5 More Tips for Exchange Server 2013 Administrators

Are you thinking about deploying Exchange Server 2103 or have you already done it? Microsoft released the Exchange Server 2103 Preview  in July 2012 and the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build for Exchange Server 2013 in October 2012. Exchange Server 2013 is now up to cumulative Update (CU) 13 released in June 2016 at the time of this blog post.  In this blog series, we share some helpful tips that will help you as an Exchange Server 2013 Administrator. Here is a link to the first post titled 5 Tips for Exchange 2013 Administrators. Now on to the next post in the series:"5 More Tips for Exchange Server 2013 Administrators"

 

 

5 More Tips for Exchange Server 2013 Administrators

 

1. Learn how to search in the Exchange Admin Center
   Searching in the Exchange Admin Center is different than the Exchange Management Console in Exchange 2007. In older versions of Exchange using the Exchange Management Console (EMC) or the Exchange Control Panel (ECP), you were able to find mailboxes when searching by just entering the name or part of the name and you would get results. We published a post on how to search using the Exchange Admin Center so please check that out.
   
   
2. Triple verify that your third party applications work with Exchange 2013.
   This includes Anti-virus exclusions, monitoring and auditing software. This is very important to know as you deploy Exchange 2013. If the vendor does not have a version that supports Exchange 2013 you run the risk of having the product impact your Exchange deployment and cause issues or if you opt not to use it until they do, then you lose the benefits that you purchased the product for in the first place. Either outcome is not what you want. We dealt with McAfee Anti-virus exclusion paths for Exchange directories impacting our Exchange 2013 deployment and until it was addressed we actually suspended migrations while we worked with McAfee, Microsoft and our security team. For more information on Anti-Virus Software in the Operating System on Exchange Servers
   
   
3. Learn how the Exchange Administration Center works in Exchange Server 2103
   
   In an environment like ours which is a large enterprise, there are thousands of admins that manage user issues like creating mailboxes, distribution groups, Public Folders and adding user photos to name a few. We have created documentation to assist them using the Exchange Administration Center since the new interface is different to how users were managed in Exchange 2007 which is what we migrated from to Exchange 2013.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Learn how Database Availability Groups(DAGs)work
   
   Database Availability Groups (DAGs) were first introduced in Exchange 2010 and are here to stay. DAGs are a base component of the high availability and site resilience framework built into Exchange 2013. A DAG is a group of up to 16 Mailbox servers that host a set of databases and provides automatic, database-level recovery from failures that affect individual databases, networks, or servers. Any server in a DAG can host a copy of a mailbox database from any other server in the DAG. When a server is added to a DAG, it works with the other servers in the DAG to provide automatic recovery from failures that affect mailbox databases, such as a disk failure or server failure. for more information, reference Database availability groups (DAGs)
   
   
5. Use the tools provided by Microsoft: Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer and the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant
When you are preparing to deploy Exchange, Microsoft has provided resources to help you. The Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer validates External connectivity to your servers and lets Exchange Admins run connectivity diagnostics to test issues with Exchange, Skype for Business/Lync and Office 365. There is also now a Client Testing option and Message Analyzer in the latest version of the tool. Here is a screenshot from https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/



 
The Exchange Server Deployment Assistant is a web-based tool that asks you a few questions about your current environment and then generates a custom step-by-step checklist that will help you deploy different versions of Exchange Server for different types of scenarios. Learn more at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj218681(v=exchg.150).aspx

BONUS TIP : Do not ignore the cloud.

The cloud has come a long way and should not be ignored in your Exchange 2013 deployment. A hybrid configuration where some user mailboxes are hosted in the cloud and are connected to the others deployed in your data centers is becoming a common scenario. A hybrid configuration provides a seamless look and feel for Exchange in your organization and Exchange Online in Microsoft Office 365. In addition, a hybrid deployment can serve as an intermediate step to moving completely to an Exchange Online organization. Reduced costs, benefits of not maintaining hardware and accessibility from anywhere are some of the factors that make Office 365 appealing to some companies and you may want to take a look at that.

 

We hope these tips have been helpful in your Exchange 2013 deployments. If you have any thoughts, opinions or comments feel free to share them below.

Why are some attachments different places in Outlook messages?

