/2009 10:06 AM
    The e-mail address could not be found. Perhaps the recipient moved to a different e-mail    organization, or there was a mistake in the address. Check the address and try again.
     <FQDN of my server.com #5.1.7>

This type of NDR starts generating after you delete some user account from your organization and this user account was also a part of some DL and at the same time was delegated permissions on some other user’s mailbox in the same DL. Another case would be when you already know the delegated mailbox name however you are not able to fix the issue.

1. When you don’t know the name of the delegated mailbox yet you get the NDR:

Download the script at Glenn’s blog and run it in your Exchange Organization to find the user who had the deleted user account set as delegate or have a rule configured to forward emails. This script can be downloaded from http://gsexdev.blogspot.com/2006/08/reporting-on-meeting-delegate-forward.html (This script requires you having full mailbox access on all mailboxes in your organization)

Script shows all the delegate and forwarding rules in mailboxes. I will strongly recommend reading instructions at above link before you run it.

Once you get the name of desired mailbox you can certainly remove the rule either by logging on to the mailbox or by using MFCMAPI or mdbview32.exe. An alternate location to download it would be here.

2. When you know the delegated user account name but can not remove the rule using outlook:

Now, here you can use MFCMAPI to remove all those calendaring delegates and forward rules from a particular mailbox. Steps are below:

A. Open MFCMAPI.exe and logon to the store with Administrator privileges or with an user account which has full access to other mailboxes. To logon follow Session –> Logon and Display Store Table. This will show up the screen like below;

B. Right click on the mailbox you are logged on as and select Open Store from the context menu.

C. The next screen comes up which explore all visible and invisible folders in your mailbox.

D. Expand Root Container at the top of tree structure –> Expand Top of Information Store –>  right click on Inbox and select Display Rules Table

E. Another windows opens up and shows you the rules configured in the mailbox. Please note that only server side rules are displayed here.

F. This window may display several other rules as well. You have to find and select the rule which is provided by Schedule+ EMS Interface.

G. Right click on the rule and select to delete.

F. Any other rule can also be deleted using the similar method.

The service account used by BES is known as BESAdmin. BESAdmin required Send As permissions on all of the mailboxes within the organization. Once these permissions are setup; service account can forward emails to the devices as if the email was sent by the original sender. There is a complex algorithm in the form of MDS, Mailbox agents and so on runs in background which takes care of it fine.

Since Exchange Server 2007 started grabbing production environments people started implementing BES along with it too. I have always been observing an issue with most of the people that they complain, when they send a meeting request to someone using their BB handheld they are notified that their message was forwarded by BESAdmin or whatever is the name of their BES Service account. This notification looks like:

Your meeting was forwarded

besadmin   has forwarded your meeting request to additional recipients.

Meeting

M

Meeting Time

Monday, March 30, 2009 3:00 PM-4:00 PM.

Recipients

‘someone@domain.com’

This is not a non delivery report or an error report either. This is just a notification like other MDNs in Exchange Server 2007.

To resolve this issue. You simply need to disable the forwarded meeting notification on the service account. In my environment I call it, BESAdmin. So here you go with the commandlet.

Get-MailboxCalendarSettings –Identity “BESAdmin” | Select RemoveForwardedMeetingNotifications

Ideally, above command should return the status of the RemoveForwardedMeetingNotifications as $False

Now,  you have to set it to true. Run the following cmdlet.

Set-MailboxCalendarSettings –Identity “BESAdmin” -RemoveForwardedMeetingNotifications $True

And that should be it. It should stop all those forwarded meeting notifications.

You may see more than one certificate listed on your exchange server(s) and that may be simply because you or someone else from your team have already tried working with certificates on the server.

If you see the above picture, you will notice that the certificate I have on my server is valid till 24th March 2010. NotAfter holds the value in mm/dd/yyyy h:mm:ss format. NotAfter – means this certificate will not be valid after the time stamp listed in this field. On the other hand the value NotBefore – means that this certificate will not be valid before the time stamp mentioned.

