Exchange Blog

Part 1: Migrations – overview

Jonas Andersson — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:17:59 +0000

This will be a collection of posts, regarding migrations in general in the first post will digging deeper in the following posts.

Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-15
Version: 1.1

Thanks for the great input and feedback: Hakim Taoussi and Magnus Göransson

Part 1: Overview

I will try to keep the first post not technical since this is more common sense then anything else.
In short I want to summarize some key takeaways and recommendation to stick with, explaining them a bit more in detail below.

Planning
Information & communication
Pilot migrations
End-user training
Experience
Minimize the coexistence time

Planning

Some of you might think that… well of course we are planning. But sometimes I hear people that spend like 10-15% of their total project time for planning. I would recommend you to rethink if that’s the case, and suggest that you maybe should spend at least 50% of the time for it, maybe even more (in large projects).

What I mean with planning is to create a detailed migration plan, this should of course include estimations regarding how many users can be migrated per hour, how much data can be transferred per hour.
Basically what this means is that the planning phase should be used for planning and verifying that everything is in place and works like it’s expected to do.

For example, in the official guide from Quest Software when migrating from Domino to Exchange they calculate of 5GB/hour/migration server during good conditions. In the real world I’ve seen throughput of 20GB/h/server. With this said, it all depends… (the consultants favorite phrase) This is one of those things that needs to be tested and verified before creating a detailed migration plan, for doing a good estimation.

Don’t forget to verify that the target environment have enough capacity, servers and storage.

Other questions that needs clear answers can be;
How is users and mailboxes provisioned?
During the migration, where should new mailboxes be created?
Is there information in the user attributes that needs to be migrated from Domino into AD?
How will the migration process work?
What requirements are there?

So for the planning, think about all steps.

Information & Communication

With information I mean to inform everybody that’s involved in the project in one or another way.
This would include the helpdesk and support, since these are the projects closest friends for helping and taking care of incidents.

On the other hand we have the users themselves, here I’m talking about the end-users. If the migration will impact the users in a way they are not used to, remind to inform them a couple of weeks before they are going to be migrated, with a reminding notification a couple of days when the migration will take place.
During a transition from for example, Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010, there won’t be much impact on the users, it’s more a data transfer and updating a couple of attributes in the directory so the impact is very small. In those transition projects (it depends on the customer requirements) the needs for user reminders is not that big as the migration projects. But keep in mind, it’s better they get too much information than too little.

In large projects it’s a recommendation to place the information on public places like the restroom and the lunch room. Also inform the people on every place that’s possible, intranet, mail, letter, meeting and so on.

In short I want to say the obvious, if the information is lacking or poor, the experience from the end-user perspective will be poor. In the end this give the result of a failed project, at least from a user perspective.

Pilot migrations

From the projects I’ve been a part of I’ve learnt lots of things and gained experience. One of these things is to have a good pilot, I would recommend to divide the pilot into 3 parts.

Part 1 is the “Technical Pilot”, this would include the closest project members and/or only technical people that can handle issues and problems when they occur.
Part 2 is the “Pilot 1” and this would include at least 10 users, spread throughout the organization, the more spread they are the better value would the pilot have.
Part 3 is called “Pilot 2”, this is started when the “Pilot 1” phase is completed and the evaluations are done. Maybe some tweaking needs to be done before starting this stage (if there were issues and errors).
In “Pilot 2” should at least 50 people be included throughout the organization, this last Pilot phase is used for solving any issues that occurred in previous stages, this for minimizing the impact when the real migration phase will take place.

The numbers above is just examples, but might be good examples for a environment with a couple of thousand users.

Before starting with “Pilot 2” the whole migration process, how object get provisioned should be well documented. It would be a recommendation to have it documented even in the “Technical Pre-Pilot”, but my experience tells me that things are changing and somewhere during “Pilot 1” the processes are getting tested and documented.

End-user training

As this is mentioned, in some cases it might not be needed, for instance if the moved users still keeps the same Outlook client version and the impact is very low. As we all know things are changing over time with new versions and if the user used for example Outlook 2003 with Windows XP and will be upgraded to Windows 7 and Outlook 2013, there might be a reason for giving the users a training session and some documents with instructions on how things work in the new version.

If the users are migrated for example from Domino/Notes to Exchange/Outlook I would strongly recommend having training sessions were the users can attend and also bringing instructions on how things differs between Notes and Outlook, and how Outlook should be used for booking a meeting, sending a mail etc.

This for making sure that the users gets a good experience and can handle the new tools.

Minimize the coexistence time

I’m not writing this because of lack due to products out there or the functions of them.

But I’m writing this bullet for having a smoother and easier understanding, mostly for the helpdesk and the end-users. During a coexistence (freebusy/mail flow/directory synchronization) time it can be hard to troubleshoot and isolate incidents and problems. Another good reason for minimizing the coexistence time is regarding all shared resources, by minimizing the coexistence time you will reduce the impact for the end-users. So for minimizing these hours spent on troubleshooting and the work effort everyone need to put in, I would recommend to keep the coexistence time as short as it can be, without impacting the experience or business in a bad way.

In short I would say, if things are working. Keep up a good pace for having a short coexistence time!

Experience

Last but not least, I would recommend you to select careful what project members are selected or which company that runs these kind of projects. It’s very important that they have the full understanding of what needs to be done and what impact it has for everyone involved but also the business itself.

If using Quest Software, they have a requirement of using certified people for designing, installing and configuring their products. This for making sure that the result will be good and that everyone should be satisfied with it. I’m not sure about other vendors but I think they have something similar to this model.

Read more
Post 2: Prerequisites for Domino/Notes migrations
Post 3: Migrating User Mailboxes from Domino/Notes to Exchange 2013
Post 4: Migrating User Mailboxes from Domino/Notes to Office 365
Post 5: Migrating Groups and Resources Mailboxes
Post 6: Prerequisites for Coexistence between Domino and Exchange 2013
Post 7: Configuring Quest Coexistence Manager for Notes w. Exchange 2013 On-Prem
Post 8: Configuring Quest Coexistence Manager for Notes w. Office 365
Post 9: Prerequisites for Quest Migration Manager
Post 10: Migrating User Mailboxes from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2013 using QMM
Post 11: Migrating User Mailboxes from Exchange On-Prem to Office 365

I hope these key takeaways gave you some good insight and some things to think about.
I would be happy to hear your comments/feedback this post.

The plan is to post a new article every second week, keep your eyes open

Regards,
Jonas

Content Indexing failed using Exchange 2013 RTM

Jonas Andersson — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:34:20 +0000

I just found a bug in my lab environment and wanted to share the information with you.
My lab environment is a small environment that consists of one domain controller (Windows 2008 R2) and two Exchange 2013 RTM servers (based on Windows 2012 Server), these holds both the Mailbox and the CAS role.

I found this issue when I was about to do a failover of one of the mailbox databases.
It couldn’t be done (without using any additional parameters) because the content indexing was in failed state.

When I did run: Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus –Server tlex01 it did show me that the index was in failed state.

I tried to update it using the Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy –CatalogOnly cmdlet, but after a while it was still in failed state. Some posts on the forums stated to remove the indexing files, which is the standard procedure when having these kind of issues. However, it was done as a step 2 but it didn’t solve the issue for me.

Finally I came over some information that a group should be created called “ContentSubmitters”, I did create this group in the Microsoft Exchange Security Groups OU as a Universal – Security Group.
I also granted “Builtin\Administrators” and “NetworkService” Full Control to this group.

After this was done I stopped the Microsoft Exchange Search and Microsoft Exchange Search Host Controller service and removed the content indexing files. Then started up the services again, after a while the index was rebuilt and was in a healthy state.

I have tried to find information if this issue is solved by using CU1, but I haven’t found any information yet.

Regards,
Jonas

Exchange 2013 script – automatic installation of prerequisites

Jonas Andersson — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 09:06:04 +0000

I’ve updated a script that was intended for installing prerequisites for Exchange 2010 that were released by a couple of peoples (Anderson Patricio, Pat Richard and Bhargav Shukla). This script have now been updated and applies to Exchange 2013.

It will help you with installing all prerequisites (features) plus the FilterPack(s) and the Unified Communications Managed API. It also provides the option to disable the UAC (User Access Control) and the Windows Firewall.

You can download the script here
Feel free to use it as much as you want, I just want to mention I do not provide support for it and there are no warranty.

The script/code can be viewed below:

#############################################################################
 # Install-Exchange2013PreReqs.ps1
 # Configures the necessary prerequisites to install Exchange 2013 on a
 # Windows Server 2008 R2 server or Windows Server 2012 server
 #
 # Updated by: Jonas Andersson
 # Original written by: Pat Richard, Anderson Patricio and Bhargav Shukla
 #
 # Some info taken from
 # http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/archive/2009/12/12/Automated-prerequisite-installation-via-PowerShell-for-Exchange-Server-2010-on-Windows-Server-2008-R2.aspx">http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/archive/2009/12/12/Automated-prerequisite-installation-via-PowerShell-for-Exchange-Server-2010-on-Windows-Server-2008-R2.aspx
 # http://msmvps.com/blogs/andersonpatricio/archive/2009/11/13/installing-exchange-server-2010-pre-requisites-on-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx">http://msmvps.com/blogs/andersonpatricio/archive/2009/11/13/installing-exchange-server-2010-pre-requisites-on-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx
 # http://www.bhargavs.com/index.php/powershell/2009/11/script-to-install-exchange-2010-pre-requisites-for-windows-server-2008-r2/">http://www.bhargavs.com/index.php/powershell/2009/11/script-to-install-exchange-2010-pre-requisites-for-windows-server-2008-r2/
 #############################################################################

# Detect correct OS here and exit if no match
 if (-not((Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).OSArchitecture -eq '64-bit') -and (((Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).Version -eq "6.1.7601") -or (Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).Version -eq "6.2.9200")){
 Write-Host "This script requires a 64bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012, which this is not." -ForegroundColor Red -BackgroundColor Black
 Exit
 }

Function Disable-UAC(){

$path = "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System"
 $a = Get-ItemProperty $path -Name EnableLUA

if ($a | Select-String "0")
 {
 Write-Host "UAC is already disabled" -ForegroundColor Green
 return
 }

if ($a | Select-String "1")
 {
 Write-Host "Enabled" -ForegroundColor Red
 Set-ItemProperty "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" -Name "EnableLUA" -Value 0
 Write-host "Registry key HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\EnableLUA has been changed." -ForegroundColor yellow
 Write-Host "UAC is now disabled" -ForegroundColor Green
 }

