Since the release of Exchange 2010 Beta last month, I have been itching to deploy it in my test environment and really get my hands dirty. I have split this post into 2 parts because I want to use screen shots (hey, I’m a techie, we like pictures!) to really show off the product.

In part 1 of this 2 part post, we’ll look at how to prepare your server for a “Typical Installation” of Exchange. Notice how “Typical Installation” appears in quotation marks, this is because we refer to a “Typical Installation” when the Hub Transport, Client Access and Mailbox server roles are installed on a single server. Regardless of the installation options you use, installing Exchange does require a certain degree of planning and preparation.

To give you a brief overview of my test environment: I have a single Active Directory domain and all my servers are running Windows Server 2008, 64bit SP1. IPv6 is disabled on all my servers.

Exchange 2010 requires the following to be installed prior to installation (I completed my installation in the following order as well):

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.
• ServerManagerCmd -i RSAT-ADDS

• Windows Remote Management ( WinRM ) 2.0 Community Technology Preview 3 (CTP3).
• Windows PowerShell V2 CTP3.
• Update for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) in Windows Server 2008. See KB951725.
• Extensions for ASP.NET AJAX 1.0.
• 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack.
• ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Server
• ServerManagerCmd -i Web-ISAPI-Ext
• ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Metabase
• ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console
• ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Basic-Auth
• ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Digest-Auth
• ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Windows-Auth
• ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Dyn-Compression
• ServerManagerCmd -i NET-HTTP-Activation
• ServerManagerCmd -I RPC-over-HTTP-proxy

 

• Msdrm.dll Update. See KB950888
• Load Balancing Update. See KB958178

 

In Part 2, its  we’ll look at the exciting stuff, the actual installation.

We’ve all been waiting for it for some time now, Microsoft announced the release of Exchange 2010 Beta last week.

Exchange 2010 was built from the ground up with Software + Services in mind with more than 5 million users are already enjoying the benefits of Exchange 2010 as a service today.

Exchange 2010 will help organizations reduce costs, protect communications and delight e-mail users with capabilities to do the following:

• Lower costs with more flexible deployment and management options.
• Protect information and meet compliance requirements with the new e-mail archive.
• Improve user productivity with the ultimate inbox experience.

Exchange 2010 brings many new and exciting features to the table, for an overview of these, check out this video on Technet Edge

To download the Exchange 2010 Beta, click here

In part 1 of this series, I wrote about how to go about testing your new deployment by making use of several “Test-“ cmdlets in EMS. The Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a great way to test external access. The Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer (https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/) allows administrators to perform the following remote tests:

• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Test
• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync AutoDiscover Test
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Autodiscover Connectivity Test
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 RPC/HTTP Connectivity Test
• Inbound SMTP Email Test

 

In the below example, we’ll perform an Inbound SMTP Email Test:

The above process generates a test email that looks similar to this:

In summary, the Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a great tool for testing remote functionality of your Exchange environment. For more information on this tool, including a short introduction video, click here

My friend Nicolas recently wrote a great post on how to find and export mailboxes by size from the Exchange Management Shell (EMS). I’m sure many administrators will find this pretty handy.

Read his post here

I found a really neat little feature today, Windows 7 allows you to burn .ISO files to disk natively without any third party software.

Simply double-click the .iso image:

Select the appropriate drive and click “Burn”

And there you go..

It seems my friend Craig blogged about this a little while ago as well, click here to read his post

After your planning and deployment phases have been completed, its very important to ensure proper testing of your new environment before moving user accounts and putting the servers into production. Exchange 2007 provides several powershell cmdlets that make it really easy.

a list of all test cmdlets can be obtained by issuing the Get-Command Test* cmd in EMS.

 

For the purposes of this post, lets look at a couple of these:

Test-Mailfow

The Test-Mailflow cmdlet is used to check whether mail can be successfully sent from and delivered to the System Mailbox mailbox on a computer that has the Mailbox server role installed.

Test-ServiceHealth

Use the Test-ServiceHealth cmdlet to test whether all the required services that are configured to start automatically on a server have started. The Test-ServiceHealth cmdlet returns an error for any service that is required by a configured role and is set to start automatically but is not currently running. The output will vary depending on the role of the server you issue the cmd on.

