New articles and whitepapers – Ontrack PowerControls and GroupWise migration with Quest

Hi,

Over the last few weeks I’ve worked on a few articles.

Two have recently been published.

The first is a migration whitepaper which Declan Conroy and I worked on together. We have previously written a whole series for Msexchange.org on the subject of GroupWise to Exchange migrations which can be found here.

This new piece takes a new look now Exchange 2010 is out and also discussed migration to BPOS.

The whitepaper can be downloaded here:

http://www.quest.com/documents/landing.aspx?id=11954&technology=&prod=&prodfamily=&loc=

In the second article Phil Bridge, MD of Kroll Ontrack, and I discuss some of the Pitfalls and pathways to migrate to Exchange 2010, with a particular look at which tools make sense for which types of migration.

The article is on the On Windows site here:

http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/Potholes,-pitfalls-and-pathways-to-success/5195/Default.aspx

Hope they are useful.

Cheers

Nathan

Webinar Recording and Slides from MMMUG Exchange 2010 SP1 events

In the last few weeks MMMUG has delivered a couple of Exchange 2010 SP1 events.

The first was with Microsoft as posted here:

http://nathanwinters.co.uk/2010/06/09/exchange-2010-sp1-webinar-thursday-10th-june-2010-with-microsoft-uk-and-mmmug/

And the second was MMMUGs re-launch event as listed here:

http://nathanwinters.co.uk/2010/06/21/mmmug-july-2010-in-person-event-exchange-2010-sp1-and-migration/

Well the slides and webinar recordings from the first event are available on the MMMUG site here:

http://mmmug.co.uk/Exchange-2010-SP1-Livemeeting/View-category

The slides from Jaap Wesselius from the in person MMMUG event are here:

http://mmmug.co.uk/July-Meeting-Exchange-2010-SP1/View-category?orderby=dmdate_published

Hope they are useful.

Cheers

Nathan

MMMUG August Event – Exchange Backup and SCDPM 2010

We’re on a roll! The August MMMUG event is being hosted by Tony Brown. and is being held in London on the 18th August 2010.

The subject of the meeting is Exchange backup and recovery and we have Microsoft’s Anthony Tyler talking about System Centre Data Protection Manager’s take on backing up exchange and Kroll Ontrack’s offering for recovery.

Kroll Ontrack is now celebrating its 25^th Anniversary as a global leader in the provision of data management solutions, specialising in data recovery, restoration, erasure and investigative products and services (www.krollontrack.co.uk).

Ontrack PowerControls software for Microsoft Exchange empowers users to search, recover, extract, restore and migrate Microsoft Exchange data (www.ontrackpowercontrols.co.uk).

Faced with increasing hardware and administration costs together with tighter budgets, organisations are seeking more cost-effective and efficient solutions to manage ad-hoc and routine Microsoft Exchange data requests. The core functionality of Ontrack PowerControls enables System Administrators to search, recover and restore entire .edb, .pst files and granular level items, whilst retaining data integrity.

Kroll Ontrack is pleased to be demonstrating the core functionality, features and application of this invaluable Microsoft Exchange administration tool.

Agenda:

18:00pm – 18:30pm Arrival
18:30pm – 19:30pm Ontrack PowerControls

• Company & Product overview
• Single item restore / recovery
• Intuitive searching
• Additional functionality
• Existing customers
• Live demo
• Extraction of Microsoft Exchange data from backup
• Browsing single / multiple .edb & .pst files, to single item level
• Searching across multiple .edb’s
• Compliance, investigations and legal requirements
• Restoration of data
• Reporting
• Hands-on demo
• Q & A

19:30pm – 20:00pm Refreshments
20:00pm – 20:45pm Microsoft DPM

• Why build DPM?
• Introducing DPM
• Demo – Protecting Data
• How Does DPM work?
• Demo – Rapid & Reliable Recovery
• Protected Platforms

20:45pm – 21:00pm Discussions & Questions on Exchange backup / recovery.

The event will be held at Kroll Ontrack’s flagship offices overlooking HMS Belfast and London Bridge:

• Kroll Ontrack Limited
• Tower Place East
• London EC3R 5BS
• United Kingdom

To Sign Up use the link below:

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/4-18th_August_2010_-_Exchange_backup_and_recovery

Digicert being most impressive!

