Cluster Help

First Day at Mindsharp

Today is officially my first day at Mindsharp.

Many of you have heard of the company and most people immediately associate it with SharePoint. That is a good thing, but Mindsharp is going to be much more than SharePoint in the near future.

My job is to help complete courseware for Office Communications Server and help promote classes and consulting opportunities for OCS. I am excited about this opportunity. I get to work for a top-notch organization with a great reputation, and I get to help lead the company into new areas of technology.

Yeehaw... let the fun begin.

My focus, my time, and my odd dreams now include Mindsharp and the new logo. This week includes lots of paperwork and review of the current outlines and content to see what the next steps are oing to be in the next few weeks. 

I already had the question come up, "What does this mean for ClusterHelp.com?" Damn good question. We are talking with Mindsharp about selling the IP to them and then re-building the course for Windows Server 2008. It may take a good bit to make it happen, but it will not impact our current commitments. The next two classes (Pittsburgh and NYC) will still happen.

The Perfect Job

I don't know if it is possible to find the perfect job or not.

Over the last few weeks, I have been talking to several companies about opportunities. These conversations have been fun, and the interviewing has really been entertaining as well.

Interviewing - I bet you have all heard the basic questions, like, "What is your biggest weakness?" So, during the process, I put together my top 10 questions.

1. Why are you leaving your current position? Also, why did you leave your last job?
2. Can you describe a typical day at your last job?
3. How do you handle stress?
4. If you could change the last X number of years of your professional life, what would you change?
5. What major challenges did you face in your last position and how did you respond to those challenges?
6. Can you describe an occassion where you made a mistake and what you did afterwards?
7. What did you like/dislike about your previous supervisors?
8. How do you feel about travel?
9. How do you keep up on the constantly changing technology?
10. Why would you like to work for our organization?

My all time favorite question is, "What are your salary expectations?"

So, since I have all of these questions and appropriate answers memorized, the next step is always the initial technical screening. It is very unusual to have any issues with the technicals screen unless the interviewer doesn't know the right answer to their own questions. This has happened more than a few times with me which have resulted in me sending them email in the middle of the interview with the proof that my answer was right. Then the joy of salary negotiation, which I actually like doing.

OK, back to the perfect job for me. I thought about it long and hard. What were the things that I loved about previous jobs and what are the things that pissed me off most about previous jobs. The pissed off part was easiest. :)

So, what are the things that I like to do? So, another list...

1. Speaking at conferences
2. Helping others through newsgroups and blogging
3. Writing and technical reviewing the work of other offers
4. Researching new technologies
5. Train and help others learn new technologies
6. Consulting - By this, I mean indentifying issues, creating solutions, and helping to deploy fixes to existing and new environments
7. Be able to leave work at a reasonable time - the always missing work/home life balance which everyone claims to support

I looked at all of the opportunities in front of me, and it was real easy to eliminate a few companies.

So, the result? I accepted a position with a great company, Mindsharp. I will be working as a lead courseware developer as well as a technical lead for all things related to Unified Communications. The first project? Yep, finish the courseware and get it out into the market place. After that, I will be working as a trainer on the courses that I help develop and will also work as a consultant in UC.

I can't wait to get started!

Question of the day: What are they doing for Bill Gates last day?

Now, seriously, what are they going to do for him?

In some companies, they have a luncheon party, in others, they take up a collection and buy a parting gift.

So, what are they doing for Bill? Does he get a cake? Does he get a watch? A plaque? A handshake from Steve? A hug? A letter of appreciation? A fishing pole?

I really want to know.

Cluster Class in Pittsburgh

We have scheduled a class in Pittsburgh, PA. It is tentative at this point. What does that mean? Well, it means that there is no actual contract yet, but it looks like it will be a go.

If you are interested, please contact RiverHead Training in Pittsburgh by calling them at 412-224-2345 or by sending email to education@riverhead.com.

Philip Anderson is the point of contact.

Blog was Down

I am sorry, but this blog, as well as many others hosted on MSMVPS.com, was down for a considerable amount of time.

I really wasn't happy about it, but I also really can't complain because this server is supported by a couple of voluteers, and they do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

I will continue to host my blog here, for now. However, if there are continued issues, I will do my best to move to a new location. In the meantime, keep in mind that I copy many of my posts (not all) to another blog site that I use for personal stuff as well as geek stuff. You can get to it here.

