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Exchange 2010 SP1 officially released!

Categories: Microsoft Related
August 25th, 2010 by Scott

Well, the MS Exchange team announced today that Exchange 2010 SP1 has now been officially released!

You can go out and download it here: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

For more information on the features included in SP1 you can go here.

Enjoy!

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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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Netflix adds Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM to their streaming service!

Categories: General NetFlix
August 11th, 2010 by Scott

For those of you know I’m a Netflix fan, well I just read an article that Netflix as has formed a partnership with MGM, Lionsgate, and Paramount Pictures!  What this means is users will now be able to stream moving made by these manufactures.  According to Mike the guy sitting next to me that includes all the Saw movies!  I’m a huge fan of Star Trek and that franchise falls under Paramount!

If you ask me, this is a pretty sweet deal.  Thanks Netflix and the studios involved for making this deal to happen.  It sounds like the movies will be made available on September 1st.  New movies will not be available until 90 days after they go on pay TV.  Either way, I’m happy!

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VMotion and Database Availability Groups (DAG)

Categories: Exchange Server VMware
August 5th, 2010 by Scott

Over the past few weeks I have been busy deploying Exchange 2010.  Many of these deployments involved deploying Exchange 2010 on VMWare ESX environments.   In a previous post I mentioned how Vmotion and Exchange 2010 DAGs was not supported.  However, based on some testing I have changed my opinion of this approach.  Perhaps it is just a fluke and I would be interested to hear what everyone out there is experiencing but here goes.

When leveraging DAG on Exchange 2010 and the need to VMotion the server comes up there seems to be an issue with doing a migrate when the Exchange 2010 mailbox server is powered off for the Vmotion.  I have seen this occur at two separate client sites.  Power off the Mailbox Server, Migrate, DAG broken.  Got it?

Now, what I am seeing that if I leave the Passive node online and replicating the passive databases with the active node a live migrate seems to work just fine!  I have tested this twice now (which is why I don’t know if it is a fluke or not) and both times migrating the passive node while powered on and replicating caused NO problems.  I even went as far as to reboot the passive machine anticipating it to break, but nope, nothing! 

So, I’m going to challenge the community out there to try this if you can.  Live migrate your passive VM Mailbox node and see what happens.  If you can, power it off and migrate and see what happens.  I seem to have the same occurrence when the VM is powered down and/or when the VM is powered on. 

Either way, from my testing it appears that if you migrate while the DAG member is online (keep in mind I didn’t have any active databases running on the node) it seems to successfully migrate without any problems!

Let me know what your findings are, but this is great news!

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BES 5.0 SP2 – reduction to disk I/O on Exchange!

Categories: BlackBerry Enterprise Server Exchange Server General
July 30th, 2010 by Scott

As you may or may not know about 3 weeks ago RIM released SP2 for BES 5.0.  Since I have some clients that run BES I thought I would read through the release notes for SP2 and came across an interesting bullet:

  •  reduction to disk I/O — impact The BlackBerry Enterprise Server does not write updates for user statistics to mailboxes to reduce the load on the Microsoft® Exchange Server.

 What does this mean?  Well, my guess is it reduces the disk I/O impact on Exchange servers!  As you may know in previous articles when building an Exchange environment you need to factor in an additional I/O on the disks of 3.64 (I like to round up to 4) for each BlackBerry Device in your organization.  Meaning if you have 100 BlackBerry’s you can expect to have an extra demand of 400 IOPS on your Storage platform. 

 Well, with this new fix with the “does not write updates for user statistics to mailboxes” I would have to assume that this would reduce that 3.64 number.  I have heard a rumor that this number has been reduced to 1.85 IOPS per device.

 Considering I don’t have easy access to BES 5.0 SP2 I’m curious if anyone out there can confirm this?  Please comment if you have tested and confirm!

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DOH!

Categories: General
July 26th, 2010 by Scott

I looks like my server crashed at some point on Friday the 23rd of July.  Being out of town for the weekend I didn’t find out until now.

I apologize to all my fans, sorry for the inconvenience!

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VMotion and Exchange 2010 DAG Not supported!

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
July 26th, 2010 by Scott

Where have I been!  I have been a very busy bee.  Sorry for not posting too much lately, seems there isn’t enough time in the day.

