Blog (at) mreza.info

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Public Beta

2009-04-15T10:48:34Z

Microsoft today released the first public beta of upcoming Exchange Server 2010 (Code name Exchange 14).

Microsoft Exchange® Server 2010 Beta helps IT Professionals achieve new levels of reliability with greater flexibility, enhanced user experiences, and increased protection for business communications.

Flexible and reliable - Exchange Server 2010 gives you the flexibility to tailor your deployment based on your company's unique needs and a simplified way to keep e-mail continuously available for your users.
Anywhere access - Exchange Server 2010 helps your users get more done by giving them the freedom to securely access all their communications - e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, and more - from virtually any platform, Web browser, or device.
Protection and compliance - Exchange Server 2010 delivers integrated information loss prevention, and compliance tools aimed at helping you simplify the process of protecting your company's communications and meeting regulatory requirements.

This software is intended for evaluation purposes only. You must accept the license terms before you are authorized to use this software. There is no product support for this trial software. You are welcome to participate in the forums to share your trial experiences with others and to ask for advice.

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista 64-bit Editions Service Pack 1

Operating System for Installing Management Tools: The 64-bit editions of Microsoft® Windows Vista® SP1 or later, or Windows Server® 2008.
PC - x64 architecture-based computer with Intel processor that supports Intel 64 architecture (formerly known as Intel EM64T) or AMD processor that supports the AMD64 platform

Additional requirements to run Exchange Server 2010 Beta

Memory - Minimum of 4 gigabytes (GB) of RAM per server plus 5 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended for each mailbox
Disk space
- At least 1.2 GB on the drive used for installation
- An additional 500 MB of available disk space for each Unified Messaging (UM) language pack that you plan to install
- 200 MB of available disk space on the system drive
Drive - DVD-ROM drive, local or network accessible
File format - Disk partitions formatted as NTFS file systems
Monitor – Screen resolution 800 x 600 pixels or higher

Exchange Server 2010 Beta Prerequisites
If these required prerequisites are not already installed, the Exchange Server 2010 Beta setup process will prompt and provide links to the installation locations; Internet access will be required if the prerequisites are not already installed or available on a local network.

Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5
Windows PowerShell v2
Windows Remote Management

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta

POW #8 – DPM 2007 SP1 Error ID 3013

2009-04-10T12:31:15Z

If you installed Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008 RTM you receive Error ID 3013 if you select Reporting from DPM Management console.

DPM could not connect to SQL Server Reporting Services server because of IIS connectivity issues.

On the computer on which the DPM database was created, restart the World Wide Web Publishing Service. On the Administrative Tools menu, select Services. Right-click World Wide Web Publishing Service, and then click Start.

ID: 3013

Problem resides in Reporting Services virtual directory in Internet Information Services (IIS) named ReportServer$MS$DPM2007$.

Workaround is simple:

Run Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, expand Web Sites, expand Default Web Site, and then click the virtual directory for the report server.
Under Features View, double-click Handler Mappings.
Under Actions, click Edit Feature Permissions.
Click to select the Scripts check box, and then click OK.

MVP Summit 2009 & I’m a PC

2009-04-02T11:56:30Z

I was attending Microsoft MVP Summit 2009 in Seattle at the beginning of March. It was nice meeting all great people from around the world! I would like to thanks to Microsoft for organizing such a great event with 700 sessions, EMP party, breakfast and lunch, hotels were covered,…

I must say that Exchange team is really great! I enjoyed talking with every member of Exchange team that I meet.

During Steve Balmer’s keynote we were part of I’m a PC campaign. For sure it was fun. :) Video is available from Microsoft home page.

MVP "I'm a PC" Video

Pictures

Microsoft Surface in hotel Sheraton, Seattle

Panoramic view from “smoking area” in hotel Sheraton, Seattle

Pike Place Market, Seattle

Luka Manojlovic, Miha Pihler, Dejan Sarka

Football field in Microsoft Campus

Vladimir Meloski, Helio Panissa Jr, Luka Manojlovic

Slovenian flag in center ;-)

EMP Party

Regional Dinner with MVP Lead Allesandro Teglia

Links:

Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server

2009-01-29T13:05:25Z

I received a pleasant surprise on January the 1st from Microsoft MVP Award Program. I was awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in year 2009 for Exchange Server. It’s a privilege and honor to serve as MVP!

I would like to thank Microsoft for noticing my efforts in the community over the last years!

You can also read Welcome post from my MVP Lead Alessandro Teglia!

MCT Summit 2009 Prague

2009-01-19T22:07:55Z

I was attending MCT Summit 2009 in Prague. Prague is definitely beautiful and cold city during winter. :)

Great job Tjeerd Veninga and thanks to all speakers for another great MCT Summit!

Cheers to everyone I met there (Gasper, Joze, Vincent, Andy Malone,..., and of course Slavko and Marko ;-))!

