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

So, managed to get everything installed and working great yesterday, really fought with the Cisco VPN client, but I eventually managed to get it working (or so I thought!) installed all windows updates before shutting down last night .. arrived at the office a little earlier this morning, turn my laptop on, BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!, happened a few times yesterday while I was fiddling with the Cisco VPN client so I figured I’d just repair it and try again, only, this time I was not so lucky..

To cut a long and frustrating story short: Windows 7 rebuilt and looking good again..

For the Cisco VPN client, I tried many things, this is how I managed to get it to work:

• Install Citrix DNEupdate
• Reboot
• Take ownership and delete ndis.sys (in c:\windows\system32\drivers).
• Take ownership and delete ndis.sys.mui (in c:\windows\system32\drivers\en-us).
• Install Cisco VPN Client 5.0.04.0300.
• Reboot
• Windows 7 will repair itself (should take a few seconds) and automatically reboot.
• Cisco VPN Client should work without any other tweaks.

Many thanks to Aaron Tiensivu for posting this on his blog, read it here

While some of my “bleeding edge”” colleagues have been running and blogging about Windows 7 for a while now, its taken me a little longer to get my hands dirty. I decided to rebuild my Lenovo T61 yesterday and see what all the fuss was about.

The installation was seamless and quick, as you would expect. It found drivers for all my devices. I did have some trouble getting my Novatel Wireless 3G HSDPA card to work, the installation would not run at all, not even using Windows Vista compatibility mode. I downloaded the drivers off the Novatel website and managed to get the card installed that way. Works perfectly after I created a new connection through “Network and Sharing Center”

At the moment, I am very much of the opinion that it is Windows Vista with some cosmetic changes, but that’s probably unfair of me to say since I have only been using it for a few hours. I’ll be sure to report any cool new features.

Now I have to make it productive so I can get some work done when I get into the office tomorrow!

UPDATE: For information on how to move the Exchange 2010 Mail Queue, see "Exchange 2010 Moving Mail Queue"

One problem that Exchange Administrators run into after successfully transitioning to Exchange 2007 is back pressure. Back pressure is a system resource monitoring feature of the Microsoft Exchange Transport service that exists on computers that are running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 that have the Hub Transport server role or Edge Transport server role installed. Important system resources, such as available hard disk drive space and available memory, are monitored. If utilization of a system resource exceeds the specified limit, the Exchange server stops accepting new connections and messages. This prevents the system resources from being completely overwhelmed and enables the Exchange server to deliver the existing messages. When utilization of the system resource returns to a normal level, the Exchange server accepts new connections and messages.

The following system resources are monitored as part of the back pressure feature:

• Free space on the hard disk drive that stores the message queue database.
• Free space on the hard disk drive that stores the message queue database transaction logs.
• The number of uncommitted message queue database transactions that exist in memory.
• The memory that is used by the EdgeTransport.exe process.
  The memory that is used by all processes.

One solution is to ensure that you have sufficient disk space for your queue database and logs. An important thing to note is that if you are making use of CCR, Exchange holds the data for the transport dumpster in the transport queue file.

Moving the queue database and logs is a fairly simple operation and can be done via the Exchange Management Shell with the Move-TransportDatabase cmdlet.

The following command will move the database and logs to D:\Queue from the default location of C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\data\Queue:

Move-TransportDatabase -QueueDatabasePath: D:\Queue -QueueDatabaseLoggingPath: D:\Queue

For more information on Back Pressure, visit Microsoft Technet

I recently posted about the NZ Internet Blackout and I am happy to report that the campaign was very successful.

Thanks to an impressive campaign spearheaded by Creative Freedom NZ, New Zealand’s controversial ‘guilt upon accusation’ clause, s 92A, will be delayed and may be suspended and may be abandoned.

Read the full story here

On 12 Feb I blogged about Exchange 2007 Update Rollup 6 having been released and that it also includes a fix for the critical security issue that was published under Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-003.

I have seen a lot of posts on the internet about problems experienced after applying this update, so I recently decided to apply the update to a non-production environment. Here are my experiences.

About the environment:

• 2 x CAS servers in a NLB
• 2 x Hub transport servers
• 1 x CCR Mailbox cluster
• All servers run Server 2008 with SP1
• All servers are physical machines

 

The only "strange" thing I experienced was that the installer sits on "Creating native images for .NET assemblies..." for more than an hour.

 

After it does complete, and the servers are rebooted, everything seems to work perfectly.I had no problems with services not starting or OWA not working after applying this update.

When installing a Exchange 2007 SP1 in Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) cluster, the passive node installation fails with the following error:

“This is not a passive node. A clustered mailbox server represented by the cluster resource group [name of cluster] was found on this node.”

 

After a bit of head scratching, I realised that this occurs because after the installation of the passive node, Exchange setup asks you to restart your server thus causing the cluster to fail over.

The solution: well.. simply restart the passive node and run Exchange setup again.