Email is one of the most important communications tools for businesses. When it stops working, people start to get nervous.

While there are many things that a user can do to mess up their email, many of these problems can be resolved with a restart of the software or the computer.

However when the old standby of restarting doesn’t work, it is time for the email administrator to start looking into the issue a bit more deeply.

Here are some of the more common errors found in Outlook 2007 along with some of the ways you can make things right again:

1. Error message that reads: “Cannot open your default e-mail folders. The information store could not be opened.”

This issue can be fixed by first locating Outlook.exe that can be found here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12.

Next, right click Outlook.exe and then click on Properties.

On the Compatibility tab, clear the check box that reads ‘Run this program in compatibility mode’. Then click Ok and restart Outlook.

2. Error message that reads: “Your Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable.”

This error is a bit trickier to resolve only because there can be many different causes.

No data connection – test your SMTP connection using telnet. If you are unsure how to do this, Microsoft has provided a guide on their TechNet site that walks you through this process: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123686.aspx.

Office Outlook files are locked – there are times when .ost and .pst files are accidentally, or purposefully, set to read only. Check the permissions of these two files by navigating to:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ for .pst files and C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\ for .ost files. Make sure that neither is set to read only.

Third party applications are interfering with Outlook – many programs, including anti-malware solutions, can interfere with Outlook connecting to the Exchange Server. To check to see if this is the cause, start Outlook in safe mode.

Outlook files are corrupted – this can happen after an upgrade is applied to Outlook. If any of the .dat files listed below are present they should be deleted or renamed.

• Extend.dat – Located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\
• Frmcache.dat – Located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms\
• Views.dat – Located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\
• Outcmd.dat – Located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\

All the files, with the exception of Outcmd.dat will be re-created. The Outcmd.dat file saves customized toolbar settings so if it is removed these settings will have to be re-applied.

3. Office Outlook will not open personal folders or personal folders do not show up in Outlook.

Personal folders are often the root of many problems related to Outlook. Microsoft has published the Inbox Repair tool, Scanpst.exe, that can be used to scan .pst and .ost files for errors in the file structure. If this is not intact, it will reset the file structure and rebuild the headers.

This tool will only work on the files that reside on your computer’s hard drive, not the files on the Microsoft Exchange Server.

This will also help to resolve the error message: “Cannot open your default e-mail folder. The file c:\users\owner\documents\software info\outlook.pst is not a personal folders file”.

4. Error messages that read either: “The action cannot be completed. The connection to the Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable. Your network adapter does not have a default gateway” or “Your Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable”.

This error occurs when Outlook is unsure of the default gateway address. The former is the error message that shows when the Outlook profile is configured automatically and the latter appears when the profile is manually configured. Both have the same fix.

To repair this you will need to edit the registry so clicking on Start and then Run is necessary. Then, enter regedit in the Open box and click OK.

Next, navigate to the registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\RPC. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.  Type DefConnectOpts, and then press ENTER. Now, right-click DefConnectOpts, and then click Modify. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.

5. None of the authentication methods supported by this client are supported by your server.

This happens to people when they use their computer in multiple locations. For example, a laptop is taken home and connected to the home network or perhaps a computer is taken on the road. Basically, it comes from authentication rules for the SMTP server.

When this error occurs go to the Account Settings tab and click on Change then More Settings. Now select the Outgoing Server tab.

The option that reads: “My outgoing server requires authentication” and the one that reads: “Log on to incoming mail server before sending mail” should both be looked at. If there is a check in the option box remove it.

5 Common Outlook Errors and How to Fix Them

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I’ve been reading through several forums on the web to looking for resolutions to the blank email problem. Unfortunately there is no all-encompassing, single silver bullet out there that will satisfy everyone.

What originally got me started down this path is that I was reading through a blog forum – “Office for MacHelp.com” – and I came across a blog entitled, “Exchange Mail sent as HTML in Outlook 2011 is received as plain text”, written by Diane Ross.

In her comments she related an issue some administrators have encountered after recently upgrading their Exchange servers from 2003 to 2010. Prior to the upgrade, users were able to see all their email messages and to check whether they were sent as HTML messages or as Plain Text messages. But after the upgrade only plain text messages were making it through to the end user. HTML formatted messages would arrive but were not viewable – they were displayed as blank messages. Not so good.

So I dug around the web looking for that one-size-fits-all solution. Sorry to say, it’s not there. But I did find some options that can be used to resolve this problem.

One solution is to run the following command:

get-remotedomain | set-remotedomain -ContentType MimeHtmlText

Once the ContentType parameter has been set then an administrator should restart the Exchange Transport Service.

The set-remotedomain cmdlet is used to define the parameters which affect the managed connections of a remote domain. Such parameter settings can affect the exchange of mail messages, how messages are formatted and any associated policies. Any messages that are sent to or received from remote domains can also have different character sets.

The following command can be used to view the current setting of the ContentType parameter of the remote domain:

Get-RemoteDomain | FL

In the solution example above, the contenttype parameter on the Exchange server is being set to MimeHtmlText. The ContentType parameter can be used to define how messages that are sent should be formatted and what their content type should be. The ContentType parameter has three possible values: MimeText, MimeHtml and MimeHtmlText.

The MimeText content type takes all messages that use text formatting and converts them to Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) messages. The MimeHtml content type takes all messages that use HTML formatting and converts them to MIME messages. And lastly, the MimeHtmlText content type takes all messages that use HTML formatting and converts them to MIME messages. However, if the HTML formatted message was originally a text message then that message is sent out as a MIME message with text formatting. MimeHtmlText is the default setting.

After the remote domain’s ContentType has been set then an administrator should restart the Exchange Transport Service.

Another solution was found that basically involves turning off your anti-virus protection. What was happening was that the anti-virus application was removing the content of the email messages whenever HTML formatting was used. If the option to scan outbound email messages is not selected then the result is that the messages will be viewable and not blank. Unfortunately the anti-virus protection will not be able to scan the messages for viruses so this really isn’t the best choice.

An example of this problem is when the ESET NOD32 4.x anti-virus software is installed on client machines. In this case some Exchange 2010 users may receive email messages that do not contain any content. An administrator should check with their respective vendor’s technical support team to see if a solution had been created.

There is another situation that results in blank email messages whenever an Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) client application is used to read email messages and Exchange Server 2010 is the email server. If the content type of the MIME message is multipart and the multipart has only a single subpart then this will produce a blank email message.

The following is an example of a MIME message that cannot be read by an IMAP client:

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary=”-1970672470-1383129417-1288825231=:5310″
Subject: test
MIME-Version: 1.0

—1970672470-1383129417-1288825231=:5310
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”ISO-8859-1″; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT

. . . . . . .

—1970672470-1383129417-1288825231=:5310–

The problem is that the Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 service does not send back the correct response to the IMAP FETCH (BODYSTRUCTURE) command. The solution to this particular problem is to install the Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1.

Blank Email Messages

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There are multiple management roles that are included with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Many of the roles get assigned to management role groups or management role assignment policies. Together, these management role groups and management role policies control who is permitted to manage and use the various capabilities of Exchange Server.

The permissions that result from the combination of the management role groups and management role assignment policies can affect how Exchange Server is maintained and administered. If there are problems during the installation of Exchange Server then it can adversely affect the creation of administrative management role assignments. For example, an administrator may see roles beginning with “My” that get assigned to the Organization Management role group.

Additionally, the management roles can affect many aspects of the administration of the Exchange Server. The Role Based Access Control model of Exchange Server 2010 includes the management role. It is this role that can get assigned to several management role policies. It can also get assigned to role assignment groups, universal security groups and users. Using the management roles, administrators can edit Exchange Server components that include: transport rules, recipients and mailboxes. Administration of the Exchange Server components is performed through the use of cmdlets or scripts. A cmdlet or script along with its corresponding parameters is called a management role group. The cmdlets or scripts are included with the role and can be executed by those who are assigned the role.

