The Beta of Exchange Server "15" shows considerable improvements in the ease of management and installation. It has been extensively re-engineered to make it more effective in working across several datacentres. It also has a new Outlook Web App that even allows offline working. … Read more
If you are using Exchange Server 2003, it is worth considering a move to Office 365 instead of Exchange 2012. If you have business reasons to do so, it is possible to use the migration tool to switch over from an 'on-premises' Exchange-hosted mail service to a cloud-based Office 365 service. Jaap walks through the steps for a relatively small corporation..… Read more
The offline address-book (OAB) of Exchange is available when the user is not connected, Since Exchange 2007, it is updated via a Web-based distribution point. But what if you need to set up several Offline address-books for a variety of sites or geographical regions, each to be distributed by a different point? How would you do that? Krishna demonstrates.… Read more
Microsoft Exchange Service Pack2 (SP2)is now released, so Jaap Wesselius has taken a look at the latest update, highlighting some of the most interesting features of the latest build.… Read more
When a customer asks for an Exchange Server feature that you have no idea how to implement, and you just get one item coming up on Google, then you've got the blues. Antoine relates the struggle from that point to successful delivery of the feature.… Read more
When one mailbox server in a Database Availability Group (DAG) is accidentally deleted, then it is supposedly easy to fix the problem, but if the DAG is not fully cleaned up, it can prove a little more complex.… Read more
With the recent announcement of the Office 365 public beta, Microsoft has unveiled the next incarnation of their cloud-based services. Lucky for us, Jaap Wesselius has the inside scoop, and gives us everything we need to start using the new platform.… Read more
In Exchange Server 2010 it is possible to make the system more resilient by creating a Database Availability Group (DAG) where the nodes contain multiple server roles.… Read more
In his last article, Johan gave us a crystal clear guide to preparing to migrate from an on-premises Exchange environment to a Cloud-based BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) environment. With the preparations complete, he now walks us through the final steps of the migration, and correctly configuring the environment.… Read more
Jaap has now walked us most of the way through the upgrade from an Exchange 2007 environment to an Exchange 2010. In this last article in the series, he takes us the rest of the way, and completes the migration.… Read more
By now, you've probably heard of Microsoft's latest foray into the PaaS arena - Office 365 - but you might not know that Microsoft's BPOS offering is going to be a component of this latest incarnation. If you're considering either of these platforms, Johan Veldhuis' clear and comprehensive guide to Migrating from Exchange to BPOS is essential reading.… Read more
Having read Brien's previous article describing PST Horror Stories, you should now be well aware of the dangerous pitfalls of rogue and unmanaged PST files. Thankfully, 3rd party tools offer us a painless away to entirely avoid these problems, as Brien now explains.… Read more
Having walked us through the initial steps of the migration from Exchange Server 2007 to 2010, Jaap now discusses the next stage of the process - Configuring External access to your Exchange environment, and setting up your new Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server.… Read more
Upgrading to Exchange Server 2010 is easy if you know how, and Jaap's simple walkthrough will guide you painlessly through the process. Having already explained the step-by-step upgrade process for those of you using Exchange Server 2003, Jaap now makes life easy for the Exchange Server 2007 SysAdmins, too.… Read more
Brien has been on the front line of Systems Administration for long enough to both respect and fear PST files. Though they are a handy tool when used wisely, they are too often misused, resulting in disaster. Brien relates a few tragedies to which he's had a front-row seat. Read on, and be warned.… Read more
Unless you use Red Gate's PST Importer, the import and export of PST files with Exchange 2010 is a complex and error-prone business. Microsoft have acknowledged this in the release of Exchange 2010 SP1, since they have now re-engineered the way that PSTs are handled to try and ease the pain of importing and exporting them, but it is still a matter of using Powershell with cmdlets, rather than a GUI. Jaap Wesselius takes a look at the new process.
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Now that you've created your first DAG in Exchange 2010, you'll need to be sure it's correctly configured for failovers and switchovers, and you know how to troubleshoot. Fear not, for Neil Hobson tells you what you need to know.… Read more
Since Exchange 2000, and the introduction of the document retention period it has been much easier to recover mailboxes, disconnect or connect mailboxes to users, and disable mailboxes. Exchange 2010 has introduced the personal archive, which adds a slight complication. Michel de Rooij explains how to deal with this, and clean up mailboxes that are still within the retention period.… Read more
Although very tempting to use, the Hoster Edition of Exchange Server 2010 SP1 is not an alternative for the enterprise customers. Don't try it, don't even think about it, there's too much complexity for the average enterprise customer.… Read more
There are several possible disasters which might happen to your Office Communications Server environment. This will be everything from a file share which becomes corrupted, all the way over to a complete OCS server recovery. None of these will present a problem if you've prepared for disaster recovery beforehand. Johan explains what to do when disaster strikes.… Read more