Microsoft UK UC Blog : E2K7

Microsoft Certified Master : Exchange 2007 - A survivors guide…

msukucc — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:19:45 GMT

I attended the Microsoft Certified Master : Exchange 2007, rotation 2; prior to attending I had the good fortune to be able to talk to previous Ranger/MCM candidates within Microsoft, who helped prepare me for the program. I thought it would be a good idea to consolidate this information, along with my own advice for future rotations.

I will leave it to others to talk about what the MCM program is and the and benefits of attending (there are many!); this post is simply to outline what to expect and how to cope with it :)

There are five flavours of MCM that currently exist. Although they loosely follow the same structure they are also very different. This post is regarding my experiences from attending the Exchange version…

What to expect?

So, one of the first things to know about MCM is that it’s essentially three weeks of your life dedicated to Exchange. If you want to stand any chance at being successful it is VITAL that you have cleared this time, both with your customers and your FAMILY!! – this is especially true if you are attending from Europe; the time zone and class schedule makes communication with family and friends quite a challenge. Make sure you set their expectations that you haven’t died or been abducted by aliens during the three weeks.

Be prepared for long and difficult days, some days during my rotation I would be awake at 7am and not get back to my apartment until 10pm. On average most days tend to run from 8am to 6pm of classroom teaching, then there are homework assignments and often there are recommended labs to complete. There are three exams to complete, studying for these exams usually takes up most of the weekend, so its probably not a great idea to plan anything too exciting for the weekend – we typically did a mixture of self study throughout the weekend and a group white board session on Sunday afternoon which gave everyone a chance to combine their knowledge and talk about what we “thought” might be on the exam (we were almost always wrong!)

It sounds like hard work, and it is, but its also great fun – honest :) If you enjoy technology and working with Exchange, the chance to spend so much time focused on a single product is actually really good fun – especially with a group of like minded people :)

Preparation

The Exchange program has a great reading list – however it is a bit on the large side. Roughly it suggests you read the help file and every blog or whitepaper published on Exchange 2007. The approach I took, which seemed to work well for me, was to concentrate on areas I had the least amount of experience with. Once in class the content is presented very quickly and if you get lost there is very little time to recover, likewise the labs can be complex – Greg’s approach is to describe the end goal of the lab and not give you step-by-step instructions. This is great and allows more flexibility in the labs; however it also means that you may struggle if that area of technology is new to you.

Once I had identified my areas of weakness I printed out white papers and blogs etc, which I kept with me in my laptop case. Rather than read a book on the train or plane, I would read about UM or ILM. I still found these topics tough, but without the pre-reading I would have been totally lost!.

In addition to Exchange there are some additional skills that will make your time at MCM less traumatic. I hope Greg doesn't mind that I list these, but I feel that some exposure and familiarity with the following technologies would help all candidates…

ISA is used predominantly during the CAS sessions and lab work – its not necessary to be an ISA expert, but some hands on practice configuring publishing rules and listeners would have helped me beforehand – likewise understanding what troubleshooting processes and features to use would have been handy.

It also appears compulsory to say the phrase “Green Ticky Ticky” whenever something goes well in ISA (Everyone in R2 will understand that! - and so will you if you go through a rotation!)

Accommodation

A large proportion of my rotation ended up staying at the Redmond Trails, which are essentially a collection of self catering apartments about a 25 minute walk from campus. You will not spend long in your chosen accommodation, so it is important to be realistic regarding the items you buy. It’s unlikely you will have much time to prepare food or cook – we literally just had coffee and ready meals in our apartment. Pretty much all of the time was spent studying to ensure we passed the exams. The apartments usually have fast internet access and Microsoft FTE’s can access their lab environments via the corp VPN.

Make sure that you know how long it takes to get to class, there is a no tolerance approach to lateness; on your first late you will be made to do something appropriately embarrassing (this is usually recorded!) – but be under no illusions, class will start regardless of you being there or not. Since a huge part of the exams are based on the verbal information provided by the instructors, your instructor may choose to give the rest of the class a bit of “important” information in your absence! – you may also find that additional homework is received for the entire group due to one person being late – DO NOT BE LATE! :)

My flatmate and I decided to walk whenever possible – you spend so much time cooped up inside the classroom it seemed like a good idea to get some fresh air and exercise whenever possible. Be warned however, its Redmond – that means it rains – a lot! so be prepared :)

