Month: August 2009

British Airways: Earn Tier points on all economy flights

by ucinfo, posted in !News, Flaphead

About bl00dy time too, I fly BA a fair bit, but I pay so want to do it cheap! .. I received this in an email:

We’re delighted to tell you that as of 18 August 2009, you’ll be able to earn Tier Points on every flight* you take with us and our oneworld® partners. This even includes flights on discount economy tickets, for which you’ll receive 25% of the Tier Points you’d earn on fully flexible economy tickets.

It’s a programme change that has been frequently suggested in the feedback we’ve received from our members. Now you’ll have even more opportunities to earn the Tier Points that enable you to move up through the different levels of the Executive Club and enjoy the additional benefits each tier brings.

I hope this programme change will benefit you and that the next time you fly you choose to fly with British Airways.

Notes from the MMMUG August 2009

by ucinfo, posted in Exchange, Flaphead, MMMUG, MsExchange

Wow not many spare chairs, so this was an Exchange 2010 HA session with Ewan Tsang-MacKellar.

Session started with the HA options Exchange 2007 gave us.  Then Ewan introduced us to Exchange 2010 DAG’s (Database Availability Groups).

  • DAG
    • Config information is stored in the AD and the Windows Failover cluster (yeah it’s still used). 
      • It uses the cluster database, heartbeats and the quorum for a failover cluster
    • The DAG is the boundary of replication and failover.
    • Each DAG contains a number of mailbox role servers.  You can have up to 16 servers per DAG and 100 databases.
    • DAGs use Log shipping to move data to other replicas of the database with  1mb Log files. 
      • Replay process similar to Exchange 2010. 
      • Now use TCP sockets NOT SMB for log shipping.
      • Push based log shipping.
      • Can choose the TCP port now too.
      • Supports encryption and compression
    • If a database fails, Exchange will determine the best copy to use.  The CAS will then reconnect outlook automatically.  Failover times are less than 30 seconds (which seem a bit more than Exchange 2007 CCR)
    • Can spread a DAG over Active Directory Sites ;-) Can make it like an SCR target in Exchange 2007.
    • Maximum number of passive copies = # servers in DAG –1 active
    • You can co-locate other roles on a mailbox server that is in a DAG.
    • Database names are unique across an forest
    • Still uses a FSW
    • Incremental Reseeding
    • Continuous Circular logging
  • Active Manager
    • HA’s brain
    • Primary (holds changable state information of each database) and secondary
      • PAM
    • One server in DAG is selected
    • Secondary
      • SAM
      • Helps CAS find the active copy of the database
      • All other servers in DAG
    • On failure of a database will select best copy
      • Copy Status [Good]
      • Catalog (healthy of crawling) [Healthy]
      • Copy Queue length [<10)]
      • Replace queue length
    • If all are okay can you set a preference
  • Backups
    • Uses VSS
    • Can backup active or passive copies or select a server to backup
    • Can use a database copy as a “backup”
      • 7 – 14 day lag copy

Transport HA

  • Shadow Messaging (Redundancy)
    • Hub Transport keeps a copy of a message until it gets confirmation that the message was sent.
    • Uses MsgID to identify each message.  In the event of a failure there is a possibility for duplicate messages to be sent, but the two messages will share a MsgID and “most” email systems will notice this
    • Exchange 2010 keeps a table of MsgID’s for 7 days
    • Size of transport dumpster depends on the time stamp of the worst  log copied.

Other Stuff

  • Autodiscover DNS TTL lower to 5 mins

VMware vSphere 4: Exchange Server on NFS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel

by ucinfo, posted in Exchange, Flaphead, MsExchange, Virtualisation

Thanks to Ash for pointing me at this: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_perf_exchange-storage-protocols.pdf

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is a storage intensive workload used by a large number of IT organizations to provide email for their users. In this paper, a large installation of 16,000 Exchange users was configured across eight virtual machines (VMs) on a single VMware vSphere 4 server. The performance of this configuration was measured when using storage supporting Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS storage protocols. The results show that each protocol achieved great performance with Fibre Channel leading the way, with iSCSI and NFS following closely behind.

More on Exchange 2007 SP2

by ucinfo, posted in Exchange, Flaphead, MsExchange

Okay been trawling the web and found these:

Interesting things from the Release Notes:

  • You must prepare Active Directory and each domain before you perform the first installation of Exchange 2007 SP2 in an organization.
  • The original release (RTM) version of Forefront Security for Exchange Server is incompatible with Exchange 2007 SP2
  • Windows Installer version 4.5 is required to install Exchange 2007 SP2
  • You can perform a clean installation of Exchange 2007 SP2
  • To Upgrade run:
    Setup.com /mode:upgrade
  • You cannot uninstall Exchange 2007 SP2
  • The Exchange 2007 Setup program requires all installation source files to be stored on a local resource. A local file source is required because Exchange 2007 Setup is a Microsoft .NET Framework application
  • PowerShell Version 2 is supported on all Exchange 2007 SP2 server roles. PSv2 is the preferred solution for PowerShell on Windows Server 2008 servers and servers.

