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Hi,

I am very happy to say that I will be at The Experts Conference in San Diego this April.

The conference runs from April 29th to May 2nd. This time round I have two sessions, which will be as follows:

Dealing with those pesky PSTs. A look at archiving and discovery in Exchange 2010 and Office 365

A growing number of businesses face regulatory pressures to retain and retrieve business data. This session will look at the features available in Exchange 2010 to manage, maintain and retrieve large quantities of data. You will learn about your options for storing data either in large mailboxes, using the archive functionality of Exchange on premises or through archiving to Office 365. We will discuss where and when the different approaches make sense and cover what your options are if you already have a vast amount of data stored in an existing archiving platform. Finally we will take a look at the new PST Capture tool from Microsoft which gives a solution to the problem of locating and importing PSTs from across your network.

Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) – What is it an why should you care?

Outsourcing your mail filtering is nothing new, however that doesn’t mean it isn’t a complex area which needs careful consideration and configuration. In this session we will introduce the capabilities of FOPE before diving into a demo based walk through of its configuration including coverage of Exchange Hosted Encryption (EHE). We will cover standalone FOPE used to protect an on premises deployment of a messaging platform and then cover the differences when using FOPE with Office 365. Finally we will get into the detail of routing topologies covering how mail flows in different scenarios from standalone, to Office 365 passing through Hybrid on the way.

If you want more information about the conference then take a look at the website here:

http://www.theexpertsconference.com/us/2012/

Cheers

Nathan

Hi,

As you may know, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to attend the first five years of Minasi Conferences held each year from 2006 to 2010. It gave me my first speaking opportunity and prompted me to get into writing (as well as photography!)

Well after a gap in 2011 the conference is back in 2012. Once again there is a great line up of speakers and the chance to hang out with some of the leaders of our industry. Sadly this year I won’t be able to make it as I’m going to be at another event in the US (more of which later). I have no doubt that it will be a great event!

For more information see the website here

http://minasiconference.wordpress.com/

And for schedule info here:

http://minasiconference.wordpress.com/minasi-2012-timetable/

Hope some of you manage to make it to the event.

Cheers

Nathan

Hi,

Just a quick post to spread the announcement on the Exchange Team blog that MEC is back!

From what I’m told MEC was the best conference out there! A great chance for Exchange experts from all around the World to come together and share information about the latest and greatest in the world of messaging.

After an absence of 10 years, it’s back. To find out more checkout the post here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/03/06/mec-is-back.aspx

Looking forward to seeing you there

Cheers

Nathan

As I mentioned a while back I’ve been trying the uCertify Prepkit for the Microsoft Exchange 2010 Design exam (70-663). In fact I also used the Prepkit for the Configuration exam (70-662) as well.

Having passed both exams I thought it was time to share a few thoughts about the Prepkits.

The download and install process is very straightforward and it is possible to use a trial version which gives you a selection of tests whilst you decide whether they are right for you.

Once installed and fully licensed, a simple matter of inputting your purchase key into the software, there is a large range of information and test methods which help you study for your exam.

The Prepkit lays out the Exam Objectives and also has a range of Study Notes which outline key topics and which are supplemented by a couple of longer articles. It would be nice if these Study Notes were linked from the Exam Objectives so that there was a better flow from piece to piece however the information in general is useful.

Once you get down to the actual test material then there are various ways of learning including many ways to customise the actual tests by selecting the type of areas you want tested and also whether you want to be able to get the answers after each question or only at the end of the test.

Whilst testing, you can of course mark items for review and also tag items and give feedback on the questions. Your scores are logged and you can easily see which areas need more study and then take questions on those areas only. Equally you can simply retest questions that you got wrong before.

All in all, I found having sat and passed the exam, that the type of material in the 70-663 Prepkit wasn’t entirely representative of the material on the exam. The Prepkit material seems a little more suited to the 70-662 exam around configuration rather than more focussed on the design type questions in 70-663. Also 70-663 has a scenario type case study section where you must read a bunch of key information about a customer and come up with design suggestions. This isn’t covered at all in the Prepkit.