Class usually begins on a Monday so try to get up to campus on the Sunday beforehand so that you know where you are going on Monday morning – there is nothing worse than frantically racing around campus trying to find a building or somewhere to park! Get there early, grab a coffee and try to relax – its going to be a busy day :)

Dealing with Jetlag

Unless you live in Redmond or somewhere close, it’s likely that you will experience some degree of jetlag during the first week of MCM. Previously I had tried many things to get over jetlag, the most suitable for me is just to adopt the new time zone as quickly as possible and deal with a few days of being incredibly tired. A good friend of mine who attended the OCS MCM rotation in January suggested that rather than fight the jetlag, study when you can and sleep when you can. For most of the European candidates this means getting up at 4am each day, doing some study from the previous day’s class and then going to sleep at 7pm after class. At the end of the first week you have pretty much adjusted anyway. Those that didn’t adopt this technique found that they were studying when their bodies wanted to go sleep and they were not able to remember a great deal from their study sessions.

Don't forget you are there for three weeks – its an endurance game, no point in pushing yourself to breaking point in the first few days!!

Dealing with Jetlag

Socialising

One of the most important aspects of attending MCM is the social side. You will be sitting in a room with a number of other Exchange candidates – you probably have had a very similar career path to the guy sitting next to you. It’s also highly likely that you will learn a huge amount from the people sitting around you - as well as the guy standing at the front of the class. Some of the class discussions are fascinating – everyone sitting in that room with you has earned their place, however they may have a totally different perspective than you – taking the time to participate and learn from these discussions is highly rewarding.

Greg also runs a couple of nights out, all of which are great fun and allow you to get to know your fellow candidates in a more social setting. All of you are in the same boat and will go through the same highs and lows as each other. By the end of your time at MCM you will undoubtedly have made several new friends.

Health and Welfare

This is one area that concerned me before I got to MCM. If these classes are 12 hours and we have homework, study and exams – how will I cope for three weeks?

The time passes incredibly quickly, but it’s vitally important to keep yourself alert and well rested. Get as much sleep as you possibly can and ensure that you keep yourself well hydrated throughout each day. We all know we should do this – right? But it’s all too easy to forget. There are frequent breaks – make the most of them – don’t be afraid to request a break, if you need one…. the chances are everyone else does too!.

The classroom also acts like a Petri dish for colds and illness – in my rotation we had sixteen candidates, half of which had flown long-haul from around the world. Then we all sat together for 12 hours a day or more in a room with no windows! – combined with lack of sleep and the stress of the program led to many of us catching a cold (including Greg!). So, make sure you have cold medication, headache tablets etc – be prepared! There is nothing worse than trying to absorb information when you’re not feeling well and you have an exam on Monday!

Exams

The exams are multiple choice, closed book and computer based - but don’t expect MCP style questions. These exams can be tough, very tough! There were times during our rotation where those little multiple choice exams seemed impossible!

There is no easy way to pass the exams; the best advice is to pay attention during class and MAKE NOTES! Some people like study groups, others prefer to study alone. During my rotation we spent several hours each weekend going through topics on the whiteboard, checking that our understanding was correct. We also attempted to guess what likely questions would be asked on each topic – this proved largely unsuccessful (devious instructors!) but participating in these group sessions definitely help me; usually I prefer to study alone, so I was surprised to enjoy the group sessions. My advice is that if you typically study alone, why not study the material then head off into class for a short while and see how you get on in a group. Besides, it might make a nice break from your apartment!

Another tip that I found useful was during the week as you come across areas that you think might be on the exam, write them in marker pen on a sheet of A4, then tape it to the wall. I found this particularly effective for remembering lists; although our apartment did look a bit odd after three weeks...

Pay attention to the slide decks; not only might they have links on them (questions can come from the slides, notes, links or verbal content!) but quite often the slide notes are very revealing :)

Qualification Lab

This sorts the men from the boys! there is no easy way through – it’s tough. Without giving too much away, the test is essentially made up of a virtual environment containing a number of servers, routers and other infrastructure which has various things broken. You are given multiple tasks to complete within the lab which will require that you fix some of the breaks. Just to make things a little harder, you have a time limit which generally means that if you attempt to fix all of the breaks you will run out of time. The real skill is in determining exactly what you need to fix in order to complete the tasks as quickly as possible.