Should I Deploy Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003 for Exchange Server 2007?

This is another question that came up many times during TechEd.

It was usually phrased, "Why would I go with Windows Server 2008 over Windows Server 2003 when deploying my Exchange Server 2007 environment next month?" Sometimes they also threw in that they were going to to CCR.

My point, which actually seemed to please some of the people is that we, as administrators, should try to avoid NT 4.0 situations that we are still paying for today.

What does that mean? Well, think about it, in 2000, we were deploying new servers. The options were to deploy NT 4.0 or Windows 2000. Windows 2000 was still new and there was fear about using it for critical environments. So, NT 4.0 was used. In 2003, the hardware reached the end of its warranty. So, we paid for an extended warranty for a year, or more, until it got too costly. So, last year, we had an OS that was 11 years old running critical systems.

Take it forward today. I deploy a new and extremely critical email environment that is supposed to last me between 4 to 5 years. So, if I use Windows Server 2003, I will find myself running Windows Server 2003 in 2013. Sound familiar?

I am willing to bet you money that not a single person will be wanting to upgrade the OS to Windows Server 2008 when the application and the OS are still working properly. We, as IT people, do not mess with what is working. So, we don't upgrade and we end up in a bad position where we are way past the end of life on the operating system on a critical server environment. This is especially true if we are deploying a high availability environment to support the application. You don't mess with it.

I am a big proponent of aligning application and hardware refreshes because it just makes sense. What we end up with is a cycle of every 3-5 years, we replace our out of warranty equipment with new equipment running the latest OS and the latest application version just so that when we hit the end of our planned life cycle, we are not in an unsupported state and trying to remember how to manage an OS and an application that we haven't touched in years because we are constantly moving forward.

Something else to consider. Let's say it is the year 2010, and you call Microsoft for support for your Windows Server 2003 environment. Who do you think you will get to help you? Well, the very best people have already moved on to the other teams. They are working on the 2008 platform, or they are working on Win 7 (whatever its real name will be then). The best support guys will not be stuck working on the 2003 team. 

I hope that is enough reason for you to do your best to convince management that it is better to go with Windows Server 2008.

Exchange Server 2007 and Virtualization

During my booth duty at the Failover Clustering booth, I must have heard questions regarding this topic about once per hour if not more.

The official stance: Microsoft does not support the virtualization of Exchange Server 2007 roles at this time. Why not? Well, Microsoft does not have a virtualization platform capable of supporting 64-bit virtual machines at this time. Hyper-V is not an RTM product. Whether Microsoft will change the stance once Hyper-V RTMs is another question, and I don't have an answer. Also, keep in mind, Microsoft is not about to support a third party's virtualization platform because they don't have the control over it to properly support it and fix problems that might be discovered.

My point of view: Why would you ever want to do that anyways? Exchange and SQL are two services that really do require top-notch resources and sharing them on a server with other virtualized servers just seems counter productive to providing the best performance possible for two key business services.

OK, now that I am off my soap box, can you virtualize Exchange Server 2007? Yes, you can. It make perfect sense to me for development and testing environments. It makes perfect sense for a proof of concept, too. It even make perfect sense in small organizations that won't push their Exchange implementation very hard.

Recently, I worked with a client that has a nice virtualization platform running Hyper-V RC1. They hosted mailbox servers, hub transport servers, and client access servers for their test environment. It ran wonderfully. They are considering doing it when Hyper-V RTMs because their expected load for 35 users isn't very large. 

UPDATED: Scott Schnoll posted the official stance in his blog post, Exchange Server 2007 and Hyper-V.

Tech-Ed and the High Availability Pre-Conference Session

I have learned over the years that a successful presentation depends on solid planning, good input from many sources, and preparation. So, what do you do when things go wrong despite all prepartions going right?

What do you do when:

1. Three computers fail during the presentation and one of the three catches fire
2. The computer used for displaying the PowerPoints reboots five times during the presentation
3. The rack holding demonstration equipment makes tons of clacking noises as power spikes hit the PDU and force it to reset continuously
4. The spot lights flicker on and off continuously
5. There are seven to nine technicians on stage trying to fix everything during the presentation
6. There are technicians replacing hardware during the presentation
7. Demos have to be copied multiple times between computers because of hardware failures

Yes, it was challenging. Would you believe that it was still a great deal of fun and everyone that I saw during the rest of TechEd that was in the session said they still learned a great deal of information?

