Dmitry blogs all about it here . I'd been meaning to write pretty much this very same post ever since I attended Devin 's talk on managing Legacy Exchange with PowerShell at ExchangeConnections last November this past April , so I'm glad to see Dmitry write it up!

I received an email the other day from someone who had read my “ IMF and the Junk E-Mail folder in Outlook ” posting. This person was wondering: “How can I tell who does and doesn’t have this per-mailbox setting enabled?” and I replied that there’s no built-in way...

Here’s an interesting problem: After you apply Windows 2003 SP1, the new security settings prevent running HTA files from a network share. So this means if you download the Exdeploy pack and dump it into a network share, it won’t work properly on a W2k3 SP1 server. The workaround, of course, is to...

It’s now been about a year since Exchange 2003 SP1 released, and cross-site, mixed-mode mailbox moves were introduced. In that time, I think folks have really started to get the hang of how it works and what needs to be in place to ensure successful moves. That said, there’s one topic that I’ve seen...

Gerod points out in this blog post that if you install Windows 2003 SP1 onto your Exchange 2003 cluster nodes, you’ll need to install the hotfix in KB.841561 . If you don’t apply this hotfix, users will not be able to access OWA (they will receive 500 – internal server error), although Administrator...

When you move mailboxes across mixed-mode site boundaries with the Exchange 2003 SP1 feature, there is a period of time where mail will have trouble routing properly to these moved mailboxes. There are a couple of ways you may see this presented, as I’ll discuss in this post. The most common case is...

Here are a couple of interesting KBs that have come out or been updated recently: KB.884863 ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884863 ) – “Update to Exchange 2000 Server adds application event logging for deletion of public folders” An additional feature that is related to public...

Thanks to Dave Howe for pointing out this newly released hotfix. With the release of KB.883652 , it’s now possible to script cross-site mixed-mode moves based on the Exchange 2003 SP1 feature. Before applying this hotfix, if you are doing scripted moves with the MoveMailbox method of the IMailboxStore...

Hot off the presses, there’s a filter update for the Exchange Intelligent Message Filter that released today. You can download this updated filter at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c1ea8cf1-48c9-4e43-a4eb-82d9a83fd4a7&displaylang=en . See the Readme for more info...

I’ve posted several IMF-related blog postings in the past — here , here , and here . In these posts, I’ve focused mainly on the gateway behavior of the IMF. This is because that’s really what the IMF is, of course… just the gateway behavior. But when your mailbox server is running Exchange 2003 or better...

Back in July of last year, I posted about how the DS/IS hotfix prereq check works and why you need to apply it. Since that time, I’ve run into one other item I wanted to talk about in the process that I didn’t provide enough detail on in the original post. Here’s a recap of the “check for the DS/IS hotfix...

Ok, so that title sort of says it all. You’ll find that installing a roll-up hotfix onto an Exchange 2000 or 2003 server may not update the display in the Exchange System Manager to reflect the new version. So what’s really going on? For example, an Exchange 2000 SP3 server is going to display...

The "Exchange 5.5 Post-SP4 Rollup" ( KB.841765 ) containing the DS/IS Hotfix required for Exchange 2003 SP1 Site Consolidation work (see my earlier posting ) has been updated as of December 16, 2004. If you've been looking for it, you can now download the updated version here .

Wow, this is a pretty cool scenario. I'm sitting on a plane, diligently reading my December 2004 Redmond Magazine . I flip the page and there's an article on Exchange 2003 consolidation. Here's where it gets good... Reading through the article by Bill Boswell, I think to myself - " wow, this sure sounds...

If you've tried to do Exchange 2003 SP1 cross-AG mixed-mode moves, you've (hopefully!) realized that you need to meet a bunch of prereqs before you can proceed. The Site Consolidation Overview KB ( KB.843104 ) lists these various prereqs, but here is the short version again for reference: Upgrade all...

If you're running Intelligent Message Filter (IMF) on an Exchange server with a 15 character servername (for instance, if your gateway with IMF installed is called ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO ), you may have noticed that IMF doesn't process the inbound messages. This is because IMF does not bind properly to a server...

I completely forgot to post this link when it first went live in mid-July! Better late than never, have a look at my Technet article on the new " Recover Mailbox Data wizard " introduced in Exchange 2003 SP1. This is the new feature built-into the Exchange System Manager GUI that allows you to bypass...

A while back, I wrote a blog post about verifying that you are ready to remove the source site after undergoing the process of SP1 mixed-mode site consolidation. See here for that intro. Since that post, I've run into a few questions about what to do if these validations never pass. Suppose you keep...

Someone sent me email the other day asking about the global configuration of the Intelligent Message Filter (IMF). " Is there anyway to configure the IMF settings at the Admin Group level or something less than global ," they asked. Well, it turns out there is a way to configure the IMF (or at least...

Windows group released an updated set of Domain Rename tools last week -- download here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/downloads/domainrename.mspx . You'll still need to understand and follow the steps for the XDR-FIXUP utility . Note the required Exchange version information from the website...

Recent newsgroup posting caught my eye: I've done cross sites moves today from 5.5 servers to 2003SP1 servers. The documentation says I need the exprofre.exe tool to update the Outlook profiles. But I don't need it, the profile connect automatically to the new server in the other administrative group...

First, my apologies to the folks I'd planned to grab lunch with while I've been out in Redmond these past few weeks. The project I'm working on has been keeping me much busier than I had expected. Maybe next time! Onward -- Someone commented a few weeks ago on an earlier post: a question about site consolidation...

A new version of the configuration utility is now posted on the web http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21E5A788-5993-40A9-BD35-B14D414E3E16&displaylang=en IMPORTANT : Before installing the new version of the configuration utility (configapp.msi) the user MUST remove the previous...

I've replied to this question a handful of times in the newsgroups, so perhaps there's a need to post the solution here as well. This is evidently happening to a number of people out there. When you upgrade your Exchange 2003 server to Exchange 2003 SP1, lots of the Exchange binaries get upgraded...

In order to to Exchange 2003 SP1 Site Consolidation (ie - cross-site/cross-administrative group moves), we require that the Active Directory Connector (ADC) be upgraded to Exchange 2003 SP1 level. In the webcast I did on Tuesday , I talked a bit about why we have this requirement, but the short version...