For a full list of cmdlets, see Microsoft Technet

A mere 5 weeks after Update Rollup 6, Microsoft have released Update Rollup 7 for Exchange 2007 Sp1. The update fixes around 50 issues.

For more info on the update and to download it, see KB953469 

I would like to highlight the following:

“Note Certain Exchange Server 2007 managed code services may not start after you install this update rollup. This is true if the services cannot access the following Microsoft Web site:
http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/CodeSigPCA.crl

For more information about how to resolve or to work around this issue, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
944752 Exchange 2007 managed code services do not start after you install an update rollup for Exchange 2007”

I also strongly recommend reading the “Known Issues” section before applying this update.

Quest have some really cool products to add value to UC implementations (like you need it, right?)

Some of the key products are:

Spotlight on Messaging:
Spotlight® on Messaging helps administrators get more out of their messaging environments by diagnosing and resolving problems across multiple platforms. A comprehensive view into an organization’s messaging infrastructure, Spotlight on Messaging:

• Reduces cost and improves productivity by identifying issues and performance bottlenecks before they affect end users
• Accelerates problem resolution by significantly reducing the time-to-resolution during outages
  Improves system performance by maximizing the availability and responsiveness of messaging servers

 

MessageStats:
MessageStats is the most complete and comprehensive messaging reporting and analysis solution in the industry. Used on more than 15 million Exchange mailboxes around the world everyday, MessageStats helps reduce and quantify your Exchange investment. An essential tool to keeping tabs on the cost of your infrastructure, MessageStats gathers, analyzes, and reports on Exchange and other messaging components to:

• Better understand usage and trends
• Find unused and excess capacity
• Justify expenses
• Optimize operational efficiencies

Providing a complete view of all messaging components from one interface, MessageStats delivers platform-specific business- and technical-focused reports for:

• BlackBerry
• Windows Mobile
• Microsoft Office Communications Server
• Microsoft Exchange
• Outlook Web Access
• And more..

 

For more info on these and other value add products from Quest Software, visit their site here

After rebuilding my trusty T61 with Windows 7 about a week ago, the only device that was not functioning correctly was the “biometric coprocessor”. I tried installing the software using ThinkVantage Productivity Center, but this did not work. After asking google, I found that the device was manufactured by UPEK and that they have released a Windows 7 driver on their site. Download it here.

The process of enrolling a fingerprint is fairly simple in Windows 7. Open Control Panel, select “Biometric Devices”

Select “Use your fingerprint to log on to Windows”

When prompted, enter your password

Select the appropriate finger (its probably a good idea to select more than one!)

Follow the instructions:

All done!, next time you log on, just use your finger!

Yesterday I attended the IBM Lotusphere Comes to You event here in Sydney. I was excited to see what the IBM Unified Communications strategy would be and ended getting a lot more than I had bargained for.

The event covered a large part of their portfolio from Messaging and Collaboration, UC and Web Portals to Cloud Computing. As a consultant, I have always taken an interest in what “the other guys” are doing, but, being honest, the last time I saw Domino was back in version 6.

I was most impressed with how slick the Notes 8.5 client looks and the fact that they have integrated everything into a single client whether it be IM, voice & video, document libraries, opening and editing MS Office docs with Symphony, even SAP integration, it can all be done via the Notes 8.5 client.

One of the themes that became immediately obvious was value.. ROI is important, especially in today’s economic climate and IBM seem to be on top of that, a great example is Lotus Symphony which is a free, MS Office compatible suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet editor and presentation editor. I was also impressed by the fact that IBM have realised that (as predicted by Gartner) Apple’s market share in the desktop space is growing and that Windows may not always be the desktop OS of choice, and I think they have catered for this really well by making their software platform independent so it will run on Windows, OSX, and Linux.

In the Cloud Computing space, LotusLive is their solution to online collaboration and it is available now, offering online meetings, hosted email and more.

So, what about UC and more specifically, voice stuff? does “the pbx killer” a.k.a OCS R2 have some competition? IBM are calling it UC² and, well.. I liked what I saw, they certainly have some innovative little features, very easy to use and will certainly make collaboration “child’s play”. They are certainly working with an impressive list of business partners as well. I would say though, that with the maturity of OCS R2 and the fact that it is available now I think IBM may just have missed the boat a little. UC² will be available “later this year” and given the momentum OCS already has, it’s going to be interesting..

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications