Exchange 2010 SP2 Has Arrived

After what feels like a long wait… Exchange 2010 SP2 has hit the web, http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28190.

Some highlights:

Address Book Policies – ABP

Create customs GALs to different sets of mailboxes based attributes and filters.

Hybrid Configuration Wizard

Ease co-existence configuration between Exchange Online and on-premise deployments.

Exchange UM Language packs

There are a number of new language packs for Exchange 2010 UM

Outlook Mobile Access – OMA

OMA makes a return providing a web based mailbox interface for browser's on small screened devices.

Improving Exchange UM Resilience/Availability

I was asked the other week how to load balance the UM role, I am going to use this post to provide some simple advice to get you started.

In short, add multiple UM role servers to each Dial Plan you wish to make more resilient to application or operating system failure.

Depending on your IP Gateway you should be able to round robin or balance the load between UM servers. To remove a server temporarily you could use:

set-umserver -identity e14um01 -status nonewcalls

Simple and to the point I hope.

Technorati Tags: Exchange,UM

Assigned additional IP Addresses to Exchange Server?

It’s been a while since my last post, so I’m easing in gently with an old favourite of mine I have recently used in deploying a hosting solution…

I can think of a number of reasons you can end up with multiple IP address; on-premise it may be to support additional receive connectors using the same port; and in the hosting world for Autodiscover or OWA customisation.

If the IP addresses are on the same subnet you can just apply them to the primary NIC, this may result in routing issue however as they will all be registered in DNS. Over the years my approach has been to simply add a secondary NIC (made easy even easier with virtualisation) with the “Register this connections addresses in DNS” option not checked and to assign the additional IP addresses to this NIC.



I have been using this with Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 for a many years without any problems.

Hope you find this useful.
Daniel

EMC 2007/2010 IE9 bug fixed

Microsoft have release an IE9 fix to resolve the interoperability issues with between Exchange 2007 and 2010 EMC. Great news (not that I ever get use EMC anymore, well at least that was until this announcement Future of /Hosting Mode).

Anyway back to the fix… Exchange 2007 or 2010 EMC might fail to close with "You must close all dialog boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console". The Exchange team have posted this on there blog with links to the fix, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/10/17/a-fix-for-the-interoperability-issues-between-exchange-2007-and-2010-emc-and-ie9-is-now-available.aspx.

Daniel

RIP /Hosting Mode – Exchange Server 2010 /Hosting

I have been waiting for this for a while, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/10/13/future-of-hosting-mode.aspx.

In summary…

• 180 U turn on hosting!
• You don’t need to use /Hosting Mode, on-premise is probably the preferred choice now
• No new features will be added to SP2 /Hosting Mode, that includes UM
• You will probably need to use an automation partner or have s**t hot Exchange Admins

While I do not agree with this, I do understand working with one product with tweaks is mush easier. Looks like it is back to the way I used to do Hosted Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 before /Hosting Mode was born.

I’ know what I’m doing for the rest of the month….

SysAdmin Required – Basingstoke

I’m looking for a Systems Administrator to join my team in Basingstoke, ideally someone with commercial experience of Exchange Server and PowerShell.

The position has been posted here, http://www.developiq.com/about-us/careers/system-administrator-microsoft.aspx. If you have great service skills and are looking for a step up from Support to SysAdmin this could also be the position for you.

Daniel

BES, Exchange 2010 Hosting Mode and EWS Impersonation

I speak with a lot of people about getting BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5 working fully with Exchange Server 2010 Hosting Mode, and repeatedly come across the same problem with calendars.

While Microsoft have done an excellent job documenting Exchange Management Shell Cmdlets, RIM seems to have completely missed required sections from the deployment documentation.

With Exchange Server 2010 SP1 BES must use EWS to access calendar, to configure the service account we need to create a new Management Role.

