Where's Jim?
Jim's Web Log: Ramblings related mostly to Microsoft Exchange, IT security, bug notices, workarounds, tips, PowerShell, and stuff. Sometimes Active Directory, 4Runners, trains, GoT, Siberian Huskies, social commentary, politics, events, religion, or humor, but, well, mostly Exchange.
If you have tried modifying or manipulating objects in your Windows 2003 Active Directory using some of the new command-line tools such as dsget.exe, dsmod.exe, msquery, or dsrm.exe, then you have discovered the same limitations that many others have. I see a lot of postings to this effect in the newsgroups. These tools only support a limited set of attributes. My favorite tool for dealing with this is ADMODIFY.NET.
Backing up Exchange to disk has become an increasingly popular way to backup Exchange databases. Microsoft is doing "backup to disk" and is keeping two days worth of backups online and available; this can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to restore from backup. And, logically, the backup you probably want to restore from is the most recent.
Ever had a problem where you right click on an image in Internet Explorer, but the Save As dialog box only allows you to save the image as a bitmap (BMP) file? I have seen this for a couple of years, but never figured out why. And, the problem was inconsistent. Thanks to Eugene Siu, I now know why. The Internet cache is full. Purge it or increase it, close the browser, reopen it, and try again! Thanks Eugene, you are my new favorite blogger!!!!!
realtimepublishers.com and AlterPoint introduce a new chapter to the free ebook Tips and Tricks Guide to Network Configuraiton Management - 2005 Edition by Don Jones. Networking and security guru Don Jones has just written this new chapter covers questions dealing with configuration management best practices, troubleshooting, security, compliance management, and configuration management. In my experience, once a network is in place and running, one of the biggest problems that administrators experience is improper change and configuration control. This is something we should all get better at and this ebook is a good start.
A lot of people still don't know these exist, so I thought I would blog them. Although, I think the audience for my blog is probably already aware of these. Microsoft has a couple of e-mail aliases for product suggestions. They DO monitor these and the suggestions get routed the product group managers. For all Microsoft products, use mswish@microsoft.com. For Exchange Server, exwish@microsoft.com. If you have ideas for Microsoft products or feature suggestions, please let Microsoft know about them.
The folks that I work around (well, at least the senior officers) all want to carry Blackberries. I agree they are a cool little device, but since I'm an "Exchange guy", I would like to see more people using Windows Mobile and Exchange Active Sync enabled devices (like my Motorola SmartPhone). After all, for full functionality of a Blackberry, Exchange users require the Blackberry Enterprise Server while Exchange 2003 has all of the necessary mobile functions built-in.
As many folks have found, GMail allows each mailbox 2GB of data storage space. However, as you may have also discovered, the maximum message size is 10MB. So, to fill your mailbox, you are going to have to send and receive a LOT of mail!
Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 introduced a new feature called Data Execution Protection (DEP). The DEP feature essentially protects the operating system from applications that might run applications with buffer overruns. Some folks are finding that when they run the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, it is reporting that PAE is enabled.
I have seen a couple of posts in the newsgroups about people having problems installing Windows 2003 SP1 on Dell servers that are running Dell Open Manage. I have installed SP1 on a number of Dell Servers with Dell OpenManage v4.2 and have not had problems, but some people are reporting problems with the BSOD (blue screen of death) during or after installation.
For some people (myself included), often public folders are almost a mystery. I understand some of the replication and hierarchy gizmos that are going on in the background, and other times I'm really perplexed. Microsoft has changed a few of the details of how public folder replication and hierarchy replication works in Exchange 2003, also. One of the nicest changes is that the administrator can now "force" replication.