Harold Wong's Blog Site

With Windows 7 RTM scheduled for no later than July 31st, I’m wondering if anyone would be interested in me hosting another set of Install Fests based on final (released) code?  Before you get too carried away, I will NOT be able to provide a free copy of Windows 7.  Instead, I am thinking that the folks who have a TechNet Plus Subscription or MSDN Subscription or folks who work for companies with a Volume License agreement (and owns the client) should be able to download the final bits shortly after RTM. 

The agenda would be similar to the three I held in Irvine and San Diego in June.  I will start with a 60 – 90 minute presentation on Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7.  The rest of the time (afternoon, evening) would be used to help everyone install Windows 7 (clean, in-place upgrade from Windows Vista, Migrate from Windows XP, etc.).  Although we would be using release code, I would still insist on people bringing a non-production machine as I cannot be responsible for that.

If you are interested or have any other thoughts / ideas on this, please post comments for all to see.  Thanks!

Harold Wong

I don’t usually create one huge blog post with a boat load of videos embedded, but I decided to do it and see what happens.  Below are seven different videos that include interviews of different Exchange Product Group folks including Becky Benfield, Scott Schnoll, Kristian Andaker and Matt Gossage.  I chose topics of interest like Backup strategy or Database Availability Groups and Transitions from Exchange Server 2003 / 2007 to Exchange Server 2010.

Becky Benfield on Site Resiliency

Scott Schnoll on High Availability (DAGs)

Scott Schnoll on Backup

Kristian Andaker on OWA

Kristian Andaker on Transitioning to Exchange Server 2010

Matt Gossage on Storage improvements

Snippet of Workshop led by Becky Benfield on High Availability

If you would like to download the actually WMV files (both high fidelity and lower fidelity), please visit Edge.  The direct links are listed below.

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Interview-with-Becky-Benfield-on-Exhcnage-2010-Site-Resiliency-at-Tech-Ed-2009/

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Interview-with-Scott-Schnoll-on-Exchange-2010-High-Availability/

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Interview-with-Scott-Schnoll-on-Backup-Strategy-in-Exchange-2010/

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Interview-with-Kristian-Andaker-on-Exchange-2010-OWA/

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Interview-with-Kristian-Andaker-on-Transitions-to-Exchange-Server-2010/

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Snippet-of-Exchange-2010-High-Availability-Workshop-led-by-Becky-Benfield/

Harold Wong

Objectives of the project:  What problem did you set out to solve?  Really just getting a look at the product from a document management standpoint and team workspace.

Are you piloting or deploying the products?  Piloted.  We are not deploying to production other than Project Server. Xerox Docushare, Heat and Document Locator won out over SharePoint by the powers that be. As an IT guy, I would have preferred 1 unified system, but I don’t always get my way. SharePoint with some well written webparts could do the job of all the other pieces of software.  I guess that’s the biggest problem with SharePoint is that it isn’t ready to go out of the box. It takes a lot of dev work to compete.

Products used in the project (all that apply):  Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007,  ESX.

Project description:  I fired up SharePoint sites for a data and voice support teams to interact and move tickets back and forth.  They actually still use it as they move off to Heat.  No one really disliked SharePoint but no one fell in love with it either.  One surprising win was that we fired up Project Web Access on top of SharePoint, and that has been a huge hit with our PMs.

Were the objective stated at the beginning satisfied?  Did you solve the problem?  The objective was satisfied, however Xerox won out and no one really liked SharePoint enough to stick with it through much of a pilot.  The exception being Project Server.

Are you going to save money?  How much over how many years?  Not Applicable.

What do you think about the IT Pro Momentum program?  Would you have done this project without the IT Pro Momentum program? Any suggestions for improvements are appreciated.  We tried to make this as easy as possible on everyone.  Very helpful, I think I used free support here for help with SharePoint workflows.

Harold Wong

Objectives of the project:  What problem did you set out to solve?  CEO To use all the new features of Office 2007 and to easily deploy an email server at a remote location.

Are you piloting or deploying the products?  Deployed.  We started minimal testing by moving some IT Mailboxes over to Exchange 2007 from Exchange 2003.

Products used in the project (all that apply):  Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2007, ESX with VMotion and HA. 

