My friend Nicolas recently wrote a great post on how to find and export mailboxes by size from the Exchange Management Shell (EMS). I’m sure many administrators will find this pretty handy.
I found a really neat little feature today, Windows 7 allows you to burn .ISO files to disk natively without any third party software.
Simply double-click the .iso image:
Select the appropriate drive and click “Burn”
And there you go..
It seems my friend Craig blogged about this a little while ago as well, click here to read his post
After your planning and deployment phases have been completed, its very important to ensure proper testing of your new environment before moving user accounts and putting the servers into production. Exchange 2007 provides several powershell cmdlets that make it really easy.
a list of all test cmdlets can be obtained by issuing the Get-Command Test* cmd in EMS.
For the purposes of this post, lets look at a couple of these:
Test-Mailfow
The Test-Mailflow cmdlet is used to check whether mail can be successfully sent from and delivered to the System Mailbox mailbox on a computer that has the Mailbox server role installed.
Test-ServiceHealth
Use the Test-ServiceHealth cmdlet to test whether all the required services that are configured to start automatically on a server have started. The Test-ServiceHealth cmdlet returns an error for any service that is required by a configured role and is set to start automatically but is not currently running. The output will vary depending on the role of the server you issue the cmd on.
For a full list of cmdlets, see Microsoft Technet
A mere 5 weeks after Update Rollup 6, Microsoft have released Update Rollup 7 for Exchange 2007 Sp1. The update fixes around 50 issues.
For more info on the update and to download it, see KB953469
I would like to highlight the following:
“Note Certain Exchange Server 2007 managed code services may not start after you install this update rollup. This is true if the services cannot access the following Microsoft Web site:
http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/CodeSigPCA.crl
For more information about how to resolve or to work around this issue, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
944752 Exchange 2007 managed code services do not start after you install an update rollup for Exchange 2007”
I also strongly recommend reading the “Known Issues” section before applying this update.
Quest have some really cool products to add value to UC implementations (like you need it, right?)
Some of the key products are:
Spotlight on Messaging:
Spotlight® on Messaging helps administrators get more out of their messaging environments by diagnosing and resolving problems across multiple platforms. A comprehensive view into an organization’s messaging infrastructure, Spotlight on Messaging:
MessageStats:
MessageStats is the most complete and comprehensive messaging reporting and analysis solution in the industry. Used on more than 15 million Exchange mailboxes around the world everyday, MessageStats helps reduce and quantify your Exchange investment. An essential tool to keeping tabs on the cost of your infrastructure, MessageStats gathers, analyzes, and reports on Exchange and other messaging components to:
Providing a complete view of all messaging components from one interface, MessageStats delivers platform-specific business- and technical-focused reports for:
For more info on these and other value add products from Quest Software, visit their site here
After rebuilding my trusty T61 with Windows 7 about a week ago, the only device that was not functioning correctly was the “biometric coprocessor”. I tried installing the software using ThinkVantage Productivity Center, but this did not work. After asking google, I found that the device was manufactured by UPEK and that they have released a Windows 7 driver on their site. Download it here.
The process of enrolling a fingerprint is fairly simple in Windows 7. Open Control Panel, select “Biometric Devices”
Select “Use your fingerprint to log on to Windows”
When prompted, enter your password
Select the appropriate finger (its probably a good idea to select more than one!)
Follow the instructions:
All done!, next time you log on, just use your finger!
Yesterday I attended the IBM Lotusphere Comes to You event here in Sydney. I was excited to see what the IBM Unified Communications strategy would be and ended getting a lot more than I had bargained for.
The event covered a large part of their portfolio from Messaging and Collaboration, UC and Web Portals to Cloud Computing. As a consultant, I have always taken an interest in what “the other guys” are doing, but, being honest, the last time I saw Domino was back in version 6.
I was most impressed with how slick the Notes 8.5 client looks and the fact that they have integrated everything into a single client whether it be IM, voice & video, document libraries, opening and editing MS Office docs with Symphony, even SAP integration, it can all be done via the Notes 8.5 client.
One of the themes that became immediately obvious was value.. ROI is important, especially in today’s economic climate and IBM seem to be on top of that, a great example is Lotus Symphony which is a free, MS Office compatible suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet editor and presentation editor. I was also impressed by the fact that IBM have realised that (as predicted by Gartner) Apple’s market share in the desktop space is growing and that Windows may not always be the desktop OS of choice, and I think they have catered for this really well by making their software platform independent so it will run on Windows, OSX, and Linux.
In the Cloud Computing space, LotusLive is their solution to online collaboration and it is available now, offering online meetings, hosted email and more.
So, what about UC and more specifically, voice stuff? does “the pbx killer” a.k.a OCS R2 have some competition? IBM are calling it UC² and, well.. I liked what I saw, they certainly have some innovative little features, very easy to use and will certainly make collaboration “child’s play”. They are certainly working with an impressive list of business partners as well. I would say though, that with the maturity of OCS R2 and the fact that it is available now I think IBM may just have missed the boat a little. UC² will be available “later this year” and given the momentum OCS already has, it’s going to be interesting..
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications
So, managed to get everything installed and working great yesterday, really fought with the Cisco VPN client, but I eventually managed to get it working (or so I thought!) installed all windows updates before shutting down last night .. arrived at the office a little earlier this morning, turn my laptop on, BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!, happened a few times yesterday while I was fiddling with the Cisco VPN client so I figured I’d just repair it and try again, only, this time I was not so lucky..
To cut a long and frustrating story short: Windows 7 rebuilt and looking good again..
For the Cisco VPN client, I tried many things, this is how I managed to get it to work:
Many thanks to Aaron Tiensivu for posting this on his blog, read it here
While some of my “bleeding edge”” colleagues have been running and blogging about Windows 7 for a while now, its taken me a little longer to get my hands dirty. I decided to rebuild my Lenovo T61 yesterday and see what all the fuss was about.
The installation was seamless and quick, as you would expect. It found drivers for all my devices. I did have some trouble getting my Novatel Wireless 3G HSDPA card to work, the installation would not run at all, not even using Windows Vista compatibility mode. I downloaded the drivers off the Novatel website and managed to get the card installed that way. Works perfectly after I created a new connection through “Network and Sharing Center”
At the moment, I am very much of the opinion that it is Windows Vista with some cosmetic changes, but that’s probably unfair of me to say since I have only been using it for a few hours. I’ll be sure to report any cool new features.
Now I have to make it productive so I can get some work done when I get into the office tomorrow!