A support background will definitely help here, although it’s essentially just about being logical and working through each problem as you find it. Those that are successful generally take a task approach, so rather than fixing everything, simply fix the minimum things required to complete that single task, then move on to the next. In our qual lab there was nothing that could be described as complicated – all of the problems had relatively easy fixes, however finding that simple fix might take an hour or more. It’s also worth remembering to check the basics, networking, DNS, AD – it’s amazing just how much chaos Greg can cause without actually doing much!

Take your notes electronically as you go. Various candidates advised me to do this after struggling to get their notes completed before the time ran out. To complete the qual lab, not only do you have to fix the breaks, you have to detail the changes you have made to get things working. Without these notes you will fail, if the notes are not complete or Greg is unable to understand them, you could also still fail! Your notes will also help you should you need to back out a change that you have made to the environment.

Other Stuff and DSN

Its meant to be fun as well as a challenge. One of the guys from my rotation had an agreement with his daughter that he would take her toy “Theodore” with him everywhere he went for the three weeks and take pictures so that she could see what he had been up to. Theodore quickly turned into the class mascot…

Rotation 2’s mascot “Theodore” showing just how easy OCS is… :)

Are you ready?

Both before and after attending MCM I would talk to people about the program. One of the most common comments I heard was that they would love to attend but they didn't think that they were ready yet.

After going through the program and surviving I have some advice for all of those people (you know who you are!) – if you have the opportunity to attend this course, do not pass it up because you think you might not make it – you probably know much more than you think you do already :)

MCM Exchange 2007 - rotation 2’s home for 3 weeks – I'm not entirely sure where we all were when this was taken…

If you are interested in attending Microsoft Certified Master (and you should be!) - I recommend you check out the following links…

PS. The pictures were all expertly taken by Morten Kjønnø

Posted by Neil Johnson, MCS UK, MCM Exchange 2007

Is your E2K7 project in danger of being scrapped?

msukucc — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:21:57 GMT

I’m guessing that over the next few months IT managers are going to be pushing their staff really hard to justify any spend. ..and projects to upgrade to Exchange Server 2007 are not going to be immune. Clearly to have any chance of getting the go ahead for your deployment of Exchange Server 2007 you are going to need to be able to demonstrate significant advantages of its deployment and that’s going to centre around saving cash… (incidentally it’s no surprise that 3 out of the top 5 ‘Top Ten Reasons to Upgrade to Exchange Server 2007’ are based on saving money.)

So I thought I’d put together a few blogs about areas where you can prove that deploying Exchange Server 2007 will lead to saving your boss’ money.

Part 1 (Fewer Servers supporting More Mailboxes)
“OK so it’s one thing being able to say that you can support more for less but it’s another proving it. So how do you prove that you actually save money by requiring fewer servers to support the same or more mailboxes?”

Part 2 (Make your backups more cost effective…)
“One area it’s worth focusing on is backups. ..but I wouldn’t tackle backups on their own – I would tackle them in conjunction with your overall plans for compliance and availability.”

Part 3 (Storage)
“Ah yes that old chestnut… SAN versus DAS – switch to DAS and save a load of money. It’s obvious right? Well I’m not sure. This is still a hot topic but the bottom line is that Exchange 2007 now gives us a lot more options about which storage we choose to support our Exchange data.”

Part 4 (Big Mailboxes)
“OK so the idea of big mailboxes has become a viable option for a lot of organisations since Exchange Server 2007 was released and now that we are seeing real examples of deployments of mailboxes of multiple GBs there is more information around to make it more of a comfortable decision to deploy large mailboxes with Exchange Server.”

Part 5 (the Edge)
“OK so I work for Microsoft but hey it’s worth a try …consider the Edge Transport role server as a replacement to other services in the perimeter.”

Part 6 (A few last ideas…)
“...a few more ideas that are worth exploring...”

Doug Gowans

November MMMUG in London

msukucc — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:03:21 GMT

This event will be held in London at the MSFT offices in Cardinal Place near Victoria.

This month we have a topical session led by Clive Watson, Brett Johnson and Julius Davies from Microsoft. We will be discussing the new support statements surround the issue of virtualising your Exchange environment. Having understood which pieces of Exchange are now supported we will look at some of the key design issues facing those virtualising Exchange.

The meeting will be held on Tuesday 11th November and starts at 18:30.

For more information and to sign up please see the link below:

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/forums/thread/23926.aspx

How quick's it going to take to backup and restore Exchange data with DPM?

msukucc — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:55:35 GMT

One of the most often asked, and most difficult to answer, questions concerning Microsoft System Centre Data Protection Manager (dpm) is how long will it take to backup and restore data... As you'd expect the answer is 'it depends'. So I thought I'd provide an example from my own experience which it might be useful to use to extrapolate an estimate for your own environments...