So once you cross the date listed in field NotAfter the certificate becomes invalid and indeed may open up doors to many other troubles like connectivity to web services, SMTP transport, POP and IMAP retrieval, etc. To renew the certificate you can simply run a cmdlet and get a new self signed certificate. But, this is just not as simple as simply running a cmdlet and get a new certificate, there is a procedure to do it. Check the following steps:

1. Run Get-ExchangeCertificate |FL – This will list details of all certificates that you have assigned to Exchange Services. Please understand, this cmdlet does not retrieve any information about any other certificate from local certificate store which is not used by Exchange. Once you get the output printed on the screen; note down the Thumbprint of certificate into a notepad.

2. Run Get-ExchangeCertificate –Thumbprint “58C846DEEA2865CA9E6DD4B42329A9AC994EBF63” | New-ExchangeCertificate . This renews the certificate. You will notice the moment you press enter on keyboard you may be prompted to confirm if you want to use the same certificate for SMTP service.

3. Check if the certificate is renewed. This can be simply examined by looking at the changes in thumbprint of the certificate after running the cmdlet mentioned in step 2. You can see the changed thumbprint in below picture.

4. Looking correctly to the above picture you will also notice that the certificate is not being used to secure IIS based services anymore though the NotAfter and NotBefore dates have changed. To enable this renewed certificate for IIS as well run Enable-ExchangeCertificate – Thumbprint “E0BB201793DC74D0F94F3275E6AA53BA75907565” –Services IIS

5. Verify all the services are working correctly after renewing and enabling the certificate.

6. Remove old certificate by running Remove-ExchangeCertificate –Thumbprint “58C846DEEA2865CA9E6DD4B42329A9AC994EBF63”

Again, a x64 based product with a lot of modification in the functionality and architecture. Microsoft seems to be moving to .Net 3.5 platform with for Exchange 2010 development. Due to changes in architecture of the product it might look a little different than its previous release; Exchange Server 2007 but it still inherits many feature with much advanced functionality. Key changes in Active Directory Schema, Permissions Model, Mailbox Server role, Routing, High Availability, and much more are the things of interest for those who have already worked on its legacy versions.

So now you can download and enjoy testing

Download Exchange Server 2010 Beta 1

Read Technical Documentation

Basically, what was happening is her last name was being automatically added to her display name and was being shown as her Title in contact though the Title field was never modified or had anything there. As an example, user name was Geek Pan and it appeared as Pan Geek Pan. Take a look at screen shot below;

When this contact is opened the details also look incorrect,

And the Details tab shows:

However, the name of the user in GAL appears as Pan, Geek

This is troublesome when you are sending your own contact to someone and name on your contact details appears incorrectly.

Details:

If you are wondering why this happens then the answer is simple but not very much known to Exchange Administrators. Probably outlook support guys may know this already. Places of interest to troubleshoot this problem are Active Directory Users and Computers and ADSIEDIT.MSC. But they do not show up anything related to the Title field in any one of the attributes on user account. So why would this happen?

Outlook is trying to help you here. Pan is a salutation in some language, unlike San in Japanese, Meneer in Dutch, and so on (I do not understand and know all salutations in all languages spoken all over the world ). As soon as outlook detects these likely salutation words; it adds these words into the Title field automatically and replaces the conventional English salutations like Mr., Mrs., Miss automatically.

Technically, this seems to be a bug in outlook but has been fixed with Outlook 2007. Yet, Outlook 2007 has to be working with Exchange Server 2007 for that. If OL 2007 is configured for a mailbox hosted on Exchange 2003 the same problem occurs.

For those who still use OL 2003 / OL 2007 with Exchange Server 2003 there is no way around than simply removing the Title field manually.

Now, what is value for each of these check boxes and how it varies? Take a look at below table:

So, when 1st and 2nd check boxes are selected the value of attribute msExchRoutingAcceptMessageType becomes 3. In simpler terms it would be simple addition of numbers based on the above table. The last option is “Preserve sender’s display name on messages” is not relate to these values. Attribute msExchRoutingDisplaySenderEnabled stores the value of it and works on a Boolean values of “TRUE” or “FALSE”.

Well, text and picture above is pretty clear and explains the things if you understand a little of AD and Exchange but where do I locate these attributes and their values? Open ADSIEDIT.msc and browse to the location below and open the properties dialog box:

CN=Default,CN=Internet Message Formats,CN=Global Settings,CN=<Org Name>,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration

Note: above location may change according to your customized settings.

