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This blog is no longer updated.

Since I own the domain name for a couple more years, and the hosting was paid-in-advance, it's still here. But I've moved on to Hawaii, and no longer have the need to publish all the sorts of neat stuff that made up the contents of this website.

If you've linked to me, you are invited to unlink, as your readers will no longer be presented with new content. Thanks, Steve


This is Topic: Microsoft - Exchange
Following are the News Items published under this Topic.



  Link Dump / Exchange
Microsoft - Exchange Tips for Disaster Recovery: From the EHLO team, a couple of tough questions to ask:
1) Which one is more important to my users: Restoration of Mail Flow or Recovery of Historical Data?
2) How long can we afford to be down with out any Mail Flow?
3) How long can we afford to be down with no Historical Data Recovered?
4) If Historical Data is our top priority at what point does Mail Flow become more important and vice versa?

Send an email to all users created today: From the ExchangeCookBook site - lots of great scripts over there.

Exchange Dump tutorial from MSExchange.org. ExchDump can be downloaded from Microsoft.com (here) for free.

WINS and Exchange: Scenarios where Exchange 2003/Exchange 2000 still require NetBIOS/WINS name resolution:
· The Exchange Server 2003 Setup program and the Exchange 2000 Server Setup program, especially on clustered servers.
· Exchange Mailbox Merge Wizard (ExMerge) on an Exchange 2003 computer and on an Exchange 2000 computer.
· Changing a password for an Exchange 2003 mailbox or an Exchange 2000 mailbox through Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA).
· Exchange System Manager on an Exchange 2003 computer and on an Exchange 2000 computer.
· Microsoft Outlook clients that are earlier than Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 also require NetBIOS name resolution.

Exchange 2003 SP2: Unless you were buried under a rock, you already knew this was published. Make sure to check the release notes before installing.

Hidden Features of OWA: More from the EHLO team. Favorites:
· Putting an = in front of the e-mail alias that you are trying to resolve when composing a mail will automatically resolve it to any exact matches.(Outlook, too!)
· Sort on multiple columns at once by holding down shift and clicking on the column headers you want to sort on.

Exchange Server Management Pack: "Provides a graphical user interface to configure Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 Management Pack, including test mailboxes, message tracking, and monitoring services." Nuff said.

Exchange Disaster Recovery Analyzer (ExDRA): "...designed for administrators who need to troubleshoot database mounting issues."

Exchange Performance Troubleshooting Analyzer (ExPTA): "...designed for administrators who need to determine the root cause of Exchange Server performance issues"

MS Webcast: Setup and Deployment Changes "...discuss the changes made to the local computer and to Active Directory by the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 setup process, and how its deployment differs from Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server." Includes link to download (rather than stream).

Exchange 2003 Common Criteria Certification: EAL 4 + Systematic Flaw Remediation. If your eyes just glazed over, don't bother clicking.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Monday, November 28, 2005
 

  Exchange 2003 VSS backup - best practices white paper
Microsoft - Exchange Intro: Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 uses the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) that is included in the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system to take volume shadow copies of one or more of your Exchange Server 2003 databases. VSS, if deployed correctly, enables you to recover computers running Exchange Server 2003 within minutes, regardless of the size of your Exchange Server 2003 database. Because many VSS strategies are available, you must understand and test the capacity, performance, and recovery implications of the solutions in order to ensure that you have the data that you need to succeed in your deployment, and you must ensure that any potential solution is operating within the VSS framework. This article provides information about choosing, testing, deploying, and monitoring a VSS solution for Exchange Server 2003.

Read it here.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Friday, October 14, 2005
 

  Outlook Signature's gone nuts!
Microsoft - Exchange Via Useful technology
Email signatures are really useful but creating them and getting them to appear correctly can sometimes be troublesome. For example, sometimes you may create a beautiful email signature only to discover it comes out double-spaced when you compose a new email. "Why's that then," I hear you cry. Well, you may be interested to learn that this double-spacing madness occurs because of the way Outlook interacts with your signature editing application, probably Word or Frontpage. Normally, when you type ENTER at the end of a line while composing a signature, a <br> tag is inserted. This is HTML code for a line break. But some applications insert a <p> tag, HTML's paragraph tag, instead. And Outlook interprets a <br> tag as a line break plus an extra line space. Heck!

