M365 and AZURE Blog: May 2010

Monday, May 31, 2010

How to Migrate Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010

We will talk about upgrading from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 in premises. This article will assume you have existing exchange 2003 server in your messaging environment and will talk about high-level steps going forward.

Your environment could be multi role exchange environment or clustered servers or even a single server. The process of upgrading from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 is fairly same and simple and much less complicated compared to Exchange 2007 migration scenarios in my opinion.

~~Task 1~~

Decide your hardware, your Disk type, Memory, CPU requirement based on your needs. The basic printable for deploying exchange servers are still the same
Calculate your IOPS and future growth
Install adequate memory on the new Exchange servers, Memory prices are not the main factor these days , more memory is better ( 8,16,24,32 Gig memory)
CPU requirements , use MS guidelines and same goes for CPU the more power is better for your Exchange servers
Disk type and local storage requirements, JBOS ( no RAID, just bunch of disk) , If you are going to take advantage of new redundancy futures perhaps you will look more into DAS ( direct attached storage) or go JBOD RAID less.
Most likely this is ( DISK) where the price difference will come into play, at least no more SCSI expensive disk is required, SATA disk are most preferred disk type for small and large deployments. DELL, IMB and other hardware vendors do have DAS (direct attached storage) you may want to explore to see what options you have.
RAID type is one of the most asked questions, remembers Exchange 2010 is above %50 percent faster in speed to compare to Exchange 2007 and somewhere 150 times faster compared to Exchange 2003. (These are round numbers). The fastest read and write you can provide to Exchange 2010 is better with utilizing SATA disks as general rule and yes how much redundancy you wish to have it up to you as well. For instance utilizing one exchange server 2010 with DAS configured in RAID 10 seems to be valid option. SATA disks are cheap compared to SCSI drives.

You need to decide what hardware to use or what type of configuration you will use to move forward with Exchange 2010. I am sure you already heard about lowering the cost and making Exchange redundant by utilizing (DAG) or maybe you will deploy single server. Sizing your hardware and making up your mind for hardware redundancy is entirely optional, as budget constrains effects such decisions.

~~Summary:~~

Install New Exchange 2010 server into existing Exchange org.
Replicate all Public folders and its entire content to Exchange 2010
Use mailbox move wizard to move some pilot users
Test mail ( inbound and outbound ) for the pilot users
Configure and test OWA, outlook anywhere etc. on the exchange 2010 server
Schedule to move rest of the users from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010
Change mail flow inbound and outbound SMTP traffic to Exchange 2010 server
Stop all exchange related services on Exchange 2003 server and make sure everything is working, if you encounter problems, turn the services back on and find out what did you forget to do.
Delete all mail stores, databases from Exchange 2003 server.
Shut down Exchange 2003 server for couple days to make sure everything is working.
You may forget receive fallowing errors and warning when you ready to remove the exchange server from windows 2003 server.
One or more users currently use this mailbox store. The users must be moved to different store or be mail disabled before deleting this store. ID no c1034a7f, exchange system manager. You don’t see any mailboxes but there are objects in AD which are pointing to Exchange server you are trying to decommission
Now we need to find out which object is still has a partial information pointing to this exchange server we wish to remove from out Mail organization

~~Lets fire up, ADUC~~ on the Exchange 2003 server.

Start run
Dsa.msc
Right-click the domain container, and then click Find ( or click on the find icon on top left)
Select the Advanced tab
Select User from the Field button
From the list of attributes displayed, choose Exchange Home Server
Set the Condition field to Ends With
Enter the Exchange server name into the Value field ( server you are trying to get rid of)
Click Add
Click the Find
Make a right Click and Delete all those found in the search
Go back and kick of uninstall process one more time
you may receive warnings for routing group connectors and routing group master as the old exchange 2003 is the only server and un-install wizard wont move head. You may need to use ADSI edit to delete the routing group connector etc (Warning , ***make sure you understand what you are deleting, ADSI edit is serious tool and wont have tolerance if you delete the wrong information, so be Extremely careful****

Finally Un-install wizard will let you move on and last you need to point the uninstall wizard to Exchange 2003 binaries location or the install CD in order to finish.

~~Take a look~~

E2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator
http://msexchangeteam.com/files/12/attachments/entry453145.aspx
Exchange Server 2010 Cost Savings Calculator
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/Exchange-Calculator.aspx
You most likely heard about DAS ( direct attached storage) and maybe you are looking for offloading your exchange servers from any type of SAN backend, the process we will talk about bringing new exchange servers and decommission old ones will be pretty much same.
Upgrade to Exchange 2010
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998604.aspx
Upgrade from Exchange 2003 Mailbox
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638113.aspx
Deployment assistance ( upgrade from Exchange 2003)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exdeploy2010/default.aspx#Home

Best regards,
Oz Casey , Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog
Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)
Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

Monday, May 24, 2010

BlackBerry BES Agents & Single Exchange Server lookup if mailbox gets moved from DB1 to DB2 within Same Exchange Server….. What caused BB handheld to break????

Moving Exchange users within the same Exchange server from DB to another DB will break handheld device and you will end up removing the user from BB server and adding it back again to get it working.

The reason why BB will end up not working is related the way how BES does scan to Exchange server. BES uses DN ( distinguish name of the Exchange server ) to scan mailboxes, hence moving users within same exchange server will end up causing BB agents to hose up and not working. ( DN is the same, BB agents will end up mapping to MB which they think the user is located on even you move the MB for same user to another DB within same exchange server.

It basically isn't smart enough to identify new DB location for the same user, due to LDAP lookup starts with DN of the Exchange server which is not changing and stops there………..

So do we have to assign the static agent for the BB users before we move them within the same exchange server or afterwards? Here Jeff Bakin comes to rescue (-:

Got to put users on a static agent after you move their mailboxes
When you assign a static agent, it tells BES to do a MAPI rescan of the user, and thus finding the user in the new storage group. If you static agent the user before you move the MB, then the static agent will do the MAPI rescan, find the same mailbox location, then mailbox will get moved, and BES will break anyway.

To assign BlackBerry device users to a static mailbox agent, complete the following steps:

In BlackBerry Manager, select a BlackBerry device user to be assigned to a static agent.
Click Edit Properties.
In the Properties screen, select Advanced.
Set Enable Static Mailbox Agent to true.
Set Mailbox Agent ID to a value between 200-399.

Of course if you are moving users within two different Exchange servers you don't have to worry about this (-:

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Shrinking the Size of Exchange Drive

For whatever reason you have you decided to shrink the size of the Exchange drive while in production.

Platform: Exchange 2010, Windows 2008 R2

Goal: Shrink the Exchange binaries , DB and Log drive size

results: Success on the fly no issues at all

Fallow the steps, log into Exchange server and go to Disk management , locate the drive you wish to shrink

Step#1

Step#2

As you can see we did this on production Exchange server while users connected (-: , I am sure you will avoid doing that and scheduled off hours as good practice…. and use GUI to get the work done, result is hundred percent success with no issues

BPOS Stories………………….

Many people ask so many times which is better and why such company should pick one or the other. before I reveal the story I would like to emphasize being honest the MB cost was hide factor for many businesses but again with Exchange 2010 , now questions comes up what is really left when you take the cost away ??????? Remember Exchange 2010 MB cost is shinning I have seen figures less than 4bucks per mailbox, which is incredible affordable considering the value you get.

From fallowing article, interesting to read Why Serena Software is Going with BPOS, A Customer Story

They [Microsoft] deliver trustworthy, enterprise-class solutions – with the performance, security, privacy, reliability and support we require.
Using Office, SharePoint and Exchange will allow us to collaborate more effectively internally and with customers and partners, many of whom use the same technologies, and we can do so without having to deal with content loss or clients being unable to open or edit a document.
There are alternatives on the market that promise lower costs, but in our experience, this is a fallacy

Friday, May 14, 2010

Exchange is unable to mount the database that you specified,Error code: MapiExceptionBusy,Unable to mount database…

~~Problem:~~ After dismounting Database and trying to mount it, you receive fallowing error on Clustered mailbox server, Exchange 2007,trying to bring the database online from EMC is not working,

--------------------------------------------------------

Microsoft Exchange Error

--------------------------------------------------------

Failed to mount database 'SG15MB1'.

SG15MB1

Failed

Error:

Exchange is unable to mount the database that you specified. Specified database: MailServer1\SG15\SG15MB1; Error code: MapiExceptionBusy: Unable to mount database. (hr=0x8004010b, ec=-2147221237)

~~Solution:~~

Open fail over cluster Management
Console
Click Services and applications
Click server name, in the middle pane
scroll all the way down “other resources”
find the SG shows offline
Make a right click and select bring this resource ONLINE

If you are running off single exchange server check to make sure system attendant service is running, you may have to restart this service to get going.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

How to Dump/Export GAL to CSV file.

This is one of the most common request comes time to time, although there are many ways to accomplish the task I will show you one of the easiest one.

Log into one of your management server , ~~Csvde.exe~~ is a Microsoft Windows 2000 command-line utility, so open CMD prompted. Copy and paste below…..

CSVDE -f GalDump.csv -r objectCategory=person -l "displayName, title, telephoneNumber, department, mail"

All you need to do it to open the CSV file called GalDump.csv , the fiel will be on the same directory as you ran the command.

If you want everything use this one

CSVDE -f GalDumpAll.csv -r objectCategory=person

~~KB555397~~

~~Tips~~

If you look at the first column you will figured out the attribute names and you can use this to modify the first CSVDE to fit to your needs

Monday, May 10, 2010

What is your Item Count?

I hear you are performing troubleshooting on your exchange server and you come cross not the size of mailbox the item count in critical path folders makes the difference. If you did not know this keep reading as I know you will find this post very useful.

Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 suffered from I/O fear long time due to new optimized and improved structure of ESE providing shooter and sequential I/O’s

Exchange does many small, random input/outputs (I/Os) which allows Exchange 2010 to use JBOD configuration with cheap disk ( SATA)

Store Schema changes
DB I/O size improvements
Database cache effectiveness improvements
ESE optimizes for new schema

~~Results:~~

E2010 reduces the I/O by additional 70% when compared to E2007 and 160% compared to Exchange 2003.

Large item count per folder is an issue due to restricted views (affects large mailbox deployments)

Schema changes of the table structure and deferred index updates greatly improves restricted view performance

~~Result:~~ Supports 100,000 items per folder

Outlook Personal Folder Files (PSTs) are a litigation, security, and management nightmare
New Messaging Records Management features
Item level policy settings
Archive mailbox feature for importing and storing PST data
Compliance Officer search capabilities

~~Result:~~ PSTs can be removed by placing data into Exchange repository and can be searched easily.

After al these good information you decided to look to see what is the item count on your mailbox. Remember you will need to take into consideration of critical path folders which the folders are.

Calendar,
Contacts,
Inbox
Sent Items

~~Version Folder limits~~

Exchange 2000/2003	5000
Exchange 2007	20.000
Exchange 2010	100.000

Click here to download

Get-Mailbox -identity dedealoc -ResultSize 'Unlimited' | Get-MailboxFolderStatistics | Select-Object -property 'Date', 'Name', 'FolderPath','ItemsInFolder', 'FolderSize'

~~Note:~~ after installing PGUI if this is your first time and you have no clue what to do

make right click on PGUI select new Folder
Name the folder anything you like click Apply on the bottom

Now I assume you download the PS1 I uploaded on my website to your desktop.

Now on the folder . new Script node

Click open on the file picture brose the PS script and bring it into PGUI

Give it a name and click Apply to save it

As you see it runs as soon as you click on it

PGUI is the *BEST* tool out there and as you can see it is so efficient and easy to use. You can collect your own PS scripts and make PGUI even more efficient for your environments. At this point export the report to CSV and calculate the folder items mentioned earlier to get the item count.

You can find out your heavy users and educate them how to lessen the these folders or perhaps go for Exchange 2010 (-: and not worry about 20.000 item count limits at all

Friday, May 7, 2010

Perfwiz for Exchange 2010 & 2007

If you have not seen “ Perfwiz for Exchange 2010” by Mark Lagase , you really are missing nice tool you might need to use one day to identify the the bottle neck on your messaging environment. These are pre-set PerWiz template will make your life extremely easy so check it out

~~E210 PerfWiz~~

http://blogs.technet.com/mikelag/archive/2010/01/11/perfwiz-for-exchange-2010.aspx

~~E07 PerfWiz~~

http://blogs.technet.com/mikelag/archive/2008/05/02/perfwiz-replacement-for-exchange-2007.aspx

here is real nice useful link from Mike site

http://blogs.technet.com/mikelag/archive/tags/Performance/default.aspx

I really like Mike’s site it has tons of great stuff………………..

Thursday, May 6, 2010

What will Kill your Exchange Server so Quick ???

