I talked about several times in regards to improvements in Exchange 2010 and tried to explain why this version is not similar to any other previous versions. The most significant difference is shining on ***Cost*** as I brought up. Here is the article talking about the cost of Exchange mailbox for $5 dollars per users ( BPOS) . The future of Exchange seems to be living in hosted services “ in the cloud “ as it was , intended. We have seen benefits moving into cloud computing and some of us to be honest not liked the idea of running e-mail within the cloud for many valid reasons, per scenario which I wont get into details here. The big and most important point to see or understand to me is that, the cloud computing is here and getting more and more powerfully and eventually, most critical applications will be running from cloud and getting ready for the cloud experience seems real. I am not big supporter of cloud computing but , I foreseen quickly changes in IT will always exist and keeping up with these changes always fun and new learning material is beneficial to most of people I work and worked with so far (-:

The drop from $10 per user per month to $5 for Exchange Online is significant because it brings Microsoft much closer to the price Google charges for its Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) suite that is anchored by Gmail. In addition, Microsoft said allowable mailbox sizes would go from 5GB to 25GB, a move that ups Microsoft’s stake in the so-called “bottomless” inbox war with other online providers.

Read more

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

Error:

Microsoft Exchange couldn’t find a certificate that contains the domain name mail.smtp25.org in the personal store on the local computer. Therefore, it is unable to support the STARTTLS SMTP verb for the connector HTS-IronPort with a FQDN parameter of mail.smtp25.gov. If the connector’s FQDN is not specified, the computer’s FQDN is used. Verify the connector configuration and the installed certificates to make sure that there is a certificate with a domain name for that FQDN. If this certificate exists, run Enable-ExchangeCertificate -Services SMTP to make sure that the Microsoft Exchange Transport service has access to the certificate key.

Solution

Open EMS

Get-ExchangeCertificate | FL

You will need to highlight the Thumbprint and paste into fallowing PS command

Enable-ExchangeCertificate –Thumbprint DBA3601A10DF90E0F00462C03940C90B8BA87292 -Services "SMTP"

Corresponding KB 555855

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

It has been so long wait for me to be honest (-: and finally Exchange 2010 had been officially released couple minutes ago

At 11:33am pacific time, the Exchange Product Group declared RTM for build 14.00.0639.021. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 has left the building!

Thanks million for hard work put into this, this is for sure one of most exciting news we all have been waiting

Regards,

Ocd

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

Below  article is taken from MSExcahnge team site, if you have not seen it yet , here it is.

Exchange 2010 is Code Complete and on its way to General Availability

We are happy to announce that Exchange 2010 is Code Complete!  Our senior leadership team has signed off on the final code, and it has been sent to our early adopters for one final look before its public release. This Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone means we are on our way to general availability and the launch at Tech·Ed Europe 2009 (http://www.microsoft.com/europe/teched/) in early November.

For those of you attending Tech·Ed in Berlin this year, be sure to check out the Unified Communications track, which is packed with technical content on Exchange 2010. And be sure to visit us at the Exchange product booth in the Exhibition Hall and let us know what you think of the product. Crystal Flores, who interviewed some of you on video at Tech·Ed North America earlier this year, will be on-hand in Berlin in a few weeks, armed with a camera and interview questions.  A group of us are also marching to Las Vegas for Exchange Connections the same week where our fearless leader Rajesh is giving the keynote.

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/10/08/452775.aspx

Regards,

Ocd

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

This was asked on the MS forums and I tried to pass on some of my positive experience and end up writing long answer and of course decided to post it here , hoping I could give some positive feed back to some of you out there wondering how exchange would be performing on VM environment.

Dave, I understand you have your own reasons to go for SCC and wondering if CAS , HTS roles would be a good idea placing on virtual environment and my previous implementation experience might be able to answer your questions, hopefully (-:

I had to go for SCC for my own reasons as well, not the limitations but SAN appliance was offering perfect DR solutions (NETAPP) Snapmanager and I was extremely comfortable going for SCC for so many reasons I will just mention couple of them, Netapp has never failed me over 10 years, in multiple very large implementations and Snapmanager offered perfect DR solutions ( it does log shipping and just like CCR) and replicate SAN data to San data.

