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PST Capture Tool Released!

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
February 3rd, 2012 by

Over at the Exchange team blog they have released a new tool for performing discovery and importing PSTs into Exchange!  Why is this important?  Well, say for example you have a lot of users in your organization who have PSTs.  There is a problem with this scenario, you cannot manage the PSTs.  You cannot perform any discovery on users PSTs.  You also cannot archive or keep the emails in the PST in a centralized area and under your corporate control.

The PST Capture tool allows you to deploy the PST Capture application on a centralized server or workstation, file PSTCapture.msi.  Once you have your central server setup you will then deploy the PSTCaptureAgent.msi (there is also one for x86 systems) on the computers throughout your organization.  This allows the agent to report back to the server and alert of any PSTs.

How it works:

The display screen here gives you two options, the first is Find a PST and import PST files.  You obviously will want to find the PST files first:

The tool will ask what to search by presenting you with your AD tree.  You will want to select the OUs of the computers you want to search:

Next you will want to select the location of where to search.  For this demonstration I just selected “All” and let the tool go do its thing.

Next it asked me if I wanted to setup a schedule, for this I said No.  But if you have a large environment you may want to consider setting up a schedule to collect the PSTs.  Anyway, once I came back to my screen I hit Scan Now and off it went looking for PSTs.  Keep in mind this is a lab so I’m not going to find too much data but it find the PSTAgents and reported back:

Once completed I selected the files and I did an import now.

I should also point out that you can assign the PSTs to different mailboxes.  This comes in handy if the PST file is not directed to the correct mailbox.

So in the above example I switched the test.pst to my test account “Roy”

What a great tool.  I actually have a few clients that are looking for ways to bring PSTs back into their Exchange Organization.  Before this tool there was no real easy free way of doing it.  Thank you Microsoft for giving the community such a great tool!

To get the download you can go to the Microsoft Exchange PST Capture download site.

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Exchange 2010 SP2 has been released!

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
December 5th, 2011 by

The MS Exchange team has released Exchange 2010 SP2!  Yay!

Some of the new features in Exchange 2010 SP2 that I’m looking forward to are:

  • GAL Segmentation!  GAL Segmentation will allow an exchange admin to have multiple GAL that are filtered to users based on a new feature called Address Book Policy (ABP). The ABP allows an administrator to assign to a user which address books, GALs, rooms, and users they can see. I say users because if a person looks at an distribution list that contains users from different GALs and the user doesn’t have permission to see that GAL the ABP will filter out those users.  (more info on GAL Segmentation from The Exchange Team: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/01/27/3411882.aspx )
  • Silent Redirection!  As it stands now when a user hits OWA and logs in to their mailbox, if that user resides in another Internet facing AD Site they will be presented with a link to click to get to their OWA URL. Once they click that link the user will need to enter their username and password again. With Silent Redirection in Exchange 2010 SP2 this will no linger be the case! Users will now automatically be logged in to the redirected site. This gives the users a single sign on experience!
  • Hybrid Configuration Wizard, which will allow organizations to deploy a hybrid deployment where some mailboxes will be on-premises while others can be on Microsoft Office 365.

For some other features of Exchange 2010 SP2 check out my old Blog Article, Exchange 2010 SP2

Looking to download Exchange 2010 SP2?  You can find it here:  http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28190

For a list of the features in Exchange 2010 SP2 you can go here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh529924.aspx

Enjoy!

Questions, Comments?  Please Share


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Some Voicemail systems may not route SMTP mail to Exchange 2007/2010

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
September 13th, 2011 by

I recently had a client upgrade to Exchange 2010 for their mail system. As part of this process all applications servers, including voicemail, were configured to route to the Exchange 2010 environment.

The majority of their applications worked however the voice mail system would not work. The voice mail system was using SMTP delivery to send voice mails into the Exchange Organization. The voice mail system was configured to route to the Hub Transport server and the Hub Transport Server was configured to accept connections from the Voice mail systems IP address on a dedicated receive connector.

When looking at the Exchange logs the following information popped out:

,2011,08,01,HubSrv\VoiceMail,TargetIP,SourceIP>,501 5.1.7 Invalid address

Turning to Google I typed in the error,” 501 5.1.7 Invalid address” and came across a KB944302. Here I read that the cause states:

This problem occurs because by default the receive connector in Exchange Server 2007 does not have its default domain value set. This is unlike the behavior in Exchange 2000 or 2003 where it automatically appended the default domain to values that are submitted to MAIL FROM: or RCPT TO: in the message envelope by a sending server if no domain name is provided.

In Exchange Server 2007, the default domain value on the receive connector is not set by default. If no domain name is specified in the MAIL FROM: or RCPT TO: commands, Exchange Server 2007 rejects the message with “501 5.1.7 Invalid Address” response.

This also applies to Exchange 2010. The voice mail system was not able to send mail to the receive connector because the default domain field was blank. I was able to verify that the field was blank by doing a “Get-ReceiveConnector “HubSrv\VoiceMail” | FL Name,Default*” which returned:

Name: VoiceMail
DefaultDomain:

Seeing that my defaultDomain was blank I then ran the following command to set the field:
Set-ReceiveConnector “HubSrv\VoiceMail” –DefaultDomain “scottfeltmann.com”

Scottfeltmann.com is what I used in this example but this should be your SMTP domain name.

When I ran the Get-ReceiveConnector command again my configuration looked like this:

Name: VoiceMail
DefaultDomain: scottfeltmann.com

Once this configuration was completed the voice mail system was able to route voicemails into the Exchange 2010 environment!

Questions? Comments? Please Share.

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Do I need a CAS Array?

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
September 12th, 2011 by

I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw this topic covered at TechEd next year.  I have many clients ask me the following question a lot, “do I need a CAS Array in my organization?”  I imagine that there are many people out there wondering the exact same thing.  So, do you need a CAS Array for your Exchange 2010 organization?

Well, let’s start out by looking at how Exchange 2010 will work without a CAS array.  In the event where you do not have a CAS Array when you create a Database the database will configure the “RpcClientAccessServer” (the RPC Endpoint for Outlook Client Connectivity) based on one of the following:

  • If you have both the Client Access server role and the Mailbox server role on the same physical server, the value of RPCClientAccessServer property for a particular Mailbox server will be the same as the Mailbox server.
  • If you have the Client Access server role on a separate maching the RPCClientAccessServer property for a particular Mailbox server will be set to a random Client Access server within the Active Directory site.

What this means is that the Mailbox Database that you created will either assign the RPCClientAccessServer property based on one of the two options above.   Which brings me to Scenario one.

Scenario one:

Let’s say you have two Exchange Servers deployed within your organization EXCH1 and EXCH2.  Each server is running the Mailbox, Hub Transport, and Client Access role in the same Active Directory Site.  Now say you deploy one databases on each server Database1 on EXCH1 and Database2 on EXCH2.  Each Database will be assigned the RPCClientAccessServer property with the server name the database resides on.  i.e. Database1 will have a RPCClientAccessServer set to EXCH1 and Database2 will have a RPCClientAccessServer set to EXCH2.

Next we deploy a DAG within our two nodes and replicate the two databases between the servers.  Even with a DAG deployed in the event that EXCH2 goes off line all users in Database2 will lose their connection!  This is because their RPCClientAccessServer points to EXCH2 even thought their database is mounted on EXCH1.  The RPCClientAccessServer property does not get updated automatically.

End Scenario one

Now let’s take a look at how Exchange 2010 behaves if the CAS Array is already created.  When you create a Database the database will configure the “RpcClientAccessServer” (the RPC Endpoint for Outlook Client Connectivity) based on one of the following:

  • In the event that you have first created a CAS Array and then second created a mailbox database Exchange will assign the RPCClientAccessServer property with the name of the CAS Array for that Active Directory site.

Which brings me to Scenario two!

Scenario two:

Let’s say you have two Exchange Servers deployed within your organization EXCH1 and EXCH2.  Each server is running the Mailbox, Hub Transport, and Client Access role in the same Active Directory Site.  There is no hardware load balancer in your organization but you decided that before creating any databases in your organization you would create a CAS Array.  (for info on creating a CAS Array see my article: Exchange 2010 Client Access Server Array (CAS Array)

Once the CASArray has been created you go out and create a DNS entry, in this case cas.scottfeltmann.com.  For an IP address for this DNS entry you type in the IP Address of EXCH1 and set the time to live to 5 minutes or less (you could do DNS round robin but in the event of an outage 50% of the users will be off line).

