I came across this error for the first time the other day, not entirely sure why I have not seen it before on Win 2008. This particular server was Windows 2008 Ent with SP2.

“Setup failed due to insufficient permissions….”

At first I thought it was pretty obvious that my account did not have the correct permissions, right? that's what the error suggests.. checked AD and it turns out I had been granted the correct permissions. What else could it be? As a test, I tried to open the Security Log and that worked.. I was a little confused. Then I realised what it was.. UAC

User Account Control (UAC) is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. It aims to improve the security of Microsoft Windows by limiting application software to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase in privilege level. In this way, only applications that the user trusts receive higher privileges, and malware should be kept from receiving the privileges necessary to compromise the operating system. In other words, a user account may have administrator privileges assigned to it, but applications that the user runs do not also have those privileges unless they are approved beforehand or the user explicitly authorizes it to have higher privileges. Windows 2008 also uses UAC.

The workaround I used was to turn off UAC and reboot the server, setup worked perfectly after that.

To turn off UAC, go to “Control Panel”, then “User Accounts”.

Microsoft have released Update Rollup 9 for Exchange 2007 SP1. This rollup includes included many bug fixes, but also enables support for Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controllers in the environment. For a full list of the issues that the update rollup fixes, click here

Update Rollup 9 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is a cumulative update. This update replaces rollups 1 – 8.

To download and for more information, click here

After a long day of troubleshooting ISA 2006 array problems, I must say, I felt like one after I saw this error:

 

There has been a serious lack of original content on my blog this month, with the financial year coming to an end here in Australia, I’ve been flat out

Never fear though, Scott Schnoll over at The Microsoft Exchange Team Blog has put together a great 4 part video series on high availability in Exchange Server 2010:

In Part 1 he introduces the concept of database mobility, and the features known as database availability groups (DAGs) and mailbox database copies.

In Part 2 he demonstrates how to create a DAG and how to add mailbox servers to a DAG

In Part 3 he shows how to add a mailbox database copy

and, in Part 4 he performs a database switchover using the Exchange Management Console (EMC)

For the next few days you can download free copies of some MS Press e-books on OCS 2007 R2.. visit Johann’s Blog here for more info

I first saw this at a Quest Software presentation a little while ago, fascinating stuff:

 

That’s right.. as we already know, when Exchange 2007 was released, a 32-bit version (which was unsupported in production environments) was made available for use in lab environments, for demos etc.

This will not be the case with Exchange 2010 as Microsoft will not be shipping a 32-bit version at all. What now? well.. I’m sure we’ll all agree that this a probably a good thing in the long run, forcing organisations to start seriously considering the deployment of 64-bit servers for things other than Exchange, like, for example DC’s.

It certainly is the start of a interesting journey, hopefully other software vendors will be prompted to start making more of an effort to make their applications 64-bit compliant too, it is, in my opinion, long overdue!

The webcast will be hosted by Johann Kruse on Friday, June 19, 2009 11:00 AM Australia (East). To register for this webcast, click here

Microsoft recently announced that Exchange 2007 SP2 has been slated for release later this year. Exchange Server 2007 SP2 enables customers to increase their operational efficiency and it sets the foundation for the transition to Exchange Server 2010, which is expected to be available in the second half of 2009. In case you haven’t heard, a public beta of Exchange Server 2010 is available for download here

Key new features of Exchange Server 2007 SP2 include:

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

The last feature is worth expanding on as it has been the subject of much discussion. Exchange 2007 SP2 will ship with a backup plug-in that will enable Windows Server Backup to backup Exchange data. A few things worth noting about this are:

• The backup is volume-based and as such there is no specific "Exchange only" granularity
• Only VSS backups are supported
• The backup will support backing up to a local hard disk or network share
• There is no remote server backup functionality
• The plug-in supports only full backups of the active copy if using CCR
• When restoring, you do not have to restore the whole backed up volume, but can choose to restore only Exchange application data
• Recovery can be done either in-place or out of place
• You will be able to open different "backup sets", even if they were created on servers different than the one where you are restoring

Detailed documentation will be available when SP2 ships, but for more detailed information, check out this post on the Exchange Team Blog

For more detailed information about Exchange 2007 SP2, click here

In Part 1 we looked at preparing our server for the installation of Exchange 2010. What about preparing Active Directory and domains? As you’ll see during the installation, if you run the Exchange 2010 Setup wizard with an account that has the permissions required to prepare Active Directory and the domain, the wizard will automatically do it for you. You can, of course, prepare Active Directory manually the way you have always been able to – Refer to Microsoft Technet for more information.

If you’ve reached this phase of the installation you’ve probably already downloaded a copy of the Exchange 2010 Beta. If not, simply click here to download it!

Once extracted, launch the Exchange 2010 Setup wizard..

If you have not installed all the prerequisites, Setup will link you to the appropriate sites where you can download the components. We did this in Part 1, so we simply click “Step 4: Install Microsoft Exchange”

After clicking “Next” on the Introduction page, we are presented with the following options relating to the location of the language files. I selected the “Download latest language files from the Web” option.

Once you acknowledge the confirmation, the Setup wizard will “acquire” the latest language files.

Accept the License Agreement and click “Next”

Next we select the installation type, here we select “Typical Exchange Server Installation” which will install the Hub Transport, Client Access and Mailbox Server Roles on our single server. Because we selected the “Typical Exchange Server Installation” option, we will not be able to install the Unified Messaging Server Role, Edge Transport Server Role, or Clustered Mailbox servers during this installation.

Because this is the first Exchange Server in the organization, we are asked to provide a name for the Organization. The Exchange organization name can't contain more than 64 characters and can contain only the following characters:

• A to Z
• a to z
• 0 to 9
• Space (not leading or trailing)
• Hyphen or dash

Since this is the first Exchange Server in the organization, on the “Client Settings” page we select the option that describes the client computers in our organization that are running Microsoft Office Outlook. If you select “No”, Exchange Setup will not create a public folder database on the Mailbox server. You can add a public folder database later. For example, if you add client computers that are running Outlook 2003 and you need a public folder database, you can create one on the Exchange Mailbox server. You must then configure the offline address book for public folder distribution, and then restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service before client computers that are running Outlook 2003 and earlier will be able to connect to the server.

On the “Readiness Checks” page, view the status to determine if the organization and Server Role prerequisite checks completed successfully. If they have completed successfully, click “Install” to install Exchange.

Congratulations, you have successfully completed a “Typical Installation” of Exchange 2010. I highly recommend reading the Exchange 2010 documentation on Microsoft Technet.