So I ended up placing two Hub servers on VM, two CAS servers on VM, and  two ISA servers, for redundancy, each server was placed on separate VM farm, so that if one VM farm goes down the mail infrastructure would work without any interruption. I used as mail gateways 2 Ironport on toe different data center and created two sent connectors one with high cost for redundancy. Both Ironport published outside to public DNS for redundancy .Although traditional DNS provides round robin response, in reality it is up to sender who to send the mail too and one thing I did not implement was road balancer in front of Ironport like F5 to be able to provide true redundancy (-: , ran out off $$$$

So VM servers has been working with no glitch over months, mail uptime is 99.9 , I have been extremely pleased with Exchange servers running on VMware ( HTS, CAS) no issues at all. Same goes for SCC , it has been running flawless fail over with 08 server is much better in my opinion, and maintenance is the most part I love about SCC.

This wasn’t the first time I placed Exchange servers on VM farm we have been doing this since Exchange 2003 (except mailbox server) we placed exchange 2003 servers in large environments  40.000 + mailboxes and they have been running with no issues over years (almost 6 years) ,

honestly I have not seen one single issue, but please remember all these implementation have been followed by MS best practices ( memory, HD, CPU etc.) except the VM part (-:

Good luck to you on your implementation

In addition Exchange 2010 is almost out, as I said so many times to me Exchange 2010 is the ***MOST ADVANCE*** version of messaging application ever, and due to critical changed have been done to the application itself , I strongly recommend everyone out there start planning to place Exchange 2010 in your business, it really wont be brainer to figured out business reasons and benefits running your messaging environment with next generation messaging application with incredible changes and stunning performance not to mention full redundancy out the box (-:

Many thanks to Exchange team for incredible hard work and providing us the best messaging application.

Regards,

Ocd

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

Two ways to accomplish changing default size limits if you are on SP1 or later you can use GUI or Shell

• Organization Configuration
• Hub Transport
• Global Settings tab
• Transport Settings
• properties

1024 X 20 = 20480

here is the corresponding information

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

On previous article we talked about , certificate warning

Information you exchange with this site cannot be viewed or changed by others. However, there is a problem with the site’s security certificate.

The errors was causing by expired internal certificate on the CAS server or servers, as the limitation of internal issued certificates, ( expire in 1 year) we need to renew the expired certificate.

here is the link for more information

Here is summary how to deal with this situation

• Get-ExchangeCertificate | FL  ( to see the status of cert installed and the thumbprint
• Get-ExchangeCertificate -Thumbprint 56BB128980C53883BBF09AA0281FBC6471FB04FE | New-Certificate

**** you need to place your thumbprint

• Get-ExchangeCertificate | FL  ( one more time to see the certs)

At this point you will see two of them , pay attention one is “Valid” one is not, it is Invalid.

you want to remove the Invalid one by typing

• Remove-ExchangeCertificate –thumbprint 56BB128980C53883BBF09AA0281FBC6471FB04FE

Dont forget again the replace the correct thumbprint

Now you might need to enable the new cert with services

• Enable-exchangecertificate -services IMAP, POP, UM, IIS, SMTP -Thumbprint DBA3601A10DF90E0F00462C03940C90B8BA87292

last time to make sure issue

• Get-ExchangeCertificate | FL 

verify the Cert is valid and correct services are enable to use this internal cert.