Project description:  We deployed Exchange Servers in a main datacenter and a remote location with less than stable bandwidth.  I was able to setup SCR for a storage group with all users from another office, overnighted the server to the other office, let the seeding catch up and failed over that SG, thereby providing a server to that office without having to move very large mailboxes (10GB+), including our CEO’s mailbox (our CEO set the requirement of an exchange server local to him).  The main challenge was training users on new version of Outlook/Office.  It took many of them a few months to really catch on. 

Were the objective stated at the beginning satisfied?  Did you solve the problem?  Yes. The SCR server-move trick was a huge win.  Plus, we are now fully utilizing Transport Rules. 

Are you going to save money?  How much over how many years?  The objective was not to save money, but to maximize our investment that was already made on Microsoft.

What do you think about the IT Pro Momentum program?  Would you have done this project without the IT Pro Momentum program? Any suggestions for improvements are appreciated.  We tried to make this as easy as possible on everyone.  Good.  Pretty straight forward.

Harold Wong

First, for those of you who are still running Windows 7 Beta, you may want to consider updating to Release Candidate soon.  Starting July 1st, the Beta will start rebooting every two hours and then expire (stop functioning) on August 1st.  Unless you really enjoy having your computer reboot every two hours, I suggest you make the change soon.

The Release Candidate is good until June of 2010 so you will have plenty of time to test it out.  Also, the Release Candidate download program will end on August 15th.  What does this statement mean???  It means the RC bits will no longer be available for download once August 15th comes.  You will still be able to install (provided you already have the bits) and get a key if necessary. 

Before you get upset, remember that Windows 7 will RTM by the end of July and be on the shelves by October 22nd.  If the product has already RTM’d why do you still want to install RC code after August anyways???

If you are using Windows 7 Release Candidate right now and would like to provide feedback on various aspects of the Operating System, please visit input.microsoft.com.

Harold Wong

Objectives of the project:  What problem did you set out to solve?  CEO demanded real-time presence info.

Are you piloting or deploying the products?  Deployed.  We started with a pilot between engineering teams. Presence, IM and outlook integration was very smooth so we deployed company wide.

Products used in the project (all that apply):  Windows Server 2003, Office Communications Server 2007, SQL Server 2005 x64, ESX with VMotion and HA. 

Project description:  This one was pretty easy. We put together some user training based on quick reference sheets for communicator available from office.microsoft.com. Once the users knew what to expect we deployed via logon script. Everyone is very happy with it including use on Windows Mobile and Blackberry. When will there be an iphone client? Keep in mind our deployment was just IM and presence and that made it very easy to get started. We are thinking of adding voice in the next year or two. The biggest challenge in our deployment was getting PIC going. It wasn’t originally in scope, but we figured no biggie to add it once we bought the licenses. We purchased a supposedly certified godaddy.com UC cert that just would not work with Yahoo or AOL, but was fine with MSN. As soon as I switched to an entrust cert, PIC worked like a champ.

Were the objective stated at the beginning satisfied?  Did you solve the problem?  Yes and Yes. Our CEO loves the app, some users just don’t like IM at all but if the boss is happy, I’m happy.

Are you going to save money?  How much over how many years?  I don’t see a cost savings here yet. I’ll get back to you when we implement voice.

What do you think about the IT Pro Momentum program?  Would you have done this project without the IT Pro Momentum program? Any suggestions for improvements are appreciated.  We tried to make this as easy as possible on everyone.  Good site, I like the re-design. Between IT Pro, Technet Edge, MSDN, Technet (and I’m sure a few others), it’d be nice if one of these sites would be more of an easy to search/sort unified gateway to all knowledge known to Microsoft.

Harold Wong

Objectives of the project:  What problem did you set out to solve?  Report MVLS licensing along with software deployment and asset intelligence.

Are you piloting or deploying the products?  We have deployed fully to meet our MVLS true-up deadline. We also successfully used it for generic reporting and software management.

Products used in the project (all that apply):  Windows Server 2003, System Center Configuration Manager, SQL Server 2005 x64, ESX with Vmotion and HA

Project description: We had no idea how many of what product was deployed to whom, so asset intelligence was key for us. As it turned out we found out we had built project pro into our default image and rolled it out to the entire company going way over our EA licensed amount. We then used SCCM to silently uninstall project from over 100 PCs.

