Jim McBee's Mostly Exchange Web Log

Very cool Exchange organization report generator

2012-01-02T19:05:00.000-10:00

I have been meaning to share this for a few weeks. Very cool Exchange Management Shell script from Exchange MVP Steve Goodman. This script generates a nifty report of some useful information about your Exchange organization including about Exchange / Windows server versions, mailbox databases, sizes, and number of mailboxes. Management digs this type of information!

Thanks Steve!

E2K10 SP2: Thanks for the new custom attributes!

2011-12-18T10:43:00.000-10:00

One of the nice new things that Microsoft introduced in Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 did not make much news. There are 30 new extension attributes (aka custom attributes). These are msExchExtensionAttribute16 - msExchExtensionAttribute45.

Note, these are NOT editable from the Exchange Management Console nor the Set-Mailbox cmdlet, But, they are flagged for Global Catalog replication, they are assigned a mapiID and they can be added to the details templates!

Exchange 2010 SP2 upgrade issue with Discovery Mailbox

2011-12-17T11:03:00.000-10:00

I just upgraded my lab servers to Exchange 2010 SP2. I was somewhat pleased that all I needed to do prior to the upgrade was just run a Microsoft Update and make sure that the recommended and critical updates were applied. Sometimes, with new Exchange releases, you have to chased down obscure and not-yet-released fixes for things.

I did have one issue as the mailbox role was being upgraded. Setup crashed repeatedly and included the dump from a script that had failed.

Couldn’t resolve the user or group “volcanosurfboards.com/Microsoft Exchange Security Groups/Discovery Management.”

It is also listed in the eventlog at Event id: 1002: Exchange Server component Mailbox Role failed:

Event ID 1002

Providor Name:MSExchangeSeup

“Couldn’t resolve the user or group /Microsoft Exchange Security  Groups/ Discovery Management” If the user or group is a foreign forest  principal, you must have either a two-way trust or an outgoing trust.

The trust relationship between the primary domain and the trusted domain failed”

I chased my tail on this quite a bit assuming it was an Active Directory problem when in fact it was a problem with the Discovery mailbox. The only solution is to delete the discovery mailbox and recreate it. My test domain (volcanosurfboards.com) is in the steps below. Substitute your own domain.

1)   Disable-Mailbox “DiscoverySearchMailbox {D919BA05-46A6-415f-80AD-7E09334BB852}” 

2) Enable-Mailbox “DiscoverySearchMailbox {D919BA05-46A6-415f-80AD-7E09334BB852}” -Arbitration

3) Add-MailboxPermission -Identity:"volcanosurfboards.com/Users/DiscoverySearchMailbox {D919BA05-46A6-415f-80AD-7E09334BB852}” -User:”Discovery Management” -AccessRights:”FullAccess” 

Note that the user account that is used for the Discovery Search mailbox must be disabled.

The IT Curmudgeon

2011-12-10T15:09:00.000-10:00

After a particularly frustrating week at work...

There are rarely good technological solutions for bad behavior. (this one comes from Ed Crowley)
Any meeting that gets off track more than twice will not achieve its intended goal.
Projects that are not well scoped will come in late and over budget.
"On time and under budget" are misnomers in IT.
An IT department's effectiveness is inversely proportional to the number of layers of management.
IT organizations that are afraid / intimidated by their users will inevitably serve those users poorly.
Scope creep is the enemy of IT.
Good information security practices are important; rigorous information security practices stifle productivity and creativity.
Regularly scheduled meetings diminish in productivity after each meeting occurrence. Beware the recurring meeting!
Consultants and vendors almost always act in their own best interest.
Complexity and change are the enemies of high availability.
Everything has a maintenance / sustainment cost.
Fear the IT Manager that tries to get too much in the technical weeds.
No good can come from your CIO meeting with your consultant’s “senior practice manager.”
No organization ever knows the true cost of their IT infrastructure, services, and operations.
Avoid major IT projects using internal staff. Internal staff gets sidetracked with existing duties.
Beware the IT manager that wants Administrator rights.
A Configuration Management team that treats engineering and operations teams like their enemy are encouraging people to find ways to bypass them.
People have to see “what’s in it for them” with regards to collaborative tools otherwise they won’t use them.
Bureaucrats always expect you to know about their bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy and bureaucrats

2011-12-10T14:51:00.000-10:00

"The most annoying thing about bureaucrats is that they expect everyone to understand their little piece of the bureaucracy."- Jim McBee

I really tried to love you, but it is not working out,,, Goodbye OWA 2010 Conversation View

2011-11-07T20:07:00.000-10:00

I really tried to love you, but it is not working out. I'm breaking up with you... Goodbye little OWA 2010 Conversation View. And thanks to Tony Redmond for reminding me of how easy it is to turn off...

Click the View button, then clear the checkbox next to Show As Conversations.

OWA and Outlook RPC URLs

2011-11-06T14:43:00.000-10:00

A question came up at Exchange Connections this past week about using a separate name space for the OWA/Web Services/ActiveSync URL than you use for the RPC Client Access area. eg...
owa.domain.com versus
outlook.domain.com

Microsoft recommends keeping these separate. While it *does* work if they both point to the same hostname and/or IP address, if they are separate, you reduce the risk of external Outlook clients (Outlook Anywhere / RPC over HTTP) timing out.

Here is the text from TechNet:

It's important that the (FQDN) specified in the command be only resolvable internally. If the name is also resolvable externally, these external clients will attempt to connect to the array via a TCP connection instead of HTTPS.

During the session at Connections, I was thinking it was something more complicated than this.

California AB 155 - It is just bad for business. Period

2011-09-11T14:20:00.000-10:00

The California Assembly has passed AB 155 and it is awaiting Gov. Brown's signature. Though the bill is primarily targeted at Amazon and would require Amazon to pay CA state sales taxes on all sales made to state residents, it has much broader implications for anyone selling online. Assembly Speaker John Perez says that residents that make purchases online through out of state providers are "tax cheats."

CA Assembly sponsors say they are intent on making California businesses "more competitive" with out-of-state businesses, but that is just hogwash. This is about hundreds of millions of dollars in potential tax revenue for the State of California.

If California is successful, surely the other 49 states will follow.

One way or another, the tax is passed on to the consumer. That much is true. But, what about the cost on out-of-state businesses that must charge, collect, record, process, reconcile, and pay those taxes. For a small business that makes maybe 2 or 3 sales in the State of Cali each *month*, I now have a fairly significant monthly, semi-annual, and/or annual burden in the form of labor. Plus, possible the cost of software and/or services to comply with this law.

A simple analysis of my own suggests that this is going to add 15 to 20% to the cost of operating my business in the form of either a 3rd party service or an accounting clerk that is going to have to track each purchase, its location, the tax rate, and what tax has to be paid for the purchases from that particular state.

Once again, California, you are proving yourself to be unfriendly to business. Both out-of-state as well as jacking up the price of the merchandise your in-state businesses purchase.

Exchange Connections: The economics of moving to the cloud

2011-09-09T17:28:00.000-10:00

The old expression "no one ever gets fired for IBM" shifted a few years ago to "no one ever gets fired for buying Microsoft." We get it. Microsoft technologies are a pretty safe bet for your business. This follows a certain school of thought in business that a technology is not truly legitimate until the big players have an offering.

I'm not sure you can hear me over the roar of the media and the Microsoft marketing machine, but Office 365 and cloud services are the hot topics. And, I generally loathe marketing terms such as "cloud". At any rate, cloud services deserve a second (or third) look.

Cloud or hosted services are certainly nothing new. Since the first large scale mainframes came online, businesses have been outsourcing computer services that they could not effeciently or cost effectively offer themselves. Computerized accounting and billing services were outsourced way back in the 1960s.

Outsourced e-mail and SharePoint services also not new as of 2011, either. Even in the late 1990s there were providers around the globe offering hosted Exchange services. Microsoft themselves have been in that business with BPOS and other offerings for at least the last 6 years.

Office 365 is a bit different thought. Aside from the fact that there is a massive marketing effort surrounding Office 365 services, Microsoft seems to be betting the house on these services. The different tiers of service and pricing seem to be Microsoft's recognition that different customers will have different requirements. They are making it easier than ever for us to move to the cloud including better interoperability with on-premise solutions such as Exchange Server 2010.

So, even for the most skeptical of cloud curmudgeon, the cloud (and Office 365) should not be considered a viable alternative and not a bleeding edge solution. So, where does that leave us?

I consider myself an "on premise" kinda guy. I'm a systems guy at heart and am most comfortable somewhere between an engineering and an operations role. I like to have my hand in both sides of IT. But for many of us, the simple fact is that cloud or outsourced services is in our future and we have to accept that.

So, I’m a tiny bit conflicted when facing the prospect of cloud-sourcing my favorite part about IT. But, we have to take a bigger picture view of our jobs. Our first obligation is to provide reliable IT services to our businesses (or non-profit or government entity) and those services must be services that meet our end-user's requirements. But second, and almost important, is to provide those services at a cost that is as affordable as possible.

When I started thinking about sessions for the Exchange Connections conference that would be of value to today's IT Professional, one of the ideas I had was to explore the economics of moving e-mail services "to the cloud" and what that means to an organization's IT team. We all have visions of mass layoffs, but I'm betting that is not usually the case.

In order for us to be responsible IT Pros, we need to know not only what our service costs us to offer but also exactly what services we are providing. In my session "Economics of Cloud Sourcing and what that Means to Your IT Team" I'll explore how you calculate not only the cost of the service you offer (such as the per month per mailbox cost of your system) but also determine what services you are offering to your business and your end users.

This will help you to make an "apples for apples" comparison of costs and services. Some organizations will find that they can do things in the cloud at 25% the price of their current on-premise solution while others are going to find that regardless of the cost savings they cannot duplicate the features or functionality in cloud that are required by their end users.

IT Pros have a professional responsibility to their employers to approach the cloud with an open mind and eye towards helping their business succeed rather than promoting specific pieces of technology. And, for techies like me, that can be a tough exercise.

