Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Assistant Expanded

In November, Microsoft launched the Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Assistant. In the initial version of the Deployment Assistant, content was available for customers upgrading from Exchange 2003. Microsoft has now announced that they have  released content for the following scenarios to http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeploy2010:

• Upgrading from Exchange Server 2007
• Upgrading from a mixed Exchange Server 2003/2007
• New Exchange Server 2010 installation

The Deployment Assistant allows you to create Exchange 2010 deployment instructions that are customized to your environment. The Deployment Assistant asks a small set of questions, and based on your answers, it provides a set of instructions that are designed help you install and complete a basic configuration on Exchange 2010. Instead of reading dozens of topics in the Exchange 2010 Technical library, you simply answer a few questions, and the Deployment Assistant gives you customized content to install Exchange 2010. 

I would recommended however that you also read the Technical Library later on as the instructions provided are basic and may not meet all of your needs if you already have an older install of Exchange that isn’t a standard installation or if you have another mail system such as Lotus Domino or GroupWise.

New uses for DiskPart CLI

So, here I am, reading new email (at 10pm I might add) from within the Exchange Master and Architect Community when I came across a thread started by one of the other long time Exchange Masters (thanks Derrick!) around the topic of using DiskPart for automation.  Now, many of us remember using DiskPart or DiskPar in older versions of Exchange when we were running it on Windows 2003 and earlier Operating Systems.  We used to use it to align the disk offset with the recommended settings from the disk subsystem manufacturer, often 64 or 128 instead of the default for Windows back then of 63.  And to be honest, I haven’t really thought much about DiskPart lately since we don’t require it for Windows 2008 (the default now in Windows is 64 – Yeah!).  

As the email pointed out, DiskPart now supports a Command Line Interface (CLI) that can be used for automation of Disk subsystem configuration and management.  Way cool eh!?

Microsoft has posted a TechNet article called “DiskPart Command-Line Options”.

So, what is new in the current release of DiskPart?  Read on:

1. One nice addition to diskpart scripting file is they finally have the NOERR parameter, so when a single typo dumps you out like before causing the user to create a second file with the fixed entries minus everything that worked.  Major Pain.

Ex: assign [{letter=d|mount=path}] [noerr]

2. Format: you can now format from inside Diskpart.  So the need for a second script file to Format all those drives is no longer needed. 

Ex FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="New Volume" QUICK

3. AUTOMOUNT: be careful.  This could really mess up clustering (if not in exchange) if used at the wrong time.

How does this make your life simpler?  If you have lots of drives, having to do each one manually, creating partitions, then assigning mount points through disk manager UI takes forever. Formatting through the UI (selecting each drive and waiting) also takes forever.  Now it all can be done in one place, and you are sure that you are selecting the correct drive for naming since its in the same command set.

To run the answer file with diskpart

C:\DISKPART /s ANSWERFILE.txt

Diskpart answer file example: 

select disk 10

online disk noerr

attributes disk clear readonly noerr

create partition primary noerr

select partition 1

assign mount C:\EXCHANGE_MOUNT_POINTS\MDB1 noerr

FORMAT FS=NTFS unit=65536 LABEL="New Volume" QUICK noerr

Results:

Exchange 2007 SP2 RU1 – Raising diagnostic logging for “Message Access” causing calendar issues for users

Microsoft posted yesterday a new issue that administrators can cause with user calendaring just by increasing the diagnostic logging for “Message Access” to anything other than “Lowest”.  This seems to impact Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 implementations up through Roll Up 1.  A KB article is not available yet, but appears to be in the works.  Based upon this Microsoft EHLO Blog article, the following information has been released on this issue. 

What the users may see

Symptoms before applying the pending update:

• Access to recurring appointments (which have attachments for the instances) is broken - Outlook in online mode receives an "Item cannot be opened" error.
• Sending an embedded message in cached mode results in the attachment being stripped.
• Availability is not shown for some users.

The following symptoms may persist, even after applying the update or manually setting the Message Access diagnostic level back to Lowest:

• Certain users show no availability information from Outlook or OWA scheduling assistant.  Also, event id 4009 for MSExchange Availability is logged on servers with the CAS role

Exception returned:

Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Storage.ObjectNotFoundException: Cannot open embedded message.

