Using the Set-emailaddresspolicy after your migration to Exchange 2007

The syntax used in address lists and recipient policies in Exchange Server 2003 is not compatible with the administration tools in Exchange Server 2007. Therefore, immediately following the transition of your administrative tasks to the 2007 servers, you should upgrade the lists and policies. If you don’t, you will not be able to modify the Address Lists (used to view recipients in Outlook) or the E-mail Address Policy (used to define the incoming SMTP domains in your Exchange organization.)

 

To upgrade your Recipient Policy to a E-mail Address Policy syntax:

 

Set-emailaddresspolicy -includedrecipients allrecipients (when prompted for the name of the list, enter "Default Policy" if you are using a default naming convention.)

 

To upgrade your Address Lists to an Exchange Server 2007 syntax:

 

Set-AddressList -includedrecipients mailboxusers (This is for the All Users list, that included mailbox users; for other lists, enter the appropriate value, such as MailUsers, MailContacts, Resources or MailGroups) (Of course, when prompted, put in the correct list name.)

Managing multiple SMTP domains during coexistence between Exchange 2003 and 2007

As many of you start to Transition your Exchange environments from 2003 to 2007, you’ll find out that most transition mean coexistence. Coexistence means issues… An issue you’ll have to deal with is how certain settings are replicated betwen Exchange versions and others are not. For example, when you install your first Exchange 2007 server, Exchange 2003 Recipient Policies are regenerated in 2007 in the form of Accepted Domains and E-mail Address Policies; no problem there. However, if you create additional Recipient Policies, the associated Accepted Domain is NOT created. If you happen to decomission your 2003 servers, without noticing this, e-mail messages destined to those domains will be rejected. Solution: Create the new Accepted Domains manually. Voila.

Top 5 routing concepts that have changed in 2007 (In brief)

Many people have been asking many questions about all the changes in Exchange Server 2007. One concept that’s been catching everyone asleep, is the new message routing features, paths and services. So here’s your "In brief" review of the new routing concepts:

 

1. No more Routing Groups / Site Connectors used for internal Exchange messaging: Partially true, since you still maintain a routing group for coexistence with Exchange 2000/2003. So what’s used instead? AD Sites and AD Site Links (with costs)

2. Exchange-specific routing costs: To tie in quickly the previous point, if you want to modify message routing costs and do not want to affect your AD replication paths, you can apply Exchange-specific costs. (Hint: Use the EMS for those)

3. Direct delivery of messages across sites: An Exchange server will try to establish a direct connection to a destination/target server in a destination site. If there are multiple sites in the routing path, the Exchange server (HT) will communicate directly with the final hop in the routing path. If that server is unavailable and all destination servers in the site are unavailable, it will back-off to the closest point of failure and queue it on that server (site).

4. Send Connectors and Receive Connectors: The concepts of "Sending" and "Receiving" are now clearly divided into Send and Receive Connectors. They’re actually the new implementation of SMTP VS, without some of their limitations. Some Send Connectors are created "Dynamically) and cannot be modified (HT), some Send Connectors are created during the installation and allow for sending mail to the Internet (ET).

5. MexRuntime Agents: All antispam and filtering components run as agents. These agents can run on both HT and ET servers (except for a couple that are only available on ET. (Hint: To install most agents on an HT, run the install-antispamagents.ps1 script)

 

Of course, other things have changed, but lets start herefor now…

Major permission change in Exchange Server 2003 Store

Since I know many readers of this blog are using BES or GoodLink servers, you’ll be very interested with this change in behavior. In a nutshell, to send mail as another user in Exchange 2000/2003, Full Mailbox Owner permission is no longer enough, in conjunction with this permission, you also need the "Send As" permission. This will only affect you if you install an update to store.exe after April 28th, 2006.

Microsoft has created a script to help you identify the users in your organization that will require this update. The following KB has all details about this issue and the script. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912918

For more information about the specific Store.exe version affected, look at the following KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895949/

Of course, nobody believes in conspiracies to make your life real complicated to use BES or GoodLink for wireless access and in fact convince you to purchase som Mobile 5.0 direct push devices… Rubbish!!!

Troubleshooting Exchange Server ActiveSync through an ISA server

I’m spending more time on advanced issues related to Exchange Server 2003 these days. I don’t get calls anymore to migrate or install servers, i’m getting requests for RPC over HTTP, multi-node clusters and configuring Server ActiveSync. This makes for much more interesting projets…

 

So this week I had to configure a new client’s Server ActiveSync environment and ensure connectivity through an existing ISA 2004 server. Of course, the current environment wasn’t properly configured and I had to stabilize a few things before I could move on… However, when it came to the ActiveSync portion of the work, I ended up forgetting a few details and I made myself a list of gotcha’s. Here they are:

 

1. Ensure that ActiveSync is enabled both at the organization leve (global settings) and at the use level.
2. Ensure that a valid certificate is imported in for the Server ActiveSync Virtual Directory in IIS.
3. If you are using a certificate from an internal Windows CA, ensure that the PDA either has imported the CA’s root certificate or is not verifying the validity of certificates (disablecertchk.exe).
4. Ensure that the certificate is issued to the Exchange server’s name (you will run into the same issue with RPC over HTTP, certificate name must map to the FQDN of the Exchange server)
5. Ensure that the ServerActiveSync Virtual Directory is NOT set to Require SSL.
6. Ensure that the web site hosting the Exchange serverdirectories is NOT using host headers (this one might only be specific to going through an ISA server, not 100% sure if its needed without ISA)
7. Import the Exchange server’s certificate into the ISA server and create a new Web Listener in ISA. Associate the new Web Listener to the new access rule for HTTPS.
8. Ensure that the FQDN on the cert can be resolved through external DNS.

