My Notes to Myself and Others... : Exchange

Increasing the rule quota limit/size (Exchange 2007)

Erik Rozman — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:41:43 GMT

This has always bugged me. When using Exchange you have a limit on how many rules
you can create for your mailbox. At first sight you might say,what is the big deal-you almost
never hit the limit. The problem is that once one of your users does actually hit the limit
you have no compelling explanation as to why the limit for Exchange servers up to 2007
was 32KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886616).

In Exchange 2007 this changes, and the limit can be changed to either 64KB, 128KB or
256KB. This can be done by using a cmdlet called set-mailbox.

Set-Mailbox <mailbox> -RulesQuota:<size>

The specific attribute being changed is called appropriately: RulesQuota .

UC practical demo

Erik Rozman — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:18:13 GMT

I stumbled upon a video that demos the abilities of Microsoft UC. It looks at
it from the lighter side by building upon the plot of the “Devil Wears Prada”.

I found this demo to be one of the better demos I have witnessed, it simply
shows how technology can be used to help day-to-day tasks without adding
in any marketing fluff or overbearing technical details.

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/sessionh.aspx?videoid=668

Exchange 2007 SP1 (available for download)

Erik Rozman — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:26:48 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=44C66AD6-F185-4A1D-A9AB-473C1188954C&displaylang=en

Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008

Erik Rozman — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:23:50 GMT

A post about the interoperability of these two systems has been published on the Exchange team
blog.
The highlights are:

Exchange 2007 (RTM) can not be installed on Windows 2008.
Exchange 2007 SP1 (when released) will be supported on Windows 2008.
Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2003 (SP2) are supported with Windows 2008 domains.
Management tools for Exchange 2007 (RTM) and 2003 are not supported on Vista or/and Windows 2008.
Management tools for Exchange 2007 SP1 (when released) will be supported on Vista or/and Windows 2008.

For the additional (somewhat confusing) details,take a look at the post:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/08/16/446709.aspx

Testing RPC over HTTP through ISA Server 2006

Erik Rozman — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:10:42 GMT

The ISA server team has posted a guide on the subject (in three parts). The guide
covers most aspects of the subject including troubleshooting.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Exchange 2007 documentation updated

Erik Rozman — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:09:08 GMT

For additional information take a look at the following post by the Microsoft Exchange team.

Active Directory Explorer

Erik Rozman — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:29:00 GMT

This tool (from Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell) is basically ADSI Edit on steroids.
It allows you to connect to your AD environment directly thus providing you a "raw" view
of your directory and in turn the ability to change the directory directly(which might cause a lot
of pain since you are working without the net provided by the traditional AD tools).

A feature of this tool that seems extremely useful to me is it's ability to take a snapshot
of a directory (and then another snapshot) and eventually to compare the two snapshots
providing you with a list of what has changed.

The tools ability to filter the results and to provide a very focused view of what has changed
makes this tool very useful even in dynamic environments.

Download the tool from:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/adexplorer.mspx

Exchange 2003 OWA and Vista

Erik Rozman — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 11:28:00 GMT

An oldie but I see it coming up in the newsgroups...my guess is that some sysadmins forgot to
fix the problem and the users (specifically home users) trying to access their mailboxes are
surprised and convinced that something is wrong with their own system(which to some extent is
true...):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911829

Reset log file generation (Exchange)

Erik Rozman — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 19:05:00 GMT

Ok,so you actually ran out of transaction files(hopefully you noticed event 514/ESE).

A relatively annoying issue with a simple solution:

Preform a full backup of the storage group.
Dismount all stores inside the storage group(you should verify that your stores are in a "clean" state-eseutil /MH).
Create a new directory in a safe place.
Copy all existing transaction log files and the checkpoint file to the directory.
Mount all stores inside the storage group.

Hopefully you are done. If you are experiencing issues you can try copying the original checkpoint file and transaction
log files.

Good Luck!

ADModify- Making bulk changes in style

Erik Rozman — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 17:15:00 GMT

ADModify is a tool that will enable an AD/Exchange admin to make bulk
changes in user properties.

One of the special treats of this tool is the fact that it provides a simple GUI for
configuring the accepted MAPI level for clients.

You can download the tool at:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=f5cbbfa9-e46b-4a7a-8ed8-3e44523f32e2

Blackberry and Goodlink may be affected by Exchange store patch

Erik Rozman — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:44:00 GMT

I happened to stumble upon this one by chance-and I do admit I am really happy since
I am very familiar with the situation. It seems that a patch intended for the information store
changes the behavior of permissions thus causing lose of functionality of the aforementioned services.

