Microsoft Exchange pour Tous V2 - Microsoft Exchange made simple

Temporary post

2013-04-03T14:57:10Z

Gc servers.txt | % {&"c:\utils\experfwiz\experfwiz.ps1" -quiet -server $_ -interval 5 –Begin “04/03/2013 11:00:00” –End “04/03/2013 15:00:00“ -filepath C:\PerfLogs}

Exchange 2010 and BES server Throttling Policy settings

2013-03-27T19:10:00Z

The credit for the following article goes to Carter Tan, Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, and BlackBerry (the proudly Canadian company) as well. Thank for putting all this together Carter !

From Exchange 2010 SP1 and later, the MaxSessionsPerUser is set via Client Access Throttling Policy:

<snip>

Increase the maximum number of connections to the Address Book service

in Microsoft Exchange 2010

By default, Microsoft® Exchange 2010 limits the maximum number of connections from the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server to the Address Book service to 50. To permit the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to run, you must increase the number of permitted connections to a large value (for example, 100,000).

Before you begin: You must complete this task if the messaging server that the BlackBerry Enterprise Server uses is Microsoft Exchange 2010. If the messaging server is Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1, you can change the MaxSessionsPerUser settings using client throttling policies.

1. On the computer that hosts the Microsoft Exchange CAS server, in <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin, in a text editor, open the microsoft.exchange.addressbook.service.exe.config file.

2. Change the value of the MaxSessionsPerUser key to 100000.

3. Save and close the file.

4. Restart the Address Book service.

</snip>

The Client Access Throttling Policy recommended by RIM is as follows:

<snip>

Turn off client throttling in Microsoft Exchange 2010

By default, Microsoft® Exchange 2010 uses client throttling policies to track the bandwidth that each Microsoft Exchange user consumes and enforce bandwidth limits as necessary. The policies affect the performance of the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, so you should turn off client throttling for the Windows® account that has a Microsoft Exchange mailbox.

1. On a computer that hosts the Microsoft Exchange Management Shell, open the Microsoft Exchange Management Shell.

2. Type New-ThrottlingPolicy BESPolicy.

3. Type the following command:

Set-ThrottlingPolicy BESPolicy -RCAMaxConcurrency $null -RCAPercentTimeInAD $null -

RCAPercentTimeInCAS $null -RCAPercentTimeInMailboxRPC $null -EWSMaxConcurrency $null -

EWSPercentTimeInAD $null -EWSPercentTimeInCAS $null -EWSPercentTimeInMailboxRPC $null -

EWSMaxSubscriptions $null -EWSFastSearchTimeoutInSeconds $null -EWSFindCountLimit $null

4. Type Set-Mailbox "BESAdmin" -ThrottlingPolicy BESPolicy.

</snip>

The MaxSessionsPerUser value in the Address Book Service is limited by the RCAMaxConcurrency value, which also controls the number of MAPI connections allowed by the service account.

<snip>

The RCAMaxConcurrency parameter specifies how many concurrent connections an RPC Client Access user can have against a server running Exchange 2010 at one time. A connection is held from the moment a request is received until the connection is closed or the connection is otherwise disconnected (for example, if the user goes offline).

If users attempt to make more concurrent requests than their policy allows, the new connection attempt fails. However, the existing connections remain valid. The RCAMaxConcurrency parameter has a valid range from 0 through 2147483647 inclusive. The default value is 20. To indicate that the number of concurrent connections should be unthrottled (no limit), this value should be set to $null.

</snip>

Exchange 2010–Links to nice articles showing how to simply troubleshoot Exchange 2010 performance issues

2013-03-27T13:29:30Z

The first article is Exchange 2010 counters information from the Technet.

The principle described in the second and the third article can be applied or declined to any versions of Exchange.