}

Function Disable-FW(){

$status = netsh advfirewall show allprofiles state

if ($status | Select-String "ON")
 {
 $enabled = $true
 }
 else
 {
 $enabled = $false
 }

if ($enabled -eq $true) {

netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off
 Write-Host "Firewall is now disabled" -ForegroundColor yellow
 return
 }

if ($enabled -eq $false) {
 Write-Host "Firewall is already disabled" -ForegroundColor Green
 }

}

Function InstallFilterPack(){

if (Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{95140000-2000-0409-1000-0000000FF1CE}" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) {

Write-host "FilterPack is already installed." -ForegroundColor yellow
 return
 }

else
 {

trap {
 Write-Host "Problem downloading FilterPackx64.exe. Please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26604 and http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17062"

break
 }

#set a var for the folder you are looking for
 $folderPath = 'C:\Temp'

#Check if folder exists, if not, create it
 if (Test-Path $folderpath){
 Write-Host "The folder $folderPath exists."
 } else{
 Write-Host "The folder $folderPath does not exist, creating..." -NoNewline
 New-Item $folderpath -type directory | Out-Null
 Write-Host "done!" -ForegroundColor Green
 }

# Check if file exists, if not, download it
 $file1 = $folderPath+"\FilterPack64bit.exe"
 $file2 = $folderPath+"\filterpack2010sp1-kb2460041-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe"

if (Test-Path $file1){
 write-host "The file $file1 exists."
 } else {
 #Download Microsoft Filter Pack
 Write-Host "Downloading Microsoft Filter Pack..." -nonewline
 $clnt = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
 $url = "http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/A/2/0A28BBFA-CBFA-4C03-A739-30CCA5E21659/FilterPack64bit.exe"
 $clnt.DownloadFile($url,$file1)
 Write-Host "done!" -ForegroundColor Green
 }

if (Test-Path $file2){
 write-host "The file $file2 exists."
 } else {
 #Download Microsoft Filter Pack SP1
 Write-Host "Downloading Microsoft Filter Pack SP1..." -nonewline
 $clnt = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
 $url = "http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/A/3/AA345161-18B8-45AE-8DC8-DA6387264CB9/filterpack2010sp1-kb2460041-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe"
 $clnt.DownloadFile($url,$file2)
 Write-Host "done!" -ForegroundColor Green
 }

#Install Microsoft Filter Packs
 Write-Host "Installing Microsoft Filter Packs..."

$args = "/quiet /norestart"
 $setup1 = (Start-Process $file1 -ArgumentList $args -Wait -PassThru).ExitCode
 if ($setup1 -eq 0) { write-host "Successfully installed $file1" -ForegroundColor Green }
 if ($setup1 -ne 0) { write-host "Failed!" -ForegroundColor Red }

$setup2 = (Start-Process $file2 -ArgumentList $args -Wait -PassThru).ExitCode
 if ($setup2 -eq 0) { write-host "Successfully installed $file2" -ForegroundColor Green }
 if ($setup2 -ne 0) { write-host "Failed!" -ForegroundColor Red }

}
 }

Function InstallUMAPI(){

#Change reg key below!
 if (Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\UCMA4" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) {

Write-host "Unified Communications Managed API 4.0 Runtime is already installed." -ForegroundColor yellow
 return
 }

else
 {

trap {
 Write-Host "Problem downloading UM API. Please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34992"

break
 }
 #set a var for the folder you are looking for
 $folderPath = 'C:\Temp'

#Check if folder exists, if not, create it
 if (Test-Path $folderpath){
 Write-Host "The folder $folderPath exists."
 } else{
 Write-Host "The folder $folderPath does not exist, creating..." -NoNewline
 New-Item $folderpath -type directory | Out-Null
 Write-Host "done!" -ForegroundColor Green
 }

# Check if file exists, if not, download it
 $file = $folderPath+"\UcmaRuntimeSetup.exe"
 if (Test-Path $file){
 write-host "The file $file exists."
 } else {

#Download Microsoft UM API
 Write-Host "Downloading Microsoft UM API..." -nonewline
 $clnt = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
 $url = "http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/C/4/2C47A5C1-A1F3-4843-B9FE-84C0032C61EC/UcmaRuntimeSetup.exe"
 $clnt.DownloadFile($url,$file)
 Write-Host "done!" -ForegroundColor Green
 }

#Check/Install Media Foundation feature
 $mf = Get-WindowsFeature "Server-Media-Foundation" | select *

Start-Sleep 2

if ($mf.Installed -eq $False)
 {
 Write-Host "Installing Media Foundation feature..."    -ForegroundColor Green
 Add-Windowsfeature Server-Media-Foundation

Write-Host ""
 Write-Host "Installing of Media Foundation feature completed." -ForegroundColor Green
 Write-Host ""
 Write-Host "Restart the server and restart the task" -ForegroundColor Red
 Write-Host "or else the UM API won't be installed" -ForegroundColor Red
 Write-Host ""

return

}

if ($mf.Installed -eq $True)
 {
 #Install Microsoft UM API
 Write-Host "Installing Microsoft UM API..." -ForegroundColor Green

$args = "/quiet /norestart"
 $setup = (Start-Process $file -ArgumentList $args -Wait -PassThru).ExitCode
 if ($setup -eq 0) { write-host "Successfully installed $file" -ForegroundColor Green }
 if ($setup -ne 0) { write-host "Failed!" -ForegroundColor Red }