• Delegates viewing calendars receive the error:

Cannot read on instance of this recurring appointment. Close any open appointments and try again, or recreate the appointment

• Messages are sent to ActiveSync devices with the following text:

Microsoft Exchange was unable to send the following items to your mobile device. These items have not been deleted. You should be able to access them using either Outlook or Outlook Web Access.

• When accessing Calendar from OWA, the day, week or month viewing will fail with the error:

The item that you attempted to access no longer exists.

We have determined these symptoms are primarily due to calendar items affected between the time logging was increased and when the pending update or workaround is implemented. Recurring calendar items with no end date that have had an occurrence modified seem most susceptible.  A quick method to find these visually is to look for the circling arrows with a line through it.

Does this apply to you?

Before the release of the pending update, if any Exchange Server 2007 SP2 server with the Mailbox role has the following new event log level raised from Lowest, this applies to you.

MSExchangeIS\9000 Private\Message Access

How to check your Organization for the problem

You can determine if your MBX servers are at risk by looking in the following places:

1) The new GUI introduced in SP2 - in the Exchange Management Console under Server Configuration, Mailbox, select the server and choose Manage Diagnostic Logging Properties...

2) In the registry for each MBX server [Lowest = 0]

3) Run the following Exchange CMDlet to find all Exchange 2007 MBX servers and this specific diagnostic logging level for Message Access:

Get-MailboxServer | foreach {Get-EventLogLevel -id ($_.name + "\MSExchangeIS\9000 Private\Message Access")}

How to correct the problem

If any MBX server is found to have logging above the default before the pending update is applied, you should reset it to Lowest manually.  Note which MBX servers are configured with the non-default level and then run this CMDlet to ensure they are all set to "Lowest"

Then either remount the databases or restart the Information Store service.

Get-MailboxServer | foreach {Set-EventLogLevel -id ($_.name + "\MSExchangeIS\9000 Private\Message Access") -Level "Lowest"}

A sample PowerShell script is available here to track down calendar items contributing to the symptoms that persist after applying the workaround detailed above.  This script will identify the day containing problem appointments and can be run against a specific mailbox or all Exchange 2007 mailboxes.  The requirements for running the script are detailed in the script comments. The sample script uses the $true argument to enumerate all Exchange 2007 mailboxes and user42@contoso.com to initialize the Autodiscover portion of the Web Services object:

[PS] C:\Powershell\scripts> .\Find-BadCalendarItems.ps1 user42@contoso.com $true
Checking mailbox: user01@contoso.com
Checking mailbox: user02@contoso.com
...
Checking mailbox: user42@contoso.com
Checking mailbox: repro01@contoso.com
Failed: 11/30/2009 - 12/30/2009
Error: Mailbox logon failed., inner exception: Cannot open embedded message.

Day failed: 12/2/2009
Checking mailbox: repro02@contoso.com
Failed : 11/30/2009 - 12/30/2009
Error: Mailbox logon failed., inner exception: Cannot open embedded message.

Day failed: 12/23/2009
Checking mailbox: user43@contoso.com
Checking mailbox: lastuser@contoso.com
Problems found:
repro01@contoso.com: 12/2/2009
repro02@contoso.com: 12/23/2009
Done!

Now that 12/23/2009 has been identified as the problem date for user repro02@contoso.com, you can use Outlook to find any recurring calendar items with no end date that have had an occurrence modified on that day. Copy that occurrence [either to a temporary Calendar folder or even to a different time that day] then delete just that occurrence. Moving the copy back or manually recreating the instance will resolve the symptom for that user.

Happy whatever…

To All My Liberal Friends and Colleagues:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

To My Conservative Friends and Colleagues:

Happy New Year, in the year of our Lord, 2009/2010!!

Exchange 2010 Transport Architecture Diagrams

The Exchange 2010 transport server role architecture diagrams are now available for download. The Hub Transport Role Architecture diagram can help you understand the different transport components involved in processing and routing messages, the different transport and routing agents that act upon messages and the SMTP events on which they are triggered, and visualize the mail flow.

The Hub Transport Extensibility diagram can help you understand how different transport agents process a message in the Exchange 2010 transport pipeline.

