ActiveSync (beta) for Andriod HTC Magic

If you have bought a HTC Magic or HTC Dream you can get a free beta ActiveSync client from http://www.dataviz.com/products/roadsync/android/.

You get Push email with HTML formatting, calendarand contact synchronisation including caller photo ID integration.

For the security conscious a remote wipe can be initiated from Exchange Server should the device go missing. The beta ends on 30 May 2009

Daniel
twitter.com/dannoakes

Microsoft release Shadow Redundancy information on TechNet

Following my earlier post, check here for more detail on the feature.

RAID0 FTW!


"Understanding Shadow Redundancy" http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351027(EXCHG.140).aspx


"Shadow Redundancy mail flow scenarios" http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351091(EXCHG.140).aspx



Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

Exchange 2007 SP2 and Windows 2008 Backup

Microsoft have announced that Exchange 2007 SP2 will include the ability to backup using Windows 2008 Backup Tool as currently you cannot use this application to backup Exchange.

There has been quite a lot of noise about this as previously the functionality was available with NTBackup on Windows 2003 and it's good to see Microsoft adding the functionality as it's very useful to have this available even if you do have a backup system in place already.

Check out all the details here http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/05/13/451311.aspx

Wayne Hollomby

Hyper-V virtual network card anomaly prevents Exchange installation

I ran into an interesting problem today which prevented me from installing Exchange 2010 onto 1 out of 4 Hyper-V guest OSes I was setting up. The problem was that the host couldn't find what site it belonged to for some reason. nltest /dsgetsite would return an error "DSGetSiteName failed: Status = 1919 0x77f ERROR_NO_SITENAME" and therefore Exchange setup couldn't pass the prereq checks.

This issue isn't just an E2K10 issue; it goes all the way back to Exchange 2000. See the following KB article for more details: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/264001

Checking the configuration of the OS didn't yield any red flags, and in fact the OS was built and configured from the same sysprep image as the other 3 that were working. IP settings were correct and there was only one virtual NIC assigned to the guest. All other domain related nltest queries worked fine, and the Site settings in AD Sites and Services were all correct.

Before wiping the VM and starting from scratch, I decided to try one more thing. I decided to uninstall the NIC from Device Manager, shut down the OS, use Hyper-V Manager to remove the virtual NIC, and then add a brand new one. It worked! When the OS came up it found the new NIC, and after configuring it with the same settings as the previous incarnation the nltest /dsgetsite command came back with the expected result - my site name!

So if you run into the same issue installing Exchange 2007 or the 2010 beta onto a Hyper-V virtual machine, try removing the NIC and reinstalling - it did the trick in my case. I've only seen this on one VM out of dozens I've installed Exchange on, but I didn't find anyone else via Google that had run into the same issue, so hopefully this post will help somebody out. Cheers!

Over 2000 Seats? I'm over here, i'm free and i'm available!!!!

Thinking of going to 'The Cloud' to save on your Exchange Server infrastructure spend?


Over 2000 seats?


I will design a custom solution for you taking into account your needs and my time will be on the house, zero, free - although you're welcome to buy me a beer :-)


If you are interested please contact me.


Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

Screenshots of MailTips in action

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/04/28/451193.aspx

Cool stuff

Dan - http://twitter.com/dan_germain

Customer service and cloud computing

Cnet published an interesting article by James Urquhart entitled "Customer service and cloud computing" yesterday. The article is a wake-up-call for many in the emerging Cloud computing market.
Customer service should be at the heart of any organisation actually wanting to help their customers achieve their goals, but James suggests this isn't being implemented widely in the Cloud Computing market yet.
James goes on to provide a "wish list" of customer service options which are well worth a read no matter what industry you are in.
What do you think makes good customer service?

Leaked screenshots of Outlook 2010

Here's a screenshot of Outlook 2010. It's simple and been edited to protect the identity of the end-user as this has been leaked out, it's not an official release.

I like the look of the cleaner interface and the new ribbon, including a Quick Steps menu - common forward tasks to Team, Manager, FYI. You can see the Ignore button too.

There's a peek of the new Office logo as well - I expect an outburst of logos and colour schemes based on this new orange over the next year!

Dan - http://twitter.com/dan_germain

Exchange 2010 Outlook Web Access and the ECP

Take a look at Exchange 2010 Outlook Web Access!






















Note the new layout and updated views. I believe it's a nice evolution of the Web Browser experience. Further if you use Firefox or Safari you too can use the Premium version of OWA now - you won't be subjected to the Light version. Good news!


Take a look at the Options screen:






















You can immediately see a new feature to connect Outlook to your account - a great idea (and about time :-) )


Clicking on Groups shows the Groups you belong too and the Groups you own. Notice you can request to join _and_ leave groups

And finally if you're an Administrator you can manage your Org to a certain extent through the ECP. Note I have changed the 'Select what to manage' setting in the top left corner to 'my organisation'. You can see I can add Users, Groups and Contacts, and also delete them if I so choose. I am also able to perform Message Tracking from here.

Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server

Exchange 2010 Hub Transport feature, Shadow Messaging/Redundancy

Fed up with RAID10 for your Hub Transport Servers? Well half the cost of your Hub Transport disk subsystem with Exchange 2010.



Exchange 2010 Hub Transport Servers support a feature called Shadow Redundancy. This means that the HT Server gets confirmation the other HT it passed it onto actually successfully passed it on itself.



Great you say! But how does this benefit me? Well for a start your users won't have to resend lost messages, and well secondly you don't necessarily have to rely on RAID10 anymore. RAID0 is a real possilbility for your Hub Transport Servers. You still need your IO (when you are transferring a lot of messages and have features like Journaling or Transport Rules are setup and enabled), but you now have the potential to half your disk cost.



Take an Enterprise that has 20 Hub Transport Servers, they may have a 6 disk SAS based RAID10 solution for their mail queue database. That's 120 SAS disks. With Shadow Redundancy you can half that to 60, with just as good or slighter better IO (no write penalties).



If a disk fails then you just rip it out and rebuild the RAID set, and then reboot your Server or restart your Microsoft Exchange Transport Service - you don't have to worry about the lost mail in that mail database as previous hops will have not recieved confirmation of delivery and they will re-route using alternative HT Servers.



Now RAID0 isn't great in all circumstances. You wouldn't use RAID0 for any Hub Transport Servers that recieved mail directly from the Internet for example. However this is a perfect solution for Hub Transport Servers in dedicated Hub Transport AD Sites - where they only ever pass mail onto Hub Transport Servers in other AD Sites.



Note this feature isn't support with communication between Exchange 2010 and 2007 Hub Transport Servers, It's 2010 to 2010 only.




Oliver Moazzezi

MVP - Exchange Server