Were the objective stated at the beginning satisfied?  Did you solve the problem?  Absolutely. MVLS true up has never been easier, and as we learn the software it’s becoming more and more helpful. Our helpdesk loves to be able to pull reports and drill down into machine details on the fly.

Are you going to save money?  How much over how many years?  More saving time than money. Software deployment and reporting have become very easy. We are a large, understaffed shop. This automation has been huge for us.

What do you think about the IT Pro Momentum program?  Would you have done this project without the IT Pro Momentum program? Any suggestions for improvements are appreciated.  We tried to make this as easy as possible on everyone.  I like the program, I certainly would have done this project without it as it was a job requirement; however, I do like the support resources.

Harold Wong

I am very sorry that it took so long for me to get all the questions answered from my webcast.  I do appreciate everyone’s patience.  As there were quite a few repeats on some questions, I chose to answer the first one and deleted the subsequent ones.  If you find that I truly did not answer your question, please feel free to post a comment on this blog and I will address it.  Thank you!

Harold Wong

TechNet Webcast: Exchange 2010 Archiving and Retention

Question: you are great although you reply very late, what is difference the third party archiving and E2K10 archiving

Answer: We’ve heard from customers that other archiving solutions:

• Has a poor user experience: unfamiliar, disjoint search and access experience between live and archived data, and “clunky” integration with OL or OWA.

• Complex Admin experience: client add-ons create install/perf problems for OL, separate archiving infrastructure to manage, search, etc.

• High costs: separate licenses, management and storage costs, etc.

We also received feedback from customers that they would like to have integrated capabilities to preserve and discover e-mail data out of the box. Our goal was not to completely replace solutions from third parties. With that said, it is hard to compare and contrast our out of box solution with third party solutions.

Question: can we send additional questions to the blog?

Answer: You are more than welcome to post questions via my blog or send via email.

Question: Can we import PST's from other exchange groups, organizations, etc to index and run discovery searches on detached from our live mailboxes?

Answer: If you can open the PST and copy the items into the Exchange 2010 database, you can perform discovery searches. You cannot link to other Exchange organizations and perform a multi Org search.

Question: is 64bit HW required for storage improvement?

Answer: Exchange Server 2010 requires 64 bit hardware and a 64 bit OS.

Question: there are other archiving products in market like symantec enterprise vault etc. How different is archiving in Microsoft Exchange 2010 from these products?

Answer: Suffice it to say, we are different. I know these companies will continue to evolve their products as well and will likely enhance what we are doing in Exchange 2010 with their product line..

Question: I was told that Archiving feature is not available in Exchange 2010 beta. Will it be available on R1. If yes, do you have ETA for R1.

Answer: This is correct. The Archive Mailbox did not become available until post Beta builds of Exchange 2010. I do not have an ETA for the next beta version of Exchange 2010 at this time. However, I am working to create a screencast that shows both the administrative and client experience for Archiving so you can see what it looks like.

Question: I was told that Outlook 2010 will be the version of Outlook to access Archiving feature. Will Outlook 2010 in Cached Exchange mode to access archiving mails on Exchange 2010.

Answer: Outlook 2010 will need to have live access to the Exchange 2010 server in order to access the Archive Mailbox node.

Question: As you mentioned, the purpose of archiving is to reduce backup of production database. However, I was told that Exchange 2010 only supports active mailbox and archived mailbox on the same database. Will Microsoft will fix it on RTM Exchange 2010.

Answer: It is true that Exchange Server 2010 requires the Primary and Archive Mailbox to be located in the same database. Per discussions from Tech Ed, we are investigating other options for post RTM.

Question: if we are archiving enable with E2k7 and E2K3 using 3rd paty, can we use the same data for E2K10 archiving. we are using SQL 2008 as Database.

Answer: The 3^rd Party archiving tools do not function the same as Exchange 2010 Archiving, so you will not be able to import the data from those tools into Exchange 2010 nor will you be able to natively access those from Exchange 2010 without the 3^rd Party component.

Question: archive mailbox is locally stored, like pst?

Answer: No, the Archive Mailbox node is stored on the Exchange Server and is only accessible when there is a live connection to Exchange.

Question: Is the archive mailbox space allocated at time of creating or does it grow dynamically upto the limit set?

