Johan Veldhuis OCS Disaster Recovery, Part 2
by Johan Veldhuis | 31 August 2010 |
There are several possible disasters which might happen to your Office Communications Server environment. This will be everything from a file share which becomes corrupted, all the way over to a complete OCS server recovery. None of these will present a problem if... Read more...
James Allison Importing PSTs into Exchange 2010, The Easy Way
by James Allison | 27 August 2010 | Not rated yet
PST Importing has always been a bit messy. With Exchange 2010’s Personal Archiving feature, it’s become more pertinent, yet still comes with pit-falls, gotchas, and inexplicable errors. James Allison has done some research, and presents an easy way to smoothly... Read more...
Ben Lye Identifying Exchange ActiveSync Users with PowerShell
by Ben Lye | 26 August 2010 |
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...
Krishna Kumar Increasing Email Size Limits for your High Profile Users in Exchange 2010
by Krishna Kumar | 26 July 2010 |  1 comment |
If you ever need to set up fine-grained rules to control the maximum size of messages a subset of your picky users’ can send or receive, Krishna Kumar has you covered. His step-by-step instructions will tell you everything you need to know to keep emails sizes under... Read more...
Bob Cramblitt Reinventing the Exchange email archiver
by Bob Cramblitt | 19 July 2010 |
If you could design an Exchange email archiver from scratch, what would you do differently and how would you bring it to maturity? Bob Cramblitt talks with three principals from the new Exchange Server Archiver 3.0 development team and gets the inside story on the... Read more...
Sean Duffy Manageable and Trim: A Review of Exchange Server Archiver 3.0
by Sean Duffy | 19 July 2010 |
Sean Duffy, always keen to be on the cutting edge of making his job as a production SysAdmin as painless as possible, puts V3.0 of Red Gate's Exchange Server Archiver through its paces. His verdict: an impressive and transparent tool for managing your Exchange... Read more...
Antoine Khater Restoring Exchange Server 2010 using Windows Server Backup
by Antoine Khater | 24 June 2010 |  1 comment |
In his previous article, Antoine Khater made sure that every Exchange SysAdmin knew how to backup their servers. Now that you've got your backups running smoothly, his latest no-nonsense guide covers exacty how to restore everything ranging from whole servers down... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius What's New in Exchange Server 2010 SP1?
by Jaap Wesselius | 22 June 2010 |  1 comment |
The very latest and greatest incarnation of Exchange Server 2010, Service Pack 1 Beta, is now available for the public to try out. Lucky for us, Jaap’s had access to the new release for quite some time, and he gives us a distilled guide to exactly what is new and... Read more...
Johan Veldhuis OCS Disaster Recovery Part 1
by Johan Veldhuis | 16 June 2010 |  2 comments |
Office Communications Server stores its data in a variety of locations, which can make backing it up and disaster recovery a slightly tricky business. Thankfully, Johan Velduis is here to tell which databases and fileshares we need to worry about, and give us peace... Read more...
Neil Hobson Exchange 2010 DAG Creation and Configuration Part 1
by Neil Hobson | 07 June 2010 |  2 comments |
If you’re using Exchange 2010, then you’re probably interested in using the new Database Availability Group feature for your High Availability needs. The DAG is superbly powerful technology, but you’d better make sure yours is 100% correctly configured. Neil Hobson... Read more...
Antoine Khater Backing up Exchange 2010 For Free
by Antoine Khater | 26 May 2010 |  1 comment |
It's hardly surprising that many SysAdmins are willing to pay over the odds for sophisticated backup solutions which they don't necessarily need, just to make sure their data is safe ASAP. Thankfully, Antoine Khater is here to give you a short and sweet walkthrough... Read more...
Elie Bou Issa An Introduction to Information Rights Management in Exchange 2010
by Elie Bou Issa | 06 May 2010 |  4 comments |
If you’re a Systems Administrator concerned about information security, you could do worse than implementing Microsoft’s Information Rights Management system; especially if you already have Active Directory Rights Management Services in place. Elie Bou Issa talks... Read more...