So now you know why your once perfectly-formed signature goes a bit loopy when you start using it back in your Outlook application. Thankfully there's a really easy way to avoid all this HTML craziness: use SHIFT-ENTER instead of just ENTER at the end of each line while creating your email signature. Problem solved!
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Friday, October 14, 2005
 

  Exchange Monitor 2003
Microsoft - Exchange Via MSExchange.org, a pretty neat .HTA application that monitors multiple Exchange servers and services.

The free version (screenshot below) looks pretty good - the registered version shows details about the Administrative Groups, whether it’s a front-end server, if subject logging is enabled etc. You also get a complete list of the Exchange services on the given server, each existing storage group and how much disk space it accumulates as well as an overview of the SMTP queues on the server.



Visit the Exchange Monitor page for download (Exchange 2000 version will monitor both 2000/2003 servers, Exchange 2003 version will only monitor 2003 servers).
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Saturday, October 01, 2005
 

  Outlook Tip of the Day: Clearing the Autocomplete cache
Microsoft - Exchange In Outlook 2003 (previous versions also?), when you create a new message and start typing in the "To:" or "Cc:" boxes, the autocomplete function makes a best guess of the address you're trying to send to, and allows you tap 'enter' and move on to the next addressee.

For email you send out of your domain, it usually works really well. Autocomplete remembers quite a few addresses, even after months of forgetting to email Mom.

But for addresses within your domain, your mail isn't sent to (username)@(yourdomain), it's routed internally by Exchange. Unfortunately, the shortcut that Autocomplete remembers is to your buddy's mailbox (through Exchange routing), rather than to the email address on his business card.

And should that mailbox get deleted and recreated, the shortcut is no longer valid. It's quite frustrating to send an email to 10 folks and have a few of them bounce back as undeliverable - so what can you do?

1 - If it's only one or two guys, you can type their last names in, and when Outlook attempts to autocomplete, hit delete. That'll get it out of the autocomplete cache.

2 - If it's 5,128 accounts, you usually can't distinguish between autocomplete entries that will work vs. those that won't. Your best bet is to blow away your autocomplete cache alltogether, as there's just no way to edit it.

     After you close Outlook, rename the "NK2" file at c:\documents and settings\your user name\Application Data\Microsoft\yourprofile.nk2 to something.txt.

That will remove all autocomplete entries. Fire up Outlook again, create a new mail, and start typing - no autocomplete. Great.


To recreate most of your autocomplete list:

Open up that "something.txt" file (from above) in Notepad, and find all of the " @ " symbols - these are all the addresses external to your domain that have autocomplete entries (like Mom). In the "To:" block, start typing them all, separating with a semicolon. Just keep going through the text until you've got most of them (you may not really want to re-cache those that were one-time only). Type <CTRL><K> - this resolves all of the addresses, and dumps them into your autocomplete cache. Then, hit <ESC> and don't bother to save the mail (certainly, don't send it out). All of these SMTP addresses will be in your autocomplete cache.

Make another new mail, and go through as much of your Global Address List (GAL) as you can stand, adding all of your frequently mailed-to friends and coworkers. Again, hit <CTRL><K> to ensure the names are resolved and subsequently dumped into cache. Hit <ESC> and you're back in business.
     1 Comment |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, July 19, 2005
 

  "nslookup" command line query for MX records
Microsoft - Exchange My MX records were dorked up last month. Symptoms were that I could send email from my domain, but replies were getting bounced as 5.5.1 rejects - the email server that was listed couldn't accept the replies (as they were for my domain, and that server was configured not to relay... good for them.)

In my never-ending quest for the perfect data center monitoring script, I found the following option for nslookup....

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;nslookup -querytype=mx domain.f.q.d.n | findstr "MX"

...which kicks out a single line for each of your MX records, like so:

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;C:\>nslookup -querytype=mx rokus.net | findstr "MX"
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Non-authoritative answer:
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;rokus.net&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail.rokus.net
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;rokus.net&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = alternatemxrecord.rokus.net &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[*]
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;rokus.net&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MX preference = 30, mail exchanger = anothermxrecord.rokus.net &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[*]

Now, all I have to do is verify that "mail.rokus.net" is what I actually expect to see. I guess I can write it out to file and import it later; in the interim, I'll just manually verfy it.

DNS bubbas, I'm watching you!

[*] lines included for the sake of this demo - it's not a real response. Just in case you're a-retentive to check...