Even before you go ahead follow this blindly and change the settings per your requirement, do take a look at your Active Directory health and replication as well. Exchange may not be able to contact AD for the correct information to read and hence allows the automatic forwarding to internet or does not apply the restrictions mentioned above.

Backup:

1. Backup the mailbox database.edb and pubic database.edb as well as mail.que files. It is highly recommended to have a full backup of these files to prevent any future complications.
2. Power down the current Exchange server

Backing up Exchange Server 2007 depends on what server role is being backed up. Below is a list of role specific data that needs to be protected before moving ahead. Procedure documented here applies to a single server installed all the server roles.

• Mailbox Server Data
• Hub Transport Server Data
• Edge Transport Server Data
• Client Access Server Data
• Unified Messaging Server Data
• Active Directory Data
• Client-Side Data

Configure New Hardware:

1. Use ADUC console to reset the Exchange Sever machine account.
2. If you already have a Windows Server box to box to be brought on the network, join it into the network, change its name to your Exchange Server 2007 existing computer name and join into the domain.
3. Configure IP Address for the new machine so that it uses a static IP that matches the IP in the DNS host record for the old server.
4. Run Exchange setup. Using Start -> Run specify the path to Exchange Server 2007 Setup launcher, add the /recoverserver and /donotrestart switches. The complete command should look like the following:

Drive:\Setup /m:recoverserver /donotrestart

Once setup completes.

Move:

1. Move the mail.que database back into the queue folder (this folder should be empty): c:\program files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\data\queue
2. Move the mailbox database into the production folder (this folder should also be empty): c:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox\First Storage Group
3. Move the Public database into the production folder (this folder should also be empty): c:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox\Second Storage Group
4. Open the Exchange Management Console – obtain properties of the two stores and select the option that “This database can be overwritten by a restore”.
5. Start all Exchange services.

Verify:

1. Verify Send Connector configuration – you should have a * domain listed with a type = SMTP in order to send mail outbound.
2. Verify Receive Connector configuration – In order to receive mail the connector needs to accept anonymous connections.
3. If external SMTP domain is different than the internal domain you need to Verify the External SMTP Domain is added to the Accepted Domains list.

OPTIONAL:

Enable the Anti-Spam Agents for the Hub Transport role. To do so:

1. Open Exchange Management shell and navigate to the scripts directory: c:\program files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts. Issue following command: .\install-AntispamAgents.ps1
2. Restart the Exchange Transport Service (MSExchangeTransport).
3. In Exchange Management console verify that the SPAM Agents are enabled on the Anti-Spam tab. This will be Organization Configuration – Hub Transport – Anti-Spam.
4. Verify internal and external mail flow.

External Links:

If you have different server roles installed on different hardware following should be a good read;

• How to Move an Exchange 2007 Client Access Server to New Hardware Keeping the Same Server Name
• How to Move an Exchange 2007 Mailbox Server to New Hardware Keeping the Same Server Name
• How to Move an Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging Server to New Hardware Keeping the Same Server Name
• How to Move an Exchange 2007 Edge Transport Server to New Hardware Keeping the Same Server Name

Symptoms:

Mailbox on Exchange Server 2007 does not appear to be disconnected though it is the associated user account is deleted using Active Directory Users and Computers.

Cause:

Exchange does not enumerate the user attribute changes continuously to see the exchange attributes on the associated user account in active directory. Queries to identify the changes in attributes value for some user account are shot to AD after looking into the caches and refresh intervals which is maintained by DSAccess  (ADAccess in Exchange Server 2007). As this is a cache of ADAccess these values can not be stored in active directory hence, Windows Registry is used for it. Look at an article on Microsoft TechNet for more information: Mailbox Size Limits Are Not Enforced in a Reasonable Period of Time . It is highly recommended to adhere to the refresh interval recommendations made by Microsoft to prevent the performance implications. Under normal circumstances you don’t need to run the mailbox cleanup agent manually because the disconnected mailbox appears under Disconnected Mailbox immediately. Yet, in certain cases you have to run the mailbox cleanup agent manually. See the Resolution section to see how to run the mailbox clean up agent manually in Exchange Server 2007.