Have you ever wondered why some messages with attachments in Outlook have the attachment in the body of the message and why some messages have the attachment at the top of the message below the Subject? This post will tell  you why that happens and how to fix it. I had a user ask me today why this was like this. He wanted the attachment at the top only not in the body of the message.

The reason this happens is due to the format of the message. In Rich Text format,(Supported since Outlook 97) it does in-line attachments in the body of the e-mail message as shown below.

 

In HTML Format and Plain Text Format the attachment is at the top of the message. HTML Format is shown below (from Office 2013)

Did you notice the attachment to the message sent in HTML format also has the size of the file (26 KB) while the message in Rich Text Format has the same attachment but no indication of file size?

So how do you change the format of the message from Rich Text to HTML? You can do it two ways. You can change it per message by opening a new message then going to FORMAT TEXT in Outlook and choosing HTML as shown below (applies to Office 2010 and Office 2013)

If you want to only send HTML Messages and have attachments be at the top of the message and not embedded in the body you can change it in the Outlook Client settings By going to FILE then OPTIONS then Mail and select HTML as shown below from Office 2103.

 

This will cause all messages from that point on to be sent in HTML Format. Please note that replies to messages will be sent in the original format of the message because Outlook preserves the format. Also in my testing the Rich Text Formatted message with the attachment in the body was slightly larger than the HTML Formatted and Plain Text messages. I am sure that will make your Exchange Administrators happy when you can send smaller messages with the same content. Microsoft recommends sending messages in HTML Format.  Rich Text format supports in-line attachments and the attachments are in the body of the message. HTML and Plain Text formats do not support in-line attachments.

 

BONUS TIP:You can also change the message format for all messages sent to an Outlook Contact

1. Open the contact card for the recipient.
2. In the E-mail box, double-click the recipient's e-mail address.
3. In the Internet Format list, select the format that you want to use for messages to this recipient.

I hope this post has helped with understanding why attachments are different in your Outlook client. Feel free to leave comments.

Why Can't I find a mailbox using Exchange Admin Center (EAC) in Exchange 2013?

Why Can't I find a mailbox using Exchange Admin Center (EAC) in Exchange 2013?

The answer: You may be looking in the wrong place in the Exchange Admin Center(EAC). In older versions of Exchange using the Exchange Management Console (EMC) or the Exchange Control Panel (ECP), you were able to find mailboxes when searching by just entering the name or part of the name and you would get results. Using the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) which is the new web based management console in Exchange 2013, is bit different and I will go through the options to help you get what you want when searching for a mailbox. Please note that with each of the options outlined in this post you need to wait for the data to finish loading before you start searching using the search box.

If you are searching for a User Mailbox be sure you have the mailboxes option selected.

 

 

If you are searching for a distribution group you have to have the groups option selected.

 

 

If you are searching for a resource mailbox you need to have the resources option selected

 

 

If you are searching for a shared mailbox you need to have Shared option selected

 

 

 

I hope this post has helped and made it easier for you when searching for a mailbox using the Exchange Admin Center in Exchange 2013. Please share your comments and feedback on this post.

A possible fix for Calendar Meeting Requests showing up as email messages on a BlackBerry Device

A few weeks ago we started getting reports of users on Exchange Server 2007 with BlackBerry devices getting calendar meeting requests on their BlackBerry device as an email with no option to accept or decline the meeting. We discovered that the problem was due to the

-AutomateProcessing attribute of the impacted mailbox being set to None. The default should be AutoUpdate.

 

 To see the setting for a single user open the Exchange Management Shell on Exchange 2007and type Get-MailboxCalendarSettings user alias | FL

press enter and look at what the attribute -AutomateProcessing is set to:

 

 replace user alias with the appropriate alias for the mailbox you are checking.

 

 

To fix the issue, type Set-MailboxCalendarSettings user alias -AutomateProcessing AutoUpdate and press Enter. After it is complete you can check again using Get-MailboxCalendarSettings user alias | FL 

and you should see the following: 

 

replace user alias with the appropriate alias for the mailbox you are checking.

The users were then able to see Calendar Meeting Requests correctly on the BlackBerry device.