Sean Duffy The Great PST Migration
by Sean Duffy | 06 April 2010 |  2 comments |
Having recently been on the front lines of a massive PST import operation, Sean Duffy offers advice and points out pitfalls. More than anything, he wishes he had a simple tool with which to banish PST hell, and finishes with some hard-won guidelines. Read more...
Johan Veldhuis Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 - Part II
by Johan Veldhuis | 19 March 2010 |
Once you have set up Office Communication Server 2007 R2 to provide IM within the organisation, the next stage is to provide full telephony by setting up the OCS Mediation Server and the OCS Edge Server to connect ‘outside’ the organization, and escpecially to a... Read more...
Brien Posey Implementing Cluster Continuous Replication, Part 3
by Brien Posey | 12 March 2010 |
Cluster continuous replication (CCR) uses log shipping and failover to provide a more resilient email system with faster recovery. Once it is installed, a clustered server requires different management routines. These are done either with a GUI tool, The Failover... Read more...
Johan Veldhuis Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 - Part I
by Johan Veldhuis | 11 March 2010 |  4 comments |
Office Communications Server, which provides integrated voice, conferencing, IM, and telephony, is one of those products that are difficult to explain in simple terms. It takes a brave man to take on the task, and to provide a simple guide to installing it:... Read more...
Johan Veldhuis A Deep Dive into Transport Queues (Part 2)
by Johan Veldhuis | 09 February 2010 |
Johan Veldhuis completes his 'Deep Dive' by plunging even deeper into the mysteries of MS Exchange's Transport queues that are used to temporarily store messages which are waiting until they are passed through to the next stage, and explains how to change the way... Read more...
Elie Bou Issa Single Item Recovery
by Elie Bou Issa | 22 January 2010 |
One of the more obscure parts of Exchange Server is the Dumpster. This allows the recovery of one or more deleted emails, in much the same way as the recycle bin in Windows, even if the user has purged them. Although it is seen as an alternative to backup, or as a... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 - Part II
by Jaap Wesselius | 15 January 2010 |  16 comments |
In Jaap's second article on upgrading straight from Exchange Server 2003 to 2010, he explains how to move the various services from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2010 and fully decommission the Exchange Server 2003 servers. Read more...
Johan Veldhuis A Deep Dive into Transport Queues - Part 1
by Johan Veldhuis | 12 January 2010 |  3 comments |
Submission queues? Poison message queues? Johan Veldhuis unlocks the mysteries of MS Exchange's Transport queues that used to temporarily store messages waiting until they are passed through to the next stage, and explains how to manage these queues. Read more...
Ben Lye Customizing the Outlook Address Book
by Ben Lye | 17 December 2009 |  2 comments |
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...
Michael B. Smith Exchange Server 2010 Compliance Capabilities
by Michael B. Smith | 15 December 2009 |
Exchange 2010 now has more features to assist System Admistrators with Compliance, but are these features sufficient? Are they easy to use? Michael Smith gives a roundup of these new features, and points out where are useful, and where they fall short of providing a... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010
by Jaap Wesselius | 11 December 2009 |  16 comments |
In this article, the first of two in which Jaap describes how to move from Exchange Server 2003 straight to Exchange Server 2010, he shows what is required before moving mailboxes from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2010. He shows how to upgrade Active... Read more...
Jonathan Medd Active Directory Management with PowerShell in Windows Server 2008 R2
by Jonathan Medd | 19 November 2009 |  2 comments |
One of the first things you notice with Windows Server 2008 R2 is that PowerShell 2.0 has become central to the admin function There is a powerful Active Directory module for Powershell that contains a provider and cmdlets that are designed to allow you to manage... Read more...
Brien Posey Implementing Cluster Continuous Replication, Part 2
by Brien Posey | 19 November 2009 |  1 comment |
Cluster continuous replication (CCR) helps to provide a more resilient email system with faster recovery. It was introduced in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and uses log shipping and failover. configuring Cluster Continuous Replication on a Windows Server 2008... Read more...
Ben Lye Implementing Windows Server 2008 File System Quotas
by Ben Lye | 19 November 2009 |  1 comment |
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...
