Google recently hung a ‘going out of business’ sign on its Message Continuity service for users of Microsoft Exchange. Google will continue to provide the service to its users until their contracts run out, but after that, they’re on their own.

Since the service was launched a little over a year ago, “hundreds” of businesses have subscribed to the offering, which uses Google’s cloud to provide email continuity when a Microsoft Exchange environment is interrupted for any reason.

Hundreds of users, though, can’t compete with the “millions” of businesses that have moved their entire email operation to Google Apps, so Searchzilla has decided to scrap its continuity product for Exchange  and concentrate all its resources on its application suite. Continue reading Google Deserts Exchange Users by Killing Message Continuity

As the end of November draws near, anticipation is building that Service Pack 2 for Exchange 2010, which was announced in May, will finally be released. Given Microsoft’s track record with the last two roll-up updates for the software, you really can’t blame Redmond for being extra careful with this service pack.

Although originally expected to make it out the door at the end of October, it appears that the new deadline for the service pack is sometime next week, if Microsoft’s general manager for Exchange, Kevin Allison is to be believed. Continue reading Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP2 is Coming Soon

Last month, I posted an article titled “What’s a good mailbox size?” where I discussed many of the considerations an architect must take into account when sizing storage for a new email system. In that post, I also set up a survey where I asked readers to answer six short questions about what they think makes a good size for a mailbox, as well as what future plans they might have for system growth. As promised in last month’s post, I am sharing the results of the survey now.

While the total number of respondents was somewhat less than I hoped for, the quality of those responses from survey participants is greatly appreciated. No one skipped any of the first four questions; the last two were “if” type and should have been skipped if not applicable. Thanks to all those who took the time to share their answers. I will share each question and the responses by percentage below.

Continue reading As it Turns Out, a Good Mailbox Size Is…

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. Continue reading A Closer Look at Exchange in Microsoft’s Office 365

As administrators we hear a variety of complaints throughout the week. Some complaints we acknowledge with a minimum of a head nod and an “I’ll get to it as soon as I can” response. Other complaints such as “The system is down” or “I don’t have access to email” capture our attention immediately. But some complaints fall in the middle.

One such complaint is that “…searching on my emails seems slow”. This is an issue that usually means something has broken and will require some time to fix. It also means that if allowed to continue it could also have a greater impact on employee productivity.

Think of the various departments that are dependent on their abilities to search email. For instance, your sales and support departments rely on their abilities to satisfy their customer needs and so they often must search through old emails for keywords such as their competitor’s names or products. Likewise a law firm or office will want to search on emails involving their casework that might relate to their current caseloads.

Continue reading Troubleshooting Mailbox Database Indexing

The fruits of a partnership announced last year by HP and Microsoft have finally ripened with the announcement of a new series of application appliances aimed at simplifying the deployment of critical business software programs, including Exchange 2010.

The Exchange appliance, the HP E5000 Messaging System, will be available in March starting at $36,000, plus the cost of a software license. It’s designed to meet the design goals of Exchange 2010–including the creation of low-cost large mailboxes that can be scaled quickly to meet growing data demands and are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week–and to reduce the complexity of deploying and optimizing storage for critical business messaging.

With the new appliance, an organization can cash in, with a minimum of pain, on Exchange 2010 benefits, such as boosting user productivity by removing archival functions from the desktop with the elimination of *.pst files, improving performance by adopting new IO patterns that reduce IOPS requirements by 85 percent and decrease storage demands and costs with built-in replication for direct attached storage.

Continue reading New Exchange hardware released by HP-Microsoft

More and more companies are learning about virtualization technologies. And there are a lot of companies that have already gone from a dedicated server environment to a virtualized server setup in their data center.

Companies, IT directors, their staff and administrators are all considering the advantages and disadvantages of virtual server technology and whether it is the right choice for their company. There are many reasons to go to a virtual environment. And when going to a virtual environment a frequent question is which of our servers would benefit from being virtualized?

Email servers are great candidates for virtualization. If your organization is small then you are probably already running your email server or servers on small boxes with a certain amount of CPU, memory and disk drives. One of the parameters to look at when considering a virtual server is to ask the question: what is the current CPU utilization of my existing email server?

Typically, most data centers are running their email servers at anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of CPU utilization. If that is the case for your company, and you have other servers also running at 20 to 25 percent, or less, then you are a good candidate for an email server virtualization effort.

And what does it mean to virtualize my server? In short, a server virtualization means that we are consolidating one or more existing servers onto one physical frame or box. Each of the virtual servers gets their own allocation of virtual CPUs, memory, disk storage and I/O adapters. A combination of software and firmware performs the distribution and balancing of those resources among the virtual servers that have been defined on the physical frame or box. Usually a hypervisor is involved as a sort of traffic cop for distributing those resources.

Continue reading 3 Reasons to Virtualize Your Email Servers – Part 1 of 2

Information leaks can be harmful to an organization’s profitable operation. Microsoft Exchange 2010, with its rights management features, can give a company the kind of control over its information to reduce the risk of such leaks occurring.

