Mark Fugatt - Exchange and OCS Blog

Significant update to the Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator - v 14.7

mfugatt — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:44:00 GMT

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/06/12/449007.aspx

May Posts to Office Communications Servers and Office Communicator Blogs

mfugatt — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:24:00 GMT

Video Conferencing for Masses vs. Personal Telepresence

“SIP Trunking” in Office Communications Server

Simplifying Enhanced Presence

Recent Yahoo! and MSN (Windows Live) Public IM Connectivity Changes

To UDP, or not to UDP, that is the question

Office Integration – like Peanut Butter and Jelly (Beans)

The RTCComponentService Account and Cannot Synchronize Address Book

UCC API: What is it and how does one write an application using it?

How to be visible to defined contacts only

Call Forwarding in Microsoft Office Communicator

Description of the update for the Unified Communications Client API SDK

mfugatt — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:15:39 GMT

The authentication protocol that is used by Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and its clients has been updated to require a signature in all messages. This includes the first message that carries the challenge response.

The version number of the protocol that is advertised in the challenge response has increased to version 4. Challenge responses that use version 4 of the protocol must contain a signature. The signature is a digest of the identifying headers in the message. The signature is calculated by using the session key.

Client applications that are built by using the Unified Communications Client API SDK must use this update to register and to work with Communications Server 2007. Communications Server 2007 requires the first challenge response message to contain a signature.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950559

A Series of OCS and Exchange 2007 Case Studies are Now Available

mfugatt — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:00:45 GMT

New E-Book on Managing Exchange with PowerShell

mfugatt — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:33:58 GMT

One of my co-workers (Jane Lewis) just pointed out this post on Eileen Brown's blog:

http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/archive/2008/05/21/new-ebook-on-managing-exchange-with-powershell.aspx

Office Communication Server 2007 Webcasts - June 2008

mfugatt — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:29:43 GMT

The following Office Communication Server 2007 Webcasts are scheduled for June 2008:

Disaster Recovery in Communications Server 2007 (Level 200) - June 2nd 9.30am PST

All About Communications Server 2007 Security (Level 300) - June 5th 9.30am PST

Configuring DNS, Certificates, Ports, and Load Balancers for Communications Server 2007 (Level 300) - June 9th 8.00am PST

Deploying and Managing Your Unified Communications Devices (Level 300) - June 10th 1.00pm PST

How to Do a Proof of Concept for Communications Server 2007 Interoperability with PBX Systems (Level 300) - June 18th 9.30am PST

A Technical Introduction to Forefront Security for Communications Server (Level 300) - June 19th 11.30am PST

Communications Server 2007 Quality of Experience: Defending, Deploying, and Succeeding (Level 300) - June 19th 11.30am PST

Planning and Deploying Voice Routes in Communications Server 2007 Using Route Helper (Level 300) - June 25th 9.30am PST

Exchange Server Protocols

mfugatt — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:51:07 GMT

The Microsoft Exchange Server Protocols documentation provides detailed technical specifications for Microsoft proprietary protocols (including extensions to industry-standard or other published protocols) in the Microsoft Exchange Server system.

The Microsoft Exchange Server Protocols documentation provides specifications for protocols that are implemented in the Microsoft Exchange Server system software and that are used to communicate with other products.

The documentation is designed to describe each protocol in detail as it is used by the Microsoft Exchange Server system. Each protocol specification documents the technical requirements, limitations, dependencies, and Microsoft-specific protocol behavior.

The documentation also includes a set of companion overview and reference documents that supplement the technical specifications with conceptual background, overviews of inter-protocol relationships and interactions, and technical reference information, such as common data types and error codes.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc307725(EXCHG.80).aspx

Windows 2008 Enterprise Failover Clustering Hands on Lab

mfugatt — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:52:58 GMT

Are you interested in learning about Failover Clustering with Windows Server 2008. Well the wait is over, the Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering team would like to announce the availability of the of the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Failover Clustering Hands on Lab.