Here is a list of some of the roles that are assigned to management role groups or management role assignment policies:

• Active Directory Permissions Role – Active Directory permissions can be configured by administrators who have the management role assigned to them. Transport Receive and Send connectors, and Send As and Send on behalf of permissions for mailboxes are all features that use Active Directory permissions or Access Control Lists (ACLs).
• Address Lists Role – Administrators who have the Address Lists management role assigned to them can create, modify, view, and remove address lists, global address lists (GALs), and offline address lists (OABs) within their organization.
• Application Impersonation Role – Applications that are assigned the Application Impersonation role are allowed to take on the role of specific users in an organization in order to execute actions as if they were that user.
• Audit Logs Role – The administrator audit log can be configured by users who are assigned the Audit Logs management role.
• Cmdlet Extension Agents Role – Administrators are allowed to enable or disable the cmdlet extension agents in an organization if they are assigned the Cmdlet Extension Agents management role. They are also allowed to set the priority.
• Database Availability Groups Role – Administrators are allowed to manage database availability groups in an organization if they are assigned the Database Availability Groups management role. The Database Availability Groups role is the highest administrator level that is responsible for the high availability configuration in an organization.
• Database Copies Role – Administrators are allowed to add, remove, suspend, resume, view, and update database copies on individual servers if they are assigned the Database Copies management role.
• Databases Role – Administrators are allowed to create, manage, mount, and dismount mailbox and public folder databases on individual servers if they are assigned the Databases management role.
• Disaster Recovery Role – Administrators are allowed to restore mailboxes and database availability groups, create mailbox databases, and start and stop database availability groups in an organization if they are assigned the Disaster Recovery management role.
• Distribution Groups Role  – Administrators are allowed to create, modify, view, and remove distribution groups, and add or remove distribution group members in an organization if they are assigned the Distribution Groups management role.
• Edge Subscriptions Role – Administrators are allowed to manage edge synchronization and subscription configuration between Edge Transport servers and Hub Transport servers in an organization if they are assigned the Edge Subscriptions management role.
• E-Mail Address Policies Role – Administrators are allowed to manage e-mail address policies in an organization if they are assigned the E-Mail Address Policies management role.
• Exchange Connectors Role – Administrators are allowed to create, modify, view, and remove routing group connectors and delivery agent connectors if they are assigned the Exchange Connectors management role.
• Exchange Server Certificates Role – Administrators are allowed to create, import, export, and manage Exchange server certificates on individual servers if they are assigned the Exchange Server Certificates management role.
• Exchange Servers Role- Administrators are allowed to perform the following actions if they assigned the Exchange Servers management role.
  • Database availability groups can be added or removed.
  • Unified Messaging servers can be enabled or disabled.
  • Outlook Anywhere can be enabled or disabled.
  • Edit configurations of Hub Transport, Client Access, Mailbox and Unified Messaging server.
  • Edit Outlook Anywhere configuration.
  • Edit content filtering configuration on Hub Transport servers.
  • Edit general Exchange server configuration.
  • View the server role configuration.

In future posts I will discuss additional Exchange Server management roles.

List of Built-In Management Roles

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Microsoft’s newly launched Office 365 offers powerful, intuitive controls for businesses looking to deploy a cloud-hosted collaboration and messaging solution.  I was able to get my own trial account activated in just 10 minutes, faster than any hosted Exchange providers that I’m aware of.  In addition, the presence of a free 30-day trial means that businesses and individuals can experiment with – or even deploy – various components of the service without having to part with a single cent.

As I’ve explained in Why Office 365 is good for Exchange Administrators, Office 365 can actually help to bolster the popular of Exchange Server; enhancing the career prospects of experienced Exchange administrators in the long-term.  Moreover, many of the reasons to consider an on-premise deployment of Exchange Server remain just as relevant today.  This includes a greater choice of anti-spam and anti-malware solutions, heightened confidentiality, compliance, as well as increased backup and archival options.

Companies on the fence about deploying Exchange or new businesses lacking the budget for on-premise Exchange Server will definitely want to start off with Office 365.  Depending on individual requirements, businesses can migrate to a full-fledged Exchange Server at a later date.  To assist administrators who may be thinking of starting off their Exchange deployment on Office 365, I shall be exploring the capabilities of the various plans today with a specific focus on Exchange Server.

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses

Positioned towards professionals and small businesses, Plan P is touted as a plan that offers value-for-money.  It is easy to see its attraction when one considers its Exchange capabilities, as well as the presence of SharePoint Online and Office Web Apps.  The downside is lower levels of support: don’t bother calling Microsoft when you encounter any problems.  Moreover, note that Plan P has an upper limit of 50 user licenses, and does not support Active Directory Sync.(Though the Plan P product page says “fewer than 25 users”, it does not stop users from buying up to 50 user licenses).

According to the official FAQ, a company growing beyond 50 users will need to cancel their Plan P and manually switch to a Plan E. You heard it right; there is no automatic migration for businesses that outgrow Plan P.  Finally, do note that Plan P does not officially support what it calls “vanity” domain (yourname@yourdomain.com), but defaults instead to yourname@yourcompanyname.onmicrosoft.com.  There are a couple of workaround strategies fortunately, which I shall outline in my next article. And yes, Plan P includes premium antivirus and anti-spam filtering with Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange

Despite its shortcomings, its low price of US$6 per user per month makes Plan P a compelling offering indeed.  The Plan P1 trial includes 10 user licenses.  You can read more about Plan P here.

Office 365 for midsize businesses and enterprises

Plan E comes in various configurations that range from E1, E2, E3 to E4.  Priced at US$10, US$16, US$24 and US$27 per user per month, the various offerings under Plan E include the license rights to access on-premise deployment of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and Lync Server – more about possible deployment scenarios another time.  E1 excludes online document viewing and editing capabilities with Office Web Apps, while E3 and E4 include the desktop edition of Office Professional Plus.  Do note that a trial is only available for Plan E3, which includes 25 user licenses.  You can read more about the various offerings under Plan E here.

Other Online Exchange options

Businesses that require only Exchange Server services will be interested in the “Kiosk Worker Plans” called K1 and K2.  Both plans offer 500MB of mailbox storage and are priced at just US$4 and US$10 respectively.  It is important to note that both plans offer the Outlook Web App as the only interface to standard Exchange services such as email, calendar, contacts and the company directory.  Microsoft Outlook is not supported, although POP access is. The slightly pricier K2 plan comes with the ability to make basic edits to documents with Office Web Apps.

Finally, administrators or individuals interested in Exchange Online-only plans may want to check out the various plans tucked away here.  Exchange Online is offered at just US$5 and US$10 per month and includes access via PC (Microsoft Outlook), Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) and Outlook Web App.  A final Exchange Online Kiosk plan mirrors the K1 plan by doing away with Outlook and EAS support (no contacts and company directory too) for a rock bottom price of just US$2 per user per month.

Have you given Exchange Online in Office 365 a spin yet?  Feel free to share your experiences.

A Closer Look at Exchange in Microsoft’s Office 365

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A few months ago I wrote a post listing fourteen online resources for email admins that included several of my favourite troubleshooting resources. In this post, I want to take you for a closer look at the best one of the lot for testing remote connectivity to Exchange, the Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer. You can access this test suite by clicking the link above, or directly at its URL, https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/. There are several great tests this tool can run through to ensure that you have properly set up remote access to your Exchange infrastructure, and you will want to bookmark this site and refer to it whenever you setup, or change, the external connectivity to Exchange.

Before you begin, create an unprivileged test account in your Active Directory, and make sure it has a valid Exchange mailbox. You can of course use your own account or anyone else’s, but this site requires that you enter valid user credentials, and it’s a best practice not to submit valid credentials for a ‘real’ user to an external site outside of your complete control. If you want to skip that step, that’s on you, but I always keep a test account handy for things like this.

Once you have your test account ready, take a look at the site to see what it offers. There are four categories with two tests each:

1. Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity Tests
   Exchange ActiveSync
   Exchange ActiveSync Autodiscover
2. Microsoft Exchange Web Services Connectivity Tests
   Synchronization, Notification, Availability, and Automatic Replies (OOF)
   Service Account Access (Developers)
3. Microsoft Office Outlook Connectivity Tests
   Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP)
   Outlook Autodiscover
4. Internet E-Mail Tests
   Inbound SMTP E-Mail
   Outbound SMTP E-Mail

The ActiveSync Connectivity tests can validate your DNS records, as well as how you have exposed EAS connections to the Internet (through Microsoft TMG or other reverse proxy, or by passing HTTPS traffic through to your CAS server directly). Both of these tests will in essence configure a mail client using EAS, and requires that valid test account to connect all the way through. In case you are using self-signed certificates, it even gives you the option to not validate certificates.

The EWS tests are useful for admins who need to support Entourage or other applications that require access through Exchange Web Services, and can verify the ability to create/delete messages and other service activities.

The Outlook Connectivity tests basically configure an Outlook client using the RPC over HTTP protocol. It can also validate all your DNS records, whether you are using A or SRV for autodiscovery. See this post for more on Autodiscover.

The Internet E-Mail tests can send a test message to your account from an external sender, and can also confirm your DNS records for MX, PTR, and Sender ID, and make sure your host is not listed on any DNS Reverse Blacklist service.

While all of these could be done using your external Hotmail account, and one or more systems connected to a DSL circuit external to your corporate network, it’s really useful and a great timesaver to have all eight tests available to you with nothing more required than a web browser and a test account. Even if you have a working system now, take these eight tests for a spin to see how things you might not be able to test, like Mac clients, would function, and also to see how your DNS records test. You might be surprised at what you find out. If you pass all eight the first time through, you’ve earned bragging rights; leave a comment and let me know.

How to troubleshoot remote connectivity to Exchange

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You must have heard about the launch of Microsoft’s Office 365 last week, which promised end-users and businesses alike with a way to attain “anywhere access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars”.  Understandably, the availability of a Microsoft-supported and run Exchange offering may have resulted in some amount of anxiety with some administrators.

To get a better feel of Office 365, I spent some time last weekend figuring out the various packages, and have also signed up for a trial Office 365 account to get a hands-on feel of Microsoft’s latest – and arguably best - cloud-based offering.  Today, I want to share my experiences as to why Office 365 may actually be good thing for Exchange Administrators.