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

your users are receiving fallowing message when they open their outlook “The Security certificate has Expired or is not yet valid”

You also are receiving fallowing errors on your mail server

• Event Type: Error
• Event Source: MSExchangeTransport
• Event Category: TransportService
• Event ID: 12014
• Date: Date
• Time: Time
• User: N/A
• Computer: Server_Name
• Description:

Microsoft Exchange couldn’t find a certificate that contains the domain name Domain_Name in the personal store on the local computer. Therefore, it is unable to support the STARTTLS SMTP verb for the connector Default Server with a FQDN parameter of FQDN. If the connector’s FQDN is not specified, the computer’s FQDN is used. Verify the connector configuration and the installed certificates to make sure that there is a certificate with a domain name for that FQDN. If this certificate exists, run Enable-ExchangeCertificate -Services SMTP to make sure that the Microsoft Exchange Transport service has access to the certificate key.

• Event Type: Warning
• Event Source: MSExchangeTransport
• Event Category: TransportService
• Event ID: 12015
• Date: Date
• Time: Time
• User: N/A
• Computer: Server_Name
• Description:
• An internal transport certificate expired.
• Thumbprint:Thumb_Print_Value

Cause:  the internal certificate used by Exchange is expired due to limitation, check out bb851554

Limitations of the Self-Signed Certificate

The following list describes some limitations of the self-signed certificate.

• Expiration Date: The self-signed certificate expires 12 months after Exchange 2007 is installed. When the certificate expires, a new self-signed certificate must be manually generated by using the New-ExchangeCertificate cmdlet.
• Outlook Anywhere: The self-signed certificate cannot be used with Outlook Anywhere. We recommend that you obtain a certificate from a Windows PKI or a trusted commercial third party if you will be using Outlook Anywhere.
• Exchange ActiveSync: The self-signed certificate cannot be used to encrypt communications between Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync devices and the Exchange server. We recommend that you obtain a certificate from a Windows PKI or a trusted commercial third party for use with Exchange ActiveSync.
• Outlook Web Access: Microsoft Outlook Web Access users will receive a prompt informing them that the certificate being used to help secure Outlook Web Access is not trusted. This error occurs because the certificate is not signed by an authority that the client trusts. Users will be able to ignore the prompt and use the self-signed certificate for Outlook Web Access. However, we recommend that you obtain a certificate from a Windows PKI or a trusted commercial third party.

Solution:

Logon to Exchange server issue fallowing command from EMS

Now pay attention to Status and  the dates and also you will need to copy and paste “Thumbprint”

Now copy paste or type below into EMS

Do not forget to copy and paste the Thumbprint corresponds to your own exchange server

Type letter “Y” when it is prompted

Issue once more 

Now get rid of from the old one simply use below PS and corresponding thumbprint

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

Outlook is retrieving data from the Microsoft Exchange Server mail1.smtp235.org; Christmas Balloon is not welcome for many exchange administrators.

In the past I blogged about the reasons and how to troubleshoot the issue in details here is the link to that post

Recently , we found out the same issue was raising on one of our customers network. The Exchange servers on this environment had 32 Gig memory with 16 CPU, so it was pretty easy not to start looking for server side problems, rather some other issue was causing the problem. Short story we found out  the problem was related to DC/GC , decommissioning problem DC/GC did the trick, the famous balloon  was gone.

I wanted to post some little very useful information , help me to what to look for right off the bat (-:

Note:

If the server name appears as a NetBIOS name, the data is being retrieved from an Exchange Server computer. If the server name appears as a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), the data is being retrieved from a global catalog server

Cheers,

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog

Are you installing Exchange Sp2 on windows 2008 SBS server and getting below error?

Turn off UAC , by going control panel , user accounts, turn user account control off.

Also you will need to fallow the step mentioned on kb 973862 if you are receiving below erros.

You must update your Windows Small Business Server 2008 settings both before and after you install Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2). Before installing SP2 for Exchange Server 2007, read the detailed information at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155135.

Open Regedit on the SBS server

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
• Software
• Microsoft
• SmallBusinessServer
• Exchange  ( create this if does not exisit)
• E12SP2READY  (create this also and Value is = 1)

oz Casey Dedeal,

MVP (Exchange)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +

Http://smtp25.blogspot.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.spaces.live.com (Blog)

Http://telnet25.wordpress.com (Blog