Answer: Like any mailbox in an Exchange database, the space is not actually set aside and will grow as the mailbox grows.

Question: What are the changes in terms of single instance storage within Exchange 2010?

Answer: We no longer have single instance storage in Exchange Server 2010.

Question: Can all email both internal and to/from external parties be forced to go into the archive and can users be restricted from deleting email in the archive? For eDiscovery, you need the ability to search across all emails, not just emails users are saving.

Answer: Any email can be archived into the Archive Mailbox. We have a new “Legal Hold” that enables the IT staff to put a user on a retention hold that prevents/captures deleted and edited e-mail items in both their Primary and Archive Mailbox.

Question: does a message have to be moved into a folder to be classified for retention, or can an item be "flagged" in place for retention?

Answer: Unlike MRM, the user can apply Retention Policies on any of their folders.

Question: When you auto-archive a message from a mailbox to an archive, does it keep the existing folder structure?

Answer: Yes, it does.

Question: In order to stop users from creating PSTs on their local Hard Drive, will exchange 2010 take away the outlook archive option from the users?

Answer: To disable uses from writing to a PST, you could use Group Policy to push out a change to prevent the PST from growing.

Question: What do you mean by "Secondary Mailbox Node?"

Answer: The Archive Mailbox is a second mailbox that is created in the Exchange Database. It is not a “regular” mailbox but a special one that is associated with the users Primary mailbox.

Question: What archiving capabilities are available in Outlook versions earlier than 2010 e.g. 2003.

Answer: Outlook 2007 and earlier have the native ability to archive to a PST file. If you implement a 3^rd party solution, then more options are available. To access the Archive Mailbox in Exchange 2010, you will need Outlook 2010 or you will need to use Outlook Web Access in Exchange 2010.

Question: What is the secondary mailbox? can a user have more then one mailbox? does AD allows users to have more then one mailbox like back in exchange 5 and 5.5?

Answer: Secondary Mailbox is the Archive Mailbox. Users can have more than one mailbox that they connect to, but it is not the same as Exchange 5.5 and earlier.

Question: Does the Outlook client present two mailboxes, the primary and the archive secondary?

Answer: Yes, for Outlook 2010.

Question: will it prevent the usr from deleting or just remove the auto-delete from policies?

Answer: The user will be able to access the Archive Mailbox in the same manner that they access their Primary Mailbox. This means they will be able to delete emails from the archive. You can use Legal Hold to prevent deletions as I stated in an earlier answer.

Question: Can you also put a Legal Hold on Public Folder emails?

Answer: No, the Legal Hold only applies to Mailboxes.

Question: Got a customer with 20k mailboxes, they have quota of 50MB and 100MB limits, and looking for GB level quotas. Looking for resource management tools that might help also asking how hotmail handles mailbox quotas of >5GB?

Answer: I’m sorry, but I don’t have any insights into what the Hotmail team does. The key to supporting large mailboxes and maintaining a decent level of SLA from a backup / restore perspective, is to ensure you don’t continue to backup to tape, but to use snapshot backup utilities (like DPM).

Question: If a user wants to find a message do they have to search both their mailbox and the secondary mailbox?

Answer: The search allows for searching across both the Primary and Archive Mailboxes.

Question: Are these features available with the standard CAL or Enterprise CAL?

Answer: Currently, the Archiving feature will require the Enterprise CAL. Since Exchange 2010 hasn’t released yet, I do have to state that this can change.

Question: One of the common questions from customers: Why should we sue Archiving that comes with Exchg2010 but not Symantec Enterprise Vault, or another third party . They have more features. Thanks for all the answers

Answer: This question comes up on most features. Ultimately, it comes down to what feature set you need. If the feature that is natively available in Exchange will be sufficient, then go with it. If you need more features that are only available with a 3^rd party solution, go with that.

Question: If I need a copy of an email from/to user x’s mailbox and one from user y’s mailbox, will I be able to show one message each, showing which mailbox it is from, or will de-duplication remove this data? contact me at tinatorres@brco.com if I need to explain this question more

Answer: Journaling will capture a copy for each user that you are journaling for. In your example, you will have a journaled copy for x’ and y’.

Question: Is or can the primary mailbox be archived as well?

Answer: Absolutely!

