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Issues with Migrating users to Exchange 2010 and Migrating Users to new BES 5.01 Server

Categories: BlackBerry Enterprise Server Microsoft Related
August 20th, 2010 by Scott

I recently came across a client who was having some problems with a transition from BES 4.0 to BES 5.01.  The reason for the transition is that they are in the process of migrating users from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.  The process they are using is a gradual migration meaning they are migrating users from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 in batches of 25% of their user base.

The process they are using is that they will migrate the user from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 and then use the BlackBerry Transporter tool to migrate the users from BES 4.0 to BES 5.01.  What is occurring is that many of the users end up needing to have their BlackBerry device reactivated.  As a end result this process causes additional work load for their support staff. 

The problem that is that when migrating the user from BES 4.0 to 5.01 immediately after the Exchange user migration the BES server does not have time to rediscover the users new mail location.  A support call placed to RIM revealed that this is a known bug and the recommendation is to wait at least 30 minutes after the Exchange Migration.  Talking to the Admin at my client she suggests waiting 45 minutes, as this has reduced the likelihood of this problem from occurring again. 

Again, this problem is only occurring in the event where a company is migrating from Exchange to a new version and migrating to a new BES server i.e. 5.01.  I’m guessing many organizations won’t see this issue because they are either not upgrading BES at the same time, or big bang the Exchange user migration and then upgrade the BES database/server to the new edition.

Comments or thoughts?  Please share!

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Exchange 2010 Client Access Server Workload Sizing

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related TechEd
June 14th, 2010 by Scott

During TechEd 2010 in New Orleans I was able to attend a session dealing with the CAS workload Sizing.  Microsoft put together a new chart to help with the different workloads that hit a CAS.  The chart is based on the amount of workload that a typical CAS will see and the CPU Cost and Network Cost.  I have attached a copy of the Chart that MS will be publishing to help with CAS sizing in the future.  The chart is based on a 100 messages sent/received per day. 

The Chart:
CAS Workload Sizing

The chart gives a potential impact of using all Outlook using in the form of Outlook Anywhere, Outlook Web Application, Outlook, and ActiveSync.  You can see that the chart includes IMAP and POP3 but those protocols are used for reading and not submitting mail.    

If you take a look at the chart you will notice that Outlook Anywhere and Outlook Web App are basically the same thus simplifying the sizing used for those roles.  ActiveSync is actually an additional cost to Outlook.  The logic here is that users will both be using Outlook and ActiveSync at the same time.  Rarely do you see a user just using ActiveSync and not use Outlook at any given time during the day.  (Actually I’m using Outlook right now and ActiveSync since my phone is automatically syncing) 

Another key take away from this session is the use of Windows 2008 R2.  It was mentioned that the improvements to Windows 2008 R2’s rpcproxy service allows for the expansion of 15,000 Outlook Anywhere users on an 8-core CAS i.e. 2 sockets with 4 cores each (Recall my previous post?)

Anyway, I felt this chart was very useful and since it hasn’t been published on TechNet yet I thought I would share.

Enjoy!

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Microsoft TechEd 2010 is over.

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related TechEd
June 11th, 2010 by Scott

Well, last night was the TechEd 2010 closing party.  The location was Mardi Gras World right next to the convention center in New Orleans.  Inside we were able to go through the shop where all the floats are stored and created.  It was rather interesting to see the amount of work that goes on there to build all those floats.

After the first building came the mansion and a hall.  Microsoft provided beer, wine, and food.   Given how much I love food I had to give all of the food a try.  The best was the beef brisket on top of some sort of cucumber pasta thing.  I also have to say the cupcakes were good as well.  Another cool aspect was the four bands there.  Two rock and roll, a brass band, and a polka band.  It is also located right off the Mississippi River where we could watch ships coming in and out.  There was a number of Xbox 360’s provided for competitive game play.  I sat down and tried my luck on a first person shooter but got my butt whipped my some younger fella.  Guess I’m a bit out of practice.  They also had charactures, gambling (with pretend money) and tarot card/palm readers.  Overall it was a pretty cool night. 