I hope you will join me for this session at Exchange Connections in Las Vegas and hear my own experiences and my journey towards weighing costs and services objectively.

Setting the Out-of-Office reply

2011-09-09T16:31:00.000-10:00

Very cool! You can set the Out-of-Office reply on someone's mailbox using the Exchange Management Shell. Thanks to Bharat Suneja and the Exchange team for sharing this great tip.

Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration bsuneja@e14labs.com –AutoReplyState Scheduled –StartTime “9/8/2011” –EndTime “9/15/2011” –ExternalMessage “External OOF message here” –InternalMessage “Internal OOF message here”

Exchange Connections: 2 new Office 365 sessions from Mike Crowley

2011-09-03T17:34:00.002-10:00

We just recently added 2 new Office 365 sessions to the Exchange Connections conference. Thanks to Mike Crowley from Planet Technologies for these!

EXC22: Exchange Online: Administration
Mike Crowley
Be careful not to fool yourself; Exchange Online (part of Office 365) offloads infrastructure management, but as an administrator, you are still responsible for the administration of your user mailboxes, Internet mail flow, message tracking and more! This session introduces you to the various administrative interfaces of Exchange Online, Forefront, RBAC, provisioning and other operational topics.

EXC23: Exchange Online: Understanding Archiving and Compliance
Mike Crowley
Thinking of moving to Office 365? Whether you are aiming for a period of coexistence or a complete migration, your archival and compliance requirements are not going away! In this session we examine the features and functionality that Microsoft provides around retention, archiving, and search.

Addressing issues uploading photos or writing to logs in Directory Manager or Directory Update

2011-08-20T16:42:00.000-10:00

If you are having issues with Directory Update or Directory Manager writing to either the "logs" folder or the "photo" folder, it is probably due to one of two problems.

First, check the Security properties of the c:\inetpub\wwwroot\DirectoryUpdate\Photos (or .\DirectoryManager\ folder). This also applies to the Logs folder. Ensure that the "NETWORK SERVICE" user has "Modify, Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, Read, and Write" permissions to that folder.

Second, open up IIS Manager, navigate down to the web site on which Directory Update or Directory Manager is installed, view the Advanced Settings of the virtual directory (\DirectoryUpdate or \DirectoryManager) and verify that the Application Pool is "DefaultAppPool" - unless you have created your own dedicated application pool for Directory Update or Directory Manager.)

Finally, in IIS Manager, navigate to Application Pools, and view the Advanced Settings of the DefaultAppPool (unless you have created your own) and in the Process Model section, make sure that the Identity is set to "NetworkService".

Vote for Directory Update!!!

2011-08-15T19:08:00.000-10:00

Directory Update users: Windows IT Pro has opened voting for the 2011 Community Choice Awards. Please vote for Ithicos Solutions' Directory Update product in the "Best Active Directory & Group Policy Product" category!!!!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/windowsitpro-communitychoice2011-finalvoting

Office 365 sessions for Las Vegas!

2011-08-12T08:59:00.002-10:00

The industry is buzzing about Office 365. Come to Exchange Connections this fall in Las Vegas and find out what the buzz is all about. Our Office 365 track covers the gamut of technologies including migration, interoperability, Lync--in-the-cloud features, and more. Session topics for the Office 365 track include:

Jim McBee - Economics of Cloud Sourcing and what that Means to Your IT Team
Randy Williams - SharePoint Online and The Cloud. Forecasting Today and Tomorrow
Michael B. Smith - Throw that old server away – moving Exchange to the cloud
Mike Crowley - Exchange Online: Administration
Byron Spurlock - Lync Server 2010 Cloud
Siegfried Jagott - Rich Coexistence of Office 365 and Exchange 2010
Mike Crowley - Exchange Online: Understanding Archiving and Compliance

Use the discount code SPKR and receive $50 off your conference admission. Register BEFORE Sept 1 and get the early bird discount and save an additional $100 for a total of $150 off the registration price.

Exchange Server sessions at Exchange Connections this Fall

2011-08-11T15:19:00.000-10:00

We have some outstanding Exchange Server related sessions scheduled for the Fall Connections show. Exchange sessions at Exchange Connections includes:

Tim McMichael: Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role High Availability - What’s Under the Hood....
Tim McMichael: Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Site Resiliency - Understanding Datacenter Activation Coordination
Jim McBee: Don’t Fear the Exchange Management Shell
Siegfried Jagott: In-depth Message Tracking Using the Tracking Log
Byron Spurlock: Lync and Exchange Integration
Jim McBee: My Exchange Server Is on a Fault Line (Establishing an Exchange 2010 Disaster Recovery Site)
William Lefkovics: Outlook Web App Customization in Exchange Server 2010 (Service Pack 1)
Michael B. Smith: To Backup or Not Backup - That Is the Question
Michael B. Smith: SSL Certificates and Exchange – The (Next) Final Word
Siegfried Jagott: Rich Coexistence of Office 365 and Exchange 2010
Anthony Vitnell: Exchange 2010 Designing for Unified Messaging
Randy Williams: Integrating SharePoint with Exchange: The What's, Why's and How's

Not only are we providing some great, in-depth topics on Exchange server, this fall we are further exploring the integration of Exchange server with other technologies such as through Byron Spurlock's Lync session, Anthony Vitnell with Unified Messaging, and Randy Williams with SharePoint.

Register before September 1rst to get discounts up to $150 (using the SPKR discount code and the early bird discount.)

Lync and Unified Communiations sessons for Exchange Connections

2011-08-08T11:30:00.005-10:00

The convergence of voice, presence, video, voice-mail, and e-mail continues. This fall at Exchange Connections, we have some great Lync / Office Communications / Unified Messaging sessions lined up. We are very fortunate to have some of the industries leading experts joining us this fall including Rui Maximo, Anthony Vitnell, and Byron Spurlock. This fall's sessions include:

Byron Spurlock: Lync Server 2010 Cloud
Anthony Vitnell: Lync Server 2010 - Integration with the Cisco Telephony Platform
Byron Spurlock: Lync Deployment Notes from the Field
Anthony Vitnell: I’m Not a PBX Guy. How do I Design and Deploy Lync Enterprise Voice?
Rui Maximo: Configure Direct SIP with Lync Server and Skype Using Asterisk
Byron Spurlock: Lync and Exchange Integration
Anthony Vitnell: Exchange 2010 Designing for Unified Messaging
Rui Maximo: Defend Your Lync Edge Server from DoS attacks, Brute-Force Password Attacks and Account Lockouts

Moving jpegPhoto photos to the thumbnailPhoto attribute

2011-07-31T12:05:00.001-10:00

There are a lot of clever people out there. Unfortunately, I'm not amoungst them. But, Joe Richards and Brian Desmond are! Thanks to Joe for developing some great tools and Brian for showing me how to use some of them to do something tricky.

Anyway, on past the credit. There are quite a few organizations out there that used the jpegPhoto attribute to store photos of users for use with 3rd party applications including my Directory Update and Directory Manager applications. Microsoft is now using thumbnailPhoto as their photo-attribute-of-choice for Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010. That leaves a lot of us with our photos in jpegPhoto.

Using the ADFind and ADMod applications from Joe Richards, though, you can copy the jpegPhoto data in to the thumbnailPhoto attribute. First, download and unzip these two applications.

Here is an example of how to move user LukeHusky's photo:
adfind -f "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(samAccountName=LukeHusky)(jpegPhoto=*))" jpegPhoto -adcsv | admod BIN##thumbnailPhoto::{{jpegPhoto}}

If this works for one user, you can actually run this against ALL users that have data in the jpegPhoto attribute with this command.
adfind -f "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(jpegPhoto=*))" jpegPhoto -adcsv | admod BIN##thumbnailPhoto::{{jpegPhoto}} -unsafe

You can also run this so that it will stop after a specific number of errors, such as 5 in the case below:
adfind -f "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(jpegPhoto=*))" jpegPhoto -adcsv | admod BIN##thumbnailPhoto::{{jpegPhoto}} -exterr -upto 5

As always, test before doing AD-wide deployments!

GAL sync on a budget - Thanks Quest and Tony Murray

2011-07-24T10:45:00.000-10:00

I was very dismayed to find that Microsoft has discontinued support for the old Identity Integration Feature Pack (IIFP) tool that was a subset of their Microsoft Identity Integration Server. This tool was "free" and allowed you to do a reasonably easy directory sync between 2 Active Directory forests (User -> Mail-enabled Contact.) I say "reasonably easy" because compared to a full blown install of MIIS, it was easier but still not simple.

The folks at Quest have once again recognized a hole in the market and have provided a free tool. Active Directory MVP Tony Murray has written a couple of good articles on using this tool. See:

GAL Sync with Quest Quick Connect Express for Active Directory

Quest ActiveRoles Quick Connect Express: GAL Sync Step-by-step Guide

Remember, both the tool and the articles are "free" so support is roughly going to be "you get what you paid for", but both Tony and Brian Desmond (Active Directory MVP) say it does what it is supposed to do.

Exchange Connections conference discount code

2011-06-28T11:27:00.000-10:00

Exchange Connections is just around the corner. Register now for any of the conferences and get the early bird registration discount ($100). If you use the discount code SPKR then you get an additional $50 off. So, with the early bird discount and this code, you get $150 off the registration price!

See you in Las Vegas!

Office 365 is out of beta

2011-06-28T07:50:00.000-10:00

Office 365 is out of beta and will soon be generally available. Office 365 includes Exchange Server, SharePoint, and Lync services in "the cloud".

Exchange 2010 Licensing Survey

2011-06-26T09:13:00.002-10:00

Share your thoughts and understanding of Exchange 2010 licensing with this quick survey. I promised Paul Robichaux weeks ago I would post this for him.