}
 }

}

Import-Module ServerManager
 $opt = "None"
 # Do {
 clear
 if ($opt -ne "None") {write-host "Last command: "$opt -foregroundcolor Yellow}
 write-host
 write-host Exchange Server 2013 - Prerequisites script
 write-host Please, select which role you are going to install..
 write-host
 write-host '1) Client Access Server'
 write-host '2) Mailbox'
 write-host '3) Typical (CAS/Mailbox)'
 write-host
 write-host '10) Install Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0'
 write-host '    Required if installing Mailbox Server roles' -foregroundcolor yellow
 write-host '    Automatically set for options 2 and 3' -foregroundcolor yellow
 write-host '11) Install Microsoft UM API'
 write-host '    Required if installing Mailbox Server roles' -foregroundcolor yellow
 Write-Host '12) Disable UAC'
 Write-Host '13) Disable Firewall'
 write-host
 write-host '15) Restart the Server'
 write-host '16) End'
 write-host
 $opt = Read-Host "Select an option.. [1-14]? "

switch ($opt)    {
 1 {

# Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
 if ((Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).Version -eq "6.1.7601") {

Import-Module ServerManager
 Add-WindowsFeature "Desktop-Experience", "NET-Framework", "NET-HTTP-Activation", "RPC-over-HTTP-proxy", "RSAT-Clustering", "RSAT-Web-Server", "WAS-Process-Model", "Web-Asp-Net", "Web-Basic-Auth", "Web-Client-Auth", "Web-Digest-Auth", "Web-Dir-Browsing", "Web-Dyn-Compression", "Web-Http-Errors", "Web-Http-Logging", "Web-Http-Redirect", "Web-Http-Tracing", "Web-ISAPI-Ext", "Web-ISAPI-Filter", "Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Metabase", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Mgmt-Service", "Web-Net-Ext", "Web-Request-Monitor", "Web-Server", "Web-Stat-Compression", "Web-Static-Content", "Web-Windows-Auth", "Web-WMI" -restart

}

# Windows Server 2012
 if ((Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).Version -eq "6.2.9200") {

Install-WindowsFeature "AS-HTTP-Activation", "Desktop-Experience", "NET-Framework-45-Features", "RPC-over-HTTP-proxy", "RSAT-Clustering", "RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface", "RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt", "RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "WAS-Process-Model", "Web-Asp-Net45", "Web-Basic-Auth", "Web-Client-Auth", "Web-Digest-Auth", "Web-Dir-Browsing", "Web-Dyn-Compression", "Web-Http-Errors", "Web-Http-Logging", "Web-Http-Redirect", "Web-Http-Tracing", "Web-ISAPI-Ext", "Web-ISAPI-Filter", "Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Metabase", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Mgmt-Service", "Web-Net-Ext45", "Web-Request-Monitor", "Web-Server", "Web-Stat-Compression", "Web-Static-Content", "Web-Windows-Auth", "Web-WMI", "Windows-Identity-Foundation" -restart

}

}

2 {

# Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
 if ((Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).Version -eq "6.1.7601") {

Import-Module ServerManager
 InstallFilterPack
 Add-WindowsFeature "Desktop-Experience", "NET-Framework", "NET-HTTP-Activation", "RPC-over-HTTP-proxy", "RSAT-Clustering", "RSAT-Web-Server", "WAS-Process-Model", "Web-Asp-Net", "Web-Basic-Auth", "Web-Client-Auth", "Web-Digest-Auth", "Web-Dir-Browsing", "Web-Dyn-Compression", "Web-Http-Errors", "Web-Http-Logging", "Web-Http-Redirect", "Web-Http-Tracing", "Web-ISAPI-Ext", "Web-ISAPI-Filter", "Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Metabase", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Mgmt-Service", "Web-Net-Ext", "Web-Request-Monitor", "Web-Server", "Web-Stat-Compression", "Web-Static-Content", "Web-Windows-Auth", "Web-WMI" -restart

}

# Windows Server 2012
 if ((Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).Version -eq "6.2.9200") {

InstallFilterPack
 Install-WindowsFeature "AS-HTTP-Activation", "Desktop-Experience", "NET-Framework-45-Features", "RPC-over-HTTP-proxy", "RSAT-Clustering", "RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface", "RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt", "RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "WAS-Process-Model", "Web-Asp-Net45", "Web-Basic-Auth", "Web-Client-Auth", "Web-Digest-Auth", "Web-Dir-Browsing", "Web-Dyn-Compression", "Web-Http-Errors", "Web-Http-Logging", "Web-Http-Redirect", "Web-Http-Tracing", "Web-ISAPI-Ext", "Web-ISAPI-Filter", "Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Metabase", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Mgmt-Service", "Web-Net-Ext45", "Web-Request-Monitor", "Web-Server", "Web-Stat-Compression", "Web-Static-Content", "Web-Windows-Auth", "Web-WMI", "Windows-Identity-Foundation" -restart

}

}

3 {

if ((Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).Version -eq "6.1.7601") {

Import-Module ServerManager
 InstallFilterPack
 Add-WindowsFeature "Desktop-Experience", "NET-Framework", "NET-HTTP-Activation", "RPC-over-HTTP-proxy", "RSAT-Clustering", "RSAT-Web-Server", "WAS-Process-Model", "Web-Asp-Net", "Web-Basic-Auth", "Web-Client-Auth", "Web-Digest-Auth", "Web-Dir-Browsing", "Web-Dyn-Compression", "Web-Http-Errors", "Web-Http-Logging", "Web-Http-Redirect", "Web-Http-Tracing", "Web-ISAPI-Ext", "Web-ISAPI-Filter", "Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Metabase", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Mgmt-Service", "Web-Net-Ext", "Web-Request-Monitor", "Web-Server", "Web-Stat-Compression", "Web-Static-Content", "Web-Windows-Auth", "Web-WMI" -restart

