Exchange Ideas - Daniel Kenyon-Smith : Windows 2008

ServerManager Depreciated?

danielke — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:46:07 GMT

ServerManagerCmd is deprecated in R2 (we are trying to move away from that model although it still works) See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354(EXCHG.140).aspx#WS08R2 (The new command is now Add-WindowsFeature)

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith

Exchange 2010 Q&A

danielke — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:43:47 GMT

please Join me at this event to talk about Exchange 2010, you can register here

Combined HT and CAS

danielke — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:00:59 GMT

Take a look at the new guidance for combing HT and CAS and you can install both roles by running Setup.com /mode:install /role:H,C (nice and easy)

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith

CCR or Stretched CCR?

danielke — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:42:47 GMT

Having spoke with a few customers about whether a local CCR and SCR is the best solution or a stretched CCR across 2 data centres I thought I'd write a post.

There is no right and wrong answer to that question, in typical consulting style 'it depends'. There are various factors to take into consideration when designing the right solution for your customer:-

Network Infrastructure such as data centre locations, network bandwidth, latency, redundant links (including switches)
Customer requirements (do they require full site resilience without manual intervention)
Cost
Does the customer currently have the right skills to manage the environment
How many copies or the database are required, (2 with a stretched cluster, 3 with CCR and SCR)
Can a 3rd data centre be used to host the File Share Witness (FSW)

There are also some factors to think about from the client side, such as DNS refresh. If the customer doesn't have a stretched Virtual LAN (VLAN) between data centres, the cluster will be assigned 1 Network Name resource and 2 IP address resources (since both nodes are separate IP subnets). When the the clustered mailbox server (CMS)fails over the CMS will be assigned a different IP. As part of the cluster configuration in Windows 2008 we recommend the default DNS TTL value for the CMS Network Name resource should be changed.

By default the cluster service has a setting of 20mins, you need to be careful if you change the DNS TTL value through the DNS management console as this will be over written by the cluster settings. So if you want to change the default value from 20mins to our recommended setting of 5 mins you'll need to make the change through cluster administrator.

In order to make this change you'll need Local Admin on each node in the cluster and have full control permission to the cluster.

From a cmd prompt run - cluster.exe res <CMSNetworkNameResource> /priv HostRecordTTL=300 (where 300 is the recommended 5 mins as mentioned above)

Take the cluster offline by running Stop-ClusteredMailboxServer cmdlet in Power Shell

Bring the cluster back online by running Start-ClusteredMailboxServer cmdlet.

I’ve listed below a few risks and how they can be mitigated if you do decide to go with a stretched CCR over CCR + SCR

Risk	Mitigation
File Share Witness (FSW) Location	Locate the FSW at an alternate location to provide additional resilience to the cluster
Client cache IP refresh interval	this can configured on the cluster in Windows 2008, or a stretched VLAN can used
Logical corruption of the databases	SCR would provide this feature, but take into consideration your Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
Is the network link between physical locations resilient	Ensure there is alternate routes available
Does the network link between physical locations have low latency (below 50ms)	Test network latency
Network link between between physical locations has enough bandwidth	Test network bandwidth
Backup solution can backup any node in any physical location	ensure your chosen backup solution can back up both locations in the event of a site failure
Manual configuration required to control message routing within a data centre (SubmissionServerOverridelist)	Ensure your operational guides are up to date with how to configure mail routing
Control Client Access within a Datacentre	ISA Server
Querying of AD may take place across the data centre interconnect	None
Potential loss of email data in the event of a site failure	Email will be stored in the transport dumpster of the HT server in the failed site
Operational Management	Having an in-depth understanding of cluster technology and Window 2008 and Exchange 2007 experience

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith

Exchange 2007 SP1 certificate generation

danielke — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:35:00 GMT

I created a cert the other day for a customer so thought I'd share the Powershell command, you never know it might help!

New-ExchangeCertificate -GenerateRequest -Path c:\CompanyA.csr -KeySize 2048 -SubjectName "c=GB, s=London, l=London, o=CompanyA, cn=Mail.CompanyA.com" -DomainName Server1.CompanyA.com, Server2.CompanyA.com, Autodiscover.CompanyA.com, Server1, Server2 -PrivateKeyExportable $True

This cert will allow CompanyA to access external services to exchange, such as Exchange Active sync (EAS), Outlook Web Access (OWA), Autodiscover, Outlook Anywhere (RPC/HTTPS), etc…

Obviously in order to access these services you will need to setup ISA and publish the relevant rules. In this example Mail.CompanyA.com will be configured in ISA as a multiple path rule, allowing a single url for client access to services like OWA and EAS for example.

