Download Frequently in support, we encounter several backup related calls for Exchange 2010 databases. A sample of common issues we hear from our customers are: “My backup software is not able to take a successful snapshot of the databases” “My backups have been failing...

Wanted to write a quick post about a tool that can help you find and catalogue various PowerShell scripts that are scattered on various online communities or – possibly – your internal company network shares. The tool is called Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell and has entered the public...

When managing an Exchange 2010 server organization in a production environment, an Exchange Administrator many times wants to keep track of things like Database Latency, Disk Space problems, search issues, user needs, and more. PowerShell was created to give us more power in our admin efforts, and many...

During the installation of Exchange rollup update for Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010, some of the Exchange services e.g. the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service may fail to start. This issue occurs because there is a problem with the way in which the Exchange services interact with Forefront...

To enforce messaging policies, organizations frequently need to inspect messages based on different properties such as sender, recipients, subject, headers and attachments, and take the necessary actions such as adding disclaimers, adding headers, adding a prefix to the message subject, setting or modifying...

EDIT 06/18/2010 : Few post changes to match the newest version of the script. Working in Exchange Customer Service and Support, we often see cases where user performance, or overall server performance, is impacted because of a high number of items in critical folders within user's mailboxes. This...

We had a case come in a few months ago where we were restoring Message Tracking Logs from backups and couldn't use the Get-MessageTrackingLog properly when specifying an -EndDate parameter. Consequently, we run into this same problem when trying to load up logs from other servers as well. Basically...

I am always on the lookout for new and interesting scripts that are worth writing and worth writing about. Recently, I got two requests for scripts that I thought were useful so felt I would share them here. Both of these scripts were used to solve real world customer requests and both of them will be...

Hi from Alabama. This is a follow-up to my last post , which was about building a lab with Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2003 using a PowerShell script. This post is about building the same lab using Exchange Server 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008. I just got a new server and started playing with 64...

A little trick from Jeffrey Snover over on PowerShell team blog: Speeding Up PowerShell Startup . Running the script mentioned by Jeffrey speeds up PowerShell startup times. Yes, hard to believe at first, but after having run this on a few servers, as Jeffrey says - the reaction is "Wow!" Paste...

We're exploring making improvements to the experience of configuring Transport Rules. As part of this, we want to make sure we account for exactly how you are using Transport Rules today. The script linked to below will output some Transport Rules usage data. If you are using transport rules today in...

Microsoft's Usability group is recruiting IT administrators who have experience working with PowerShell for upcoming usability studies. This is a unique opportunity to provide feedback and improve the user experience of PowerShell version 2. The study will run from March 4th to March 10th. This is...

While working with (playing around with) PowerShell on Exchange 2007 I found myself typing in the same series of commands over and over. These were commands that I was using on a regular, repeated basis while managing my particular environment. Being the efficient (lazy?) person that I am, I did a bit...

One of the more common requests we hear is that customers want a way to export the configuration settings for their Client Access servers. One reason for this is due to the unique way in which a Client Access server stores configuration settings and data. Client Access servers store their configuration...

If you've spent any time in the PowerShell , then you're probably familiar with get-command (gcm). Here's an example I threw together taking that to the next level. This will help you when you can't remember the command you want to use. Say you want to find all shell commands that deal with DSNs but...

One of the strengths of Windows PowerShell scripting is the ability to leverage both .NET and COM objects. Scripting with System.DirectoryServices is now possible, the main purpose of this blog post is to provide a sample script used to bulk modify Active Directory objects. Specifically - what this script...

EDIT: This post has been updated on 10/15/2007 to incorporate feedback we received since original posting. So my last post demonstrated a script that used a .net method and some functions within the script to take care of a problem that was a little hard to solve manually. The feedback I received was...

For those who wish to script the migration from Lotus Domino to Exchange 2007, PowerShell can be extremely helpful. I wrote the below script for a few customers who wanted more extensive control over their migration, this script can be easily tweaked to meet individual needs. DISCLAIMER: This script...

One of the things that I have liked the most about the move to Exchange 2007 is the introduction of PowerShell into the management of Exchange. PowerShell is a very powerful tool that the Exchange administrator now has in their arsenal. Many regular, advanced and or mundane tasks can now be automated...

The Exchange 2007 scripting contest has concluded and a winner has been selected. Congratulations to Nick Smith of Colorado State University on his winning entry: " Return the smallest database "! Description: Locates the smallest mailbox database (in terms of size) for automatic provisioning process...

Mihai Jalobeanu and Vivek Sharma have blogged about the Exchange 2007 PowerShell Scriptacular demo pack . Some really cool scripts in there: addfakeservers.ps1 and removefakeservers.ps1 NOT standalone . Makes it looks like your demo setup has more than one server. We use a very useful feature of Exchange...

In the display of true geekness, Satish Mathew and Marcel Ortiz have created a PowerShell script that will play Jingle Bells on your computer speaker. No longer will your machines have to sit in silence! You can run this on any computer that has PowerShell installed. I have attached the script to this...

In this video, Vivek Sharma (Program Manager) and Mihai Jalobeanu (Software Dev Engineer) show several aspects of Exchange Management Shell in action. This was a part of their Interview that we posted here . This video is about 10 minutes long, and can be found here: - The Exchange...

This is an (almost 23 minutes long) interview with Vivek Sharma (Program Manager) and Mihai Jalobeanu (Software Dev Engineer) from Exchange System Management team, talk about Exchange Management Shell (aka Monad). There will be a follow-up video with some demos that they did as a part of this interview...

With Exchange Management Shell available in Exchange Server 2007, you can now do almost every single admin task with an interactive command line (in addition to the traditional GUI) - you can use it to quickly check settings, create reports, check the health of your system or best of all: automate all...