As for the overall TechEd 2010 Experience I had a great time.  I couldn’t believe how much information I learned, the people I met and the activity’s I was fortunate enough to attend.  I really wanted to send special thank you to the Krewe for keeping track of the events and making it easy for a first timer at TechEd to meet people.  If you’re not familiar with the Krewe they basically track the events going on at TechEd and present new comers and opportunity to meet people and socialize.  Thanks to Jeff Guillet over at the Expta.com blog for organizing the Exchange round table at Rusty Nails.  I have to admit, this was probably one of the best events for me at TechEd.  I had the opportunity to sit down with other exchange experts and talk Exchange.  Not to mention some of the Exchange Product team members showed up!  The amount of knowledge these guys have about Exchange is unreal.  I learned more about Exchange 2010 in that night then all week just because I was able to ask those questions where I was confused and got solid Answers.   I have to also give thanks to the Exchange Product team for taking time out of their busy weeks to meet up with us at the Exchange Round Table.   Thank you very much Kumar Venkateswar, Ross Smith IV, Scott Schnoll for hanging out with us on Monday night!  I had a blast and it was great meeting you guys!

Well, that’s it! The last post for me from New Orleans.  Next step is to review my notes and digest all that I have learned here at TechEd 2010.  I’m looking forward to coming back next year where TechEd 2011 will be in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Take Care!

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Change to CPU recommendation for Exchange 2010

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
June 11th, 2010 by Scott

Well, today was the last day of TechEd.  I have to admit I learned a great deal and met some great people, but that is for another post.

I wanted to mention something I heard today during one of the presentation.  It sounds like Microsoft is going to change the recommendation around CPU sizing for Exchange 2010.  Currently Microsoft has CPU core ratios on their website listing the required cores for a server based on the roles it is running.  For example, in Exchange 2010 for every 4 mailbox cores you need to have 3 CAS cores.  If you happen to have a Hub/CAS combined roles you would have a core ratio of 1:1.

In the very near future Microsoft is planning to release a new technet article that will recommend CPU Sockets rather than cores in their CPU recommendations.  The speaker that mentioned this didn’t go into too much detail on the reason for the change.

He did mention however that for Exchange 2010 the ideal number of sockets are two sockets.  This was practically the recommendation for every server type in Exchange 2010.  From listening to the speaker each socket was quad core, which is nearly default configuration on new servers hence the change in requirement specifications, my thoughts.  I will be interested to see when the Technet article comes out and what it has listed for Sizing Exchange 2010 servers.  If you’re interested you can take a look at the TechNet article discussion Exchange 2010 sizing and performance.    Keep in mind the current link as of 6/11/2010 still states server cores, we will have to pay attention for the change.

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New feature in Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 regarding cross-site database failover

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
June 10th, 2010 by Scott

I am currently down in New Orleans attending TechEd 2010 and was able to attend a session by Ross Smith IV.  During the presentation Ross brought to our attention a new feature in Exchange 2010 SP1 regarding Outlook behavior is a cross-site (two datacenters) database failover.

As it stands now in the event that a failover would occur in a DAG the outlook client will connect directly to its preferred CAS server which is set at the RPCClientAccessServer property.  So for example, say you have two AD sites.  Each site contains a CAS Array, CAS1 in Datacenter 1 and CAS2 in Datacenter 2.  The preferred CAS Array in this scenario is CAS1 (RPCClientAccessServer).  So, what this means is that the outlook client is going to default to CAS1 and then to its local database in Datacenter 1.   Now, in the event of a Database failure and the Database fails over to a mailbox server in Datacenter 2 the outlook client will have a direct connect to CAS1 and CAS1 will have a direct connect to the mailbox server in Datacenter 2.  In RTM you can only get a redirect to CAS2 by changing the RPCClientAccessServer property on the database.

In Exchange 2010 SP1 you can choose to enable or disable cross-site direct connect.  You can also define an activation preference for a database which determines whether to perform a direct connect or a redirect. 

What this means is that if you consider our scenario above where we have two datacenters and two CAS Array’s CAS1 and CAS2 we can control the cross-site failover event.  In the event where Cross Site Connections are allowed the RPCClientAccessServer remains CAS1 and CAS1 will connect the user to their mailbox server in Datacenter 2.  However, say we wish to disable Cross Site Connections, in the event of a failover Autodiscover detects the profile change and updates the client to point to CAS2 (requires restart).  CAS2 then will provide the mailbox access to the mailbox server in Datacenter 2!  This behavior in SP1 is based on three properties.
1.  Home server property in Outlook
2. Preferred database site (RPCClientAccessServer)
3. Active database site

Now, keep in mind that since the Autodiscover service is being used this feature will not work well with Outlook 2003.  Actually during one of the session it was strongly encouraged that if you are still using Outlook 2003 you should move off of it prior to moving to Exchange 2010.  In the event that you have disabled Cross Site Connections and have outlook 2003 when outlook attempts to connect to CAS1 it will detect the failover via ecWrongServer and redirect to CAS2.  However, in the event that CAS1 goes down, Outlook 2003 can’t update if the source CAS goes down.