Here are some pictures from Prague:

POW #7 - DPM 2007 SP1 Error 0×80004002

2009-01-05T23:30:42Z

After updating my Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM 2007) to Service Pack 1 (SP1) I received a bunch of errors regarding inconsistency and recovery points creation.

I was looking trough MSDPMCurr.errlog (located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM) and found following error:

GetDifferentialSoftwareSnapshotMgmt3Interface () failed: (0x80004002)

It appears that Service Pack 1 does not correctly register VSS writer...

After searching around I found solution on Ask The Core Team blog. You need to re-register vss_ps.dll on server.

Solution:

Run cmd.exe (with administrative privileges in Windows Server 2008)
Run regsvr32 %windir%\System32\vss_ps.dll
Restart Volume Shadow Copy service

Link:

Error 207 - No such interface supported 0x80004002 after installing DPM SP1

POW #6 - Exchange Server 2007 SP1 & IPv6

2008-12-23T11:35:38Z

As we know from previous post Service Pack 1 for Exchange Server 2007 brings support for IPv6 but only in combination with Windows Server 2008 and IPv4.

But there were some known issues with IPv6. For example:

Outlook Anywhere connectivity issue (DSProxy ::1:6004) - KB950138

Issue mentioned above was most annoying since you received login screen multiple times and was still unable to connect. This issue was already fixed and update is included in Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1. Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is the latest version at the moment and I recommend you strongly to apply it.

IPv6 recommendation

There is only one simple rule. Disable IPv6 if you do not need it!

Disabling IPv6

Uncheck Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) on network card.
The above step is not enough! Remove or comment out the line ::1 localhost in HOSTS file.
Disable IPv6 in registry.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters
DWORD: DisabledComponents
Value: 0xFFFFFFFF

That's it. :)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I wish you all Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Here are some free e-books for cold days... :)

POW #5 - Windows Server 2008 & Exchange Server 2007 SP1

2008-12-05T13:42:02Z

I guess many of you have already heard phrase "Windows Server 2008 & Exchange Server 2007 SP1: Better Together"? :) In general this is true but there are some gotchas!

Benefits

Support for multi-subnet failover clusters
Better performance of file copy operations (SMBv2)
Reduced downtime for hardware maintenance (Hot add, remove, replace of core hardware components)
Reduced downtime for fixing NTFS issues (Self-Healing NTFS)
Greater scalability of TCP/IP connections (Client Access Server especially; Next Generation TCP/IP Stack)
Integrated Exchange Server 2007 prerequisites (PowerShell,...)
IPv6 support (only in combination with Windows Server 2008 and IPv4)

Installing Exchange Server 2007 prerequisites

The easiest way to install all prerequisites on windows Server 2008 is with ServerManagerCmd command line utility.

Exchange Management Tools

ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell

If you want to manage all internal server roles including CAS role you must also install following IIS components. Note that this also applies if you have stand alone HUB Transport server and you want to manage CAS server from it.

ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Metabase
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console

Hub Transport Server

ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell

Edge Transport Server

ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell
ServerManagerCmd -i ADLDS (AD LDS - Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services; previously known as ADAM - Active Directory Application Mode)

Mailbox Server

ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Server
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-ISAPI-Ext
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Metabase
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Basic-Auth
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Windows-Auth
ServerManagerCmd -i Failover-Clustering (if Mailbox Server will be clustered)

Client Access Server

You don't need a separate command for every component. Instead you can write every component you need separated with space.

ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell Web-Server Web-ISAPI-Ext Web-Metabase Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console Web-Basic-Auth Web-Digest-Auth Web-Windows-Auth Web-Dyn-Compression RPC-over-HTTP-proxy

Unified Messaging

ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell
ServerManagerCmd -i Desktop-Experience (audio/video codecs required by UM)

Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Update Rollup 5

Update Rollup 5 resolves some important issues in combination Windows 2008/Exchange 2007.

Here are some of more important updates:

Exchange 2007 CAS cannot copy the OAB from the OAB share on Windows Server 2008-based Exchange 2007 CCR clusters (KB954197)
The OAB generation is unsuccessful and Event IDs 9328 and 9373 are logged in the Application log in a Windows Server 2008-based Exchange 2007 Single-Copy cluster environment (KB957978)
Exchange Server 2007 Update Rollup 3 does not update the Outlook Web Access Logon.aspx file after you modify the file (KB956582)

Complete list of included updates: Description of Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (KB953467).

The Christmas Wish!

At the moment there is no build in exchange-aware backup solution in Windows Server 2008. We are still waiting for VSS-based plug-in for Windows Server Backup! Ultimate (and cheap) backup solution at the moment is of course Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager!

Gift!

Well... it's not from me but anyway... :) Here is a free copy of Windows PowerShell Workbook: Server Administration!

