http://www.windowsitpro.com/authors/author/author/5576977/rss/5576977en-USSun, 27 May 2012 06:06:12 GMTSun, 27 May 2012 06:06:12 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office/testing-google-apps-143090
By Tony Redmond
A recent article on CIO.com asked the question “Can Google Apps Unseat Microsoft Office and Exchange?” Many similar articles are published to help advise CIOs and budding CIOs about the deep and serious choices they will have to make about technology. Take the wrong decision and your career is a bust, make the right choice and your reputation is secure and you become a CIO par excellence. Or so the theory goes. Given the topic, I had a certain interest in the article. There’s always a possibility that you can learn something from the experiences of others, even if this article focused on a small 500-user company (New England Biolabs) in a highly specialized area (molecular biology) that might not be a good prototype for other companies that are considering making a switch.The trial to figure out whether Google Apps could replace Office and Exchange was carried out  by 24 users over 60 days. Not many companies could dedicate nearly 5% of their total user population to testing new software, so this was somewhat out of the ordinary. All of the testers were Gmail users for personal email and the company operates heterogeneous platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).]]>Tony RedmondThu, 24 May 2012 07:49:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office/testing-google-apps-143090http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/exchange-server-2010/corrupted-items-mailbox-moves-exchange-2010-142659
By Tony Redmond
Are your mailbox moves constantly disrupted by an excess of "bad" items? Find out how you can adjust Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) settings to mitigate this issue.]]>Tony RedmondWed, 23 May 2012 00:40:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/article/exchange-server-2010/corrupted-items-mailbox-moves-exchange-2010-142659http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office-365/office-365-mailbox-statistics-143025
By Tony Redmond
A recent tweet took me to a script repository for Office 365 maintained by Microsoft’s Thomas Ashworth. Now, despite the best efforts of Twinbox to integrate my Twitter feed into Outlook (a job it does quite nicely), I don’t always respond to tweets or even read their content. After all, there’s so much rubbish you can deal with during any one day. But discovering an exception to the normal dross is always wonderful and so it is when you discover something useful. When I visited it, the script repository offered just six scripts. Perhaps more will come over time. However, the point is that there’s some interesting stuff here that can be taken advantage of immediately, which I think is the hallmark of a truly useful repository. In this case, the PowerShell scripts deal with aspects of Office 365 tenant domain management. I think that most administrators who have to manage email in an Office 365 tenant domain limit their horizon to the Exchange Control Panel (ECP) and don’t attempt to navigate the depths of PowerShell for Exchange Online. ]]>Tony RedmondTue, 22 May 2012 07:29:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office-365/office-365-mailbox-statistics-143025http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/mec-early-bird-discount-142982
By Tony Redmond
Early-bird discounted registration for the much-anticipated relaunch of the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) finishes on May 18, which is tomorrow for most people. This public service message is brought to you in an attempt to help resolve the nagging question “which conference is likely to deliver the best Exchange content for me in the next year”. The operational and technical environment that people deal with differs enormously from deployment to deployment and a single answer won’t apply in all cases. For instance, it’s pretty clear that Microsoft will use MEC as the launch vehicle for Exchange 2013 with Kevin Allison, GM of Exchange, promising that “MEC will be full of Exchange 15 content” when he keynoted at TEC in San Diego earlier this month. Therefore, if you really must learn all you possibly can about the latest and greatest version of Exchange, you’ll be one of those who packs their Mickey Mouse ears and heads to Orlando in September to join the MECfest. On the other hand, if you’re more interested in the details of practical deployment, tips and techniques, and the nitty-gritty of current versions of Exchange, you’d probably be better off investing in a conference fee for either TEC or Exchange Connections. That is, if these conferences continue to function in a world where a lot of the available attention and attendee dollars is being vacuumed up by MEC.]]>Tony RedmondThu, 17 May 2012 07:45:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/mec-early-bird-discount-142982http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office-365/outlook-synchronization-logs-142489
By Tony Redmond
