Virtualisation Support for Exchange 2007 SP1 is here

Microsoft have recently announced that they will now support Exchange 2007 SP1 running on a virtualised Hyper-V Windows 2008 platform.

There has been a new article published that gives you the information about best practices for running Exchange 2007 SP1 on Hyper-V.

If your thinking of giving this a go read this first has some very good information about planning for doing this in a production environment.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794548.aspx

You must use Exchange 2007 SP1 on a Windows 2008 operating system to be supported

Note the Unified Messaging role will not be supported in a virtualised environment.

It's not just Hyper-V that will be supported which is a big surprise other vendors are being supported to see: http://windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm

This is something that a lot of Exchange admins have been waiting to happen for a long time and a constant question i see banded around the Microsoft support forums so it's good to see Microsoft giving people the flexibility to use virtualisation with Exchange 2007 SP1.

Wayne Hollomby

Recovering an Exchange 2007 Server

So i'm recovering this Exchange Server in the Test Lab, and one thing that really bugs me is the fact that when using the /recoverserver switch (more info here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332343(EXCHG.80).aspx), Exchange is installed to the default location (%program files%\microsoft\exchange server).

I find this rather annoying as the install path is recorded on the Exchange Server object in the Configuration Container partition of AD.

When recovering a server however you can specify an alternate install directory. After /recoverserver use /t or /targetdir and specify the install directory.

Example: setup /m:recoverserver /t:"D:\Install\Exchange"


Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

HMC 4.5 Released

Microsoft have just released there latest and greatest version of Hosted Messaging and Collaboration Solution the new version has some really good added features that will please hosters there is support for OCS 2007 as one of the major components to be added but also some added features for Exchange 2007 SP1 being supported like resource mailboxes and web based offline address books to give you option of moving away from having these sitting on the public folders servers if all of your users are running Outlook 2007.

Download and information above this release can be found on the new service provider website from Microsoft at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/serviceproviders/default.aspx

You will also be glad to here there is a migration kit on it's way to enable you to move from HMC 4.0 to 4.5 and directly from HMC 3.5 to 4.5 i will post more information about this when it becomes available.

Wayne Hollomby

msExchMailboxFolderSet and HMC4.0 + HMC3.5 co-existence

If you are deploying HMC4.0 in co-existance with HMC3.5, and not a Greenfield install, then read on.

In co-existance when moving all POP, SMTP, IMAP and OWA urls(inc. Outlook Anyhwere/ RPC over HTTPs access) over to Exchange 2007 Hub Transport and Client Access Servers, be aware there is a bug if you have used OWA segmentation using the msExchMailboxFolderSet attribute.

More on Exchange 2003 OWA segmentation here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/833340

The issue is if you use the value '4294967295' (FFFFFFFF) to set 'All Features' for Premium/Gold/'your full access mailbox type here'.

'FFFFFFFF' is read as -1, and Exchange refuses to allow POP3 and IMAP connectivity on the mailbox. Further the Exchange Management Console also flags the 'msExchangeMailboxFolderSet' as corrupt when selecting a user under 'Recipient Configuration \ Mailbox'.

Setting the value to '131071', as mentioned in the article, fixes the issue. (edit: there was an issue with this kb which has now been fixed, so additional notation on 131071 and 1310071 removed).
The way to fix this is to set the attribute to (null), or 131071 as mentioned in KB833340.

Other values that actually do restrict OWA use appear to not be affected.

This will also effect any ordinary enviroment that is in transition from Exchange 2003 to 2007 and is using the msExchMailboxFolderSet attribute in this way.

Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

Microsoft to withdraw per incident support for Hosted Exchange (you need a proper support contract!!)

If you're a provider of Hosted Exchange/HMC, should should read this: http://blogs.msdn.com/gavingee/archive/2008/05/16/important-changes-to-support-for-hosting-solutions.aspx

If you've got an HMC platform then you need to have the appropriate Service Provider Support Contract in place from end-June. Microsoft are withdrawing the per-incident credit-card support for HMC, often used by smaller Hosting providers to gain support from Microsoft for inidents and issues.

We've got one and it's very very useful - not only have the global hosting support team undertaken a review of our platform so that they understand us better, we also get a named TAM (Technical Account Manager; Paul you are a hero!) with pro-active support and training from MS too.

BTW, Gavin's blog is a useful source of SaaS & Hosting news with a focus on the UK. Gavin works in the UK Hosting team for Microsoft (a useful contact for you all)

Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Released

Microsoft have released another rollup fix for Exchange 2007 SP1 to follow on from rollup 1 a few months ago.

You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=99DA32E0-D9E3-4156-AABF-8369BF96E3E7&displaylang=en

This update has all the fixes that were in Rollup 1 included so you can now just install rollup 2 and you will get all the latest updates.

A description of the fixes included in rollup 2 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=99DA32E0-D9E3-4156-AABF-8369BF96E3E7&displaylang=en

Now you can all get Xobni for your inbox

Well done to the team at Xobni - after 7 months of invite-only beta testing, it's now available for publicly for anyone to download.

You can get it here http://www.xobni.com/?friend=72198
Have a look at the video on their site if you still need convincing... it's good stuff.

Mail enabled Contacts in a Hosted Enviroment and the Offline Address Book.

Contacts in a Hosted Exchange environment can be tricky to implement succesfully, with 1) the way Exchange searches object attributes to create an Offline Address Book and 2) Active Directory not allowing 2 objects to have the same proxy address (which in all fairness is actually a great necessary check in the GUI to have – although this can be bypassed with LDAP manipulation! (ADSI too) – Note: having two objects with an identical proxyaddress will break delivery to that address and is considered attribute corruption of Active Directory).