New-ManagementScope -PartnerDelegatedTenantRestrictionFilter {Name -eq '*'} -Name BESTenants

New-ManagementRole -Parent PartnerDelegatedTenantManagement -Name BESEWS

New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role BESEWS -User "BESAdmin” -CustomConfigWriteScope BESTenants

One thing I have been surprised by is few of the automation and control panel vendors are properly documenting this which to me suggests they may be missing steps in validating their solution.

What is your experience with Exchange 2010 /Hosting and BES?

Send as permissions with Hosted Exchange 2010

If you need to assign Send As rights with Hosted Exchange 2010 it can easily be achieved with PowerShell.
I want the user Daniel to be able to send email out as the Event DL address:

Add-RecipientPermission "Event" -AccessRights SendAs -Trustee "Daniel"

Nice and easy.

Daniel

snom UC600 Optimized for Microsoft ® Lync

Well this came as surprise to me, snom have released the UC600 an Optimized for Microsoft ® Lync USB device.

To use the phone you will need Office Communicator 2007 R2 or later. I’m hopeful to get my hands on one of these to check the build quality meets the high standard on devices such as the snom 821.

More info here http://www.snom.com/en/products/unified-communications/snom-uc600/ and here http://downloads.snom.net/documentation/data_snom_UC600_en.pdf

Daniel

Technorati Tags: Lync,snom

BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0.3 MR4 and Express v5.0.3 MR1

BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0.3 MR4 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express v5.0.3 MR1 for Exchange, along with Domino and GroupWise flavours, have been released.

The software updates can be downloaded from, http://www.blackberry.com/go/serverdownloads

Newly fixed issues in BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0.3 MR4 include:

BlackBerry Attachment Service
*When a user viewed an .xls or .xlsx attachment on their device, negative percentages (example, -25%) were not displayed correctly. (DT 1428205)

BlackBerry Messaging Agent
*There is improved handling of partial name collisions that may have occurred in the LegacyExchangeDN field where the expected user account had been disabled. (DT 1448927)

BlackBerry Synchronization Service
*When the BlackBerry Synchronization Service tried to synchronize data for many devices that were not in service, a high CPU usage resulted. (DT 1839166)

BlackBerry Web Desktop Manager
*When you used the default version of USB drivers to connect a BlackBerry device to BlackBerry® Web Desktop Manager, sometimes the attached device was not recognized and could not be activated. (DT 1168677)

Organizer data synchronization
*Contacts that used a custom message class, did not synchronize with Public Folders. (DT 1400600)
*If you changed the Mappings settings for organizer data synchronization at the component level, the organizer
data was not synchronized. (DT 1396390)

Technorati Tags: BlackBerry

U-turn on Exchange 2010 SP1 /hosting mode guidance?

If you have been following Exchange 2010 options for hosters you will know that until recently you were pretty much pushed down the /hosting mode route. Well today I spotted this blog post by Ian Hameroff and Michael van Dijken, So, You Want to Host Exchange?, suggesting we don’t have to use /hosting if we want UM and some other functionality.

As with Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 we are able to make a standard deployment of Exchange 2010 SP1 work as a multi-tenant environment, Paul Roman covers it nicely here, The Hard Way - Hosting Environment Preparation.

My first Hosted Exchange solution was Exchange 2000 with a custom built automation engine, which was great, but I remember how much better the support was when HMC was introduced. With /hosting mode it became even simpler and although I desperately want UM in my solution today, I am not sure moving away from /hosting is the right direction.

What are your thoughts?

Daniel

Technorati Tags: Exchange,cloud,hosting

Exchange 2010 SP1 Rollup 4 re-released

After being pulled and providing an explanation the Exchange Team have re-released Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (KB2579150).

Get the update below.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26910

Remove a domain from Office 365

If you are having trouble removing a domain using the Office 365 management portal you can use the Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows PowerShell to help.

First off download the module and find out a little bit more about the MSOL module from here, http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/hh124998.aspx.

Use the following cmdlets to connect, identify and remove domains.