Yeah, I know you can type 'nslookup' (return) and then 'set type=mx' (return) and then 'rokus.net' (return), but I wanted to script this.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Sunday, July 17, 2005
 

  Exchange User Monitor
Microsoft - Exchange Use the Microsoft Exchange Server User Monitor to gather real-time data to better understand current client usage patterns, and to plan for future work. Administrators can view several items, including IP addresses used by clients, versions and modes of Microsoft Office Outlook, and resources such as CPU usage, server-side processor latency, and total latency for network and processing with Outlook 2003 version MAPI.

Download page.
File Name: Exmon.msi
Version: 06/05/7543
Size: 991 KB
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Saturday, July 16, 2005
 

  Exchange 2003 Event ID 1205
Microsoft - Exchange Error Message: Failed to create the mailbox of /o=ABC/ou=XYZ/cn=Recipients/cn=domain with error 0x50c. (Other values, of course.)

Reason: The error code 0x50c translates to EcMailboxInTransit which means that the user tried to log on the mailbox while it was being moved.

The Fix:
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;- You can mailbox disable the account and the re-enable it on a different store.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;- Delete and recreate the account, then mailbox enable it on the same store. The new account will not match the entry in the tombstone table.

Lesson learned.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Wednesday, July 06, 2005
 

  Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide
Microsoft - Exchange (Updated February 2005.) The download package for this guide includes important security templates. These templates were updated November 2004. This guide walks you through the process of hardening your Exchange 2003 environment, including configuration recommendations and strategies for combating external threats. Read the entire Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide online or download the Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide. This guide is designed to provide you with essential information about how to harden your Exchange Server 2003 environment.

In addition to practical, hands-on configuration recommendations, this guide includes strategies for combating spam, viruses, and other external threats to your Exchange 2003 messaging system. Important: Since the previous version of this guide was released, the following new topics have been added and are available only online:
• Running Exchange Server 2003 Clusters in a Security-Hardened Environment
• How to Run Exchange Server 2003 Clusters in a Security-Hardened Environment
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, March 17, 2005
 

  Exchange Mailbox Scripting via WMI
Microsoft - Exchange The Exchange_Mailbox Class has properties that return information about Microsoft Exchange mailboxes.

MSDN article linked above has a neat script that shows how to retrieve a list of Exchange_Mailbox instances, and how to retrieve all the associated properties.

Obviously, needs some work before you run it against an Exchange server with thousands of users (unless you reformat the output to CSV and import it to Excel). Otherwise, you'll just get a long list of stuff about every mailbox:

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;AssocContentCount - total number of messages associated with the mailbox folders.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS - when the store detected that the mailbox no longer had a corresponding user entry in Active Directory.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DeletedMessageSizeExtended - the cumulative size of all deleted messages that are still being retained according to retention policy settings.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LastLoggedOnUserAccount - the account name last used to log on to the mailbox.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LastLogoffTime - the time that the last user logged off.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LastLogonTime - the time that the last user logged on.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LegacyDN - the legacyDN of the mailbox and matches the legacyDN attribute of the user object in AD.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MailboxDisplayName - the display name of the mailbox and matches the displayName attribute in AD.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MailboxGUID - the globally unique identifier (GUID) that links the mailbox to a user in AD.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ServerName - the name of the server where the mailbox resides.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Size - the cumulative size of all of the messages in the mailbox, in bytes.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;StorageGroupName - the name of the storage group that contains the mailbox.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;StorageLimitInfo - the storage limit settings on the mailbox.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;StoreName - the name of the message database (MDB) that contains the mailbox.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;TotalItems - the total number of messages in the mailbox.

Great stuff. Definitely useful (once modified) to include in a daily/weekly/monthly summary report.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, March 08, 2005
 

  TechNet Webcast: Managing and Administering Exchange Server 2003—Level 200
Microsoft - Exchange Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 adds power and flexibility to the Exchange administrative experience. Join this informative webcast to learn how to take advantage of the newest features of the Exchange Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in, such as the multi-threaded mailbox move, wireless access management, and a single viewer for all mail queues.

Take an in-depth look at various administrative services and components such as the System Attendant, Exchange Management Service, and Exadmin virtual directory. We will also cover the Exchange System Manager architecture and permissions model for Exchange administration.

