Exchange-Genie

Exchange 2010 RU2 Released

Exchange Genie — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:25:57 +0000

Exchange 2010 RU2 was released today and can be downloaded from the following link

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d3ae3e0-3982-46d6-9e9c-7d7d63fae565&displaylang=en

The link below is a list of fixes included in Ru2

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=979611

Exchange 2007 SP2 RU2 released

Exchange Genie — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:35:04 +0000

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/01/29/453908.aspx

Exchange CXP team has released Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (KB 972076) to the download center.

In addition to bug fixes reported by customers we have added new rules to the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer to check the health of your system. Starting this rollup, customers who wish to deploy the new BPA health rules to a server with no internet connection can do so by downloading the installing the update rollup on the server. Until Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2, updates to the BPA rules were available only via the web which meant customers wanting to deploy the new health check rules to servers not connected to the internet would have had to copy over the XML files manually. In Exchange 2007 SP2, we implemented a work item which allows us to ship updates to the BPA health check rules via the rollup and as well as via the traditional web based channel. More on this via a blog post in the near future.

KBA 972076 lists all the fixes included in this rollup. Here are some of the product improvements and critical bug fixes we’d like to call out:

KB 972705: This one is for all the IT pros and anyone who has ever had to explain abnormal database size/log file growth in a short period of time. We have added three new registry entries to help speed up troubleshooting the issue:
- BytesLogWarningThreshold
- BytesLogErrorThreshold
- BytesLogCheckPeriodInMinutes
More information on the values to set in the above registry keys is documented in KB 972705.
KB 975404: Accepting meeting requests sent via an application using CDO like Blackberry devices sometimes results in rendering an embedded message attached to the meeting request inaccessible.
KB 976137: We have made a change to the behavior of the Unified Messaging Auto attendant when it plays the greeting for callers on a holiday. Currently when callers call on a holiday, they hear the non-business hours greeting followed by the holiday greeting. In this rollup we have made a change so that the callers calling on a holiday will only hear the holiday greeting. If your greetings are configured such that they would make sense to callers calling on a holiday only if they hear both the non-business hours greeting and the holiday greeting, then you need to re-configure them when you install this update rollup.
KB 971177: Another change in the UM Auto Attendants configuration in the Exchange Management Console. It is now aware if your time zone follows Daylight Saving Time.
KB 975165: In an environment using self-signed certificates and CAS-CAS proxying, Exchange Web Services requests proxied may start failing after the Availability Service has made a proxy request.
A bug where the OWA Virtual Directory cannot be accessed via the Exchange Management Console in an environment coexisting with Exchange 2010 if the Exchange 2007 server was upgraded from Exchange 2007 SP1 to SP2.

KB 972076 has more details about this release and a complete list of all fixes included in this rollup. Exchange CXP team has released Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (KB 972076) to the download center.

KBA 972076 lists all the fixes included in this rollup. Here are some of the product improvements and critical bug fixes we’d like to call out:

KB 972705: This one is for all the IT pros and anyone who has ever had to explain abnormal database size/log file growth in a short period of time. We have added three new registry entries to help speed up troubleshooting the issue:
- BytesLogWarningThreshold
- BytesLogErrorThreshold
- BytesLogCheckPeriodInMinutes
More information on the values to set in the above registry keys is documented in KB 972705.
KB 975404: Accepting meeting requests sent via an application using CDO like Blackberry devices sometimes results in rendering an embedded message attached to the meeting request inaccessible.
KB 976137: We have made a change to the behavior of the Unified Messaging Auto attendant when it plays the greeting for callers on a holiday. Currently when callers call on a holiday, they hear the non-business hours greeting followed by the holiday greeting. In this rollup we have made a change so that the callers calling on a holiday will only hear the holiday greeting. If your greetings are configured such that they would make sense to callers calling on a holiday only if they hear both the non-business hours greeting and the holiday greeting, then you need to re-configure them when you install this update rollup.
KB 971177: Another change in the UM Auto Attendants configuration in the Exchange Management Console. It is now aware if your time zone follows Daylight Saving Time.
KB 975165: In an environment using self-signed certificates and CAS-CAS proxying, Exchange Web Services requests proxied may start failing after the Availability Service has made a proxy request.
A bug where the OWA Virtual Directory cannot be accessed via the Exchange Management Console in an environment coexisting with Exchange 2010 if the Exchange 2007 server was upgraded from Exchange 2007 SP1 to SP2.

KB 972076 has more details about this release and a complete list of all fixes included in this rollup.

EMS and how big is my database

Exchange Genie — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:32:16 +0000

Microsoft has provided a nice easy command to show you how large your current databases are, this one line command can be pipped to a file or used in a report

Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | fl name,databasesizes

Name : DB001

DatabaseSize : 141.8 GB (152,220,270,592 bytes)

Name : DB002

DatabaseSize : 98.17 GB (105,412,362,240 bytes)

Customizing ECP QuickLinks

Exchange Genie — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:13:06 +0000

Let me start out with this is not a supported item by Microsoft however is vary functional!

Today in Exchange 2010 when a user logs onto OWA and selects the options button they are taken into what is now called the Exchange Control Panel or ECP which has added some functionality for users. One problem that I have found is that Microsoft has provided users with some nice links telling them how to configure their mobile device or Outlook anywhere but those links directt users to Outlook.Com configuration which tends to generate support calls.

Those links are controlled by a file located here C:\Exchange\ClientAccess\ecp\PersonalSettings\QuickLinks.ascx , this file can be copied and modified with company faq settings to direct users to the appropriate place. I must note that every RollUp applied or Service Pack will overwrite your custome file and you must recopy the file back to this directory. The 2nd point I need to make is that every build of Exchange (after rollup or service pack) you need to copy the new file and modify that file because Microsoft could have made changes in security or configuration, reusing the same old file could cause issues. You will also have to copy this file to each CAS server.