Connect-MsolService

the following command will list the domains you have added to O365.
Get-MsolDomain

Change the default domain.
Set-MsolDomain -IsDefault -Name exchangegeek.onmicrosoft.com

Remove the domain.
Remove-MsolDomain -domainname exchangegeek.com –force

Hope this helps, it worked for me out moving domains between tenant organisations and not getting any response to my “service requests”.

BES 5.0.3 support for Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode–CDO - no longer supported

The compatibility matrix for BES has been updated to include Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode support, BlackBerry Enterprise Server Compatibility.

When BES 5.0.3 was released I upgraded BES in my Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode environment to resolve a calendar issue preventing meeting management from devices, this was great news for my team as it had caused some pain internally.

I actually performed a fresh install and moved users to the new BES, for me this minimised down time, allowed time for testing and gave me an easy roll back operation.

CDO no longer supported by BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft ® Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode

To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services on BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 SP3:

1. Copy the BlackBerry Enterprise Server installation files to a computer that hosts a BlackBerry Enterprise Server instance.
2. Extract the contents to a folder on the computer.
3. At the command prompt, navigate to <extracted_folder>\tools.
4. Perform one of the following actions:
   • To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services for a specific BlackBerry Enterprise Server , type
     TraitTool -server <server_name> -trait EWSEnable -set true
   • To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services for all BlackBerry Enterprise Server instances in a BlackBerry Domain, type
     TraitTool -global -trait EWSEnable -set true
5. Press ENTER.
6. Restart the BlackBerry Controller Service for every BlackBerry Enterprise Server modified.

Daniel

Update Rollup 4 for Exchange 2010 SP1 Release

The Exchange Team have release RU4 for Exchange 2010 SP1 with a ton of updates and fixes for both client and server experience.

Get the full info and update here, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2509910.

Roll on august when we get RU5 and hopefully SP2 sometime soon!

Exchange 2010 Error Reporting and Feedback

If you have Exchange Server 2010 and it has internet access I recommend running the following cmdlet. Submitting feedback and error reports can only make future releases and updates better. Best of all the data is anonymous and submitted over SSL.

Get-ExchangeServer | Set-ExchangeServer -CustomerFeedbackEnabled $true -ErrorReportingEnabled $true

MCM Exchange 2010 Exam Only

Coming summer 2011 Microsoft have decided to recognise demand for Exchange MCM status and provide exam only options, removing the mandatory 3 week course.

While this is great for those who would struggle to take 3 weeks out of their business I am not sure it is the best idea. To me MCM is about deep dive learning with other Exchange IT pros and establishing relationships in the community and Microsoft product teams.

The people I know who have been through the 3 week training have come away with new experience and knowledge. So while I’ll jump at the chance to do the exam only MCM myself, I just don’t think it will be the same.

Read the press release here, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/may11/05-16MicrosoftCertifiedMaster.mspx.

Get information on Exchange MCM here, http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/master-exchange.aspx.

Daniel Noakes

Why I like dummy.file with Exchange

Dummy.file to me is an empty file with and allocated size on disk. With Exchange I create one on each LUN hosting mailbox databases or logs. Simple to create and just one line to your build document/script.

> fsutil.exe file createnew c:\dummy.file 20971520

Should a LUN fill up rapidly resulting in a dismounted database I can delete dummy.file and mount the database. I can then take action to reduce the database size or manually truncate logs. Coupled with Opalis you could delete dummy.file based on a SCOM disk alert, start online mailbox moves and send notifications without having to touch the server. Opalis could even raise a PO for more storage. :-)

Obviously LUNs should be sized correctly in the first place, but in large dynamic infrastructures this last resort can prove useful and give some breathing space.

You can also modify the Exchange database size limit using the registry, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232092.aspx. this approach works, but isn’t a simply to restore service as deleting a file.

I hope you find this as useful as I have other the years.

Daniel Noakes

Lync Web Scheduler

I’ve been working with the Lync Web Scheduler as an alternative to the Outlook add-in to schedule Lync meetings online for the past few days. Functionality includes:

• Scheduling a new online Lync meeting.
• Listing all existing Lync Server 2010 meetings that the user has organized.
• Viewing and modifying details of an existing meeting.
• Deleting an existing meeting.
• Sending an email invitation to meeting participants by using a configured SMTP mail server.
• Joining an existing conference.

