I am just posting this here since it's a bit of information I regularly provide to customers and I always have trouble remembering where I found it (yes I know I should create a browser bookmark, but I thought I would share!). When you deploy Office 365 one of the most difficult (and poorly documented...

Quite often when I am working through Jetstress escalations I will ask to see the BLG files from the test. These files contain performance counter information that was logged during the test run and they show us a lot more about what is really going on than the data in the report HTML files. To keep...

If there is one area of Exchange 2010 that was poorly documented and poorly understood it has to be database maintenance.  The problem stemmed from the significant changes that we made in the store for Exchange 2010 and a confusion of terms. This has led many people in the field to get confused...

Last week when the internal announcement was made to say that SP2 had been completed and was scheduled for release, I added a few blog articles onto my “to do” list.  Imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up to find that the internets were crammed full of SP2 news and that most of the articles...

I recently authored a post over at the Exchange Team Blog about Exchange ESE and Windows Disk Timeout values. http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/11/17/windows-disk-timeouts-and-exchange-server-2010.aspx Whilst writing that article and especially researching how ESE timeouts have evolved...

This has been irritating me more and more recently – I am generally quite a tolerant person, but sometimes its the smallest things that irritate you the most!.  Anyway, it looks like there is a fix available.. I am out for most of this week without lab access so I cant test this, however I wanted...

MCM Rotation 10 has just completed and was the first rotation that I have been involved as an instructor (albeit remotely on this occasion!).  I noticed that Jeff Guillet had posted his experience here so I thought I would share it to give some more insight into what the program entails… http:/...

I recently wrote about configuring Office 365 hybrid to get cross premises availability working, since that article a number of people have asked me about certificate planning. This is pretty well understood for an Exchange deployment, but what names are required for an Office 365 Hybrid configuration...

The Microsoft Office Services Diagnostics and Logging (MOSDAL) tool has been around for a while, certainly most BPOS customers will have come across it before… however it has now been updated to provide AD FS authentication diagnostic information so its now useful for Office 365 deployments as well!...

All the way back in May 2009 I had just completed my Exchange 2007 Microsoft Certified Master rotation in Redmond, on my return I decided that I would write up my experience… it was actually quite emotional re-reading this post, many of the people I went through this experience with are now good friends...

** Updated 24-08-2011 to include enable-OrganizationCustomization step as an optional extra. I have been working with a number of customers and consultants recently who have been keen to explain to me just how difficult they are finding the configuration of Exchange Rich Coexistence or Hybrid Deployment...

I recently wrote about gathering user profile data for Exchange Server 2003 and 2007 by using the Exchange Server Profile Analyzer tool.  As a re-cap the EPA tool uses WebDAV to interrogate the mailboxes and generates user profile data, including.. messages sent per mailbox per day messages received...

This has been steadily escalating this afternoon and the decision has finally been taken to remove RU4 from the download servers.  From what little I know one of the changes that was made to fix a bug in Exchange has highlighted a latent problem within Outlook.  Both the Exchange team and the...

So, this is something we have all wanted (Expected?) to see in Exchange for years!  It seems that finally we will have a solution for PST ingestion directly into Exchange… As soon as I can get my grubby hands on a copy I will provide some more information – this is HUGE news Full article is here...

So.. with all of the launch fuss I failed to notice that the service descriptions for Office 365 had also been released as non-beta for the first time!  When I am working with new customers and they want to know “what” Office 365 is in more detail than the shiny marketing slides can explain, I generally...

Throttling policies in Exchange Server 2010 have been an often discussed and much misunderstood part of Exchange over the last few years.  Especially with Exchange Online!  However, Michael Mainer has written a great article about Exchange Throttling policies on his blog.. well worth a read...

This great news just arrived in my inbox from Kurt DelBene…  I have been working with the Beta of Office 365 for a little under 12 months now and its great to finally see it unleashed upon the world! Office 365:  Open for Business Today, I’m proud to announce that we launched our cloud services...

If there is one thing that has always been lacking in Exchange its a mechanism to inventory and report on your infrastructure.  Personally I think its something that should be in the Exchange Management Console, but that's a different story… The good news is that Steve Goodman has released an excellent...

I have just been told that RU4 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 has been released to web for… Download Link is here… http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26554 Issues that the update rollup resolves 2537099 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2537099/ ) "80040154" error message when...

One thing I often do when I am learning a new area of technology is look for webcasts or recordings from TechED about that topic.  I find that it helps me understand topics much more quickly by watching a presentation and then going off afterwards and reading the deeper technical documentation once...

Last Updated : 21/06/2011 The field guide is released at major intervals on the Exchange Team Blog, however I have decided to keep dot release updates here to ensure that the very latest information is available to those that do a lot of Jetstress testing (yes, there are some of us that do a lot of stress...

Over the past 18 months I have been dealing with more and more cloud engagements.  One thing that crops up during the planning phase of all of these engagements is network link latency and bandwidth requirements. Bandwidth prediction is something I am working on in the background, but network link...

Recently one of our partner has highlighted an issue in the current version of Jetstress that means the test may run in performance mode when in fact it should be running in stress mode. What's the difference between performance and stress mode? Put simply, performance mode validates the storage performance...

I don't usually like posting to other peoples blogs, but the one I will make an exception for is the Exchange Team Blog.  I specifically want to raise awareness of Scott’s HA misconceptions article – not only does it clear up quite a few misconceptions, but its also a highly condensed HA primer...

I have been involved with a few escalations recently (I don't even work in support!), the cases have been mostly due to Jetstress tests failing – typically then the relationship between customer and storage vendor becomes more hostile and eventually someone points the finger at Jetstress or Exchange...