EMC 2007/2010 IE9 bug fixed

Microsoft have release an IE9 fix to resolve the interoperability issues with between Exchange 2007 and 2010 EMC. Great news (not that I ever get use EMC anymore, well at least that was until this announcement Future of /Hosting Mode).

Anyway back to the fix… Exchange 2007 or 2010 EMC might fail to close with "You must close all dialog boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console". The Exchange team have posted this on there blog with links to the fix, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/10/17/a-fix-for-the-interoperability-issues-between-exchange-2007-and-2010-emc-and-ie9-is-now-available.aspx.

Daniel

RIP /Hosting Mode – Exchange Server 2010 /Hosting

I have been waiting for this for a while, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/10/13/future-of-hosting-mode.aspx.

In summary…

• 180 U turn on hosting!
• You don’t need to use /Hosting Mode, on-premise is probably the preferred choice now
• No new features will be added to SP2 /Hosting Mode, that includes UM
• You will probably need to use an automation partner or have s**t hot Exchange Admins

While I do not agree with this, I do understand working with one product with tweaks it is mush easier. Looks like is back to the way I used to do Hosted Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 before /Hosting Mode was born.

I’ know what I’m doing for the rest of the month….

Send as permissions with Hosted Exchange 2010

If you need to assign Send As rights with Hosted Exchange 2010 it can easily be achieved with PowerShell.
I want the user Daniel to be able to send email out as the Event DL address:

Add-RecipientPermission "Event" -AccessRights SendAs -Trustee "Daniel"

Nice and easy.

Daniel

U-turn on Exchange 2010 SP1 /hosting mode guidance?

If you have been following Exchange 2010 options for hosters you will know that until recently you were pretty much pushed down the /hosting mode route. Well today I spotted this blog post by Ian Hameroff and Michael van Dijken, So, You Want to Host Exchange?, suggesting we don’t have to use /hosting if we want UM and some other functionality.

As with Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 we are able to make a standard deployment of Exchange 2010 SP1 work as a multi-tenant environment, Paul Roman covers it nicely here, The Hard Way - Hosting Environment Preparation.

My first Hosted Exchange solution was Exchange 2000 with a custom built automation engine, which was great, but I remember how much better the support was when HMC was introduced. With /hosting mode it became even simpler and although I desperately want UM in my solution today, I am not sure moving away from /hosting is the right direction.

What are your thoughts?

Daniel

Technorati Tags: Exchange,cloud,hosting

Remove a domain from Office 365

If you are having trouble removing a domain using the Office 365 management portal you can use the Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows PowerShell to help.

First off download the module and find out a little bit more about the MSOL module from here, http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/hh124998.aspx.

Use the following cmdlets to connect, identify and remove domains.

Connect-MsolService

the following command will list the domains you have added to O365.
Get-MsolDomain

Change the default domain.
Set-MsolDomain -IsDefault -Name exchangegeek.onmicrosoft.com

Remove the domain.
Remove-MsolDomain -domainname exchangegeek.com –force

Hope this helps, it worked for me out moving domains between tenant organisations and not getting any response to my “service requests”.

BES 5.0.3 support for Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode–CDO - no longer supported

The compatibility matrix for BES has been updated to include Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode support, BlackBerry Enterprise Server Compatibility.

When BES 5.0.3 was released I upgraded BES in my Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode environment to resolve a calendar issue preventing meeting management from devices, this was great news for my team as it had caused some pain internally.

I actually performed a fresh install and moved users to the new BES, for me this minimised down time, allowed time for testing and gave me an easy roll back operation.

CDO no longer supported by BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft ® Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode

To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services on BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 SP3:

1. Copy the BlackBerry Enterprise Server installation files to a computer that hosts a BlackBerry Enterprise Server instance.
2. Extract the contents to a folder on the computer.
3. At the command prompt, navigate to <extracted_folder>\tools.
4. Perform one of the following actions:
   • To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services for a specific BlackBerry Enterprise Server , type
     TraitTool -server <server_name> -trait EWSEnable -set true
   • To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services for all BlackBerry Enterprise Server instances in a BlackBerry Domain, type
     TraitTool -global -trait EWSEnable -set true
5. Press ENTER.
6. Restart the BlackBerry Controller Service for every BlackBerry Enterprise Server modified.

