Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Exchange Virtual Memory
There still seems to be a lot of problems out there with Exchange and Virtual Memory. Beware of rogue information though.
A few helpful tips seem to be....
1) Use the /3GB flag when using Windows 2000 Advanced Server or any flavour of Windows 2003
2) Don't put too much memory into the machine if you don't need it.
3) If using Windows 2000 with SP4 and Exchange 5.5 DO NOT RUN THE PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZER (well do it, but not when the Exchange Server is running)
4) Make sure you put all the latest hotfixes on the boxes, and try to keep all servers at the same level, its much harder to troubleshoot if there are different versions
Extract Exchange 200x information from the GAL
Well OK, I know that its not really the GAL that we're gonna extract from, its active directory, but I found a good article about it and thought I would post it here...
http://www.outlookexchange.com/articles/Pavelnagaev/nagaev_c1p1.asp
There still seems to be a lot of problems out there with Exchange and Virtual Memory. Beware of rogue information though.
A few helpful tips seem to be....
1) Use the /3GB flag when using Windows 2000 Advanced Server or any flavour of Windows 2003
2) Don't put too much memory into the machine if you don't need it.
3) If using Windows 2000 with SP4 and Exchange 5.5 DO NOT RUN THE PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZER (well do it, but not when the Exchange Server is running)
4) Make sure you put all the latest hotfixes on the boxes, and try to keep all servers at the same level, its much harder to troubleshoot if there are different versions
Extract Exchange 200x information from the GAL
Well OK, I know that its not really the GAL that we're gonna extract from, its active directory, but I found a good article about it and thought I would post it here...
http://www.outlookexchange.com/articles/Pavelnagaev/nagaev_c1p1.asp
Friday, June 04, 2004
Don't backup Exchange 2003 Information Stores and the System State in the same backup job!
Of course we wouldn't do this anyway, or? Quite a lot of my customers are using the in-built ntbackup utility because its cheap, can do backup-to-file, and has an Exchange Agent free. What I didn't know is that you cannot backup the system state at the same time as the Exchange Information Store due to a feature of VSS. More information can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;820852
Exchange moving again and again
Been playing around with LOTS of Exchange Servers recently. Was at a customer for the last 3 days, and was confronted by another *gremlin*. I moved lots of Exchange mailboxes from the old server to the new one a few months ago. Yesterday I switched the old box off and deleted it from the Exchange world. From that moment on, there were problems with people accessing other peoples' calendars. Seems like that although Outlook updates the profile automatically when a mailbox is moved to reflect the new server, it does not update any saved calendar queries. Only way round is to delete them, or reopen them once using the "Open other user's folder", and not the quick link.
PFDAVAdmin again
I know I've already mentioned this program, but I was playing around with it again the other day, and found one of the best features. As long as the person running the program has enough rights, permissions for every single mailbox can be set from a central location. It used to be almost impossible to quickly see which permissions people had set for access to their calendar (or any other folder really) but with this tool, you can see each separate mailbox folder's permissions. Nice one MS.
New Printer
Finally plunged out for a new printer. Epson C64 (and I thought it was Commodore that made the C64 :-)) I am rather impressed. It only cost ?60, which is about 40 quid, and prints REALLY good photos. Also got 100 ready-to-print high glossy photo paper sheets for ?9 - 6 quid. Goodbye Lexmark Laser, you caused me a lot of problems, and ate more paper than you printed on... now which window is open...
Exchange 200x Troubleshooter
I've been promising myself and a few people that I would eventually get around to an easy to follow guide, a bit like a flowchart, for Exchange Disaster Recovery and Database Recovery. Well its started. Not finished, and won't be for a while yet, but from little acorns........
Of course we wouldn't do this anyway, or? Quite a lot of my customers are using the in-built ntbackup utility because its cheap, can do backup-to-file, and has an Exchange Agent free. What I didn't know is that you cannot backup the system state at the same time as the Exchange Information Store due to a feature of VSS. More information can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;820852
Exchange moving again and again
Been playing around with LOTS of Exchange Servers recently. Was at a customer for the last 3 days, and was confronted by another *gremlin*. I moved lots of Exchange mailboxes from the old server to the new one a few months ago. Yesterday I switched the old box off and deleted it from the Exchange world. From that moment on, there were problems with people accessing other peoples' calendars. Seems like that although Outlook updates the profile automatically when a mailbox is moved to reflect the new server, it does not update any saved calendar queries. Only way round is to delete them, or reopen them once using the "Open other user's folder", and not the quick link.
PFDAVAdmin again
I know I've already mentioned this program, but I was playing around with it again the other day, and found one of the best features. As long as the person running the program has enough rights, permissions for every single mailbox can be set from a central location. It used to be almost impossible to quickly see which permissions people had set for access to their calendar (or any other folder really) but with this tool, you can see each separate mailbox folder's permissions. Nice one MS.
New Printer
Finally plunged out for a new printer. Epson C64 (and I thought it was Commodore that made the C64 :-)) I am rather impressed. It only cost ?60, which is about 40 quid, and prints REALLY good photos. Also got 100 ready-to-print high glossy photo paper sheets for ?9 - 6 quid. Goodbye Lexmark Laser, you caused me a lot of problems, and ate more paper than you printed on... now which window is open...
Exchange 200x Troubleshooter
I've been promising myself and a few people that I would eventually get around to an easy to follow guide, a bit like a flowchart, for Exchange Disaster Recovery and Database Recovery. Well its started. Not finished, and won't be for a while yet, but from little acorns........