Download it here, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b7d8f948-fa64-4c51-8b54-2223954d1fa4. Installation is straight forward and getting started is simply a matter of browsing to https://lyncpoolfqdn/scheduler.

Its only available in English (US flavour) at the moment and can’t handle reoccurring meetings.

Daniel Noakes

Exchange 2010 SP1 PS trial/licence bug?

When running Get-ExchangeServer for Exchange 2010 SP1 the following results are returned listed as “..Exchange2007..”.

IsExchange2007TrialEdition        : True
IsExpiredExchange2007TrialEdition : False

I’m pretty sure this is not intentional, and to be honest really makes no difference to me. Just seems that they could drop the “2007” bit and never worry about updating for future releases.

Daniel Noakes

Clean up after installing Service Pack 1 on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

All credit to Mark Parris (@markparris) for this one, http://markparris.co.uk/2011/04/12/clean-up-after-installing-service-pack-1-on-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2/. I thought it was really useful (for me in the future) so wanted to post here.

“After installing Service Pack 1 on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, by default you have the ability to uninstall the Service Pack and rollback to the previous state. If you are confident that you do not need to rollback the service pack at a later date. The installation can be made final by running DISM /online /cleanup-Image /spsuperseded on average this has reclaimed for me over 2GB per server, not that much space these days but if you have for some reason VM’s running like this, these 2GB’s can add up to a lot of space.”

DISM has some great features including upgrading Windows Standard to Enterprise, its all covered here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744256(WS.10).aspx.

Daniel Noakes

Windows 7 SP1 RSAT available now

The Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) has been release to the web. Hooray, I’ve felt really stuck without these for the past few weeks.

Get the files from here, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3a+MicrosoftDownloadCenter+$Microsoft+Download+Center$

Daniel Noakes

BES 5 SP3 MR1– already available

Just 2 days after releasing BES 5 SP3 for Exchange, now BES 5 SP3 MR1 has hit the web. Just a couple of updates which I have copied and pasted below.

Release notes: http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/26577/BlackBerry_Enterprise_Server_for_Microsoft_Exchange-Maintenance_Release_Notes--1561918-0404053903-001-5.0.3-US.pdf

Software download: https://swdownloads.blackberry.com/Downloads

What's new

The BlackBerry® Enterprise Trait Tool includes a new trait named ExchangeEnablePropertyPromotion. This trait specifies if and how the BlackBerry Messaging Agent promotes MAPI properties. The possible values are:

• 0 – Disabled
• 1 - The BlackBerry Messaging Agent promotes MAPI properties on all folder reloads, if required.
• 2 - The BlackBerry Messaging Agent promotes MAPI properties on all folder reloads, if required, except for the first folder reload. On the first folder reload the BlackBerry Messaging Agent does not promote MAPI properties.

Example: To disable the promotion of MAPI properties for the BlackBerry Domain, type traittool -global -trait ExchangeEnablePropertyPromotion -set 0.

Example: To disable the promotion of MAPI properties for a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server instance, type traittool -server <server_name> -trait ExchangeEnablePropertyPromotion -set 0.

For information about using the BlackBerry Enterprise Trait Tool, see the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Administration Guide.

Fixed issues

BlackBerry Administration Service
If one BlackBerry® Administration Service instance sent a reconciliation task to a second instance, and the connection between the instances dropped before the second instance could notify the first that the reconciliation was complete, reconciliation stopped on all BlackBerry Administration Service instances. The first BlackBerry Administration Service instance then wrote the following error to its log file: “org.jboss.remoting.CannotConnectException: Can not get connection to server. Problem establishing socket connection for InvokerLocator [sslsocket:”. The BlackBerry Administration Service checks for unprocessed reconciliation events every 24 hours and restarts them at that time. For more information, contact RIM Support. (DT 1159175)

BlackBerry Messaging Agent
In some circumstances email messages were not delivered promptly because of high disk I/O on Microsoft® Exchange 2010 mailbox servers. (DT 1141515)

Happy patching.