Resolution:

1. Open Exchange Management Shell
2. Type, Clean-MailboxDatabase –Identity <Database Name>

Values for –Identity can be defined in following ways,

• GUID of information store.
• Distinguished Name (DN) of information store in AD.
• ServerName\StorageGroup\Database
• ServerName\Database
• StorgaeGroup\Database
• DatabaseName

If you have multiple database with same name of the same server, you must specify the storage group name.

External Links:

Exchange Server Caches and Their Lifetimes

Managing User Mailboxes

Scenario:

There are two users in my exchange organization Kate and Robb. Kate resides in Central Time Zone (US) and Robb resides in Pacific Time Zone (US). Rob sends a meeting request to Kate and marks this meeting as an All Day Event. Rob can see it correctly framed within a single day not spanning across the days.

However, when Kate receives this meeting she sees it spanning across two days and it appears the same even after she accepts it.

Basically, this behavior occurs because of the way outlook handles the meeting requests. If you observe correctly Outlook provides you a time frame of 24 hours to book someone’s or your own calendar. From 12:00 AM to 11:30 PM. When a appointment or a meeting request is marked as an “All day Event” outlook automatically adds the start time of the meeting request as 12:00 AM depending upon the local or mailbox time zone configured for a particular mailbox. This is one of the reasons why Kate’s calendar shows this entry spanned across two days. As written earlier if Rob’s outlook marked the start time as 12:00 AM 28th Wed according to Pacific Time it turns into 2:00AM 28th Wed in Central Time where Kate resides. Yet, the meeting is to complete after 24 hours and hence it spans across two days till 2:00 AM next day.

In an another scenario if this would have been a half day event which would have started somewhat around 7:00 AM and ended near about 7:00 PM in Rob’s calendar it would have reflected the correct booking in Kate’s calendar because according to her client time zone settings the meeting would have started around 9:00 AM and would have ended by 9:00 PM.

Another case where a meeting starts 7:00 AM PST and ends at 11:59 PM which is again more than a half day event will reflect spanned across two days to any users having its outlook client configured in CST.

Still, the question remains unanswered. How do I do this if my boss asks me to provide such reports. There are many third party tool available in the market to do the same task. But, if you are not willing to invest money to buy a dedicated software for doing this; you can use the Microsoft Log Parser tool to export this information. Below are the steps to do it:

Prerequisites:

Microsoft Log Parser 2.2 – Download

Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional or higher.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 or higher.

Message Tracking Log file structure:

Once you have downloaded the Log Parser from above link you can install the log parser by using the GUI interface. Yet, the application does not have a very good GUI itself. It’s a purely a console based application. Before you actually start using this application once the installation is completed we need to understand the format of the Exchange Server message tracking file. Message tracking files are saved in W3C format by default and can be parsed using Log Parser. Basically, if you open a sample message tracking log file in a text editor you can see the fields mentioned in it. They appear as below.

# Message Tracking Log File                                                                               
# Exchange System Attendant Version 6.5.7638.1                                                                               
# Date    Time    client-ip    Client-hostname    Partner-Name    Server-hostname    server-IP    Recipient-Address    Event-ID    MSGID    Priority    Recipient-Report-Status    total-bytes    Number-Recipients    Origination-Time    Encryption    service-Version    Linked-MSGID    Message-Subject    Sender-Address

In above example the Exchange System Attendant Version suggests the version of Exchange Server to which the log files belong and the text marked in maroon color suggests the fields in the message tracking log files according which details of each message is sorted.

Now we can go ahead and start sorting the things of our interest. To determine the number of emails sent/received or both by a specific user You can simply start with a simple command at Log Parser command prompt:

C:\Program Files\Log Parser 2.2>Log parser -i:w3c "SELECT * FROM C:\20090118.log WHERE Sender-Address like ‘F1E2K3-IS@warriorcorp.com’" -O:CSV >C:\Output.csv

Considering the above example as a specimen, Sender-Address can be replaced by any fields mentioned above and same applies for the replacement of ‘*’. At the end of processing you get a filtered output for it. Each of the fields can be separated by a comma (,) same will apply for email addresses as well.