Matt Simmons The Ego and the System Administrator
by Matt Simmons | 22 October 2009 |  3 comments |
Because the Sys Admins and DBAs who are efficient end up wielding a great deal of power, there is always a danger that it can 'go to their head'. If ever you start imposing your decisions on the organisation for no better reason than the fact that they're yours,... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Introduction to Exchange Server 2010
by Jaap Wesselius | 22 October 2009 |  4 comments |
What’s new in Exchange Server 2010 and what features from Exchange Server 2007 have been deprecated? What has been done to further integrate Exchange with Active Directory? In an extract from his new book, Jaap gives a rooftop view of Exchange's new features and... Read more...
Ben Lye 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...
Jonathan Medd The Active Directory Recycle Bin in Windows Server 2008 R2
by Jonathan Medd | 23 September 2009 |  2 comments |
It has always been a curse as well as a blessing that Active Directory has allowed the rapid removal of whole branches. Until now, administrators have looked in vain for an 'undo' function after having accidentally deleted an entire division of their company.... Read more...
Brien Posey Implementing Cluster Replication - Part 1
by Brien Posey | 23 September 2009 |
Imagine that you're researching Continuous Cluster Replication, looking for a simple, direct guide to the basics of getting it set up and running. What do you do if everything you find is either too specialised, or goes into far more detail than you need? If you're... Read more...
Neil Hobson Exchange 2010 High Availability
by Neil Hobson | 18 September 2009 |  3 comments |
In April 2009 Microsoft released a public beta of Exchange 2010, the latest and greatest version of a part of its unified communications family of products. Recently in August 2009, a feature complete Release Candidate version was released for public download. In... Read more...
Ben Lye Monitoring and Scheduling Exchange 2007 Database Online Maintenance
by Ben Lye | 25 August 2009 |
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...
Desmond Lee Moving to Office Communications Server 2007 R2 -Part 2
by Desmond Lee | 24 August 2009 |
In the second part of his article on Moving to Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Desmond looks into recommendations to standardize the client desktop to support the different R2 applications, other infrastructure concerns and migration of the remaining internal... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Exchange backups on Windows Server 2008
by Jaap Wesselius | 24 August 2009 |  1 comment |
NTBackup lives no more, replaced by VSS backups. Unfortunately, “Windows Server Backup” didn't work with Exchange Server 2007 until now. Exchange Server 2007 Service pack 2 contains a backup plug-in that makes it possible. Although pretty limited compared to full... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Update: Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate
by Jaap Wesselius | 18 August 2009 |
Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate is now available for download from Technet, so we asked Jaap to review it for us. Read more...
Jonathan Medd Using Twitter and PowerShell to Find Technical Information and Join a Community
by Jonathan Medd | 30 July 2009 |  3 comments |
Using PowerShell and a little bit of .NET Framework and XML knowledge, it is possible to delve a little deeper into the information which is potentially available to you from Twitter. Jonathan explains about Twitter and shows how to use Powershell to access twitter... Read more...
Ben Lye 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...
Jaap Wesselius Installing Hyper-V and Beyond
by Jaap Wesselius | 28 July 2009 |  4 comments |
In his previous article “Hyper-V, an introduction” Jaap Wesselius explained about the Hypervisor, the parent partition, the child partition, and Integration Components. In this article Jaap discusses installing Hyper-V, all kinds of Virtual Hard Disks, Virtual... Read more...
Ben Lye An Introduction to Messaging Records Management
by Ben Lye | 07 July 2009 |
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...
Jaap Wesselius Building an Exchange Server 2007 environment
by Jaap Wesselius | 29 June 2009 |
Of course, changing a 32,000 mailbox system, based in 40 Exchange Servers, to a centralised 25,000 mailbox solution is not a difficult task as long as you follow the Microsoft guidelines; It just takes patience, and time to understand Exchange's storage design... Read more...
Neil Hobson Cluster Continuous Replication Network Design
by Neil Hobson | 18 June 2009 |  2 comments |
Cluster continuous replication (CCR) is a means of providing a more resilient email system with faster recovery. It was introduced in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and uses log shipping and failover. The host-name feature of Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 and the... Read more...
Ben Lye 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...
Ben Lye 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...