Don’t ask me how to configure, that part wasn’t convered and I haven’t had a chance to play with SP1 in a lab yet.  

Hope you enjoyed this article, I will continue to work on getting more for everyone!  Have a great night!

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Datacenter Activation Coordinator Changes in Exchange 2010 SP1!

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
June 8th, 2010 by Scott

For the past few days I have been down in New Orleans taking in all the valuable information at TechEd and meeting some great people. 

So far it has been a great experience.  Last night I happened to go to the Exchange Round table that was hosted by Jeff Guillet from EXPTA.Com (Great guy btw).  While at the meeting some of the Microsoft Exchange Team happened to come to participate in the discussion.  I had the privilege of speaking with some members on the Exchange team (Smart Guys, if I get nothing more out of TechEd it was worth just the time to hang out with some of the guys on the Exchange Team) and they shared some information with me about Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1, which was totally legal since it was released to the public yesterday.

As you recall I wrote an article back on November 18th called “Managing Split Brain in Exchange 2010 DAG with Datacenter Activation Coordination Mode” and as mentioned in that article there was a restriction on how to use DAC in an environment.  If you look back at the article you will note that you can only use DAC if the following is true:

 1. You need to have at least three database copies to use DAC.  This means that you would require three separate servers. 

2.  That you could not leverage DAC  if the DAG members existed in the same Active Directory Site.

Well, after my conversation last night it was mentioned to me that the requirements above are no longer requirements in Exchange 2010 SP1!  What this means is that with Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 you can now leverage DAC with only two database copies (2 servers in a DAG)!  He also mentioned to me that on top of that neat feature above that you can also leverage DAC within a single Active Directory Site!  Whoa, Even better!  This now will give organizations the ability to deploy a HA environment with 2 database copies AND leverage DAC thus preventing a split brain scenario which was a risk with the RTM version of Exchange with two database copies.  Now that is awesome! 

What I was not able to find out was the release date of Exchange 2010 SP 1.  I am well aware that the beta is out (Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Beta Now Available for Download) but it is not quite ready for production. 

Hope this helps!

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Exchange 2010 Licensing, double and triple check!

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
June 4th, 2010 by Scott

This past week I had a client give me a call with a problem pertaining to their Exchange 2010 licensing.

a little background; I just recently deployed four Exchange 2010 servers in their environment, two are meant for standard edition and the other two are for enterprise Exchange editions.

Well, the client was on an Exchange 2010 server that was designated to be an Exchange 2010 Standard License and accidently entered in an Enterprise License!  After some research and a call in to Microsoft Licensing Support I was informed that in the event of downgrading from Exchange 2010 Enterprise to Exchange 2010 Standard licensing you will need to uninstall Exchange 2010 from the server and reinstall it.  Ouch!  The good news is you don’t need to rebuild the OS, but from an exchange standpoint this is a few hours of extra work that no one would enjoy having to do.

I will mention that in the event of upgrading a standard license to an enterprise license is possible. 

So, warning to all, when entering your Exchange 2010 Enterprise Licenses be sure you are on the correct server, otherwise you are in a rebuild state.  Thankfully for my client it was a redundant Unified Messaging Server so all configuration information was able to be retained in Active Directory!

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DataOntap 7.3 upgrade & Windows 2008 disks offline on server reboot

Categories: NetApp Windows 2008
May 6th, 2010 by Scott

A colleague of mine sent me a bug that is occuring to some of our clients when upgrading to DataOntap 7.3 and using Windows 2008.  When the server is rebooted the SAN attached disks do not come back on line.  It has been causing some headaches out there so I thought I would share the fix. 

The process to resolve the issue is a manual process, but the good news is that once you do it it doesn’t appear you have to do it again, or at least that is what I have been told from our client. 

Follow these steps:

  1. On Windows 2008 open System Manager
  2. Expand “Storage” and select “Disk Management”
  3. Right click the “Offline” disk and select “Online” (this will bring the disk back online)

Once the disk has been brought back on line all seems to be well, even after additional reboots.  

The NDU process was used but that did not resolve the issue either as noted in the below KB article. 

There is also a NETAPP article regarding the issue,  KB54672:

Disks show as offline in Windows 2008 after Data ONTAP upgrade

Symptoms

After upgrading Data ONTAP from 7.2.x to 7.3.x, all LUNs attached to Windows 2008 servers appear as ‘offline.’