Title

TechNet Virtual Lab: Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Failover Clustering Lab

Link

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032345932&EventCategory=3&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Overview

For the exercises in this lab, you will be responsible for the configuration of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise failover clustering for your organization. This lab will teach you how to add nodes to the cluster and configure the cluster to support a variety of high-availability roles such as file, print, and DHCP server clusters.

UK Premier Customer Proactive Offerings for August 2007

mfugatt — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:22:28 GMT

Microsoft Services in the UK offered Premier customers the opportunity to attend workshops on many Microsoft technologies, below is a list of the workshops that are scheduled to run in August 2007, if you are interested in attending any of the workshops please talk to your Technical Account Manager (TAM) who can make arrangements for you.

Date	Title	Duration	Location
1^st August	Active Directory Group Policy	2 days	Reading
6^th August	Exchange 2003 Mobility	1 day	Reading
7^th August	SQL 2005 Troubleshooting	1 day	Reading
9^th August	IIS 6.0 & .NET Debugging	2 days	Reading
14^th August	Windows Server 2003 Clustering Essentials	3 days	Reading
16^th August	Active Directory Disaster Recovery	2 days	Reading
20^th August	Defence in Depth: Securing Windows Server 2003	3 days	Reading
20^th August	Exchange 2003 Storage Design Concepts	2 days	Reading
20^th August	Using Windows Powershell	5 days	Edinburgh
23^rd August	ISA 2004 – Filtering, tools and VPN	1 day	Reading
28^th August	Advanced MOM 2005	2 days	Reading
30^th August	Virtual Server	2 days	Reading

Windows 2003 Scalable Networking pack and its possible effects on Exchange

mfugatt — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:11:15 GMT

With the release of the Scalable Networking Pack that is included with Windows 2003 SP2, we in Exchange support have been seeing some connectivity issues once the new networking features are enabled. These new features are enabled by default and are only used if your network card driver supports them. Some of the new architectural additions that were introduced with the Scalable Networking Pack are TCP Chimney Offload, Receive-side Scaling (RSS) and NetDMA. These were introduced because of the Microsoft Scalable Networking Initiative that was designed to help reduce OS bottlenecks caused by network packet processing. More information regarding the Scalable Networking initiative can be found at www.microsoft.com/snp.

UK Exchange User Group Has First Northern Meeting

mfugatt — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 09:27:02 GMT

This is great news for me, the UK Exchange User Group will be holding its first northern based meeting on August 29^th in Liverpool.

Agenda

18:15 - 18:40 Arrival

18:40 - 18:45 Introduction to speakers and the aims of the group

18:45 - 19:30 1st session; led by Eileen Brown, MS and Paul Stringfellow; Introduction to Exchange 2007 and a look at UM and OCS.

19:30 - 19:50 Food!

19:50 - 20:40 2nd session; led by Paul Hargreaves, (Net App) and Declan Conroy, Exchange HA including the use of NetApp Storage

20:40 - 20:55 Exchange Questions and Answers

20:55 - 21:00 Summing up and suggestions for future meetings.

21:00 The End!

You can sign up for the meeting at this link:

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/forums/thread/1307.aspx

5th July Update to the Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator

mfugatt — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:35:28 GMT

To read the updated calculator blog post and get the calculator, go HERE.

In this release, we have redesigned the look of the calculator, fixed some bugs, and as always, added new functionality based on customer feedback.

Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2007 (KB935999) Now Available for Download

mfugatt — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:10:43 GMT

You can download the latest Update Rollup for Exchange 2007 from here.

A complete list of what is included can be found here.

Standby Continuous Replication in Exchange 2007 Server Service Pack 1

mfugatt — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:31:51 GMT

Another excellent article on SCR by the one and only Mr Scott Schnoll

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/06/28/445538.aspx

Microsoft Office Outlook Blog Now Available

mfugatt — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:37:52 GMT

You can access the Microsoft Office Outlook Blog here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/