Maintains the popularity of Outlook

It’s no secret that competitors such as Google have been making steady inroads into selling the concept of Google Apps to educational institutions and businesses.  While it is plausible that some of these lost businesses would never have opted for Microsoft Exchange even in the absence of Google Apps, the logical conclusion is that more than one company must have defected as a result.  Moreover, the fight is an unequal one, given the inherent strengths of cloud computing when it comes to server maintenance and up-front cost.  Hosted Exchange evens the ground somewhat, though the specifics in terms of supported features and the ease of setup varies depending on the actual provider.

Office 365 is brilliant in that it takes the fight fully back to Google Apps by adding an online office suite and collaborative services in a standard, well-integrated interface that businesses can manage with ease.  Moreover, Office 365 maintains the popularity of Outlook by allowing small and large companies alike to tap into the full capabilities of Exchange at a competitive price tag. As you can see, these factors will only help entrench the popularity of Exchange with businesses in the long run.

Management still required

Administrators concerned that Office 365 may threaten their roles will be happy to know that administrative tasks such as user creation and service provisioning are still required – and supported, in Microsoft’s Office 365 offering.  Enough said.

Can be used to supplement an on-site Exchange deployment

I have not fully explored this aspect of Office 365 yet, but you may be interested to know that Microsoft caters to scenarios where businesses may want to deploy a mixed on-site and cloud architecture.  I’ll write more about the various mixed mode configurations in a future article.

Ability to quickly test out Exchange and SharePoint

In the past, decisions on whether to proceed with Exchange could take a long time in coming – completely understandable given the steep costs of acquiring the hardware and licenses for a new deployment.  This is further complicated by the uncertain return on investment and unknown productivity gains.  With Office 365, businesses can quickly set up a trial account for a more accurate assessment of whether Exchange and SharePoint have what it takes to meet business needs.  With zero setup costs, businesses on the fence about Exchange are now far more likely to consider this option versus “Exchange-compatible” email server products.

Deploy Exchange?  Sure, I’ll be ready in 10 minutes

Imagine this: You are interviewing at an ultra-secret start-up that has just secured a huge amount of funding from private investors.  The interviewer (and founder) wants to deploy Exchange to support the 20 new engineers he’s just hired earlier today.  He’s rearing to go, and he wants to launch the product, like, yesterday.  How soon can you get a working email system up?  Money is not an issue.

Now, you can ramble on like a typical administrator about the various merits of on-site or hosted Exchange deployments and quiz him endlessly with questions about collaboration needs and eventual size of his company.  Then call up a couple of companies, get three quotes, factor in delivery times that range from a couple of days to weeks.  In the meantime, you can apply for a dedicated Internet connection; add in a couple more days for installation and configuration… you get what I mean.

Or you can tell him you can be ready in 10 minutes and get hired on-the-spot. That’s how long I took to sign up for a trial account anyway – and I wasn’t even rushing!  After all, you can always switch to an on-site deployment after the new servers arrive.

What are you still waiting for? – Time to check out Office 365 if you’ve not done so yet!

Why Office 365 is Good for Exchange Administrators

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In his article, “Cross Org Availability using Federation Trust and Organization Relationship”, Ben Winzenz discusses some of the issues that can occur when organizations need to share Exchange server availability status with other Exchange organizations.

He notes that there are multiple ways to enable the sharing of availability status. Some of those scenarios include:

1. Exchange server is running in both organizations.
2. Different versions of Exchange server is running in the organizations.
3. Multiple Exchange servers are running in the organizations.

The requirements to support the sharing of the availability status are explained very well, and the author explains some problems and issues that can occur with the sharing of the availability status.

There are other scenarios related to availability in an Exchange Server/Outlook environment that are also of interest to email administrators. For example, one of the scenarios not fully explored, but yet still related to availability, is the Free/Busy status feature of Outlook.

The Internet Free/Busy status is a feature of Microsoft Outlook that allows end users to check on the availability status of their peers and co-workers. Using the feature, an end-user can check the calendar schedule of their co-workers in order to schedule meetings and avoid schedule conflicts. End-users are able to self-publish their Free/Busy status via a user-specified Uniform Resource Locator (URL) file server and to share this URL file server with their co-workers.

However, there are some issues related to the Free/Busy feature which administrators may encounter after migrating to Exchange Server 2010.

One of those issues occurs when end users are unable to publish their Free/Busy status in Exchange Server 2010. When this error occurs their availability will appear as a series of hash marks. If administrators view the error log they will see the following event ID:

Event ID : 8207
Category : General
Source : MSExchangeFBPublish
Type : Error
Message : Error updating public folder with free/busy information on virtual machine  (ExchangeServerName). The error number is 0×80004005

An administrator can attempt to clear and regenerate the Free/Busy information on the system running Outlook by executing a command with a path similar to the following:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Outlook.exe /cleanfreebusy

If you recently migrated to Exchange Server 2010 or have a newly installed Exchange Server 2010 environment, then you may receive an error message such as: “Unable to clean your freebusy information”.

This can happen if the Exchange Server 2010 organization does not contain replicas of any Free/Busy folders.

Administrators can correct this problem with the following steps:

1. Run the following command in the Exchange Management Shell: get-publicfolder -Identity “\NON_IPM_SUBTREE\SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY” -Recurse | fl name,Replicas
2. Next, run this command: set-publicfolder -Identity “\NON_IPM_SUBTREE\SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY\<Name of Folder>” -replicas “<Target PF Database>”
3. View the public folder group and confirm that it contain a replica as defined in step one.

In a post-migration situation, there can be problems if the old server still contains the “Schedule + Free Busy” information and the Exchange server administrator has not replicated the information to the new server. If the old server has not yet been taken offline – and is still up and running while the newly migrated server is also up and running – then the new server will function correctly except for the free/busy information component. This situation can also occur if the “Schedule+Free/Busy” system folder has become corrupted.

If the replicas have already been migrated and contain valid data then errors associated with the Free/Busy state may simply be related to the user not having published their information correctly or not at all.

Administrators may need to remind or inform their end-user community how to publish their Free/Busy Information to the Internet using Microsoft Outlook 2010 by sending a note to end users that has the following instructions:

1. Open the File tab to display the File menu.
2. Click Options.
3. Open the Calendar tab and choose Free/Busy Options.
4. Open the Permissions tab and select “Other Free/Busy”.
5. In the Internet Free/Busy section place a checkmark in the “Publish at My Location” check box.
6. Type the fully qualified pathname of the server that you will use to publish your Free/Busy Information. (Examples of valid URL format names include:  http://somedomain.com/, file://\\somedomain.com, or ftp://somedomain.com.)

Note that Free/Busy files use the .vfb file name extension. A valid URL format is:

ftp://Someserver/Freebusy/Somename.vfb

Free/Busy Outlook Feature

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The recent spike in security breaches resulting from meticulously planned and executed spear phishing attacks may have forced email administrators to start thinking of topics that they may never have considered previously, such as the repercussion of a hacked Exchange Server account, or the reasons why hackers would be interested in attacking your email server.  Indeed, you may have already read Securing Your Microsoft Exchange 2010 Server, and have duly implemented the various hardening measures that I’ve linked to in that article.

Moving ahead though, you may be wondering if your Exchange Server is truly protected against malicious attacks.  Beyond waiting for a hacker to successfully break in, is there anything that the diligent administrator can do to reduce the chances of a successful break in?  I had the opportunity to attend an EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker course recently, and one indelible lesson I gained would be how proper penetration tests can facilitate better security.  The rationale is simple – if you can break in, then so can hackers.  Today, I want to highlight some very simple penetration testing strategies that cash-strapped businesses can perform on their Exchange Servers to get a better pulse on their security readiness.

Obviously, permission must first be obtained from the relevant management prior to any penetration testing – preferably in writing.  Also, the usual caveat emptor about the dangers of tinkering with malware applies; there is also the very real possibility of Trojans hidden within typical tools used by hackers.  Finally, I would strongly advocate hiring a properly qualified and professional penetration team, which has the added benefit of a detailed report on any findings with recommendations for improvements.

Port scan

One of the simplest ways to establish the presence of malware or illicit server software would be to do a port scan on your Exchange Server.  While simplistic, this is nevertheless one of the first steps that a hacker will perform when targeting your organization, and could potentially reveal flawed configurations or the presence of unwanted (and forgotten) software services.

An extension of this idea would be to scan for the presence of SMTP (Port 25) listeners on your internal network, the presence of which could indicate the presence of unauthorized software or zombie computers running spamming software.  A basic and very well-known network and security scanner would be the free NMap, though many commercial variants exist that are capable of more detailed scans such as detecting common misconfigurations.

Sending malware to yourself

An easy way to test the capability of one’s malware filter or gateway antivirus scanner would be to deliberately send malware to an account on your server.  This may range from executable files, hiding them within archives, or malformed PDF files or Word documents – you essentially employ the same tricks that spammers and hackers are known to use.  Obviously, administrators should take pains to send infected email attachments only to unused accounts or one that has been set aside for the purpose of testing.

It should also be noted  that many of the recent attacks rely more on phishing or social engineering that push users into clicking a link to a malware-laden website as opposed to sending malware as an email attachment.