Question: Can you use Outlook Anywhere to access your archive mailboxes?

Answer: Yes.

Question: only one policy per item?

Answer: Yes, only one Retention Policy per item.

Question: Is the user's archived mailbox not available when in offline mode with a laptop if you are using cached mode?

Answer: When the user is offline (no direct access to Exchange 2010), they will not be able to access their Archive Mailbox.

Question: Can retention policies be applied to an entire information stores? if so, would they be applied to OWA and Outlook users?

Answer: The Exchange Administrator (IT Department) can apply default Retention Policies on the default folders or custom folders. They can also publish additional policies that can be used to override the default folder policy. In order for the user to specify an optional policy, they must use OWA or Outlook 2010.

Question: can user override expiration/deletion?

Answer: Only if the Exchange Administrator (IT Department) offers a “No Expiry” Retention Policy.

Question: Will any of these outlook fetures be added to Outllok 2007 since Office 2010 is not planed to be relesed untill 2Q 2010?

Answer: Currently, no.

Question: Are there any plans to allow archive mail to be stored offline like the main mailbox for mobile users?

Answer: Not currently.

Question: Will I be able to delete Archived Mails ??

Answer: Yes, the user can navigate the Archive Mailbox just like their Primary Mailbox.

Question: If a user has a primary mailbox with a 1 Gig quota and a archive mailbox of 10 Gig why not just make them a primary mailbox of 11 gig with no archive mailbox since it's all stored on the exchange server anyway?

Answer: That is always an option.

Question: MM search - items extracted to pst? or to archive mailbox?

Answer: From a compliancy search, the items are copied to a designated Mailbox.

Question: Will there by any type of strategy / guidelines for transitioning the archving solution from something like Symantec Enterprise Vault?

Answer: I’m sure we will provide guidance when the product releases, but I’m not sure if we will provide detailed step-by-step guidance.

Question: who are the main partners/products extending legal holds right now?

Answer: I don’t have the answer to this as there are quite a few third party solutions on the market.

Question: Dumpster used to be only visible for all folders by use of a registry hack. Is this still required to view full dumpster?

Answer: Visible to who??? Either way, the multi mailbox search command allows you to specify if you wish to search the dumpster in addition to the Primary and Archive Mailbox.

Question: Does transport journaling, MM search, etc. alter the metadata of the message in any way or is it more of a wrapper approach?

Answer: Journaling is a wrapper approach.

Question: Can you explain in your blog more about what features are dependent on Outlook 2010 ? Were currently in the process of rolling out office 2007 now, but we anticipate upgrading Exchange from 2003 to 2010.

Answer: Boy, this is a tough one. I do not know that we have publicized (officially documented) what requires Outlook 2010 and what doesn’t as of right now. I would highly encourage you to contact your Microsoft Account Team and see if they can delve into this in more detail with you.

Question: can i specify a delete+move policy in migration for each managed folder?

Answer: You can specify an archive and retention policy for each folder. This doesn’t require the custom managed folders like Message Records Management does.

Question: What is the storage over head of using a 3rd or 4th db copy of all our exchange databases for backups? Need to be restore any message that might be deleted in the Archive or live mailbox as long as the mail delete happen in the last month.

Answer: I’m not sure what overhead you are asking about, but from a storage perspective, it is a matter of disk space.

Question: Many of our staff use laptops and PST files so they can take the PST mail with them when off site. I don't see how Archive will eliminate the need for PST files if you cannot access the Archive folder when off site or not connected to the Exchange Server. It seems you need to be able to copy the Archive folder to the laptop; otherwise, users will not want email archived since they cannot then access it unless connected.

Answer: It is true that the user does not have access to the Archive Mailbox when offline. An option would be to set a policy that keeps the content within their Primary Mailbox. If this is indeed an issue and the above option doesn’t work, perhaps a 3^rd party solution would be a better fit or the continued use of PST files.

Question: Can I make something that a few of my archive items some MB would be avialable to me even if I'm offline ?? similar to Offline Vault in Symantec Enterprise Vault

Answer: You can move the items out of the Archive back into the Primary Mailbox.

Question: Can I set a retention policy that moves items into a document management/records management system?

Answer: The archive policies I discussed as part of Outlook 2010 and Exchange 2010 are only for moving to the Archive Mailbox.

