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In December 2007, TechNet Magazine will publish a full magazine dedicated to Exchange 2007 SP1 covering the following topics:

• Exchange 2007 SP1 Overview – Tony Smith
• Exchange 2007 SP1 + Windows Server 2008 – Paul Bowden
• Standby Continuous Replication – Scott Schnoll
• Unified Messaging Deployment Planning – Jeff Goodwin (UM Specialist, The VIA Group)

Special thanks to the hard work and contributions of several MS Exchange Team members for making this happen.  Way to go.

Along with the magazine MS is also bundling a 30″ x 20.5″ poster which highlights the architecture and feature set of Exchange 2007 SP1.

If you aren’t a TechNet reader you might want to consider getting a subscription now. 

Matt :: Oct.31.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft :: No Comments »

This recently updated topic illustrates how Microsoft met evolving business needs with the deployment of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, such as reducing risks associated with spam, improving business agility, and lowering TCO. The 64-bit platform enables Microsoft IT to keep pace with ever-increasing performance expectations, raise mailbox quotas, lower storage costs, and eliminate tape backups to save additional

Here’s the link

Matt :: Oct.29.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft :: No Comments »

If you like using scripts to manage your Exchange servers then you are most likely aware that you can use this registry key for determining the version level of your Exchange 2003 server:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Setup\ServicePackBuild

However, in Exchange 2007 this location and key has changed to the following:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\v8.0\<ServerRole>\ConfiguredVersion

This is a string value in the format of X.X.XXX.X (e.g., 8.1.240.0). 

• 8 is the major version number. 
• The .1 portion indicates it is SP1.  RTM would have .0 in that place. 
• 240 is the build number
• The .0 after 240 would be the minor build number.

Happy scripting.

Matt :: Oct.29.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft :: No Comments »

Security and compliance are critical to a successful UC deployment. Learn how to build an efficient and scalable UC architecture that addresses IM, VoIP and other modalities. Discuss best practices and planning considerations for mobile workers, federation, information leak prevention, security and a holistic approach to compliance—from regulatory requirements and corporate governance to policy management and e-discovery.

Download here…

Matt :: Oct.26.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft, OCS :: No Comments »

This session will show some key features of the extensibility capabilities of the UC platform:

• Contextual Collaboration
• Integration of Communications into Business Processes
• Anywhere Information Access.

The session will show how easy it is to embed presence in an application, and what benefits contextual collaboration offers. Overall the session covers the product extensibility of Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, and shows how those extensions can be surfaced in Windows SharePoint Services.

Download the session here..

Matt :: Oct.26.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft, OCS :: No Comments »

A very interesting paper was just published by Forrester Consulting on the TEI of MS UC.

Excerpt:

“In July 2007, Microsoft Corporation commissioned Forrester Consulting to examine the Total Economic Impact (TEI) and potential return on investment (ROI) that enterprises may realize by deploying UC products and services (UC products). To understand the financial impact of Microsoft’s UC products, Forrester conducted in-depth interviews with 15 Microsoft customers and
compiled their results into a composite case study of a 4,000-person digital marketing services company.

In conducting these in-depth interviews with Microsoft UC products customers, Forrester found that organizations can achieve significant productivity improvements and cost savings by deploying Microsoft UC products.”

Download the PDF here…

Matt :: Oct.26.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft, OCS :: No Comments »

On a recent occasion I cam across a client that was having an issue with implementing mailbox quotas.  They have by default set  mailbox quota of 250MB per user.  This works great for the average Joe…but what about the VIPs who never delete anything?  Well..as they progressed through their migration they forgot to change the quotas on the newly migrated VIPs.  So like any typical administrator they increased their storage limits using the EMC (Exchange Management Console).  But, even after making the change the quotas didn’t get applied to the VIPs mailbox…thus resulting in one angry VP.  Not good.

Why didn’t the quotas take effect immediately?

Once you reconfigure the mailbox size limits for a user the changes do not take effect immediately.  That’s because the Information Store uses the cached mailbox configuration which by default is set to refresh every two hours.  The only way to have them take effect right away is to restart the Information Store service.  WOW!  Why this may be ok for smaller companies, it is not acceptable in larger enterprises to restart the IS service in the middle of the day.

So how do you adjust your IS cache refresh interval?

Rather than re-invent the wheel there is a well written guide on how to modify the refresh interval already provided by MS. 

Read on here for the resolution…

Preserving the mailbox size limit.

The Move-Mailbox command has an option that you can use when moving a mailbox that will preserve the mailbox size limits that were previously defined.

You may have guessed is already: -preservemailboxsizelimit

Check out this link for more information on the Move-Mailbox command.

Matt :: Oct.26.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft :: 1 Comment »

The MS Exchange Team has posted an in-depth article on moving public folder replicas from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2007.  A very good article to bookmark.

Excerpt:

“In Exchange 2000 we don’t have the ability to right click on the public folder store and choose “move all replicas” as we have in the Exchange 2003 ESM. With “move all replicas” there is just one action needed to add replicas to the new public folder store and remove replicas from the old public folder store. Instead, with Exchange 2000 ESM there are three actions needed:

1. Add server to replica list
2. Waiting for replication
3. Remove server from replica list”

Read the rest of the article here…

Matt :: Oct.26.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft :: No Comments »

I had the pleasure of watching Steve Riley speak a while back and his enthusiasm is contagious and he really knows how to drive home the point.

Steve writes…

“This week, I’m attending and spoke at a cybercrime conference in Singapore. One of the presenters made a very good point, and I want to share it with you.

When considering how to protect your data, don’t consider how valuable it might be to an attacker. Always, instead, consider how valuable it is to you.”

Read the rest of his post here…

Matt :: Oct.26.2007 :: Microsoft, Security :: No Comments »

I always like to hear how other companies deployed Exchange and OCS.  Here is a great new

Overview

HP began deploying Exchange 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 in live internal and customer environments long before these products came to market. In this session you will hear about the trials, tribulations and ultimate success of implementing a consolidated Exchange 2007 environment across multiple geographies, complete with Unified Messaging and then Office Communications Server 2007 integrated with Cisco Call Manager.
Understand the business objectives and requirements that lead to this implementation including the unexpected benefits as highlighted in the case study. Learn from our mistakes, understand the real value, and pre-requisites for full functionality and ultimately streamline your own deployment!

Download

Matt :: Oct.26.2007 :: Exchange, Microsoft, OCS :: No Comments »