AndersonPatricio.ca : Tools

Product Review: Lepide Exchange Manager

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:47:45 GMT

Hello folks,

Today’s review will be about a tool called Lepide Exchange Manager developed by Lepide Software (www.lepide.com) and the version that we are using for this review is the version 12. This tool can be used with Exchange Server 2000/2003/2007 and 2010.

The trial version of the tool reviewed here can be found at http://www.lepide.com/exchange-manager/.

First impressions and overview...

Lepide Exchange Manager can be considered a Swiss Army knife for a messaging administrator and because of its neat features it allows a recover from a Disaster within a few steps, and besides of the recover capabilities which caught my attention at the first glance the tool also has search, report and export/import capabilities which are key for the daily exchange administration tasks.

The installation process is pretty straight forward and requires just a little of attention from the messaging administrator such as Outlook (32 or 64 bits) installed on the machine where the tool will be installed, other than that you will have the tool up and running in less than 5 minutes. Also, the message administrator must be prepared to seize disk properly in order to be able to restore large EDB/PSTs and OSTs files on the server where the tool is installed.

The tool was well designed and on its first page has two areas: Source and Destination where the administrator will spent most of the time during its working on the tool and all features and capabilities are no more than 2 clicks away from this initial page (figure 01).

Figure 01: Lepide Exchange Manager main interface

The source is where the messaging administrator can define where the exchange information is coming from and here you have the server side with offline EDB (healthy and corrupted databases) and live exchange mailboxes (could be a single or multiples mailboxes) and also the client side where the traditional PST or even OST files can be used (Figure 01), and the second step is the destination where the messaging administrator can choose from a PST (new or existent) or Live Exchange Servers.

Figure 02: Selecting a source

After defining Source and Destination the administrator will have access to all capabilities of the software that we are going over in the following sections where content can be copied/exported between Source and destination. The administrator also can check with a glance a preview of the exchange data loaded as Source and from there generate reports, search content, export data and so forth.

Search features…

The Search feature was reviewed as well and it allows the administrator to select many mailboxes and use several fields to perform a search (Figure 03) and because it can be run against offline DBs and also live mailboxes becomes a really good feature for auditing purposes. The administrator also has several tabs to narrow down the search and even exclude duplicates based on some parameters.

Figure 03: Initial Search Source page

Reporting features...

The report is available at Mailbox level and the administrator just need to select with folder to be used in the report and the pre-defined Reports (Figure 04) and a page with the results will be displayed and then the administrator has the option to save them and the only option available is HTML

Figure 04: Generating a Report

Import/Export features

Lepide Exchange Manager has great Import/Export features which are really handy for several scenarios, the first feature that catch my attention was the ability to export any content from an open source (Offline EDB, PST/OST, or Exchange live mailboxes) to either MSG or EML format and also the ability to save in a file with the same hierarchy (Figure 05). Besides of that you can also import the data back from those types of files.

Figure 05: Exporting a message to a file which can be imported in similar process to a PST/Live mailbox

Besides of using this feature during a recover scenario it also can be well used to validate the Exchange backup where a restored database can be loaded into the tool and a message can be restored without impacting the production environment. I’m pretty sure that your Backup Team will love this feature when they have to satisfy SOX auditors.

Review Summary

In these final notes about this review I’m definitely giving two thumbs up for Lepide Exchange Manager or if you prefer the 1 to 5 scale I would definitely give a 4.5 where the product met and exceed my expectations.

This review was my first contact with Lepide Exchange Manager and I’m still impressed how easy was to deploy and get the results that were expected from the tool and also its performance to manage different source data (Exchange Offline Database EDB, PST/OST files and live mailboxes), especially in cases of a Disaster Recovery situation the tool becomes a key component and not just at the server level but also helping to export data from OST files.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.ca
http://www.andersonpatricio.org (Portuguese)
Twitter: @apatricio

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Certificate Expiration Alerting

Anderson Patricio — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:37:33 GMT

Hi folks,

Microsoft Lync Server and Microsoft Exchange Server utilize certificates to manage encryption and authentication. When certificates expire unexpectedly, network administrators are under pressure to resolve the problem quickly. Fortunately, most trusted Certificate Providers inform customers by email before certificates expire. But what happens when certificates are issued by an internal Microsoft Windows Certification Authority? If customers do not have a monitoring solution, such as Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, to provide status updates on certificate expirations, it is a real challenge to keep track of scheduled certificate expirations. The Certificate Expiration Alerter is a free tool that helps prevent unplanned certificate expirations.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://msmvps.org/Blog/AndersonPatricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.org
Twitter: @apatricio

Announcing Additional Upgrade Scenarios for the Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Assistant

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:38:45 GMT

Hi folks,

Today the MSExchangeTeam has just announced the content missing on the first release of the assistant. You can check the assistant out at http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeploy2010

In November, we launched the Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Assistant. In the initial version of the Deployment Assistant, content was available for customers upgrading from Exchange 2003. We are happy to announce that today we've released content for the following scenarios to http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeploy2010:

Upgrading from Exchange Server 2007
Upgrading from a mixed Exchange Server 2003/2007
New Exchange Server 2010 installation

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://blogs.msexchange.org/patricio
Twitter: @apatricio

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Announcing The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer

Anderson Patricio — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:52:20 GMT

Hello folks,

Do you remember Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer (https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/)? Well, now we have a similar tool for OCS as well, check this out: https://www.testocsconnectivity.com/

Summary:

Following on the heels of success of the Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (created by Shawn McGrath and Brad Hughes), Premal Gandhi (UC Support Escalation Engineer), Matthew Fresoli (Supportability Program Manager) and Jason Stine (Senior Lead Program Manager) have been busy designing and writing a complimentary tool: The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer.