Even in an era of massive quotas, it’s annoying to find that mailboxes are cluttered with extraneous logging messages that accumulate steadily and are never removed without manual intervention. So it is with Outlook synchronization logs, which you’ll find tucked away in the Sync Issues folder (to expose this folder, click on the Folders icon and expand the folder hierarchy). Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 generate synchronization logs when errors occur when clients synchronize local replica copies (held in the OST file) of cached server folders. Logically, synchronization errors and log generation only happens when Outlook is configured in cached Exchange mode. There are many reasons why a synchronization operation might experience some difficulties. Network glitches are the obvious example – something that is extremely likely to happen when connecting Outlook to Exchange Online in Office 365 when transient network errors are common between the network that the PC client runs on and Microsoft’s datacenters. After all, no one controls the Internet and no one guarantees the speed, latency, or reliability of an Internet connection. ]]>Tony RedmondTue, 15 May 2012 07:28:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office-365/outlook-synchronization-logs-142489http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/writing-ese-applications-142952
By Tony Redmond
One of the more interesting (and esoteric) sessions at TEC 2012 in San Diego was given by ESE developer Brett Shirley on the topic of how to write ESE applications. ESE is, of course, the Extensive Storage Engine, the database engine that underpins Exchange and Active Directory databases amongst other things. The flavor of ESE used by Exchange is “Jet Blue” as it’s tailored to meet the specific needs of Exchange. Scheduling a session about a database engine that is generally not well known amongst the Exchange community seemed like an extraordinarily brave step for the TEC organizers to take. Nevertheless they put Brett’s session on the schedule and I toddled along to take in the delights of discussing the many code examples that Brett positively delighted in explaining. The other highlight was the amazing outfit that Brett wore in an attempt to garner positive feedback from his audience. Suffice to say that his overalls were of a pattern and color sufficient to make some go blind if viewed in sunlight. ]]>Tony RedmondThu, 10 May 2012 07:21:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/writing-ese-applications-142952http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/ems-143026
By Tony Redmond
When you fire up a PowerShell session for the Exchange Management Shell (EMS), the banner for the new session displays a “tip of the day”. The tips are things like examples of command syntax. Some people love this kind of information, others (probably the more experienced) find it relatively uninteresting as the tips eventually run out of something new and valuable to display. The behaviour hasn’t changed much between Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010. But now you have a chance to give direct feedback to the Exchange documentation team to tell them how you’d like to improve the information displayed when EMS initializes. It could be as simple as an expanded set of tips, some additional pointers to web sites that contain useful information about writing scripts for Exchange (a dangerous thing as URLs have a nasty habit of becoming outdated) or perhaps some artificial intelligence that analyzes your use of EMS and suggests how you can improve your personal performance. For example: “Welcome to EMS: I’ve noticed that you’re not very good at scripting. Can I suggest that you buy a good PowerShell book and read it at bedtime” or “EMS welcomes you, O lord of the scripts and master of the obscure. I can tell you nothing that you don’t know.” Everyone has a good idea from time to time. Maybe you can be the one to help EMS come to life. If you feel up to the challenge, go to David Strome’s blog and take the opportunity to reinvigorize the banner. ]]>Tony RedmondWed, 09 May 2012 11:04:47 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/ems-143026http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server-2010/exchange-ecp-142082
By Tony Redmond
I was both interested and impressed at Nuno Mota’s article describing how to enable a hidden performance section for the Exchange Management Console (ECP): impressed because the article is written well and interested because it reveals a detail about ECP that I had never heard of before. This either goes to prove that you really do learn something new every day or the worth of browsing through the many settings that exist in Exchange’s configuration files.]]>Tony RedmondTue, 08 May 2012 07:46:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server-2010/exchange-ecp-142082http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/commentary/microsoft-updates-mcse-program-142836
By Tony Redmond