}

# Windows Server 2012
 if ((Get-WMIObject win32_OperatingSystem).Version -eq "6.2.9200") {

InstallFilterPack
 Install-WindowsFeature "AS-HTTP-Activation", "Desktop-Experience", "NET-Framework-45-Features", "RPC-over-HTTP-proxy", "RSAT-Clustering", "RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface", "RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt", "RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "WAS-Process-Model", "Web-Asp-Net45", "Web-Basic-Auth", "Web-Client-Auth", "Web-Digest-Auth", "Web-Dir-Browsing", "Web-Dyn-Compression", "Web-Http-Errors", "Web-Http-Logging", "Web-Http-Redirect", "Web-Http-Tracing", "Web-ISAPI-Ext", "Web-ISAPI-Filter", "Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Metabase", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Mgmt-Service", "Web-Net-Ext45", "Web-Request-Monitor", "Web-Server", "Web-Stat-Compression", "Web-Static-Content", "Web-Windows-Auth", "Web-WMI", "Windows-Identity-Foundation" -restart

}

}
 10 {
 # future - auto detect Internet access
 write-host 'Can this server access the Internet?'
 $filtpack = read-host 'Please type (Y)es or (N)o...'
 switch ($filtpack)                {
 Y { InstallFilterPack }
 N {Write-warning 'Please download and install Microsoft Filter Pack from here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26604 and http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17062'}
 }
 }
 11 {
 # future - auto detect Internet access
 write-host 'Can this server access the Internet?'
 $umapi = read-host 'Please type (Y)es or (N)o...'
 switch ($umapi)                {
 Y { InstallUMAPI }
 N {Write-warning 'Please download and install Microsoft UM API from here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34992'}
 }
 }
 12 { Disable-UAC }
 13 { Disable-FW }
 15 { Restart-Computer }
 16 {
 Write-Host "Exiting..."
 Exit
 }
 default {write-host "You haven't selected any of the available options. "}
 }

Author of a book – PowerShell cookbook

Jonas Andersson — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:56:14 +0000

If you have missed the news on my twitter, I can tell you that the last 6 months I’ve been busy with writing a book called “Microsoft Exchange 2013 PowerShell Cookbook: second edition” for Packt Publishing.

That’s also why the blog not have been updated that much lately, now it’s time to startup with the activities for the online community work again since the book more or less is completed. Just doing the final updates of the chapters. I want to thank both Anderson Patricio [MVP] and Marcelo Vighi [MVP] for doing a great job with the review.
I also want to send a special thank you to Magnus Björk [MVP] for helping me out when bugs were found.

It have been a great experience doing this project, both exciting and exhausting in the same time because of high tempo and tight time schedules. But I can recommend everyone that thinking of doing this kind of job, DO IT!

You might wonder when it will be released? mid June..

More info about the book can be found here:
http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-exchange-server-2013-powershell-2e-cookbook/book
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Exchange-PowerShell-Cookbook-ebook/dp/B00BP47WHE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1364252267&sr=1-1

And some information about me:
http://www.packtpub.com/authors/profiles/jonas-andersson

How to set “office” value for multiple Shared Mailboxes

Jonas Andersson — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:38:55 +0000

Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: -
Version: 1.0

This script was developed because there was a need to configure every Shared Mailbox with a office value. In Exchange the value is called “Office” while in Active Directory this value is called “physicalDeliveryOfficeName”.

The script is retrieving all shared mailboxes where the office value isn’t populated and creates an array of these mailboxes. It includes a couple of attributes.

It does give you the opportunity to verify the changes that will be done, before they are done.
The array is showed to the screen and also saved as a CSV file called “pre-report-$timestamp.csv”

From each of the shared mailboxes, the script will bring the office value from the corresponding manager and put that value into respective shared mailbox office attribute value.

If there are no manager configured for any of the shared mailboxes, a log file will be created called “no-manager-configured-report.txt” and if there are no office attribute value configured on the managers, a log file will be created called “no-office-configured-report.txt”

When the script is completed, a log file will be created called “completed-report-$timestamp.txt” with the changes that have been done.

####################################################################
# SetOffice.ps1
# Description:
# This PowerShell script will stamp the office field for every shared mailbox
# that doesn't have a value set. The value will be collected from each manager
# If no Manager is set, the script will not stamp the office value
#
# Jonas Andersson, MCC 2011 and 2012
# http://www.testlabs.se/blog
# Twitter @jonand82
####################################################################