Fall 2011 Exchange Connections in las Vegas

2011-06-26T08:25:00.001-10:00

We have our sights set on the Fall 2011 Exchange Connections conference in Las Vegas October 31 - November 3rd at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. This year's show promises to be the best show we have had in years. There is a lot happening in the Exchange Server, Lync, and cloud area over the past year and this show will reflect that; especially with the release of Office 365 and Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2. There is more than ever for the Exchange or Lync administrator that is facing integration with SharePoint and online services!

We have some great conference track sessions, and full-day sessions planned from speakers including Paul Robichaux, Tony Redmond, Kevin Allison, Siegfried Jagott, Byron Spurlock, Anthony Vitnell, Randy Williams, William Lefkovics, Tim McMichael, Rui Maximo, and Michael B. Smith.

Visit the Exchange Connections site or our Facebook page for more information!

Fall 2011 Exchange Connections Key Note Speaker - Kevin Allison

2011-06-25T11:14:00.001-10:00

Kevin Allison, the GM for the Exchange Server program at Microsoft will be the keynote note speaker at Exchange Connections this fall in Las Vegas! Hope you see you there!

Why you should NOT own a Siberian Husky

2011-05-26T10:10:00.011-10:00

When I am out and about with my Siberian Husky, I am asked almost every day by a stranger on the street “How can I get one?” I find myself listing the reasons they should not.

Don't get me wrong, I love my furry little beast and would not swap him for any other dog. He is smart, handsome, intuitive, and a bundle of fun. In fact, I want a second one. But, Siberian Huskies are not for everyone. I did a lot of research on Siberian Huskies prior to getting one, so I knew about the quirks of the breed before I got him. Do your research about the breed you want.

If you are in the market for a dog, ask yourself these questions and important points:

Are you prepared to give your dog at least 60 to 90 minutes of exercise a day? Letting him out in to the yard does not count. I mean walking, running, or going to the dog park so he can run with other dogs. A bored Siberian with pent up energy is a recipe for personal property destruction.
Do you have a secure area for your dog? Some dogs are perfectly restrained by a 30 inch fence. The Siberian Husky needs a 6 foot fence (or maybe even higher!) and the fence must be attached to the ground. They don’t call them Hairy Houdini’s for nothing.
Do you want a lap dog? The Siberian is very independent. Most are not lap dogs and don’t need continual attention. Once they have had their exercise, they are content to lay across the room from you (and keep an eye on you in case you go to the kitchen for food.) Don’t be offended if he comes up to you, gets some attention, and then walks off.
Most Sibes love everyone! Kids, your neighbors, your friends, and the degenerate that just broke in to your house.
Are you offended easily? You may be sitting on the floor giving your Siberian a tummy rub when he hops up, trots to the other side of the room, and sits down.
Sibes love cats and birds. Their delicious! Seriously, unless the Siberian is raised with a cat or other small animal, don’t trust him with them.
Do you like fur? The Siberian male sheds about once per year and the female sheds about twice per year. I’m talking Die Hard: Shed With A Vengeance shedding. He will need to be bathed several times during the shedding cycle and gently brushed every day.
Siberian Huskies are natural explorers. You can NOT allow them off leash in an open space. They have no fear of traffic, large mammals, and Mack trucks.
Are you not very strong? The Sibe *is* strong* and powerful. A young adult Siberian can pull a load 4 or 5 times his own weight.
Those cute tricks you can teach your German Sheppard or Golden Retriever? Fetching, sitting, coming when called, you know the ones. Those are strictly optional with the Sibe. When you yell “Dog, come!”, the Sibe will look around at you with a look that says, “Thanks, I’ll take that under advisement.” The Sibe *can* be trained, but it is much harder than with a dog that *wants* to please you.
The Sibe wants to be alpha and you will be tested. All the time. If you are not consistent with him, your azaleas will be mulch.
Despite being strong and fairly resilient, Siberian Huskies have a delicate tummy. Keep them on a consistent diet. No table scraps and treats should be less than 25% of their daily food intake. If you change their food frequently or give them things they don’t normally eat, it will NOT be pretty come poopy time.

I have heard too many stories of people having to return their Siberian Husky to the breeder or give them to an animal shelter because they cannot handle the dog or do not have time for it.

When you look for a dog, don’t just look for a dog that “looks like a wolf” or “has nice blue eyes”, but find a breed that matches your lifestyle and the time you have to give to the dog. Both the dog and you will be much happier.

Great letter-to-the-editor response

2011-04-24T10:11:00.000-10:00

My dad sent me this letter (in hard copy) a few years ago. I wish I had the original letter, and Melissa Golding's response but I could not find them online. But, Justin J. Green's response was great.

=======

More Suggested Reading

Before writing this response to Ms. Golding's [Jan. 18] letter I took the trouble to "Google" Ms. Golding. After looking carefully at 10 pages of information, I think it fair to conclude that though there are other Melissa Goldings with the kind of credentials that might allow them to be critical of my research skills, that is not true of Knoxville's own Melissa Golding. Her two “Google” references are for a letter to Metro Pulse and a critical response to that letter. I urge Ms. Golding to “Google” me. There she will find that I have co-authored two books and she will find several references to peer reviewed journals in which I have published more than 40 articles. Ms. Golding’s issue positions suggest that her research consists of watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh.

My library contains at least 12 books about Iraq, all of which have received critical praise from reviewers and all of which contain footnotes and other references that provide strong support for the author(s)’ positions. I will mention a few on the chance that Ms. Golding might read them and replace her ignorance with knowledge. I sense, however, that she prefers to live with her fantasies rather than learn the truth.

The best books on the history of terrorism and how to deal with it are Louise Richardson’s What Terrorists Want and Benjamin and Simon’s The Next Attack. The latter makes a formidable case that our Iraq venture has contributed to the growth of various Jihadist movements worldwide. It also quotes Jihadist leaders to the effect that Bush’s policies are just what was needed to recruit Muslims to their cause.

I would also recommend The Assassin’s Gate by George Packer, The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind, State of Denial by Bob Woodward, Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks and in my opinion the single best coverage of why Iraq is so violent today and how to reduce that level, Peter Galbreath’s The End of Iraq. Ms. Goulding would also benefit if she read the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and even the Wall Street Journal as I do almost every day.

She would learn that, contrary to her expressed views , Clinton did make some mistakes but he learned from his errors. Competent people who worked for him and transferred in 2001 to the Bush administration warned Bush, Cheney, and Rice to keep their eyes on al-Qaeda. They paid little or no attention until a couple of weeks before the 9/11 attack. The published post-9/11 Commission’s report documents the failure of communications between the CIA and the FBI.

I said correctly that al-Qaeda played little or no role in Iraq. The Jihadist Zarqawi tried to legitimize his activities by naming his group al-Qaeda in Iraq. There were communications between Bin Laden and Zarqawi but the real al-Qaeda became very critical of Zarqawi’s operations. There were and are foreign Jihadists operating in Iraq but according to our own military estimates these Jihadists account for only about 10 percent of the violence in Iraq.

If Ms. Golding understand psychology she would understand that Jihadist leaders believe that if they praise Democrats and excoriate Republicans the American public might do the opposite, and ‘til last November that’s exactly how they voted.

I hate to tell Ms. Golding but November elections inform us that the American public has seen through the lies that emanate from both the liars in the White House and people like Ms. Golding, who it appears has never read anything that might disagree with her warped point of view.

Last of all, if Ms. Golding still doubts my credentials, I suggest she read Political Stability in the Philippines: Framework and Analysis by Daniel Druckman and Justin J. Green. It was an early study that explained how to predict the success of failure of insurgencies. I was told that it was required reading at the CIA (who paid for the research) for a good many years.

Justin J. Green

Knoxville

Session content and levels for Exchange Connections - Looking for feedback

2011-04-05T07:30:00.000-10:00

Hi everyone, I am one of the conference chairs for the Exchange Connections conference. That means, among other things, that I help chose the sessions that will be right for the upcoming shows. The fall show in Las Vegas (starting on October 31) is now in our sights.

What type of sessions would you like to see in future Exchange Connections events? Should they be “deep dives” on a single topic? Overviews? Best practices / lessons from the field?

What other suggestions would you make to help make the Exchange Connections event the best in the industry?

I invite you to contribute to this discussion on our Exchange Connections Facebook Community page. Please visit http://facebook.com/ExchangeConnections

Exchange maximum send and receive message size not working

2011-02-21T10:57:00.000-10:00

I see a lot of posts in the newsgroups about the maximum message size limits not working correctly. People are continually trying to change global message size limits, send connectors, etc... I keep meaning to write about this.

Out of the box, Exchange's maximum send and receive message size limit is 10MB. But, that is the "internal" message size limit. When a message is sent from one Exchange server to another within your organization, the format remains in MAPI format. This means that attachments remain in their original binary format.

However, if you send a message OUTSIDE of your Exchange organization the message must be converted in to an Internet standard. This standard is almost always MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). Binary attachments (ZIPs, DOCs, PPTs, XLSs, etc...) must be converted from there standard binary format to Base64. When an attachment is converted to Base64, the resulting attachment size is about 37% LARGER than the original file.

So, an internal e-mail message that is around 7.5MB (including attachments) will expand to just over 10MB. Exchange will issue an NDR that the message size is too large.

When explaining to your users the maximum send and receive (outbound and inbound) message sizes, it is best to explain that the "internal" limit is 10MB, but the external limit is around 7MB.

Business taxes and the Philippines

2011-01-11T20:18:00.000-10:00

I just recently sold some software to a business in the Philippines. When they paid their invoice, they deducted 30% for income taxes. The told me that while my business was NOT subject to Philippine withholding and income tax, I had to apply for the tax treaty relief ahead of time.

This strikes me as something just short of extortion. Looks like all future sales to businesses in the Philippines will be marked up by 30%.

Exchange Connections on Facebook

2011-01-07T08:13:00.000-10:00

We have an Exchange Connections page on Facebook now. We hope to use this page to spawn not only technical discussions and information, but also allow people to discuss the types of sessions they would like to see at the Exchange Connections conference. Please visit the page and "Like" it if you are a Facebook user!