Both diagrams can be downloaded from Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Transport Server Role Architecture Diagrams.

Note that Exchange 2010 includes internal or built-in transport agents which are not visible when you use the Get-TransportAgent or Get-TransportPipeline cmdlets. The list includes transport agents that implement Information Rights Management (IRM) functionality- the RMS Protocol Decryption agent, Journal Report Decryption agent, RMS Encryption agent, and Prelicensing agent, as well as the Journaling agent. To learn more about transport agents, see Understanding Transport Agents in Exchange 2010 documentation.

It’s Official: RIM/BES Supports Exchange 2010!

It has been announced on the EHLO Blog yesterday that RIM now fully supports Exchange Server 2010.

In order to enable full support, three updates are required:

• Roll-Up 1 (RU1) for Exchange Server 2010
  
• MAPI v6.5.8147
  
• BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.1 Maintenance Release 1 (MR1)
  

All three of these updates are available to customers of Exchange Server 2010 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server v.5.0 with Service Pack 1 at no cost. BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0 Service Pack 1 and Maintenance Release 1 can be found here: http://www.blackberry.com/support/downloads

Additional information on the solution requirements, preparing the BlackBerry environment for Microsoft Exchange Server2010, can be found on the BlackBerry site here.

Today's roll up also includes other minor updates to areas including calendaring, OWA, and transport. You can read more about Exchange Server 2010 RU1 here.

Source: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/12/09/453486.aspx

Office 2010 Beta Released to the Public

Office 2010 (or more importantly Outlook 2010) Beta has been released to the public on Technet, MSDN, the Beta Connect site now!

Here are the apps available
Search Server 2010 Express Beta (x64) - (English)
SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)
Office Web Applications Beta (x64) - (English)
Visio Premium 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)
Visio Premium 2010 Beta (x86) - (English)
FAST Search Server 2010 Beta for SharePoint (x64) - (English)
Project Server 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)
Project Professional 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)
Project Professional 2010 Beta (x86) - (English)
Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)
Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta (x86) - (English)
SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta (x86 and x64) - (English)
SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta (x86 and x64) - (English)
SharePoint Server 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)
Business Contact Manager for Microsoft Outlook 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)
Business Contact Manager for Microsoft Outlook 2010 Beta (x86) - (English)


These are the new icons…

One of the many new feature changes from the earlier Office 2010 CTP release is the ability to enable color schemes and specifically black. I do like this feature and this color choice since it allows for more emphasis on the document and less on the menus.
MS Word 2010 in Black color scheme

MS Outlook 2010 in Black color scheme

 Message Reviewer showing social networking features

 This is pretty awesome as it shows you the RSS feeds from this person, the emails received, the attachments they have sent me, the appointments I have with them, and the OCS IM transcripts we have had together. (kinda brings a lot of Xobni into Outlook by default)

I think this download is a great thing for everyone to try out… Come and get it!!!

Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant

Microsoft has released an updated "basic" Deployment Assistant to aid organizations with guiding them through the basic process of implementing Exchange 2010 in an existing Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 organization as well as a newly created organization. It does give good information for those organizations that are smaller or only needing some basic information. I think it is a good start for those organizations that are complex in nature or for those that do not have very experienced on site engineers. Of course, I might be a bit biased ;-) based upon my consulting background.

The Deployment Assistant is available at http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeployment2010

Exchange Server 2010 Reaches Public Beta

I can't believe it is finally time for me to openly (well sort of) announce and discuss the Exchange Server 2010 product which has now gone into its first public Beta as of today (04/14/2009). You can now download the public beta at this site! So, let's get down to a few of the features coming in Exchange 2010 (at least those I can opening discuss so far J ).

• Exchange 2010 should be in full release mode by the end of the year (according to this PCWorld article)
  
• Rumors have also been floating around the Internet recently that the forthcoming Office 14 (most likely will be Office 2010) will not ship until sometime in calendar year 2010.
  
  • Both product names would seem to be accurate since Microsoft typically names its products after the fiscal year in which they ship, not the calendar year. Microsoft begins its fiscal year each July 1^st.
    
• Microsoft's stated direction for new server products is to release both an On-Promise server solution as well as a hosted service based solution (currently known as BPOS).
  