In an Exchange environment, rights management can be imposed through the Active Directory Rights Management Server. Rights Management was introduced by Microsoft to its Windows Server product in 2003 and later renamed when Windows Server 2008 debuted. The name change reflected improved integration with Active Directory.

Rights Management allows administrators, as well as others, to control access to documents, emails and web pages. It also can be used to limit what can be done to those things. For example, functions such as printing, copying, altering or forwarding can be enabled or disabled for documents or emails. What’s more, administrators can bundle rights in templates that can be applied across a system.

Continue reading Plugging Leaks using Rights Management

Every end user out there takes for granted that when they push the Send button that there will be no problem. And take for granted that when we go to read our inbox that there will be no trouble to download new messages. But, of course, we all know that sending and receiving email messages can be interrupted at any time. And as administrators we must be able to produce solutions as fast as possible.

If your organization is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, or Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 and your end users try to send or receive email then they might run into one of the following scenarios:

• Exchange server does not accept Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) messages from certain Internet domains.
• Exchange server cannot deliver SMTP messages to certain Internet domains.

An administrator can perform a reverse Domain Name System (DNS) lookup and find that the Exchange server that is sending the SMTP message cannot be resolved. They should then perform a network monitor trace and look for any NBT (NetBIOS over TCP/IP) queries before the Exchange server disconnects.

The sender will probably receive a non-delivery report (NDR) that contains the 5.5.0 error code. This code indicates a generic SMTP failure. The NDR will look similar to the following:

> Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.
>
>       Subject:
>       Sent:    9/12/02 3:39 PM
>
> The following recipient(s) could not be reached:
>
> user@destination.com on 9/12/02 3:39 PM
> Your mail system could not find a way to successfully communicate with the destination system. Please notify your administrator. <Server.source.com> #5.5.0

Additionally error code: #5.5.4 “Transaction failed” might also be generated.

Administrators should also check the Windows Event viewer on the Exchange server that is sending the error message. They should look for an error message that contains event 4000 or event 4001. The error message will be similar to the following:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: MSExchangeTransport
Event ID: 4000
Description: Message delivery to the remote domain ‘ destination.com ‘ failed for the following reason: SMTP protocol error.

This situation can occur if the destination SMTP server performs a reverse DNS lookup and if one of the following conditions is true:

• The IP address does not match the domain name that is used in the return address of the email message.
• A pointer (PTR) record does not exist or is invalid for the source SMTP server’s IP address.

An administrator may find themselves in a situation where email messages which are sent from one domain to another domain are not delivered. Suppose the originator of the email sent has a domain name that is used in the return address of the message such as originator.com. Once the message is sent and the destination SMTP server receives the message it will perform a reverse DNS lookup. If the destination SMTP server finds that the PTR record for the originator.com domain does not exist or is incorrect, it will not deliver the message.

Administrators should be aware that using a dynamic IP address with a network adapter connected to the internet may require a reconfiguration of the Exchange Server settings for proper routing of email messages. This may be necessary for the Exchange Server to route mail from the originator.com domain through an SMTP connector to a smart host.

If an administrator wants reverse DNS lookups to be performed on all connections then they can configure the Exchange server to reject incoming connections by specifying a domain name on the SMTP virtual server. Administrators can perform this operation by right clicking the SMTP virtual server, selecting Properties, then the Access tab and then looking under Connection Control.

Administrators can correct this problem by following the steps outlined below:

1. Confirm that the public DNS records that are hosted on your DNS server are correct. Verify that your DNS server has these settings:                             Ensure that an MX record for your domain points to a valid Host (A) record. The MX record for originator.com points to mail.originator.com. Therefore mail.originator.com is a valid email server.                                                      Ensure that the Host (A) record points to a valid IP Address. In my case, mail.originator.com points to 200.44.51.64.
2. Confirm that there is a valid PTR record for the Public IP address of every SMTP server or Exchange Server system that is sending email.

Not being able to send or receive email ranks right up there with having your debit card declined at the checkout counter. It is a very frustrating experience for the end user but even more so for the administrators whose responsibility it is to ensure that communications flow as freely as the motor oil in our automobiles.

If a communications problem is consistently happening then an administrator can check the logs and the network to look for errors or other problems. But if email is being sent or received randomly then it can make the diagnostic process that much more difficult.

After clicking on the send/receive button on the top bar an end user can expect to see a picture of two folders on the bottom right of the screen. A status message should also appear which reads “send/receive status xx%”. The send/receive looks like it is making progress but subsequent clicks on the send/receive button may not produce the same results. Users end up recycling their power in an effort to clear out any problems and sometimes this works – for a short while. And that’s when the administrators get called.

One of the easiest things for an administrator to check is to look for multiple open Outlook sessions.

Continue reading Troubleshooting Slow Exchange Server Connections