Convert user mailbox to linked mailbox in Exchange 2010

A few weeks ago, someone enabled the user accounts for a bunch of our Exchange 2010 linked mailboxes.  One of the workflows in our FIM system saw this as an indication that they should be user mailboxes rather linked mailboxes and thus converted them all from linked mailboxes to user mailboxes.

I did a bit of research and was somewhat heartbroken to find this TechNet article
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201694%28v=exchg.141%29.aspx

This article implied that converting user mailboxes back to linked mailboxes was not possible using the EMC. 

After a bit more research and an email from Jason Sherry, I fortunately found out this article is wrong.  (I'm hoping Microsoft updates this.)

It is pretty simple to convert a user mailbox with E2K10 SP2 or E2K10 SP3 back to a linked mailbox.

Set-User <userID> -LinkedMasterAccount  AccountDomain\UserID  -LinkedDomainController AccountDomainControllerFQDN

Here is an example:

Set-User jim -LinkedMasterAccount Contoso\Jmcbee -LinkedDomainController dc01.contoso.local

Very cool Exchange organization report generator

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!

Exchange 2010 SP2 upgrade issue with Discovery Mailbox

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.

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

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.

Exchange 2010 Licensing Survey

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.

Uploading photos to Active Directory for use with Outlook 2010

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 Self Service Active 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.

Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices - Two Thumbs Up!

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

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.

Load balancing for Exchange 2010

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!

Exchange 2010 SP1 beta Prerequs

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

Exchange Server 2010 SP1 archiving features and Outlook 2007

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!

Mastering Exchange Server 2010 is now available

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

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.

Exchange 2010 and maximum databases per server

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exchange 2010 DAG latency between members

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

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

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

Mastering Exchange Server 2010 book

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.