This two part series walks through the steps necessary to migrate the Exchange organization from Small Business Server 2003 (SBS 2003) to Exchange 2003 Standard running on Windows Server 2003 Standard.
I have a habit of hard deleting my email. I always do this. By hard delete, I mean pressing SHIFT + Del to delete my messages, which nukes the message right out of outlook. This means that if you try to recover the deleted message in outlook, the message isn't showing.
Fortunately, there is a registry setting which will allow you to get your hard deleted messages back. I used KB246153 to solve this issue.
1. Open up the Registry editor:
2. Click Start, run. Enter Regedt32 and click OK.
3. Navigate to the following entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options
4. Right click the Options folder, click New and then select DWORD Value. Enter the following details:Value name: DumpsterAlwaysOnData type: DWORDValue data: 1
5. Close the registry editor and reboot.
6. Open Outlook, navigate to the folder where the email was hard deleted.
7. In Outlook, go to the Tools menu, click Recover Deleted Items. Then select the email you wish to recover and restore.
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I recently submitted an article for publication on the main msexchange.org website. What started off as a short article, ended up as a two part series, and I'm pleased to say that Part 1 will be published on 24th October 06. Migrating from SBS 2003 to Exchange 2003 Standard.
Needless to say, I'm over the moon at being given the opportunity to write on the main website, and look forward to writing some different articles in the coming months.
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We have been using and selling Live Meeting for close to a year now. In this time it has only impressed me more and more.For network support, it is second to none. Who needs to set firewalls? Just send the email invitation, or invite someone into your lobby.I have been on a couple of support calls with serious client server downtime, and Microsoft support staff have always used Live Meeting.Even with the most challenging of support calls, I have always managed to get the user to join the meeting in quick time.Oh, and we've also had some excellent collabortion meetings with clients on projects and training sessions. How can I live without Live Meeting? Del.icio.us : livemeeting, support
ADModify.net is an excellent tool for Exchange administrators allowing bulk changes of Active Directory properties.
I recently experienced the death of a power supply on an Exchange server, which set the clock ticking straight away. So to get users sending and receiving email quickly, I used ADModify.net to change the users mailbox location from the dead server to a spare exchange server. I also added the IP address to the spare exchange server. This got everyone sending and receiving real quick.
After recovering the hardware, I moved the users mailboxes back to the original server using ADModify as above. I then merged the mailbox data by mounting the databases used on the spare server in a recovery storage group and merging. Follow this tutorial by Henrik Walther to do that.
Here's how I did it:
Download ADModify and double click admodify.exe. Click "Modify Attributes".
From the drop down lists, select the domain you need to change properties and the Domain controller to use. You can then select the OU or User(s) you wish to change and click "Add to List", then select the user in the right hand window and click "Next".
To change the mailbox location, hit the "Exchange General" tab and simply select the appropriate server from the drop down lists of homeMTA and homeMDB.
Force active directory replication and send a test email to the mail box, and the user will now have a mailbox on the spare server. I use Email Generator to send test messages and check POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP connections.
Reverse the process to move mailboxes back and then merge the mailbox data c
I've been using RPC over HTTP to check my email since it was released. I remember setting it up for the first time and having an absolute nightmare to get all the differnet servers talking to each other through firewalls etc. Having said that, I only use email over the internet (as its known in Small Business Server 2003) to check my email. Our office LAN is seperate to our production servers, so we only ever access our exchange servers this way.I have been getting reports from some customers that they experience annoyingly long waits for outlook to open. Meanwhile outlook is frozen downloading stuff. I'm interested to hear back from people. Especially regarding experiences when using differnet internet connection speeds. If you use a 56k modem to use RPC over HTTP, or whatever you connection type, then get in touch. I'll be writing up results so we can better advise regarding preferred WAN connection speeds and connection types for RPC over HTTP.Comment on this blog to get involved. Or email [email protected] Del.icio.us : rpcoverhttp exchange survey
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
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 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&displaylang=en Del.icio.us : httpoverrpc, rpc
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
