Exchange 2010 and maximum databases per server

Exchange Server 2010 Standard Edition allows a maximum of 5 databases per Mailbox server. Exchange Server 2010 Enterprise Edition allows a maximum of 100 databases server. That is a *maximum* number of databases including all active and passive databases. So, Standard Edition *can* be a member of a database availability group, but it can have no more than 5 total database (the active and passive databases combined.)

Luke and Jim at lunch

I'm surprised what a good boy Luke is when we go out in public. I have found a few places around town with patios or outdoor areas where we can sit with a dog. When the food arrives, he just lays down at my feet and behaves himself. Here we are having lunch at "Good to Grill" on Kapahulu Avenue.

To a few people that asked, Siberian Huskies do really well in the heat as long as you don't run them in the middle of the day, provide them some shade and lots of water. Of course, our "heat" in Hawaii is usually the mid-80's and not that humid.

eBay - Thanks for nothing

The other day, one of my friends noticed that some loser on eBay was selling PDF copies of books (including my Mastering Exchange Server 2007) for $4.99. Said loser is "cheapitems_bargain", by he way. I reported him to Sybex as well as to eBay.

eBay has truly grown up. Their bureaucracy now rivals any government institution. I reported cheapitems_bargain via their online report form. Later that day, eBay responds back with the e-mail below. Hopefully the publisher will have better luck with this than I did.

Dear James,

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to your intellectual property concerns.

If you believe that a listing or item posted on eBay infringes your intellectual property rights, the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program may be able to assist you.

As you may know, eBay does not buy or sell any items. We act only as a venue that helps buyers and sellers to do so. We neither see nor inspect any items that are offered for sale on eBay. However, we recognize that some posted items may infringe certain intellectual property rights. For this reason, we have created the VeRO Program, which enables intellectual property rights owners to identify and request the removal of allegedly infringing listings.

The many benefits of participating in VeRO include:

- Direct access to a support team dedicated to addressing rights owners'
requests and processing Notices of Claimed Infringement (NOCIs)
- The ability to request the removal of listings that infringe your intellectual property rights by using the NOCI form
- The ability to request detailed contact information for sellers who post listings that may infringe your intellectual property rights

How to File a NOCI Report
The first time you file a NOCI, you will need to download, complete, and submit the document to eBay by fax. If you need to submit subsequent NOCIs after your initial fax has been processed, you will be able to do so online.

-- Note --
To view and print the NOCI, you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you don't already have the program, you can download Acrobat Reader for free from Adobe's Web site. To do so, go
to:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

To download a copy of the NOCI form, go to:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/NOCI1.pdf

Please be sure to complete all sections of the form, sign, and fax the NOCI to:

eBay Inc.
ATTN: VeRO
(408) 516-8811

For more information about the VeRO Program, please visit:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/vero-rights-owner.html

If you have any additional questions, feel free to contact us at the following email address:

vero@ebay.com.

How is your bank doing with troubled assets

If you are interested how your bank or those in your city are doing with troubled assets, here is an interesting site. I was surprised how badly a few of the banks in Honolulu were doing and also how some of the others were doing so well.

Oh little Move-Mailbox -ConfigurationOnly switch, we hardly knew ye

Exchange Server 2010 does away with the Move-Mailbox cmdlet; it is now replaced with the New-MoveRequest cmdlet and the Exchange Mailbox Replication service on the Client Access server role.

However, a handy switch is also gone. With Move-Mailbox, you could move a mailbox to another mailbox database without actually moving the data if you used the -ConfigurationOnly switch. Of course, you would almost never want to use this cmdlet unless the source database was completely toasted.

In Exchange 2010, to replicate this, you must use the Set-Mailbox cmdlet with the -Database option. This is a very powerful and potentially very destructive cmdlet so be careful with it. If you want to move all of the users whose mailbox is on MBX-001 to MBX-003 without moving the data, you would issue the following commands:

Get-Mailbox -Database MBX-001 | Set-Mailbox MBX-003

Welcome home Luke!

For those of you that have been following my search for a dog, meet "Luke", my new Siberian Husky. He turned 10 weeks old yesterday and is already 20 pounds! He loves to eat, play, run, and whine like crazy when he has to go in his crate. He is sleeping next to my chair right now while I work on the last chapter for my E2K10 book.

Luke descends from top champions on both sides of his family. His mother Laney is, a beautiful black-and-white with blue eyes in her family. His father, Quinn, is where the red comes from. Quinn's grandfather is Am/Can Ch Innisfree's Fire and Frost CGC, the only Siberian Husky to win the Westminster dog show. He came to Jes Kennels in Hawaii from Innisfree, probably the most famous Siberian Huskey kennel in the world.

Luke, of course, is just my pet. I am not going to show nor breed him. That is my agreement with Nikki, the breeder. Though I have had many dogs in my life including 3 Alaskan Malamutes, I feel like a kid with his first dog.

Using a specific domain controller with the Exchange Management Shell

Someone asked me today if it was possible to configure the Exchange 2007 Management Shell to use a specific domain controller rather than just picking the closest one. I have been unable to find a way to get all cmdlets within the PowerShell to use a specific domain controller, but most of the EMS cmdlets do support the -DomainController option. So, update a mailbox's display name and use a specific domain controller, you could use a command like this:

Set-Mailbox -DisplayName "Jim McBee" -DomainController hnldc01.somorita.local

Exchange 2010 DAG latency between members

A question came up today in a Connections session as to what was the maximum *supported* latency between Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG) members. According to this TechNet article, it is 250ms.

"Database copies aren't supported between Mailbox servers with round trip network latency greater than 250 milliseconds (ms)."

I'm guessing that it would *work* with higher latencies, but I don't recommend ever exceeding the support boundaries.

Exchange 2010 Storage Calculator

Thanks to the efforts of Microsoft's Ross Smith, the Exchange 2010 Storage Calcuator is now available. This is a very useful tool when planning things such as storage requirements, i/o, Mailbox servers, Hub Transport, and Client Access servers.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Unleashed

Props to Rand Morimoto, Michael Noel, Chris Amaris, Andrew Abbate, and Mark Weinhardt for their timely release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. It actually came out last month; I have not yet had an opportunity to review it, but congrats to Rand and his team for getting this out with the release of the product. That is not a simple undertaking.

Exchange Server 2010 available for Volume Licensing customers

Exchange 2010 was made available for download on the volume licensing site today!