Brute Force Password Hacking

A brute force password attack entails repeatedly logging into an account with various combinations of passwords, and is a strategy employed by hackers looking for soft targets on the Internet.  Unlike cracking an actual password hash file or database, attempting to break in via brute forcing the password as part of a penetration test is a lower risk proposition, and viable if care is taken not to disrupt the access of legitimate users.

Moreover, this is a good way of weeding out easy-to-guess passwords that may be used by some employees, and is an activity that be conducted when server and network utilization is lower (such as over the weekend or overnight).  Dictionary files in your company’s native language can be compiled relatively easily, or downloaded from various repositories on the Internet.  Finally, there is no need to find a tool dedicated to breaking into Exchange Server either, since any password brute force tool that supports POP or IMAP can be made to work.

Are you aware of any simple penetration testing strategies that can be used to test the robustness of an Exchange Server deployment?  Feel free to highlight them in the comments section below.

Simple Penetration Testing Strategies for Your Exchange Server

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After a painstaking examination of the various pros and cons of signing up for a cloud-based email service and that of an on-premise deployment, your company finally decides on the latter option.  Before jumping into deployment phrase however, there remain a number of important decisions that need to be made first.  Today, I want to highlight some of these areas, and offer some suggestions that I hope will be helpful to administrator tasked with setting up Exchange Server.

Deployment Scenario

While this article is about setting up Exchange Server “on-premise,” it is not an altogether uncommon occurrence for companies to host their servers in a data center.  Administrators should decide early if they would like such a deployment scenario, since cost and other practicalities may curtail the number of servers or appliances placed with a hosting provider.

On the other hand, businesses that opt to setup their Exchange Server within the bounds of their corporate networks will have another set of decisions to make.  This includes availability of sufficient upstream and downstream bandwidth on their existing Internet connectivity, and whether there is adequate static IP address for allocation to the new mail server.  In addition, redundancies may also need to be examined in terms of fallback Internet access and presence of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to guard against power trips.

Edition of Exchange Server

A decision for Exchange 2010 is pretty much a no-brainer for companies setting up Exchange Server for the first time, though some may stick with the older Exchange 2007 for various reasons.  Do note however that both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 require the presence of a 64-bit processor – which means that your 5 year old server hardware may not make the cut.  Finally, depending on whether you have the license for the stand-alone version of Exchange Server or as part of Small Business Server, there might be a need to acquire Microsoft Outlook separately.

And yes, companies who may be unable to deploy Exchange Server, but desire to have something compatible with Outlook may want to read Exchange-compatible email servers for suggestions.

Protective Mechanisms

Protective mechanisms can be segregated into two distinct components: protecting end-users from malware and spam, as well as procedures and tools to defend your Exchange Server from malicious hackers.  I wrote a post on Securing Your Microsoft Exchange 2010 Server in March, which linked to various resources with tips on how to defend your Exchange Server.  Getting a good spam filter is usually a more challenging proposition however, thanks to the constantly changing tactics used by spammers.  On this front, I would recommend that administrators check with sister-site All Spammed Up for the latest tips and developments on the anti-spam front.

Backup and Archiving

Inexperienced IT professions may confuse the need for proper backup and archival with the protective mechanisms mentioned in the previous section – they are not the same thing.  Although reactive in nature, backup and archival measures play a vital role to help businesses recover from catastrophic failures.  Indeed, even the largest corporations in the world like Google make use of offline backup as a last line of defense.  In the case of Google, I chronicled in The Big Gmail Crash and the Lesson for Email Administrators how the company’s tape backups helped them to recover from an internal bug that left the mailboxes of some users corrupted earlier this year.

Decide on an Exchange Server Role

Finally, businesses who are installing Exchange Server 2010 should be aware that it can operate in various roles:

• Mailbox Server
• Client Access Server
• Unified Messaging Server
• Hub Transport Server
• Edge Transport Server

All the above roles can be combined with the exception of Edge Transport server role, which is designed for deployment on perimeter networks.  An Exchange Server configured as an Edge Transport Server allows the establishment of a secure boundary to buffer between the internal network and the Internet – in effect acting like a proxy.

Administrators who are not familiar with the various roles of Exchange 2010 may want to look at Exchange 2010 server roles explained, which offers detailed explanations together with tips about hardware requirements.  In addition, Microsoft’s TechNet Understand the Exchange Server Roles in Exchange Server 2010 is also a worthwhile read on this topic.

Are there any other considerations that I’ve missed out?  Feel free to chip in!

Decisions to Make When Deploying an On-Premise Exchange Server

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Installing software is always an activity that administrators must allocate extra time to in order to prepare for the unexpected problems that can occur. And of course there is the time that must be allocated to handle the prerequisites.

If Exchange Server is being installed on a global catalog server then there is the possibility that not all of the services will start upon initialization. If this happens then an administrator can manually start some of the services. This situation may result in the shutdown process taking more time than if the services had been started automatically. Administrators can review the log files for the following error messages:
Event ID : 1005
Source : MSExchangeSA
Category : General
Type : Error
Description : Unexpected error The Local Security Authority cannot be contacted ID no: 80090304 Microsoft Exchange System Attendant occurred.

Event ID: 1121
Source: MSExchangeIS
Category: General
Type: Error
Description: Error 0x96e connecting to the Microsoft Active Directory.

Event ID: 2601
Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Category: General
Type: Warning
Description: Process MSEXCHANGEADTOPOLOGY (PID=1624). When initializing a remote procedure call (RPC) to the Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology service, Exchange could not retrieve the SID for account <WKGUID=DC1301662F547445B9C490A52961F8FC,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,…> – Error code=80040934. The Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology service will continue starting with limited permissions.

Event ID: 5000
Source: MSExchangeIS
Category: General
Type: Error
Description: Unable to initialize the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service. – Error 0x96e.

These error messages are generated when Exchange Server attempts to start but the Exchange Server dependent services and the domain controller do not completely start up. At this point an administrator will receive messages indicating that there was a problem with the Exchange Server startup process. Administrators can check their monitoring application to confirm whether the services are running or not. It is still possible for an administrator to manually start up the appropriate Exchange Server processes.

In addition to manually restarting the services, administrators can also change the dependencies to circumvent the problematic services. For example, the Netlogon service and the LSASS service are not needed by Exchanger Server services. Such services and their dependencies include:

Another alternate solution is to set the Microsoft Exchange system attendant and other services to restart automatically. Fortunately, all of the services can be set to restart automatically. And they can be set so that they continuously restart on their own until they are eventually started up. During this time, error messages will continue to be generated. Understand that this procedure is just a workaround but will support a successful startup of the Exchange Server.

After the installation of Exchange Server comes the installation of the Update Rollups. If during the install of Update Rollup 2 you receive a 1063 error message then it is most likely that the install failed. An administrator can create an installation log by using the following Setup Program switch:
Exchange2010-Rollup1KB976573-x64-en.msp /lvx c:\logFilePath\InstallationLogFile.log

The installation log file will most likely contain messages similar to the following:
////////////
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Doing action: CA_START_REMOVEDATA_SERVICES
Action start Time: CA_START_REMOVEDATA_SERVICES.
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Transforming table CustomAction.
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Transforming table CustomAction.
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Note: 1: 2262 2: CustomAction 3: -2147287038
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Note: 1: 2235 2: 3: ExtendedType 4: SELECT `Action`,`Type`,`Source`,`Target`, NULL, `ExtendedType` FROM `CustomAction` WHERE `Action` = ‘CA_START_REMOVEDATA_SERVICES’
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Transforming table CustomAction.
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Transforming table CustomAction.
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Note: 1: 2262 2: CustomAction 3: -2147287038
.
. (Lot’s of messages deleted here in the interest of space.)
.
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Transforming table InstallExecuteSequence.
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Transforming table InstallExecuteSequence.
MSI (s) (60:74) [Timestamp]: Note: 1: 2262 2: InstallExecuteSequence 3: -2147287038
Action ended Time: INSTALL. Return value 3.
////////////

These error messages are generated when the Group Policy Object (GPO), ExecutionPolicy, defines one or both of the following policies: the MachinePolicy and/or the UserPolicy. Just the mere fact that one or both of these policies are defined can cause the series of error messages to be generated. Administrators can stop these error messages from being generated by simply deleting any definition of the MachinePolicy and UserPolicy in the ExecutionPolicy. Use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to make these changes.

Troubleshooting Installation of Exchange Server

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Exchange Server uses several components and processes to route email messages from outside the organization through the internals of an Exchange Server transport pipeline. Many of the components and processes include: SMTP Receive, Submission, Categorizer, Local Delivery and SMTP Send.

A couple of ways that email messages can enter the transport pipeline include through a receive connector or via the pickup directory. Messages may also be placed in the submission queue by the store driver. One action that is always performed is the categorizing of the received email message. After categorizing the message, the message is placed in a delivery queue to await delivery to a mailbox or for routing to a recipient on another server maybe within a different company.