• It appears that for those existing BPOS customers, they will be given the option of upgrading to the new Exchange 2010 capabilities online starting in the first half of 2010.
  
• When Exchange 2010 ships, it is expected that organizations will be able to support both an On-Premise and a Service or hosted solution seamlessly within the same company. This provides many companies I have worked with in the past the ability to support year round employees "On-Premise" and yet offer a Hosted solution for temporary or seasonal workers. This could very well benefit organizations that have large seasonal work forces that didn't or couldn't move to Exchange because of the cost involved in ramping up servers for the seasonal workers. It will be interesting to see the eventual licensing model that Microsoft chooses to use for this…
  

With this new version of Exchange, there are a large number of significant changes to the product that I will be discussing in some detail over the next few weeks/months. For now, I will focus on one new feature that enables organizations to create and easily support a more granular administration model. With Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft published White Papers such as Configuring Permissions in Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange 2007 Permissions: Frequently Asked Questions. With Exchange 2010, although no White Papers are yet available, the permission model is much simpler and is based upon the Roles (not the Exchange permission set as it has been in all previous versions of Exchange). For example, an organization might need to grant specific permissions to search and access specific mailboxes if they are a Compliance Officer or Human Resources Manager in the company (according to Julia White, director of the Exchange product management team). What took a great deal of effort in Exchange 2007 and often with only limited success will be done in Exchange 2010 with relative ease.

I am very excited about this Exchange version, more so than I remember being about any other version in the history of Exchange. And yes, for those of you who don't know me, I have been working with and implementing Exchange since the Early Adopter program for Exchange 4.0 (the very first version) and also worked with MS Mail, CC:Mail, and others before that. The Exchange Product Group has come a long way with this product and has really listened to customers with regard to some of the key pain points they experienced in earlier versions of Exchange. The Product Group, in my opinion, has worked hard to resolve these pain points in Exchange 2010, often in very creative ways that I think will "Just work".

In future posts, I will be covering these topics related to Exchange 2010:

• Storage goals and design changes
  
• OWA Feature Updates
  
• Management and Permission Changes for users and administrators
  
• Compliance with Exchange 2010
  
• High Availability and Disaster Recovery
  
• Unified Messaging Improvements
  
• Migration to Exchange 2010
  
• Developer API Changes
  

Stay tuned…

Exchange 14 Web Services Preview

Ok, so Microsoft finally has release some information I have been dying to talk about with respect to Exchange 14. Microsoft is preparing to release with Exchange 14 a managed API for Exchange Web Services that can be utilized by developers to access Exchange data within mailboxes such as folders, email, calendar, contacts, etc… The Web Services approach is nothing new as it existed in Exchange Server 2007, but most applications written for Exchange Server 2003 or 2007 still used WebDav. Exchange Web Services is the new WebDav. There is already a sample Vista Gadget available today to demonstrate this functionality.

Go here to get more information on Exchange 14 Web Services and the announcement

Here is the PDC2008 presentation on Exchange Web Services Managed API

Go here to read more about the Managed Web Services API from MSDN.

Microsoft makes available Outlook 2007 Pre-SP2 Performance update

Microsoft has released (in February of this year) a cumulative update for Office that is a pre-release of fixes due in Service Pack 2. I have been running this for a few weeks now and the biggest changes in this update are these:

Outlook Improvements

• Improved responsiveness (reduced I/O disk usage and improved UI response time)
  
• Decreased Outlook startup time
  
• GREATLY improved exit/shutdown time (this one is HUGE since it resolves the issue with Outlook not really shutting down when you ask it to).
  
• Improved performance for folder and view changes
  
• General reliability of calendar updates especially in delegate manager scenarios
  

General Improvements

• Reduced Data File Checks (this is noticed when you see the message "The data file <file name> was not closed properly…")
  
• Improved search reliability
  
• Fewer duplicate RSS items
  
• General security improvements
  

A full list of improvements and fixes included in this update are available at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968009/

The update is available on request from this site: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=961752

Using PowerShell to Provision Active Directory Users

In the last two issues of TechNet Magazine, Don Jones of Concentrated Technology, has written about scripting (and therefore automating) the creating of users accounts within Active Directory. He does use the Quest Active Roles PowerShell cmdlets to accomplish his goal, so if you don't have that, some of the details might not work for you as described. However, he does go into good detail on some basics of PowerShell scripting such as using Process blocks, and imputing data into the pipe by way of a csv file. He also includes video demonstrating the techniques. So far, 2 of the 4 parts to this story have been published, so keep watching here or on the TechNet Magazine site for the last 2 parts. All in all, it is worth the read.

Source: Automating User Provisioning, Part 1 and Automating User Provisioning, Part 2

UM and Directory Access

I ran into an interesting and bizarre issue today when working to set up a new UM server for the Exchange User Group presentation next week. Everything was working well, on an old IBM Thinkpad A30p, except when I tried accessing the Directory using OVA. UM would respond with a short (1 second or less) delay and then say "Sorry I can't help with that" and then hang up. OUCH! Nothing was originally in the event logs that defined the issue. No TAP info or Google query found anything like this. After reading the logs and CHM file again, I still found nothing. I played with changes to the UM settings, OAB settings, added a PF for OAB to rest in (just in case), nothing helped. I turned up event logging levels to medium, then maximum, still nothing.

 

Finally I turned up logging to level 7 on the different UM aspects and got two event log warnings stating that GAL.CFG and DistributionList.CFG couldn't be found in the path C:\Program files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\UnifiedMessaging\grammar\en. I looked on the install CD and there the files were. I copied the files into the directory from the CD image and the Directory access worked immediately. This was a 32 bit RTM build, so maybe this only happens in 32 bit and not 64 bit.

 

I will have to try a clean install with SP1 and see if this happens again.

Filling the "Direct Push" Gap for Windows Mobile 2003 Devices

Similar to the Messaging Security & Feature Pack (MSFP) for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, RoadSync is now available for Windows Mobile 2003 SE handsets.
• Secure, wireless and "Direct Push" synchronization of corporate e-mail, attachments, calendar and contacts with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP2
• Global Address List (GAL) Look-up
• IT Policies including Remote Wipe & Device Passwords
• Mass Configuration Tool available for faster and more managed deployments
Looks like I may have to dig out one of my old 5600's to give this a test. If someone out there using a 2003se device and exchange, has the chance, give this a shot and let us know what you think. I will try it myself, schedule permitting once I can find a phone to get charged up.

Get the Full Detail from Dataviz

Source: MoDaCo

Updated (ver 8.0) of the MS IT Message Hygiene

An updated detailed discussion on how Microsoft IT manages the large quantities of unwanted e-mail (a.k.a. spam) and malware-infected messages in its inbound Internet e-mail traffic. The paper documents how Microsoft IT uses Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 technologies, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, and third-party solutions to both reduce the quantity of spam routed through the corporate messaging infrastructure by filtering at the gateway layer and then remove the threats in remaining messages posed by viruses, worms, and their common distribution vectors, such as file attachments.

 

Get the updated Version 8.0 here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=17dc35ad-8ba1-48b1-91f3-563313ee878a&displaylang=en

The Size of UM Messages in Exchange Server 2007

Recently, Michael Wilson posted this blog entry on the size of UM messages….

When talking about Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging (UM), we often get a question: "Just how big will those messages be?"

 The size of UM voice messages depends on the size of the attachment that holds the voice data. In turn, the size of the attachment depends on three factors:

           (1) the duration of the recording

          (2) the audio codec used

          (3) the audio storage format

 UM uses one of three codecs for creating voice messages: WMA (Windows Media Audio), GSM 06.10 and G.711 PCM Linear. The WMA codec is always stored in Windows Media format (the attachment is a file with a .wma extension). Audio encoded as GSM or PCM is always stored in RIFF/WAVE format (the attachment is a file with a .wav extension).

 The graph below shows how the size of the audio depends on the duration, for the three codecs used:

 

PCM is uncompressed, and therefore occupies the most space at a given duration (just over 160,000 bytes for each 10 seconds of audio). It has the highest audio quality of the three. However, WMA and GSM are both acceptable to the vast majority of listeners.

 

GSM is compressed (just over 16,000 bytes for each 10 seconds).

WMA is the most highly compressed codec (about 11,000 bytes for each 10 seconds). However, the WMA format has a much larger header section than the WAV format (about 7K, compared to less than 100 bytes). WMA recordings become smaller than GSM recordings for durations of about 15 seconds and above. The average call-answered voice message is about 30 seconds long.

WMA is the default setting. GSM or PCM can be used where interoperability with other platforms is of great importance (the WAV format and GSM codec are widely supported).

More Exchange analyzer TLA's*

* TLA = Three Letter Acronym

 
 

In September 2004, we released the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA).  We followed up on this success in November 2005 with the Performance Troubleshooter (ExPTA) and the Disaster Recovery Analyzer (ExDRA).  Over recent months we have been working on a new analyzer called the Mailflow Troubleshooter (ExMFA).  Looking at our overall tool set, we decided that rather than continue to ship these tools as entirely independent entities, we would unify most of them together under a single umbrella application.  This is how the Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant (ExTrA) was born. 

 
 

ExTrA is essentially a union of ExDRA, ExPTA, and the new ExMFA, with a few additional things thrown in.  ExBPA is not currently part of ExTrA.  While we may consider this in the future, the current thinking is that ExBPA is a more proactive tool to be run at any time, and the others are more reactive to be run in response to a particular problem occurring.  All of our analyzer/troubleshooter tools are built off of the same configuration-driven engine, so combining them together was actually a very simple process that did not require us to do any rewriting of the existing logic.  We have essentially just packaged them all together and added a single additional screen that allows you to choose which tool to launch.  This first screen has two sections: a set of symptom-based selections, and a set of related functionality selections.  The initial symptom-based selections will be for troubleshooting mailflow issues, performance issues, or database issues (such as storage mounting problems).  The related functionality will include things like trace control, message tracking search and disaster recovery management (some may be available only for Exchange 2007 servers, however). 

 
 

Over time, we will be adding to these selections, and creating deeper integration between the components (like ExBPA, ExTrA is configuration driven and will be updated on a regular - probably monthly - basis).  Initially, when you select, for example, performance troubleshooting, the experience from that point on will be exactly the same as if you had launched ExPTA independently.  We will eventually blur the lines a little bit to make them function more as a whole.  For instance, mailflow and performance troubleshoot overlap to some degree.  Both areas will eventually branch back to the same symptom/root cause branch when tracking down the same type of problem (i.e. slow mailflow).  Another example of this would be if you are troubleshooting a store mounting issue and it concluded a database corruption was the root cause, it would branch automatically over to disaster recovery management to allow you to begin that process seamlessly.

 
 

ExTrA is intended to eventually become the one-stop shop for all Exchange troubleshooting needs, and in turn it will get more heavily integrated into the Exchange product itself.  We are very excited about releasing this tool, and are committed to following through with it over the upcoming years in the same way we've done with ExBPA in the past. 

 
 

Now, a little more about the new mailflow troubleshooting functionality we're adding.   Like performance, mailflow is controlled by many interacting processes and settings, and when something is not working right discovering the root cause can be quite difficult and requires a good deal of product expertise to do.  The mailflow troubleshooter attempts to walk a user through the process by starting with a symptom and working towards root cause.  The initial set of symptoms we will deal with are:

 
 

·         Non-delivery reports (NDR's) are being received.

·         Mail from an external source is slow or blocked.

·         Mail to an external source is slow or blocked.

·         Mail queues are backing up.

 
 

For example, when a remote delivery queue is backing up, the mailflow troubleshooter analyzes DNS for incorrect configurations, checks network connectivity (e.g. black hole routers), throws a series of SMTP commands to remote hosts, diagnoses link state data and more to identify possible root causes. Similarly, different sets of troubleshooting steps are prepared to tackle each symptom.

 
 

Like the other troubleshooters, we will be adding more sophistication into the logic over time.  New symptoms will be added and more root causes will be automatically identified.  We have been beta testing this functionality within our support team, and the early results indicate that this will have as immediate and positive an impact as ExBPA and ExPTA have had.

 
 

ExDRA has not yet enjoyed the same kind of success as the other analyzer/troubleshooter tools have had, largely due to the nature of the area it is addressing: disaster recovery.  We are investing quite a bit of effort in this area, however, particularly for Exchange 2007.  Most of the top Exchange disaster recovery experts at Microsoft are involved in the design and development of this tool.  We think the expanded feature set will make this as useful as any of the other tools we have.  A couple of examples of new functionality are steps to reset the log generation number, and a set of database repair steps that includes running defrag and isinteg to get the database consistent again.  We are also branching out some functionality from this area to do more symptom based analysis, such as identifying root causes of store mounting problems.  We are particularly eager to hear from anyone who has experience using this tool and are looking for feedback - both positive and negative - on its effectiveness and what we can do to make it even more useful.  If you have such feedback to give, please post a reply to this entry or to our newsgroup at microsoft.public.exchange.tools. 

 
 

ExPTA development continues apace as well.  We are adding more and more sophistication in this area, and this will continue for both the Exchange 2003 scenarios and the new Exchange 2007 scenarios.

 
 

There are no major new features coming up in the next release of ExBPA; just more rules, but the next release is going to be fully localized, (for ExBPA only - the other tools will be localized when Exchange 2007 releases).  Another thing that is going to be new when Exchange 2007 Beta 2 hits the streets is a new 'Exchange 2007 Readiness Check' scan type. You can run this against your existing Exchange 2000/2003 deployment to find out if there are any changes or decisions that need to be made before Exchange 2007 is introduced. This will allow you to plan for, and implement changes well-ahead of time, giving you a gentle glide-path to deploying Exchange 2007

 
 

All of the new functionality discussed here is expected to be released this summer.  It should also be a part of the toolbox in Exchange 2007 and available directly from the Exchange Management Console.  As I hope is apparent, we are devoting quite a large number of resources into the area of operational support tools here in Exchange, and we hope everyone who uses Exchange is happy with the progress we've made over the past couple of years, and we look forward to continuing this effort.  We've gotten a lot of positive feedback on these tools, and that makes it all worthwhile.  Thanks for the support.