Daniel Noakes

Lync Server 2010 Visio Stencil: What is your favourite shape?

In February Microsoft published the Lync Server 2010 Visio Stencil, which I have been using to produce designs for our hosted solution.

My favourite shape has to be Microphone, it just looks a bit funny to me and I’m sure not many people have free standing devices like this. What is your favourite shape?

Microphone - Lync Server 2010 Visio Stencil

You can download the Lync Server 2010 Visio Stencil here, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=65b5a396-2c87-445d-be23-d324727d19cb.

Daniel Noakes

BES 5.0.3 & BES Express 5.0.2 MR5 released

BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5 Service Pack 3 has been released to the web, read the release notes here http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/25750/BlackBerry_Enterprise_Server_for_Microsoft_Exchange-Release_Notes--1398168-0311101250-001-5.0.3-US.pdf.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server  Express 5 Service Pack 2 Maintenance Release 5 has also been released to the web, read the release notes here http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/25750/BlackBerry_Enterprise_Server_for_Microsoft_Exchange-Release_Notes--1398168-0311101250-001-5.0.3-US.pdf.

Both are available to download here, http://swdownloads.blackberry.com/Downloads/.

Updated: I forgot to add SP3 adds OCS 2007 R2 and Lync 2010 support which I blogged about last week http://blog.exchangegeek.com/2011/03/lync-ocs-r2-support-in-bes-5-sp3.html.

Daniel Noakes

Lync & OCS R2 support in BES 5 SP3

BlackBerry have announced BES 5.0 SP3 (surely, 5.3?) adds support for OCS 2007 R2 and Lync Server 2010. Get the release notes here, http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/25751/New_in_this_release_503_1311756_11.jsp.

If you are feeling like you want to give it a go read the documentation here, http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/25747/Provisioning_BCS_as_a_trusted_application_1396931_11.jsp.

Daniel Noakes

P2V OEM Windows

Something I don’t really see mentioned much is how we can take a physical OEM Windows server or PC and convert it to a virtual machine without breaking the licencing agreement.

Before we start converting machines we must ensure we have sufficient non-OEM Windows licences and corresponding media available.

Simply pop in the install media and run an “upgrade” this will run a dynamic upgrade from say OEM to VLK. I do find this a little irritating as it extends the maintenance window for the P2V.

This is also pretty handy for those restoring a full OS backup to a virtual environment, in the event of disaster or data recovery from decommissioned servers.

Daniel Noakes

Exchange 2010 holiday calendar with delegate approval

After a recent migration from dedicated to hosted Exchange 2010 we needed to provide solutions for a few shared public folder calendars, one of which was used for booking holiday. The solution was a resource mailbox with the addition of delegate approval.

This should work with any Exchange 2010 service that supports remote PowerShell access.

The mailbox can be easily created in ECP, although I chose to use PowerShell. I also created a distribution group for the delegates, don’t forget to add members.

New-Mailbox –Name “Holiday” –Room

New-DistributionGroup –Name HolidayAdmins | Set-DistributionGroup -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled $true

I then setup the calendar processing parameters.

Set-CalendarProcessing –Identity “Holiday” –ResourceDelegates “HolidayAdmins”

Set-CalendarProcessing –Identity “Holiday” –AllBookInPolicy $false –AllRequestInPolicy $true –AutomateProcessing AutoAccept –AdditionalResponse “Holiday request has been submitted. Confirmation will be sent separately.” –EnforceSchedulingHorizon $false –AllowConflicts $true

Users can now book holiday by adding the Holiday resource to meeting. Members of the distribution group (managers/HR) will receive a delegated meeting request which can be accepted or declined.

Daniel Noakes

Populating Lync 2010 Contact Lists

Lync does a great job at searching for contacts, as well as displaying team and frequent contacts. If you work for a smaller organisation or a group of people with no particular hierarchy you may want to populate the contact list with a bunch of people for different groups.