Limitations:

• You can not parse more files from different servers at the same time.
• If you have multiple files  to extract data from; the queries has to be run on each file separately. As a work around to it a little bit of scripting would help you to accomplish your requirement.
• Exchange stores the message tracking information for a single day in each file.

Post does not talk about the technical details and architecture though the it appears that the new product is going to prove itself cost effective and resource scalable from the administrator’s perspective.

Restrict:

Set-CASMailbox -Identity <Mailbox Alias> -ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIDs: <DeviceID> 

You can have multiple devices enabled for the same mailbox by simply specifying each device id in quotes (“IVR100W”) and each separated by a comma. Keep in mind that these IDs are stored in the mailbox of the associated mailbox alias. 

Manage and Audit:

Get-CASMailbox -Identity <Mailbox alias> |FL 

Your manager may come to you some day and ask you about the list of approved devices on your Exchange Server mailboxes. Do not stumble at all, above command will give you the information about device IDs associated with the mailbox name you specify in place of <Mailbox Alias>. A drawback of running this command is that it shows everything related to the CAS role and which is stamped on the mailbox. According the an article http://www.exchangeninjas.com/AllowByDeviceID which was shared to me by one my co workers this audit can be simply carried out by using the cmdlet Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics –Mailbox:<Mailbox Alias> |FL DeviceID but it failed to show me the details I wanted. A little bit of work with Microsoft Excel and a correct filter like –OrganizationUnit should be good to get the desired reports.  

Remove:

Remove-ActiveSyncDevice -Identity <MobileDeviceIDParameter> 

Well, nothing much to explain about this. The command is pretty simple and straight forward. IDs collected using the Get-CASMailbox –Identity command can be used as an input to this command if at all you find some of those IDs aren’t in use.

Expanding any of the Exchange Server 2007 related registry keys in registry editor we get a view of at least one sub key under it. If noticed correctly most of these children entries are named as “Diagnostics”, “Performance”, and “Linkage”

We would take a glance at all these three and their contents.

Diagnostics: 

This is basically for providing the event logging level. In some scenarios we need to bounce the diagnostics logging on some of the components of Exchange Server to understand or locate an exact problem place. Diagnostics key node will help bouncing the event logging level as per your desire and your expectations helping to locate a problem with some particular component.

As an example if you explore down till the location; HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchange ADAccess. Diagnostics tree node under it will list all the available sub components for MsExchange ADAccess. Values of each registry entry under the diagnostics node varies between 0-7. So, what does it return when values are set to 0 and what when it’s set to 7? Keeping in mind 0 is the lowest level of logging and 7 is the highest below table will tell what you get upon bouncing these values. If you have been already been administering an Exchange Server 2000 or 2003 box you will easily understand what changes happen in registry when you bounce up the diagnostic logging using the server properties page in ESM. The below table has been written assuming that it would be easier to co relate the levels.

Diagnostics logging level 7 is considered as the expert level logging which if enabled will log events including Information, Warnings, and Errors. These errors may range between 100-1000 events a minute depending upon how the service is being used; number of calls handled by the service as well the number of errors it encounters. So, before you think of bouncing up the diagnostics logging to 7 you also need to think of the application log file settings on your server.

To set these levels manually you can browse to the location …\<Service Name>\Diagnostics in your registry editor and set them manually. However it is strongly recommended to do it manually. For Exchange Server 2007 a simple command using EMS would serve the purpose. To bounce diagnostics logging on any component you can use Set-EventLogLevel “MSExchangeSA\NSPI Proxy” -Level 5. You will notice that if there is a space in the service name of a component name the EMC will show you a red line to death.

 Performance: 

This is something which holds the performance related data of each of the services installed on the server. You can see this entry below the registry node for most of the well known services of Exchange Server 2007 and holds information about the performance libraries (DLLs), performance counters (that you see in performance monitor of windows server 2003), a little information of performance objects in WMI and a little more about the actions to be taken when a particular incident is manually triggered by the server administrator.

Below table contains a list of common registry keys that you can see under the tree node named “Performance”.

Thanks to James for helping to form above table. He made my understanding clearer about these. I have rest of them too and will post them later.

Linkage: 

The optional Linkage sub key specifies the binding options for the driver by using the Bind and Export values.

