The Capslock Assassin

Unable to enable Offline Address Book for web distribution

Paul — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:56:47 +0000

You may encounter an issue with Exchange Server 2007 organisations that have been migrated from previous Exchange versions where the Default Offline Address List cannot be enabled for web distribution, even after the OAB has been moved to an Exchange Server 2007 server.

In the Exchange Management Console the check box to enable web distribution is greyed out.

To resolve this issue use the Set-OfflineAddressBook cmdlet to apply the mandatory properties to the OAB object.

[PS] C:\>Set-OfflineAddressBook "Default Offline Address List" -ApplyMandatoryProperties

When viewed in the Exchange Management Console the check box is now available.

You can now tick the box and add OAB virtual directories for web distribution.

Exchange Server 2007 CCR recommendations

Paul — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:00:00 +0000

From Tales of a System Administrator come these recommendations for Exchange 2007 CCR deployments:

Having had Cluster Continuous Replication in place now for about a year, I’ve derived some of my own best practice recommendations that might not be found within the official Microsoft documentation.

Although these recommendations are based on a very solid and stable production environment…anything bad or job search inducing that happens as a result of implementing them in your environment is not my responsibility.

Read the rest…

Link: My “unofficial” Exchange Server 2007 CCR recommendations

SharePoint Security Resources

Paul — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:00:00 +0000

Microsoft provides two useful resources for MOSS security:

Security for Office SharePoint Server 2007 (downloadable book)
Office SharePoint Server Security Account Requirements (worksheet)

Link: John Westworth’s blog on Technet

Video: Exchange Server 2007 storage considerations by EMC

Paul — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:01:00 +0000

Storage is important to Exchange performance, which means Exchange guys need to talk to storage guys from time to time. This video might help the Exchange guys understand the storage guys a little better.

Link: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Storage Considerations: DAS or SAN

Web host closure leads to 70% drop in global spam

Paul — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:00:00 +0000

From the BBC:

The closure of a web hosting firm that is believed to have had spam gangs as clients has led to a drastic reduction in junk mail.

Two US internet service providers have pulled the plug on the firm McColo following an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper.

Anti-spam firm Ironport has seen junk mail levels drop by 70% since McColo was taken offline on 11 November.

But, it warned, it will be a temporary respite from the menace of spam.

Read the full article here.

Mr Simon Okoye needs my help!

Microsoft releases Small Business Server 2008

Paul — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:21:44 +0000

I’m going to get laughed at by my colleagues for posting this, but I’m excited that Microsoft has released Small Business Server 2008.

SBS 2008 comes in two versions, the Standard version includes:

Windows Server 2008
Exchange Server 2007 (Standard Edition)
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Windows Software Update Services 3.0

The Premium edition includes

a second Server 2008 license
SQL Server 2008 Standard for Small Business

The product also ships with 120 day trials of:

Forefront Security for Exchange
Windows Live OneCare for Servers

Although I would anticipate most customers will investigate third party security products.

The great thing about the SBS product is that it integrates all of the components together with nice wizards and customised admin consoles to make deployment and administration a real breeze. Its pretty hard to screw up an SBS deployment when you go along with the “SBS way” of doing things instead of treating it like a bunch of independent products.

I have exactly one SBS 2003 customer needing to transition to SBS 2008 which I am sure will yield me some good blog fodder.

Link: Windows Small Business Server site at Microsoft.com

The essential Exchange Server 2007 toolkit

Paul — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:58:04 +0000

If you are regularly deploying or administering Exchange Server 2007 environments then chances are there are some pieces of software and documentation that you regularly need to make use of. Today I thought I would share with you what is in my own Exchange 2007 toolkit.

Software

Operating Systems

Naturally it pays to have copies of the Windows Server CD media on hand. If you don’t like carrying CD’s then having ISOs that you can mount is usually just as good.

Windows Server 2003 32-bit and 64-bit (both Standard and Enterprise, and R2) CD media, slipstreamed with SP2.
Windows Server 2008 32-bit and 64-bit DVD media (includes all the bits for both Standard and Enterprise on it)

Exchange Pre-Requisites

When deploying Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2003 there are several pre-requisites needed. Having these ready to copy to the server saves a lot of time finding and downloading them:

.NET 2.0 with Service Pack 1 (x86 and x64)
MMC 3.0 (x86 and x64)
PowerShell (x86 and x64)

Even though production Exchange systems are only deployed on 64-bit servers I include both the 32-bit and 64-bit pre-requisites in my toolkit for situations where the Exchange 2007 schema extension is performed on a 32-bit domain controller.

