Microsoft has released the first rollup for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server. This article contains information about how to obtain the rollup and issues that are fixed by the hotfix rollup.
Download the rollup from here
Click on “View and Request Hotfix Downloads”.
Accept the terms and conditions.
Select the hotfix, provide an email address and request the hotfix. The download link will be emailed to you.
While working with Exchange 2010 at a customer site, I came across the error message below while launching the Exchange 2010 Management Console (EMC) and navigating to Recipient Configuration –> Mailbox.
An error caused a change in the current set of domain controllers. It was running the command “Get-Recipient –PropertySet ConsoleLargeSet –ResultSize ‘1000’ –SortBy DisplayName –RecipientType “UserMailbox”
AD guys confirmed that one or more domain controllers were decommissioned before I tried launching the EMC. Few GCs were online while I received the error as well. After searching on the internet and finding number of “fixes”, the one that worked for me was to delete the “Exchange Management Console” file from my profile.
The file is located in C:UsersUserAppDataRoamingMicrosoftMMC
After deleting the file, I was able to work with the EMC without any errors!
With the release of Exchange 2010 SP1 Beta, archive mailboxes can be moved to different database than the one that hosts the primary mailbox. My previous article explains the process in detail.
As the exchange community has started playing with SP1 Beta in test environment, one question that comes up very often is “an easier way to move all archive mailboxes to a dedicated database/server”. This can easily be done with the help of exchange shell.
Run the following command to move all archive mailboxes hosted on any database in your environment to a dedicated database, say “ArchiveDB”.
Get-Mailbox –Resultsize Unlimited | where { $_.ArchiveDatabase -ne $null } | New-MoveRequest –ArchiveOnly -ArchiveTargetDatabase ArchiveDB
The –archiveonly option makes sure that only the archive mailboxes are selected.
Once the move is complete, clear the request as always. You won’t be able to move the mailboxes again otherwise.
Get-MoveRequest -MoveStatus Completed | Remove-MoveRequest
Microsoft had introduced “Online Mailbox Move” as part of Exchange 2010 RTM. Though it was named "Online Mailbox Move”, end users had to restart outlook after their mailbox got moved from one database to another. But, it is was definitely an improvement compared with the previous versions of Exchange where the user had to close Outlook while their mailbox got moved.
In 2010 SP1 Beta, the feature has improved much more and it truly does what it says – Online Mailbox Move. Users get prompted to restart Outlook in 2010 RTM mailbox move.
This has changed in 2010 SP1 Beta, in that there is no more user prompts. This is only the case as long as the move is between two 2010 SP1 Beta servers. Let me explain by moving my mailbox from one SP1 Beta to another SP1 Beta database.
My account has the primary mailbox on DB3 and archive on DB2.
I am moving the mailbox to DB7 which is in my second 2010 server.
The move completes successfully and the mailbox properties gets updated.
My outlook was still online, no user prompts whatsoever. I did notice that outlook got disconnected for a second after the mailbox move was completed, but got connected to exchange the next second. For an end user, this shouldn’t be an issue at all. Even if they press the “send” button at the very second the mailbox got disconnected, the emails will be stored in the “Outbox” and will be send the next second when the mailbox gets connected.
I did send an email after the mailbox move from my account to administrator with a subject “Email after mailbox move”. Note that I didn’t close or re-launch outlook.
And my administrator did get the email without any delay!
Certainly a big improvement. You can now move your mailboxes in the background without even letting the end user know, as long as it is between two SP1 Beta servers! The feature should be available in SP1 RTM as well.
The export/import mailbox process has undergone a major change in 2010 SP1 Beta compared with the RTM version. Major changes are:
Importing and exporting mailbox data has been improved to allow you to import or export pst files in an asynchronous process. In order to see/run export/import cmdlets in the shell, you should be given explicit permissions. No user is allowed to run the command by default. The user who wants to run the cmdlets should be given “Mailbox Import Export” management role.
Let me explain with an example. I want to give my administrator account the necessary rights to run export/import cmdlets. The cmdlet I need to run is
New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –User “administrator”
You can also create a group and give the group the necessary access. This way, you only need to add any new users who wants this permission to the correct group using AD Users and Computers (thereby avoiding the shell)!
New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –SecurityGroup “ImportExportGroup”
Let’s get to business, now that the permissions are in place. In order to export a mailbox to a pst file, the command I need to run is
New-MailboxExportRequest –Mailbox “alias” –Filepath “\servernamesharefile.pst”
Run Get-MailboxExportRequest to find the status of the export process and in my case, it has completed successfully.
I do have the PST file in my C drive!
The file path should be a UNC, otherwise you will get the error below.