 Cause of this problem
Data ONTAP upgrades to 7.3.x without using the NDU process will change the LUN revision numbers. Data ONTAP versions prior to 7.3 used a LUN revision number of 0.2, which can be seen using the devcon.exe utility:
MPIO\DISK&VEN_NETAPP&PROD_LUN&REV_0.2_\1&7F6AC24&0&4334677547345438416C4B4F: NETAPP LUN Multi-Path Disk Device 

After 7.2.x, LUN revision numbers took on the version of Data ONTAP and the filer was upgraded to:
MPIO\DISK&VEN_NETAPP&PROD_LUN&REV_7310\1&7F6AC24&0&5672482F2F4A54344E46674C: NETAPP LUN Multi-Path Disk Device

 Solution

 There are several options:

1. Use non-disruptive upgrades of Data ONTAP (with takeover/giveback) to prevent the LUN revisions from changing.|
2. Use SnapDrive to disconnect/reconnect drives, as it will automate the process of bringing drives online.
3. Do nothing and online the drives manually in diskpart or disk management GUI.

To prevent this issue entirely:

 For hosts that fall within the above conditions, we recommend setting the SAN Policy to “Online All” prior to the ONTAP upgrade. This will prevent the virtual disks from dropping offline after a reboot. Once the host is rebooted, the SAN Policy can be changed back to the default setting of “Offline Shared.”

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New Version of PFDAVAdmin

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
April 9th, 2010 by Scott

The MS Exchange team has released a new Version of PFDAVAdmin.  Why is this important?  If you’re like me and you need to manage or setup replication or what ever it is you want to do with Public Folders PFDAVAdmin is a great tool.  I use this quite a bit when I’m migrating from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.  It allows me to set up replica’s rather quickly between the Exchange Servers.  If you haven’t used this tool before I strongly encourage you to check it out! 

If you’re not sure what PFDAVAdmin is:

Overview

Use the Exchange Server Public Folder Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV)-based Administration tool (PFDAVAdmin) to perform various management tasks related to public folders and mailboxes. The tool checks the permissions status of each public and mailbox folder and corrects any problems found. The ability to bulk export/import the permissions and replica lists make this tool invaluable in achieving greater productivity in managing public folders. The program can also reports content information of each public folder and mailbox folder such as the number of items in each folder, size of folder and most recent modification date of any item in the folder.
 
 
For the article posted at the Exchange Team Blog go here: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/04/09/454590.aspx
 
Have a great Weekend Everybody!
 
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Exchange 2010 SP1 Teaser

Categories: Microsoft Related
April 7th, 2010 by Scott

The MS Exchange team has posted a great blog article pertaining to the release of Exchange 2010 SP1.  This is actually great to hear.  I love the fact that the Exchange team is listening to the users in the community and implementing some of their ideas into Exchange.

The biggest new feature I see mentioned is being able to create a user’s archive Mailbox in a different database.  Currently the archived content of a user’s mailbox is stored in a separate archived mailbox in the same exchange database.  There have been many times where I have been meeting with clients and the question came up, why do I have to store a user’s archive content in the exact same database on my SAN? (Yes, clients still prefer to use SAN disk)  To answer their question I say, that’s the way it is designed, but I have heard rumors it will not be like that in the next service pack.  It sounds like those rumors are correct!  That is totally awesome.  And to sweeten the deal it sounds like Microsoft is going to allow access to the archived mailbox via Outlook 2007!  How sweet is that?!  I actually have had a number of clients say they do not want to use Exchange Archiving because they are not ready (nor is it available) to move to Outlook 2010.  Well, no longer an issue.  I’m glad to see users will be able to use Outlook 2007.  I heard rumors around that as well but nothing solid until today.

There is also going to be the ability to create Retention Tag Policies in the Exchange Management Shell.  It will be interesting to see this interface.  As you know to enable Archiving you mostly have to go through the EMS.    For some more info on the Archiving take a look at my Archiving post here.

There are also some changes to Outlook Web App and Mobility. 

Honestly I’m more excited about the changes to the archiving piece then anything because that is where I have a lot of hang ups. 

One other piece to mention is the New Management UI available in both the Exchange Control Panel (ECP) and the Exchange Management Console (EMC).  The additions are:

  • Create/configure Retention Tags + Retention Policies in EMC
  • Configure Transport Rules in ECP
  • Configure Journal Rules in ECP
  • Configure MailTips in ECP
  • Provision and configure the Personal Archive in ECP
  • Configure Litigation Hold in ECP & EMC
  • Configure Allow/Block/Quarantine mobile device policies in ECP
  • RBAC role management in ECP
  • Configure Database Availability Group (DAG) IP Addresses and Alternate Witness Server in EMC
  • Recursive public folder settings management (including permissions) in EMC

For more information on the changes including the OWA and Mobility you can take a look at the original article @ http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/04/07/454533.aspx

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