Daniel

Restoring a DAG member, don't forget to evict the node!

Hi,

When restoring a DAG member (please see a previous blog post on how to to do this) it is important to remember to evict the node from the cluster, otherwise errors will occur when you re-introduce it.

The error that will be shown should the server still be a cluster member, when running the cmdlet 'Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer' is shown below:













To remedy this open the Failover Cluster Manager on a valid DAG member. Select the DAG member you are performing DR on, right click it and select "Evict node"












Go back to your open Powershell session and re-run 'Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer' and this should now run succesfully.

You will see it succesfully adding the server to the cluster:












Finally once configuration is complete, it will show the server as a valid member:











You now simply have to reseed any databases that should reside on this DAG member and you are all set!

Take care,

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

setup.com /m:recoverserver when server is a DAG member

Hi,

You cannot just recover a DAG member using /m:recoverserver, the setup process will notice the server is part of a DAG and stop, as can be seen below.












In order to succesfully recover an Exchange 2010 Server that is a DAG member we must remove it from the DAG. This involves removing any database copies it may have as a DAG member and also removing it from the DAG entirely.

The following process shows how this is done.

1. Remove any Database copies this DAG member may have

Remove-MailboxDatabaseCopy DATABASE\SERVER












2. Remove the server from the DAG it is a member of. Because the server is offline, or a standby server is present ready to be used, we use the -ConfigurationOnly switch. This tells Exchange not to search for the Exchange server (as it would error as it is not there), and instead remove the configuration data only.

Remove-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity DAG -MailboxServer SERVER -ConfigurationOnly











3. Going back to the server we are performing the recovery on, and re-running setup.com /m:recoverserver we should now see no issues performing DR













Finally after performing recovery setup completes and we can see the server is ready once a reboot is complete.













If the server is a combined server role it is important to make changes to any .config files you previously made changes too, as the recoverserver command will not re-introduce those changes.

Finally there are some other switches that can be used when recovering the Exchange 2010 server.













/TargetDir - this lets you specify the install location of the Exchange 2010 setup files. You can use this to ensure it is installed elsewhere if previously you did not install to c:\

/UpdatesDir - this allows you to place any updates in the directory so Exchange can slipstream these and ensure you do not have to apply them seperately after.

/InstallWindowsComponents - this will automatically install windows features should they be missing on the new server you are performing the recovery on.

/DoNotStartTransport - if the server is a Hub Transport or Combined Server Role, then you can initiate this switch to ensure the Transport Service doesn't start, should you need to perform more configuration or perform tests prior to allow SMTP to flow through it (from Mailbox Servers or Internet).


Take care,

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

Hosted Exchange 2010 Webinar Today

Just a quick post to say this is starting at 1pm GMT. You can sign up here

http://www.cobweb.com/learn-now/webinars--events/webinar-exchange-2010.aspx

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

#CloudPro @asktechnetuk Twitter Event 15/04/2011

Hi,

I will be one of many on a panel for Technet tomorrow (@asktechnetuk) where you can ask questions in a live Twitter Q&A!

Topics will covered will be based on what YOU want to hear advice on, such as Exchange, SQL, Powershell, Cloud Hosting, Virtualization and System Centre.

I will be one of a number of MVPs including

- Vikas Sahni – SQL Azure MVP: @sahnivi
- Myles Jeffrey – Office365 MVP: @mjthinkscape
- Mark Rendle – Windows Azure MVP: @markrendle
- Damian Flynn – Virtual Machine MVP: @damian_flynn
- Oliver Moazzezi – Exchange Server MVP: @OliverMoazzezi
- Patrick Lowdns – Virtual Machine MVP: @PatrickLownds
- Thomas Lee – Powershell, MVP

Microsoft experts will also be on hand to answer questions.

See you there!

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server