1> The general counters values and thresholds for all Exchange 2010 servers, and narrowed by role:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff367896(v=exchg.141).aspx

2> From Nicole Allen from the Exchange Team : how to investigate Exchange performance issues:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2005/09/28/411674.aspx

3> An nice and concise article from one of our Exchange MVP, Ratish Nair that nicely summarizes the above articles :

http://msexchangeguru.com/2011/02/27/rpc-issues/

Windows 2012–Uninstalling AD DS services (demoting GC)–copied Powershell script from the setup

2013-02-11T03:02:35Z

#
# Windows PowerShell script for AD DS Deployment
#

Import-Module ADDSDeployment
Uninstall-ADDSDomainController `
-DemoteOperationMasterRole:$true `
-IgnoreLastDnsServerForZone:$true `
-LastDomainControllerInDomain:$true `
-RemoveApplicationPartitions:$true `
-Force:$true

UNSUPPORTED and DRAFT post - but just to play in a Lab for fun–Installing Exchange system Manager 2003 and Exmerge on a Windows 7 computer to export Exchange 2007 mailbox data to PST files

2013-02-08T19:24:12Z

Installing ExMerge:

ExMerge download link :

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2743

Installing ESM 2003 on a Windows 7 64 bits machine:

- First download the ESM for Vista :

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17836

- Second, extract the MSI (launch the .exe) somewhere

- Third, run ESMVISTA.MSI /passive

Of course an ESM 2003 on a Windows 7 is not supported, but that only means “not tested”, that actually works… now we have to test using ExMerge with this from a Windows 7 64 bits.

Well it’s just for one export right? Then we just have to make it work. But you won’t get any help if it doesn’t work or if it crashes !

Note: For a more long-term SUPPORTED solution, we’ll have to install Exchange 2007 management tools on a 32 bits machine.

Exchange 2007–A Queue Monitoring Console simply built

2013-02-07T20:53:36Z

Using my DTW (Document-Tool-Walkthru) Excel based tool that you can download through : http://www.opsvault.com/how-to-build-a-simple-and-efficient-windows-monitoring-solution-dtw/

Here is a nice HTA console quickly built with the above Excel tool that I called “DTW” tool :

And here is the code generated with the help of my DTW. Copy and paste the below code into a notepad that you save as “LocalQueueMonitor.hta”.

The below generated HTA file will only run on a local Exchange 2007 server, but the DTW enables you to easily build a console that will run against remote server(s). Plus, you can play with the “Console initialization parameters” as you want to customize the look and feel and behaviour of your console !

Here is the code, generated by the DTW tool, and that will to generate an HTA file that will monitor the local Exchange 2007 server queues:

Sub Window_OnLoad
On Error Resume Next

' Console initialization
Monitor.DisplayType = "1"
Monitor.ReportValueType = "0"
Monitor.MaximumScale = "100"
Monitor.MinimumScale = "0"
Monitor.ShowLegend = "1"
Monitor.ShowToolbar = "1"
Monitor.ShowScaleLabels = "1"
Monitor.ShowHorizontalGrid = "1"
Monitor.ShowVerticalGrid = "1"
Monitor.ShowValueBar = "1"
Monitor.ManualUpdate = "0"
Monitor.Highlight = "1"
Monitor.ReadOnly = "1"
Monitor.MonitorDuplicateInstances = "1"
Monitor.UpdateInterval = "1"
Monitor.DisplayFilter = "1"
Monitor.BackColorCtl = "-2147483633"
Monitor.ForeColor = "-1"
Monitor.BackColor = "-1"
Monitor.GridColor = "8421504"
Monitor.TimeBarColor = "255"
Monitor.BorderStyle = "2"
Monitor.TimeAxisLabels = "1"
Monitor.Tooltip = "1"
Monitor.NextCounterColor = "4"
Monitor.NextCounterWidth = "0"
Monitor.NextCounterLineStyle = "0"
Monitor.MaximumSamples = "200"
Monitor.GraphTitle = "CPU and Submission queues"
Monitor.YAxisLabel = "Y label"
Monitor.DigitGrouping = "1"
Monitor.WrapTimeLine = "1"
Monitor.DataSourceType = "1"
'Monitor.SqlDsnName =
'Monitor.SqlLogSetName =
Monitor.LogFileCount = "0"
Monitor.AmbientFont = "1"
'Monitor.LegendColumnWidths =
Monitor.LegendSortDirection = "-2"
Monitor.LegendSortColumn = "0"
Monitor.CounterCount = "4"
Monitor.MaximumSamples = "100"