Now that we have our CAS Array created we can move forward and create our two new databases, Database1 and Database2.  Each Database will reside on their respective servers EXCH1 and EXCH2.  Since we have created our CAS Array the RPCClientAccessServer property will be set with the CAS Array name, in this case “cas.scottfeltmann.com”.

As a final step a DAG has been deployed to replicate the mailbox databases between the two servers within our organization.  Since our CAS Array is currently pointing to cas.scottfeltmann.com which points to EXCH1 in the event that we lose the server EXCH1 our users will lose their connection.  Once this occurs a manual process needs to take place to update the DNS entry cas.scottfeltmann.com to point to EXCH2.  Once DNS updates, all users will be back on line and working again!  Much better than the scenario one if you ask me.

End Scenario 2.

Honestly to simply the failover process I always suggest a Hardware Load Balancer like Kemp Technologies (http://www.kemptechnologies.com/us/) which will automatically re-establish the connection.

Also keep in mind that if you created a Mailbox database before the creation of a Client Access array or the installed a Client Access server within the Active Directory site, you’ll need to reconfigure the value of the RPCClientAccessServer property. If no Client Access server exists in the Active Directory site when the Mailbox database is created, the value of the RPCClientAccessServer property will be set to the FQDN of the Mailbox server. To configure the value of the RPCClientAccessServer property, use the following command: Set-MailboxDatabase DBName -RPCClientAccessServer cas.scottfeltmann.com (or whatever your CAS Array name is).  In some rare instances you  may run into a bug where you created the CAS Array after the databases were deployed, and updated the RPCClientAccessServer property on the Database.  For more information on that bug see my article Outlook Profile not updating after creating CAS Array.

So, to answer the question, “Do I need a CAS Array?”  The answer is Yes!  Most certainly!  Absolutely!
Edit — I should point out, even if you have a single Exchange 2010 Server in your entire Organization you should use a CAS Array!

Questions?  Comments?  Please Share!


 

 

 

 

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If you’re running Exchange 2010 and have a DAG install one of the following Hotfixes

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
July 12th, 2011 by

I came across an interesting Tweet yesterday from Scott Schnoll which said “If you have a DAG, install the cluster hotfixes from MSKB 2549472, 2549448 or 2552040. Only need to install one (same files in each hotfix).”

The Hotfixes can be found here:

Why any one of these KBs?  Well each KB has the same files required to repair the issue that Microsoft has discovered with Exchange 2010.  As Scott put it, “These packages contain the same cluster fixes, which address some issues that can affect network connectivity in a cluster.”

Thanks Scott!

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Exchange 2010 SP2

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related TechEd
May 16th, 2011 by

I am here in Atlanta at TechEd 2011 and just finished the session on whats new in Exchange Service Pack 2. Good session. During the session it was brought up when SP2 would be released and what some of the new features will be.

The first thing to talk about is SP2 is currently in DF1 mode meaning it is currently being tested internally. The update will fix an estimated 500 bugs and carry some new features. For the user community the update will be released in the second half of 2011. Sorry, that is all the info I have there. I was hoping for third quarter personally. The update will require a schema update to active directory so be ready

During the sessions a few of the new features were presented for the first time. Those features include GAL Segmentation, OWA Cross Site Redirection, and OWA Mini.

GAL Segmentation is what it sounds. It will allow an exchange admin to have multiple GAL that are filtered to users based on a new feature called Address Book Policy (ABP). The ABP allows an administrator to assign to a user which address books, GALs, rooms, and users they can see. I say users because if a person looks at an distribution list that contains users from different GALs and the user doesn’t have permission to see that GAL the ABP will filter out those users. Make sense? In order for this feature to work the users have to be on Exchange 2010 SP2 and be accessing their mailbox through a CAS 2010 Sp2 server. This is a big plus to organizations where they do not want other users to see each other if in different address books. I should point out that with the Distribution List being filtered to only users you can see you will still send to all users in he DL. So be careful!