Windows Server 2008 deployments don’t need any special software because all of the Exchange 2007 pre-requisites can be installed via the command line.

Exchange Installation Source

The latest build of Exchange 2007 is SP1 and is available as a complete install (ie, doesn’t require you to install RTM and then apply SP1). Again even though only 64-bit is used for production Exchange servers I still carry the 32-bit version with me for schema extensions and for installing the management tools on administrative workstations.

You can download both 32-bit and 64-bit install source here.

Documentation

Microsoft provides downloadable help files for Exchange 2007 that are invaluable when out in the field, especially if you happen to be without internet access and need information fast.

While there are many good Exchange 2007 books around most of them are too big and heavy to carry out in the field. That is why I carry the Administrator’s Pocket Consultant with me. However will also list here the other books that I keep in the office for reference:

Want to work with Exchange Server 2007?

If you’re interested in working with Exchange Server 2007 you may want to:

Get certified. I’ve completed the MCTS certification for Exchange 2007 and in a few days the two books I’ve ordered for the MCITP certification exams are due to arrive.
Read my Project Coconut series, a real world Exchange 2007 deployment I recently worked on
Subscribe to my RSS feed, so you can keep up to date with all of my Exchange related blog posts

System Center Essentials “Root Management Server Unavailable” errors

Paul — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:00:00 +0000

A System Center Essentials 2007 server may raise the following alert:

Alert: Root Management Server Unavailable.

Source: sce01.domain.internal

Path: sce01.domain.internal

Last modified by: System

Last modified time: 4/11/2008 1:21:26 PM Alert description: The root management server (Healthservice) has stopped heartbeating soon after 4/11/2008 1:18:48 PM. This adversely affects all availability calculation for the entire management group.

The Operations Manager event log on the SCE server may contain the following event:

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    OpsMgr SDK Service
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    26330
Date:        4/11/2008
Time:        11:41:48 AM
User:        N/A
Computer:    SCE01
Description:
The sdk service lost database connectivity.
Database name: OperationsManager
Server instance name: sql01
Exception Message: Could not allocate space for object ‘dbo.JobStatus’ in database ‘OperationsManager’ because the ‘PRIMARY’ filegroup is full. Create disk space by deleting unneeded files, dropping objects in the filegroup, adding additional files to the filegroup, or setting autogrowth on for existing files in the filegroup.

You can resolve this problem by enabling autogrowth on the SQL database files. Launch SQL Server Management Studio on the SQL server and open the properties of the OperationsManager database. Select Files, then take note of the Autogrowth setting.

Enable Autogrowth and set it to 10 percent as shown here:

Restarting the “OpsMgr Health Service” or the server should then resolve the alert condition and allow normal SCE operations to resume.

Exchange 2007 logs not truncating after successful backup

Paul — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:23:03 +0000

You may encounter an issue where Exchange Server 2007 storage group transaction logs are not truncated after a successful backup. In our case Backup Exec 11d was the backup application being used. Backup Exec would report successful backups however the transaction logs were not truncating, leading to disk space problems.

The Application event log on the Exchange server had corresponding errors such as this:

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    ESE
Event Category:    ShadowCopy
Event ID:    2007
Date:        3/11/2008
Time:        8:39:17 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    SERVER
Description:
Information Store (3408) Shadow copy instance 9 aborted.

The solution was to install hot fix 940349, which resolves some VSS snapshot issues. The hot fix requires a server restart.

Link: Availability of a Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) update rollup package for Windows Server 2003 to resolve some VSS snapshot issues

Windows Home Server not so good at english

Paul — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:16:52 +0000

Maybe version 2 will fix this “bug”.

The Capslock Assassin

Unable to enable Offline Address Book for web distribution

Related posts:

Exchange Server 2007 CCR recommendations

Related posts:

SharePoint Security Resources

Related posts:

Video: Exchange Server 2007 storage considerations by EMC

Related posts:

Web host closure leads to 70% drop in global spam

Related posts:

Microsoft releases Small Business Server 2008

Popular posts:

The essential Exchange Server 2007 toolkit

Software

Operating Systems

Exchange Pre-Requisites

Exchange Installation Source

Documentation

Want to work with Exchange Server 2007?

Related posts:

System Center Essentials “Root Management Server Unavailable” errors

Related posts:

Exchange 2007 logs not truncating after successful backup

Related posts:

Windows Home Server not so good at english

Popular posts: