Exchange 2013 CU1

It seems that we will have to wait an extra week for the Exchange 2013 CU1 update, see link below

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2013/03/25/exchange-2013-rtm-cu1-status.aspx

Exchange 70-341 Exam

I have been taking the opportunity to upgrade my Microsoft certification after letting them elapse. So starting in January I did my 70-410, 411, and 412 exams giving me my MCSA status in late February. Now comes the elective’s, I have chosen to go down the messaging route since this is the avenue that interest me the most. I have done a couple of installs of Exchange 2013 and run it in my lab for training purposes so after 3 months of exposure to the product, felt it was time to take the exam so after 3 weeks of TechNet articles and trawling the web for articles and blogs (there’s not much out there at the moment) I finally felt confident enough to take the exam.

So off I went to the test centre and signed my life away like you do, and within 15 minutes I was sitting in front of the test centre PC waiting for my exam to load.

Although I cannot tell you any specific details of the exam due to the Microsoft NDA you agree to when the exam begins, what I can say is the exam was easier than the Exchange 2010 exams I had sat late last year. Now this could be because of the simplified roles within Exchange 2013 or because the exam is in the early stages of production. Whatever the reason a good working knowledge of the product and decent knowledge of previous versions of Exchange is necessary to allow you to pass the exam.

Even though the exam is slightly easier, it is by no means a walk in the park. I struggled on at least 30% of the questions mainly with the order that PowerShell commands are written. (my biggest weakness) if you thought that Exchange 2013 would use less PowerShell commands, you will be greatly disappointed, if anything there are more to learn, PowerShell is here to stay. 

By the time I got to the final question, I really wasn't confident if I had passed or not. Thankfully I passed which now leave me only 1 exam away from my MSCE status. So now to prepare for my 70-342 exam! If you’re thinking of going for the exam, I actively encourage you to go for it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the result. Other than the usual TechNet resource, I can highly recommend the following sites.

www.exchangeserverpro.com

PAUL CUNNINGHAM is an Exchange God, recently appointed as a MVP by Microsoft as a result of his contribution to the Exchange community. There isn't much that Paul doesn't know much about Exchange, and his site has a wealth of information about all things Exchange server.

www.sembee.co.uk

SIMON BUTLER is another great Exchange God who has helped me out in the past with his excellent forum post and knowledge of Exchange, Simon has been specialising in Exchange for the past 10 years. His blogs are legendary, and he is also an MVP so check him out on the site above

Other than the folks above, build yourself an Exchange 2013 server and practice, practice, practice.

Offline address book error 0X8004010F

I had a helpdesk call sent to me from a frustrated helpdesk analyst as the users on the site kept on getting the following error in outlook. 

After examining the Exchange server for any errors in the event viewer, the error was found and could be replicated by rebuilding the offline address book

To fix the issue do the following. First lets recreate the issue by going to offline address book in the exchange 2010 MMC, right clicking on Default offline address book and clicking on update as highlighted in yellow

Go to event viewer and you will see two event s generated 9360 and 9340. Now for the fix.

Open up regedit  and navigate down to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Services\MSExchangeSA\Parameters.

Now add a DWORD with the following value name “OAL Post Full If Diff fails” and the value data of 1.

Go back and rebuild the OAB and go back to event viewer and look for event id 9107, in my case I got 9411 which is also ok.

Now go back to regedit, and remove the key you created. That should resolve the issue, again test this by rebuilding the OAB and checking the event viewer, but if it doesn't work, you should restart your Exchange server which normally resolves the issue.

Moving Public folders from Exchange 2003 to 2010 SP3

I was on a job today and run into a familiar problem of trying to move public folders from an old Exchange 2003 server to the 2010 box I just built. Let me first establish my love hate relationship with Public folders, I hate them, with a passion as they cause me nothing but problems whenever I do a migration. The love side comes into effect when a customer says "we don't have or use Public folders"!!

On this particular occasion the customer was running Exchange 2003 which was proving to be a bit of a pain to migrate. The person who previously installed it  had added some strange permissions which were stopping me cold when trying to move mailboxes or get access to certain permissions. Anyway I managed to resolve most of those issues, and I’d got to the point where I needed to move the Public Folders. (PF)

The night before I set the replicas going and the next day arrived on site after moving half the mailboxes, only to be told that the users couldn't see any shared calendars, Great. If you ever run into this problem, here's a handy guide on how to fix it.

The first thing to do is to see if the replicas are working. The new 2010 server (pictured below)  has been added into the replica group but none of the users on the 2010 box can see any group calendars, so clearly something is wrong, let’s move over to the 2003 box to investigate.

First we need to check if the replicas are working on the 2003 box. Right click on the folder and then click on properties, on this occasion I get the old token invalid error which is to do with the virtual directory Exadmin being set to require SSL authentication. This would normally be needed for HTTPS external access but on this occasion the 2003 box is no longer being used for external web access so we can disable this feature. So how do we switch it off? Follow these simple steps.

Open up IIS on the 2003 box and right click on Exadmin and click on properties. Click on the directory security tab, next in secure communications.

Click on the edit button then un-tick the required secure channel button. If the option "requires 128-bit encryption" is ticked you must un-tick it BEFORE you click apply, if you don’t, it will still be in operation and you will get the same token invalid error.

Now when you try and open the folder you will have access, but notice that my new server is not in the list so let’s add it.

When you add the exchange 2010 database, it will appear as the database name.

On the Exchange 2010 server, the PF description should be the same as the 2003 version.

Open up the PF MMC using the toolbox in Exchange 2010, and right click on PF and click on the update Hierarchy option.

Right click on PF again and this time click on refresh.

If you want the replication to occur right away, right click on each of the folders and click on the update content option

Replication should begin straight away but may take some time depending on the size of the PF content.

And that’s it, your folders should now be on your Exchange 2010 server.

Exchange 2010 Sent management feature

For the past 14 years, I have been playing with Exchange server in one shape or another and after relying on other Bloggers for my Exchange issues, I've decided to give back to the community and post some of my findings in the field. With the arrival of Exchange 2013, I feel its now my time to add some knowledge to the masses.

I hope this will provide you all with some useful knowledge so lets start with today's blog

New features for Exchange 2010 SP3

OK so as you all know SP3 for Exchange 2010 has now been released, and while there are some neat new features to keep the 2010 brigade happy for a while, the one that we are really interested in is the one that finally allow us to use Exchange 2013 in a 2010 organisation (co-existence), we'll deal with that in a future article. For now one feature that caught my eye was the Sent Management feature, this allow a end user to store sent items sent in behalf of someone else in their own mailbox or the senders and vice versa  this is a great one for the PA's and secretaries who constantly have to send emails in behalf of their boss.

To configure the option, you have to log into OWA, below is a guide on how to activate the option

1. Log into OWA and click on the options button at the right hand of your screen

2. Click on the see all options button which will take you to the screen below

3. Click on the settings and then click on the sent button highlighted below in yellow

4. You can now select the option you want for your sent mail, simple

That's it, end of blog one for the day