' Counters list added to the console
Monitor.Counters.Add("\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Aggregate Delivery Queue Length (All Queues)")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Messages Completed Delivery Per Second")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Poison Queue Length")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Retry Mailbox Delivery Queue Length")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Retry Non-Smtp Delivery Queue Length")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Retry Remote Delivery Queue Length")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Submission Queue Length")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Unreachable Queue Length")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\Memory\Available Mbytes")
Monitor.Counters.Add("\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time")

' Counter drawing customization
Monitor.Counters.Item(19).Color = "100"
Monitor.Counters.Item(19).Width = "4"
Monitor.Counters.Item(19).LineStyle = "2"
Monitor.Counters.Item(19).ScaleFactor = "0.001"
Monitor.Counters.Item(19).Show = "1"
Monitor.Counters.Item(19).Selected = "0"
Monitor.Counters.Item(19).StatisticStatus = "0"

End Sub

</SCRIPT>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Performance Analysis–Excel (2010) automation : how to create graphs from a Perfmon-generated CSV file–Essay#1

2013-01-29T03:30:23Z

Hi all,

Today I’m concentrating my efforts into generating graphs as painless as possible for many data collected on Exchange servers. I’ll start by generating graphs from the two following counters which give an idea of the load of the servers:

- Active User Count

- RPC Operations/sec

The first step (Essay#1) is to generate as quickly as possible a nice graph to display the trend for these counters.

The second step (Essay#2) will be to generate quickly also graphs from a bunch of files located on a folder.

The third step (Essay#3) will be to quickly generate these graphs on a separate Excel spreadsheet, or even better on a Word document to start a report

the fourth step (Essay #4) will then be to generate the most significant graphs to generate a report that will enable a good graphical performance analysis of many servers at a time, simply using Excel and Word.

First you need to collect Perfmon data and configure the Perfmon data collector to dump statistics on .CSV files. You can also chose to convert existing BLG files to .CSV files using RELOG for example … or loading .BLG files onto a Perfmon console, and export the data on .CSV files … many ways to do this, but it’s not the purpose of this post.

Second, we will then generate our graph with the above mentioned two counters (as a start of my live project).

You have to open Excel 2010, show the “Developer” tab, and copy the following code :

Sub Macro_Search_Active_User()

'NAME the first column which is the timeline column
Range("A:A").Name = "Time_Line"

'FIND the column showing the number of active user count
    Cells.Find(What:="Active User Count", After:=ActiveCell, LookIn:=xlFormulas, _
        LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
        MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False).Select
'NAME the column just found
Range(Selection, Selection.End(xlDown)).Name = "Active_User_Count"

'FIND the column showing the RPC activity
    Cells.Find(What:="RPC Operations/sec", After:=ActiveCell, LookIn:=xlFormulas, _
        LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
        MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False).Select
'NAME the column just found
Range(Selection, Selection.End(xlDown)).Name = "RPC_Ops_Per_Sec"

'SELECT then all these 3 colums
Range("Time_Line, Active_User_Count, RPC_Ops_Per_Sec").Select
Range("A1").Activate

'GENERATE the Excel graph
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddChart2(227, xlLine).Select
ActiveChart.SetSourceData Source:=Range("Time_Line, Active_User_Count, RPC_Ops_Per_Sec")
'NAME the graph to easily retrieve it on other code lines
ActiveChart.Parent.Name = "ActiveUsersAndRPCOps"