For additional information on this topic please visit:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912918/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895949/

And the post on the Exchange team blog:

http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2006/01/13/417440.aspx

Setting the language of the OWA interface

Erik Rozman — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 18:19:00 GMT

When you work at a multinational/multilingual company the OWA interface's language might become
important. Currently (Exchange 2003) provides the language of the interface based on the settings
configured on the IE used to access OWA.

The problem is that at times your users might be logging on to OWA from different locations
such as airports or Internet cafes which may block the IE settings. In that case your users
might get the interface in a different language then the one they are used to see.

To prevent this from happening you might want to hard code the language used by the OWA interface.

The following KB article explains how to do it:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310599&sd=tech

The problem is that as you can see it isn't that simple. Tal H. (Thanks!!!) created the DLL
file needed for the English language and I have it attached here.

[Disclaimer-Use this file at your own risk. I (or anyone else) do not take any responsibilty
for any damage,direct or indirect, that might be caused by using the attached file.
The file is provided as is,no warranties!!]
AcceptLanguage.txt
(Rename the file to AcceptLanguage.DLL)

Why sandboxes are important...or in other words don't shoot yourself in the leg

Erik Rozman — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 20:23:00 GMT

Why not you ask?
Well since it may be painfull...

Microsoft released a patch for Exchange 2003(888619). I read the documentation and it seemed to be relatively harmless...so I decided to apply it to my environment.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=888619

[Yes,I know that it is extremely important to test patches before they are applied to production servers
but I guess I like living on the edge...yea,right!]

My environment has a front-end/back-end configuration-after the patch was applied to one of my servers OWA
stopped working for the users homed on it.

To make it even worse when I tried applying the patch(before understanding that I have an issue) to my other servers,
I got an error message stating that my server does not have SP1 for Exchange 2003 installed so I can't install the patch.
I have SP1 installed as far as I can tell.
[I start to get that sinking feeling...]

After removing the patch from the problematic server the service was resumed.

I don't really know what happened since I didn't have time to investigate it. I don't blame anyone for this(nor do I imply that there is a problem with the patch) but myself for not testing the patch and in addition to that it is possible that I have a problem in my environment that caused this.

Be sure to test the effects of a patch to your environment...

NNTP server does not work correctly on a Windows Server 2003-based computer

Erik Rozman — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 22:42:00 GMT

Now what exactly does that mean...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883479

Exchange Out Of Office in over quota mailboxes...

Erik Rozman — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 16:30:00 GMT

When a mailbox is over quota and it can not send messages, out of office messages for the
will still be sent.

Preventing Out of Office Messages from being sent ou to distribution lists

Erik Rozman — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 21:48:00 GMT

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=825370

Valid for Exchange 2003 only.

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem

Value: SuppressOOFsToDistributionLists (DWORD)

Set 1 to suppress or 0 to allow.

The setting should be set on mailbox servers.

The setting prevents sending OOFs unless the the recipient is in the TO,CC or BCC(if no one other recipients
appear in the other fields).

Displaying the Security property page

Erik Rozman — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 20:11:00 GMT

An oldie but still worthwhile mentioning.
The Exchange System Manager does not display the Security property page for the organization or for the Administrative Groups.

To display the page add the following registry entry:

Key: HKCU>Software>Microsoft>Exchange>ExAdmin
Value: ShowSecurityPage (DWORD)
Set the value to 1 and restart the ESM-Presto!

Understanding Exchange Databases Disk Consumption

Erik Rozman — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 22:41:00 GMT

Ok,
So here I go again with my shameless self promotion-I have published my second article
at MSEXCHANGE.ORG.

Here is a direct link to it:
http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Exchange-Databases-Disk-Consumption.html

Hope you enjoy it.

Mix and match Exchange versions with Windows

Erik Rozman — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 15:58:00 GMT

The following knowledge base article has a table that describes the mixing options:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=321648

My first article on msexchange.org

Erik Rozman — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 03:30:00 GMT

I do feel proud-I had my first article published on msexchange.org .
The article deals with the cosy situation in which a system's log disk runs out of space,
I called the article: “Exchange log disk is full, Prevention and Remedies” .

It can be found at:
http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Exchange-log-disk-full.html

Hope you enjoy it!