I am shocked that I didn't burst out in a tirade of obscene statements.

Somebody asked me if I would do it again knowing that the same circumstances would come up, and I said that I would.

Really, I had a great time, and it appears that the attendees were still happy despite all of the facility issues.

Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering - Microsoft Official Courseware

Microsoft has released its first Windows Server 2008 course based on the RTM version. Lucky for us high availability geeks, it happens to be the coruse on Failover Clustering.

The course will be available May 15th, 2008. In the meantime, I strongly suggest everyone take a look at the syllabus for the class. You can find it here.

"Save XP" Campaign Discussion

I have been pretty busy lately, but I just couldn't ignore the "Save XP" campaign being promoted by InfoWorld.

I have many issues with this entire campaign, so I will summarize them here:

What is InfoWorld doing? I wasn't aware that it was suddenly an opinion magazine and had given up on being a news reporting organization. It is like NBC doing a "Help Elect Joe Snuffy" campaign. It it totally inappropriate. Read the story here on their site.

I can't imagine that the world expects time to stop and technology to stop advancing.

Hardware support is halted all the time as computer hardware ages. Other companies with technology based products also stop support after products reach their end of life. Why not software? Wait, software companies also stop support of their older products, especially as newer ones are released to replace them. So, why should Microsoft be treated any differently?

Bharat Suneja, a good friend of mine, has been heavily involved in this debate regarding the "Save XP" campaign. His latest contribution to the discussion can be seen here. Bharat has pretty much nailed the topic down. To paraphrase Bharat's point of view, XP is far from dead as support won't end until next year, extended support won't end until 2014, and downgrade rights are available for everyone that buys Vista, so it is still technically possible to buy more XP licenses.

You can see my comments there, but for the lazy, I have posted them below as well.

I have been following this entire exchange on both this site and on InfoWorld.

I really get a kick out of it as I see history clearly repeating itself. I remember the same whining regarding XP when it first came out. I remember people upset because they felt that Win 95/98 was fine and they hated the new architecture of XP. They hated the performance, they hated the lack of drivers, they hated that lots of applications did not run properly on XP, and they just also seemed to hate it because it was new and it has always been trendy to express hate when it comes to Microsoft and its actions.

Well, now the griping is about Vista and XP is what people don't want to give up. I imagine the same whining and crying will come up when a new product is released to replace Vista.

What bothers me is that so many people are against change when change has led to some fantastic technological improvements that have made many companies more efficient.

Implementing Vista will lead to many improvements in business effectiveness as users are able to do more with less and support staff will have to spend less time and money to keep client computers running and secured.

My opinion? That is easy, I hate Vista on my old laptop. I absolutely love it on my new laptop, which was built with Vista support in mind. I can move from work to home and back without having to screw with my wireless network settings as Vista automatically finds everything and connects me without any special effort on my part. I love that I can put my laptop to sleep while I commute and it springs to life when I need it, again, without special effort on my part. I love that I can hibernate whenever I want and I can be confident that it will start up right where I left off again when I need my laptop.

Microsoft, like all companies, has a clear right (and a duty to its shareholders) to stop supporting old technologies as they reach then end of their lifecyle. XP has clearly reached the end of its life, and I can't see any benefits in trying to keep it on life support. Businesses, both small and large, will benefit greatly from the improvements in technology. While there is no need to go around and uninstall XP on older equipment, there certainly isn't any benefit to retrofitting it on new hardware which is more than capable of supporting Vista and providing users with a much better computing experience.

The whole "Save XP" campaign is a joke. Somebody needs to pop up and say, "April Fool's" really soon.

CCR and Multi-Site Environments

 I have been hearing more and more people talk about the virtues of using CCR with a node in each site. This talk has escalated now that Windows Server 2008 has released to manufacturing. With Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster environments now have the ability to have nodes in multiple sites without having to use Virtual LANs (VLANs) to provide the networking support.