The performance troubleshooting can be tough time to time as it can be difficult to see or identify the bottleneck. The bottleneck and what to look for when it comes down to performance. Although seeing Xmas balloon in outlook makes many of the Exchange administrator go bananas, the reality is , the heavy MAPI is easy to influenced and get worst with some many factors. This includes client side troubleshooting as well as Server side troubleshooting etc.

Most of the issues I have seen so far caused by I/O related issues and problems in Exchange 2003 and 2007 as SAN is big part of complex Exchange and cluster configurations. The worst and most frustrating part is to deal with SAN and its when problems balls down to IOPS.

Beside Exchange 2007 is complicated already, adding SAN into picture makes is even more complicated.

So imagine , most of the I/O will occur in the DISK resources and Exchange will love to hammer the hard disk logs and databases and outlook goes bananas.

If you are in the situation and need to find out what is going on here is your best friend and tool ~~ExTRA~~ ( Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant). You have to got to LOVE this tool as it is incredibly useful.

bare in mind the basic applies most of the troubleshooting cases. For most of the disk issues here what you need to know at the basic.

Check the performance counter below, they pretty much are explaining what will be the acceptable , upper limit. The bottom line is the PyhsicalDisk Averaged Disk sec/Write got to be <10ms Ideally , and the spikes should never be >50ms.

*** I have seen recently problems when Averaged Disk sec/Write >20ms as result , Outlook famous balloon pops up**** this isn't quite good experience and hard to explain client why it is happening (-:

Also Check out “Perfwiz replacement for Exchange 2007” this is real nice resource, as pre defined counters are there for Exchange 2007

http://blogs.technet.com/mikelag/archive/2008/05/02/perfwiz-replacement-for-exchange-2007.aspx

So what has changed in Exchange 2010? if I have to say one thing made me so happy , dealing with E210, I would say no more SAN and yes less complexity. Having only Exchange administrator eyes on the Exchange servers is great. We no longer need SAN expert to help us configuring or run and maintain Exchange 2010.

I think most of places who are using SAN do not know what to do if they get Exchange off the SAN, going for DAS and implementing DAG seems to be very optimal for most of these places. Huge saving are coming with using cheap SATA disk.

The I/O improvement in Exchange 2010 is 60 to 70 percent more compare to Exchange 2007, Investments done by exchange team in store schema and ESE (Extensible storage Engine ) have reduces IOPS by 70 percent more thus E210 is incredibly fast , bringing outstanding user experience not to mention tons of other improvements.

being able to implement JBOD ( bunch of disk ) yes we are talking about cheap SATA disk 7200RPM , with NO RAID , NO RAID controller is stunning. In recent when I see the saving in $$$$ I could not believe my eyes to be honest for large implementations. The saving $$$$ is HUGE. I will be honest I have not seen yet or done JBOD scenario but knowing from some of MVP colloquies the JBOD is working perfect.

So the future of Exchange change a lot, the other competitors ( Gmail) were depressing Exchange in my personal opinion for the cost when MB cost is 4buks Exchange 2007 MB cost was bit over 16 dollars. Now I am asking myself what will be left when you take that away (-: , E210 MB cost can be less than 4 Bucks not to mention , so many incredible futures and incomparable messaging experience with any other messaging application.

if you have not had your hands on E210, without wasting too much time go get evaluation copy and see with your own eyes , what does it look like the next generation messaging application.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

How do I open another user's mailbox in OWA 2010?

If whatever reason you or someone in your company needs access to someone else mailbox here are easy steps showing how to achieve this goal.

login to OWA using your own mailbox email address and password
Click on your name in the upper right corner of the window

Type the user name whom mailbox you wish to connect too. In this case I am going to connect mailbox called RBuzon, so I will type the name of the mailbox in the window as fallows

You get fallowing

It is obvious as you expected without having proper rights I should not have been able to look others mailboxes.

Connect to your exchange server, find the user you wanted to connect his mailbox too

Click on “Manage Full Access Permissions” and add your account in there

Click finish to get out

Try one more time, as you see this time I can access with no issues

Learning points: You have to assign yourself or given proper permissions to access someone else mailbox rather than yourself. You can use OWA to access this mailbox.

Reference:

~~Scenario:~~

User name: Dedealoc (he needs access to RBuzon mailbox via OWA)
User name: RBuzon

Adding mailbox permission "RBuzon" for user "Dedealoc" with access rights "'FullAccess”