What’s New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2

by , posted in Exchange, Flaphead, MsExchange

Okay the link on the download site doesn’t work, but it should go here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee221150.aspx

  • Deploying Exchange Server 2010: You can deploy Exchange Server 2010 in your organization …
  • Exchange Backup Functionality: Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 includes a VSS plug-in for Windows Server Backup to support Exchange backups.
  • Enhanced Auditing: New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. For more information about the new auditing features available with SP2, see Understanding Mailbox Access Auditing with Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2.
  • Dynamic Active Directory Schema Validation: The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema.
  • Public Folder Quota Management
  • Centralized Organizational Settings: There are several new cmdlet parameters that have been added that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
    • Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace
    • Export-Mailbox
    • Import-Mailbox
    • Move-Mailbox
    • New-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory
    • New-ManagedFolder
    • Restore-Mailbox
    • Set-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory
    • Set-CASMailbox
    • Set-IMAPSettings
    • Set-OABVirtualDirectory
    • Set-OrganizationConfig
    • Set-POPSettings
    • Set-PublicFolder
    • Set-TransportConfig
    • Test-ActiveSyncConnectivity
    • Test-OwaConnectivity
    • Test-WebServicesConnectivity

What's New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2

by ucinfo, posted in Exchange, Flaphead, MsExchange

Okay the link on the download site doesn’t work, but it should go here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee221150.aspx

  • Deploying Exchange Server 2010: You can deploy Exchange Server 2010 in your organization …
  • Exchange Backup Functionality: Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 includes a VSS plug-in for Windows Server Backup to support Exchange backups.
  • Enhanced Auditing: New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. For more information about the new auditing features available with SP2, see Understanding Mailbox Access Auditing with Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2.
  • Dynamic Active Directory Schema Validation: The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema.
  • Public Folder Quota Management
  • Centralized Organizational Settings: There are several new cmdlet parameters that have been added that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
    • Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace
    • Export-Mailbox
    • Import-Mailbox
    • Move-Mailbox
    • New-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory
    • New-ManagedFolder
    • Restore-Mailbox
    • Set-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory
    • Set-CASMailbox
    • Set-IMAPSettings
    • Set-OABVirtualDirectory
    • Set-OrganizationConfig
    • Set-POPSettings
    • Set-PublicFolder
    • Set-TransportConfig
    • Test-ActiveSyncConnectivity
    • Test-OwaConnectivity
    • Test-WebServicesConnectivity

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2

by ucinfo, posted in Exchange, Flaphead, MsExchange

Shame the What’s New link doesn’t work!

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=4c4bd2a3-5e50-42b0-8bbb-2cc9afe3216a

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) has been designed specifically to help meet the challenges of any business and the needs of all the different groups with a stake in the messaging system. Exchange Server 2007 SP2 is a mission-critical communications tool that enables employees to be more productive and access their information anywhere and anytime while providing a messaging system that enables rich, efficient access to e-mail, calendar items, voice mail, and contacts. For the administrator, Exchange Server 2007 SP2 provides advanced protection options against e-mail security threats, such as spam and viruses, as well as the tools to help manage internal compliance and high availability needs. For an overview of the new features that are available in Exchange Server 2007 SP2, see “What’s New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2”.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Web Scheduler

by ucinfo, posted in Flaphead, OCS

Interesting

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=6d6848ec-e7d6-41f4-82d9-5bed3526fcbd

Web Scheduler is a 64-bit tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It provides a Web-based alternative to the add-in for the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client for the purpose of scheduling a meeting using Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It also provides a browser-based conference management experience that includes operations such as:

  • Scheduling a new Live Meeting conference or conference call.
  • Viewing and modifying details of an existing conference.
  • Listing all existing user schedules of a Microsoft Office conference.
  • Deleting an existing conference.
  • Sending an e-mail invitation to conference participants by using a configured SMTP mail server.
  • Joining an existing conference.

Forefront Security 2010 for Exchange Server Release Candidate

by ucinfo, posted in Exchange, Flaphead, MsExchange, Security

Ohhh

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b8a7d36f-cc8d-4335-ae60-8f27c48f3a37&displayLang=en

Microsoft Forefront Security 2010 for Exchange Server provides fast and effective protection against malware and spam by including multiple scanning engines from industry-leading security partners. It also integrates with Forefront Online Security for Exchange to provide the defense-in-depth benefits of hosted and on-premise filtering in a single solution.