M365 and AZURE Blog: September 2010

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

OWA 2010 Enable Redirection HTTP to HTTPS

One of the most frequent asked question is how to redirect HTTP request for OWA in Exchange 2010 to SSL port. I have post in the past showing how to make simple modifications on OWA page, with easy approach. I will go over this one more time. If you set redirection time to “0” second with simple HTML code you do not even need to make the first splash page. I do like seeing the splash page hence I will first show you how to modify / Create the default IIS welcome page with simple steps listed here.

Click Here for SkyDrive

After downloading this file you need to open it with Adobe Photo Shop to make simple changes, your company name etc..
Open your Exchange 2010 Server , go to C drive , on the C Drive drill down to “C:\inetpub\wwwroot” folder in this folder find HTML file called “iisstart” make a right click on duplicate this HTML file
Now the image you see in here called welcome, we will be replacing this with one we will be creating with sample file I have provided, pay attention the welcome file extension is PNG but you can make this image in any format, I will show you how to change the HTML file to point to welcome.jpeg file instead of welcome.png file.
Once you have your own file same size as welcome file ( you can always modify this) place in this directory and open “iisstart.html” file by making right click and selecting open with notepad as shown below…..

For automatic redirection we will add below code into this HTML page right after <head> tag.

Rest of the HTML code is same as fallows

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<META http-equiv="refresh" content="4;URL=https:/mail.Inbase25.com/owa">
<title>INbase</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
    color:#000000;
    background-color:#FFFFFF;
    margin:0;
}

#container {
    margin-left:auto;
    margin-right:auto;
    text-align:center;
    }

a img {
border:none;
}-->
<META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=https://mail.Inbase25.com/owa"></style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
<a href="https://mail.inbase25.com/owa"><img src="welcome.jpg" alt="OWA" width="771" height="611" /></a>
</div>
</body>
</html>

You will need to replace :mail.inbase25.com to your own publish DNS a record as mail.yourcompany.com

Simply change the HTML code it says “content="4;” to anything you like if you make this “0” redirection occurs fast and first page wont be visible at all.

As it is seen all we actually did was replacing simple HTMP code into default IIS page and direct port 80 request to SLL port. I assume you have proper firewall rules configured on your firewall to make this work.

This is supper easy way of accomplishing re-direction after deploying OWA in Exchange 2010.

Respectfully,
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)

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 has been released..

This is first update on top of SP3 Exchange 2007 , the updates included fallowing fixes………..

KB 980301 The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service stops responding during a Volume Shadow Copy Service backup on an Exchange Server 2007 server

KB 983529 The EdgeTransport.exe process crashes and then restarts on an Exchange Server 2007 server

KB 973637 Exchange Server 2007 creates incorrect Lotus Notes proxy email addresses

KB 982928 The Msftesql.exe process continues using memory on an Exchange Server 2007 server

KB 983296 Exchange ActiveSync crashes on an Exchange Server 2007 server causing the client synchronization to be unavailable

Description of Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3

Download here

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Exchange 2010 & Sp1 Deployment….

SP1 for Exchange 2010 release for sure was great news and made Exchange 2010 more stronger. Most of the migration scenarios and people who wanted to wait to see at least SP1 release start shifting into upgrade path after Sp1 release. Those of you you did upgrade early will remember , one of the most confusing part was collecting all required updates to get Sp1 rolling. Here is the good new Exchange team made great post helping to easy Sp1 deployment. I think it is great post and supper useful. I am including link , in this link you will get to all download you need and some of the issues came up in deploying Sp1 also addressed here……

Exchange 2010 SP1 FAQ and Known Issues

SP1 Prerequisites

SP1 requires the installation of 4-5 hotfixes, depending on the operating system – Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2. To install the Exchange 2010 SP1 administration tools on Windows 7 and Windows Vista, you requires 2 hotfixes.

Note: Due to the shared code base for these updates, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista share the same updates. Similarly, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 share the same updates. Make sure you select the x64 versions of each update to be installed on your Exchange 2010 servers.

Here’s a matrix of the up,,,, Read more click on above link