Write-Host "Starting script.." -ForegroundColor White -BackgroundColor Black $ou = "target.local/Resource Mailboxes" Write-Host 'Retrieving all Shared Mailboxes without "Office" value..' -ForegroundColor White -BackgroundColor Black $UserList = Get-User -ResultSize unlimited -OrganizationalUnit $ou -RecipientTypeDetails SharedMailbox -Filter {Office -eq $null} $MasterList = @() foreach ($User in $UserList) { $MyObject = New-Object PSObject -Property @{ Mailbox = (Get-User -Identity $User).DistinguishedName Manager = ((Get-User -Identity $User).Manager).DistinguishedName Manage = (Get-User -Identity $User).Manager | ForEach-Object{ $o = (Get-User $_).Office } Office = $o } $MasterList += $MyObject } if ((Read-Host 'Show and save list, the listed shared mailboxes? (Y/N)') -eq 'Y' ) { $MasterList | Select Mailbox,Manager,Office $timestamp = Get-Date -UFormat %Y%m%d-%H%M $reportfile = ".\pre-report-$timestamp.csv" $MasterList | Select Mailbox,Manager,Office | Export-CSV $reportfile -Encoding Unicode -Notype Write-Host 'The file is saved as '$reportfile'' } if ((Read-Host 'Start the configuration? (Y/N)') -eq 'Y') { Write-Host 'Starting the script..' -ForegroundColor White -BackgroundColor Black Foreach ($item in $MasterList) { if (($item.Manager -eq $null) -or ($item.Manager -eq "")) { Write-Host 'Item '$item.Mailbox' doesnt have a Manager configured!' -ForegroundColor Red -BackgroundColor Black $reportfile = "no-manager-configured-report.txt" $empty = $item.Mailbox,$item.Manager,$item.Office $empty | Out-File -FilePath $reportfile -Append } if (($item.Office -eq $null) -or ($item.Office -eq "")) { Write-Host 'Item '$item.Manager' doesnt have a Office value configured!' -ForegroundColor Red -BackgroundColor Black $reportfile = "no-office-configured-report.txt" $empty = $item.Mailbox,$item.Manager,$item.Office $empty | Out-File -FilePath $reportfile -Append } else { Write-Host 'Configuring the value for item'$item.Mailbox'to'$item.Office'' -ForegroundColor White -BackgroundColor Black - Set-Mailbox -Identity $item.Mailbox -Office $item.Office $timestamp = Get-Date -UFormat %Y%m%d-%H%M $reportfile = "completed-report-$timestamp.txt" $list = $item.Mailbox,$item.Manager,$item.Office $list | Out-File -FilePath $reportfile -Append } } } else{ exit }

You can use this script for free, just make sure to test it in a lab environment before, I take no responsibility for any actions and I can’t give any support for it.
Feel free to use the script, edit it, publish it. If you do, please make sure to link back to the blog post url.

Download script

Regards,
Jonas

A summary of year 2012

Jonas Andersson — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:48:02 +0000

It has been an amazing year for me in many ways, both private and work related things.
But this post keeps the focus on the work related things..

I’ve been involved in a couple of really interesting projects such as a large coexistence between Domino and Exchange (45-50k users), coexistence between Domino and Office 365. Also migrated lots of mailboxes from Domino to Exchange. Besides the “complex” migration projects, I’ve also been involved in a large Exchange transition and storage design with 25-30k users for a customer.

Together with all these projects I was one of the lucky people that were sent to Orlando in September for attending the MEC 2012, which was really good. Lots of great new contents to me and lots of interesting people.

Regarding the community related things, I’m not active anymore at the TechNet forum because I want to spend that time of sharing articles with you out there instead. The forum is a great place to ask questions or search for issues. This post is written the 27th and the 28th of December, at that time I can look back and see that lots of people have found my blog and hopefully you find it attractive. The blog have had around 90k visitors and 130k pageviews year 2012, compared with 2011 which had 40k visitors and 50k pageviews, which is an amazing growth!

I did write a couple of new fresh posts about Exchange 2013, when it still was in a preview version.
I’m really happy that I did post these and shared them with you, in the end I got an offer from Packt Publishing to write an update on a book that Mike Pfeiffer wrote for Exchange 2010 SP1, called “Microsoft Exchange 2010 PowerShell Cookbook” which is a true honor to me that I’m really proud of. So you might have wondered why I haven’t posted so much this autumn, there’s the answer

Now, I just want to say thanks to all of you out there that keeps reading my blog and comment on posts! Happy new year everyone! See you out there in 2013

Complete guide on configuring KEMP VLM load balancer for Exchange 2013

Jonas Andersson — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 08:00:14 +0000

Introduction

Published: 2012-11-02
Updated: 2013-04-24
Version: 1.1

Update:
Made some updates regarding the health check for the OWA and Outlook Anywhere service.

Since Exchange Server 2013 reached RTM the 11th of October, and finally it was published to MSDN the 24th of October. This post is based on the RTM version of Exchange 2013.

I decided to write a post that included both the KEMP configuration together with the Exchange 2013 configuration. I’ve also seen that Jaap Wesselius have posted an article regarding this topic already, it’s my hope that I can fill the gap regarding the complete configuration of both Exchange and the load balancer.

For illustrating my lab environment, see the picture below.

On the left side is the “client” which tries to connect, in the middle is the load balancers and to the right are my two Exchange 2013 servers.

I did decide to have one namespace per service for having a better flexibility, however this is NOT required. But the advantage for having it like this is that the load balancer can check the health of each component. If one component is not working, it’s just disabling that service from the corresponding server, and not the whole server.
But an disadvantage is a increased cost for the certificate and the load balancer get’s a bit more complex.

I’m using the Virtual LoadMaster which resides in different versions (in the end of my post I will provide some links regarding versions etc).

Initial configuration

My configuration is a two-leg load balancer, where the first leg is placed into the client network segment and the other leg (NIC) is placed into my server segment.

The initial configuration is done by providing a license key.

Go to System Configuration –> Interfaces –> eth0 for configuring the IP address of the first network card.

System Configuration –> Local DNS Configuration –> Hostname configuration for giving the VLM a hostname.