Hi,

I’ve blogged about Digicert before, but over the last few days I’ve had yet another change to use them and been seriously impressed!

I was setting up an OCS 2007 R2 lab and got to the section where I needed to setup Forefront TMG to proxy connections to the OCS Web Components on my Standard Edition front end.

I created the cert request using the certificate wizard in the OCS administrative tools as it is the easiest way I know to mark the private key as exportable.

Having done that I submitted the request to Digicert and, because it was a domain I have already validated, the certificate was issued within five minutes.

I installed the certificate on the Front End, exported it, and installed it on the Forefront TMG box.

Then for testing I accessed the relevant website externally. Things looked like they worked but on one device I got a trust error. It was late, and I didn’t have time to investigate so I left it.

The next day I received an email from Digicert as below:

We just ran an installation check on the DigiCert SSL certificate that you installed on proxy.domain.co.uk and it appears that the server needs to be configured for maximum compatibility. You will need to install the Intermediate certificates to the server in order to ensure compatibility with legacy browsers and mobile devices.

On Windows platforms, the easiest way to do this is to use our certificate utility. Just visit http://www.digicert.com/util and download the Certificate Management Tool. After running it on the server, click the Repair button. Some servers require restarting the services or restarting the whole server after making this change.

You can verify that the problem is fixed at http://www.digicert.com/help/index.htm?host=proxy.domain.co.uk

If you have any problems correcting this issue, please contact our helpful support team and we will be happy to help.

Now I knew about the utility and have blogged about it before, but to be told this is the problem proactively was brilliant!

I ran the utility, it installed the intermediate CAs properly and all is well!

Thanks Digicert

Note: As an Exchange MVP, DigiCert has provided me certificates to use in test labs, without which I may not have had the opportunity to try their service.

On to pastures new!

Hi,

As some of you will know, today is my last day working for Dimension Data.

I’ve been at DD since the beginnings of the UK Microsoft line of business and have seen it grow from the six people there when I joined, to over a hundred now.

It’s been a good journey and I’ve certainly made some really great friends and learnt a huge amount along the way!

I’m looking forward to getting straight on with a new journey on Monday; working at Grey Convergence.

I will be taking on the role of Unified Communications Lead, working with Microsoft Exchange, Communications Server and supporting technologies and helping to build an expert Unified Communications practice.

I fully intend to continue sharing tips and tricks here and being as active as ever in the UC Community.

Cheers

Nathan

MMMUG July 2010 in person event – Exchange 2010 SP1 and Migration

As promised, Tony and I at MMMUG have finally managed to get the physical meetings going again.

To kick off our first meeting after re-launch, we are going to have an evening discussing Exchange 2010 SP1 and migrations on Thursday July 15th 2010.

As some of you will be aware, we recently held a LiveMeeting on the subject, however this will be a chance to dive deeper into the new changes and to bring your questions along to discuss in person.

The event is being sponsored by Redgate Software, a Microsoft Gold Messaging certified partner who provide transparent Exchange email archiving and PST discovery software. The perfect compliment to Exchange 2010, Exchange Server Archiver allows you to reduce the storage load on your Exchange server whilst providing a 100% transparent end-user experience. Combined with a PST discovering and importing tool, these tools will give you the best Exchange 2010 environment.

Alongside their software products they run the Simple-Talk sysadmin website which Jaap Wesselius and I have both written for.

Jaap will be our guest speaker for the evening and between us, we will cover both the new elements of Exchange Server 2010 SP1 and also answer questions about the process of upgrading from previous Exchange versions.

The agenda will be as follows:

18:00 – 18:30 – Arrival
18:30 – 19:45 – A look at what’s new in Exchange 2010 SP1
19:45 – 20:05 – Break/Networking
20:05 – 21:00 – Discussion and Questions on Migrating to Exchange 2010

The event will take place at the BSG Offices at the address below:
BSG House, 226-236 City Road, London, EC1V 2TT

To sign up, use the link below:

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/3-15th_July_2010_-_Exchange_2010_SP1_26_Migration

Looking forward to seeing you there, we have 30 places and expect them to fill up quickly so please make sure to register soon!