We have met the TSA.... and he is us

2010-11-23T07:26:00.000-10:00

We have met the TSA and he is us.... Yes, friends, the TSA (and its parent agency the DHS) are a direct result of our frenzied demands for a safer country. ("Our" does not mean necessarily "you" or "me", but "us" the citizens of the USA.)

We supported President Bush by an overwhelming majority when DHS and the TSA were created. We supported the Patriot Act. We supported allowing the federal government to take over airport and port security. We supported President Obama in allowing the DHS and TSA to continue to operate with bullies and thugs in their ranks. I'm not saying all TSA employees are bullies and thugs.

Since Sept 11, 2001, I have traveled a bit over 1,000,000 "base" miles via air. I *did* have a brief "brushing up against my junk incident" once in 2004, but I usually just witness clueless employees and inconsistenly enforced policies. By and large, MOST of the TSA people I have encountered were polite, but bored civil servants.

The current frenzy over back scatter machines, aggressive pat-downs, and 5 year olds being searched is a natural progression of the power and authority that we have enabled for the DHS and TSA. Regardless of who controls Congress or the White House, expect this to expand further.

I don't know of a better solution for transporation security, but I can tell you that the current "solution" is one of our own making. And I certainly don't trust Congress to make things any better. The only thing I know for sure is that terrorists and extremists are going to continue to look for ways to exploit current or future weaknesses.

Uploading photos to Active Directory for use with Outlook 2010

2010-11-22T07:33:00.006-10:00

One of the coolest new features in Outlook 2010 is the ability to view photos stored in the Active Directory. While this is supposed to work only with Exchange Server 2010, it seems to also work if you are running Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2010. I am also expecting to see the capability to use this photo integrated in to other products such Office Communication Server (Lync) and SharePoint. You can upload photos to the Active Directory using the Exchange 2010 Exchange Management Shell.

My company's products Directory Update and Directory Manager are great tools for getting the data in to the Active Directory and are MUCH easier to use than the Exchange Management Shell. Our Directory Search application can be configured to display a user's photo. For existing and future customers, here is some information:

Use the thumbnailPhoto attribute NOT the default jpegPhoto attribute
Microsoft's recommendation for the photo size is 96 x 96
We recommend setting the photo size to 128 x 128
Typical image sizes are between 5KB and 10KB
Impact on the Active Directory is usually minimal
Adjust the settings using the DirectorySettings.XML file in the section
If you supply a photo at EXACTLY the size (such as 128x128) then we do not alter the photo
Photos supplied at different sizes/resolutions are re-rendered to the size specified in the XML file
The thumbnailPhoto must be flagged in the schema so that it replicates to global catalog servers
The NETWORK SERVICE user must be given "modify" permissions to the \inetpub\wwwroot\directorymanager\photos or the \inetpub\wwwroot\directoryupdate\photos folder. This folder is used for temporary storage only.
The IIS application pool's Identity must use the NETWORK SERVICE account

Existing users of Directory Update v1.6 or later and Directory Manager v1.3 or later can modify their application to upload photos by editing the DirectorySettings.XML file. If all you wish to do is upload photos, the other sections of Directory Update or Directory Manager can be hidden.

While Directoy Update and Directory Manager can both upload photos, we recommend using Directory Manager and designate the task to a small number of people (such as Human Resources) so that you get consistent and good quality photos.

Directory Update, Directory Manager, and Directory Search on Windows Server 2008

2010-11-21T08:16:00.003-10:00

Most of our new customers are now running Directory Update, Directory Search, and Directory Manager on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. Our applications are fully supported on both flavors of Windows Server 2008, but the enhanced security and minimal install surface may make installation a bit more complicated. Here are some recommendations for installation and troubleshooting:

Internet Information Server requirements:

IIS 7 web service components
The IIS 6 compatibility components of IIS 7
ASP.NET
.NET Framework 3.5
We recommend creating a separate IIS application pool that uses the Identity NetworkService. Call it something such as "DirectoryUpdateAppPool". That application pool's 32-bit features must be disabled on Windows x64.

Give the NETWORK SERVICE user "modify" permissions to the .\Photos folder and/or the .\Logs folder

Exchange Connections Fall 2010 Session PowerPoints slides

2010-11-08T16:48:00.000-10:00

Thanks to everyone that attended my sessions at Exchange Connections in the Fall of 2010. As promised, here are the slide decks from my sessions along with the session I covered for Paul Robichaux.

High Availability for Small and Medium Sized Businesses without the High Cost

Migrating to Exchange 2010 from Exchange 2003

Making Good IT Business Decisions While Cloud Proofing Your Career

Robichaux - Get Off My Cloud

Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices - Two Thumbs Up!

2010-11-07T08:55:00.000-10:00

I just recently picked up Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices. While there is a bit of overlap with my own book, this is a really great book and has a lot more technical depth on Exchange Server 2010 (including SP1) than any other book on the marketing. Great job to Sigi Jagott and Joel Stidely! I also really like the concept of allowing other Exchange Server experts to write small side-bars or articles within the book. Two thumbs up!!

Visio stencils for Exchange Server 2010

2010-10-28T09:20:00.001-10:00

The Exchange Server 2010 Visio stencils are here! Including my favorite, the "phishing" shape! This has been updated to include the SP1 shapes.

Here is the link in case you did not click on the title. :-) You can now also download them directly from the Microsoft site.

Enabling processor virtualization for x64 on Dell Servers

2010-09-30T18:37:00.000-10:00

Sometimes, it is the most obvious things that really kick you in the fanny....

I was setting up a new Dell R610 in my lab. All my virtual machines were starting up just fine until I got to my Exchange servers. They kept just restarting over and over again. After a lot of troubleshooting, I remembered that I had not enabled the virtualization technology in the BIOS. That must be enabled if any of the virtual machines are going to be x64.

Open up the BIOS, go to processor configuration, then enable Virtualization Technology.

Load balancing for Exchange 2010

2010-09-08T10:20:00.000-10:00

I have been meaning to post about this for months. Many Exchange 2010 administrators have suddenly found themselves having to learn a new skill set, specifically that of load balancing and hardware-based load balancers. A good alternative to expensive appliances like the F5 hardware load balancers are the appliances from Kemp Technologies.

Henrik Walther has a series of articles on using a hardware based load balancer with Exchange 2010. I recommend these as a good starting point. And thanks to David Eflassy for the recommendation on Kemp Technologies. I need to get one in my lab to test!

Google hacked again by the Chinese?

2010-08-07T17:03:00.000-10:00

Just how extensively has Google been hacked by the Chinese? At least 3 of my friends are reporting that their friends are receiving spam from their Gmail accounts. One of my friends found this spam in his Sent Items folder and found that his account had been accessed by someone else. Yet, he is confident that his password would not have easily been guessed.

A few months ago, I turned on comment moderation on my Blog because I got tired of the spammers posting links in the comments. Now, the only comments I moderate are the legitimate ones. But, the ones in Chinese continue to appear.

President Rock Star? - Are we putting our president on the wrong pedestal

2010-07-29T17:50:00.000-10:00

In the USA, our president is supposed to be a Chief Executive and budgeter, not a rock star. Yet, we seem to have let this role in our government mutate in to Rock-Star-in-chief. This excellent article from Reason Magazine on The Cult of the Presidency talks about this evolution.

Who can we blame for the radical expansion of executive power? Look no further than you and me.

Gene Healy from the June 2008 issue

“I ain’t running for preacher,” Republican presidential candidate Phil Gramm snarled to religious right activists in 1995 when they urged him to run a campaign stressing moral themes. Several months later, despite Gramm’s fund raising prowess, the Texas conservative finished a desultory fifth place in the Iowa caucuses and quickly dropped out of the race. Since then, few candidates have made Gramm’s mistake. Serious contenders for the office recognize that the role and scope of the modern presidency cannot be so narrowly confined. Today’s candidates are running enthusiastically for national preacher—and much else besides.

In the revival tent atmosphere of Barack Obama’s campaign, the preferred hosanna of hope is “Yes we can!” We can, the Democratic front-runner promises, not only create “a new kind of politics” but “transform this country,” “change the world,” and even “create a Kingdom right here on earth.” With the presidency, all things are possible.

Even though Republican nominee John McCain tends to eschew rainbows and uplift in favor of the grim satisfaction that comes from serving a “cause greater than self-interest,” he too sees the presidency as a font of miracles and the wellspring of national redemption. A president who wants to achieve greatness, McCain suggests, should emulate Teddy Roosevelt, who “liberally interpreted the constitutional authority of the office” and “nourished the soul of a great nation.” President George W. Bush, when passing the GOP torch to his former rival in March, declared that the Arizona senator “will bring determination to defeat an enemy and a heart big enough to love those who hurt.” Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, suggests she is “ready on Day 1 to be commander in chief of our economy.”

Gates and Jobs sit down for a chat

2010-07-01T17:02:00.000-10:00

I could not resist sharing this.

Exchange 2010 SP1 beta Prerequs

2010-06-21T18:48:00.000-10:00

I have been playing with the Exchange Server 2010 SP1 beta in my test lab. Thus far, I'm pretty impressed. It upgraded my lab servers cleanly. I upgraded a 2 node DAG nicely as well. I'm using Windows Server 2008 R2 (fewer prereqs that have be installed.)

There are few hot fixes that you will need to install, though.
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB979533
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=183148

Administering Microsoft E-mail Servers: The basics

2010-06-20T11:37:00.002-10:00

I am proposing a book that would cover the basics of administering e-mail servers in a Microsoft environment. This would book would not be version specific, but would cover basics such as DNS, PKI/certificates, Outlook/MAPI profiles, reverse proxies, storage, SMTP, POP/IMAP, fighting spam, etc... The target audience is new e-mail administrators.

First, I think there is a good potential audience for such a book. Second, it would free books suh as the "Mastering" books from having to cover the basics.

I'd like to hear some feedback from people about this idea.

Mastering Exchange Server 2010 book

2010-06-20T11:32:00.002-10:00

The Exchange Server 2010 book is now "on the streets" and I have gotten a lot of good feedback from people. However, one thing I want to make sure that potential purchasers know. The book currently has no Database Availability Group (DAG) content. The book is intended for new administrators (new-to-product and new-to-version) rather than a technical "deep dive." Our original intent was to follow-up with an "Advanced" book. Not sure where that is, but we are looking at options for people that want DAG content.

Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer explained so I can understand it

2010-06-20T11:13:00.004-10:00

This is one of the cutest things I have seen in a long time. A young administrator explains to us the value of the Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer. :-) I wonder if I can get my Siberian Husky to "woo" an explanation of the RCA?

Interesting AT&T "dial" features

2010-06-20T11:00:00.003-10:00

I knew it was possible to "dial" a number on your AT&T phone and get my minutes balance for the month. But there is more than just minutes:

*BAL# to check your balance
*MIN# to check minutes remaining
*DATA# for data remaining (if you don't have unlimited data)
*PAY to pay your bill
*NEW# to see if you are eligible to upgrade to a new phone

Just enter the above "numbers" in to the phone and press dial. I used to have TMobile and they had some similar features.

2010-06-18T18:48:00.001-10:00

I had an annoying problem today while working with a fresh installation of Exchange Server 2010. Everything installed beautifully. But, when I went to open the Exchange Management Shell or the Exchange Management Console, I got this error:

VERBOSE: Connecting to hnlex05.somorita.local

[hnlex05.somorita.local] Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message : Access is denied. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
+ CategoryInfo : OpenError: (System.Manageme....RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [], PSRemotingTransportException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : PSSessionOpenFailed

After a more troubleshooting than I'm willing to admit, I found that the time on the Exchange server was wrong. The moral of the story? Don't forget the basics!

Photovoltaic rocks! Look ma! No power used!

2010-06-14T12:47:00.000-10:00

I recently added 15 new photovolatic panels to my solar power array. My daily "net power" consumption has now dropped to zero. I produce "excess" power during the day which is sent back out to the Hawaiian Electric Company grid. They use the power elsewhere and give me credit for the power they consume. Then at night or on cloudy days, I use up the credit. My minimum bill is $18.26 which is the "connection fee."

Exchange 2010 SP1 beta ships

2010-06-07T11:13:00.003-10:00

Greetings from TechEd 2010! If you are like me and you have been waiting on the beta of Exchange Server 2010 SP1 beta to ship, it has arrived! Time to get those test labs fired up and start seeing some of the improvements including the new personal archive improvements and improvements to Outlook Web App!

TechEd 2010 Preconference session - Thanks everyone

2010-06-06T19:10:00.000-10:00

To everyone that attended the pre-con session at TechEd, thanks much for attending. David and I had a great time doing the presentation. I think we probably could have spent 2 or 3 DAYS talking about Exchange 2010 and sharing our thoughts (and hearing yours!) Thanks for attending!

What happened to my targetAddress attributes????

2010-04-18T10:22:00.002-10:00

Like many things I learn in IT, I learned a new lesson "the hard way". We are migrating from an old forest to a new forest using Quest. The Quest mailbox migration, once it completes the migration of a mailbox, puts on the user's targetAddress attribute the SMTP of the new location. For example, the mailbox's new SMTP address is Luke@newdomain.com, so it puts in the old mailbox's targetAddress attribute SMTP:Luke@newdomain.com.

The Exchange "move mailbox" wizard actually CLEARS this attribute if you move the mailbox from one database to another in the same organization. We needed to shutdown some old mailbox servers, so we ExMerged all of the data out of the mailboxes that had been migrated, then moved the empty mailboxes to a single Exchange server.

Forwarding immediately stopped working. After some frenzied investigation, we found that the targetAddress for the moved mailboxes had been cleared. A call to our Quest consultants confirmed this. So, keep this in mind if you have to move mailboxes that have a targetAddress set on them!!!!

Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2010: Best Practices for Deployments and Upgrades

2010-04-18T09:28:00.001-10:00

David Elfassy and I are presenting a pre-conference session at TechEd 2010 in New Orleans this year. Hope to see some of my blog readers there!
_______________________________
A stable and well defined deployment strategy will provide a problem-free implementation of Exchange Server 2010. Administrators can have peace of mind when managing e-mail systems and can therefore go deeper; and explore the new features provided with this latest version of Microsoft′s premiere messaging solution.

Written and presented by co-authors of the book "Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2010", this pre-conference seminar brings years of Exchange Server deployment expertise to Tech⋅Ed attendees. This 300-350 level seminar focuses on the deployment technologies and best practices for deploying Exchange Server 2010. Content and demonstrations concentrate on the following Exchange server technologies:

• Continuous Availability and Site Resilience for Mailbox servers
• Deploying and configuring Client Access Arrays
• Implementing redundancy for message routing
• Best practices for upgrading an organization to Exchange Server 2010

Walk away from this seminar with the tools necessary to implement a new Exchange deployment, upgrade your existing messaging environment or stabilize your existing deployment. This seminar is designed for IT professionals who manage messaging environments and consultants who deploy messaging solutions.

Exchange Server 2010 SP1 archiving features and Outlook 2007

2010-04-07T08:27:00.006-10:00

The Exchange team blog contained a great post today about the future of the Exchange archiving features. This includes the much requested ability to move the archive mailbox to a different database. However, they also announced that there will be an update Outlook 2007 that will allow the user to access the personal archive. This is big news for organizations that are still in the middle of an Office 2007 upgrade!!!

Thanks to the Exchange and Outlook teams for listening to the customers!

No route was found for the recipient server.

2010-04-05T12:47:00.002-10:00

I saw a very weird problem this past week on a system running Exchange Server 2003. The organization has 2 separate Exchange organizations/forests. They are in the middle of migration from OldDomain.com to NewDomain.com and are using the Quest Migration tools.

Many of the users had mailboxes in the new domain, but their new domain mailbox had an alternate recipient that forwarded all mail to a contact in olddomain.com.

When Quest first sync'ed the "old" mailboxes with the "new" mailboxes, it removed the alternate recipient and added to the new mailbox a targetAddress of UserDomain@source.olddomain.com.

The problem is that for ONE user out of hundreds, anytime that someone sent him a message, they got back HUNDREDS of NDR messages. The user had not yet been migrated to the new domain, so the targetAddress attribute was checked and it was correct. NDR message was:

No route was found for the recipient server. Please contact your system administrator.
servername.newdomain.com #5.4.4

The message was originating from the sender's mailbox server. After lots of examining logs and message tracking, we found that the message WAS actually getting to the intended recipient, but the NDRs just kept coming in.

Ultimately for this one user, in the new domain on the alternate recipient forward, the checkbox to send to both the mailbox AND the alternate recipient was checked. But, the alternate recipient address was now blank. We had to enable a forwarder temporarily, clear that checkbox, and then remove the forwarder.

Photo voltaic revisited

2010-03-28T10:25:00.005-10:00

Since I started "greening" my house this past year, I have had a lot of people asking me questions about it. First, I don't really see this as a "green" project as much as a "I hate contributing to the political mess involved in using imported oil" mess. A long term investment in my home as well as reducing my electric bill are two of the other advantages. Being "green" is a nice to have, but not my one of the primary motivators.

I'm about to add the next phase to the roof; an additional 15 panels and inverters. This should reduce my average Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) bill down to around around $8.00. That is the "monthly connection fee".

Here are the answers to a lot of the questions:

The system uses SunPower 220 P/V panels that are around 5' long by 2.5' feet wide and Enphase 190 DC to AC micro-inverters. Each panel has its own inverter.
The system "wakes up" as soon as the first light shines on it (around 6:45AM)
Optimal power production occurs between about 9AM and 3PM. A 6 hour daily window; though the system produces power as long as there is some light.
During a typical day, each panel produces around 1KWH. So, 15 panels usually produce between 14 and 16KWH in the winter. However, I have had several 19KWH days.
The total system cost was around $28,000 including the mounting on the roof and all of the electrical work necessary to tie 3 separate P/V circuits (just 15A breakers) in to the house. The 3 separate circuits was a design decision that I made.
If you want to come by and see the system, sure, come on by. But there is not much to "see" besides some circuit breakers and the panels themselves. The real interesting stuff is in the software which you can see from where you are sitting. The Enphase software allows you to view my system's out in near-realtime. Well, about a 30-45 minute delay. See McBee Photovoltaic system.
For the 2009 tax year, I'll get approximately $19,000 in tax credits (state and federal). Thus, the actual out-of-pocket cost for the first year is around $9,000.
Actual "payback" at the current cost of electricity (around $0.24 / KWH) is around 7 years.
If you are considering this and have the sunlight available, do solar hot water first. Second, put in a "low flow" pool pump (if you have a pool). Both of those provide a better return on investment. I have both; P/V was the next logical step.
The panels are on the south-facing side of my roof. They take up about 1/4 of the south facing roof space. For the most part, my neighbors cannot see them.
I financed the first year and most of it back from the tax credits. The remainder, I paid back from my savings account.
I am adding 15 additional panels next month and am using SunPower's "no interest and no financing for a year" program to finance them as well.
I picked the SunPower 220 panels and Enphase micro-inverters because liked the idea of the panels functioning independently. The sizing of the panels and the inverters was confirmed by the vendor (Sunetric Solar Power of Hawaii).
The vendor (Sunetric) did ALL of the installation work including the electrical work, permitting, HECO paperwork, and mounting the panels. I just watched and took pictures. :-)
There are NO batteries; I am not 'off-the-grid'. Maybe in Phase 3 I'll do that for some critical house-hold things such as the refrigerator, microwave, and a few outlets.
On average, I "push back" to HECO around 6 to 8KWH per day of electricity that is then used somewhere else on the grid.
At night, I use power just like everyone else. HECO gives me "credit" for the power I sent to them during the day. The idea is to "size" the system so that it generates in about 6 hours the total amount of power you need for 24 hours. HECO only gives a 'credit' for the power. If I consistently generate more power than I need each day, HECO wins. They will NOT pay me for the excess power I produce; only a one year credit.
If the commercial power fails, my P/V array shuts down. That is a feature of the inverter. The inverters have to have an "A/C push" from the utility otherwise they don't work. This is so that if HECO shuts off power on my street, I don't keep pushing power out and shock their lineman (line-person?)

Mastering Exchange Server 2010 is now available

2010-03-28T09:33:00.004-10:00

Yes, everyone, it is FINALLY here! The Mastering Exchange Server 2010 book is finally on the shelves. Well, actually, given how bookstores are stocking technical books now, it is probably NOT on the shelf, but you can order it.

Writing this book has been a big undertaking and this is the first major book that I have written while also having a full-time job. Over the past 10 years of writing, I have usually been a contractor and thus had more time to write.

Putting together a 1,000 page technical book is a time consuming endeavor. And, often, a huge part of that time is fighting with the software to make it do what you need it to do. Crashed virtual machines, poorly documented beta software, and hardware problems all slow down the over all writing process. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 hours worth of "lab" work just to write 2 paragraphs and get a screen capture.

Regardless of what authors will tell you, most books do not get written by any one author nor reviewed by any single editor. I'll be the first to admit that MANY people were involved in the writing, reviewing, and editing of this book. Some people wrote a few paragraphs or did a first-pass technical review, while others contributed multiple chapters.

The technical editor for the book was Ross Smith; I'm not sure that Ross is going to speak to me anymore. :-) We had a number of spirited in-person, e-mail and "Word" discussions during the TE review. Ross did an excellent job and I'm sure he did not realize just how much work this was going to be. The book is a far, far better book because of Ross' involvement. If there is to be an "Advanced Administration" book, I hope that Ross will consider being involved from the start.

My co-author, David Elfassy jumped in to the project when it became apparent I would not get finished anytime before the next version of Exchange was released. Even with multiple projects on this plate and a new child on the way, David pushed ahead. Devin Ganger was helpful early on in the project and produced several chapters for me. Ken St. Cyr wrote 2 excellent chapters in the middle of trying to finish his own book. Other authors that contributed full or partial chapters included Doug Fidler, Pat Richard, John Rodriguez, Randy Williams, Michael B. Smith, Martin Tuip, and Ilse Van Criekinge.

Many of my fellow Exchange MVPs, MCT's, MCSEs, and Exchange Team members helped me with technical questions, confirmations of technical facts, or insight in to a product or function including Brian Tirch, David Espinosa, Melissa Travers, William Lefkovics, Paul Robichaux, John Fullbright, Peter O'Dowd, Scott Schnoll, Nino Bilic, Harold Wong, Evan Dodds, Rich Matheisen, Glen Scales, Missy Koslosky, Mark Arnold, and Bharat Suneja.

Some of the feedback I have gotten from the past 2 Mastering books was that they were "too advanced" for some administrators. The feeling was that someone could not just pick up the book and learn how to become an e-mail administrator. Maybe they could learn how to be an Exchange administrator, but not an e-mail administrator. The first few chapters of this new book includes more of the basics of e-mail system administration, but I'm beginning to think that there should be a 200 - 400 page book on that topic (client/server systems, SMTP, MAPI, RPCs, POP/IMAP, DNS, PKI, etc...) [Would you buy this for your junior administrators?]

The book is missing a number of things that we just did not have enough time or page space to include. Notably missing is database availability groups (DAGs) and high availability scenarios. This was a decision partially out of necessity; we just could not include the necessary material in the few remaining pages since we had a "maximum page" limit under which we had to stay. I did not want to write 25 or 30 pages of DAG material only to have it severely lacking. To properly cover DAGs and high availability, I really felt like we needed about 100 - 150 pages. I have also never felt like high availability belonged in a book that was intended to help someone "master the concepts and basic features of the product". However, I suspect for medium sized and large businesses, DAGs are going to become a requirement.

At this point, I don't know if there will be an "Advanced Administration" book or not. I feel there is a need and certainly there is the material for such a book. We will see.

For all of you out there that have bought a previous edition of this book or might buy this one in the future, thanks much for your support!

Outlook 2010 supports photos from GAL

2010-03-12T08:01:00.004-10:00

For people that have been longing to publish photos in to the Active Directory and then have those photos viewable in Outlook. The thumbnailPhoto attribute is now being used to show this information. I had talked about this a year or so ago when talking about how to better size pictures to load in to the jpegPhoto attribute. My Directory Manager and Directory Update products allow you to upload a photo in to either the jpegPhoto or thumbnailPhoto attributes. If you have used the jpegPhoto attribute to upload your photos, it is a pretty simple matter to use a tool like ADModify.NET to copy the photos to thumbnailPhoto.

In the article GAL Photos in Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010, Bharat Suneja talks about how to take advantage of this feature. An especially useful new feature is the ability to upload the photos from the Exchange Management Shell using the Import-RecipientDataProperty cmdlet. The below text is from Bharat's article:

Loading pictures into Active Directory

Now you can start uploading pictures to Active Directory using the Import-RecipientDataProperty cmdlet, as shown in this example:

Import-RecipientDataProperty -Identity "Bharat Suneja" -Picture -FileData ([Byte[]]$(Get-Content -Path "C:\pictures\BharatSuneja.jpg" -Encoding Byte -ReadCount 0))

To perform a bulk operation you can use Get-Mailbox cmdlet with your choice of filter (or Get-DistributionGroupMember if you want to do this for members of a distribution group), and pipe the mailboxes to a foreach loop. You can also retrieve the user name and path to the thumbnail picture from a CSV/TXT file.

My roof goes photo-voltaic

2010-03-06T09:51:00.006-10:00

If you follow me on Facebook, you already know this, but this past fall I added the first of 15 photo voltaic panels to my roof. Another 15 coming in the next few months.

The system was "sized" to produce about 14-15KWH per day, but I'm usually producing between 14 and 18KWH per day. And that is in the winter time!

My daily electric usage averaged around 40-45KWH per day. The pool pump is the biggest offender (at around 10KWH per day), but I'm putting in a more efficient pool pump this month.

The system has been operational for the last 3 months and I'm VERY pleased at this point. Here is my the average daily usage for my last bill. I'm down to about 20KWH per day that I have to "buy" from the electric company.

Great week in Lake Tahoe

2010-02-21T10:14:00.002-10:00

Just got back from a great week of skiing and snowboarding in South Lake Tahoe. Tahoe is definitely one of my favorite places to visit. Thanks to Tim at Heavenly Village Condo Rentals at the Marriott. Lake Tahoe Condo Rentals by owner at Heavenly Village.

Exchange 2010 and maximum databases per server

2009-11-29T16:56:00.001-10:00

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

2009-11-29T14:01:00.001-10:00

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

2009-11-26T11:16:00.003-10:00

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

2009-11-25T17:15:00.002-10:00

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

2009-11-24T18:17:00.002-10:00

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!

2009-11-21T11:16:00.003-10:00

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

2009-11-12T09:54:00.002-10:00

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

2009-11-12T09:49:00.002-10:00

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

2009-11-11T06:27:00.002-10:00

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

2009-11-10T09:21:00.000-10:00

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

2009-11-09T15:20:00.001-10:00

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

Exchange Server and the software business

2009-10-12T09:16:00.002-10:00

In an Exchange Team blog, I saw a really interesting tidbit of information. If Exchange Server was a standalone business, it would be the 9th largest software company in the world!

The other interesting tidbit was that, according to a Ferris research, the Lotus Notes market share within enterprise businesses has dropped to 10% while Exchange is at 65%.

AOL is not accepting e-mail...

2009-09-20T10:10:00.002-10:00

"AOL is not accepting e-mail from my server" "Road Runner is not accepting mail from my server".... etc Sound familiar? This is a pretty common question in the newsgroups. I have been battling this issue myself with one of my own customers.

Some ISPs (Time Warner's companies are notorious for this) check to see if your mail server has a PTR record. Does your server have an PTR record for it's public IP address? You can easily check here:
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx

Plug in your IP address in here to see a fairly comprehensive test. Ideally, your PTR record name (eg mail.somorita.com) should match the HELO or EHLO banner that your mail server sends out. Some mail servers will even reject your message if the EHLO banner does not match your PTR record. Fortunately, most don't.

Now comes the hard part: how do you assign a PTR record for your public facing IP address? You usually don't. The owner of the IP address must do that. That is almost always your ISP. Contact your ISP, tell them that you need a PTR record for your public IP and tell them what you want it to be, such as mail.somorita.com.

Enphase Inverter demo and management software demo

2009-09-08T16:31:00.003-10:00

One of the solar photovoltaic inverters I'm considering has some pretty neat software that lets you monitor the system as well as individual panels. Take a look at the Enphase software demo.

Sending e-mail as an SMS or text message

2009-09-07T08:18:00.003-10:00

Really useful answer by Michael W. on the Microsoft TechNet forums. If you want to send a text message from an e-mail client, most carriers allow you to do this. You send an e-mail message to number@emaildomain. For example, if you want to send a message to a T-Mobile user whose phone number is (808) 555-1234, then you would address the message to 8085551234@tmomail.net Keep in mind that the recipient may have to pay a "per text message" charge. Below are the US carriers. For more, see this link.