Can you believe there doesn’t appear to be a way to do this out of the box. Luckily Microsoft have built a great product with a load of really clever people who can help. Jeff Guillet has posted just a solution on his blog, http://www.expta.com/2011/01/introducing-lyncaddcontacts.html.

With 3 lines I have been able to pre-populate contacts for groups of users.

CScript LyncAddContacts.vbs /backup backup.xml
CScript LyncAddContacts.vbs daniel.noakes@noak.es
CScript LyncAddContacts.vbs /import “OU=noak.es,OU=Microsoft Exchange Hosted Organizations,DC=exchangegeek,DC=com”

Daniel Noakes

Exchange 2010 SP1 RU3 pulled until BlackBerry issue resolved

If you haven’t already picked up on it, Microsoft have withdrawn Exchange 2010 SP1 RU3 due some problems highlighted with BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Read more from Kevin Allison on The Exchange Team Blog, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/14/exchange-2010-sp1-rollup-3-and-blackberrys-sending-duplicate-messages.aspx

Daniel Noakes

Free BES for Office 365 Users

BPOS and Office 365 users will be getting BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) for free based on the information in this slide deck, http://www.slideshare.net/jessiethe3rd/blackberry-now-free-with-bposoffice-365.

Blackberry now free with BPOS/Office 365

View more presentations from jessiethe3rd

I get the impression this will be built on BES 6, as the slide deck makes reference to the service being hosted and managed by RIM. It will probably be the “Express” edition, but the difference between it and the full product a diminishing anyway.

If you have requirement for BES in business you should work with a partner who can develop a complete solution from devices to air-time and app development to hosting.

I’m available to chat about mobile and messaging as a managed service, just drop me an email or DM on twitter.

Daniel Noakes
twitter.com/dannoakes
daniel.noakes@developiq.com

Update Roll Up 9 for HMC 4.5

Finally, the update for HMC 4.5 that resolves the bug when working with resource mailboxes.

Get the info and the update here, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2492952.

Daniel Noakes

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Planning Tool Released

The Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Planning Tool has made it out of beta and is available to download here, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=bcd64040-40c4-4714-9e68-c649785cc43a.

The Planning Tool will recommend a topology and out the XML for the Topology Builder based on questions you answer about your Organisation. The suggested topology includes most things you need to know; server specifications; IP addresses; host names; and firewall rules.

Site Topology:

Edge Network:

The topology can be exported straight to Visio which is great.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Planning Tool:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=bcd64040-40c4-4714-9e68-c649785cc43a.

Daniel Noakes

Exchange 2010 SP1 /Hosting -MultiTenant CMDLET Parameter

The –MultiTenant parameter is only available for a few cmdlets in a multi-tenant deployment of Exchange Server 2010 SP1. Using –MultiTenant specifies the search or operation should be performed across the entire forest and not just the organization currently scoped.

I have found this parameter useful in combination with the Get-MoveRequest and Get-MailboxRestoreRequest cmdlets.

If I want to decommission a database I have to move all the mailboxes using New-MoveRequest. Below using Get-Mailbox with -Database I am able to retrieve all mailboxes hosted on the database across the entire forest, that is apart from arbitration mailboxes.

Get-Mailbox -Database DAG1DB1 | New-MoveRequest –Target Database DAG1DB2

To view the progress you normally run Get-MoveRequest or Get-Mailbox –Organization “Org_Name” but this will only show results scoped to the administrators or specified organization.

Using Get-MoveRequest –MultiTenant will show results for all move requests across the entire forest. This can be piped in to other cmdlets, for example to check when the moves are complete and remove them.

Get-MoveRequest –MultiTenant

Get-MoveRequest –MultiTenant | Remove-MoveRequest

This is much simpler than running Get-Mailbox –Organization 100s or even1000s of times.