Question: Can I have “per matter” retention policies (e.g. expire at project close)?

Answer: Yes, you can specify when items expire in your retention policies.

Question: Is there any compression used in archived copy of emails?

Answer: No.

Question: How do these new features interact/integrate with SharePoint?

Answer: They don’t.

Question: Is there an automated pst migration tool?

Answer: No, we do not have an automated tool.

Question: Can you set archive mailboxes for more than one user at a time, e.g. during migration, setting it as a default?

Answer: Yes, you can.

Question: Is it possible to define a "Private" folder and rule like Archive all exept "Private" as we are allowing that have still have Private mails but don't want to archive it.

Answer: You can choose not to apply Archive Policies to the Private Folder. You could also create a “Personal (No Archive/Retention)” Policy that the user applies to their “Private” Folder.

Question: When a user leaves the company and you delete their mailbox does the archive mailbox get deleted as well? Is there a way to keep the archive mailbox if you delete the user's primary mailbox?

Answer: Yes, unless it is on Legal Hold. If you want to keep the Archive Mailbox, then you will want to export those items out

Question: With the personal archive enabled to a primary mailbox, does this creates a larger mailbox store size and bandwidth issue due to each mailbox has a personal archive of about 10GB?

Answer: This does increase the size of the database.

Question: Two users (on the same database) have the same message and attachment information in their pst. IF they move their PST into the archive will the De-Dupe feature recognize this reduce the disk space required to keep the duplicates?

Answer: The De-Dupe feature I spoke about only applies to Journaling.

Question: Can the exchange server hosting the Archieve DB be a part of a DAG? sorry missed the first part of presentation

Answer: Yes, it can.

Question: Can we export to a PST still. or use exmerg?

Answer: We no longer have Exmerge with Exchange Server 2007 or Exchange Server 2010. You can export mailboxes to a PST from the Exchange Management Shell.

Question: Is the only technical difference between the main mailbox and the archive mailbox the fact that the archive mailbox is not available offline?

Answer: There is more to it than that, but that is a difference.

Question: Can I set the max size limit of the archive mailbox as the primary mailbox and how ?

Answer: The Archive Mailbox size is set as part of the User’s Primary Mailbox properties. There is a separate quota setting specific for the Archive Mailbox as I showed in the presentation (screenshot).

Question: Are there any features in Exchange/Outlook 2010 that would support importing PSTs to Online Archive folders?

Answer: Currently, we do not have a tool to do that.

Question: Is there any way we can validate that no emails will be lost / deleted in the system - that is, how do we guarantee immutability?

Answer: I mentioned the Legal Hold capability in previous answers. However, this does not “guarantee immutability”.

Question: how does e2010 tie up with Mimosa or other 3rd party vendor in respect of archiving and retention?

Answer: Currently, we are approaching it differently. I expect to see 3^rd party vendors come out with products that enhance (add on to) what we have exposed in Exchange 2010.

Question: Our organization would like to apply retention policies to force our users to retain mail based on our policies for each information store.

Answer: You can deploy default policies, but these are not set at the database level.

Question: Can we download this slide deck?

Answer: Yes. I have posted it to www.slideshare.net/harold.wong.

Question: We have a third party Compliance Application that currently gets Journaled copies of messages under Exchnage 2003. Will the decryption described in this presentation allow us to send decrypted journaled messages to this application?

Answer: So long as the 3^rd party application integrates with the Transport Journaling feature of Exchange 2010.

Question: Is Microsoft looking in the future at other applications such as File Server, Share Point Archiving to be integrated with the Exchange 2010 Archive?

Answer: Not currently, but who knows what will happen in the future.

Question: can you assign the retension policy to a group of users

Answer: Yes, but not based on group membership

Question: what was the blog again? URL

Answered: blogs.technet.com/haroldwong – Although if you are reading this, you found it already. J

Question: PST import in the new Personal Archive: will that be possibile only through Outlook (so, 1 mbox at a time), or will an administrator be able to perform the task form the EMC?

Answer: Only through Outlook. Essentially, the user will open up the PST and drag and drop folders / items into the Archive Mailbox..

Question: Do you have any court examples of Exchange 2010 standing up in a court of law?