Anyway, I came across an interesting article that I thought I would share.  Apparently, as it stands right now, VMotion and Exchange with DAGs is not supported!  I actually felt this problem about two weeks ago on a Wednesday night when a client called with problems in their Exchange 2010 environment.  Mail wasn’t routing and I thought, hey, this will be a quick fix.  Well, it turned out there were more issues in the environment then what they had thought.  The biggest problems was DAG replication was not occuring.  The Exchange 2010 DAG member could not be brought back on line on the cluster, and the Windows Cluster had kicked it out.  The way I resolved the issue was to evict the node via ConfigurationOnly and Remove it from Windows Clustering.  When I tried to bring the node back into the cluster the cluster would be joined and then evicted.  The problem?  The Witness!  It appears the Witness was locked and the new (old) node could not access it.  As it turns out the client vmotioned the server to another node and that’s when all the problems began.

I came across this article which talks about the problem I had above and I thought I would share.  Link: http://virtualkenneth.com/2009/11/20/vmotion-and-exchange-2010/

Morale of the story?  If you’re running a Database Availability Group don’t VMotion the server to another host!  Honestly you shouldn’t have to, ever.  Why?  Well, you have other servers that are capable of hosting the database of the node that is offline!  That’s what I tell my clients now who are running Exchange 2010 on VMs and they want to vmotion to a new host.  “You don’t need to vmotion to a new host.  With DAGs you have HA which means you can take a node off line for maintainence and still have your mailboxes!  So Please, don’t vmotion!”

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Outlook Profile not updating after creating CAS Array

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
June 28th, 2010 by Scott

I came across an interesting situation this morning where I created a CAS Array in Exchange 2010, updated the RPCClientAccessServer property on the existing database, and re-launched outlook.  As it turns out there is a Bug in Outlook 2007 (and apparently 2010) where the users profile will not update to the new CAS Array.  Instead the profile will remain until the profile is updated or the target is taken off line.   To resolve the issue I had to update the users Outlook Profile.  Thankfully I only have six users testing Exchange 2010 at this point. 

I can’t stress from what was learned this morning the importance of configuring your CASArray prior to migrating to Exchange 2010.  Even if you do not plan on using a CASArray I would suggest you create one and point it to the single CAS in your environment.  This will this give you the ability to add a NLB CAS Array in the future AND save you a ton of work of having to repair all the existing profiles connected to Exchange 2010 at a later date. 

For more info on a CASArray see my previous post Exchange 2010 Client Access Server Array (CAS Array).

I should point out that after some research I did manage to find a blog article pertaining to the issue on Elan Shudnow Blog.  Thanks Elan for sharing!

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Microsoft Technet Wiki!

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
June 25th, 2010 by Scott

Microsoft has introduced a new Wiki site on Technet!  The Technet Wiki is a site where members of the Microsoft community can add content related to multiple Microsoft Technologies!  Not a bad idea if you ask me.  It is actually turning out to be a great resource already!  If you haven’t done so you can go and check it out via the following links:

TechNet Wiki Beta - Main Page
Exchange 2010 Overview - Exchange 2010 related conent

There are many more articles.  I like Exchange so I thought I would include that here.  Enjoy the new wiki!

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Exchange 2010 RU 4 released (KB982639)!

Categories: Exchange Server Microsoft Related
June 18th, 2010 by Scott

Back on April 22nd you may recall an article I wrote dealing with a Bug identified with Exchange 2010 where there is a “.” in the NETBIOS name (KB981033).  Well last night the MS Exchange Team released Exchange 2010 RU 4.  As part of this rollup there is  a fix for the “.” in the NETBIOS name issue.  I noticed that it wasn’t listed in the KB Article but I did email my contact at Microsoft and he did confirm that this RU does address the “.” in the NETBIOS name.  

For all of you out there having this problem I strongly encourage you to go and get  Exchange 2010 RU 4 (KB982639) and apply it, after all, it’s what you have been waiting for!

NOTE:  For those of you who recieved the Interim Update from MS (KB981033) you will need to remove this update prior to installing Exchange 2010 RU4. 

Have a great day!

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