An *AWESOME* introduction to Exchange 2003 administration.
/may not work on K&middot;WAN.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, March 03, 2005
 

  Optimizing Storage for Exchange Server 2003
Microsoft - Exchange Are you planning to deploy Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003? Are you concerned about availability, fault tolerance and performance? If so, it is critical that you understand how to optimize your storage system for Exchange Server 2003, regardless of the size of your organization.

Disk subsystem bottlenecks cause more performance problems than server-side CPU or RAM deficiencies, and a poorly designed disk subsystem can leave your organization vulnerable to hardware malfunctions. Specifically, your disk subsystem is performing poorly if it is experiencing:

- Average read and write latencies over 20 ms.
- Latency spikes over 50 ms that last for more than a few seconds.

High disk latency is synonymous with slow performance. To reduce costly disk latency issues, at a minimum, you should:

- Invest in high performance disks and spindles.
- Consider performance before capacity.
- Align your disks by using DiskPar.

Optimizing Storage for Exchange Server 2003.exe
Size: 1163KB
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, March 03, 2005
 

  Exchange Migration: Can I leave my users as NT accounts?
Microsoft - Exchange Part I answers this question:

"What I would like to do is take an existing nt 4.0 domain (which can not be upgraded because of legacy apps, citrix XP). Create a two way trust between a new Windows 2003 AD domain and install Exchange 2003 on the new domain. Then I would run Exchange 2003 in mixed mode from now until the money becomes available to upgrade the citrix clients. What I want to do is use the new domain exclusively for email right now for my NT 4.0 users. This should work or am I way off base? Is this not just a restructure upgrade approach with a long time frame. I should not even have to move any users off of the NT 4.0 domain because of the two way trust, correct?”

Hey, read that again.

Part II discusses removal of the old Exchange 5.5 server:.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, February 22, 2005
 

  Completely remove Exchange from a server, manually.
Microsoft - Exchange KB 259158.
2. Insert the Microsoft Exchange Server CD-ROM, click Install, and then click Remove All. Follow the instructions to remove all of the Exchange Server files that were installed during setup and were never modified.
Yeah, there's just a little more to it than just "uninstall". Just so you know.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, February 22, 2005
 

  Exchange: Hands-on, guided lab sessions
Microsoft - Exchange More from Eileen Brown.

Hands-on, guided lab sessions are available here:

* Controlling Junk e-mail with Exchange 2003 and the Intelligent Message Filter
* Configuring Microsoft Windows Server 2003 RPC Proxy
* Disaster Recovery with Exchange Server 2003
* Managing Exchange and Active Directory with MOM 2005
* Migrating from Exchange Server 5.5 Windows NT 4 Server to Exchange Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 Part 1
* Migrating from Exchange Server 5.5 Windows NT 4 Server to Exchange Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 Part 2
* Patching Exchange with SMS 2003

I haven't done these seven yet, but the others I have done are awesome. Highly recommended.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, February 22, 2005
 

  Exchange Server Information Store Viewer
Microsoft - Exchange Use the Information Store Viewer (also called MDBVu32) to view or set details about a user’s message storage files, which consist of the private information store, the personal folder file (.pst), the public store and the offline folder file (.ost). The Information Store Viewer shows the properties available for each message, how you can use them, and in what format they appear.

1218 KB.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Monday, January 31, 2005
 

  Use the /3GB switch when you install Exchange 2003 on Windows 2003 with more than 1GB RAM
Microsoft - Exchange From KB 823440:

When you install Exchange Server 2003 on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer that has 1 gigabyte (GB) or more of physical random access memory (RAM) installed, and that is home to mailboxes or public folders, you must edit the Boot.ini file to optimize the virtual memory usage of the Information Store service.

Note: We do not recommend setting the /3GB switch in Boot.ini for Exchange Server computers that are also Active Directory domain controllers or Global Catalog servers.

...and I'd smack you for running Exchange on a domain controller.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Monday, January 31, 2005
 

  Preparing Exchange 5.5 Directory for Migration to Exchange 2003
Microsoft - Exchange Amit Zinman published yet another great article over at msexchange.org.

How to make sure your Exchange 5.5 directory database is ready for the upgrade to Active Directory and Exchange 2000/3 based messaging. This article will evaluate the ways of making changes in the Exchange 5.5 directory before installing the Active Directory Connector (ADC) tool that synchronizes Exchange 5.5 with Active Directory to ease matching of users and mailboxes.