So how does the Exchange 2003 System Attendant (using oabgen.dll) determine objects to be included for OAB generation? - It looks to see if the object has two attributes: a ‘proxyaddress’ and ‘mail’ attribute. It will further check to ensure the primary (SMTP in uppercase) ‘proxyaddress’ matches the mail attribute address.

So how does an Exchange Hoster get around 2 companies having the same contact of john@doe.com for example?

First let me explain the TargetAddress and ProxyAddress attributes on a mail enabled AD contact.

The TargetAddress is their actual email address, for example : bill@microsoft.com
The ProxyAddress is what RUS (if you use it – HMC disables all but Enterprise RUS (enabled for System Attendant operation)) stamps on the objects email addresses tab. RUS can of course be told to bypass objects by unchecking ‘Automatically update email addresses based on recipient policy’. You will find the primary proxyaddress will be the address of the contact, matching the targetaddress, and depending on RUS and Recipient Policy configuration it could well be stamped with further proxyaddresses.

So, john@doe.com – how can two customers have this contact in an HMC/Hosted Exchange environment?

The short answer is they can, but it cannot show up in the OAL. This is due to the Offline Address Book generation specifying proxyaddress attributes I mentioned earlier, rather than also considering targetaddress attributes.

99% of hosters won’t have this problem – and contacts will be generated with a proxy address (something HMC supports by default). However when you run into this problem it does cause customer grief.

One way of bypassing it is to give a bogus proxyaddress, for instance ‘HostedCompanyName.joe@bloggs.com’, where HostedCompanyName is the name of the Hosted Exchange customer.

This does work, but introduces other issues when a user outside the Org performs a ‘Reply All’. Take a look.

Here’s the properties of the contact from the GAL:

Here’s the contact from the AD, I have pulled the info from ADSIEdit:

You can see the highlighted proxyaddress and targetaddress attributes clearly:

When you send a message outside of the Org, and include the contact, if anyone that is also outside the Org does a 'Reply All', they will only see the incorrect proxyaddress and not the correct SMTP address of the contact, which is the targetaddress:

This of course will result in an NDR

The fix? Remove the proxy attribute altogether, removing the contact from OAB generation, or have the primary proxy address match the target address (standard Exchange2003/2007 behaviour) – but something that will cause mail flow issues when you get a customer with the same contact.


Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

SharePoint as an application platform!

I've previously talked about the potential of Exchange and CRM as application development platforms and how the support of a provisioning platform opens these up for ISV application development.

What I haven't mentioned is the powerful and unifying platform of SharePoint;

• Sharepoint use a Windows platform running SQL Server and IIS6.
• SharePoint is a .NET application and provides a powerful platform for building .NET applications & solutions
• SharePoint is widely deployed and adopted by information workers providing a familiar interface
• Close integration with Microsoft Office applications

These are a number of features that Sharepoint does pretty well now, these being;

• SharePoint & WSS are pretty well known for their collaboration features - document libraries are probably the most widely used feature of SharePoint. With WSS3, the search functions improved to support this properly too
• Support for forms & InfoPath in SharePoint (MOSS) and business process automation, including workflows, which don’t require MOSS.
• Of course, SharePoint provides an intranet/extranet solutions with a Portal into other sites, and the personal/social elements of My Site
• The core functionality of document management is OK and supports basic requirements for compliance and information security. Note: there is no formal compliance support in Sharepoint. Beyond this the reporting and auditing features do not stand up and there is no support for HSM.
• The business intelligence (BI) features have improved greatly with the use of Excel Services, KPIs, and the Business Data Connector (BDC). Excel Services is pretty cool and renders Excel worksheets including charts and pivot tables, in SharePoint sites.

We are going to be developing some concept services that use the features of SharePoint, Exchange and CRM. If you're interested in this, or developing your own applications, see http://www.saas.co.uk/

thanks, Dan

Hosted Exchange for the world

Large Hosted Exchange providers can get bitten by scheduled maintenance – it will always be in everyones contract, but what happens when a certain percentage of your customers are outside your timezone? – worse still, substantially.

To expand your Hosted mailboxes you have to reach further than your own country – and a lot of Hosted Exchange providers can say they host mailboxes for companies across both the Americas, Europe and the Middle East/Asias.

Intelligence has to be added to your provisioning portal – otherwise your Hong Kong users from Company A could be put on the same Exchange Server (not necessarily the same Mailstore or even Storage Group) as the rest of Company A’s users from Europe. And what’s worse? The rest of the users on the Exchange Server are based in Europe. How is the scheduled maintenance justified to the Hong Kong contigent when it's happening during their working day?

So how does scheduled maintenance come into effect here?

Working out of hours to GMT isn’t going to cut it for the users in Hong Kong as their day is still in full swing – this is where careful planning and design is required. The ideal answer is to carve up the World Map into set zones, so whether a single company is from Dubai, or a single company has offices in Dubai, Europe and the USA you do not affect their respective core working hours. This requires a lot of Dev work - as although HMC supports provisioning to multiple stores for a customer, it doesn’t have the intelligence of splitting users between ‘time zone Exchange Server farms’ based on their location for example. This is where in-house or outsourced Dev work is required.

Suffice to say our current Exchange 2003 solution doesn’t have this feature – we support the provisioning to multiple databases – even across multiple Exchange Servers – however there is not the intelligence that is required for a Hosted Exchange supplier to rule all time zones and keep customers that have offices in some or all, happy.

This might have to be a phase 2 or 3 step in most Hosters plans, but it is a much needed step to successfully achieve 100,000 mailboxes and beyond.


Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server