I don’t want to seem to rain on Microsoft Learning’s recent announcement about the new cloud-based Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) accreditation program as there are some very good points, such as an alignment to real-world solutions delivered across multiple versions of technology, but some nagging doubts linger. There’s no doubt that the old-model Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (also MCSE) program had run into choppy waters. Apart from the problems with the word “engineer”, which has a particular professional meaning associated with multi-year university degrees in some countries, the old MCSE program lacked credibility in part, if only because there was little to differentiate between the “paper” MCSE who had qualified after cramming for two weeks at a boot camp and a real industry pro with tons of experience. Both MCSEs were equally valid in the eyes of Microsoft, which doesn’t seem right. ]]>Tony RedmondThu, 03 May 2012 07:51:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/commentary/microsoft-updates-mcse-program-142836http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office/death-to-outlook-142900
By Tony Redmond
A boring Tuesday in April brings me to contemplate the intriguing Slate.com article entitled “Death to Word” (the title, at least, got your attention). Basically the author’s premise is it’s time for Microsoft to put Word for Windows into the spare parts bin. Some of the targets identified in the article are easy to anticipate. For example,” Clippy” makes yet another appearance as the animated icon everyone loves to hate. Other Word features that the author identifies as not worth having will probably surprise because you might consider them worth having, such as the way that Word automatically adds a superscripted “th” after ordinal numbers. To each their own, I suppose. ]]>Tony RedmondTue, 01 May 2012 07:39:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office/death-to-outlook-142900http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office/fast-office-15-142890
By Tony Redmond
The canaries are really singing around Redmond to reveal details of the upcoming Office 15 product releases. At one level it’s kind of irritating to be bound by various Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) that are strictly enforced by Microsoft only to see how Microsoft clearly plants details with journalists in the obvious knowledge that this information will end up in the public domain in short order. But then you realize that this activity is all part of the game that plays out around the launch of any new product. It’s called marketing. One of the details that slipped out last week was the fact that Office 15 marks the introduction of FAST-based search technology into the Office 15 server products to provide a single, consistent, enterprise-class search capability across repositories managed by Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync. Microsoft announced their intention to acquire the Norwegian-based FAST company in January 2008 for $1.2 billion. The deal was completed in May 2008 and since then Microsoft has been working to integrate FAST into its line-up in products such as FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. The FAST engineering team remains based in Norway. Exchange has used different search capabilities over the years. Originally, it used MSSearch in Exchange 2003 and then upgraded to use its own content indexing search in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010. The search feature has improved over the years through closer integration with the different parts of Exchange. ]]>Tony RedmondThu, 26 Apr 2012 07:43:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office/fast-office-15-142890http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/owa-offline-ie10-142789
By Tony Redmond
With all the fuss and bother about the implementation of HTML5 in Internet Explorer 10 (as part of Windows 8), it’s interesting to reflect on how far we have come in terms of web clients for email since Exchange Web Access (subsequently Outlook Web Access) appeared in Exchange 5.0 (1997). The version of Outlook Web App (as OWA is known now) included in the latest version of on-premises Exchange 2010 and in Exchange Online as part of Office 365 is obviously more functional, better performing, and complete than its predecessor. In fact, OWA has been a huge part of Exchange’s success and a key contributing factor to Microsoft’s ability to launch Office 365 as there’s no way that a cloud service could compete without a great web email client. Of course, the lessons learned in OWA have also been used by Microsoft to build the Exchange Control Panel (ECP) and that’s another major Office 365 component that will probably exert a bigger influence over the on-premises product as new versions of Exchange roll out. In terms of technology, Microsoft has moved a long way from its implementation of WebDAV and DHTML for OWA in Exchange 2000 as described in Alex Hoffman’s blog or indeed, the EHLO post that covers the same topic in less detail. ]]>Tony RedmondMon, 23 Apr 2012 07:22:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/owa-offline-ie10-142789http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/office-365/shared-mailboxes-office-365-142386
By Tony Redmond