Lets logon to OWA and take a look at the default settings:

You can see when I hover over Connect Outlook to this account the url is set to http://help.Outlook.com

Close OWA

1. On your CAS server browse to the following file C:\Exchange\ClientAccess\ecp\PersonalSettings\QuickLinks.ascx copy this file to your desktop so we can edit it

2. Open the QuickLinks file with Notepad

3. I have highlighted the section we are going to work on which is the Mobile section

4. We are going to remove this line

” />

5. Insert and href like this : http://www.exchange-genie.com target=”_blank”> Configure your mobile device with Active Sync for Beta Mail

6. Save our file

7. Rename the origianl file to .old or some other extension

8. copy and paste our new file into the following location C:\Exchange\ClientAccess\ecp\PersonalSettings\QuickLinks.ascx

9. Logon to OWA into ECP

10. Hover over the Mobile link and you will see the url now points to http://exchange-genie.com

The only 2 items you should modify in this file are related to Mobile and Outlook connections

How to upload a Photo with Exchange 2010

Exchange Genie — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:17:52 +0000

Thanks to my friend Ilse who has outlined the steps on how to upload a picture for consumption in the gal

http://blogs.technet.com/ilvancri/archive/2009/11/17/upload-picture-in-outlook-2010-using-the-exchange-management-shell-exchange-2010.aspx

What do you think is the hardest thing about Exchange Server

Exchange Genie — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:55:17 +0000

I wanted to leave this post open and make is more of a user poll.

Please leave a post about an item or configuration you think is difficult to manage with Exchange server or if you had one wish what would you add to the product?

Happy New Year

Exchange Genie — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:23:27 +0000

I just wanted to drop a little note and wish everyone a Happy and Safe New Year!

Using PowerShell to sort mailboxes by size

Exchange Genie — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:35:21 +0000

Instead of reinventing the wheel I am going to use Devin blog to reference how to do this task.

http://blogs.3sharp.com/deving/archive/2007/01/08/2738.aspx

Using PowerShell to sort mailboxes by size

This weekend I was playing with the Exchange Management Shell while performing some troubleshooting on our Exchange 2007 system and discovered some fun combinations of cmdlets I thought I’d share.

First, let’s start with a command that lists all of the mailboxes in a given server, sorted by size. There are two variants for ascending and descending, differing only in the inclusion of the -Descending paramter in the Sort-Object cmdlet in the latter:

Get-MailboxStatistics -Server RED-MSG01 | Sort-Object -Property TotalItemSize | ` Format-Table DisplayName,TotalItemSize Get-MailboxStatistics -Server RED-MSG01 | Sort-Object -Property TotalItemSize -Descending | ` Format-Table DisplayName,TotalItemSize

Pretty simple stuff, really; your basic pipeline exercise. You can also use Get-Mailbox -Server SERVER | Get-MailboxStatistics like I originally was, but since the Get-MailboxStatistics cmdlet already supports the -Server parameter it would be redundant. If you have some other way you need to define your collection of mailboxes, once you figure out how to define it, pipe the collection into Get-MailboxStatistics and away you go.

Next up, a variant of the same, only this time I want to only show those mailboxes larger than, say 1GB:

Get-MailboxStatistics -Server RED-MSG01 | Where {$_.TotalItemSize -gt 1GB} | ` Sort-Object -Property TotalItemSize -Descending | Format-Table DisplayName,TotalItemSize

The Where cmdlet gives me access to comparisons against any propertDispy on the collection of objects passed into it, so be careful where you use it in the pipeline. The collection of objects given by Get-Mailbox is not the same collection of objects given by Get-MailboxStatistics, and they will have different sets of properties. And yes, you put multiple Where cmdlets into different places in your pipeline to fine-tune your selections, as the following search for the Kelly brothers illustrates:

Get-Mailbox -Server RED-MSG01 | Where {$_.DisplayName -imatch "kelly"} | ` Get-MailboxStatistics | Where {$_.TotalItemSize -gt 1GB} | ` Sort-Object -Property TotalItemSize -Descending | Format-Table DisplayName,TotalItemSize

This would show me all mailboxes whose display name contains the string “kelly” (without considering the case of the characters) and that was larger than 1GB in size. The -imatch comparison is a case-insensitive regular expression match, so I could have gotten fairly fancy in my comparison.

Last one: let’s take the list of mailboxes, in ascending order, and feed it to the Move-Mailbox cmdlet. This way, we’ll be moving the smaller mailboxes first, allowing us to get through more moves in the beginning and saving the real packrats for last:

Get-MailboxStatistics -Server RED-MSG01 | Sort-Object -Property TotalItemSize | ` Move-Mailbox -TargetDatabase "RED-MSG02\Mailbox Database"

Let me know if you have questions or comments!

Snow day

Exchange Genie — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:03:07 +0000

Since I am on the east cost and we are getting a nice little snow storm I thought it woudl be fitting to add the snow theme to the site

Exchange 2010 RU1 released today

Exchange Genie — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:16:46 +0000

Today Mircosoft released its first rollup (RU1) for Exchange 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=371add31-d7a0-4c8b-8325-a6fced2d05e6&displaylang=en

One of the biggest advantages to RU1 is allowing functionality with RIMs BES servers, however RIM is suppose to release an MR1 soon for Exchange 2010 intergration that will be required on the BES servers

Changes http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=976573

RIM information to configure Exchange 2010 and BES

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/server/exchange/2010support.jsp