New Blog test Post

This is a post from the new Word 2007 Beta 2

Exchange Performance Troubleshooting Analyzer (ExPTA) 1.1 has shipped

This release of ExPTA includes the following:   1.    Perfmon data collection:  Collect performance data to log file or analyze previously collected logs.  ExPTA can collect for durations between 5 minutes to 8 hours. Collection works remotely. Data is analyzed in 20 minute time ranges, and results are grouped by the time in which the problem occurred.  You can analyze logs previously collected by ExPTA or via perfmon.  ExPTA will expect that the performance counters listed below are included in any log that is analyzed.   2.    Queue thresholds: SMTP Server\Categorizer Queue Length, Epoxy(IMAP)\Queue length, EPOXY(POP3)\Queue length, LDAP times, MSExchangeIS Public\Replication Receive Queue Size, SMTP Server\Remote Queue Length, SMTP Server\Remote Retry Queue Length, SMTP Server\Local Queue Length, Virus scan queue length   3.    Network thresholds:  Network Interface\Packet Outbound errors, Network Interface\Output Queue Length, Network Interface\Bytes Total/sec   4.    LDAP latency checks:  MSExchangeDSAccess Domain Controllers\LDAP Search Time and MSExchangeDSAccess Domain Controllers\LDAP Read Time thresholds were added to detect problems due to bottlenecks on the AD server.   5.    RPC requests: Max RPC requests, average RPC request thresholds are now dependent on the number of users per server   6.    Memory changes: Validate that the Database Cache Size Peak < 1.2 GB.  In addition, most of the memory rules have been changed to work off the maximum rather than the average values.   7.    Improved reporting: Reporting of results between steps and the summary are now displayed in a consistent fashion, using tabbed pages for the different reports.   Pick up the latest version from here.   Performance counters analyzed by this version of ExPTA:   \Database(Information Store)\Database Cache Size \Database(Information Store)\Database Page Fault Stalls/sec \Database(Information Store)\Log Record Stalls/sec \Database(Information Store)\Log Threads Waiting \LogicalDisk(*)\Avg. Disk Queue Length \LogicalDisk(*)\Avg. Disk sec/Read \LogicalDisk(*)\Avg. Disk sec/Write \LogicalDisk(*)\Disk Reads/sec \LogicalDisk(*)\Disk Writes/sec \Memory()\Available Mbytes \Memory()\Free System Page Table Entries \Memory()\Pages/sec \Memory()\Pool Nonpaged Bytes \Memory()\Pool Paged Bytes \MSExchangeIS Mailbox(_Total)\Active Client Logons \MSExchangeIS Public(_Total)\Active Client Logons \MSExchangeIS()\Active User Count \MSExchangeIS()\Exchmem: Number of Additional Heaps \MSExchangeIS()\Exchmem: Number of heaps with memory errors \MSExchangeIS()\Exchmem: Number of memory errors \MSExchangeIS()\RPC Averaged Latency \MSExchangeIS()\RPC Operations/sec \MSExchangeIS()\RPC Requests \MSExchangeIS()\VM Largest Block Size \MSExchangeIS()\VM Total 16MB Free Blocks \MSExchangeIS()\VM Total Free Blocks \MSExchangeIS()\VM Total Large Free Block Bytes \Paging File(_Total)\% Usage \Process(*)\% Processor Time \Process(emsmta)\Private Bytes \Process(inetinfo)\Private Bytes \Process(lsass)\Private Bytes \Process(mad)\Private Bytes \Process(store)\Private Bytes \Process(System)\Private Bytes \Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time \System()\Context Switches/sec \System()\Processor Queue Length \Epoxy(IMAP)\Client Out Queue Length \Epoxy(IMAP)\Store Out Queue Length \Epoxy(POP3)\Client Out Queue Length \Epoxy(POP3)\Store Out Queue Length \MSExchangeIS Public(_Total)\Replication Receive Queue Size \SMTP Server(_Total)\Categorizer Queue Length \SMTP Server(_Total)\Remote Queue Length \SMTP Server(_Total)\Remote Retry Queue Length \SMTP Server(_Total)\Local Queue Length \MSExchangeIS()\Virus Scan Queue Length \MSExchangeDSAccess Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Search Time \MSExchangeDSAccess Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Read Time \Network Interface(*)\Output Queue Length \Network Interface(*)\Current Bandwidth \Network Interface(*)\Packets Outbound Errors \Network Interface(*)\Bytes Total/sec \MSExchangeDSAccess Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Read calls/Sec \MSExchangeDSAccess Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Search calls/Sec \MSExchangeDSAccess Caches(*)\Cache Hits/Sec \MSExchangeDSAccess Caches(*)\LDAP Searches/Sec \MSExchangeIS()\Virus Scan Files Scanned/Sec \MSExchangeIS()\Virus Scan Files Quarantined/Sec \MSExchangeIS()\Virus Scan Messages Processed/sec   Hope you like it! Let us know if you have feedback on the tool!   - Nicole Allen

 

Microsoft Exchange Server Profile Analyzer Web Release 2.5 Now Available

 

A while ago, I blogged about Exchange Server Profile Analyzer tool here. We now have some updates! We are pleased to announce the availability of the Exchange Server Profile Analyzer WR2.5. The new version can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. List of enhancements included in EPA WR2.5: - Dumpster collection - EPA now includes message content from mailbox "dumpster" folders when calculating message frequencies. Dumpster folders contain deleted content which has not yet been purged out of the database. The frequency data is reported with and without the additional dumpster content analysis in the output report. - Message permanently deleted frequency - Because of the our new ability to analyze content in dumpster folders, EPA will now report how often messages are deleted permanently. - Overall mailbox size reported regardless of time restriction - The calculation of overall mailbox size, rules and folder related statistics is not restricted by timeframe anymore. The timeframe restriction will only be applied to statistics related to individual messages, such as message frequency, attachment, recipient, etc. This change should result in faster EPA analysis runs and also removes the need to potentially run EPA twice against the same environment to gather statistics. - Timestamp in the log - EPA now shows a time stamp for each entry in the log and console output. This allows tracking of how much time is spent on collecting data from individual mailboxes. - Immediate data report before Ctrl-C - EPA will save whatever data it collects at the time a scan is cancelled with Ctrl-C to exit from the program for any reason. This feature allows you to still take advantage of any statistics that EPA has collected up to that point. Feedback is appreciated!! - Jessie Zhu