If you want to see of all the user Mailboxes that are set to None, you can type the following in the Exchange Management Shell:

Get-Mailbox -Resultsize Unlimited -RecipientTypeDetails UserMailbox | Get-mailboxCalendarSettings | Where {$_.automateprocessing -eq "None"} | FL Identity, automateprocessing > c:\usermbcalsettings.txt

If you want to change the ones that are found you can type the following in the Exchange Management Shell: Get-Mailbox -Resultsize Unlimited -RecipientTypeDetails UserMailbox | Get-mailboxCalendarSettings | Where {$_.automateprocessing -eq "None"} | Get-MailboxCalendarSettings -AutomateProcessing AutoUpdate


Notes:

1. For Exchange Server 2010/2013 you will use Get-CalendarProcessing instead of Get-MailboxCalendarSettings and Set-CalendarProcessing instead of Set-MailboxCalendarSettings.


2. You can only apply Set-CalendarProcessing to Resource Mailboxes. It cannot be used on User Mailboxes like was done for Exchange 2007 users as mentioned in this post. Additionally in Exchange 2103, Exchange ignores the -AutomateProcessing attribute on the user mailbox. So if it is set to None or AutoUpdate, Exchange treats the message the same way, which is to auto update the meeting.

Refer to RIM KB31558 for more information from RIM about this issue.


If this has helped you fix Calendar Meeting requests showing up as email messages on BlackBerry devices please share in the comments or if you have any additional insights in to this issue, it would be appreciated.

So you're getting Event Manager / Application Log code 9669

This event manager code is generated when your Exchange Server 2007 environment has run out of rows to write to in a database column, that hold unique mail header information, per each mail server. There are many posts on the internet as to how to raise the threshold for this table up to the max (database crashing) limit of 32768.

If you've temporarily raised the ceiling, just as congress keeps raising the debt ceiling, you probably realize just as congress does that eventually a limit is going to be reached and everything is going to then crash and burn.

Fortunately for you, Microsoft decided to build a way to monitor this ceiling/threshold.

Open up regedit and navigate to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSEXchangeIS\Performance

• Modify the string value "Library" from (notice the dll name) [drive you have exchange program files on]\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin\Perf\%Processor_Architecture%\mdbperf.dll

to

[drive you have exchange program files on]\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin\Perf\%Processor_Architecture%\mdbperfx.dll

• Go to each server and apply the attached registry file change (rename the file extension appropriately)

• Open perfmon after registry change

• Right click and add counters and then select “MsExchangeIS Mailbox” under the counters and expand it

• Scroll down to “Rows in ReplidMap Table” and click once on it

• In the “Instances of selected object” window below, highlight each database individually and click add and then ok

• Next scale your counters and determine if any of them are approaching the 16383 out of the box limit

• Save the counter report as an html file so you can go back later, run the report again and calculate the rate of change each day, you can also export them as a .tsv (Tab Separated Value) file for sharing.

At this point you can spot check all other databases to see which are also approaching the replica id limit you've coded into the registry. You can also check these values with a powershell command after you've altered the registry key mentioned above.

The code for that is:

Get-mailboxserver | foreach {get-counter –counter “\MSExchangeIS Mailbox(*)\Rows in ReplidMap Table” –sampleinterval 2 –maxsamples 1}

Microsoft, What did you do to Forefront?

I am shocked but not surprised by Microsoft's decisions about Forefront as recently announced on September 12th, 2012 (the same same day as Apple's iPhone 5 launch) on their Server and Cloud Blog titled "Important Changes to Forefront Product Map". The following products from the Forefront Product Set will no longer be sold as December 1st, 2012:

• Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE)
• Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint (FPSP)
• Forefront Security for Office Communications Server (FSOCS)
• Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (TMG)
• Forefront Threat Management Gateway Web Protection Services (TMG WPS)

Also mentioned in Microsoft's blog post is that Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) will be called Exchange Online Protection (EOP) for the next release. EOP can be combined with the new Anti-malware protection built-in to Exchange Server 2013. SharePoint and Lync Servers will continue to offer the built-in security capabilities also Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) and Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) will still be be available.

Mary Jo Foley, from ZDNET, wrote a post called "Microsoft axes many of its Forefront enterprise security products" shortly after the announcement. She also mentioned that Forefront Endpoint Security will be rolled into the new System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection. The comments on her blog post, on Twitter as well as Microsoft's post show the confusion among users about the Forefront changes. People are wondering what will happen to their TMG deployments, will signatures be updated, Windows Server 2012 support, what exactly is the new Anti-malware protection built-in to Exchange Server 2013 and how is Exchange Online Protection different from that offering? Do you have any questions or comments about what your options will be once these changes take effect?

