Chris Dalby Blog

Chris Dalby is co-founder and Director of Yellow Park Ltd, a Microsoft Certified Partner located in London, UK. Yellow Park offers a holistic approach to the dilemma of the IT services jigsaw and specializes in a broad range of services, including network support for Windows networks, Live Meeting, web and email hosting, website design and multimedia services.

You can also find Chris at his other blog on <a href=”http://www.yellowpark.net/cdalby” target=_blank>Yellow Park</a>, where he covers more general IT related content, mixed in with a bit of culture and fun.

In his spare time, Chris enjoys walking and running in his local woods with his two favourite girls; wife Gosia and Kaija a Doberman.

Exchange Data Store Storage Limits – a gentle reminder

As a gentle reminder, Exchange 2003 SP2 introduced extra storage space for the data store. The configuration is now as follows:You can configure a logical database size limit for each of your Exchange databases. The logical size of the database equals the physical size of the .edb file and the .stm file minus the logical free space in each. The limitation of this feature depends on the version of Exchange Server 2003 you are running:•Exchange Server 2003 Standard Edition By default, the size limit of each database on a server running Exchange Server 2003 Standard Edition is 16 GB. After you install Exchange Server 2003 SP2, the default size limit for each Exchange database is 18 GB. Additionally, you can configure database size limits of up to 75 GB for each database on servers running Exchange Server 2003 SP2.•Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition By default, the size limit of each database on a server running Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition is 8,000 GB. This size is generally a theoretical limit. The actual limit of an Exchange database is based on your server hardware and on the hardware of your storage subsystem. After you install Exchange Server 2003 SP2, you can customize the database size limit to a value up to 8,000 GB.Further details can be found here at the micorsoft website. Del.icio.us : datastore, exchange, limits

Download World Cup fixtures for Outlook calendar

MSN have produced this download that allows you to install all the world cup fixtures into Outlook. Thats a sure way to avoid double booking any important games.Great idea. You can get it here: http://www.bcentral.co.uk/msn/worldcup/default.mspx Del.icio.us : calendar, outlook, worldcup

RPC over HTTP performance and bandwidth considerations

RPC over HTTP is a great way of connecting directly to your exchange server mailbox over the internet. This is in fact the only way I check my email as we have our production servers on an isolated network with a dedicated leased line. So I am never on the corporate network.I have also been rolling this out for customers with SBS 2003 and Exchange 2003 and it works really well. Below is a collection of articles with regards to deployment and bandwidth requirements.I'll be blogging more about this.Planning Exchange Architecture in a Bandwidth-Sensitive Environmenthttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/55/plan/ch05.mspx#EJ3AEPerformance Considerations When You Configure Exchange Server 2003 for RPC Over HTTPConnections on Low-Bandwith Networkshttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/817322/en-usTechNet Support WebCast: An overview of RPC over HTTP in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888812/en-usExchange Server 2003 RPC over HTTP Deployment Scenarioshttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/library/ex2k3rpc.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=ef58395d-3710-49cf-9698-938e2bef39e8&amp;displaylang=en Del.icio.us : httpoverrpc, rpc

Email Generator is released

We have now released the long awaited for Email Generator. We put together this tool to help us out with Routine Exchange tasks.Check IMAP4 mailboxe connectionsCheck POP3 mailboxe connectionsView mailbox messagesSend test messages to populate mailboxesVisit the Email Generaor website: http://www.yellowpark.net/emailgenerator/blog/I welcome comments on this. We will also post the source code, and welcome ideas for features or code submissions. Please email [email protected] or leave a comment on this blog. Del.icio.us : email exchange tool

A great POP3 Connector

We've been getting good results while trying out a POP3 connector called PopCon. Although the visual design is less than innovative, it really does do a great job. You can also see the emails being physically moved to differenent mailboxes. I must say, when setting up, and tracking message flow, this is the best one I've used. Plus it seems to do exactly what it says on the tin. All this without having to read a manual, because set-up is quick.This is a great connector if you need to retrieve POP3 email. Whether one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many. It's easy to use and to get you head around, you can very quickly start using this connector.Plus it's got all the features you would expect to distribute email to multiple mailboxes within an Exchange organisation.Get it here ::http://www.christensen-software.com/popcon.htmPrice: There is a cost, please check for up-to-date pricing.Company ::Christensen SoftwareURL ::www.christensen-software.comEmail ::[email protected] Del.icio.us : POP3 Connector Exchange Application