Queues are used to hold messages or data that needs further processing before reaching their final destination. Each queue of messages is processed based on its location in the transport pipeline. The transport system holds messages inside memory queues for processing. If the transport service goes down then the contents of the memory queues are “committed” to the database so as not to lose any data. These transport queues should be monitored in order to establish a baseline of activity and performance levels. If there is a problem with processing any of the messages then the messages will stay inside the queue until the problem is resolved. An administrator can use the Queue Viewer (Exchange Management Console) to correct any problems with the queues.

Exchange server contains five types of queues: submission queue, mailbox delivery queue, remote delivery queue, poison message queue, and the unreachable queue. Message data that are being processed can be found inside these queues.  Here are the details about these queues:

• Submission Queue – This queue is the first queue to receive messages for further processing. The categorizer stores the messages in this queue for actions to be taken by the Transport agents. Messages from the SMTP receive; pickup directory and store driver can also be placed in the queue. There are multiple submission queues to support the number of transport servers that are running. Messages in the submission queue are exclusive and are not existent in other queues.
• Mailbox Delivery Queue – This queue contains messages that are waiting to be delivered to a mailbox server within the same server location. Only the Hub server has mailbox delivery queues. A Hub server can have multiple mailbox delivery queues whereas only one submission queue exists on a transport server.
• Remote Delivery Queue – This queue holds messages temporarily while they are being routed to remote servers using SMTP.  The remote server destinations can be external domains, SMTP connectors or destinations outside the scope of the AD site where the Hub server is located. Hub and Edge servers may have multiple remote delivery queues. Queues are automatically created and when there are no messages in the queues – for three minutes – then the queues are deleted.
• Poison Message Queue – This queue contains messages that have been determined to have problems in an Exchange environment after a server failure. The messages in this queue have a suspended status and can no longer be processed although they can still be manually deleted by an administrator. An administrator can also decide that a message in this queue can still be processed. If there are no messages in this queue then the queue will not be viewable through the queue viewer or by using the get-queue command. One poison message queue is on each transport server.
• Undeliverable Queue – This queue contains messages that cannot be routed to their intended destinations. One undeliverable queue is on each transport server. Dropped connections or unavailable mail servers can result in email messages ending up in this queue.

Some of the management activities that an administrator can perform using the queue viewer include:

1. Change the location of the Queue database – An administrator can change the location of the queue database of the queue database transaction logs
2. Filter queue – The Queue Viewer or the Exchange Management Shell can be used to filter queues on a server that has the Exchange Server 2010 Hub Transport server role or the Edge Transport server role installed. An administrator can create detailed filters based on specific criteria that can then be used to discover highly problematic mail flow issues. Administrators can also perform actions that result in different status messages for the queues.
3. Suspend queue – Disable the delivery of currently queued messages.
4. Resume queue – Enable the queue for further processing.
5. View queue – An administrator can view queues that are running on systems that have the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Hub Transport server role or the Edge Transport server role installed.
6. Retry queue – Override a retry timer that was set because of a failed connection attempt to the next hop. The override enables the connection to be made to the next hop.
7. Filter message in queue – The Queue Viewer or the Exchange Management Shell can be used to filter messages in the queues on a system that has the Exchange Server 2010 Hub Transport server role or the Edge Transport server role installed. An administrator can adjust their search to zero in on messages that may be causing mail flow problems. Operations can then be performed to alter the status of the message.
8. Suspend message – Temporarily stop delivery of a message.
9. Resume message – Resume delivery of a suspended message.
10. Remove message – A message is permanently deleted from a queue. Messages can be deleted with or without notifications sent to the sender of the message.
11. Export message – Make a copy of the message and store it on the disk drive. An administrator must first suspend the message before exporting it.

Administrators should be aware of the fact that the list of queues can be very large, depending on current mail flow. The list of queues may also be different based on how often messages arrive and leave the server.

List of Management Tasks for Transport Queues

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Last week, I wrote the post 5 Reasons why Exchange Server will Remain Relevant, where I highlighted the reasons why I believe Microsoft’s flagship messaging server will be around for some time yet.  Moving on, I would like to address an issue that fast growing organizations restricted to on-premise deployment of Exchange Server may eventually find themselves at: that of deteriorating performance due to the invariable growth in the size and number of their mailboxes.

Obviously, the most straight-forward method of catering to growing needs would be to splurge on a new, more capable server, or to make use of load-balancing so as spread the workload across more machines.  Both options are costly however, and may entail significant disruption to get everything installed and properly configured.  Today, I would like to suggest some relatively simple upgrades that businesses can use to lengthen the lifespan of their existing Exchange Server hardware.

Upgrade your Server with Gigabit Ethernet

If your Exchange Server installation is still running off Fast Ethernet, then an upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet may yield perceivable improvements for your local clients.   This can be especially true for mid-sized organizations with large number of users on the LAN.  This is an attractive option due to the sheer simplicity of swapping in a new gigabit Network Interface Card (NIC), and is an upgrade that can be completed within existing maintenance windows.  In addition, the cost of a Gigabit Ethernet server adapter is cheap at just over a hundred dollars these days.  Of course, this is assuming core network switches are able to support your upgraded server hardware, which may entail the purchasing of a corresponding gigabit module if this is not the case.

Make use of Archive Mailbox with a Network Attached Storage

Corporations who find their primarily data storage is bursting at the seams may want to consider setting up an archive mailbox.  Also known as personal archives, it is a feature found in Exchange Server 2010 that allows users to store historical messaging data as an additional mailbox.  This makes it possible to retain seamless access to their emails and to forgo troublesome client-side .pst files that are unlikely to meet regulatory requirements in the first place.

As outlined on Microsoft TechNet, Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) allows various deployments, which ranges from provisioning a user’s personal archive on the same mailbox database as the user’s primarily mailbox, another mailbox database on the same server, or a mailbox database on another Mailbox server in the same Active Directory site.  As you can see, this feature opens the door to a tiered storage architecture where archive mailboxes can be stored on a different storage subsystem, such as a network attached storage (NAS) appliance.  My personal favorite on this front is probably the Synology DS1511+, which is capable of delivering sufficient bandwidth using desktop-class hard disk drives to more than saturate a Gigabit Ethernet link.

Outlook 2010 and Exchange Server 2010

As I wrote previously in Seven Ways to Speed up Your Exchange Experience last year, performance tweaks by Microsoft has made Outlook 2010 a far more stable and faster client than its predecessors.  Moreover, its search capabilities have also been dramatically bolstered, which should greatly reduce users’ perception of a slow server.  If you haven’t rolled out Outlook 2010 yet, doing so may go some way to help lengthen the life of your existing Exchange deployment.

A less simple upgrade would be for organizations still on Exchange 2007 to migrate to Exchange 2010.  Among various performance enhancements are internal changes to the storage schemas that pertains to reading and writing emails to disk.  This means that administrators can expect a 70 percent I/O improvement over Exchange 2007, though this option depends heavily on existing licensing terms.

Upgrade to an SSD

Strictly speaking, upgrading to a solid-state drive (SSD) is neither simple nor cheap. There is no doubt in my mind of the superior performance that an SSD offers however, which will significantly improve the performance of an I/O heavy software such as Exchange Server.  Also, the use of migration software such as Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 2.0 may be able to simplify an upgrade to the point where it can be completed over a weekend.

The downside here is that while their prices have been steadily falling, the cost of SSD does mean that mid-sized businesses with higher storage requirements may not find it worthwhile to go this route.  A suggestion to combat the high cost of SSDs would be to create a tiered storage subsystem using an archive mailbox so as to keep the size of the main mailboxes down.

How to Lengthen the Life Span of Your Exchange Server

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In his article, “Exchange 2010 Mailbox Moves and Mailbox Resiliency”, Ross Smith discusses certain data loss scenarios that can exist even though Exchange Server 2010 includes continuous replication block mode. Continuous replication block mode was added to Exchange Server 2010 to provide greater protection from mailbox data losses.

Ross Smith specifically describes scenarios that result from a high logging generation rate environment. These scenarios often occur during mailbox move operations. One example given is when a mailbox has been moved from an active database to a second passive database. Then, right after the move, the server hosting the primary (or active) database fails. As a result of the primary server failure, the second database is then activated. But because the “AttemptCopyLastLogs” operation is unable to complete, the recently copied mailbox will not have a complete copy of the pre-move mailbox.

He then further discusses the Data Guarantee API and some of the API calls that can be used to help maintain and ensure successful mailbox move operations. Some of the calls mentioned include:  Check Replication Health and Check Replication Flush.

The Mailbox Replication service (MRS) is a service that administrators can monitor with the Data Guarantee API. The MRS is located on the Exchange 2010 Client Access server and is the service that actually does the work of moving mailboxes from one database to another. The mailbox moves are initiated using move request cmdlets. The specific cmdlet used to move mailboxes is known as the “Move-Mailbox” cmdlet.

The benefit of using the MRS to move mailboxes is that the mailboxes are still available to end users even while the mailboxes are being moved. Administrators can view, start or stop, cancel and manage the active move mailbox requests from any Exchange 2010 server. The mailbox replication service is also responsible for importing and exporting .pst files, and restoring disabled and soft-deleted mailboxes. All move requests in the Active Directory site are constantly monitored by the replication service. All instances of MRS use a sharing mechanism that prevents simultaneous move requests from being executed.

