Author:

Exchange PowerShell Quickstart – Part 1

17th October, 2014

Background As we know Microsoft is firmly banking on PowerShell to be THE way to manage all of their operating systems and services, and with good reason. PowerShell is the most powerful method Microsoft has developed to manage their products. The concepts are similar to Unix style shells but it is a little more easily […]

Cross forest in Exchange

3rd October, 2014

How to open a mailbox cross forest in Exchange We often migrate users between Exchange organisations/forests, or need to add coexistence between two or more Exchange organisations and forests.  The basic set up for coexistence includes the following: Network coexistence DNS coexistence AD Trust Autodiscover coexistence Synchronisation of GAL objects Accepted Domains Remote Domains Mail […]

Exchange Cascaded Folder Permission

19th September, 2014

If you have ever done delegation in Lotus Notes and were then migrated to Outlook you would have noticed one big difference…  cascaded permissions!!!  We have asked Microsoft why Outlook permissions behave so differently to NTLM permissions but we haven’t had an answer.  At the recent MEC a number of people were asking the same […]

Restoring a Disconnected Mailbox

5th September, 2014

 in Exchange I came across an issue at a client where for reasons as yet unknown about 15 users across various servers/databases in a single DAG suddenly had their mailboxes disconnected and a new one created. Now the mailboxes had different GUIDs of course, but they had the same LegacyExchangeDN and the users were now […]

Exchange Copy-MailboxFolderPermission

29th August, 2014

Are you sometimes asked by VIPs to get Folder Permissions sorted out in Outlook when they get a replacement PA? Of course this can be done by the VIP themselves, but what if they have > 100 folders?  Outlook permissions don’t inherit down, so it isn’t enough to just set the permission at the top […]

Exchange Replication over a Split Network

22nd August, 2014

Let’s start off by explaining what I mean by Exchange replication over a split network.  I am talking about a DAG split over two Data Centres (and AD Sites) with separate links for replication and for user/MAPI traffic.  Although let’s also quickly add that Microsoft now recommends that you only do this when you have […]

Active Directory Authentication – Part 2

15th August, 2014

In part 1, we talked about authentication via NTLM and how the domain controllers that are used to authenticate you are the ones near the service that is being consumed. Now let us move onto Kerberos. Just like last time I need to point at a TechNet Article, How DNS Support for Active Directory Works. […]

Active Directory Authentication – Part 1

8th August, 2014

Today we are deviating away from the more Messaging related threads and we will be looking at authentication. The reason for writing this article is that I am often asked to troubleshoot authentication issues and to my surprise there are not many simple explanations about how authentication works.  Also I find time and again that […]

Optimizing Autodiscover

18th July, 2014

The Outlook/Exchange autodiscover process has been well documented by Microsoft (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj900169(v=exchg.150).aspx)  The basic steps are Find Service Connection Points (SCP) in AD check those records where keywords attribute contains site= matching the user’s AD Site check those records where keywords attribute contains no site= at all check those records where keywords attribute contains site= but none match […]

TEN good reasons to keep a Hybrid Exchange Server

4th July, 2014

Numerous companies are now looking at the cloud for their mail system.  Office 365 migrations are happening everywhere, but there are good reasons why you should consider keeping at least one Exchange Server on premise, i.e. Hybrid mode. The first three reasons come into play when migrating either cross forest (e.g. from a Resource forest) or when […]

Global Address List Not Showing in Outlook

6th June, 2014

We’ve had reports from users who are using Outlook QuickSteps and find that when they look for a contact within the QuickStep they are not shown the Global Address Book. Instead what they see is the Personal Address Book. The reason for this is the registry key HKLM\Software\Clients\Mail\(Default) not being set to Microsoft Outlook.  In […]

Summarizing Message Tracking Logs

30th May, 2014

Exchange does a great job at logging all kinds of information, some by default and some can be switched on or extended. One example of this is the Exchange Message Tracking Logs. These logs can get large and analysing the data can be a bit of a chore. Some of the questions we are often […]