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith

Learning Snacks

danielke — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:07:32 GMT

Learning snacks are short and interactive presentations on popular technologies, see this one for Exchange 2010, more to follow.

Take a look at the Learning snack portal for other great presentations.

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith

Single Label Domain (SLD)

danielke — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:39:42 GMT

I have recently spoken with customers who have a single label domain and have asked the question whether the next version of Exchange will be supported. It's still a recommendation to move from a SLD, but we do support it, see for more details -

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/01/27/450514.aspx

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith

PowerShell installation Windows 2008

danielke — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:47:19 GMT

Before you install Exchange 2007 SP1 onto a Windows 2008 server you'll need ensure that prerequisites are installed, by default .NET Framework 2.0 and Microsoft Management Console (MMC) will be installed but you'll need to install Windows PowerShell.

Note: You won't need to go looking around on the Internet for PowerShell all you'll need to do is:-

Go to Control Panel
Programs and features
Select 'Turn windows features on or off'
From Server Manager, click on Features and 'Add Features'
Then scroll down and select WindowsPowershell (as Show below)

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith

E14 is coming!!

danielke — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:26:00 GMT

Take a look at the video from our lead Program Manager (Exchange product team) about the next release of Exchange called code name E14.

This is the 1^st version of Exchange that been written for Software as a Service SaS. At Microsoft we run we our own software in a dogfood environment to allow us to test our products. Since this release (as mentioned above) has been designed for SaS we’ve needed to scale the product above and beyond our internal infrastructure.

Universities are now running E14 on Exchange Labs which has allowed us to scale and test features of the product, which is running with 3.5 million users in over 15 organisations

The video gives you a little demo on:-

· Outlook Client

· OWA

· Outlook mobile

One of the real benefits is E14 is that it saves you money in these challenging financial times!

Still loads more to come, so stand by for more videos!

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith

TechNet Events

danielke — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:36:00 GMT

TechNet Events Live:

TechNet Event : Managing Windows Servers with PowerShell V2

Location: London

Date: 10 February 2009

TechNet Event: Microsoft Systems Management and understanding the role of System Center

Location: Birmingham

Date: 12 February 2009

TechNet Event: Self Service Business Intelligence

Location: Edinburgh

Date: 24 February 2009

TechNet Events: “What’s New in Office Communications Server 2007 R2”

Location: Manchester

Date: 26 February 2009

TechNet Events Online:

TechNet Live Webcasts:

TechNet Presents: Protecting SharePoint with System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

Date: 14 January 2009

Time: 16.00

TechNet Presents: Farewell old friend – how to say goodbye to SQL Server 2000

Date: 17 February 2009

Time: 16:00

TechNet Presents: Storage and Capacity Planning for Exchange 2007

Date: 4 March 2009

Time: 16:00

TechNet Presents: Office Communication Server 2007 R2 - Voice Capabilities

Date: 11 March 2009

Time: 16.00

Written by Daniel Kenyon-smith

Session 3: Messaging – 3rd September 2008

danielke — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:51:00 GMT

MCS Talks

This session will build upon the core infrastructure services discussed in Session 2 but will focus on the decisions commonly faced by enterprises when deploying Exchange Server 2007. Some of the topics we'll cover will include how to approach the consolidation of services and infrastructure, and how to achieve high levels of resilience and availability with Exchange Server 2007. Focus will be given to datacentre resilience and how to control client access, message delivery and network bandwidth. With this in mind we will cover operating system choices for Exchange Server 2007 and how to protect your data with System Centre Data Protection Manager (DPM).

Written by Daniel Kenyon-smith

To Hyper-V or not to Hyper-V?

danielke — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:56:00 GMT

It’s here! Hyper-V.

Is Exchange 2007 a good candidate for virtualisation? Well only in certain situations and for certain roles and we’ll discuss this later.