Additionally, there is a MRS throttling mechanism which can be used to adjust the parameter settings that control the mailbox replication service. Adjusting these settings allows an administrator to affect the performance service. Even though all MRS instances are aware of the tasks of other MRS instances, they each have their own configuration settings. An administrator can adjust the MRS settings of the MSExchangeMailboxReplication.exe.config file that, by default, is located in the same folder that Exchange server is located: <Exchange Installation Path>\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\MSExchangeMailboxReplication.exe.config. The configuration file can be found on all Client Access servers.

Typical MRS settings may look like:

<MRSConfiguration
MaxRetries = “50″
MaxCleanupRetries = “5″
MaxStallRetryPeriod = “00:15:00″
RetryDelay = “00:00:30″
MaxMoveHistoryLength = “2″
MaxActiveMovesPerSourceMDB = “7″
MaxActiveMovesPerTargetMDB = “2″
MaxActiveMovesPerSourceServer = “40″
MaxActiveMovesPerTargetServer = “4″
MaxTotalMovesPerMRS = “100″
FullScanMoveJobsPollingPeriod = “00:10:00″
MinimumTimeBeforePickingJobsFromSameDatabase = “00:00:04″
ServerCountsNotOlderThan = “00:10:00″
MRSAbandonedMoveJobDetectionTime = “01:00:00″
BackoffIntervalForProxyConnectionLimitReached = “00:30:00″
DataGuaranteeCheckPeriod = “00:00:10″
DataGuaranteeTimeout = “00:30:00″
DataGuaranteeLogRollDelay = “00:01:00″
EnableDataGuaranteeCheck = “true”
DisableMrsProxyCompression = “false”
DisableMrsProxyBuffering = “false”
MinBatchSize = “100″
MinBatchSizeKB = “256″ />
</configuration>

Here is a brief description for some of those configuration settings:

• MaxRetries: This setting controls the maximum number of times MRS will attempt to perform a task after a transient failure has occurred. The values range from 0 through 1000. The default value is 60.
• MaxCleanupRetries: This setting controls the number of times that MRS should attempt to clean up a task. If the maximum number of attempts is reached, the task fails. The values range from 0 through 100. The default value is 5.
• RetryDelay: This setting controls the amount of time MRS will wait before it retries a task after a transient failure. The values range from 00:00:10 (10 seconds) through 00:30:00 (30 minutes). The default value is 00:00:30 (30 seconds).
• MaxTotalMovesPerMRS: This setting controls how many “move requests” can be processed by a single CAS system.  The values range from 0 to 1024. The default value is 100.
• MaxActiveMovesPerSourceServer: This setting controls the maximum number of move requests that are allowed per source server. The values range from 0 to 1000. The default value is 50.
• MaxActiveMovesPerTargetServer: This setting controls the maximum number of move requests per target server. The values range from 0 to 1000. The default value is 5.
• MaxActiveMovesPerSourceMDB: This setting controls the maximum number of move requests per source mailbox database. The values range from 0 to 100. The default value is 5.
• FullScanMoveJobsPollingPeriod: This setting controls how often each instance of MRS scans for new tasks. The values range from 00:03:00 (3 minutes) through 1.00:00:00 (1 day). The default value is 00:10:00 (10 minutes).

Any changes made to the MSExchangeMailboxReplication.exe.config file should also be made on all other Client Access servers. Only experienced administrators should make changes to the configuration file. As always, keep track of all changes made to the configuration file.

Mailbox Replication Service

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The prevalence of free and high-quality web-based email services has undoubtedly helped advance the prevalence of emails. Indeed, one of the first stops for a new Internet user these days would be to first pick up an email account or two at one of the free webmail providers.  Given the familiarity of users with web-hosted emails, should Exchange Administrators be at all concerned that Exchange Server would eventually lose its appeal?

Well, my personal opinion is that Exchange Server will continue to retain its relevance for some time yet, especially in the realm business. I’ve highlighted some of the reasons below.

1. The Hosted Exchange route

Buoyed by the advantages of a cloud-based deployment, some companies have made a strategic decision to migrate their on-premise server deployments into the cloud.  This doesn’t necessarily sound the death knell for Exchange Server however, given Microsoft’s foresight in creating a version of Exchange for cloud deployment.  Depending on the flexibility of partners and the size of your deployment, Email Administrators can leverage on the full breathe of capabilities found in Exchange but set up as a hosted solution.

2. Web email with Outlook Web Access

Employees or businesses that desiring a Web-only approach to cut down on maintenance costs will still be able to tap into Outlook Web App (OWA).  As implemented in Exchange 2010, OWA lets staffers effectively access their email and voicemail from any of the major web browsers on the market (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari).  Users are able to access their calendar, contacts and tasks – providing a level of usability from a web platform practically indistinguishable from that of a desktop experience.

3. Convenience of Outlook

I’ve used a variety of email clients over a span of 15 years, ranging from the likes of Eudora in the past, and open source ones such as Thunderbird.  I’ve eventually gone back to Microsoft Outlook 2010, which I currently use on a day-to-day basis.  As I wrote in an article published on TheEmailAdmin last year, Outlook 2010 not only offers a polished interface but includes advanced features for business collaboration such as shared calendars, threaded view, and support for connecting to multiple Exchange Servers.

4. Popularity of Exchange ActiveSync

Confronted with RIM’s robust push mail technology, Microsoft created the very first version of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) in 2002.  The technology was subsequently enhanced and shipped together with Exchange Server 2003; and the EAS protocol has come a long way since those early days.  For example, Exchange Server 2010 shipped with EAS 14.0 which incorporates the ability to look up the free/busy status of a user as well as SMS syncing, among other new capabilities.  So not only is EAS a cornerstone of Exchange Server today, but the protocol is also widely implemented on other operating systems such as the iOS and Android.

5. Strength of Archival Options

Google’s commitment to achieve zero downtime for Google Apps and the company’s revision of its SLA terms notwithstanding, Gmail suffered an outage earlier this year after a buggy storage driver update resulted in corrupted data being replicated across its data centers. Thankfully, offline tape backups meant that no data were actually lost.  As I highlighted in The Big Gmail Crash and the Lesson for Email Administrators in March, one of the lessons gleaned from the outage pertains to the value of an offline backup.

The crux of the matter has to do with the fact that while it is undeniable that many cloud hosted solutions are highly redundant, users have practically no control over the actual backup or archival process.  This is underscored by various third-party vendors that swiftly unveiled software tools for offline archival of Gmail accounts.  Unfortunately, though these utilities may be highly usable, they are ill-suited for the demands of the average businesses.

In comparison, Microsoft Exchange is a highly-respected messaging server that has been around for more than 15 years.  Deployed by some of the largest enterprises, Exchange support can be found in every business-centric archival and backup application today.  Moreover, there are also many tried-and-tested tools that work exclusively with Exchange to deliver the maximum choice for administrators when it comes to backup and archival capabilities.

While it would be impossible to project the popularity of Exchange Server another 20 years down the road, I think it is safe to say that Microsoft’s flagship messaging server won’t be going away anytime soon.

5 Reasons why Microsoft Exchange Server will Remain Relevant

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It is never good news to have servers compromised by hackers or corporate espionage.  Given the finite resources of any company however, the open secret is that not every computing node on the network can be equally well-protected.  As it is, priorities are often heavily skewed towards protecting servers running crucial Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services, or publicly accessible Web servers.

What many businesses do not realize is how the humble email server is often overlooked and left under protected.  Yet it remains a front-facing server due to its location on the Internet, or in the DMZ that demarcates the Internet from the relatively safe harbor of the company intranet.

I want to highlight five repercussions of a hacked Exchange Server account today so as to illustrate the importance of ensuring that your Exchange Server is patched in a timely manner, as well as the need to ensure that adequate best practices and security defenses are put in place.

1. Stolen email messages

The most obvious repercussion of a hacked Exchange Server account would of course be the theft of email messages that have yet to be archived.  Organizations that do not practise off-line archiving of emails could conceivably see years of email messages quietly siphoned away by the hackers to be examined and dissected at leisure.  This can lead to the exposure of trade secrets and other highly confidential data, with the very real danger of careless, private remarks being aired as public knowledge – which could have embarrassing or career-ending ramifications.  It must be pointed out also that email notifications containing passwords and other personally identifiable information can often be found in old emails.  Access to this information opens the door for the bad guys to break into other accounts, as well as exposes an employee to the possibility of identify fraud.

2. Spear phishing attacks

Armed with the latest email communications of colleagues, business partners and senior executives, it is now trivial for a hacker to create sophisticated phishing attacks with a high chance of success.  The likelihood of pulling it off is far higher as the perpetrators can leverage existing information and craft their spear phishing attempt as a continuation of earlier correspondences.  It is worth noting that the same threat exists should the email accounts of business partners and other parties be broken into.  With the popularity of redirecting users to malware laden websites these days, staffers should be warned against clicking on shortened URLs or unfamiliar Web addresses.

3. Resetting of other account passwords

Signing up for a new social networking account or an email account for your private use?  You will in all likelihood be asked to furnish an additional email address as a precaution against forgotten passwords; being in control of such an email addresses is often construed as final proof of ownership of an account.  In the same vein, unauthorized access of an email account can led to the ability to reset the account passwords for other online accounts.  A worst case scenario that I’ve encountered would probably be the illicit transfer of valuable domain names being initiated from the right email address.