Via Neil @ MS Exchange Blog
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Wednesday, January 05, 2005
 

  Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide
Microsoft - Exchange This guide is designed to provide you with essential information about how to harden your Exchange Server 2003 environment. In addition to practical, hands-on configuration recommendations, this guide includes strategies for combating spam, viruses, and other external threats to your Exchange 2003 messaging system.

Important: Since the previous version of this guide was released, the following new topics have been added and are available only online:
• Running Exchange Server 2003 Clusters in a Security-Hardened Environment
• How to Run Exchange Server 2003 Clusters in a Security-Hardened Environment

Read the entire Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide online.
Download the Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, December 30, 2004
 

  A bunch of Exchange Links
Microsoft - Exchange These have been sitting in queue waiting to get published - file under stuff to remember someday.

&middot; How to run Eseutil on a computer without Exchange Server
&middot; Exchange 2003 Operations Checklists
&middot; When Tar is Your Friend - tarpitting SMTP on Windows 2003.
&middot; Prerequisites for upgrading Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange 2000 Server or to Exchange 2003 Server
&middot; How to create a virtual server for Exchange 2000 Server
&middot; How to determine whether the information store is limited or unlimited in Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003
&middot; How to remove the first Exchange 2000 Server computer from the site
&middot;&nbsp;&middot; How to remove the last Exchange Server 5.5 computer from an Exchange 2000 Administrative Group
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Monday, December 27, 2004
 

  LoadSim - Testing Exchange 2003
Microsoft - Exchange Via the MS Exchange Blog, an excellent article on stress testing Exchange 2003 with LoadSim prior to deployment.

LoadSim allows you to create conditions similar to those you would expect to find on a production Exchange Server - and then follow the impact to your server (using your monitoring tool of choice).

Screenshot of LoadSim:


LoadSim is available for download here.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, December 16, 2004
 

  Exchange Server: WinRoute
Microsoft - Exchange Use WinRoute to determine the link state routing information as known to the routing master. The WinRoute tool connects to the link state port, TCP port 691, on Exchange 2000 or 2003 server and extracts the link state information for an organization. The information is a series of GUIDs that WinRoute matches to objects in Active Directory, connectors and bridgehead servers, and presents in human-readable format. This tool should be the first step in troubleshooting routing in an Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 mail-handling environment.

Download page.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, December 09, 2004
 

  Webcast: Exchange 2000/2003 OWA administration
Microsoft - Exchange This Support WebCast discusses troubleshooting a variety of issues that may occur when you run Outlook Web Access on Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 or Microsoft Exchange 2003 Server.

Both a streaming presentation and an offline viewing are available here.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, December 09, 2004
 

  New Feed / Top Exchange Server Downloads.
Microsoft - Exchange Added a new XML Feed today - Top Exchange Server downloads.

Highlights so far:
- Exchange 2003 Service Pack 1
- Exchange Server All-In-One Tools Download - contains such goodies as the Best Practices Analyzer, Error Code Lookup, Stress testing, OWA Web Administration.
- PST2GB - creates a truncated copy of PST when it reaches over 2GB.
- OWA Web Administration - also available in the All-In-One link above.
- Badmail Deletion and Archiving - nobody reads the badmail file, right? Get rid of that stuff...
- Exchange 2003 Deployment Tools - checklist, tools, and utilities.
- Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 3
- Customizing OWA - for those that think standard OWA's just not enough...
- Planning Exchange 2003 Messaging System - network infrastructure, hardware, AD directory service, and administrative concerns.
- Exchange 2003 Disaster Recovery - already logged this one.
- Exchange Security Guide Scripts Download - part of the Security Operations Guide.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Monday, December 06, 2004
 

  Remove "M Drive" in Exchange 2000
Microsoft - Exchange This step-by-step article [KB 305145] describes how to remove the Exchange 2000 Installable File System (IFS) mapping from drive M.

The IFS provides access to the Exchange 2000 information store through Win32 file system APIs. The Exchange 2000 IFS supports the \\.\backofficestorage\ namespace. For compatibility and convenience, Exchange 2000 also supports a normal drive namespace, by default M:\. The IFS was introduced in Exchange 2000 as a way to access the Exchange 2000 information store by using the standard file system interface.

...Includes a script to turn it on and off.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Wednesday, December 01, 2004
 

  What's New in Exchange Server 2003
Microsoft - Exchange Overview:
This guide provides important information about using Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. The purpose of this guide is to outline the features in Exchange Server 2003 and provide the basic information necessary to begin using these new features.