Once all of this is done, configure the profile on the PDA to point to the FQDN on the certificate and start syncing!!!

Windows Vista vs Windows XP Pro

http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=332& : Good read!

 

I don’t typically post links to articles, but i’m getting a lot of questions lately about the differences between Vista and XP. Although there are many differences under the hood, the interface differences are very impressive as well. As always, MS is pushing towards a user friendly interface and an effortless management of information. Sometimes succeeding on both fronts…

I’ll write more in the months to come about Vista, as one of our clients has been selected as a MS TAP client for Vista and we’ll be managing the deployment during March and April.

More on the 64 Bit version of Exchange 12…

Or Exchange Server 2007 as it will probably be known…

As an MCT (Trainer), one of the things I was very worried about is the 64Bit only version of Exchange 12. Since we run a lot custom courses and MS courses on Exchange, we would have to put in 64Bit processors as a requirement for our courses, driving costs up. After understanding a bit more of the driving factors for this 64Bit decision, I fully support it now and look forward to the new features and performance gains. But I was still concerned about not being able to run it on 32Bit hardware…

 

Quote from Terry Myerson (Exchange Team): "We will release a 32-bit version of E12 for feature evaluation, training, and demonstrations—but we are not planning to support this release in production"

 

I’m pretty sure this means it will be available post-beta. This is good news!!!

Peering through the technological fog of 2006

During the month of December, I typically spend some time looking back at the year behind me and the projects I’ve worked on, as well as the projects ahead. I usually spend some time looking into where I should focus my energy for the upcoming year. I run a brief analysis of what is moving and shacking in my market and globally with IT in general.

 

This year, I think we’ll see some interesting changes in 2006. Of course we have the obvious, the release of Windows Vista and (hopefully) the new Office. But where is the IT focus shifting to? What’s going to emerge this year as a front runner or new leader in IT. For example, as far as I’m concerned, 2005 was the year of Sharepoint/WSS. Not necessarily cause i’ve worked so much with the product, but because of the buzz around it. 2006 will see many more implementation of Sharepoint technologies and a continued rapid growth for the product. A probable integration into the next version of Exchange will only speed up the adoption rate of this technology. In 2006, we’ll also a continued effort from MS to push its business solutions products. As a MS Certified Partner (we reached Gold Partner status this year ) we are constantly promoted the virtues of these technologies for our clients. I believe MS sees itself hold a larger portion of that market and 2006 may be the year that is spent positioning the company with the important clients. As an example of that, will be the proposed integration of Office 12 with SAP. A pilot project of the SAP integration will take place at some point this year.

 

So what should we keep our eyes open for this year?

 

The continued speed of adoption of Sharepoint technologies.

The impact/adoption rate of Windows Vista.

The growing news and impact of 64bit only Exchange 12. (E12)

Office 12, level of integration with other products and the evergrowing suite of server side Office products.

Another one I’m curious about is Live Communication Server 2006 (heard it is going to be renamed). Lets see what the rate of adoption on that product will be. If IM is any indication this technology should be hot this year.

And of course all those new ERP products arriving towards the end of 2006, early 2007.

Happy new year everybody and good luck with your implementations…

 

 

 

Will it be named Exchange Server 2006 or 2007?

At the IT Forum in Barcelona, Microsoft announced the release schedule for the next version of Exchange, code named Exchange 12. I’ve blogged about E12 before, including all its exciting new features. More details to come about this very soon…

 

Exchange 12 release schedule:

• Beta 1: Q4 2005
• Beta 2: Mid-2006
• RTM: Late 2006 / Early 2007

So which one will it be 2006 or 2007. Let the pool begin… I’m betting on March 2007.

Using MONAD to administer Exchange Server 2003

I know, i’ve been MIA for a while. I’ve been busier than a japanese tourist at a Canon Outlet, but something real interesting brought me out of hiding.

As many of you know, MONAD is all the buzz these days. Especially, the security benefits of this new technology in being touted around. However, what I only learned a few weeks ago is the administrative benefits that MONAD will provide for Exchange 12. For Exchange administrators that are not comfortable writing or using complex ADSI scripts to perform automated Exchange management, MONAD will provide a simplified syntax for management.

Here are a couple of examples I just came across from the Exchange Team Blog:

 

To Set the send quota for ALL mail enabled users in a DL to 1MB

 

Get-DistributionGroup “DL_NAME” | Get-DistributionGroupMember | Set-Mailbox –ProhibitSendQuota 1024

 

To move all users from one Exchange server to another Exchange server

 

Get-Mailbox –server SOURCE_SERVER_NAME | move-mailbox –targetDatabase “DESTINATION_SERVER_NAME\DESTINATION_MBXSTORE”

 

This looks like pretty exciting stuff. More about E12 soon, but before that ,watch out for some SP2 stuff coming up.