4. Compromised account password

Depending on the configuration of your company’s servers, the compromised account password is likely to be the same password used on Active Directory.  This is also the reason why Microsoft does not recommend that administrators use user names as the email alias.

5. Covert monitoring

After successfully breaking into an Exchange Server account and copying out older emails for study, some hackers may opt to lie low and quietly monitor for new correspondences.  Depending on business verticals, the most damage by far could result from this posture.  While server logs will retain evidence of the monitoring efforts, these logs are not something that is routinely examined.

My objective today is to convince system administrators or IT managers (or help them convince their CIOs) of the importance of properly securing their Exchange Servers.  The security-conscious email administrator may also want to take a look at Securing Your Microsoft Exchange 2010 Server, where I’ve highlighted various resources to help you tighten the screws on your Exchange installation.

Next week, I want to talk about some defensive measures and practices that companies can employ to lower or mitigate the risks should their Exchange Server account ever be broken into.

5 Repercussions of a Hacked Exchange Server Account

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Exchange 2010 SP1 offers significant capabilities for data storage and retention, all of which can be greatly enhanced by the addition of third party archiving solutions. These solutions can increase mailbox storage to virtually unlimited capacity, provide for search and discovery, reviews for compliance and internal investigations, disaster recover scenarios, and more, all by maintaining a complete record of all messaging that is kept separate from the Exchange infrastructure.

Exchange has its own archiving solution in place, but many customers choose to go with a more feature rich third-party software package, either to get more features or to separate the archiving function from the Exchange server function. Third-party solutions have three distinctly different methods for accessing messaging data within Exchange. Understanding these methods and how each can impact the performance of your Exchange system is important when shopping for a solution. Each has both pros and cons, depending upon the goals of the archiving, and the system resources of key Exchange server roles within your organization.

1. Journaling

Journaling captures copies of all messages sent using SMTP, and is very good at archiving messages and calendar data when it is sent to or from external users. Journaling can place an additional load on hub transport servers, and won’t capture any changes to messages or calendar data once it is in a user’s mailbox.

2. Crawling

Crawling accesses an archiving mailbox at regular intervals, and copies messages down to the mail archive system from that archiving mailbox. It uses a standard client access protocol, such as IMAP over an SSL connection, to download data securely and without requiring any additional agent on the Exchange server. While it is possible that messages that are created and then hard deleted between intervals could be missed, a shorter polling interval minimizes this. Crawling can place an additional load on mailbox servers.

3. Log shipping

Log shipping is able to archive every transaction including messages and calendar information, and any changes to those, by copying the Exchange logs to the archiving system. The archiving system replays the logs to reproduce the exact state of all data, much like high-availability solutions within Exchange. This is a very effective and low impact way to record all messaging transactions, but is not supported by Microsoft as a third party archiving solution, primarily because many third party applications may inject data back into the Exchange database.

With so many ways to implement archiving, evaluate the archiving solution you are considering based on its performance and potential impact to your system. Depending upon which method your product uses, you could consider scaling up your hub transport or mailbox servers to meet any additional load introduced by journaling or crawling.

Personally, I do not recommend any solution that puts you in an unsupported configuration, so my advice is to stay away from products that use log shipping. While you may not ever need to call Microsoft Support, you don’t want to put yourself into a situation where they cannot help you.

3 Ways to Implement Exchange 2010 Archiving

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For those who prefer their email to arrive at specific mailboxes, owning multiple mailboxes can be advantageous as emails are naturally filtered out based on audiences, subject material and even personal correspondences.  On the other hand, they can dramatically increase the amount of work that the mail servers have to do, especially if more than one user is running multiple mailboxes.

There are Exchange servers that enable users to gain access to several accounts in just one profile, which eliminate re-logging into a different username every time you want to switch accounts.  For you to be able to enjoy this feature, the administrator needs to configure Outlook in such a way that it will permit access to multiple email boxes in just one profile.

Administrators should begin using Outlook with the profile of the first account configured in the Exchange server mailbox to add a “delegate” account.  It might well be likely that validation will be required so you need to log in as the user of the first account, and then follow these steps for both Outlook 2002 and 2003 versions:

1. Click the Tools menu, and select Options to add a delegate.
2. Choose the Delegates tab, and then click Add.
3. Provide a username by typing it or selecting it for the delegate second account.
4. Click Add> OK or press the Enter key.
5. Find the Delegate Permissions dialog boxes and then select Editor (read, create, and modify items) in each of them.
6. Click OK or press the Enter key two times.
7. On the View menu, click the Folder List to make it visible.
8. Do a right-click on the Mailbox – user name (for you to start adding a new user).
9. Click Properties for Mailbox and choose the user name on the shortcut menu.
10. On the Permissions tab, click the Add button.
11. Provide the user name by typing or selecting the second account you want to add, and then click Add.
12. Click OK or press the Enter key.
13. From the Name box, click the recently added user name for the second account.
14. From the Roles box, click Owner> OK or press the Enter key.
15. Repeat the process from step 8 until 14 for all the other folders in the mailbox.
16. On the File menu of Outlook, click Exit and Log off Windows.

You are all set to reboot Windows and log yourself back in using the recently added user name for the second account.  Once you are inside Windows, you can open Outlook and use the profile for the recently added user name.

To add the new user name for the second account into the Exchange Server, follow these steps:

1. Click Tools from the menu and select E-mail Accounts.
2. Click View or choose change existing e-mail accounts.
3. Choose the Microsoft Exchange Server, and click the Change button.
4. Choose More Settings and click the Advanced tab.
5. Click the Add button.
6. Provide the username of the first account, and then click the OK button three times.

At this time, you should see the mailbox of the first account in the Folder List.  Your user will now be able to send meeting requests and messages using the second account as if they were coming from the first account just by entering the user name of the first account in the “From” field.  All messages sent will contain both the user names of the first and second account.

While it is definitely useful to have multiple mailboxes, it can also be difficult to take away when problems occur stemming from having multiple mailboxes in one profile.

There have been reports submitted by some users that they receive warning messages upon reading email coming from multiple accounts when they have recently installed a service pack update.  The message can look like this:

“This item cannot be displayed in Reading Pane. Open the item to read the contents.”

When you double-click on the message, it will produce an error message that says: “Cannot open this item. Unknown Error.”

When you attempt to add the mailbox again, it will lead to other error messages including: “The name cannot be resolved.  The connection to Microsoft Exchange is not available. Outlook must be online or connected to the internet to complete this action.”

The error message can occur even if the user was able to successfully send and receive emails using the primary account in the Exchange server.  The problems are caused by incorrect routing groups leftover or the groups have not been cleaned out when there was a recent migration done.  It can happen when you use Outlook to store names of mailboxes internally using a “AD” syntax to fully describe the exact location of the mailbox.  The confusion was caused by the way Exchange 2007 is employing a different location rather than the one stored inside Outlook.

End users will definitely feel the effects of having an out-of-sync location for the mailbox with delegates, the use of frequently mailed list of contacts, and email replies.

You must know that the real cause of the out of sync mailbox location is that the migrated user had an attribute commonly called the “LegacyExchangeDN” pointed to the former old AD location after a successful migration from the Exchange 2003, and the user name created using Exchange 2007 does not have the same attribute.  This can be corrected by simply adding a new X.500 address to all the different mailboxes having the value of the “LegacyExchangeDN” attribute.  All entries in outlook that are cached will be able to locate the mailboxes of the users and can prevent the error messages mentioned above from being generated by the system.

Using Multiple Mailboxes In One Profile

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In his blog article, “Exchange mailbox protection explained” , Stephen J. Bigelow discusses the problems with unprotected Exchange mailboxes and the various options for protecting them.

He explains that unsecured mailboxes can be easily compromised and their contents stolen. There are other problems associated with unsecured mailboxes such as: identity verification, privacy and proof of delivery. Additionally unsecured electronic mailboxes are subject to spam, viruses, and other harmful malware that is all too common with using popular, everyday email systems like Hotmail, AOL, Gmail and even Outlook. And almost all of these mail systems use the open-to-anyone Internet as their communications vehicle.

Stephen goes on to explain that the loss of email data impacts not only the productivity of the employee but also the productivity of the company or organization that the employee works for.

If I think about how the loss of my email content would affect my business activities then I immediately start thinking about backing up my data. I cannot afford to lose any of my emails. As an email administrator it is your responsibility to protect against the loss of, or the invasion of, all emails that circulate through your organization’s email server.

Stephen explains the various ways that an Exchange Server administrator can protect the email contents of their servers.

One of the options available to administrators using Exchange Server 2007 is known as “Cluster Continuous Replication”. Using Cluster Continuous Replication allows an administrator to: reduce the frequency of their full backups, reduce the total amount of data backed up and to shorten the recovery time objective (RTO). The RTO can be found in their department’s service level agreement (SLA) documents outlining the level of service which they are to provide for their customers’ or organization’s various departments.