'This step is optional : DELETE the X axe label - "xlCategory" (or find an equivalent function to deactivate it) – because you may want to keep the X-axe time data
ActiveChart.Axes(xlCategory).Select
Selection.Delete

' Add a secondary Axe for one of the data series(no matter which one)
' .. Select series nb 1
ActiveChart.FullSeriesCollection(1).Select
' .. add data as a secondart axe
ActiveChart.FullSeriesCollection(1).AxisGroup = 2
' .. Color selected collection to in RGB(xxx,xxx,xxx) with xxx btw 0 and 255
    With Selection.Format.Line
        .Visible = msoTrue
        .ForeColor.RGB = RGB(255, 0, 0)
        .Transparency = 0
    End With
' .. Color the axis linked to the secondary collection into the same color
' ... Select the secondary axe first
ActiveChart.Axes(xlValue, xlSecondary).Select
' ... then set the selection properties : line visible, color and not transparent ...
    With Selection.Format.Line
        .Visible = msoTrue
        .ForeColor.RGB = RGB(255, 0, 0)
        .Transparency = 0
    End With
    ActiveChart.Axes(xlValue, xlSecondary).Select
    With Selection.TickLabels.Font
        .Color = RGB(255, 0, 0)
    End With

'. Same SELECTing and FORMATting the second data collection and axe
ActiveChart.FullSeriesCollection(2).Select
    With Selection.Format.Line
        .Visible = msoTrue
        .ForeColor.RGB = RGB(0, 130, 0)
        .Transparency = 0
    End With
ActiveChart.Axes(xlValue).Select
    With Selection.Format.Line
        .Visible = msoTrue
        .ForeColor.RGB = RGB(0, 130, 0)
        .Transparency = 0
    End With

'Finally, delete the title
ActiveChart.ChartTitle.Select
Selection.Delete

End Sub

Execute the macro and you’ll instantly have the following type of graph:

Next I’ll try (and succeed hopefully) to generate the above graph type for many CSV Perfmon files stored in a directory.

Exchange 2010–Dumpster V2.0 questions and answers

2013-01-18T02:52:56Z

Ø Does the archive database has a separate dumpster with a separate retention ?

Remember in my presentation, I talked about the dumpster v2.0 and the purposes of the “Deletions”, “Versions”, and “Purges” subfolders. Note that these will be used only if you activate the “Single Item Recovery” or the “Litigation Hold” feature on your mailboxes :

The archive mailbox, which can be either in the same database as the “live” mailbox or in a separate, dedicated database that you can chose anytime (when creating the live mailbox or you can also move the archive after a while).

So each archive mailbox is always associated with the “live” mailbox. And each archive mailbox has exactly the same Dumpster v2.0 structure than the “live” mailbox:

Ø What happens when I move an email from my inbox to the archive and then delete it.

If you move a mail from the “live” mailbox to the archive mailbox, the mail will reside in the archive mailbox. Then, if you delete it, it will go on the Dumpster V2.0 from the archive mailbox, on the “Deletions” sub-folder of the archive mailbox’ dumpster v2.0. If you chose to purge it using the “Recover deleted items” menu from Outlook, e.g :

… then the mails will go in the “Purge” items, still on the dumpster of the archive mailbox.

Ø How long would the deleted copy be kept?

- The time period by which the deleted data is maintained is based on the deleted item retention window. The default time period is 14 days in Exchange 2010 and is configurable per database or per mailbox. The following cmdlets let you alter this behavior:

o For the mailbox database: Set-MailboxDatabase -DeletedItemRetention

o For the mailbox: Set-Mailbox -RetainDeletedItemsFor

- Also, to avoid denial of service attacks by placing lot of data into the dumpster (lots of spams for example, that the user deletes), you can configure the dumpster to have a quota. By default, the database-level limits are configured for the dumpster. You can use the RecoverableItemsWarningQuota and/or the RecoverableItemsQuota parameters from the mailbox settings to set the dumpster’s quota and the behavior of the dumpster in case the quota is reached.

o Recoverable Items Warning Quota : lets the dumpster purge the oldest mails to permit new mails to be placed in the dumpster

o Recoverable Items Quota : prevents any deletions on the “live” mailbox when the dumpster’s quota is reached.

