The Exchange product team have announced that Exchange 2010 is Code Complete and they are looking to launch at Tech·Ed Europe 2009 in early November.

Congrats guys, great effort!

I was looking for a good reference of AD and Exchange schema version numbers yesterday and thought it would be handy to combine all the bits of information I came across into a single post.

There are a couple of ways to find the schema version number, I prefer using “DSQuery” to “ADSIEdit” so I’ll be making use of “DSQuery” in the following examples.

To determine the version of your AD schema, we use “DSQuery” to find the value of the “objectVersion” attribute:

dsquery * cn=schema,cn=configuration,dc=yourdomain,dc=local -scope base –attr objectVersion

Here is a mapping between the “objectVersion” attribute value and the AD schema version:

 

To determine the version of your Exchange schema, we use “DSQuery” to find the value of the “rangeUpper” attribute:

dsquery * CN=ms-Exch-Schema-Version-Pt,cn=schema,cn=configuration,dc=yourdomain,dc=local -scope base –attr rangeUpper

Here is a mapping between the “rangeUpper” attribute value and the Exchange schema version:

 

NOTE: in both examples, it is assumed that your domain name is “youdomain.local”

Having attended Tech-ed Australia last week, I cant help but echo my friend and colleague Craig's thoughts. Infact, I thought I would repost something from his blog. The original post can be viewed here

Last week I attended TechEd Australia in the Gold Coast.  I had a great time learning, connecting, talking, networking, teaching, socialising and presenting.  Having said that I left the Gold Coast both drained and a bit frustrated.

While there was a lot of content there, there was an awful lot of content that was not there.  I was lucky to be one of the speakers in the UC track.  There were 12 sessions allocated for the UC track.  Nine were focused on Exchange 2010 and three went to OCS 2007 R2.  Now, granted, Exchange is a flagship product and 2010 is an exciting release.  I would not take anything away from Exchange.  But OCS 2007 R2 needed much more coverage.  Rewind a year to TechEd 2007 and all the OCS 2007 R2 content was still under embargo so the result of the lack of sessions at TechEd 2009 is that R2 content has not really had a good airing at a large public conference in Australia.

This is not due to a lack of speakers – I submitted two other sessions that did not make the cut.  I know other external speakers who put sessions forward that did not get a slot at all.  I know the Microsoft UC guys could of done more sessions.  Nor is it due to a lack of things to talk about.  In pulling together content for our overview session Derrick Buckley and I drew content and inspiration from no fewer that 5 TechEd US sessions!  Oh the detail we could of gone into if we had had the time.  Edge Services, Conferencing Solutions, Group Chat Architecture and UC Applications could all easily be sessions in their own right.

So if we need more room in the UC track (among others) and we can’t trim back on the existing content because we need that too, what’s the solution.  Simple really.  TechEd Australia should be five days long, like the one in the US is.

Now, I know that events cost money and extending TechEd Australia to five days would not come cheap – but there must be a way.  One suggestion I would put forward would be to combine TechEd Australia and TechEd  New Zealand into one ANZ event.  Surely it would be cheaper to run one event for 4000-5000 people than two for 2500 each.  Also with fewer flights and nights of accommodation for the US speakers that hit Australia and New Zealand perhaps we could get more US speakers out here for the same money?  More days, more colleagues, more experts and more content.  It sounds like a winner to me.

Now – in reality this would probably mean canning TechEd NZ and just having one in Australia since there are no venues in NZ big enough to host an event that size.  I use to live in NZ and I would of crossed the Tasman to attend TechEd in Australia if need be, but I’m sure there will be plenty of naysayers.  Even now, if NZ builds a venue I would happily cross the ditch in the other direction to attend an ANZ TechEd in New Zealand.

I tweeted this thought the other day and got a few comments back from people who thought two more days would be great if their livers could hold out.  What say you Microsoft?

Today I attended the SEC208 session with Jamie Sharp which really provided a great overview of Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG). If you use and like ISA server, you’ll love TMG.

Some of the great new things we can look forward to are web filtering, URL filtering and it also has built in Exchange Edge Server functionality which means if you have an Exchange Edge Server role deployed and also use ISA server, you can now consolidate these into a single server. Another cool thing is, like Exchange Server 2010, TMG will only be available in 64bit.

TMG is currently available as beta3, click here to download it. It is expected to be RTM towards the end of the year.

If you are attending tech-ed, make sure you get your Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) account setup.. I have been most impressed by BPOS.

