EHLO Me!

I’ve been taking part in a number of migrations from both on-premise installations and hosted solutions to the cloud in recent years.

It was pretty peculiar to find out how many folks around are still using legacy systems (from the standpoint of those who daily deal with cutting edge technology of course) like Exchange 2000 or even some POP servers with really limited functionality to say the least.

To strengthen my amusement was the fact that the most conservative businesses are the big organizations having access to bigger financial resources than SMBs. It is a kind of of ‘set it and forget it’ approach that, however, has its reasoning. Migration from such installations with hundreds of users actively using their emails usually takes at least a month an rarely turns to be completely painless. Moreover, many are skeptical to touch systems that ‘work’ and a bunch of new features and possibilities current messaging systems provide do not look very seducing under such circumstances.

And here comes product lifecycle that often becomes a change driver.

Just a few months still remaining before the extended support ends for Exchange 2000 (not Conferencing server) that would inevitably mean certain difficulties for those maintaining in-house installations.

Exchange 2003 that is a flagship for most on-premise installations (yes, the number of Exchange 2007 installations is significantly smaller!) maintains its positions and will likely fall only to Exchange 2010 serving as another accelerator for a change.

These business if they prepare for the move will prepare moving to Exchange 2010 skipping Exchange 2007 due to not only a richer set of new features but also because of lower TCO and higher reliability.

Exchange 2007 is not going to retire soon apparently. However, some complexities involved in its deployment and some technology tremendously improved in Exchange 2010 (like storage design for example) do position the latter as a market leader and obvious market driver for years to come.

Having invested in Exchange 2010 the businesses may feel safe and quiet for a decade ahead:

Another trend worth mentioning is that more and more big organizations start outsourcing their messaging infrastructure to the cloud after they realize the cloud has become a reliable place for keeping sensitive data providing higher levels of safety, redundancy, reliability, support than many on-premise implementations. Lower TCO adds more value too.

Nice trend and I’m excited to see how the messaging evolves from mostly on-premise installations to the cloud based feature rich solutions benefitting businesses around the globe.

Exchange rocks!

Been wandering through Microsoft Partner Portal, specifically Partner Learning Center and found an awesome course available for partners that will be really interesting to every Exchange PRO –

This turned out to be a very good course on Exchange 2010 that is highly recommended even to those having all these books in possession. I’ve read most of them but such courses are always of a big value and do provide concise and in-depth overview of the product.

The course consists of the following topics:

• Introduction to Exchange 2010
• Introduction to Exchange 2010: Presentation
• Setup, Deployment, and Server Role Configuration
• Setup, Deployment, and Server Role Configuration: Presentation
• Exchange 2010 Setup, Deployment, and Server Role Configuration: Lab
• Upgrading From and Coexisting With Exchange Server 2003/2007
• Upgrading From and Coexisting With Exchange Server 2003/2007: Presentation
• Coexistence and Upgrading from Exchange Server 2007 to Exchange 2010: Lab
• Upgrading from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange 2010: Lab
• Planning, Sizing, and Performance
• Planning, Sizing, and Performance: Presentation
• Using Exchange 2010 Tools to Plan a Deployment: Lab
• Client Access Server
• Client Access Server: Presentation
• Exchange 2010 Client Access: Lab
• The Exchange 2010 Information Worker Experience
• The Exchange 2010 Information Worker Experience: Presentation
• Using Exchange 2010 Mobility Features: Lab
• Federation Scenarios
• Federation Scenarios: Presentation
• Transport and Routing
• Transport and Routing: Presentation
• Exchange 2010 Transport Routing: Lab
• Information Leakage Protection and Control (IPC)
• Information Leakage Protection and Control (IPC): Presentation
• Exchange 2010 Compliance: Information Leakage Protection and Control: Lab
• Compliance: Archiving and Retention
• Compliance: Archiving and Retention: Presentation
• Exchange 2010 Compliance: Archiving and Retention: Lab
• Unified Messaging
• Unified Messaging: Presentation
• Using Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging New Features: Lab
• Configuring Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging: Lab
• Configuring Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging and OCS 2007 R2 Integration: Lab
• Storage
• Storage: Presentation
• High Availability
• High Availability: Presentation
• Exchange 2010 High Availability and Storage Scenarios: Lab
• Management Tools and Role-Based Access Control
• Management Tools and Role-Based Access Control: Presentation
• Using Exchange 2010 Management Tools: Lab
• Exchange Online
• Exchange Online: Presentation
• Using Exchange 2010 Security Features (Anti-spam and Antivirus): Lab
• The Exchange 2010 Developer Platform

The labs available in the course add an extra value to the course and the course itself may serve as preparation material for Exchange 2010 certification.

There can be a problem searching for this course. I tried this way and it worked. First off, you’ll need to go to Partner’s Learning Center –

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/LMS_LearnerHome.aspx

Then you’ll need to search the catalog by keyword ‘exchange ignite’ and this would yield that hidden gem

Happy learnin’!

Here it comes! All Exchange Pros around have long been anticipating this release and now it is RTM.

Most of the features of SP1 were described earlier, and Microsoft released a beta of the mail server’s service pack in June at its Tech-Ed event in New Orleans. This first service pack features improved e-discovery and e-mail management capabilities for IT pros. Those capabilities are enabled, in large part, because Exchange 2010 uses a new “Exchange archive” approach for e-mail storage that differs from the traditional .PST storage approach.

The feature list and additional details are available here -

Technet

This is really excited and I’m looking forward to see it rolling out into the production environment soon.