TechNet - Exchange Server 2007 Tips & Tricks

2008-11-25T12:54:54Z

Yesterday, I was presenting at Microsoft TechNet and MSDN Event in Ljubljana (Hotel Mons) about Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Tips and Tricks.

Agenda

Windows Server 2008
Transport
High Availability

TechNet - Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Triki in Nasveti

POW #4 - Send connector external FQDN in HELO/EHLO banner

2008-10-27T13:55:25Z

Pretty common problem this days is around specified FQDN for external connections from Exchange 2007 HUB servers.

For demo purposes let's say our internal FQDN of Exchange 2007 HUB server is DEMO-E2K7SP1.demo.pri and external FQDN is demomail.exchange.si.

Specify FQDN for Send Connector

We need to specify FQDN for each send connector we created for internet delivery. In our case we have send connector named Internet. Let's specify FQDN:

Set-SendConnector -Identity "Internet" -Fqdn demomail.exchange.si

As you can see demomail.exchange.si is specified as FQDN for above mentioned send connector. Please do not forget to also create/use certificate with Subject Name (or Subject Alternative Name) demomail.exchange.si.

Let's see what will be present in mail header at recipient side. As you can see bellow in the first red marked part demomail.exchange.si FQDN was used at HELO/EHLO step when contacting recipient mail server.

As you may also noticed DEMO-E2K7SP1.demo.pri is also visible in mail header. There is nothing wrong with that! It's expected behavior of every mail server in the planet. Full 'travel' path is always included in message header.

How do I hide internal servers from message header?

My recommended solution is with Transport Rules usage. Here is sample transport rule that strip Receive part from message header.

Create new transport rule:

Specify Condition from users Inside the organization, sent to users Outside the organization and Action remove header (Received).

If we look again into message header you will notice that internal server is not visible anymore (Received: from DEMO-E2K7SP1.demo.pri). Removing other parts from message header can also be done with Transport Rules.

I hope this problem with distinguishing between configuration errors and records in message header is just a bit more clear now.

SloWUG - Exchange Server 2007 SP1 High Availability

2008-10-20T19:21:53Z

Last Thursday, I was presenting at SloWUG event here in Ljubljana about (new) High Availability options in Exchange Server 2007 SP1.

Agenda

Mailbox Server High Availability options in Exchange Server 2007 SP1
Cluster Continuous Replication
Standby Continuous Replication
Data Loss?
Demo!

Presentation with recorded demos is now available for download. Any comments or suggestions are more than welcome. I'm also accepting requests for next presentation.

SloWUG - Exchange Server 2007 SP1 High Availability

POW #3 - Enable Windows Server Backup support for Hyper-V

2008-10-08T09:41:57Z

Did you try to backup Hyper-V Virtual Machines with Windows Server backup and received Event ID 521 error on Hyper-V host?

Backup started at '7.10.2008 23:21:14' failed as Volume Shadow copy operation failed for backup volumes with following error code '2155348129'. Please rerun backup once issue is resolved.

Event ID 12302 error on guest computer?

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: An internal inconsistency was detected in trying to contact shadow copy service writers. Please check to see that the Event Service and Volume Shadow Copy Service are operating properly.

Result of running vssadmin list writers command is empty?

Event ID 10102 error appears in Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS/Admin Event Log?

Failed to create the backup of virtual machine 'GUEST01'. (Virtual machine ID 0FBA408B-B269-4169-9278-EC650FEEBB1B)

Solution resides in the registry ;).

Fix VSS Event ID 12302 on Hyper-v guests

In order to get rid off Event ID 12302 on Virtual Machines you need to follow the following procedure:

Backup registry key:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\EventSystem\{26c409cc-ae86-11d1-b616-00805fc79216}\Subscriptions
Delete registry key Subscriptions.
Restart Virtual Machine (key will be regenerated after restart).
Verify that vssadmin list writers command returns valid list of writers.

Enable Hyper-V VSS Writer with Windows Server Backup

In order to enable VSS backups of Hyper-V Virtual Machines, you need to add the following registry keys and String Value to enable Hyper-V VSS Writer with Windows Server Backup on Hyper-V host.

Key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\
WindowsServerBackup\Application Support\{66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}

String Value:

Name: Application Identifier
Type: REG_SZ
Value: Hyper-V

Also check that Hotfix KB956697 (Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V VSS writer is not used during a backup job because of corrupted or invalid virtual machine configuration files.) is installed!

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008

I also have great news for all Hyper-V lovers. Microsoft released Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008! The best thing about it is that it's FREE! Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 is a stripped version of Windows Server 2008 Core and contains only Windows Hypervisor, Windows Server driver model and virtualization components.

Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 is a stand-alone product that provides a simplified, reliable, cost-effective and optimized virtualization solution enabling organizations to improve server utilization and reduce costs. It allows organizations to consolidate workloads onto a single physical server and is a good solution for organizations who want a basic and simplified virtualization solution for consolidating servers as well as for development and test environments. Low utilization infrastructure workloads, departmental applications and simple branch office workloads are also candidates to virtualize using Hyper-V Server 2008.

Links:

POW #2 - Upgrading legacy filters

2008-10-02T14:30:53Z

I just migrated from Microsoft Exchange Server 2000/2003 to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. What is this thing with upgrading E-Mail Address Policies, Address Lists,...?

I receive this question quite often. So let's try to answer.

Exchange Server 2007 uses a new filter syntax (OPATH) to replace the traditional LDAP filters. So what is OPATH? OPATH is filtering syntax used by PowerShell, and is therefore also used by Exchange Server 2007. Remember that the whole Exchange Server 2007 administration is done via PowerShell! OPATH replaces complicated syntax used by LDAP filters in Exchange Server 2000/2003.

Which (default) filters do we need to upgrade?

Email Address Policies
Global Address Lists
Address Lists

Let's start with Email Address Policies. Here is LDAP Recipient Filter that comes with Exchange Server 2000/20003:

As you can see only LDAP Filter is present and Recipient Filter Type is Legacy.

How can we upgrade filter? Here is a cmdlet:

Set-EmailAddressPolicy "Default Policy" –IncludedRecipients AllRecipients

And result:

As you can see Recipient Filter is filled and Recipient Type is Precanned. Precanned means that the filter for this group was created using the pre-canned filters.

Upgrading (Default) Global Address List

Similar to Default Email Address filter only LDAP filter is present and Recipient Filter Type is Legacy.

Upgrading cmdlet with OPATH filter:

Set-GlobalAddressList "Default Global Address List" -RecipientFilter {(Alias -ne $null -and (ObjectClass -eq 'user' -or ObjectClass -eq 'contact' -or ObjectClass -eq 'msExchSystemMailbox' -or ObjectClass -eq 'msExchDynamicDistributionList' -or ObjectClass -eq 'group' -or ObjectClass -eq 'publicFolder'))}

And result:

Recipient Filter contains OPATH filter and Recipient Filter Type is Custom, since we used custom and not pre-canned filter.

Upgrading (Default) Address Lists

Notice that Default Address Lists in Exchange 2000/2003 are All Users, All Groups, All Contacts and Public Folders. All Address Lists contains only LDAP Filter and Recipient Type is Legacy.

Upgrading cmdlets with OPATH filter:

Set-AddressList "All Users" –IncludedRecipients MailboxUsers

Set-AddressList "All Contacts" –IncludedRecipients MailContacts

Set-AddressList "All Groups" –IncludedRecipients MailGroups

Set-AddressList "Public Folders" –RecipientFilter { RecipientType -eq 'PublicFolder' }

And results:

Notice that all filters are upgraded to OPATH filter format. Filters for All Users, All Groups and All Contacts were created using pre-canned filters and Public Folders with custom Recipient Filter.

This part covers converting Default Filters from LDAP to OPATH filter format. If you are using custom Email Address Lists, Global Address Lists or Address Lists please consider upgrading LDAP filters to OPATH.

POW #1 - Sending HTML e-mails to remote domains via OWA 2007

2008-09-10T22:39:33Z

As spotted on many blogs, the pretty popular topic for some time now is Links of the Week. So I decided to try something new, something more technical and useful for my readers. And here it is. New set of posts named Problem of the Week (POW).

So here is the first part that talks about sending HTML e-mails to remote domains via OWA on Exchange Server 2007, the e-mails in question being received as plain text on destination domains.

So you send 'nice' HTML e-mail...

... which is displayed in plain text at destination.

So what's the catch?

Answer lies in 'hidden' ContentType parameter of Remote Domains settings.

ContentType value MimeText is not there by default. Yes, that's right! Someone set this up on Exchange Server 2003! ;-)

Does this look familiar to you?

That's right. If you have (or had before migration) this set to Provide message body as plain text the ContectType parameter for Remote Domains is MimeText.

So what's the solution?

You need to set value of ContentType to MimeHtmlText. Here's cmdlet:

Get-RemoteDomain | Set-RemoteDomain -ContentType MimeHtmlText

...and the result...

That's all for part #1. Happy reading... ;-)

Edge Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007

2008-08-25T14:57:17Z

Another great tool from OCS team!

The Edge Planning Tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 provides settings for configuring your perimeter network based on information that you provide to the tool.

The Edge Planning Tool asks questions about your proposed or current edge server deployment. The tool uses your answers and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices to generate the following reports:

Settings that you can use to configure your certificates, DNS services, and firewalls.
Custom documentation for configuring your edge servers, reverse proxy, and next hop server.
A comparison of your answers to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices.

Source: Edge Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007