For us, we were considering replacing Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) servers with Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 servers but now we are exploring other solutions I think partly based on this recent news. I will be watching closely to see what Microsoft does with new Forefront offerings. Comments, thoughts and opinions welcomed.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Released!

Microsoft has recently released Exchange Server 2013 Preview as well as an Outlook 2013 preview. I cannot go into all the changes in the Exchange Server 2013 Preview release but some of the things you can expect are:

• Smart Search that learns from your communication and collaboration interactions.
• Social integration of contact data from multiple sources to provide a single contact view.
• A new look for Outlook and OWA with A touch aware streamlined UI for OWA and Offline Access in OWA 
• Improved integration with SharePoint 2013 and Lync 2013
• Improved E-Discovery searching across Exchange Server 2013, SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013 and Windows File Share
• A redesigned resilient deployment.

Prerequisites for deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 include:

1. First join the computer to the appropriate internal Active Directory forest and domain.
2. Make sure that the functional level of your forest is at least Windows Server 2003, and that the schema master is running Windows Server 2003 with SP1 or later
3. The full installation option of Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 must be used for all servers running Exchange 2013 Preview server roles or management tools.
4. You should also uninstall 64-bit version of Microsoft Visual C++ 11 Beta Redistributable.

Please note that Mailbox and Client Access Server (CAS) Roles are the only choices. The transport pipeline in Exchange 2013 Preview is now made up of several different services: the Front End Transport service on Client Access servers, the Hub Transport service on the Mailbox servers, and the Mailbox Transport service on the Mailbox servers.

RPC is no longer a supported direct access protocol. Outlook connectivity uses RPC over HTTPS.

There are also standalone Help Files for Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Preview, Microsoft Exchange Online Preview, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Preview Hybrid Deployments release as well as a Resource Page that has more information.

You are encouraged to send feedback to Microsoft using the Exchange Server 2013 Feedback option.

More information will be revealed at the upcoming Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) in Florida from September 23rd to 26th 2012. I hope to be in attendance at my first MEC.

You can engage in the discussions at the forums. I will be reading and maybe posting there also.

Please note due to the nature of this product information and links can be changed without warning.

How to Have a Daily PowerShell Report of your Exchange 2007 backups sent to you everyday.

Have you ever needed a way to quickly tell what was going on with your Exchange 2007 backups at night when you are not in the office? I came up with this script back in 2010 that helps you do that using PowerShell combined with Scheduled tasks on a Windows Server. Tested on Exchange 2007 and PowerShell v1 and v2.

We do Full Backups daily but if you want to, you can add “LastIncrementalBackup”or “LastDifferentialBackup” to suit your needs.

Here is the script:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#######################################
#Backup_report_vs1.ps1                #
#http://imjustanengineer.blogspot.com #
#Created by DJ 6/2/2010               #
#######################################

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.powershell.admin;

Get-Mailboxserver | Get-MailboxDatabase -Status |FL Name,Server,lastfullbackup,backupinprogress,Mounted > c:\exch2007_backups.txt

start-sleep -s 120

$filename = “c:\exch2007_backups.txt”
$smtpServer = “your.smtpserver.com” #Enter FQDN of your SMTP server

$msg = new-object Net.Mail.MailMessage
$att = new-object Net.Mail.Attachment($filename)
$smtp = new-object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
$msg.From = “BackupReportingScript@yourdomain.com” #Enter senders email address $msg.To.Add(”recipient1@yourdomain.com, recipient2@yourdomain.com,”) #Enter one or more recipient addresses
$msg.Subject = “Exchange 2007 Servers Backup Report" #Enter subject of message $msg.Body = “Attached is the Daily Exchange 2007 Servers Backup Report. Please note any servers that have not been backed up for more than a day.” $msg.Attachments.Add($att)

$smtp.Send($msg)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the created text file on your C: drive you should output that looks like

Name             : EXCH-SERVER01_SG01DB01
Server           : EXCH-SERVER01
LastFullBackup   : 6/7/2010 2:33:10 AM
BackupInProgress : False
Mounted          : True


Please let us know if this is helpful to you.