So first let's have a quick look at my test environment...

Some other key bits of information:

7 Protection Groups each protecting a single Storage Group
Custom Volumes
8 Day retention period
Weekly Express Full schedule
15 minute incremental schedule
2 minute incremental offset
No Express Full offset

So here are my results...

1. Replica Creation and Consistency Check

This test is the initial job which copies the data from Exchange Server to DPM and runs a consistency check between the Exchange Server volumes protected by DPM and the DPM volume where the corresponding data will be stored. For a definition of a consistency check please go to the following location: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc161653.aspx

Protection Group	Data Transferred	Change Percentage	Time to Completion (h:m:s)
PG1	80,689.88MB	100%	01:42:29
PG2	80,788.82MB	100%	01:52:41
PG3	80,821.94MB	100%	01:43:30
PG4	80,609.82MB	100%	01:46:00
PG5	80,647.94MB	100%	01:50:26
PG6	80,131.94MB	100%	01:51:04
PG7	80,611.82MB	100%	01:44:01

Total Data Transferred	Bandwidth Consumption	Backup Time
564,302.16MB	368Mbps	01:52:41

* Bandwidth consumption was calculated as an average bytes received per second for the duration of the peak transfer of data during the consistency check.
** All jobs ran in parallel and so the backup time is the time it took for the longest job to complete.

2. First Express Full Backup

This job takes across any changes since the original replica creation and consistency check. Have a look here for more information about the Express Full job.

Protection Group	Data Transferred	Change Percentage	Time to Completion (h:m:s)
PG1	1,164.19MB	1.4%	00:24:43
PG2	1,155.94MB	1.4%	00:33:35
PG3	1,129.50MB	1.36%	00:25:10
PG4	267.38MB	0.3%	00:24:48
PG5	1,144.25MB	1.4%	00:33:12
PG6	286.88MB	0.3%	00:21:21
PG7	1,171.44MB	1.4%	00:33:04

* A consistency check had to be run previously against Protection Groups 4 and 6 which is why there was less data to transfer. The issue was resolved by the installation of the DPM Feature Pack.

Total Data Transferred	Bandwidth Consumption	Backup Time
6,320MB	104Mbps	00:33:35

* Bandwidth consumption was calculated as an average bytes received per second for the duration of the peak transfer of data during the backup job.

3. Second Express Full Backup

This job takes across any changes since the last Express Full backup job.

Protection Group	Data Transferred	Change Percentage	Time to Completion (h:m:s)
PG1	4,114.50 MB	5%	00:26:44
PG2	3,997.31 MB	4.5%	00:34:41
PG3	3,926.00 MB	4.5%	00:40:28
PG4	4,123.56 MB	5%	00:41:18
PG5	1,144.25MB	4.5%	00:35:36
PG6	4,019.13 MB	4.5%	00:19:19
PG7	4,002.19 MB	5%	00:36:56

Total Data Transferred	Bandwidth Consumption	Backup Time
28,338.44MB	240Mbps	00:41:18

4. Example Incremental synchronisation job

This test is the regular incremental synchronisation which occurs by default every 15 minutes. Have a look here more information about this type of job.

Protection Group	Data Transferred	Time to Completion (h:m:s)
PG1	51.19MB	00:01:05
PG2	56.19MB	00:01:04
PG3	55.19MB	00:01:05
PG4	57.19MB	00:01:06
PG5	46.19MB	00:01:04
PG6	40.19MB	00:01:04
PG7	36.19MB	00:01:07

Total Data Transferred	Bandwidth Consumption	Backup Time
342.33mb	4Mbps	00:01:07

5. Database Restore

The final test I ran was to restore a single database over the top of a 'failed' database to its original location.

Protection Group	Total Data Transferred	Time to Completion (h:m:s)	Bandwidth Consumption
PG2	92,176.44MB	00:21:33	744Mbps

What it is quite interesting to see what happens to the bandwidth consumption as an incremental backup job kicks off during the restore. You would expect to see this on a production server. The following screenshot shows how the bytes sent per second drops drops from around 744Mbps to about 520Mbps... So obviously parallel backups will increase restore times. Pretty obvious I know but interesting to see.

So what conclusions can we draw from these results?