On the surface, CCR and Windows Server 2008 in a multi-site cluster sounds like the answer to many organization needs. Obviously, I am setting up the argument against this kind of implementation. OK, maybe it wasn't obvious to some of you. <G>

Anyways, here is a rough sketch (this means that lots of non-discussed components are not shown, i.e. CAS, DC/GC, DNS, etc.) of how this would look if you had two physical locations with them both being in the same AD site to support CCR. In the drawing, Node1 is the active node and replication traffic flows over the WAN link to Node2 which is the passive node. If you look at the drawing, you should immediately see some issues.

Consideration number 1. Where should you put the FSW? In this drawing, it is in the site on the left. Well, what if that is the site that goes down in a flood, tornado, meteor strike, or whatever? If the FSW is lost along with one of the nodes, there will not be an automated failover. OK, this is fixable since we can manually force the cluster to start, but it will impact life in the real world if there is a major disaster, especially if you lose your administrators along with the site. Make sure you document the process in your DR documentation as somebody else might need to perform the task.

Consideration number 2. How do you know which Hub Transport to use for the transport dumpster in order to back fill the surviving node? After all HT1 and HT2 are in the same AD site, which means that they would be used in a load balanced manner, so it is not possible to use one of them to provide full replay of lost transactions. Yes, you can hard code which HT to use, but that makes no sense to me in an HA environment as if you did that, you would lose the redundancy/load balancing functionality gained by having multiple HTs in a site. Of course, you might even have two in the same physical location. Also, let's say you hard code HT1 for the CMS and it is active on Node1. If you do that, then you lose the transport dumpster along with the location in the event of a major disaster. OK, so let's say you hard code HT2 for the CMS which is active on Node1. That would mean all of your traffic would be going across the WAN link, which is not exactly a good idea.

Consideration number 3. What about the use of the Wide Area Network (WAN) and its uncontrolled use by many different services? After all, if both physical locations are in the same AD site, will you have issues with clients logging on and authenticating across the WAN link? Will you have problems with the Clustered Mailbox Server (CMS) using the Hub Transport (HT) on the other side of the WAN link? What about the HT using the wrong Domain Controller/Global Catalog server and thus all of its queries being run over the WAN link? Again, you can hard code some of these settings for some applications and services, but even if you do that, there is again the issue of potentially losing redundancy/load balancing.

Consideration number 4. Using Windows Server 2008 and its multi-site improvements impacts DNS and resolution. For example, when Node1 is active, its VIP address is registered with the CMS name. If there is a failover, then the other VIP (for the physical location of Node2) must be registered within DNS and DNS updates needs to be replicated to all DNS servers in the organization. During the time of the updates and shortly after, there will be clients that have the old VIP address in its cache, so it will resolve incorrectly until the cache is updated on the clients. This is not an Exchange issue, but something else that should be considered.

So, what do I recommend? I am glad you asked that question. If you didn't, too bad, I will answer it anyways.

I highly recommend using CCR within a single physical site that is also an AD site. For disaster recovery reasons, I recommend using Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) to copy transactions to a remote site's Exchange mailbox server.

FYI, I updated based on some of Scott Schnoll's comments to me. Scott had some excellent points regarding my concerns listed above. I won't go through them one by one, but it basically came down to my making the assumption that CCR in a multi-site (stretched AD site) environment would be configured for automatic failover. I did make this assumption because if we were looking for a manual process that would require administrator intervention to get it up and running, then we should be talking SCR, not CCR. High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are very different in my mind. HA means that processes are automated to reduce downtime to a minimal amount. DR is something that is done when there is a major disaster that requires steps to be taken to recover the environment. CCR is an HA technology and SCR is a DR technology, in my opinion.

Domain Controllers as Cluster Nodes - Bad Idea

This is an issue that pops up all the time when it comes to best practices and building server clusters.  

It is considered a very bad practice, in the community, to run Domain Controllers (DCs) as nodes in a cluster. While Microsoft says it is possible, and it is even discussed in KB171390

So, why do so many people recommend against doing it? Let's hit the main reasons:

• Microsoft clearly recommends against it in KB281662
• It is not supported for Exchange per KB898634
• There are known issues with file share clusters per KB834231
• The SQL team strongly recommends against it for performance reasons
• Some hotfixes for DC/GCs may not be recommended for clusters
• There is overhead involved with running the DC/GC on each node of approximately 130 MB of RAM, plus issues with replication traffic and overhead involved with responding to authentication and logon requests
• There are issues with multihomed DCs where the private connections also get registered in DNS and can cause many systems to fail to properly logon/authenticate - the check box to not register the private heartbeat connection is not honored by a domain controller without proper hotfixes or registry hacks
• If they are the only DCs in the org, then they must also be Global Catalog servers (GCs) and must also host DNS
• If they host DNS, they should point to each other for their own DNS resolution, which will cause failures in resolution if one node is down
• There are issues with FSMO roles and how will they will be handled if the node that hosts them is down
• There are problems with the first node coming online if it is the only DCs in the org because the cluster service needs to validate its own account, but it can't find the DC if the node is pointing to the other for DNS per proper DNS practices and the same is true for services such as SQL and Exchange that use service accounts
• There are issues with possible failures if the DC is too busy being a DC and the cluster service can't access the quorum drive as required
• The hisecdc security template will break clustering if it is used to secure domain controllers

It is vital to remember why we are implementing server clustering when it comes to making decisions like making the nodes domain controllers. We implement server clustering because the service that the cluster is hosting is vital to the company, and we want to mitigate against risks that could cause its failure. Putting nodes on domain controllers introduces too many new risks to the cluster and that is a huge violation of high availability practices.

I hope I have made it clear that it is a really bad idea to use DCs as cluster nodes.

Windows Server 2008 Clustering Documents

Microsoft released a whole set of white papers and made them available for download off the same page here.

The documents available include:

• Microsoft High Availability Strategy White Paper.doc
• Overview of Failover Clustering with Windows Server 2008.doc
• Quick Migration with Hyper-V.doc
• Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering Architecture Overview.doc
•  WS2008 Failover Clustering Datasheet.doc
• WS2008 Multi Site Clustering.doc

They are all fantastic reads and I highly recommend downloading them.

IT Manager Webcast: Delivering High Availability

Manish Kalra, will be delivering a 60 minute presentation on the value of High Availability. I strongly recommend that everyone give it a view. Details below:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032365516&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

IT Manager Webcast: Delivering High Availability to Your Infrastructure (Level 100)  
Event ID: 1032365516
Register Online
 
Language(s):     English.
Product(s):     Windows Server.
Audience(s):     IT Professionals.
    
Duration:     60 Minutes
Start Date:     
Thursday, February 07, 2008 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
 
Event Overview

Organizations put a lot of value on mission-critical servers and rely on them heavily to run their businesses. As a result, server downtime can be very costly. For every benefit and advantage brought to an organization by an IT solution, technology and business decision-makers should also think about how to deal with the inevitable downtime of these solutions. In this webcast, we discuss how Microsoft can help you avoid downtime and deliver an available infrastructure to meet the demands of your business and customers.

Presenter: Manish Kalra, Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Manish Kalra is a product manager in the Windows Server group, where he is responsible for high availability planning. Manish joined Microsoft in 2000 and has held positions as a product manager for Microsoft Systems Management Server, a management solutions specialist, and an infrastructure consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services.

View other sessions from: IT Manager Connections: Build Business and Careers on the Microsoft Platform.

If you have questions or feedback, contact us.

Registration Options
Event ID:
1032365516

TechEd 2008 PreCon: High Availability Planning with Windows Server 2008

I just wanted to point out that there will be an excellent Pre-Conference session on Windows Server 2008 High Availability with several demonstrations at the upcoming TechEd in Orlando.

You can see the pre-conference sessions here: https://www.msteched.com/itpro/public/precons.aspx

I have multiple reasons for promoting this session:

PRC18 High Availability Planning with Windows Server 2008

Speaker(s): Manish Kalra

This pre-conference seminar is designed to help you build a highly available infrastructure for all your organizational needs. We cover the deep technical issues to be addressed and all the possible issues you could run into when designing a Messaging, Database, Virtualized, Web, and File/Print infrastructure

Microsoft Official Cluster Team Blog

The cluster team at Microsoft has restarted their blog with a new dedication focused on Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering and Network Load Balancing.

I have been promised, by some of the powers that be, that they will do their best to provide responses to all appropriate comments posted to their blog entries.

Also, from my experience, these are some really wonderful people and they really want to help everyone understand what failover clustering is all about and how your organization can benefit from implmenting failover clustering.

Anyways, I recommend that you visit them.