The next big feature was the OWA Cross Site Redirection. As it stands now when a user hits OWA and logs in to their mailbox, if that user resides in another Internet facing AD Site they will be presented with a link to click to get to their OWA URL. Once they click that link the user will need to enter their username and password again. With the new feature in Exchange 2010 SP2 this will no linger be the case! Users will now automatically be logged in to the redirected site. This gives the users a single sign on experience!

The final feature that was discussed was OWA Mini. OWA Mini is basically OMA brought back using new code. The URL will reside as a virtual directory under OWA/OMA. If you are in an organization that requires OWA policies have no fear. OWA Mini will use the OWA policies! Basically when a user logs in they will get their FBA and supply their credentials. The screen that the user receives is basic and will be used on their device or phone.
The menu looks something like this:
1)Inbox
2)Calendar
3)Contacts
4)Tasks – yes tasks!
5)Find Someone
6)New
7)Search Mail
8)Browse Folders
9)Options
0)About

This feature was brought back because of user demand. I should also point out that ActiveSync Policies are not applied to the OWA Mini.

Some pretty cool features. My favorite is the GAL Segmentation using Address Book Policies. I did manage to take a picture of one of the slides. Take a look and let me know if you have any questions!

20110516-043913.jpg

Finally look for a blog post huge Exchange Team tomorrow for more details on Exchange 2010 SP2. I would post a link but typing this blog post from my iPhone is pretty limited.

Update – The MSExchange Team has posted an update regarding Exchange 2010 SP2.  You can read it here.

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Fourth Annual UC Roundtable at Microsoft TechEd 2011!

Categories: Microsoft Related
April 17th, 2011 by

I emailed Jeff Guillet last week asking if he was going to do another UC Round Table this year.  Well, it looks like he is!

If you go over to The EXPTA {blog} you will find out Jeff is hosting a fourth annual Roundtable at TechEd this year.

If you are into the UC scene I would encourage you to check out the round table.  Last year the MS Exchange team showed up to take some Q/A.  Well worth the price of admission!  (there wasn’t actually admission but it was worth the time)

For more information check out The EXPTA {blog}.

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KEMP Announces the First Server Load Balancing Appliance, Specifically Designed for Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
April 5th, 2011 by

As many of you know I have been working with a lot of Exchange 2010 deployments and leveraging the CASArray feature in Exchange 2010.  As a result I have been using the KEMP load balancers for my small to medium size business clients.

Having said that you will recall a few months ago I posted an article about the KEMP Technologies being certified for Exchange 2010 CASArray.   I just received a press release stating that KEMP has introduced a server load balancing appliance designed specifically for Exchange 2010. 

Here is the press release:

—————————————————————————————————————

KEMP’s LoadMaster Exchange comes pre-configured and ready to deploy for instant redundancy and high availability of critical Exchange 2010 services

 Yaphank, N.Y. – April 5, 2011 – KEMP Technologies today announced the availability of its new LoadMaster Exchange (LM-Exchange) server load balancing and application delivery appliance. The newest member of its family of affordable load balancers, the KEMP LoadMaster Exchange is designed to address high-availability and scalability demands of Microsoft Exchange 2010 deployments for businesses up to 250 users. 

 While all of KEMP’s server load balancing and application delivery controller (ADCs) products currently support and are approved by Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2010 qualification program for hardware and software load balancers, the LM-Exchange is the first product of its kind that was specifically designed and purpose-built for Microsoft’s Exchange 2010. “For the smaller business that may not be familiar with load balancing technology, ease-of-use and speed of deployment was our top priority in the design and development of this product,” said Peter Melerud, vice president of product management at KEMP. “For the vast majority of smaller enterprises, which will consolidate the primary Exchange 2010 server roles onto a pair of servers, the LM-Exchange can be deployed in less than five minutes, providing instant redundancy and high-availability for client access server (CAS) and other critical Exchange 2010 services.” 