Email Generator Update

OK, I was hoping to have posted the first release of the window app I've put together – Email Generator.But we got a bit carried away and tried to buld in a few extra features. Angel has been working on this project too and has made great progress, so we should see this available for download at some point next week. Del.icio.us : email, exchange, test, tools

Upgrading SBS 2000 to SBS 2003 and Exchange 2000 to 2003

I recently did a job to upgrade Windows Small Business Server 2000 to Windows Small Business Server 2003. This server was running on a network of around 30 PCs (XP and 98), 30 users, with numerous different types of printers. The server ran Pervasive and SQL databases and Exchange 2000.We did a huge amount of research for this upgrade. Microsoft Pre-sales Technical Support offered two routes for doing the upgrade:"If you have an existing server in your network, you can upgrade it to Windows Small Business Server 2003. There are two options for completing an upgrade:• Upgrade the existing server to Windows Small Business Server 2003• Install Windows Small Business Server 2003 on a new server and then migrate the existing server's data and settings"We decided to do the inplace upgrade, as the customer had an existing installation and was not likely to buy a new server box. We tested the upgrade in a test lab, mirroring the same environment as near as possible. The test upgrade went through without any problems. In fact, the documentation we found regarding this upgrade all pointed to be a straight forward upgrade, with no significant problems. Exchange included.However, this was not a straight forward upgrade. When dealing with SBS, you have to be careful not to annoy it, because it starts stamping its foot and wanting to be in-charge. The main draw back with SBS is that the SBS server needs to be the root Domain Controller in the forest. You can't have more than one SBS server in a forest at any one time. Disobey these rules at your peril.Needless to say, the upgrade didn't

Email Generator v0.1

I have started writing an admin application. Its quite simple in function, but I have designed it to make my life easier when doing mundane tasks. I've called it Email Generator v0.1. It allows you to quickly test out connections to exchange servers and populate mailboxes with bulk amounts of email.The idea was borne out last weekend when I was doing some configuration testing. I needed to create a test environment and populate mailboxes with some data. So I initially designed the tool to send however many emails I wanted to whatever mailboxes on any servers. I got through this quickly and decided to start building in extra functionality to connect via POP3 and get a list of the email headers in the mailbox.As is always the case, one thing led to another and I kinda got carried away. Now I've got a .NET 2.0 windows app designed in Visual Studio 2005 with a great bunch of features. .NET 2.0 has exposed some great features. Specifically the System.Net.Mail namespace, amongst ohers. This means quite complex tasks can be initiated realtively quickly when you know how.I'll be rounding out the app this week and I'll be posting the app free for download by the start of next week. Morfe on Email Generator v0.1 soon……. Del.icio.us : tool exchange

Pop3 Connector Hell

I've steered clear of POP3 connectors since usng Exchange 2003. I've never had the need to use them. Afterall, I route all my mail through our Exchange Servers. In fact it never occurred to me that you could use this way to get your mail until I saw a couple of our SBS clients using POP3 connectors to collect their mail.The Microsoft Pop3 connector in SBS 2003 Exhange is very clunky. You've got a two choices for routing mail to mailboxes.One to one – one pop3 account delivers to one mailboxOne to many – one pop3 account delivers to many mailoxes in the exchange organisationHaving experimented with the One to many type system on SBS 2003, I would recommend using a third party Pop3 connector. That way, you get email downloaded from the pop3 mailboxes and forwarded using the exchange smtp server onto the appropriate mailboxes. We used one from www.quantumsoftware.com.auSearch the pages on msexchange.org for a range of POP3 connectors. Technorati : POP3 Del.icio.us : POP3 Exchange

Don’t put E12 into a production environment

I was alarmed to read on the MSExchange Team Blog that there has been a spate of people putting E12 into a production environment. Please stop! Dont't do it! Step away from the server.Its very tempting to do this. In fact it crossed my mind about trying to get some kind of "Live Test". But seriously, it seems that putting E12 int a production environment is not a good thing to do. Sounds like a few people had a few major problems.E12 extends the Active Direcory schema. Because E12 is a beta, some of the schema might not make it into the final release. So who nows what damage could be done. Del.icio.us : e12

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