Answer: Since Exchange Server 2010 hasn’t shipped, we do not have any data points like this yet.

Question: so my archives will not be compress when the contents is moved from primary mailbox to archive

Answer: If you are referring to compression like within a PST file, no.

Question: You could use Volume mount points to accomplish this though?

Answer: No, because you cannot split the database location in this way.

During the webcast last Wednesday, I said I would have the Q&A Log with all the questions and answers posted by Monday (yesterday).  Unfortunately, I’m a little behind as there were a lot more questions that I thought there were and it is taking me a little longer to go through it all.  I will get it posted no later than this Friday though so please be patient and give me just a few more days.

Harold Wong

For all those folks out there who follow my blog and live in the Irvine, CA or San Diego, CA area and are interested in attending a Windows 7 RC Install Fest, please read on.

In conjunction with Quickstart Intelligence and local IT Pro User Groups, I am hosting two Windows 7 RC Install Fests in Irvine and one in San Diego.

If you are interested in getting your hands on Windows 7 Release Candidate and just haven’t had a chance to download the bits and install it yet, now’s your chance to bring your laptop and come spend some time with us doing just that.  Don’t worry about downloading the bits as we will provide a copy of the Windows 7 Release Candidate DVD for you to use (and keep).  I will have mostly 32 bit DVDs but will have some 64 bit DVDs on hand as well.

Here are the registration links for the three events:

June 18, 2009 from 1 PM – 5 PM in Irvine

June 18, 2009 from 6 PM – 9 PM in Irvine

June 19, 2009 from 1 PM – 5 PM in San Diego

The agenda for the afternoon in Irvine and San Diego is as follows:

1 PM – 2 PM: Windows 7 Overview and Features Presentation (and Demo)

2 PM – 5 PM: Open time to Install Windows 7 RC and network

The agenda for the evening in Irvine is similar and is as follows:

6 PM – 7 PM: Windows 7 Overview and Features Presentation (and Demo)

7 PM – 9 PM: Open time to Install Windows 7 RC and network

There is no requirement to attend the entire afternoon (or evening). You are free to come and go at anytime during the event.  I will be available to help with the install and to answer questions during the entire session.  We will also be raffling off the following items:

· 1 Free TechNet Plus Subscription

· 1 Voucher for a Free MCP Exam (expires June 30, 2010)

· 1 Copy of Office Ultimate 2007

You do not have to be present to win. We will be collecting evaluation forms that will be used for the raffle at the end of the day. The winner(s) will be notified and we will make arrangements to get the prize to the winner.  If you happen to be there, you will be able to leave the event with your prize in hand.

System Requirements: (laptop is preferred)

Make sure your desktop or laptop meets these minimum requirements:

• 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor

• 1 GB of system memory

• 16 GB of available disk space

• Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)

• DVD-R/W Drive

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. The system WILL BE WIPED, (unless you use virtualization), so do NOT bring systems that have any data on them that you wish to keep.
2. If you decide to bring a Desktop Computer please review the following:
   • We will NOT be providing monitors, keyboards, mice, or any associated cables, including power cables, so make sure you bring the required hardware to run your system.
   • Get there early as you will likely need a little more time to setup than the laptop users.
   • We will NOT have any hand trucks or carts to help you bring equipment in so, please come prepared.
3. There will be no ongoing support for the pre-release software after the loadfest. We will, however, make a best effort on the day to get your system up and running.
4. Make sure your test computer has a wireless card that works with Windows Vista/Windows 7.

Harold Wong

Earlier this week, Microsoft released a new search engine called Bing.com.

I debated whether I wanted to do a blog post on it or not and have decided to do so after playing around a bit with it.

To test things out, I did a search for “great wall” and got a set of results.  As I moved my mouse over the different result items, I noticed a little bar along the right side of the link so I hovered my mouse over it and got a nice surprise.  Bing actually showed me a nice quick preview of the page (more than just the quick info under the link).

Along the top left of the page, there were links for Web, Images, Video, etc. so I decided to click on Images (I was already on the Web portion) and was presented with a bunch of Images that matched my search.  If I hover over one of the images, I can see details on it.