This is not a comprehensive document about Exchange, but a guide for getting started with testing and running Exchange 2003.

This guide supplements the release notes (releasenotes.htm), and should be read only after reviewing the release notes. The release notes contain critical information about known issues with Exchange 2003.

This guide is designed to benefit Exchange administrators who will be testing and deploying Exchange 2003. Furthermore, this guide assumes that you have an excellent working knowledge of Exchange 2000. Its structure is based on Exchange components; specifically, each chapter itemizes the new component features and discusses how to begin using them.



Download here.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Monday, November 29, 2004
 

  Exchange Server 2003 Client Access Guide
Microsoft - Exchange Overview:
This guide provides information about working with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 and client access. It describes the new features for Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003, in addition to improvements in Outlook Web Access 2003. It contains configuration information, such as how to secure your messaging environment, deploy the server architecture, and configure Exchange servers for your supported client access methods. This guide also describes how to manage protocols, Exchange Virtual Server, Outlook Web Access, Exchange ActiveSync®, and Outlook Mobile Access.

File Name:       Exchange_2003_Client_Access_Guide.exe
Download Size:   1232 KB
Date Published:  8/25/2004
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, November 16, 2004
 

  Planning an Exchange Server 2003 Messaging System
Microsoft - Exchange Overview: In addition to evaluation and design recommendations, this guide describes improvements in Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003. It also identifies network infrastructure, hardware, Active Directory® directory service, and administrative concerns. In addition, this guide discusses the considerations that help you design a highly reliable and consistently available messaging system, including storage technologies, clustering, server tuning, and client configuration. 
File Name:       Ex2k3PlanningMsgSys.exe
Download Size:   3715 KB
Date Published:  9/21/2004
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Tuesday, November 16, 2004
 

  Exchange Server 2003 Administration Guide
Microsoft - Exchange This guide explains how features work in the Exchange Server architecture, and how to configure and manage these features for optimal results. This content ranges from configuring global settings at an organizational level, to managing individual servers, to managing Exchange clusters. After reading this guide, you will have a solid understanding of what it takes to configure and manage your Exchange Server 2003 organization. 
File Name:      Exchange_Server_2003_Administration_Guide.exe
Download Size:  6767 KB
Date Published: 8/25/2004
Version:        3.0
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Thursday, November 11, 2004
 

  Exchange 2003 Migration: Some Mailboxes merged instead of cloned.
Microsoft - Exchange When you migrate users by running the Microsoft Exchange Migration Wizard in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, some mailboxes may be merged instead of being cloned. This issue may occur in any one of the following situations:

&middot; You migrate users from a Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 organization to an Exchange 2003 organization.
&middot; You migrate users from a Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server organization to an Exchange 2003 organization.
&middot; You migrate users from an Exchange 2003 organization in clone mode to a different Exchange 2003 organization.
.
KB Article available here.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Sunday, November 07, 2004
 

  WebCast - Migrating from Exchange 5.5 to 2003
Microsoft - Exchange This Support WebCast discusses the steps to take when migrating from Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. It talks about various migration scenarios, including both basic migrations and migrations with multiple forests. The WebCast also discusses how to merge Exchange organizations.

More information here.

This webcast is 95 minutes. It's also available as a single download *.exe file.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Sunday, November 07, 2004
 

  Exchange Server 5.5 and Exchange 2000 Online Defragmentation Does Not Run During Backup
Microsoft - Exchange KB Article 183675:

In Exchange Server 5.5 and Exchange 2000, the online defragmentation schedule is controlled by the information store maintenance schedule. If online defragmentation does not complete by the end of the information store maintenance schedule, the current location is recorded, and the next online defragmentation begins at this point.

Exchange Server online defragmentation does not run during a backup session.

Because a backup program is running during the scheduled information store maintenance, it is possible that the online defragmentation process may never complete.

For large message stores, ensure that information store maintenance gets at least five hours each night that do not overlap with the backup schedule to finish its tasks.
     comments? |  Permalink |  Mail this... | Sunday, November 07, 2004
 

  Exchange Server Error Code Look-up
Microsoft - Exchange Use the Error Code Lookup tool to determine error values from decimal and hexadecimal error codes in Microsoft Windows® operating systems. 

File Name:       Err.EXE
Download Size:   809 KB
Date Published:  5/24/2004
Version:         06.05.7226
Download here.</