System Configuration –> Local DNS Configuration –> DNS configuration for configuring the VLM with a domain and DNS server.

System Configuration –> Route Management –> Default Gateway for configuring the VLM with a default gateway.

Often it’s required to have the VLM understand other networks and can route traffic to them, for configuring additional route go to System Configuration –> Route Management –> Additional Routes.

Don’t forget to configure the date and time on the VLM, go to System Configuration –> System Administration –> Date/Time. I’ve configured to use “ntp.lth.se” as my NTP server, it’s recommended to use the NTP option.

When the configuration is done, a good tip is to take a backup of it, go to System Configuration –> System Administration –> Backup/Restore.

High Availability configuration

Kemp is providing a high availability cluster of two load balancing nodes, where one is active and one is passive (standby). I’ve been playing around with it and it works really good. The passive kicks in right away when the active one is broken or restarted/shutdown.

During a restart of the active node the passive becomes the active node.

In general, they share a cluster IP/name where the configuration is done and on each LB node the local settings can be done such as configuring date/time, IP addresses etc.

Start with the first node, for configuring this go to System Configuration –> Miscellaneous Options –> HA Parameters. Set it to “HA Mode: HA (First) Mode”.

Go to System Configuration –> Interfaces –> eth0. Give the load balancer cluster a IP address and also provide the IP address for the second node. Don’t forget to press the “Set Shared address” and “Set Partner address” buttons for saving the configuration. Then go back to System Configuration –> System Administration –> System Reboot. Restart the first node.

When the first node is back online, continue with the second node. Go to System Configuration –> Miscellaneous Options –> HA Parameters. Set it to “HA Mode: HA (Second) Mode”.

Example of my first node.

Example of my second node.

Creating and configuring load balancing services

I will create two examples for load balancing services, one for OWA and one for Outlook Anywhere.
Using these examples, you can easily creating services by yourself for the other ones.

OWA

Go to Virtual Services –> View/Modify Services –> Add New.

Type in the IP address for the service in the Virtual Address field, together with port, protocol and name.
Press “Add this Virtual Service”.

Make sure that “Force L7” is checked, but the “L7 Transparency” is unchecked.
Since Exchange 2013 doesn’t require persistence anymore, make sure that the option is set to “None”.
For the load method/Scheduling method, I’m using Round-Robin which is pretty much spreading the load on all servers.

Update:
Under “Real Servers”, let’s configure the health checks. Make sure it’s set to use HTTPS protocol. This together with Checked Port: “443” and URL: “/owa/healthcheck.htm”. Don’t forget to press the “Set URL” button for saving the settings. Check the option “Use HTTP/1.1” and select GET as the HTTP Method.

Let’s press the “Add New…” button under “Real Servers”. Add your Exchange 2013 Client Access servers. When all servers are added, press the Back button. (I’m using multirole servers, so all of them are added)

When everything is setup it should look like the figure below.

When you’re satisfied with the configuration, press the Back button. The services should then show up as green if the protocols are available.

Outlook Anywhere

Go to Virtual Services –> View/Modify Services –> Add New.

Type in the IP address for the service in the Virtual Address field, together with port, protocol and name.
Press “Add this Virtual Service”.

Make sure that “Force L7” is checked, while the “L7 Transparency” is unchecked.
Since Exchange 2013 doesn’t require persistence anymore, make sure that the option is set to “None”.
For the load method/Scheduling method, I’m using “Round-Robin” which is spreading the load to the servers.

Update:
Under “Real Servers”, let’s configure the health checks. Make sure it’s set to use HTTPS protocol. This together with Port: 443 and URL: “/rpc/healthcheck.htm”. Don’t forget to press the “Set URL” button for saving the settings. Also check the option “Use HTTP/1.1” and select GET as the HTTP Method.

Let’s press the “Add New…” button under “Real Servers”. Add your Exchange 2013 Client Access servers. When all servers are added, press the Back button.

Everything is now setup for load balancing the Outlook Anywhere function.

In the services console, it should look like below if the health is successfully verified.

Note: In my lab environment I’ve decided to not use L7 transparency since I don’t have any use for it. It is used when the Client Source IP address needs to show up at the CAS Servers. This can sometimes be important when using SMTP filters. So for proper load balancing, the traffic needs to flow through the load balancer, both back and forth. Therefore you need to change the Default Gateway settings of your servers, when you are activating the L7 Transparency.

Final tests

Let’s start with testing the load balancing functions so that Outlook is able to connect and that the connections are spread throughout the servers.

Here’s my final configuration, for clarifying that I’m using five different VIP’s, one for each service.

The figure below shows that Outlook 2013 profile is getting connected, I was using the autodiscover feature for configuring the Outlook profile. Both the InternalHostname and the ExternalHostname is configured to: outlook.testlabs.se in my scenario, on both my servers. For authentication I’m using NTLM.

Since Outlook 2013 was worked fine, it’s up to OWA to show up.
I reached the form-based authentication page and put in my credentials and finally got to the Inbox.
Did this a couple of times, together with login into the Admin Center for getting some more sessions in the load balancer.
This for checking so that the VLM spreads the load between the servers in a good way.

Below are two figures that shows how the sessions are spread between the servers.
To me this looks really good!
The first figure shows the servers and how the sessions are spread between them.
The second figure does show the services instead of the servers, this together with the total amount of connections last minute and up to the last hour.