I also wanted to see what the Videos option would provide so I clicked on that next.  I was of course presented with a list of Videos that matched my search.  As I hovered over one of the videos, Bing actually started to play the video for me.  I do want to point out that the entire video did not play, but only a snippet.  I had to click the link and play the full video from the original location.  The thing I like about the preview is that it actually identified the portion of the clip that was relevant to my search and played that as the snippet.  I tested this with 8 of the different video clips to make sure.  Now, I can see a quick preview to make sure that’s the video I want to see before going to the link and watching all the ads first.

If you look along the left navigation bar, you can also see additional options to refine the search based on Length or Screen Size, etc.   Similar options were also available on the Images page.

Overall, I like Bing and will continue to use it as my preferred search engine.  I’ve added it to IE8 and Firefox 3.0.

Harold Wong

During Tech Ed 2009 in Los Angeles, I had a chance to chat with Rui Maximo who is a Technical Writer for the Unified Communications team (OCS specifically).  Rui shares what he does as a technical writer and how he stays verifies technical accuracy of his documents.  I would love to get the server that Rui has in his home!!!  Rui also talks about Microsoft’s official support policy on Virtualizing Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and what roles are supported versus not supported.

Rui has also written quite a few books, with the most recent one being the Resource Kit for Office Communications Server 2007 R2: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/13113.aspx.  (I’m still waiting for my signed copy of the Reskit from Rui).

Rui is also one of the “minions” for DrRez (twitter.com/drrez).  If you want to stay up to date on what’s going on in the OCS front, I would encourage you to follow DrRez on Twitter as well.

Here’s the video (high bitrate version) interview with Rui.

For a lower bitrate version, please visit Edge where you can download both the high bitrate and the lower bitrate versions.

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Chat-with-Rui-Maximo-at-Tech-Ed-2009-on-OCS-2007R2-and-Virtualization/ 

Harold Wong

I have talked to many folks about our Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) offering for a little bit now.  One of the common questions / complaints I received was around custom applications that a customer might have built on SharePoint and now it doesn’t work with BPOS.  Or just that it wasn’t possible to write custom applications for BPOS and hence why BPOS was not a possibility.

During Tech Ed this year, I had a chance to speak with Datta and Sanjay of Sonata Software out of India who had done just that – wrote a custom application that works with BPOS!!  I took the opportunity to chat with them on video about their solution and what it entailed.  Understand that this is a 6 minute video interview so it does not get into all the technical details, but does give an idea of how much effort was required and how difficult / easy it was.

As with all my videos, I rendered this one at a high bitrate so the file is a bit large.  You can also download a smaller version (lower bitrate) from the Edge posting.

Edge link: http://edge.technet.com/Media/Custom-application-for-BPOS-from-Sonata-Interview-from-Tech-Ed-2009/

Harold Wong

During a previous Tech Ed, I met Dwight Jesseman who is a Senior Systems Engineer for Messaging at University of Florida.  I helped answer some of his questions on Exchange Server 2007 at that time and Dwight was able to assist U of F architect and deploy Exchange Server 2007 within their environment.  (I’d like to think that I contributed to this somehow – :-))

This year, Dwight asked me some questions around Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Conferencing integration with their existing Polycom equipment.  Dwight had already started doing some of the integration work and so I took the opportunity to interview him on video and get him to share how things are going.

I want to warn you that I rendered the video in a high bitrate so the video is a bit large.  I have also posted the video (lower bitrate availble) to TechNet Edge and will include the link at the bottom of this post.

Video on Edge (with links to download WMV file): http://edge.technet.com/Media/Interview-with-Dwight-Jesseman-University-of-Florida-on-OCS-2007R2/ 

Harold Wong

During the keynote today at Computex 2009 in Taipei, Microsoft Corporate VP Steve Guggenheimer revealed the release dates for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2!  Yup, you heard right.  The Release To Manufacturing (RTM) date will be the second half of July and the General Availability (GA) will be October 22nd!

This is indeed exciting news and I’m sure everyone is counting down the days (ok, maybe not everyone is counting down the days, but I am).

If you want to read the entire Press article, you will find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Jun09/06-02SteveGuggenheimer.mspx.

The Windows Team also blogged the details: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/06/02/the-date-for-general-availability-ga-of-windows-7-is.aspx.

The Windows Server Team’s shorter blog is here: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/06/02/windows-server-2008-r2-rtm-and-general-availability.aspx.

Harold Wong