The version of the Exchange Control Panel (ECP) that is provided for Office 365 tenants doesn’t support the creation of shared mailboxes. Luckily, you can easily use the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) for this purpose.]]>Tony RedmondSun, 22 Apr 2012 10:26:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/article/office-365/shared-mailboxes-office-365-142386http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/cloud-computing2/microsoft-google-cloud-outages-142870
By Tony Redmond
On October 3, I wrote about the success that Google was then enjoying at achieving stellar levels of performance against SLA for Gmail, which had delivered 99.984% availability for users in 2010 and appeared to be doing even better in 2011. I guess the pressure of fighting multiple law suits must be transmitting stress from the executive suite elsewhere in Mountain View because Gmail has not delivered the same performance since. In fact, soon after I wrote the original piece, Gmail suffered a 50 minute outage on 31 October. Not so bad, but enough to put a big hole in their hopes of achieving the same SLA performance as in 2010. And then Gmail had another blip on April 17, 2012 when “something” caused a 64 minute outage that Google said affected less than 2% of their estimated 350 million users worldwide. Again not so bad, unless you were one of the 7 million people who were deprived of their email fix. It seems therefore that Exchange Online has been doing a little better in its competition against Gmail recently. There was the small matter of the APAC outage on March 16, but no one really counts a problem that only affected people at the other end of the world, do they? At least, that’s what it seemed like based on the lack of coverage in the mainstream IT media. I don’t want to keep on harping about cloud email outages because it really doesn’t matter all that much if either Gmail or Exchange Online are inaccessible for an hour or so every so often. ]]>Tony RedmondThu, 19 Apr 2012 11:34:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/cloud-computing2/microsoft-google-cloud-outages-142870http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/exchange-monopoly-142707
By Tony Redmond
The key position that Exchange Server occupies in the Microsoft firmament and some of the challenges that it faces in the future are laid out in an interesting presentation called “10 Hypotheses for Technology Investing” that’s given by Roger McNamee, managing director and co-founder of Elevation Partners, a VC company that has had some notable successes with investments in Facebook, Yelp, and Palm. McNamee has been giving this presentation at various conferences for a while (the reason why many 2011 dates appear on the slides) in an effort to drive some debate about where the IT industry is going. Some interesting ideas are aired, including the impact of mobile devices on the fabric and function of the Internet; the impact of these changes on Google; how Apple’s closed-wall model threatens the kind of Internet that Google has built its success upon; and the disruption that has resulted from iPads (the first successful tablet) and what this means for other players. His views don’t make great reading if you’re a Microsoft stockholder (I’m not). McNamee boldly states that software development for Windows has all but stopped as developers rush to embrace the app model or develop for the web. In addition, Microsoft’s subscription model imposes a “tax” of roughly $1,000 annually per PC and that these factors contribute to the fall in the percentage of Windows in the overall pool of devices connected to the Internet. ]]>Tony RedmondTue, 17 Apr 2012 07:12:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/exchange-monopoly-142707http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/exchange-2013-dates-142818
By Tony Redmond
Well, if the information revealed by IDG and other publications is correct, Exchange 2013 (Exchange 15, don’t you know) will make its debut alongside the rest of the Office Wave 15 products in early 2013. Mary Jo Foley has previously reported that the "whisper date" (Microsoft leak) for the Office 15 Release to Manufacturing date is in mid-November. RTM is the point when the engineers have concluded that the code is solid enough to be unleashed into production and so the code is formally released to be made available to customers through various channels. The graphic describing the product roadmap revealed in the articles, which Microsoft apparently released to their Partner Network confirms that the "general availability" date for Office 15 products is in the end-2012/early 2013 timeframe. ]]>Tony RedmondFri, 13 Apr 2012 10:35:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/exchange-2013-dates-142818http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/exchange-2003-outlook-enter-final-years-142798
By Tony Redmond