UNITED STATES
n@teleflip.com Teleflip
n@message.alltel.com Alltel
n@paging.acswireless.com Ameritech
n@txt.att.net ATT Wireless
n@bellsouth.cl Bellsouth
n@myboostmobile.com Boost
n@mobile.celloneusa.com CellularOne
n@mms.uscc.net CellularOne MMS
1n@mobile.mycingular.com Cingular
n@sms.edgewireless.com Edge Wireless
n@messaging.sprintpcs.com Sprint PCS
n@tmomail.net T-Mobile
n@mymetropcs.com Metro PCS
n@messaging.nextel.com Nextel
n@mobile.celloneusa.com O2 / Orange
n@qwestmp.com Qwest
n@pcs.rogers.com Rogers Wireless
n@msg.telus.com Telus Mobility
n@email.uscc.net US Cellular
n@vtext.com Verizon
n@vmobl.com Virgin Mobile

Unable to Remove Exchange Mailbox Database or Exchange Server

2009-09-06T09:02:00.002-10:00

"I can't remove an Exchange mailbox database" or "I can't remove an Exchange server".
I have seen this question a few times in the online forums recently and this is something that I frequently see myself as I move mailboxes around an Exchange 2003 organization. I usually use the Exchange System Manager to move the mailboxes around. However, one we

Microsoft has a good TechNet article on the process of removing an Exchange Server (or the last old Exchange Server): How to Remove the Last Legacy Exchange Server from an Organization

Another good KB article is You receive a "c1034a7f" error message when you delete a mailbox store: "One or more users currently use this mailbox store"

What I usually do is to add the mailbox database as a column in Active Directory Users and Computers, the go through each of the OUs that contain users and sort by that column. That is the quick and dirty way to do locate the mailbox.You could also perform a Find in ADUC and search for the old mailbox database name, but you do need the DN of the database to do that. Amit Tank recommends this custom query for ADUC:
(&(mailnickname=*)(msExchHomeServerName=*ServerName*))

Worst case, of course, you can navigate to the Mailbox Database using ADSIEdit and delete it. The following is an example of the path, but you would need to substitute your own organization, admin group, server name, etc...
Configuration -> CN=Services -> CN=Microsoft Exchange -> CN= -> CN=Administrative Groups -> CN= -> CN= -> CN=InformationStore,CN -> CN=

Key error messages:
The component 'Microsoft Exchange Messaging and Collaboration Services cannot be assigned the action "Remove" because: -One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.

Or
You cannot remove the mailbox database because there are still mailboxes on that store.

Heavenly Village Condos

2009-09-05T09:39:00.001-10:00

Find us on Facebook

Heavenly Village Condos on Yelp

Heavenly Village Condos in South Lake Tahoe

2009-09-05T09:35:00.002-10:00

Heavenly Village Condos are great!

My home project - Using less electricity

2009-09-05T08:35:00.005-10:00

I'm now on a kick to use less electricity. Well, at least, to "buy" less electricity. On average, my house uses about 45KWH per day (around 1400KWH per month). Current electricity cost is around US$0.20 per KWH but this time last year I was paying closer to US$0.33 cents per KWH.

A few years ago, I put in a solar hot water system on my roof. At the time, that saved me about $50.00 per month, but is probably saving me more now.

Here is some guesses as to the major power consumers in my house:

2 Dell T605 Servers - 6KWH per day
4 Desktop computers - 5KWH per day
Pool pump (8 hrs/day) - 14KWH per day
Refrigerator - 5KWH per day
Air Conditioning (22 SEER rated at 7 hours day) - 3KWH

The electric bill itself does not bother me as much as the dependency on oil. Not that I'm an environmentalist or anything (I don't even recycle cans!), but from a political perspective I think the dependency on oil is a really bad thing.

I am planning 2 separate projects:

Replace the pool pump with an Intelli-Flow pump. These are supposed to use 75% less electricity. They run continuously, but at a signficantly lower horse-power/amperage.
Install a photo-voltaic system. I have proposals to install systems that produce between 6 and 32KWH per day. I'm probably going to go with a system that produces around 15KW per day, but can be expanded the second year with an additional 20KW of capacity. So the second year capacity would be around 35KWH per day. The initial system's cost is $28,000 but there are almost $19,000 in tax incentives to do this. At the current cost of electricity, the payback on this system is around 7 years.

If any of you did the math and are asking, wait a minute, if you are producing 35KWH of electricity per day, you are only producing that much during the sunny hours of the day (peak production for these systems in Hawaii is 9AM - 3PM though they will produce some outside of those periods. Your house is using electricity 24 hours per day.

Quite right. The final system that I'm looking at will produce around 8.3KWH (per hour). However, I'm not using THAT much an hour. In that case, my power meter runs backward and I feed electricity back out "on the the grid". The electric company can then use that electricity and (by law) has to give me credit for it. Then, at night, when I'm not producing electricity I can use back up the credits.

My ultimate goal is to produce about as much per day as my house uses. I can do that if I can improve the pool pump's efficiency. The initial investment is pretty high, but the system lifetime is 25+ years so the payback is tremendous.

Connections Online goes live!

2009-08-30T18:14:00.003-10:00

Do you like conferences, but can't get the funding to travel? The Connections folks have a solution for you in the form of the Connections Online conference. You can pick and choose the sessions you want to attend (they are US$39.95 per session or you can buy a package) and once you purchase the session you can watch it as many times as you want during a specific period of time.

A few examples of the many sessions that are available includes:

Active Directory Security Best Practices by Sean Deuby
ESX and Hyper-V Comparison by Alan Sugano
Eradicating PSTs by Martin Tuip
Administrators' Idol: The Coolest Session Ever by Dan Holme
Exchange and Certificates by Ilse Van Criekinge
Group Policy: The New Hope -- Vista and the GP Preferences by Jeremy Moskowitz
Get ready for Exchange 2010 : Why this release is the most important yet! by David Elfassy
Exchange Management Shell – Beyond the One Liner by Glen Scales
A Close Look Inside the SharePoint Engine by Randy Williams
VSS Backup and Exchange by Michael B. Smith
SYSVOL Replication Can Wreak Havoc in Your Network by Rhonda Layfield
What’s New in Active Directory: Windows Server 2008 R2 by Brian Desmond
Pragmatic ASP.NET (Tips, Tricks) And Tools by Steven Smith
Clustering in SQL Server by Ronald Yenko
All That You Can Learn About LINQ in One Hour by Dino Esposito

Public folders on a CCR cluster

2009-08-24T18:07:00.000-10:00

Microsoft has long stated that locating a public folder database on a CCR cluster in an organization where there is more than public folder database is no supported. Bharat Suneja summarizes this nicely in Cluster Continuous Replication and Public Folders. As with many things that Microsoft says are unsupported but that actually works, I took this to be more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule.

In one of my Exchange environments, we have a lot of regional offices with between 1,000 and 3,000 users. In the 1,000 user location, we did not want to invest additional hardware in a dedicated public folder server so we threw the public folder database on the CCR cluster. During testing that we move the clustered mailbox server (CMS) from node to the other, the public folder database moved just fine.

You guessed it, the active node failed a few weeks ago and the public folder database did not remount. We could not get it to mount at all. Period. End of story. Kaput. Dead database. I had a PSS engineer sitting right next to me and he could not rescue it either. Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is apparently hard coded not to allow the database to be recovered, even if you accept a lossy failover.

So, the moral of the story. If you have more than one public folder database in your organization, do NOT put it on a CCR cluster.

Symantec Endpoint Security Fan Club - Not!!!!

2009-08-07T11:49:00.002-10:00

Over the past 3 months at work, we have came across a number of performance issues and other weird problems related to Symantec Endpoint Security. We finally made the decision to remove it entirely and go with McAfee. Yes, it was THAT bad.

I had a new issue today with Symantec Endpoint Security running on an IIS Server. Every time I made a change such as enabling ASP.NET or deleting the Default Web Site, when I ran IISRESET, I would look back in IIS Manager and the change would have reverted back to the original setting. I deleted the Default Web Site five times and it kept coming back. (Insanity can clearly be demonstrated by the person who does the same futile thing over and over again but expects a different result.)

Once I stopped all of the Endpoint service, I was able to make the necessary changes to IIS. Unfortunately, that is 2 hours of troubleshooting time that I will NEVER get back.

Ilse van Criekinge rocks!

2009-08-05T11:55:00.002-10:00

As many people are aware, I am working on the Mastering Exchange Server 2010 book for Sybex. Ilse Van Criekinge jumped in and helped me out with the Exchange Management Shell chapter by providing an informal technical review as well as some new content with respect to the remote shell and the new PowerShell 2.0 GUI feature. Thanks Ilse! You are much appreciated! And, if you don't have Ilse's Exchange Management Shell book, well... what are you waiting for???!!!!

OWA logon using DoD SmartCard / CAC card

2009-08-03T18:45:00.001-10:00

For those of you that work with the US Dept. of Defense CAC cards and OWA, here is an interesting article. OWA CAC Enabled Login

Windows 7, iTunes, and the iPhone

2009-08-02T10:10:00.002-10:00

If you are an iPhone user, be careful about syncing your iPhone from a Windows 7 computer. One of my friends installed Windows 7 RC (release candidate) on his computer (from scratch) and then started using iTunes and syncing his iPhone. His Bluetooth headset stopped working. When he tried to enable bluetooth, the icon would just spin, but it would never enable. He tried resetting the device, turning airplane mode on/off multiple times, and more.

He finally took it in to the Apple Store and they said that Windows 7 was not compatibile with the iPhone should not be used. They had to completely erase the iPhone and reload the firmware. But, once they did, Bluetooth started working. As soon as he took it home and sync'ed it again, Bluetooth stopped working again.

Finally, he had to wipe the device out completely re-install the firmware again. Then, he sync'ed it from a Windows XP computer and Bluetooth has worked ever since.

I'm assuming this is a problem with iTunes that will be fixed as more people report this.

Pat Richard's new blog

2009-08-01T12:00:00.000-10:00

My buddy, Pat Richard, has got a new blog. I promised him a link, but I am starting with a "plug". Pat is doing a great job of generating new content, including this article I really like on removing the Internet Newsgroups public folder

Microsoft Virtualization Benefits report

2009-08-01T10:54:00.001-10:00

Microsoft has stood up a really useful site - http://www.hyper-green.com - that can help you estimate your electrical and energy cost savings based on the number of servers that you virtualize. It has a nice interface and actually spits out some useful numbers. It does not really take in to consideration the cost of the virtualization frame (servers, networking, storage), but does provide a userful starting point and some hard numbers to help justify virtualization. Thanks to Doug Fidler for sharing this with me!

