In Active Directory (AD) there is the concept of objects, attributes and links between objects. AD Objects AD objects (or more correctly Object Classes) include users, groups, computers, service connection points, OUs, etc. They are the type of things about which we want to store information. An instance of an AD object class is an […]
Convert Mailbox to Linked Mailbox
When performing an AD migration it is sometimes necessary to make the mailbox a linked mailbox so that the migrated user can continue to use their email. When searching online I found the official answer from Microsoft which is to disable-mailbox and then connect-mailbox, however this loses all of the Exchange related attributes. Of course you […]
SMART AD Migrator Architecture
This week we will look more deeply into the Binary Tree SMART AD Migrator software’s architecture, and how to scale up or out. We introduced AD Migrator in an earlier blog called “Introducing SMART AD Migrator from Binary Tree”. If you’ve not heard of the product before it is worth reading the overview first. Right, […]
Merge a MailContact with a User
Often when doing migrations some form of GalSync has taken place or where admins have manually created mailcontacts in the opposite Exchange Org to assist with coexistence. However when it comes time to do the migration the Prepare-MoveRequest.ps1 it will convert the MailContact into a MailUser and ensure it has the mailboxGUID and other attributes […]
Convert Mailbox to Mailuser
I was asked to convert a mailbox to a mailuser, and funny enough although the reverse is true, you can’t just call enable-mailuser on a mailbox… Of course you can disable-mailbox and then enable-mailuser but that removes all Exchange related attributes, which isn’t really that desirable. To overcome this I wrote a small script that […]
Introducing SMART AD Migrator from Binary Tree
We’ve just had two days of training using the revamped SMART AD Migrator software from Binary Tree. They’ve had an AD migration tool for some time, but it used to have various issues. These resulted in a total overhaul of the product, and this current release looks to be in a good stable state. The […]
Bandwidth Latency’s Relationship to Throughput
This post aims to explain bandwidth and latency individually and then look at how they relate to throughput. It came about when discussing how some transfers like mailbox moves got nowhere near to using the overall capacity on a network link, and also why SMTP transfers for large emails were taking much longer than expected. […]
Deleting Folders
from an Exchange Mailbox with PowerShell I was given an escalation at a client where somehow a user managed to create thousands of folders all nested one inside the other. So the task was how to delete these folders. User and 1/2/3rd line support had already tried using Outlook, OWA and MFCMapi but none of […]
Sending TLS mail to Exchange from the command line
Before we look at sending TLS mail to Exchange, let’s talk about using a command line to send mail without TLS. The command you use to send plain email to Exchange is the telnet client. It is no longer installed by default but you can install it by adding the Windows Feature for telnet client. Once […]
Demystifying AD Schema Extensions for Exchange
Now most people who have been around Active Directory (AD) will understand about the AD schema and that some applications like Exchange, Lync, etc make updates to this schema. However not everyone is intimately familiar with AD, so let’s start at the beginning… Active Directory 101 Microsoft introduced Active Directory back in the Windows 2000 […]
Microsoft Ignite 2015
Back from Microsoft Ignite, great conference but to be honest it was a bit too big really. 25,000 attendees and the venue was enormous! The food was pretty dire, there were long queues for transportation and the hotels were a long way from the venue. All in all it was a very tiring week and […]
Setting up a new Office 365 Tenant
Setting up a new Office 365 tenant may seem daunting, but actually it is a pretty simple process. In this blog we will take you through step-by-step from going to http://www.office365.com through to having a tenant fully functional. Step 1: Go to http://www.office365.com Step 2: Click Home or Business In our case we’re chosing Business […]