Bhargav's IT Playground

Passion for Technology. Power of Messaging.

Archive for September, 2009

Philadelphia Area Exchange Server User Group Announced

Sep 29

Posted by Bhargav in Uncategorized | No Comments

I announced Philadelphia Area Exchange Server User Group at The New Efficiency launch event in Philadelphia. The User Group is open to any IT Professional who is involved in Architecting/Designing, Implementing and Supporting Microsoft Exchange environments. Despite the UG name, the UG is not really limited to those who are located in the area. The UG site http://www.ehlougphila.com will soon have forums to allow collaboration on the UG without physical location of UG members.

 

I would like to invite anyone interested to visit the UG site and join the group.

 

If you missed the launch event, you can attend it virtually at http://www.thenewefficiency.com

  • Share/Bookmark
Print

Why is Exchange 2007 SP2 not supported on Windows Server 2008 R2?

Sep 21

Posted by Bhargav in Exchange 2007, Exchange Server, Supportability | No Comments

This is a tough question to answer as a PFE when I work with customers for whom, the release of both products came almost around the same timeframe. For many things, we rely on product groups to answer such questions and Exchange Team has answered it on their recent blog post.

I am sure there will be many more questions around this post. I am looking forward to reading interesting discussions that will follow.

On the lighter side of life, if you are getting ready to shoot someone for this issue, make sure that’s not me as I have nothing to do with how those decisions are made, neither do I have any input in that process. I’m just the messenger.

  • Share/Bookmark
Print

Tags: ,

Who knew? Does Microsoft support Exchange 2007 Databases on BitLocker Encrypted drive?

Sep 21

Posted by Bhargav in Exchange 2007, Exchange Server | No Comments

Did you know that Microsoft has tested and fully supports Exchange 2007 Databases on BitLocker encrypted drive? That does mean you will need Windows 2008 with BitLocker encryption enabled. If you are willing to go that for for securing your servers, Microsoft is committed to supporting your secure configuration!

You can read more about it here.

  • Share/Bookmark
Print

Tags: , ,

How to bypass confirmation prompts for Managed Folder Policy

Sep 16

Posted by Bhargav in Exchange 2007, Exchange Management Shell, PowerShell | No Comments

When you try to apply managed mailbox folder policy to a mailbox using set-mailbox, you would run a command like this:

 

set-mailbox -identity mailboxA -ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy "MFPolicy"

 

This would result in a confirmation prompt

 

Confirm
  <br />Are you sure you want to perform this action?
  <br />...

 

To avoid the prompt, you instead run command

 

set-mailbox -identity mailboxA -ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy "MFPolicy" –confirm:$false

 

However, you will get prompted again with the following:

 

Confirm
  <br />When assigning a managed folder mailbox policy…

To put it in perspective, the first confirmation prompt is for set-mailbox operation. The second confirmation prompt is for applying Managed Folder Policy. Whenever Managed Folder Policy is applied, it impacts legacy Outlook client functionality. Which explains why additional confirmation is needed.

So, how can you tell the shell not to ask you for confirmation as you know what you are doing or you don’t care if it breaks ;) ?

Type this:

set-mailbox -identity mailboxA -ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy "MFPolicy" -ManagedFolderMailboxPolicyAllowed -Confirm:$false

you can now tell the computer who is the boss. :)

  • Share/Bookmark
Print

Tags: ,

Exchange 2003 support and Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controllers

Sep 10

Posted by Bhargav in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 | 1 Comment

When I originally wrote this post, Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controllers were not supported for Exchange 2003, however, in recent months the guidance from product team has changed and new support guidance now includes Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controllers as supported configuration.

Please refer to this article on Technet for more information.

MS Exchange Team recently published an article on Exchange 2007 Supportability Matrix. As I read more into it and look at the accompanying article on Technet, it is noteworthy that we talk about Exchange 2003 support as well.

I got questions from multiple customers I work with on this. As I realize many organizations are still in process of deploying Exchange 2007. Many have Exchange 2003 SP2 in production and majority of users are on Exchange 2003 mailbox servers.

This poses an interesting challenge. If an organization wants to move forward with Windows Server 2008 R2 (specifically – R2) Domain Controllers, they hit a huge roadblock. The supportability Matrix provides specific guidance around that and that means Exchange 2003 is not supported against Windows 2008 R2 Domain Controllers.

When I looked at Microsoft Support Lifecycle site for Exchange 2003, I noticed that Mainstream support for Exchange 2003 ended 4/14/2009. Given SP2 support note says support for SP2 will end at release of new Service Pack or end of Support Lifecycle of Exchange 2003 which is sometime in 2014, it still is important to note that when Mainstream support ends, only security fixes are provided for the product without any cost to customer.

It isn’t surprising that Exchange Product team may have decided to focus their efforts in developing features that customers asked for in current and future versions and not for the products that are in Extended Support phase of Lifecycle. I have no visibility in the effort of development and testing of any fix/service pack, features that goes into Exchange Server products but if I have to assume, I am sure it is huge for every possible combination they may have to test.

So to summarize, I know it is going to be painful to plan around the supportability of Exchange 2003 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controllers. The best approach I can recommend is follow the published guidance and plan around migration to Exchange 2007 before you can upgrade all your domain Controllers to Windows Server 2008 R2 and raise Domain / Forest functional level.

Last but not least, do read the site disclaimer, the views presented here are of my own and not of my employer.

  • Share/Bookmark
Print

Tags: , ,