Bob Cramblitt For this Exchange Server Archiver, “Transparency” Fits
by Bob Cramblitt | 05 May 2009 |
Sometimes, it is a great relief when a user of your software gives it a tough test and then reports that it just works automatically without the users even knowing about it. Once again, Exchange Server Archiver just quietly gets on with its job. Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Exchange Server 2010 – The First Public Beta Version
by Jaap Wesselius | 15 April 2009 |  3 comments |
Jaap takes a first look at the new Beta 1 of Exchange Server 2010, which is now available for download, and likes what he sees, especially with Outlook Live, mailbox replication, and the 'self-healing' of the database. Much will change before the release, but there... Read more...
Hilal Lone Third Party High Availability and Disaster Recovery Tools for Microsoft Exchange Server
by Hilal Lone | 30 March 2009 |  5 comments |
Clustering Exchange 2007 to ensure high-availability has its disadvantages. It is expensive and complicated. Is it possible, as an alternative, to recover rapidly from a downed Exchange Server using one ot the third-party Exchange Server Disaster-Recovery tools? Read more...
Ben Lye Message Tracking in Exchange 2007
by Ben Lye | 27 March 2009 |  3 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...
Jaap Wesselius Upgrading to Exchange Server 2007: Part 2
by Jaap Wesselius | 26 March 2009 |
Jaap completes his series on the necessary steps to migrate an existing installation of Exchange to Exchange Server 2007. He deals with the problems of installing the Hub Transport server, moving policies and mailboxes and decommissioning the old servers Read more...
Michael B. Smith Determining MS Exchange Disk Performance
by Michael B. Smith | 26 March 2009 |  2 comments |
With an Exchange Server, how do you measure performance? How, in particular do you do about measuring your disk subsystem's performance? Whereas the CPU Usage and Memory usage are both easy to measure, the measurement of disk performance is often described as a... Read more...
Michael Francis Red Gate's Exchange Server Archiver Screenshot Gallery
by Michael Francis | 01 March 2009 |
These are some screenshots from the new Pre-Release of Red Gate's Exchange Server Archiver tool. Read more...
Ben Lye Goodbye Exchange ExMerge, Hello Export-Mailbox
by Ben Lye | 26 February 2009 |  3 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...
Jaap Wesselius Upgrading to Exchange Server 2007
by Jaap Wesselius | 20 February 2009 |
Jaap starts a series on the necessary steps to migrate an existing installation of Exchange to Exchange Server 2007. Of course it's simple! Everybody says so, but it is in the detail where you can get caught out. Read more...
Ben Lye Exchange E-mail Addresses and the Outlook Address Cache
by Ben Lye | 12 January 2009 |  13 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...
Jaap Wesselius Exchange: Recovery Storage Groups
by Jaap Wesselius | 06 January 2009 |  3 comments |
It can happen at any time: You get a request, as Admin, from your company, to provide the contents of somebody's mailbox from a backup set as part of an investigation. The Recovery Storage Group is usually the easiest way to do this. It may either mean using the... Read more...
Brien Posey Optimizing Exchange Server 2007
by Brien Posey | 24 November 2008 |  3 comments |
Brien Posey ponders an 'off the cuff' remark that Exchange 2007 runs so well with a default configuration that you don’t even have to worry about optimizing Exchange any more. He decides that there is actually plenty that can be done to help Exchange to perform... Read more...
Michael Francis The Road to Beta - Exchange Server Archiver speaks!
by Michael Francis | 10 November 2008 |  2 comments |
Richard, Robert and Marine at Red Gate Software talk about designing, developing and testing Exchange Server Archiver (ESA) to beta. Not to mention the copious amounts of user input to the project, and the use of Nerf shotguns in a software development context. Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Online Exchange Backups
by Jaap Wesselius | 18 October 2008 |  3 comments |
In the third of Jaap's popular series on Exchange Backups he explains Online backups. These have major advantages over offline backups since the backup application does all the logic, and work, for you. Read more...
Ben Lye Reporting on Mobile Device Activity Using Exchange 2007 ActiveSync Logs
by Ben Lye | 10 October 2008 |  7 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...