More information about all the answers given in the mail can be found on the following links :

Understanding Recoverable Items

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee364755(v=exchg.141).aspx

Recoverable Items Folder

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2009/09/25/3408389.aspx

Exchange 2007–Event ID 9786 potentially followed by Event ID 623 possible causes

2013-01-11T14:40:56Z

Authors : Levon Kohoutek (for the question) and Nagesh Mahadev (for the answer)

Question :

Exchange 2007 SP3 RU6 - Server 2008 SP2 environment.

Quite frequently we’re receiving ExchangeIS Event 9786’s potentially followed by ESE Event ID: 623 “The version store for this instance (x) has reached its maximum size of xxxMb.” errors. At this point we’re unsure as to what action is precipitating this (e.g. performing a search in Outlook). Also we may have high item counts, and we know we have to do a procdump of Store.

The question is as follows:

When viewing the 623 Event in Event Viewer, we can see that it cites a possible long-running transaction as the cause. It identifies this possible transaction by a SessionID, Session-context, and Session-context ThreadID.

What the SessionID is referring to ? Is there a way to derive anything identifiable (user/mailbox/etc…) from that number and if so, how?

Answer :

The SessionID represents a particular connection between the store process and ESE. It has no bearing on the client at the other end of the request. It is only helpful when looking at dump of store process. While ESE.DLL is tightly coupled with the Store.exe, ESE is a database engine and serves clients. Similar to how SQL would handle multiple clients issuing requests against a server, except in this case, the clients are different threads within the store. Within a procdump, you *may* be able to locate a session (represented by a JSES object) and tie it back to a particular user depending upon context – again typically within a procdump only.

About event 9786 :

Event Type:        Warning
Event Source:    MSExchangeIS
Event Category:                Database Storage Engine
Event ID:              9786
Date:                     10/18/2007
Time:                     1:34:04 PM
User:                     N/A
Computer:          BORO
Description:
The database engine has consumed 90% of the "b-trees" resource (60820 used out of a maximum of 67096) for storage group 'GLDSTORE1'.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 46 43 42 FCB

==> This can indicate that we have a user that sends a huge attachment to a large amount of people for example, or there is a large message that is looping between two servers, anyways, there may be a leak in the ESE process due to an other database usage pattern.

- To see what happens exactly, we have to get a dump and use the userdmp3.pl script on the Dump to see if there was a message leak and or if someone send a large message to a ton of people.

LogParser or ExRAP tools “Log row too long” issue

2012-12-11T16:38:46Z

Bookmark to Rhoderick’s blog :

http://blogs.technet.com/b/rmilne/archive/2012/07/05/how-to-fix-log-parser-log-row-too-long.aspx

Note : The maximum value is *not* 0xFFFFFFFF. It’s actually 0x00785111 (hard coded in the LogParser code)

To determine the value to put on the below registry key, take the performance log file that you have in CSV format (works only on CSV formats), copy the headers only, and paste it in Notepad, then save it as a txt file. The size of the txt file determines the minimum value we need to put on the CSVInMaxRowSize attribute (in Bytes) :

x86

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Log Parser

REG_DWORD CSVInMaxRowSize 393216 decimal

To automate adding on x86 machines:

REG.exe ADD "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Log Parser" /v CSVInMaxRowSize /t REG_DWORD /d 393216

x64

HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Log Parser

REG_DWORD CSVInMaxRowSize 393216 decimal

To automate adding on x64 machines:

REG.exe ADD "HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Log Parser" /v CSVInMaxRowSize /t REG_DWORD /d 393216