 The LM-Exchange supports up to 13 virtual services and six real (physical) servers. To simplify installation, the LM-Exchange is pre-configured and optimized for the most commonly deployed Exchange 2010 server roles. Moreover, the appliance is designed out-of-the-box to support Outlook Web Access, Outlook Anywhere and ActiveSync. The LM-Exchange will include all the key functionality that the typical Exchange 2010 deployment will require, including distribution of Exchange 2010 traffic load across and up to six servers, CAS server affinity (persistence), SSL offload and application service and server hardware health checking with automatic failover upon detection of outages. The LM-Exchange scales to support up to 250 Exchange 2010 users, with performance capacity of 920Mbps of layer-seven (L7) throughput, SSL offload of up to 200TPS and can support up to 25,000 L7 connections per second. 

 The LM-Exchange is currently available for shipping and has an MSRP of $1,590 including first-year hardware maintenance and support. 

 About KEMP Technologies

KEMP Technologies is a leader in affordable server load balancer appliances and application delivery controllers tailored to meet the needs of businesses that rely on the Internet for e-commerce and business-critical applications. KEMP helps companies rapidly grow their business with 24/7 high-availability, better web infrastructure performance, scalability and secure operations – while streamlining IT costs.

 Thousands of KEMP LoadMaster products are in use today to improve customer satisfaction by accelerating user access to business-critical web applications. Service providers also rely upon KEMP products to enable fast time-to-market and cost-effective operations for new and existing managed services.

 KEMP’s highly affordable LoadMaster products include Layers 4-7 load balancing, content switching, server persistence, SSL offload/acceleration, and application front-end capabilities (caching, compression, intrusion prevention system), plus one full year of product support – delivering industry leading price/performance value.

 The company is headquartered in Yaphank, New York. For more information, visit www.KEMPtechnologies.com, or call at +1 631-345-5292.

——————————————————————————————————–

 If you don’t have a NLB for Exchange 2010 I would suggest looking into the Kemp Technologies solution.  They are affordable and work well.   I have a few clients that have purchased them and so far so good!

Questions, comments?  Please share!

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Update Rollup 3 for Exchange 2010 SP1 and Exchange 2007 SP3

Categories: Exchange Server
March 8th, 2011 by

The Exchange Team today released two new Rollups for Exchange 2010 SP1 and Exchange 2007 SP3.  More detail can be found here - Released: Update Rollup 3 for Exchange 2010 SP1 and Exchange 2007 SP3.

One thing to note are fixes for memory leaks in 2010 which I have seen in the wild.  This has caused some Exchange Servers to crash.  Glad to see this was addressed.   You can find a description of the rollup for 2010 here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2492690

For the release notes for Rollup 3 for Exchange 2007 SP3 you can go here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2492691

Have a great day everyone!

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Riverbed Network appliance and Exchange 2010 DAG replication

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related Riverbed
February 28th, 2011 by

I had a colleague come up to me the other day talking to be about an issue he ran into regarding Exchange 2010 DAG and Riverbed WAN acceleration.

The setup was like this.  The client had a DAG setup that spanned across two sites.  This gives them site resiliency so they have their data in two datacenters.  The two sites were connected via wire with Riverbed appliances acting as a WAN acceleration between the two sites.  This means that the DAG was log shipping over the wire which was managed between two riverbeds.

Ok, so since the traffic was passing through the Riverbed appliance the compression ratio was only 24% and the traffic was going SLOW.  Why?  Well, by default log replication in a DAG employs compression and encryption!  Basically what was occurring is the Riverbed was trying to compress traffic that was already compressed causing slow network performance.

The solution?  Disable both compression and encryption on the DAG servers.  I’m not sure why you need to disable encryption, I was really surprised to find this out but the solution didn’t work with encryption is enabled.  And yes, this came directly from Riverbed support where this is a known issue, but not documented (it is now J).

How do you disable network encryption and compression on the DAG?  We will use the Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup command:

Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Identity <DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIdParameter> -NetworkEncryption Disabled

Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Identity <DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIdParameter> -NetworkCompression Disabled

By doing this you will optimize the WAN acceleration traffic between the two Riverbeds.  I was told the compression was at 74% and functioning properly!  Network communications were flying and problem solved!

Thanks Dan for sharing! 

Comments?  Please feel free to share!

Thanks!

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