SP1 for Exchange 2010 can be retrieved via the Microsoft Download Center here (a 522 MB download).

Happy installation/upgrade, Exchange Bros!

I’ve been dealing with cutting edge technology for sometime and once in a while every IT PRO has to decide where the career should go when some milestones have been reached, some solid knowledge obtained and the desire to set spurs to further development is still high.

Being primarily Microsoft Exchange professional I do love the product a lot but begin to feel the desire to extend the knowledge to areas that are adjacent to technology world. That being said, I laid my eyes on ITIL certification as this is something I expect to develop in a few coming years with relevant hands-on experience that has already been earned and will be earned in the future.

ITIL gives detailed descriptions of a number of important IT practices and provides comprehensive checklists, tasks and procedures that any IT organization can tailor to its needs. ITIL is published in a series of books, each of which covers an IT management topic. The names ITIL and IT Infrastructure Library are registered trademarks of the United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

This is how Wikipedia puts it. The reality is way more brutal – this is series of very valuable bits of knowledge that can be received not only with books but along with practical experience only. Followed by foundation level are professional exams one allowed to pass only after studying at certified course provider venues.

The chart displays the path to Expert is not easy at all and involves studying a lot of materials designed to accompany your foundation level of knowledge, practical experience with scientific approach and solid research basis.

Core Reference Material Includes

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement
• ITIL Lifecycle Publication Suite

The ITIL Lifecycle Publication Suite - containing Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement – offers considerable costs saving against purchasing all five titles individually.

The books are pricey but the information they provide is really good and cannot be compensated by something else. So if you’re on the track you can’t avoid them:)

EXIN’s site (the organization in charge for this certification) outlines the following benefits of ITIL certification –

Why Certify?

EXIN’s certification does:
•    Strengthens your skills and maximize results.
•    Qualifies you for jobs that require specialized knowledge.
•    Optimizes your career opportunities.
•    Ensures you recognition from the industry and your peers.

I am going to take the challenge both due to professional necessity and internal desire to learn that I’m junkie of:)

By the end of the year I plan to pass Foundation exam –

The Foundation training in IT Service Management according to ISO/IEC 20000 provides professionals in ITSM a basic level of knowledge and understanding of both IT Service Management and Service Quality Management. The training is based on an introduction and overview of the main principles, concepts and relationships in the field together with a basic knowledge of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard and the terminology of the quality approach to IT Service Management.

And after that the plans are to take a course at some accredited center to become eligible for professional series exams. The sweetest plan is to take this course somewhere in Northern Europe during the trip with my family – I’d love to spend a few days on study either in Denmark or Norway while traveling there that I expect to repeat next summer:)

Alright, now it’s time to buckle down to make these plans a reality!

An interesting collision of Outlook views that I’ve lately come across -
sporadically I’ve begun receiving complaints that migrated users (both Exchange 2003 and 2007 to Exchange 2010) are having problems with default view of different shared folders (e.g Contacts or Calendar).

The problem manifested itself in the form of disappearing default view that was replaced by generic Outlook Today view.
The user who shared folders was not able to see such a behavior and only delegates were able to replicate it.

A couple of similar cases ended up with mailboxes recreation that I considered too harsh for such a problem and decided to take a deeper look into it.

The problems outlined in the incidents which ended up with mailbox recreation were lacking a few key troubleshooting techniques that I’d like to engage.
Mailbox recreation apparently is way too brutal and I personally would use it as the last resort only.

This is pretty crucial for successful troubleshooting to figure if this is the global issue for all delegates set for a specific mailbox (I wouldn’t hesitate to add a test one in case there’s only one existing originally) or the problem of view rendering for a specific delegate.

I believe this is a logical must to separate the problem into 2 possible clauses:

1. Shared folder problem
2. Delegate’s problem

I decided to go this way as I’m not that kind of mailbox recreation junkie.

It turned out the problem was not reproducible on other delegates’ accounts and was absolutely isolated to a specific person trying to open a shared folder. Apparently with this in mind you’ll never say ‘go’ to mailbox recreation.

You may find some solutions on the Internet involving running /resetfolders switch that will never help in such issue or rebuilding user account (like this link from Experts Exchange) -

“I resolved the problem for my situation by rebuilding the user account. First I exported the entire mailbox to a .pst then from Exchange
Management Console I removed the mailbox and associated user account. I recreated the account with the same name and after granting access
to the Contacts folder everything works as it should. Note: the profile on the user’s computer will detect a new user account so you will
need to copy user info into the new profile. ”

The right way is to use /cleanviews switch that does its job just fine. This needs to be run against the profile setup with cache mode off. There is a way to take care of views problems with mfcmapi but this requires some more experience with it in order not to destruct the mailbox occasionally. For end users running the switch is absolute no brainer (compared to mfcmapi tricks:)).

As a resume, expediting a bit more on possible way of resolution may help us avoid mailbox recreation unless it’s absolutely necessary. Scalpel is way better than the axe, huh?

UPDATE:

Just had the same issue on other mailbox and the steps outlined above were of no help. The problem persisted even after mailbox move and running the appropriate switches.

Given the repeated nature of the problem the case with Microsoft was opened and here are the brief details -

First off, the recommendation was to run the following cmdlet against the database where the delegate was resided:
The code is here

Secondly if we still have the issue then we have to export the delegate’s mailbox data to a pst file and delete the mailbox. Recreate the mailbox and import the data back.

Since the first step required bringing the entire database online that was not acceptable at that time we proceeded with the second step that did the needful and the problem was resolved.