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Authors  >  Ben Lye

Ben Lye Ben Lye
Ben Lye is a senior systems administrator at a multi-national software company. He has over 10 years experience supporting and administering Windows and Exchange, and has been MCSE and MCP certified since 1999. Ben is passionate about automating and streamlining routine tasks, and enjoys creating and using tools which make day-to-day administration easier.
Identifying Exchange ActiveSync Users with PowerShell
by Ben Lye | 26 August 2010 |  2 comments |
Just recently, a problem involving the iPhone/iPod's synchronisation process with Exchange 2007, made it necessary for Exchange Administrators to alert various mail users to upgrade to the latest version of Apple's iOS 4. Ben shows how easily he was able to do this... Read more...
Troubleshooting Windows Blue Screen Errors
by Ben Lye | 06 May 2010 |  3 comments |
The so-called ‘Blue Screen of Death’ has inspired fear in the hearts of mere mortals, but Systems Administrators are expected be capable of casually beating back this sinister beast. So imagine Ben Lye’s distress when he discovered that many aspiring SysAdmins had... Read more...
Troubleshooting Nonpaged and Paged Pool Errors in Windows
by Ben Lye | 12 March 2010 |  6 comments |
Ben Lye uncovered a memory leak in the nonpaged pool which was crashing his servers with disquieting regularity. Luckily it was relatively easy to troubleshoot, and he's sharing the tools and techniques he used to get his servers back on track in double-quick time. Read more...
Active Directory Snapshots with Windows Server 2008
by Ben Lye | 09 February 2010 |
Snapshots are a useful feature of Windows Server 2008. Taking a snapshot of Active Directory as a scheduled task can prove to be a wise precaution in case disaster strikes. Once they are mounted, they can be accessed by any LDAP tool which allows the user to specify... Read more...
Regional Office Virtualization - Less Can Be More
by Ben Lye | 14 January 2010 |  1 comment |
The dream of an 'office in a box' has been around for years, but the increasing sophistication of virtualization software has turned the dream into reality. Ben Lye explains the problems and benefits of reducing the amount of physical hardware that were deployed in... Read more...
Customizing the Outlook Address Book
by Ben Lye | 17 December 2009 |  1 comment |
It is possible to change the fields in the Outlook address book to make them a better fit for your organisation. Exchange provides templates for Users, Contacts, Groups, Public Folders, and Mailbox Agents that are downloaded to Outlook. Any changes will be visible... Read more...
Implementing Windows Server 2008 File System Quotas
by Ben Lye | 19 November 2009 |  3 comments |
File system Quotas are used to restrict the amount of space users can consume or to report on the space consumed by them. They are useful for reporting on those users or folders that are consuming large amounts of disk space on a file server. Ben Lye shows that... Read more...
Using Group Policy to Restrict the use of PST Files
by Ben Lye | 08 October 2009 |
Outlook PST files are a problem for Exchange users, and give no benefits over Exchange mailboxes. You have to use them on a local drive, they are difficult to back up, and tricky for the administrator to manage. It is possible to use Exchange Group Policy settings... Read more...
Monitoring and Scheduling Exchange 2007 Database Online Maintenance
by Ben Lye | 25 August 2009 |  3 comments |
To keep the Exchange database healthy, it is important to make sure that online maintenance and online maintenance and online defragmentation are running properly, or are at least conforming to Microsoft’s recommendations. Ben shows how easy it is to automate the... Read more...
Restricting Outlook Client Versions in Exchange 2007
by Ben Lye | 29 July 2009 |
There are good reasons for preventing old versions of Outlook from connecting to Exchange Server. You'll probably, at least, want to do it for security. Before you do so, you'll also need know what versions are out there being used so you can make sure that... Read more...
An Introduction to Messaging Records Management
by Ben Lye | 07 July 2009 |  1 comment |
There are a number of features in Exchange that can be used in creative ways to solve problems in Exchange as they crop up. Ben Lye recently found a great use for Messaging Records Management when hit hit the problem of a meeting-room mailbox that stopped replying... Read more...
Using Exchange 2007 Transport Rules to Protect the First Entry in the Address Book
by Ben Lye | 08 June 2009 |  2 comments |
Global Address Lists in MS Exchange can cause problems because the first person in the list often gets the reply. Ben Lye shows how one can eliminate any such problems with Global Address lists by creating a mail contact, a transport rule and a custom Delivery... Read more...
Emulating the Exchange 2003 RUS for Out-of-Band Mailbox Provisioning in Exchange 2007
by Ben Lye | 08 May 2009 |
Exchange's Recipient Update Service was important in Exchange 2000 or 2003 in order to complete the provisioning or updating of mailboxes created from an out-of-band process or from an Active Directory User. In Exchange 2007, full provisioning is automatic, but the... Read more...
Message Tracking in Exchange 2007
by Ben Lye | 27 March 2009 |  6 comments |
'Where did my mail go?' In order to answer this question, to troubleshoot mail problems and to analyse mail flow, the Exchange administrator can use message-tracking logs. Ben Lye elaborates on these essential logs and explains how you can use Powershell commands to... Read more...
Goodbye Exchange ExMerge, Hello Export-Mailbox
by Ben Lye | 26 February 2009 |  8 comments |
ExMerge was a great way of exporting a mailbox to an Exchange PST file, or for removing all occurences of an email virus, but it has now been replaced by two new Exchange Management Shell cmdlets, Export-Mailbox and Import-Mailbox which are equally as useful to... Read more...
Exchange E-mail Addresses and the Outlook Address Cache
by Ben Lye | 12 January 2009 |  16 comments |
Because Exchange auto-complete cache uses X.500 addresses for e-mail sent to addresses within the Exchange organization, it will bounce back messages from a re-created mailbox even after you give the user account all the old SMTP addresses. This is because the old... Read more...
Managing Exchange 2007 Mailbox Quotas with Windows PowerShell
by Ben Lye | 24 November 2008 |  5 comments |
The use of PowerShell with Exchange Server 2007 can do a great deal to ease the task of managing mailbox quotas. You can, for example, use scripts to customize quota messages, retrieve mailbox sizes, and set the quotas. Ben shows you how, in the 2nd installment of... Read more...
Reporting on Mobile Device Activity Using Exchange 2007 ActiveSync Logs
by Ben Lye | 10 October 2008 |  10 comments |
In this new column giving practical advice on all things Sys Admin related, Ben Lye takes on the often difficult task of keeping track of mobile device activity Read more...
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