If you are using Exchange Server 2003, it is worth considering a move to Office 365 instead of Exchange 2012. If you have business reasons to do so, it is possible to use the migration tool to switch over from an 'on-premises' Exchange-hosted mail service to a cloud-based Office 365 service. Jaap walks through the steps for a relatively small corporation..… Read more
The offline address-book (OAB) of Exchange is available when the user is not connected, Since Exchange 2007, it is updated via a Web-based distribution point. But what if you need to set up several Offline address-books for a variety of sites or geographical regions, each to be distributed by a different point? How would you do that? Krishna demonstrates.… Read more
When a customer asks for an Exchange Server feature that you have no idea how to implement, and you just get one item coming up on Google, then you've got the blues. Antoine relates the struggle from that point to successful delivery of the feature.… Read more
When one mailbox server in a Database Availability Group (DAG) is accidentally deleted, then it is supposedly easy to fix the problem, but if the DAG is not fully cleaned up, it can prove a little more complex.… Read more
In Exchange Server 2010 it is possible to make the system more resilient by creating a Database Availability Group (DAG) where the nodes contain multiple server roles.… Read more
Brien has been on the front line of Systems Administration for long enough to both respect and fear PST files. Though they are a handy tool when used wisely, they are too often misused, resulting in disaster. Brien relates a few tragedies to which he's had a front-row seat. Read on, and be warned.… Read more
Unless you use Red Gate's PST Importer, the import and export of PST files with Exchange 2010 is a complex and error-prone business. Microsoft have acknowledged this in the release of Exchange 2010 SP1, since they have now re-engineered the way that PSTs are handled to try and ease the pain of importing and exporting them, but it is still a matter of using Powershell with cmdlets, rather than a GUI. Jaap Wesselius takes a look at the new process.
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Now that you've created your first DAG in Exchange 2010, you'll need to be sure it's correctly configured for failovers and switchovers, and you know how to troubleshoot. Fear not, for Neil Hobson tells you what you need to know.… Read more
Since Exchange 2000, and the introduction of the document retention period it has been much easier to recover mailboxes, disconnect or connect mailboxes to users, and disable mailboxes. Exchange 2010 has introduced the personal archive, which adds a slight complication. Michel de Rooij explains how to deal with this, and clean up mailboxes that are still within the retention period.… Read more
Although very tempting to use, the Hoster Edition of Exchange Server 2010 SP1 is not an alternative for the enterprise customers. Don't try it, don't even think about it, there's too much complexity for the average enterprise customer.… Read more
Just recently, a problem involving the iPhone/iPod's synchronisation process with Exchange 2007, made it necessary for Exchange Administrators to alert various mail users to upgrade to the latest version of Apple's iOS 4. Ben shows how easily he was able to do this for his organisation, using Exchange's Management Shell with PowerShell and some Exchange cmdlets.… Read more
Exchange Server 2010 has an online Move-Mailbox functionality, invoked by calling the New-MoveRequest cmdlet. By using it, the time a mailbox is offline has been reduced to only seconds.… Read more
If you ever need to set up fine-grained rules to control the maximum size of messages a subset of your picky users' can send or receive, Krishna Kumar has you covered. His step-by-step instructions will tell you everything you need to know to keep emails sizes under control.… Read more
If you could design an Exchange email archiver from scratch, what would you do differently and how would you bring it to maturity? Bob Cramblitt talks with three principals from the new Exchange Server Archiver 3.0 development team and gets the inside story on the soul of a new archiver.… Read more
Sean Duffy, always keen to be on the cutting edge of making his job as a production SysAdmin as painless as possible, puts V3.0 of Red Gate's Exchange Server Archiver through its paces. His verdict: an impressive and transparent tool for managing your Exchange environment.… Read more
In his previous article, Antoine Khater made sure that every Exchange SysAdmin knew how to backup their servers. Now that you've got your backups running smoothly, his latest no-nonsense guide covers exacty how to restore everything ranging from whole servers down to individual mailboxes and items, and how to do it fast.… Read more
The very latest and greatest incarnation of Exchange Server 2010, Service Pack 1 Beta, is now available for the public to try out. Lucky for us, Jaap's had access to the new release for quite some time, and he gives us a distilled guide to exactly what is new and improved.… Read more
If you're using Exchange 2010, then you're probably interested in using the new Database Availability Group feature for your High Availability needs. The DAG is superbly powerful technology, but you'd better make sure yours is 100% correctly configured. Neil Hobson walks us through what we need to know, using a two-node DAG as an example.… Read more
If you're a Systems Administrator concerned about information security, you could do worse than implementing Microsoft's Information Rights Management system; especially if you already have Active Directory Rights Management Services in place. Elie Bou Issa talks Hub Servers, Transport Protection Rules and Outlook integration in this excellent guide to getting started with IRM.… Read more
Cluster continuous replication (CCR) uses log shipping and failover to provide a more resilient email system with faster recovery. Once it is installed, a clustered server requires different management routines. These are done either with a GUI tool, The Failover Cluster Management Console, or the Exchange Management Shell. You can use Powershell as well for some tasks. Confused? Not for long, since Brien Posey is once more here to help. … Read more