Daniel Noakes

Upgrading Windows Server 2008 R2 Editions with DISM.exe

You can use DISM.exe to upgrade the Windows Server 2008 R2 Edition you have installed from the command line. Before going any further, don’t think about doing this on DC or Exchange Server without first removing these roles.

Why would you need this? I’m working with a Virtual Data Centre provider who provide a Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition template, but I need Windows Failover Clustering support for Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Groups.

I could use the install media, but using DISM.exe is much simpler. You may run in to trouble if a single licence key covers both Standard and Enterprise, in that case head over to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff793406.aspx and use a KMS client setup key to perform the upgrade.

Run the following from the command prompt, followed by a restart as directed.

DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerEnterprise /ProductKey:ABC12-ABC12-ABC12-ABC12-ABC12

If KMS client setup key was used remember to change to the key.

Daniel Noakes

Set-ExchangeAssistanceConfig

Use the Set-ExchangeAssistanceConfig cmdlet to modify Microsoft Exchange Help configurations for your organization. Out-of-the-box OWA and ECP users will be redirected to help.outlook.com, which contains Office 365 and Live@edu specific settings which can be misleading.

To make changes read more at, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298070.aspx.

Daniel Noakes

Lync 2010 “Appear Offline” Status

Lync 2010 users may wish to set the “Appear Offline” status, which unlike OCS 2007, is not enabled out of the box.

Open Lync Server Management Shell and run:

Get-CSClientPolicy | Set-CSClientPolicy -EnableAppearOffline:$true

On the next login the change will be visible in the client.

Daniel Noakes

Lync Server 2010: Enable Members of Protected Domain Security Groups

It goes without saying we all setup our environments with separate user and administrative accounts, but lets just say we wanted to enabled a member of a protected domain security group.

Using the Lync 2010 Server Control Panel you will receive the following error:

Active Directory operation failed on "dc01.exchangegeek.com". You cannot retry this operation: "Insufficient access rights to perform the operation"

We simply have to use PowerShell, which we are all using anyway, to administer members of protected domain security groups.

Enable-CsUser -Identity "daniel.noakes" -RegistrarPool "se01.exchangegeek.com" -SipAddressType EmailAddress  -SipDomain exchangegeek.com

Daniel Noakes

Microsoft UC OIP (Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program)

I’m finding new Lync UC resources all the time and today came across the Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program (via Brett Johnson) detailing infrastructure and services qualified for Lync Server 2010.

It’s nice to have a one stop shop to check out qualified Direct SIP, IP-PBX, SBA and SIP Trunk providers. Check it out here, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lync/gg131938.aspx.

Daniel Noakes

Interactive Whiteboard & UC: eBeam + Lync

In the search for interactive whiteboard solutions I have rediscovered eBeam, having used the eBeam Classic Projection products previously.

The eBeam Edge Projection is a USB/Bluetooth receiver device attached to a flat surface (wall, table, whiteboard) which tracks a stylus within a captured area (123in/312cm diagonal).

The device connects to a computer, which in turn uses a projector to display on to the area being captured.

Image from: http://www.e-beam.com/products/ebeam-edge-projection.html

In the box you get the receiver, stylus + battery, 2 mounting plates, eBeam Workplace software and a USB cable. The mounting plates are metal and can be easily fixed to a wall, the receiver is magnetic so can be attached quickly to a mounting plate or whiteboard.

Image from: http://www.e-beam.com/products/ebeam-edge-projection.html

The device comes with it own software, but I think it really lends itself to use with Lync Server Whiteboard Collaboration, or virtual whiteboard as I have also seen it referred to as.

The real headline for me is the cost coming in below £520 ($899) for USB version + the cost of a projector (preferable an ultra short throw). You could half the cost of interactive whiteboard solutions in the office and have the benefit of being able to carry it in your laptop bag or projector case.

I surprised to find no mention to Lync Server on the eBeam website, despite the obvious advantages for all. I would hope in the coming months this changes and maybe the products become Lync certified.

Once we are up an running in our new office I plan to post pictures, videos and couple of articles of this in action.