Similarly, New-MailboxImportRequest brings the PST file back to exchange. You can import a PST file into the primary mailbox or archive.
I have seen various articles which says that the “export-mailbox” cmdlet is no longer available in SP1 Beta. This is not right. The export-mailbox cmdlet is still available and runs successfully as long as Outlook 2010 X64 is installed. I ran it without any errors in an SP1 Beta server.
You receive the error below if you try running the “export-mailbox” without Outlook 2010 X64 installed.
The export/import process has improved significantly and we no longer need Outlook installed when the new cmdlets are used!
A feature that has been given a face lift in SP1 Beta control panel (ECP) is “Multi-mailbox search”. Though it is possible to search for keywords across all mailboxes in an organization in 2010 RTM, the feature has been improved with more options in SP1 Beta.
Let me explain based on my lab environment. First things first, even an administrator doesn’t have rights to perform a multi-mailbox search by default. The account has to be a member of “Discovery Management” group for the options to be visible in ECP. I have added the administrator account to the Discovery Management group.
This brings a new tab in ECP named “Discovery”.
Clicking the “New” button open a “New Mailbox Search” window. I will only highlight the new options available in SP1 Beta, as creating a search query is pretty easy.
Estimate search result: provides an estimate on the number of items in the result set before an email located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox. This gives an idea regarding how big the search result will be and how much space the discovery mailbox will take.
Enable de-duplication: When this option is checked, it will only copy one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. This can help you reduce the amount of email you need to review following the search.
One of the features that has been introduced in the Exchange Control Panel (ECP) in the beta version of Service Pack 1 is the ability to manage journal rule. Administrators can create, edit, disable or delete journal rules by using the browser alone, without connecting to the exchange infrastructure via VPN.
To see the feature in action, login to Outlook Web App (OWA) with an account that has administrative rights and click on “Options –> See all options”. Another way is to directly login to the control panel using the owaurl/ecp (eg; https://mail.domain.com/ecp).
Select “Manage My Organization” from the top left dropdown menu.
Click on “Mail Control” and you can create, edit, disable or remove journal rules under “Journaling” section.
I will create a new rule by clicking the “New” button. A new window pops up, which will act as a wizard for creating a new journal rule.
As you are familiar with creating a journal rule, I am not explaining the steps for creating one. I have named my rule as “Test”.
You can edit the rule by clicking the “Details” button, disable by unchecking the “On” check box and delete by clicking the “cross” button.
I can see the rule that I have created in the Exchange Console as well.
You can now work on journal rules with ease, even from an internet cafe!
While we are still playing with the SP1 Beta release of Exchange 2010, Microsoft has released Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Exchange Server 2007. This service pack enables Exchange 2007 to be installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 version of the operating system.
With this service pack, Exchange 2007 management tools can be installed on Windows 7. Clean installations of Exchange 2007 SP3 on a new server are possible by using this download in the same manner as you would install Exchange 2007 RTM, Exchange 2007 SP1 or Exchange 2007 SP2.
Download Exchange 2007 SP3 here
Customers using Small Business Server 2008, check How to install Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 on servers that are running Windows Small Business Server 2008
I came across this error at a customer site while installing the latest update rollup for Exchange Server 2010. Though I have seen this error before, I forgot to share it and hence posting it now.
“Setup Wizard for Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 (KB982639) ended prematurely because of an error. Your system has not been modified. To install this program at a later time, please run the installation again.”
Looking at the “installed updates” indicates that the update rollup 4 has been installed properly.
Being curious, I checked the version in the properties of Exsetup.exe in the Bin folder. It shows the file version as 14.0.702.0, whereas a successful installation of update rollup 4 shows 14.0.702.1.
It looks like the setup has gone someway, making changes before giving up, showing the error message above.
The problem is that the server had “User Access Control” turned on, which is recommended. One way of installing the update successfully is to turn off UAC for the period of installation. I would recommend to keep the UAC turned on. So, how can we successfully install the update without the error message above? Right clicking the file with “shift” key pressed doesn’t bring an option to “Run as administrator”.
The solution is to open a command prompt with “Run as administrator” option and run the update rollup file, which will give the setup the necessary permission to install the update rollup successfully.
Microsoft has released the much awaited ADMT tool which can be run on Windows 2008 R2 machine. The Active Directory Migration Tool version 3.2 (ADMT v3.2) provides an integrated toolset to facilitate migration and restructuring tasks in an AD domain.
ADMT can be installed on any computer capable of running the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system, unless they are Read-Only domain controllers or in a Server Core configuration. ADMT v3.2 support migration operations involving Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 source domains, target domains or domain controllers.
Download ADMT v3.2 here
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