My feeling is that for the 70-663 exam whilst the Prepkit is full of useful Exchange related info I don’t think it was an ideal tool especially compared to the 70-662 Prepkit which was much better suited to that particular exam.

The ease of use and the general experience is good, but there is room for improvement in how the material matches the exam.

One of the things I’ve been a little slow in keeping up with is MCP exams. It’s something that I’m sorting out and in the next couple of weeks intend to take the two Exchange 2010 exams – 70-662 and 70-663.

With that in mind I thought I would look at some of the study aids out there. In particular uCertify offered to let me review their PrepKit for the Exchange design exam (70-663).

I’ve used their products once or twice before and have found them generally easy to use with a decent number of questions. So I will be testing out their product and hopefully it will get me through the exam.

I will write up a longer review of the PrepKit once I’m done!

As always it seems, it’s been ages since I’ve actually blogged anything. Anyhow, having finally completed my first book Mastering Lync 2010 for Sybex, i’ve got some time back to build some labs…

… As always with modern technology there is a need for certificates. In this case I’m setting up a Hybrid Coexistence system for Exchange 2010 SP2 and Office 365 and need a cert for the ADFS box. Well one thing I finally figured out whilst writing the Lync book was how to generate a certificate request from the shell.

Here goes.

In this case I need a simple SSL cert with a single name – adfs.msexchangelab.co.uk

I find that the smoothest way of creating certificates these days is through the shell using certreq.exe. There is a lot of information on the subject of using certreq.exe available at the following links:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff625722(WS.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725793(WS.10).aspx

Essentially, the process is to create a request template file (.inf) for the required certificate and then to use the certreq.exe utility, which is installed by default on Windows Server 2008 R2, to create a certificate request file.

The template file for a simple SSL single name certificate is show in Code Sample 1.

Code Sample 1: .inf File Text Used to Create Single Name ADFS certificate

[Version]

Signature="$Windows NT$"

[NewRequest]

Subject = "CN=adfs.msexchangelab.co.uk,OU=ICT,O=MSExchangeLab,L=Croydon,S=Surrey,C=GB"

Exportable = FALSE

KeyLength = 2048

KeySpec = 1

KeyUsage = 0xA0

MachineKeySet = True

ProviderName = "Microsoft RSA SChannel Cryptographic Provider"

RequestType = PKCS10

FriendlyName = "ADFS Cert"

[EnhancedKeyUsageExtension]

OID=1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1 ; Server Authentication

Once you have created the above file and saved it with the file extension .inf you will take the following steps to create the certificate:

From an Administrator CMD.exe prompt, change to the folder where the request template .inf file is stored and run the following command which will will pull settings from the adfscsr.inf file and output to the adfs.req file in the same directory. 

certreq -new adfscsr.inf adfs.req

At this point you have created the certificate request for the required certificate. You will now need to copy the contents of the .req file and send it to your third-Party CA, such as Digicert or VeriSign.

P.S.

If you were thinking about creating SAN certificates in this way, then of course you can. You just need the correct .inf file. An example is Code Sample 2.

Code Sample 2: .inf File Text Used to SAN Cert

[Version]

Signature="$Windows NT$"

[NewRequest]

Subject = "CN=subject.msexchangelab.co.uk,OU=ICT,O=MSExchangeLab,L=Croydon,S=Surrey,C=GB"

Exportable = FALSE

KeyLength = 2048

KeySpec = 1

KeyUsage = 0xA0

MachineKeySet = True

ProviderName = "Microsoft RSA SChannel Cryptographic Provider"

RequestType = PKCS10

FriendlyName = "Example SAN Cert"

[EnhancedKeyUsageExtension]

OID=1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1 ; Server Authentication

[Extensions]

2.5.29.17 = "{text}"

_continue_ = "dns=subject.msexchangelab.co.uk&dns=SAN1.msexchangelab.co.uk&dns=SAN2etc.msexchangelab.co.uk"

Hi,

Now that we’ve ticked over into a new financial year at Microsoft and I’ve got the hang of the place (mostly!), one of my aims for this year is to start getting back into the technology community.