Some applications can have major advantages from increased utilization of hardware, simplified and flexible deployment. A virtualized technology is not necessarily suited to every server workload or application, in fact some are a poor fit and hamper the business benefit if virtualized. Mission critical applications are often poor candidates for virtualization, the cost/efficiency can be outweighed by the risks.

Let’s have a look at how Hyper-V should be configured for Exchange 2007 SP1:

Root OS configuration

· Separate LUN’s / Arrays for root OS, Guest OS VHD’s and Hyper-V storage

· Snapshot creation and differencing disks for VM’s are not supported for production environments

· Oversubscribing CPU’s greater than 2:1 (Virtual processor / Physical core) is not supported for Exchange

· No Exchange (or other applications) running in the root OS

Guest OS Configuration

· Windows 2008 and Exchange 2007 SP1 only

· Fixed VHD’s for virtual OS

· Account for pagefile consumption in addition to OS requirements

Exchange Storage Configuration

· Exchange storage should be separate spindles from the guest OS VHD physical storage

· Exchange storage must be using a fixed VHD, SCSI pass-through or iSCSI

· FC/SCSI HBA’s must be configured to root OS and LUN’s presented to VM’s as passthrough or VHD

o Separate iSCSI Gigabit network recommended

o Dedicated NIC

High Availability

· There is an automatic switch over of application services which doesn’t affect the integrity of the application

· Hyper-V is a good fit for the branch office scenario when servers in the branch office cannot be consolidated to a central datacenter, this could be due to bandwidth or connectivity issues (Hyper-V enables 50% reduction of physical server count in branch scenarios when HA is required)

Consolidation

In some environments (such as branch offices) consolidating servers into Hyper-V provides many benefits. The servers which are good candidates for Hyper-V consolidation are Active Directory (AD) servers, Exchange 2007 SP1 Client Access Servers (CAS) and Exchange 2007 SP1 Hub Transport Servers (HT).

· Exchange 2007 SP1 Mailbox role –

o This server role is NOT a good candidate for virtualisation as it increases the overall risk for such a critical resource.

o Adds additional complexity to an already complex configuration.

o The mailbox role is a highly utilized role and has few resources available for sharing

o Requires additional network interfaces and complexity especially with storage e.g. iSCSI

Unsupported configuration

· Unified Messaging Server Role

· Hardware VSS/VDS

· VHD Disk > 2040GB

For more information on Hyper-V consolidation see Virtualization and Consolidation with Hyper-V and Identifying Server Candidates for Virtualization

Written by Daniel Kenyon-smith

Exchange 2007 SP1 and Windows 2008

danielke — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:33:00 GMT

Now Windows 2008 has been released to manufacturing (RTM), all new implementations of Exchange 2007 SP1 can be designed using Windows 2008 Server (SP1 is a minimum requirement for Windows 2008, a full list of prerequisites can found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354.aspx ).

Windows 2008 new features

For a full new and updated list of features in Windows 2008 see the following link http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/compare-features.aspx

Topology

If you are running Windows 2008 Read-only DC’s (RODC) or Read-only Global Catalog servers (ROGC), be aware that no version of Exchange supports these new types of server roles and Exchange requires a writeable server. However Exchange 2003 SP2 and Exchange 2007 are supported in a Windows 2008 AD environment.

Windows Upgrades

In place upgrades cannot be performed when the server is running Exchange, so in order to run Windows 2008 and Exchange 2007 SP1 you will need to build a fresh server. Official guidance for migrating from Exchange 2007 running on Windows 2003 to Exchange 2007 running on Windows 2008 can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc296562.aspx

Exchange 2007 Sp1 new features when running Windows 2008

These are only a few of the new and improved features of running Exchange 2007 SP1 on Windows 2008

· Faster log shipping – Windows 2008 includes SMB v2, which increases the throughput performance by around 30-40%

· Support for multi-subnet failover cluster – Running a Windows 2008 failover cluster with Exchange 2007 SP1 includes support for geographically dispersed cluster for failover across 2 subnets

· Improvements for Client Access Servers (CAS) – Windows 2008 removes RPC Proxy service TCP connection limits. Previous versions of Windows had a limit of 65,535 connections per server, Windows 2008 now supports 65,535 connections per IP address

· Easier deployment – Windows 2008 includes Windows PowerShell

· Support of IPv6 – IP addresses can be entered using IPv4 or IPv6 (the default installation supports both versions)

Written by Daniel Kenyon-Smith