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

Hosted Exchange 2010 Webinar Today

Just a quick post to say this is starting at 1pm GMT. You can sign up here

http://www.cobweb.com/learn-now/webinars--events/webinar-exchange-2010.aspx

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

Converting a mailbox to a linked mailbox, improvements in Exchange 2010 SP1

In Exchange 2007 and 2010 you have to perform two actions to accomplish this. First Disable-Mailbox and then Connect-Mailbox, specifying the linked account to convert the mailbox upon re-attachement into a linked mailbox.

The problem with this method is that it removes all Exchange attributes, basically resetting them. The mailbox is in a disconnected state and until you re-attach the mailbox and re-apply Exchange attributes (email addresses just one example) you can potentially bounce mail.

Exchange 2010 SP1 has a new feature that isn't spoken of (infact TechNet documentation here still points to the above method!) This new command will automatically convert the mailbox to a linked mailbox without any disconnection or loss of Exchange attributes, and will automatically disable the account when applying the linked user.

Set-User -Identity Oliver@contoso.com -linkeddomaincontroller UserAccoundForestDC -LinkedCredential $(Get-Credential accountforestdomainadmin) -linkedmasteraccount Oliver@fabrikam.com

Try it, it works great!

Enjoy,
Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server