Well first of all DPM seems to make pretty efficient use of the available bandwidth. At times during the consistency check and the restore DPM was hitting about saturation point of Gb Ethernet...

Secondly because DPM is only concerned with changes following the initial replica creation and consistency check backups are fast. My express full backups were taking under 45 minutes and because DPM is VSS based the interruption to service was always under 2 seconds. The regular transaction log syncs were taking about a minute each time.

..and of course as we are backing up from the replica database there is no impact on the active database and therefore the clients.

You should also be able to get pretty decent restore rates - 93GB in under 25 minutes is pretty fast I reckon.

Lastly I'd like to point out that tests were performed using the latest Feature Pack for DPM; available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=AD5CD1A2-9B87-4A2C-90A2-9DBAF1024310&displaylang=en and for the duration of the testing DPM proved to be very stable...

Of course I do have to point out that this was a test rig with nothing else going on its isolated network. Unfortunately it's very difficult to say exactly how DPM in your environment might perform based on these results. However I hope the information is useful as a guide for some...

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Doug Gowans

'Exchange 2007 Recipient Management' Technet Session at the Microsoft offices, London

msukucc — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:46:38 GMT

Why not go along to Daniel Kenyon-smith’s (UK MCS) TechNet presentation ‘Recipient management, policies and permissions in Exchange 2007’ at our Microsoft offices in London...

Abstract
In this session we will discuss the recipient management model, which has changed since Exchange Server 2003. There are a number of things we will cover here, most notably, how Exchange Server 2007 handles resources. The other major are we will be discussing is changes to the administrative permission model. In Exchange 2007, you have the option to separate your Active Directory administration from your Exchange administration, and during the session, we’ll see how that’s achieved.

What we will cover
Recipient Management Model Update
Administrative Permission Model Overview

Demonstrations in this Session
Locating Recipients
Managing Recipients
Delegating Admin Roles

Session Prerequisites
IT administration experience with Microsoft? Exchange Server 2003, Exchange 2000 Server, or Exchange Server 5.5

Recommended Audience
Generalist
Infrastructure Specialist

If you are interested please register online at the url above..

Exchange 2007 Virtualization Support Policy

msukucc — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:53:13 GMT

Well, Hyper-V launched in June 2008 and the Exchange product group promised to revise their support strategy for running Exchange products within a virtual environment. That statement has been out for a few weeks now, so I thought it would be a good time to discuss what it actually means...

First of all here is a link to the support policy and recommendations paper for Exchange 2007 on Microsoft Virtualization technology.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794548(EXCHG.80).aspx

So, if your using Hyper-V you can virtualize the Exchange 2007 SP1 64 bit versions of Mailbox, Hub Transport and Client Access Server Roles and remain supported. Unified Messaging is currently only supported on physical hardware.

So what if you want to run Exchange 2007 on your non Hyper-V virtual platform? Well, there is good news. Here is a link to the support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=897615

So as long as your virtualization platform is listed under the SVVP agreement and the hypervisor has been validated, you get the same level of support as customers using Hyper-V. Currently the only other validated hypervisor is VMware ESX 3.5u2.

All things considered, it means that there are now viable options for running Exchange in a virtual environment.

Just to finish this post off, I wanted to provide this link which contains all of the Microsoft server software that is supported running in a validated hypervisor.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006

Happy Virtualizing!

--
Neil Johnson, MCS
neiljohn@microsoft.com

Idle Storage Groups and CCR...

msukucc — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:31:32 GMT

Let's say that over a period of an hour only a very small number of transactions are generated for a particular CCR enabled storage group. If those changes add up to less than 1MB's worth of transactions and are therefore not sufficient to fill up and close the current log file does that mean those transactions are not replicated to the passive database for an hour?

The answer is explained in the following whitepaper:

White Paper: Continuous Replication Deep Dive
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc535020(EXCHG.80).aspx

ESE now forces the active log to close after a period of time. The time is based upon the LLR (Lost Log Resilience) depth which in Exchange 2007 SP1, with CCR enabled, is set to 10. (At RTM the LLR depth is different dependent on what AutoDatabaseMountDial is set to.)

The formula to calculate when log roll will occur is:

[15 (minutes) ÷ LLR Depth value] = Frequency of log roll activity (in minutes)

In effect log roll will occur every 90 seconds when insufficient transactions occur to fill the current log. This means that for a completely idle storage group 960 transaction logs will be generated over a 24 hour period for a CCR enabled storage group...

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Doug Gowans