To that aim I am pleased to be able to say that I will be presenting at The Experts Conference (TEC) Europe in Frankfurt from 17th to 19th October.

For those that are not aware of the TEC conference it is run by Quest and has several tracks. It originated as a Directory Experts conference but now includes Directory, Exchange, PowerShell and Virtualisation content.

As the web site says:

• TEC for Exchange is a unique opportunity to…
• Obtain deep instruction on Microsoft’s Exchange Server messaging platform
• Network with leading experts while attending intense, 400-level training sessions
• Share practical advice and best practices you can immediately implement into your day-to-day activities
• Meet with Microsoft Program Managers, provide feedback, and make a direct impact on the future of Exchange technologies
• Network on an international level with other Exchange professionals within the industry

There are a good range of sessions with some outstanding presenters. My sessions are as follows:

Archiving and Discovery with Exchange 2010 and Office 365

A growing number of businesses face some regulatory pressures to retain and retrieve business data. This session will look at the features available in Exchange 2010 to manage, maintain and retrieve large quantities of data. You will learn about your options for storing data either in large mailboxes, using the archive functionality of Exchange on premises or through archiving to Office 365. We will discuss where and when the different approaches make sense and cover what your options are if you already have a vast amount of data stored in an existing archiving platform.

Designing Exchange 2010 for Site Resilience (It’s more than just technology!)

Exchange 2010 brings great technical wealth in its ability to be deployed in a site resilient way. However do you really need this level of complexity. This session will discuss the business drivers which drive site resilient design. We will then dive into the technical elements which make enable us to make Exchange deployments site resilient, including CAs, Mailflow, Load Balancers, and of course the DAG. You should come away from this session with a clear idea of whether Site Resilience is sensible for you, and how to weight up the various design decisions needed to deploy, and more importantly operate a site resilient model successfully.

So all in all, it should be a great event and I look forward to seeing a bunch of friendly faces in the crowd!

Cheers

Nathan

Hi,
 
Just checking out this new Quora social networking system.
 
Here is my profile on Quora

Nathan Winters

Yup, I know, why am I using Windows XP SP3. Well I’m not, it’s on my wife’s laptop.

Anyhow, with the install of SP3 a while back, we noticed that the address bar was gone from the task bar. It turns out that this was a “by design” issue rather than a bug as described in the KB article below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951448/en-gb

To rectify the issue originally, I found a third party utility which provided an address bar, however after some recent tidying and software un-installation, it vanished!

Having looked around, there is a much better option which doesn’t require any hacking of system files as mentioned in various website, or the use of a third party tool.

To get the taskbar back, simply drag the My Computer icon up to the top of your screen and drop it. It will then create a bar along the top edge of the screen and from there you can right click, go to the toolbar list and add the “address bar”. Now, right click again and remove My Computer from this bar after which you will be left with just the “address bar”.

Finally, click to pickup the address bar and drag it off the top of the screen and down onto your real taskbar. You may have to play about with exactly where to drag it, but get it right and it will dock into the main task bar and you will have you normal address bar back.

Cheers

Nathan

As some of you may know, Tony Brown and I have recently re-launched my user group MMMUG. As part of that launch I wrote a new article for the site.

The article discusses the decisions to be taken when installing Exchange Server 2010 in a single server environment and shows in detail the steps taken to do so. I show how to install the typical Exchange roles; Mailbox, Hub Transport and Client Access roles, as I will provide a later article detailing the installation of the Unified Messaging role.

The article covers only the install of Exchange to the point where the server is operational in its default configuration. Both patching and basic configuration steps will be covered in later articles.

The article can be found on the new MMMUG site here:

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/articles/installing-exchange-server-2010-in-typical-configuration