Obama and letters from voters

2009-08-01T10:22:00.000-10:00

The other day on the news, President Obama was talking about all the letters he was getting that was telling him how much health care costs were cutting in to their paychecks. I wonder if I send him a letter and tell him how much taxes are cutting in to my paycheck, will he do something about that, too.

ASP.NET application "wakeup" program

2009-07-30T10:14:00.000-10:00

SharePoint, Exchange Outlook Web Access, and other Web applications based on ASP.NET are sometimes painfully slow and first use each day. This is because after so many hours of not being used, Internet Information Server (IIS) flushes the application from its cache. The delay you experience is IIS rebuilding the application in cache.

The Codeplex project SPWakeUp can be used with any ASP.NET application. Simply configure it with the URL of the application and a schedule it to run every few hours. This will "touch" the site and either load it in to cache or tell IIS to keep it in cache.

This can also be used with my company's Directory Update and Directory Manager applications.

Thank you for your service...

2009-07-25T10:22:00.003-10:00

The other day at lunch, I was sitting the food court in a local mall with a few of my military friends (Air Force and Navy.) They were in uniform. A middle aged lady walked up to the table and in all sincerity told them each "Thank you for your service."

For a few moments after she left, even my friend who is never at a loss for words was a bit speechless. I don't think they would have been any happier than if she had even given them each a $20 bill. It was a very nice gesture on her part and was very well received. I would hope that more people would do this.

So, to the hundreds of thousands of men and women in U.S.A. voluntary military serivce, I also say "Thank you for your service."

MyWinConnections magazine published

2009-07-18T10:48:00.000-10:00

The new MyWinConnections magazine has now been published on the DevConnections web site. This includes several articles including one by yours truly. Jeffery Hicks article on Getting the Most Out Of PowerShell's Custom Properties was really informative as was Dan Holme's article on who last used a computer, and Juergen Hasslauer's explanation of Lost Log Resiliency. I put Dan's article to use immediately at work, by the way. Thanks Dan!

Exchange Server 2007 "Advanced Administration"

2009-07-18T09:09:00.000-10:00

I have had a number of people ask me about the Exchange Server 2007 Advanced Administration book? This is the book that would have formely been known as Exchange Server 2007 24seven. I talked with the publisher about doing this book about a year ago, but given the low adoption rate of E2K7 at that time and the proximity to the release of Exchange Server 2010, it was decided that a better use of my time would be to put out a 2nd edition of the Mastering Exchange Server 2007 book.

With Exchange Server 2010 in beta now for several months and the adopotion rate of Exchagne Server 2007 being fairly low, there will not be an Exchange Server 2007 Advanced Administration book.

Exchange Server 2010 favorite feature

2009-07-01T10:28:00.000-10:00

At this point, while I really like the idea of database availability groups (DAGs) and other cool features of Exchange Server 2010, I think I like the best the New-MailMessage cmdlet. This allows you to easily send an e-mail message from an Exchange Management Shell cmdlet.

NAME
New-MailMessage

SYNOPSIS
The New-MailMessage cmdlet creates a new e-mail message for the specified user mailbox placing the e-mai
l message in the Drafts folder of the user's mailbox.

SYNTAX
New-MailMessage [-Body ] -Mailbox [-BodyFormat] [- Confirm []] [-DomainController ] [-Subject ] [-WhatIf [] ] []

DESCRIPTION
If the cmdlet is run without specifying the subject or body parameters, an empty e-mail message is placed in the user's Drafts folder.
You need to be assigned permissions before you can run this cmdlet. Although all parameters for this cmdlet are listed in this topic, you may not have access to some parameters if they're not included in the
permissions assigned to you. To see what permissions you need, see the "User reporting" entry in the Client Access Permissions topic.

Mastering Exchange Server 2010 book

2009-06-26T09:17:00.000-10:00

I'm pleased to annouce that I have now started work on a new book: Mastering Exchange Server 2010. Putting together a book of this size is a massive effort and one I certainly cannot do on my own. Exchange MVP David Elfassy is working as a co-author. Devin Ganger has supplied us with some content as has Randy Williams, Doug Fidler, Michael J. Smith, and Martin Tuip.

I'm on Facebook

2009-06-23T17:21:00.002-10:00

I have been a slacker when it comes to posting! But, fear not, I have some content stored up. Just no time to get it posted. Partially, because I just joined Facebook and have spent time playing. If anyone is interested in seeing boring pictures of me standing in front of things, come on down! :-)

Exchange and Windows Connections 2009 in Las Vegas

2009-06-21T10:59:00.000-10:00

The Exchange and Windows Connections shows in Las Vegas are just around the corner. Join Mark Minasi, Steve Riley, Tony Redmond, Dan Holme, Jeffrey Hicks, Darren Mar-Elia, William Lefkovics, Kieran McCorry, and a host of other excellent speakers for this great event. The Connections conferences have always been my favorite conference to not only speak for, but to attend.

The main conference runs from November 9 - 12, 2009 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center with pre-conference and post-conference sessions taking place on either side of that. I'm stoked to once again be speaking! My sessions include:

Amaze Your Friends and Users with Global Address List Tips and Tricks
E-mail Message Security Revisited
Exchange Server: Your Top Questions Answered
Zen and the Art of Exchange Performance Monitoring

Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008

2009-06-15T09:09:00.000-10:00

If you have not found this out already, keep this in mind for future Exchange Server 2010 planning. Exchange Server 2010 *only* runs on Windows Server 2008 x64 or Windows Server 2008 R2 x64. I recommend starting out with Service Pack 2 due to the number of patches that will be required if you are running SP1. And, there is NO x86 bit test version.

Hawaii IT Professionals User Group

2009-05-10T11:37:00.000-10:00

I am forming a Hawaii IT Professionals User Group. This user group will focus mostly on Microsoft technologies (Windows, Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, Systems Center Configuration Manager, etc...) but we may delve in to other areas such as storage, networking or interoperability.

We are planning our first meeting sometime during the summer of 2009 (still looking for a place to meet that can hold about 30 - 50 people and would be free.)

I have created a LinkedIn group for the Hawaii IT Professional Users Group so please visit there for more information.

Your Exchange Server Administrator has blocked the version of Outlook that you are using

2009-05-10T11:25:00.003-10:00

I had a problem recently that was driving me crazy. It was on a migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange Server 2007. The first sympton was that all of the Outlook clients were getting the message:
"Your Exchange Server administrator has blocked the version of Outlook that you are using."

Of course, I checked the Registry on the E2K7 server and there was no client version being blocked. I read through the Microsoft KB article "When you use Outlook with an Exchange 2007 mailbox, you cannot connect to Exchange 2007, and you receive an error message " but everything was good on my configuration.

I was having a separate problem that I thought was unreleated, though. The public folder hierarchy was not replicating to the Exchange Server 2007 public folder database. Anytime I tried to use the *-PublicFolder* cmdlets, I got the below error:

There is more than one MAPI public folder tree in administrative group. This may cause access denied errors when accessing public folders

I went through the KB article: "Multiple MAPI public folder trees detected" but it was no help. Well, first of all, it was never possible to create more than one MAPI public folder tree in Exchange 2003, but still, I checked on the E2K3 servers for more than on public folder tree (of any kind). I drilled down via ADSIEDIT to the Public Folder container but did not find any other public folder tree other than the default one.

Finally, I searched the entire configuration Container for public folder trees and found a CNF (conflict) object directly under the Exchange organization object in the Configuration container. The object was very old so I'm assuming that at some point, when this Exchange organization was migrated from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003, the Active Directory Connector was misconfigured and it replicated the public folder tree twice.

Anyway, once I deleted this CNF public folder tree object, both problems went away, the public folder hierarchy and folder content started replicating, and life was good!

Preparing Windows Server 2008 for Exchange Server

2009-05-09T11:17:00.000-10:00

You know all those ServerManagerCmd commands you need to do in order to install the necessary Windows Server 2008 roles and features? Such as:
ServerManagerCmd -i RSAT-ADDS
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Server
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-ISAPI-Ext
....

Well, you can accomplish the same thing with one command:

ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Server Web-ISAPI-Ext Web-Metabase Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console Web-Basic-Auth Web-Digest-Auth Web-Windows-Auth Web-Net-Ext Web-Dyn-Compression NET-HTTP-Activation RPC-over-HTTP-proxy RSAT-ADDS

The above command installs the necessary roles and functions for an Exchange Server 2010 Client Access Server.

Tip: Remember when you open the command prompt to open it as an administrator. :-)

The Essentials Series: Operations Benefits of Email Archiving

2009-02-10T12:38:00.000-10:00

If you are one of those people that think that e-mail archiving is all about reducing your e-mail storage requirements, then you need to take another look at e-mail archiving. I have written a free eBook called The Essential Series: Operations Benefits of Email Archiving. This eBook highlights the principal advantages of an email archive system implementation including:

- Email archiving is the best way to meet eDiscovery requirements as well as ensure that the organization remains compliant with applicable laws and regulations.
- An archive system allows for the eradication of PST files; doing so will help ensure compliance, ease email access for users, and decrease storage requirements for local hard disk drives.
- An email archiving system can aid disaster recovery by reducing the amount of data on the production mail server, reducing the time required to recover data, and improving the efficiency of data recovery

Remote Desktop to Windows Server console connection not working

2009-01-24T14:00:00.003-10:00

For the past several months, I have had an annoyance happening with Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1. When I use the Remote Desktop client - mstsc.exe - I cannot connect to the console session of my servers. I always use the command prompt mstsc /console but it no longer seems to work when connecting to the console session.

I finally did some research today and found that it was changed to where you have to use the /admin switch instead. So, now I have to start my sessions like this:

mstsc /admin