Exchange, a view from the trenches

Another Vista post (Good bye XP)

vytas — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:19:00 GMT

I never thought I would be posting so much about Vista (as opposed to Exchange posts).

Recently, I migrated my personal laptop over to Vista Ultimate. It was a big step for me, as it was the last of my PC's that had XP on it. Not only did I leap over to Vista, and leave XP in the rear view mirror, I loaded 64-bit Vista, on a laptop that's pretty old (bit still 64-bit capable).

Would I find all the drivers I would need?

Would my apps still work (primarily games)?

Would my old laptop be a dog under Vista?

The laptop in question is an HP NX6125, with the low-end AMD Turon processor ( the 6125 family had been offered with three different Turons, all with differing clock speeds and varying, increasing levels of L2 cache. The one I bought was the cheapest one). It had served me well with the 1GB of RAM I had been running it on for the last few years. And XP had served me well, but it was time to rebuild the laptop, if for no other reason then as a reorganisation.

My plan initially was to simply load Vista Ultimate, and bump the RAM to 2GB. First I had to find RAM, as the 6125 uses DDR2 PC2100. I went to the local Tiger Direct outlet, and they didn't have it. I picked up some PC3200 thinking the PC would recognize it and just use it at the lower clock speed.

No dice. It only recognized half the banks on the PC3200. Back to Tiger Direct, exchange the RAM, and order the proper stuff.

Problem #2 was also self-inflicted. After backing up the XP installation, and installing a new 120GB HDD, I began loading 32-bit Vista. In fact, I had it loaded and was applying updates. It was at that point I had the idea to load 64-bit. What if I didn't like it? What if it performed worse then 32-bit? What if I couldn't find the drivers? I would have to repeat the 32-bit installation again, and feel like an idiot on top of losing a few hours doing the installation.

The install went fine.

I was able to find all the 64-bit drivers, and most of the HP programs too. I was concerned about the HP Protect Tools Security manager, which I used as a password manager. Turned out it didn't work very well on the 64-bit platform, but no big loss, I am not very keen on password managers.

I ended up running with only 1GB of RAM for a week, with acceptable performance. I dropped the extra gig in, and haven't looked back since.

I have noticed that 64-bit IE tends to not like Flash, and also seems to be impervious to a lot of crap that regular 32-bit IE isn't.

In any case, I can honestly say I really don't miss XP that much. I remember first running across XP, as a factory load on a new ThinkPad while I was a network admin/it director/master of all I surveyed IT-wise at a previous job.

I hated it. I hated the UI. I hated that everything had been rearranged. Sound familiar?

All my users were on Win2K, with its familiar Windows 9x interface, and I didn't have the time to retrain everyone on the new one. But I knew that eventually, I would have to roll it out. I started to load it on some test boxes, and tinker around with it. At the same time, I started looking at group policy and XP. I discovered how to turn off that awful XP theme, and make it look like 9x/2000. My users wouldn't have to bother me or the helpdesk. After all, I wouldn't want to do a company-wide OS upgrade and disrupt the users with a differnet theme. I knew that if I deployed XP with the XP theme, with its different colors, I'd be swamped with calls.

After all, change is bad. People hate change. Users hate change. This doesn't look like my old computer...

Well, to compress 4 or 5 years, and spare you all the morbid details, the point I am trying to make is that after some teething problems, my IT team, my former employer, and my former company all got on well with XP. I forecd the Classic theme on everyone, and we did a rolling upgrade. XP served us well, and did what it needed to do.

And as things would have it, my first laptop at Microsoft had the then trusty and stalwart XP...and then Vista RTM'd

I knew I had to upgrade.

I knew I had to bite the bullet, and make my primary work machine a new OS. In fact, MS IT told me so (as did the Windows team, and just about everyone else).As a field engineer, normally I could load up some test boxes with it. But I was busy, being in the field, doing field engineer things. There would be no testing for me. No ramp up period, no time to familiarize. It'd be jump off the high-dive, eyes open.

I was eventually able to steal away from the field for a day, and on a February 2007 day run into the Downers Grove office and RIS my Toshiba-san with Vista. I knew that the next week, I would be out of town, on the road, OOF, and if something went wrong, I'd be SOL.

And of course, the first thing I did was force the Classic theme.

After about 3 days or so, I started to have second thoughts about Classic theme. Maybe I should give Aero a try. And I did. And I haven't looked back since.

Ever want to test your CAS deployment?

vytas — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:21:00 GMT

Have you ever, either in the course of troubleshooting, or perhaps when standing up a new Client Access Server, wanted a method to test if it works externally? Microsoft CSS has deployed a tool - more specifically, a web site- where you can check the functionality and availibility of any CAS servers that you may have published to the internet.

The Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer conducts the following tests of your CAS servers:

-autodiscover test
-validates your login creds
-tests RPC/HTTP
-tries hostname/autodiscover
-then autodiscover.domain.com
-connect over 443, check cert, rpc ping on different ports
-RPC/HTTP test
-Inbound SMTP test
-gets MX records
-validates MX records
-tests port 25
-sends email

Stay tuned, as this tool is in it's infancy
-OWA test- coming soon
-EAS test coming soon
-POP/IMAP coming soon

http://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com

TechReady 6 bowling champ!

vytas — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:47:00 GMT

Last month I attended TechReady 6. TechReady is a Bi-annual, 5-day Microsoft internal technical conference for employees. During the CSS Bowling nite, I was on a team that took 4th place overall. Additionally, I was awarded a trophy for highest score (158), and placed for most strikes, which also received a trophy. This is despite the fact that I haven't bowled in more then one other occasion since High School- which was a looooong time ago.

My team consisted of a couple of other PFE's, both of the Sharepoint persuasion - Duray Akar and Lane Blundell. Funny how the Sharepoint engineers are always trying to get you to "convert" from your specialty to SPS/MOSS. Don't worry, I am still an Exchange Engineer.

Afterwards, we were joined by some CSS colleagues from Japan - Keiko, Juei, Rika, Shinya and Yukari.

Things I didn't know about Vista - New file system introduced with SP1

vytas — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:04:00 GMT

It’s always been a personal pet peeve that large USB drives come shipped from the factory formatted with FAT. I have to reformat my MP3 player semi-regularly because it is a 30 GB Fat (something) partition.

The first thing I do with a new USB flash drive is to try to format it with NTFS. Today, I noticed that there was a new file system choice: exFAT. In short, it is designed for mobile devices and USB flash drives, where using NTFS may not be possible. exFAT supports partitions beyond 32GB.

More info:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa914353.aspx

Things that happen when you are on the road, Part I

vytas — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:47:00 GMT

Today, while eating dinner at the former Mactarnahan's Taproom (now a Pyramid establishment), I was notified that my 12-week old Viszla pup Mia (left) had spent some time alone with my Christmas tree. The Christmas tree lost.

The unholy trio

vytas — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:13:00 GMT

Are you having weird issues with connectivity? Outlook clients not being able to connect to Exchange? RDP suddenly stops working? Perhaps one of the following:

• When you try to connect to the server by using a VPN connection, you receive the following error message:
Error 800: Unable to establish connection.
• You cannot create a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection to the server.
• You cannot connect to shares on the server from a computer on the local area network.
• You cannot join a client computer to the domain.
• You cannot connect to Microsoft Exchange Server from a computer that is running Microsoft Outlook.
• You can only connect to Web sites that are hosted on the server or on the Internet by using a secure sockets layer (SSL) connection. In this scenario, you cannot connect to a Web site that does not use SSL encryption.
• You experience slow network performance.
• You cannot create an outgoing FTP connection from the server.
• The DHCP Server service crashes.
• Clients experience slow domain logons.
• Network Address Translation (NAT) clients that are located behind Windows SBS 2003 experience intermittent connection failures.
• You experience intermittent RPC communications failures.
• Clients that are configured as SecureNat clients may be unable to connect to the Internet.
• Some Outlook clients may be unable to connect to Exchange.
• You cannot run the Configure E-mail and Internet Connection Wizard successfully.
• Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server blocks RPC communications.
• Clients cannot visit the http://companyweb Web site.
• You cannot browse Internet Information Services (IIS) Virtual Directories.

If you are seeing strange behaviors with networking, you ought to educate yourself and read the following:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936594
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;927168
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/07/18/446400.aspx
http://microsoft.com/snp

If any of that looks vaguely familar, you may want to consider disabling TCP Chimney, along with RSS (receive side scaling) and TCP Offloading.

As an addendum to this post, if you are having issues with CAS servers, IMAP/POP, and slow Autodiscover, you may also want to look at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943502 and apply http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942027/

Updating Schema for Exchange 2007 (easily understandable format)

vytas — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 07:47:00 GMT

**If you do not know what Schema is, or Exchange 2007 for that matter, do not attempt this. Put your keyboard down and back slowly away from the computer. This post is intended for qualified Exchange Admins only**

Recently, I had cause to go through the various ways of preparing your AD and AD schema for Exchange 2007.

I've broken this process down into two general scenarios, the first where you want to apply all pre-requisite AD and AD schema changes, and then the second where you may want to stage the AD and AD schema changes. I've then further broken down each of the 2 scenarios into 2 cases: single forest/single domain, and single forest/multiple domains. All scenarios assume you are transitioning* an existing Exchange Org to Exchange 2007 from 2003 or 2000. So, to summarize, this post will cover the following scenarios and cases:

"All at once"

-Single Forest, Single Domain

-Single Forest, Multiple Domains

"Staged"

-Single Forest, Single Domain

-Single Forest, Multiple Domains

Here are my notes on preparing schema:

All at once
Single domain, single forest
setup.exe /preparead (this is what the wizard/gui runs)

Single forest, multiple domains
setup.exe /preparead (or /ad)in root, then - Enterprise admin and schema admin
setup.exe /preparedomains (/pd)-or setup.exe /preparealldomains (/pad) - enterprise rights

Staged:
Single domain, single forest
setup.exe PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions (/pl) -Enterprise admin and schema admin
setup.exe /prepareschema (/ps) -Schema admin
setup.exe /preparead (/ad) - Domain Admin (unless domain created after preparead, then also needs exchange org admin rights)

Single forest, multiple domains
(ROOT)setup.exe PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions (/pl) -Enterprise admin and schema admin
(ROOT)setup.exe /prepareschema (/ps) -requires Schema admin
(ROOT)setup.exe /preparead (/ad) - requires Domain Admin (unless domain created after preparead, then also needs exchange org admin rights)

Then, in each child domain that is hosting:
-Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003, or Exchange 2007 servers
-Mail-enabled objects
-Global catalog servers that Exchange directory access components might use

Run the following:
-setup /preparedomain (/pd)

Reference:

White Paper: Description of the Parameters Used With the Exchange 2007 Setup.com Tool

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb288906.aspx

Introduction

vytas — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:01:00 GMT

Hello, my name is Vytas, and I am a Messaging Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft. I have been with Microsoft for a year (as of this past Tuesday), and have decided that I need to blog. You-the Microsoft customer- need me to blog. Why do we want me to blog?

Well, lets start with my background, as I think that would be the best way to convey my intent with this blog, and you will be able to see my perspective. I started out in the IT industry back in 1996, working for a VAR in Downers Grove, IL. I started out as a humble hardware tech, and by 1997 earned my NT 4.0 MCSE, A+ and several other certifications. In the intervening 10 years since, I have at times been a network admin; a consultant; an independant consultant; a senior network admin; an architecht; a stand-in-IT-director-because-no-body-cares; I've been the guy who has been in the trenches long enough where the Dilbert's and the Computerworld's Shark Tanks are no longer funny, but hurt (ok, I am being a bit dramatic there. But if you wince when you read Shark Tank, while everyone else is laughing at it. you know what I mean, right?). Most of my professional career has been focused on planning, maintaining or deploying Microsoft products (but not exclusively).

I remember the frustration of trying to deploy OWA for 5.5 before any real documentation of it became available. MS has come a long way since then, starting with the documentation with Windows 2000, and I believe up to the present, that Microsoft admirably attempts to document its products. In fact, the entire Step-by-Step series of MS documentation, in my opinion, is a 5-star, 11 on a 10 scale concept.

So why should I care?

Well, for a couple of reasons. One, is that I truly enjoy being in this business because Information Technology helps people get stuff done, and I like that. I like helping people. I love my job. Part of my job is to be an advocate for my customers, and to ensure that your voice is heard in the product groups, and various other corners of Microsoft. I still haven't learned all the insider tricks of doing that. I envision this blog as being an interaction with Microsoft customers (regardless of past, present or future), and I would sincerely appreciate any feedback, or any painpoints you are experiencing on the subjects discussed here.

Before I became a blue-badger, I remember what it was like trying to dig through Technet looking for hardly documented features. I remember the frustration upon reflecting on the fact that I and the company I was working for wanted to deploy and leverage all these great features in MS products- features we see about and read about in all the places that we see and read about products- only to find that scant or conflicting documentation exists about it. And I've also found that when a new product gets released, that it's a safe bet to raid the bookstore and pick up some 3rd party books that offer the perspective that the KB articles and the whitepapers lack. But even these books, that always seem to run between 800-1100 pages, lack detail, and gloss over and ignore entire aspects and features of products. Specifically, Exchange 2007 itself is a massive topic to cover. It has an entirely new architecture from previous versions of Exchange, and despite the fact that its been released for over 9 months, and available in beta even longer. There is still a lot of information that should be out there that isn't in a digestible form. OK, maybe it isn't _that_much_, but that is where I hope this blog will fill in some of the holes in everybody's Exchange knowledge.

FWIW, I can only discuss publicly disclosed features. I will try to keep information succinct and as non-convoluted as possible (but I reserve the right to throw around a couple of $5 words). I hope you find the information posted here useful in your role of an Exchange admin, or Exchange admin for the day/week/month.