The tool is available at https://www.TestOcsConnectivity.com

Overview:

The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a web site for IT Administrators to validate and diagnose end-to-end Office Communications Server scenarios. The site simulates multiple Office Communications Server client access scenarios from outside the customer's infrastructure and reports whether the test was successful. If the test fails, we inform the IT Admin exactly where in the process it failed as well as provide troubleshooting tips on resolving the issue.

In this beta version, the tool provides the following end-to-end tests:

· Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity

· Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity w/AutoDiscover

Coming Soon:

We will be expanding the Office Communications Server scenarios in the next few months to include the following:

· Deeper level of diagnostic information - MSDiagnostics header

· More detailed troubleshooting information based on MSDiagnostic header

· Additional tests

Feedback:

If you have feedback on the tool or suggestions for additional tests or improvements, please use the feedback link provided on the site.

Technorati : Analyzer, OCS 2007, OCS Connectivity Analyzer, Tools
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Office Communications Server 2007 Edge Planning Tool

Anderson Patricio — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:38:06 GMT

The Edge Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007 is a tool that takes a user through a set of interview questions regarding the proposed or current edge server deployment. The tool interviews users about their perimeter network settings as well as some questions regarding their internal deployment.

Get it here: http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/category/1006.aspx

Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007

Anderson Patricio — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:46:54 GMT

Hello folks,

The planning tool provides you prescriptive guidance to get you started with planning your Office Communications Server 2007 topology. The tool asks you a series of interview questions about the features that you are interested in, as well as information about your organization. Based on the answers you provide, the planning tool draws out a recommended topology based on Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 User Model that has been tested. The planning tool also provides customized links to the appropriate documentation to help you plan and deploy your topology.

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=06793661-cd69-4490-bb4b-e97dd271209d&displaylang=en

Best Regards,
Anderson Patricio

New release of the Microsoft Transport Suite

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:49:10 GMT

Hello Folks,

A new release of Microsoft Transport Suite was released today.

Microsoft Transporter Suite is a set of interoperability and migration tools to migrate content from Lotus Domino servers or Generic POP/IMAP servers.

Overview

Transporter Suite contains a set of tools for migrations from both Lotus Domino Servers, and generic IMAP/POP sources. For Lotus Domino the suite contains a set of tools for Directory and Free/Busy interoperability between Lotus Domino 6 or 7 and Exchange Server 2007 and Windows Server 2003 Active Directory. In addition for Lotus Domino the suite contains migration tools to migrate users, groups, personal address lists, mailboxes, personal mail archives, and applications from Lotus Domino 5, 6 or 7 to Active Directory, Exchange Server 2007, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. For generic POP/IMAP servers the suite contains a set of tools to bulk migrate mailboxes from any generic email servers that support the POP3 or IMAP4 protocol to mailboxes in Exchange Server 2007

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=35FC4205-792B-4306-8E4B-0DE9CCE72172&displaylang=en#filelist

Best Regards,
Anderson Patricio

Technorati : Microsoft Transport Suite, release

Managing Active Directory through PowerShell

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 24 May 2007 05:11:00 GMT

Hello folks,

Quest (www.quest.com) has released a free tool called ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory that is a set of PowerShell commands (CMDLETs). Inside of this tool we have got some cmdlets to manage the Active Directory environment, here are the list of cmdlets available in the free tool:

CONNECT-QADSERVICE
DISCONNECT-QADSERVICE
GET-QADUSER
SET-QADUSER
NEW-QADUSER
GET-QADGROUP
NEW-QADGROUP
GET-QADGROUPMEMBER
ADD-QADGROUPMEMBER
REMOVE-QADGROUPMEMBER
GET-QADCOMPUTER
GET-QADOBJECT
SET-QADOBJECT
NEW-QADOBJECT
REMOVE-QADOBJECT
CONVERT-QADATTRIBUTEVALUE

You can get it here: http://www.quest.com/activeroles-server/arms.aspx
Ps.: Registration will be required

Tomorrow, we will be visualizing the new tool called PowerGUI, if you don't like to write cmdlets that will be your perfect tool :)

Best Regards,
Anderson Patricio

Creating a mailbox usage report using the out-html and out-ie

Anderson Patricio — Mon, 21 May 2007 16:54:00 GMT

Hello folks,

We usually see in the MS presentation the guys using a lot of cmdlets and they show the information in the browser directly from the PowerShell.. If you have already seen it, I think you might tried before in your lab without success, right? It occurs because the "out-html" and "out-IE" scripts aren't found in the default installation. These scripts belong to the Exchange Server 2007 Powershell Scriptacular pack that were developed by (Vivek Sharma and Mihai Jalobeanu).

But why I'm talking about it? Because we are going to use those scripts to generate a report :)

First of all, download the Scriptacular from this site: http://www.viveksharma.com/techlog/2006/12/21/announcing-the-exchange-2007-powershell-scriptacular-demo-pack/
Extract all the files in the Scripts folders that are located under Exchange installation drive (the defaul path is c:\program files\microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts)
Run the following cmdlet:
Get-MailboxStatistics | select DisplayName,TotalDeletedItemSize,TotalItemSize,StorageLimitStatus | out-html | out-ie
Now we can see a html report with all mailboxes, TotalDeletedItemSize, TotalItemSize and the status of the Storage Limit settings, as shown in figure below:

If you understand portuguese or you are trying to learn it, you can check out this tutorial at my personal website: http://www.andersonpatricio.org/Tutoriais/Tutoriais.asp?tut=910

Best Regards,
Anderson Patricio