Cluster continuous replication (CCR) is a high availability feature that combines the asynchronous log shipping and replay technology of Exchange server with the fail-over and management features provided by the Cluster service. CCR is designed to provide high availability for Exchange Mailbox servers by eliminating single points of failure and without requiring any special hardware. And there are no shared storage requirements to implement cluster continuous replication.

A second copy of the database is continuously and asynchronously updated using the database failure recovery functionality of Exchange Server. Thus, CCR operates in an active-passive mode with changes being made to an active copy of the database while the second (passive) database is also updated. Copying of the logs and replays are continuously performed.

The key points about Cluster Continuous Replication include the following:

• Continuous replication is asynchronous so not every log file that exists on the active server will be on the passive server. The logs are not copied until they are closed and no longer used by the Mailbox server. However, if an administrator has scheduled an outage on the active server for routine maintenance then the log files will be kept in sync.
• Continuous replication places almost no load on the CPU or input/output (I/O) devices. Secure file sharing is used by the passive node to obtain access to the logs.
• Servers in the cluster will take on both active and passive roles depending on their failover status. What may have been a passive node initially can change after a failover from the active node to the passive node. And vice-versa – the status of the active node can change to being a passive node after a failover has occurred.
• The time it takes to failover from node 1 to node 2 is the same amount of time it would take to failover from node 2 to node 1. On small servers, the estimated failover time is less than two minutes. For larger servers, a scheduled outage can be less than four minutes due to the time it takes to perform a controlled shutdown of an active node.
• CCR can be combined with standby continuous replication (SCR) to replicate storage groups locally in a primary data center. Replicating locally could provide for more highly available servers, using CCR, should a failure occur on the active server. A secondary remote datacenter could contain a passive node in a failover cluster that hosts the SCR targets for site resiliency. If the primary datacenter failed then the SCR targets hosted in the remote standby cluster could be quickly activated.

As noted by Stephen, in his article, CCR has been replaced with database availability groups (DAGs) in Exchange Server 2010.

Protecting Mailboxes with Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR)

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I’ve previously written about why companies may want an on-premise deployment of Exchange Server.  However, a hosted email service may be more suited for some businesses at times, for reasons relating to cost, the lack of in-house expertise or simply as a matter of preference.  Today, I want to outline six factors that companies may want to consider before deciding on an Exchange service provider.

1. Look for Exchange 2010

Though the bulk of service providers have migrated to Exchange 2010, there are those who still offer the older Exchange 2007.  As such, companies should not assume that signing up for Exchange hosting automatically gives them access to Microsoft’s most recent iteration of Exchange Server.  This is important because Outlook 2010 when used with Exchange 2010 offers a number of compelling capabilities, such as conversation view, MailTips, as well as the ability to flag entire conversations to be ignored.  In the same vein, it would be good to clarify your service provider’s stance on upgrading to new versions of Exchange as they become available.

2. Mobile and BlackBerry support

Practically all email providers today charge a premium to support checking emails via mobile phones or BlackBerry devices.  The former is easily supported by enabling the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) option, while the latter requires the installation of an additional BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) service.  As such, email providers that support “mobile phones” do not necessarily mean that they will work with BlackBerry smartphones, while some providers do not support both EAS and the BlackBerry for the same user.

3. Outlook CAL included?

Some providers include the CAL (Client Access License) for the latest version of the Microsoft Outlook email client as part of their offering.  The effectively allow businesses to tap into the newest features of Outlook without having to upgrade their current version of Microsoft Office.  This is obviously a boon, as businesses incur no additional cost, though businesses that have already purchased Outlook will find this of limited benefit.

4. Examine the provider’s uptime record

IT managers and email administrators with any experience at all under their belt will be familiar with the adage about how “talk is cheap.”  Indeed, one cannot help but wonder about some of the providers who offer extremely high levels of “guaranteed uptime” for ludicrously low prices.  Some even tout 100% uptime, promising refunds if it falls below the mark.  Note however, that such promises are known in the industry as “marketing uptime.”  With penalty charges pegged at a pro-rated amount of the basic monthly subscription, any payout can hardly be considered punitive – and are typically given in the form of service credits.

Rather than have business deals go awry due to an inopportune downtime, it is highly preferable that the service provider not fail in the first place.  As such, it makes sense to first examine its track record in terms of downtime.  Additional care can also be exercised by talking with the service provider or its current customers to better ascertain the procedures in place to handle unscheduled outages.

5. Look at the support tracking system

Examining the support tracking system of an Exchange provider can yield additional clues to the robustness of the company.  As a general guide, a minimum level of automation in managing support emails signifies a more reliable or established provider.  Conversely, a completely manual response should be deeply worrying, and could well be the result of a very small outfit that has not yet invested in the appropriate customer management systems.  In addition, businesses should also look out for a dashboard that shows the real-time health of the service provider’s network, as well as an alternative way (other than email) of informing key employees about major system outages.

6. Migration Procedures

Eager to gain new accounts, some Exchange providers are dangling free data migration service to entice existing Exchange users to make the leap.  Such offers can result in substantial discounts in some cases, and help simplify the migration process.  Equally important, but often neglected would be the provider’s policy (and charges) when it comes to exporting your Exchange database.  This leaves the door open for migration to another provider in the future, or for switching to an on-premise Exchange deployment.

Feel free to chip in on other factors that businesses should consider prior to signing up with an Exchange service provider.

6 Factors to Consider when Selecting a Hosted Exchange Provider

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Whether you are considering migrating to a new version of Exchange server or you are contemplating a first-time install of Exchange server, as an administrator you will greatly benefit from knowing and documenting your environment. Administrators should be able to pull up documentation, graphical charts and spreadsheets that illustrate their networks, existing servers and their data/application path topography. Not only will this benefit you in your planning efforts but it will also provide a quick path for troubleshooting problems as they arise.

Here is an outline for administrators to follow in their pre-troubleshooting efforts:

1. Understand your topology
2. Understand your servers and workloads
3. Know your Backup strategy
4. Document your Exchange Server configuration and settings
5. Know your client interfaces
6. Review and document all your Network connections and communication paths
7. Know your Environment changes

The details of these steps are as follows:

1. Understand your topology

It is an understatement to say that IT departments and administrators should understand the physical layouts and the logical flow of their email communications though their organization. These diagrams can become crucial to have during the troubleshooting process so it is best to have both diagrams – for quick at a glance viewings – as well as spreadsheets showing the details. Diagrams should include the following:

• Cities
• Locations and IP addresses of firewalls, Domain Controllers and Exchange Servers
• Bandwidth and latency of site links
• Subnets

For logical structures, the corresponding diagrams would contain the following:

• Active Directory topology (domain names, forest names, AD Sites, and trusts)
• Domain Controllers
• Exchange servers and Exchange Virtual Servers (for clusters)
• Site link costs
• Number of users

  2. Understand your servers and workloads

To help with understanding the workload requirements of Exchange server, administrators should document the following parameters:

• Number of mailboxes
• Usage patterns of the mailboxes (heavy, light, medium)
• Exchange Server version, service pack and rollup level
• Device driver versions
• Item counts in mailbox folders (higher item counts indicate a greater load)
• The number of hard drive spindles and controllers
• Protocols and driver connections (SCSI, iSCSI, SATA, JBOD, SAS, SAN)
• Directory and file locations of the databases, log files and server files
• Amount of memory on the Exchange server system
• Roles on the Exchange server system
• Location of the server relative to the firewall and network

  3. Know your Backup strategy

• How often is your Exchange server system backed up?
• How long does the backup take?
• Can backup be restored in the time specified in your Service Level Agreement?
• How often are rebuilds and restores tested?
• Do you have a high availability solution (CCR/SCR)?

  4. Document your Exchange Server configuration and settings

• What version of the operating system are you running?
• What is the operating system Service Pack level?
• Do you have Administrative Groups?
• What is the name of the Exchange Server(s)?
• What is the hardware manufacturer and model of the server(s)?
• What kind of Anti-Virus software is installed?
• Are there any Front End servers? If so, how many?
• Are there any Back End servers? If so, how many?
• Are there any Edge role servers? If so, how many?
• How many Exchange Server Mailbox roles servers are there?
• How many Exchange Server CAS role servers are there?
• How many and what kind of High Availability solutions have been deployed?

  5. Know your client interfaces

• What are the Outlook client versions and service packs?
• Is Outlook running in Exchange cached mode or online mode?
• Are there any third party add-ins enabled in Outlook?

  6. Review and document all your Network connections and communication paths

• Are the Exchange servers on the same network or separated by a WAN?
• Enumerate and list all the network devices between the Exchange servers, i.e. routers, switches and firewalls
• What network cards and drivers are installed on the Exchange servers?
• Are any network interface cards configured for teaming? If so, which ports or links?

  7. Know your Environment changes

• Have there been any recent changes in the environment including server changes, network changes, group policy changes, software updates, security patches, etc.?
• Do Exchange administrators have the ability to install software on the Exchange server?
• Can changes to the environment be easily tracked?

All of the above parameters, if well documented and diagrammed, can be an immense help to administrators when problems arise and troubleshooting efforts begin.

7 Steps to Troubleshoot Exchange Server Environment

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