While I am at it, I would like to recommend the other blogs that contain clustering posts on a regular basis, to include:

• John Toner's Blog - John has been a clustering MVP for ages. John tends to specialize in Multisite clusters. John is US based.
• Nail Own's Website/Blog - Nail is a fairly new MVP in cluster. Nail resides in Germany.
• Rodney R. Fournier - Rod used to be a clustering MVP but is now a Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft based in Arkansas.
• Exchange Team Blog - The Exchange team often posts great information about clustering Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2007.
• Windows Server Core Team - This group has recently started posting about several different scenarios with clustering.
• Windows Server Division Weblog - This is the OS team and they post about a variety of High Availabilty scenarios.

 I hope you find these other blogs as helpful as I find them.

Exchange Server 2003 Assessment Configuration Packs

Microsoft released assessment configuration packs for the following today:

Gramm-Leach Bliley Act (GLBA)

European Union Data Protection Directive (EUDPD)

Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)

Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Exchange Server 2007 Architecture Poster

Get it here, fresh off the presses and just released today!

Which Exchange Server 2007 Server Cluster Type Should I use, CCR or SCC?

This is becoming a pretty common question in my Exchange classes. Which should I use? Why one over the other?

My current recommendation is to use CCR whenever possible vs. SCC. Why? I am glad you asked that question.

High Availability, see my definition here, is all about risk mitigation. What we should be doing is identifying risks to our important/critical applications and finding ways to eliminate or at least mitigate the risks where economically feasible.

One of the major risks that I see with Exchange Server 2007, as well as previous versions of Exchange, is losing my production database because of a disk failure or my database becoming corrupted. In the case of a disk failure, I would normally restore my database, but that takes time, and very few people want to run a dial tone database while they recover. So, two Exchange Server 2007 technologies provide some protection against a lost database drive or a corrupted database. One is Local Continuous Replication (LCR). LCR, however, is a single server technology and does not provide the risk mitigation against an entire server loss that a cluster can provide. The second technology is to use Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR). CCR provides the one extra piece that a Single Copy Cluster (SCC) does not: it provides for loss of the database disk or corruption of the database.

Since CCR does not do a block by block copy like a SAN replication utility might, the likelihood of corruption passing from the production database to the passive copy is extremely low. Remember, the passive copy is receiving transactions and having them applied to the database much like the production database. Corruption is not copied in such an environment.

Of course, we can't forget that by using CCR, we also can eliminate the need for a SAN, which is a huge cost savings.

So, add the increased risk mitigation and elimination of the SAN requirement for high availability and you can see that CCR is a vast improvement over SCC.

Wonderful Changes in Exchange Server 2007

I want to end the work day on a positive note. Yes, there are a couple of things about Exchange Server 2007 that tick me off, but overall, I love the product.

I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to mention some of my favorite features.

• Databases - The change to a single database is a big plus in my mind. Also, I love that we can now have up to 50 Storage Groups and up to 50 Databases when using Enterprise Edition. With the larger number of databases, we can now have smaller and faster databases. We can also have an extremely large number of spindles to provide even more disk I/O. Of course, being able to have a single transaction log disk per database also is a nice change which will lead to better performance as well as easier database recovery.
• OWA - Wow, lots of great changes here (except for the issue of Public Folder support which will be added back with SP1). I love that it is so much easier to select recipients without having to do a search. The vast number of new options is also a big plus.
• Mobile - Being able to allow users to wipe their own lost/stolen mobile devices is nice as well as being able to allow users to setup their own devices. The updated Exchange Active Sync is fantastic.
• OOF - Out of office messages are now much more granular. It is possible to configure them in a number of ways so that we can control the OOFs differently based on whether it is an internal sender vs. an external sender and even to the point of controlling OOFs to partners where we have SMTP connections setup directly with them.
• Transport Rules - I can't say enough about all of the fantastic things we can now do using transport rules. I could go on for hours about the many new options we have as administrators including simple things like being able to add disclaimers to all outbound email.
• UM - Unified messaging with the Outlook Voice Access capabilites are fantastic. I am having a blast playing with this new functionality.

If you have looked into Exchange Server 2007, I highly recommend downloading an evaluation version, taking a class, and seeing just how it can improve messaging in your company. The changes I have listed above are just the tip of the ice berg. There are many more new features that I am sure your company can use today.