Installing the prerequisites for Exchange 2010 SP1 UM role – can’t install UCMA

Just a quick tip, as this seems to have caught a few people out (including me!)

When installing Exchange 2010 SP1 UM role there is the need to install the UCMA 2.0 Runtime which can be downloaded from the Microsoft site using the link below:

UcmaRuntimeWebDownloadX64.msi

So when the software downloads, you double click the MSI and install it. What is perhaps not so obvious, is that you haven’t actually installed anything yet! You have only copied the files to the location specified which in my case was:

C:\Microsoft UCMA 2.0 Runtime Installer Package\amd64

So at that point you need to run the SetupUcmaRuntime application in that folder to actually install UCMA, at which point Exchange setup will find the prerequisites and let you install the Exchange UM role!

Hope that helps!

Cheers

Nathan

The SysAdmin Handbook

I was asked about this a little while ago but until recently it slipped my mind! Anyhow, I’ve noticed that Redgate software (the people behind the www.simple-talk.com website) have published a new eBook featuring a bunch of articles from their website to help administrators to get to grips with Exchange.

Excitingly for me, one of my articles was included! It was the one about Resource mailboxes in Exchange 2007 which is still the most viewed article on the Simple Talk website! The article can be found here:

http://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/using-exchange-2007-for-resource-booking/

Or, if you are interested in the whole book, take a look here:

http://www.red-gate.com/specials/Exchange/the_sysadmin_handbook_ebook.htm

Cheers

Nathan

Friday Tips and Links #1

At the end of the week I always find that I have a bunch of browser windows open which have some information I think might be useful. Maybe not immediately, but certainly worth looking at sometime!

So recently I’ve seen a few people do weekly round up posts, and I’ve decided that it would be the perfect place to put all those little bits of info, which are not fully investigated but which might be worth a look in the future.

So here goes with number 1.

First Tip:

Typing whoami at a command prompt in Windows 2008 R2 (and likely earlier – 2008) tells you who you are logged on as. It’s great to find out if you are a local or domain admin!

Second Tip:

For those who run SnagIt, (screen capture software) but don’t have the latest version, here is the link for previous versions:

http://www.techsmith.com/download/oldversions.asp

Third Tip:

Here is a useful webcast from Microsoft about virtualizing Exchange:

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032428204&CountryCode=US

Fourth Tip:

A nice website offering tools for testing around email

MX Toolbox – www.mxtoolbox.com

Fifth Tip:

Microsoft has released a deployment guide for hosters planning on using Exchange 2010 SP1.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=BBA88FB5-9D84-475C-85D7-3FFEB308636E&displaylang=en

Exchange 2010 SP1 webinar – Thursday 10th June 2010 with Microsoft UK and MMMUG

As you may be aware – Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 is being released shortly and Microsoft’s Brett Johnson, Steve Tassell and Leigh Smith and I will be delivering a LiveMeeting on the 10th of June from 9.30 am to 11:00 am to explain in detail the fixes and enhancements that it contains.

The LiveMeeting’s agenda is as follows:

• Reminder of the Exchange 2010 core tenets
  • An update on where Microsoft is with Exchange Online
  • Introduction to the Feature Enhancements of Exchange 2010 SP1 such as;
    o The New Exchange Control Panel Management UI
    o Improved High Availability and Disaster Recovery functionality
    o Improved Outlook Web App UI and Performance
    o Better Mobile Device Experience
    o New Information Protection and Control
      ? Personal Archive Enhancements
      ? Retention Policy Management Enhancements
      ? Multi-Mailbox Search Enhancements
• Demo and Deep Dive
    o Having given a broad outline of the new features we will demo some of the most visible, including;
      ? New OWA,
      ? Exchange Control Panel
      ? Key Information Protection and Compliance functions
• Questions & Answers

To log into the event – click on the following url….

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=3Z8JBW&role=attend&pw=5P7XXQ

We encourage you all to join this meeting as it will be useful to anyone who looks after Exchange Servers of whatever variety – even if you’re not currently using Exchange 2010.