There’s been some recent commentary about the fact that Windows XP will reach its formal end-of-life milestone in less than two years time. What might just have passed you by is that the same thing happened for Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003 on April 8, 2012. In other words, on April 8, 2014 these products reach their planned end-of-life and after that time Microsoft will cease to worry about small but important details such as security updates, bug fixes, and the like. Neither product will stop working when the magic date happens, but it’s a brave administrator that plans to continue into the unknown without the comforting feeling that they can call Microsoft support if they meet a bad bug or suffer a security issue. Actually, they can probably still call Microsoft support but I predict that the subsequent conversation will be a frustrating and unsatisfying experience. Come to think of it, just like many other telephone calls with support desks. Before I receive a barrage of hate mail to tell me just how horribly I have maligned support organizations, let me point out that I have both worked for and been responsible for product support and know exactly how difficult the job is and how unsatisfying calls can be from the other side of the phone line. Microsoft has already applied the mark of doom to Outlook 2003 by refusing to allow it to be a client for Exchange Online in Office 365. ]]>Tony RedmondThu, 12 Apr 2012 07:23:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server/exchange-2003-outlook-enter-final-years-142798http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server-2010/exchange-myths-142637
By Tony Redmond
Don’t believe everything that you read on the Internet. This is good advice that more people should really follow considering the amount of sheer dross that one comes across in an average day. A good example is a recent publication of a blog review that purports to compare Zimbra Collaboration Server (ZCS), the open-source based email server now owned by VMware, and Exchange 2010. The core theory advanced by the author, a fellow named Christopher Wells who rejoices in the splendid handle “vSamauri” (probably due to his experience in Japan coupled with his focus on VMware), is that ZCS can be simply dropped in to replace Exchange “in enterprise deployments of all sizes”. The ideas advanced in the article have been comprehensively addressed by a rebuttal written by Dave Stork and Michel de Rooij, so I won’t bother to repeat those points here. Instead, I’d like to consider some of the myths about Exchange that the article perpetuates. ]]>Tony RedmondTue, 10 Apr 2012 07:16:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server-2010/exchange-myths-142637http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server-2010/finer-details-exchange-high-availability-142620
By Tony Redmond
The esteemed Scott Schnoll, famed speaker at many TechEd and other conferences around the world, recently tweeted a reminder about one of the most useful articles published about Exchange 2010 High Availability that was originally published in May 2011. Good information like this article ages well and it’s always a pleasure to review to both reinforce knowledge and discover new details that had previously escaped your attention. Scott presents a number of misconceptions about Exchange high availability in the article. I especially like #4, which reviews how Active Manager makes use of the AutoDatabaseMountDial setting during automatic database transition. This is a property of a mailbox server that can vary from server to server within a deployment. Of course, the name of this setting doesn’t immediately tell you what it governs. It might be better named as AutomaticDatabaseTransitionThreshold (too long) or AutoDatabaseMountThreshold. In any case, the setting is named as it is and we are stuck with it. ]]>Tony RedmondThu, 05 Apr 2012 07:36:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/exchange-server-2010/finer-details-exchange-high-availability-142620http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office-365/immutability-exchange-142550
By Tony Redmond
Immutability is a word that trips elegantly off the tongue. It’s also a word that is used more often to describe an aspect of Exchange that receives increasing attention from the legal eagles (aka the fine, upstanding members of the legal profession who assist technologists to run computer systems in a legally-pleasing manner). I was reminded of this fact when I viewed a video where Perry Clarke, a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer who has made many contributions to the development of Exchange over the years, explained what immutability means in a practical sense to the contents of user mailboxes. In a nutshell, immutability is the driving factor behind many of the compliance features that Microsoft introduced in Exchange 2010 such as “dumpster 2.0”, retention and litigation hold, and archive mailboxes to create an environment where the system can retain data in an unchangeable form. The problem that these features seek to address is pretty simple. Up to and including Exchange 2007, it’s possible for users who want to cover their tracks to remove potentially incriminating data from mailboxes. The original dumpster implementation uses a special mailbox view to track soft-deleted items. In this context, “soft-deleted” means an item that a user has deleted from a mailbox folder that is kept in the database until its retention period expires. ]]>Tony RedmondTue, 03 Apr 2012 07:08:00 GMThttp://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/tony-redmonds-exchange-unwashed-50/office-365/immutability-exchange-142550