Brien Posey Configuring Exchange Server 2007 to Support Information Rights Management
by Brien Posey | 02 October 2008 |  1 comment |
In Exchange Server 2007, Information Rights management is easy to set up once you have set up the prerequisites. It is also much cheaper, and easier to use. This is just as well, because of the increasing statutory regulations to prevent the mishandling of... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Exchange Server Log File Replay
by Jaap Wesselius | 22 September 2008 |  5 comments |
Exchange Server stores information in a database and uses log files for transactional processing. To restore, defragment or repair a database, the ESEUTIL tool is essential . It is always possible to recover data when the database is lost, if you have backed up the... Read more...
Nicolas Blank Deploying Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008
by Nicolas Blank | 19 September 2008 |  6 comments |
Nicolas Blank recounts his Experiences deploying Exchange 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008, when not everything worked out of the box as it should have. In this article Nicolas writes about the fixes to the issues he faced when installing on Server 2008. Read more...
Neil Hobson Message Classifications in Exchange 2007
by Neil Hobson | 18 September 2008 |  2 comments |
In Exchange 2007, you can now classify your messages in any way you wish, so that, for example, you can flag messages as being sensitive information that should not be sent outside the company. You can also create transport rules for all messages of a particular... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Exchange Database Technologies
by Jaap Wesselius | 22 August 2008 |  10 comments |
One of the most misunderstood technologies in Exchange Server, regardless of its version, is the database technology. Most people, even Exchange administrators know it is something to do with ESE and tools like ESEUTIL, but once it’s running they leave it that way... Read more...
Michael Francis Top Tips for Exchange Admins
by Michael Francis | 22 August 2008 |  2 comments |
Michael Francis hands out imaginary Olympic medals to the winner of the August 'Top Tips for Exchange Admins' Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Exchange 2007 Mailbox Server Clustering
by Jaap Wesselius | 12 August 2008 |  4 comments |
The original, rather complex, Exchange clustering, 'Single Copy Cluster', protects you against a server failure but not a database failure. 'Local Continuous Replication' protects you from database failure, but not server failure. The more simple 'Clustered... Read more...
William Lefkovics Controlling Email Messages using Exchange's Transport Rules
by William Lefkovics | 22 July 2008 |  1 comment |
Some tasks that should have been easy in previous versions of Exchange just weren't. Now, with Transport Rules in Exchange 2007, administrators have a much improved set of tools to manage message flow. Read more...
Nathan Winters Using Exchange 2007 for Resource Booking
by Nathan Winters | 16 July 2008 |  4 comments |
The process of booking various resources to go with a meeting room just got a whole lot easier with Exchange 2007. Nathan Winters explains Exchange’s resource-scheduling functionality and offers practical advice on how you might go about configuring Exchange to... Read more...
William Lefkovics Message Hygiene in Exchange Server 2007
by William Lefkovics | 03 July 2008 |  4 comments |
Around four out of every five email messages are spam. Now that the nuisance threatens to engulf what has become the normal route of business communications worldwide, all the vendors of Mail Servers are taking more active steps to confront the problem. William... Read more...
Neil Hobson High Availability in Exchange 2007
by Neil Hobson | 10 June 2008 |  1 comment |
Neil Hobson writes about the ways that MS Exchange 2007 can ensure that your organisations messaging remains available. He looks at the way that the Mailbox Server role can be made more available using features as Single Copy Clusters, Local Continuous Replication,... Read more...
Jaap Wesselius Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 – Part II
by Jaap Wesselius | 18 January 2008 |
Article redirect. Read more...
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Tony Davis The VSS Mess
 Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe (VSS) will soon cease to exist. Mainstream support will end in April 2011, and so...  Read more...


 View the blog
Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010
  In this article, the first of two in which Jaap describes how to move from Exchange Server 2003... Read more...

Using Exchange 2007 for Resource Booking
 The process of booking various resources to go with a meeting room just got a whole lot easier with... Read more...

Goodbye Exchange ExMerge, Hello Export-Mailbox
 ExMerge was a great way of exporting a mailbox to an Exchange PST file, or for removing all occurences... Read more...

Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 - Part II
 In Jaap's second article on upgrading straight from Exchange Server 2003 to 2010, he explains how to... Read more...

Managing Exchange 2007 Mailbox Quotas with Windows PowerShell
 The use of PowerShell with Exchange Server 2007 can do a great deal to ease the task of managing... Read more...