What's BPOS? click here

So you’ve arrived in the Gold Coast, checked in, unpacked, visited the gym and checked out the pool (right?) now what? I was planning which sessions to attend over the next few days and thought it would be a good idea write a post about it.

Firstly, I would definitely recommend that you get to registration as soon as possible to avoid the rush! Registration will be open until 9pm tonight and then again from 7am tomorrow morning. Once registered you can also pick up your HP Mini Notebook (of course I am writing this post on it!), there is an “unpacking area” in the convention centre if you would like to dispose of the box and packaging.

There is a welcome reception at the exhibition hall betweenn 6pm and 9pm and the opening keynote is tomorrow at 08:15am. All this info is in the mini-guide.

As far as sessions go, here are some of the ones I am looking forward to attending:

Wednesday:

09:45am – 11:00am UNC201 - Introduction to Exchange 2010 with Johann Kruse and Roger Lawrence

11:30am – 12:45pm UNC302 - Exchange 2010 Architecture with Scott Schnoll

 

Thursday:

08:15am – 09:30am UNC305 - Exchange 2010 Voicemail with Mario D'Silva

5:00pm – 6:15pm UNC309 - OCS 2007 R2: Overview & Architecture with Derrick Buckley and Craig Pringle

 

Friday:

08:15am – 09:30am SEC310 - IAG... the success story with Jean-Pierre Simonis

11:30am – 12:45pm – UNC311 - Telephony in OCS R2 with Brendan Carius and John Smith

 

There are of course other events going on, one of which is Sydney UC and Melbourne OCS User Group get together on Thursday. click here for more info

Cant make it to tech-ed this year? no need for tears… many sessions are available on live meeting, click here for more info

and finally, yes, of course I will be tweeting all week! be sure to follow me on twitter!

Jetstress has been updated to support Exchange 2010. The beta build is now available. There are a few significant changes in this version, for a comprehensive list, see the following post on The Exchange Server Team blog.

To download Jetstress 2010 Beta, click here

Microsoft recently announced the release of Exchange 2007 SP2. One of the key and long awaited features of SP2 is that it sets the foundation for the transition to Exchange Server 2010, which is expected to be available soon. Other features include:

• Enhanced Auditing
• Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality
• Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation
• Public Folder Quota Management
• Centralized Organizational Settings
• Named Properties cmdlets
• New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging

For more  detailed information, see the release announcement on The Microsoft Exchange Team Blog. To download it, click here

I recently came across a very interesting problem while configuring ISA 2006 logging to a remote SQL server. If you have ever done this, you’ll no doubt know that its not a very complicated thing to do –in fact, Richard Hicks has a great guide on his blog, here. It really surprised me when I was not able to get it working, I’ve done it many times before and I have never had any problems.

I checked connectivity to my SQL server using telnet and the "Test” button when performing the configuration, everything seemed fine, but no data was appearing in the database

On the SQL server, a temp table was being created, no rows inserted and the stored proc to copy the rows from the temp table to the permanent one never got called. The session appeared to wait with "async_network_io"

After speaking to Microsoft and performing a ISA trace, it appeared that there is some buffer issue (insufficient buffer) when ISA is trying to insert the log record to the SQL server. It looked like the problem happened before writing to SQL. This also explained why there was no row inserted into the temp table, and the SP to move the record from temp table to permanent one had never been called.

It turns out that the string format call which generates an EXEC SP statement to insert log records only has a buffer of 100 characters and the combination of my server name and table name exceeded this. Shortening the table name fixed the problem.

In Microsoft ISA Server, alerts can be configured to shut down the Microsoft Firewall service when situations that raise specific events occur. Whenever the Firewall service shuts down, ISA Server goes into lockdown mode, in which only specific types of traffic are allowed. ISA Server can leave lockdown mode only when the Firewall service is restarted. By default, the built-in Log failure alert shuts down the Firewall service. This alert is triggered by the Log failure event, which is raised when a logging failure occurs. You can prevent logging failures from causing ISA Server to go into lockdown by disabling the action of the Log failure alert that shuts down the Firewall service.

Microsoft have documented this on Microsoft Technet, although this solution is documented for ISA 2004, it seems to work just fine for ISA 2006. The only problem I encountered is that the script on Technet seems to have be “text wrapped” so it comes up with syntax errors.

 

***WARNING***

I am not in any way suggesting that this script should be run on your ISA servers. Lockdown mode is not a bug and was included in the product by design, there are many reasons why it is a good thing so my advice is that you consider all options very carefully before running this script. ALWAYS backup your configuration first!!

 

I have corrected the syntax errors, DisableLockdownOnLogFailure.vbs can be downloaded here