News, Blog & Resources

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 […]

Factors affecting Migration velocity

26th September, 2014

After a lot of experience in the field I’ve tried to bring together a bunch of items to consider when embarking on a Microsoft transformation. This blog is really directed at the Migration side of such a project, however many items are shared with coexistence.   The list may seem quite large, but in actual […]

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 […]

Migrate from Lotus Notes

1st August, 2014

It’s a stampede… In my humble opinion I believe that IBM could have saved themselves from the juggernaut of Notes to Exchange Migrations. More accurately stated, it is in fact “Domino to Exchange” and “Notes to Outlook” migrations. Why is that relevant? The fact of the matter is that user’s actually don’t care about mail […]

Permissons and Delegations – Lotus Notes vs Outlook

25th July, 2014

Lotus Notes ACL & Delegation versus Outlook Permissions & Delegation – Part 1   By Conrad Murray Introduction Delegate Access is most commonly used between a manager and assistant, where the assistant (delegate) is responsible for processing the manager’s incoming meeting requests or email messages and coordinating the manager’s schedule. Delegate Access can be used […]

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 […]

Domino Directory Cataloger (dircat) does not replicate updates

11th July, 2014

In a large organisation I found that a domino directory catalog consolidating about 5 large domino directories did not have all documents replicating and was completely out of sync….   There are a variety of reason why directory catalogues are used. For most organisations it is simply to have a consolidated directory from multiple domino directories to […]