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Common Templates
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Fonts
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Microsoft Exchange\ModifyPath
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Microsoft Exchange\UninstallString
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Microsoft Exchange\DisplayIcon

Exchange is a standard installation program built around Microsoft Installer (MSI) and does support standard MSI attributes for installation and so does keep track of its uninstall information as well. The file you are seeing in above table is exsetupui.exe is the actual Exchange Server installation exe. After you double click the setup program on your installation media and the setup starts copying required files to the temp folder on local hard disk drive the standard setup.exe hands over the control to exsetupui.exe and remains in the memory. Rest of the stuff is performed by exsetupui.exe
Do you still remember the last image embedded in my previous post? It was a screen shot of registry editor on an Exchange Server.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\v8.0\AdminTools\ is the location where the temporary information of Exchange Server management console is stored. I intentionally wrote “Temporary” because some of the values below this location are going to be wiped off the registry upon the exit of installer. So a couple of registry locations those are deleted from the registry are:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\v8.0\AdminTools\Action
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\v8.0\AdminTools\Watermark

All of the above locations in the registry can be seen getting created, modified and deleted during the setup is running on your windows server 2003 box. It was indeed not possible for me to mention all of the locations where exsetupui.exe plays with registry because of the limitation of size text that I can post on my blog. So, what is next? What does it do with the Service Control Manager (SCM)? If you are really curious to understand the architecture of any setup program you will definitely have this question on your mind. Well, let me not make it more complex. In simpler terms, SCM database is a linking to the registry location HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services and is controlled by services.exe. This is the location that controls the startup behavior and logon behavior of the services installed on some windows server system. Off course! Exchange does install its own registry entries in the SCM as well. Just expand to the node mentioned in earlier sentence and you will find some more information about what entries are created and dependencies of each entry are located in their sub keys named “DependOnService”. Did you see something more listed below HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet00x\Services? Well, don’t worry about it. If you have heard of Last Good Known Configuration (LKG) then utility it won’t be hard enough for you to co relate what does that location and all the entries below it mean there. You will notice the names of services those are required to be started before the relative Exchange services is started. SCM database contains more than 90 Service entries related to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 if MBX, CAS, HT and UM server roles are installed on the same server.
That brings me to the end of Exchange Server 2007 integration with local machine and its registry but I would strongly like to drag your attention to the article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724072(VS.85).aspx before you conclude anything. Because, Windows Server 2003 x64 registry architecture is not exactly similar to as in windows server 2003 32 bit. So I would strongly recommend you to look at the article to understand the registry key location and changes if you are looking at a windows server 64 bit system registry. I would definitely not miss the chance to post another article on it. Indeed, I would like to thank my friend Dilbagh for helping to understand the registry structure.

If you want to install the Exchange Server 2007 on different and dedicated hardware for each Server role the Custom Exchange Server Installation option will help you to choose the role you want to deploy on that particular box. The role selection screen allows you to install the desired Server role, take a look at below screen shot.

Clicking on the Next button will bring up the next screen to allow you to choose the name for your Exchange organization.

Please note that this screen will only appear if you are installing Exchange Server 2007 in a fresh AD environment with no legacy Exchange installation in it. If you already have an Exchange Server 2000 or Exchange Server 2007 organization running in your AD forest the setup will not prompt you to enter any organization name.

Then it comes to selecting the client settings where you can let your Exchange Server 2007 know if you are still using legacy clients like outlook 2000 and outlook 2003. If you have legacy clients running in your company you must select "Yes" and click next.

Once all the required settings and namespace are defined to the setup program it will search for the prerequisites first of all, this check is indeed a part of Exchange Server best practices analyzer integrated with the setup program. These checks include the discovery of Active Directory configuration prerequisites, platform operating system readiness check, and Server role specific requirements check.

After the organization prerequisites checks are passed the setup program proceeds with copying the required files to the temp Directory on the Server. These files are copied from the location <PLATFORM>\Setup\ServerRoles\Common and are stored at location <SYSTEMPATH>\Temp\ExchangeServerSetup on local computer.

That’s it, once all of the chosen Server roles are installed the next screen confirms the successful installation by showing green signals.

With the next post in this series I will try to focus on the things happen in background whenever the setup program is launched to install a Server role.