These two figures together shows how the load is spread, since this is just a lab environment I don’t have an large amount of connections. It would be really interesting to see in a large enterprise environment how the load is spread between the servers.

Helpful links

General documentation
http://www.kemptechnologies.com/documentation

Sizing tool for load balancer (Exchange 2010)
http://www.kemptechnologies.com/emea/loadmaster-sizing-for-ms-exchange-2010.html

Deployment guide
http://www.kemptechnologies.com/fileadmin/content/pdf/KEMP_Exchange_2010_Deployment_Guide_5_1_v1.6.pdf

Compare Load Balancer models
http://www.kemptechnologies.com/emea/products/server-load-balancing-internet-router-load-balancer.html

Exchange Load Balancers
http://www.kemptechnologies.com/emea/loadbalancingresource/ms-exchange-2010.html

Virtual Load Balancers
http://www.kemptechnologies.com/emea/products/virtual-load-balancers/vlm-overview.html

Multi-Site Load Balancers
http://www.kemptechnologies.com/emea/products/multi-site-load-balancers/overview.html

Thanks for reading!
I hope that this was informative and interesting to read, please feel free to provide feedback

Regards,
Jonas Andersson

Wave 15 is now RTM

Jonas Andersson — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 16:13:12 +0000

If you haven’t seen it already, the whole Wave 15 has reached RTM state, which means that the code is ready.
This means that Office 2013, Lync 2013, Exchange 2013 and Sharepoint 2013 is now code completed.

The software will be available for download in mid November.

More information can be found on Exchange Team blog.

Another update regarding Exchange is that Microsoft re-released the Update Rollups.
Exchange 2010 UR4 for SP2 was re-released as UR4 v2, more info/download.
Exchange 2010 UR7 for SP1 was re-released as UR7 v2, more info/download.
Exchange 2007 UR8 for SP3 was re-released as UR8 v2, more info/download.

Since my last post I’ve had a great time attending MEC in Orlando, lots of great contents and met a lot of inspiring people.

In the upcoming weeks I will try to publish the next post, regarding load balancing for Exchange 2013 Preview. (It will be updated when the RTM is downloadable if there are any changes).

Exchange Server 2013 Preview – Part 4: Configure DAG, CAS Array and Public Folders

Jonas Andersson — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:18:48 +0000

In this series of posts, you can read about the fresh release of Exchange 2013 beta/Preview.
The posts are done as “how-to” posts with configuration examples from both Exchange Administration Console (EAC) and Exchange Management Shell (EMS).

Earlier parts can be found below:

Part 1: Installation guide
Part 2: Basic configuration
Part 3: Continue of configuration, URL’s etc.

At the end of the post, I will link to some interesting TechNet articles around High Availability, Disaster Recovery, Site resilience and Public Folder migration.

Note: My posts around Exchange 2013 Preview/beta are based on Beta information and it could be changed before it will be released (RTM).

Database Availability Group (DAG)

If this expression is new to you, here are some background information.
The DAG is the new cluster technology from Exchange 2010 and also included in 2013. It give us the opportunity to have a mailbox database replicated between two or more servers, the DAG can have utilize up to 16 copies of each database (16 different servers). The advantage of this is that if one server fails, it’s easy and very fast for doing switchover/failover to another server.

Some interesting changes around databases are that each database runs under it’s own process in Windows. Store (ESE) is totally rewritten, again.. which means you can’t use databases from older versions of Exchange directly on Exchange 2013. I have also read that IOPS requirements for databases have been reduced with another 50% from Exchange 2010, but I haven’t read it officially so maybe it’s just a rumor. We’ll see what happens when it’s being release and probably Microsoft will release an update mailbox calculator.

DAG is available for both Standard and Enterprise version of Exchange, and supported to run on both Windows 2008 R2 and Windows Server 8. Though all DAG members needs to run the same OS version.

Let’s get ready to create the DAG and add the Databases as copies on each DAG member/node.

Using EAC: It’s time to like the new EAC “console”.

Running “ipconfig” on both mailbox servers, for checking the IP addresses. Both for the MAPI network and the Replication network.

Go into Control Panel and check the network interfaces,

Type in DAG name, Witness Server, Witness directory and DAG IP. Press Save.

When the DAG is created, select it and Press Edit. Check the option “Configure database availability group network manually”. Press Save.

It’s now time for adding the mailbox servers into the DAG, this by pressing “Manage membership” button.

Press the Add button (+) and add the mailbox servers.

Add the mailbox servers that should reside in the DAG. Press OK.

Press Save.

The configuration now gets saved, failover clustering was installed on mailbox servers. Press Close.

Next thing to do it the DAG Networks, as you can see in the right bottom corner, a network called “MapiDagNetwork” has been created. I want to have the control over these networks so I will create my own.
Start by pressing “New DAG Network”. I’m about to create two new networks.

I will give the first network a name like MAPI Network, and assign the Subnet to it where the clients are supposed to connect. Press Save.

My second network will be called Replication Network, since that it’s purpose and also assign it to the correct Subnet. Press Save.

Since we now have created those two network, let’s remove the automatic created one by pressing “Remove” button.

Press OK.

The MAPI Network is not supposed to be used as replication network, so let’s disable that function by pressing “Disable Replication” on the MAPI network. Press OK.

The DAG should now show two networks called MAPI and Replication. The MAPI Network should not be enabled for replication.

Final DAG configuration

The last step (just a recommendation) is to enable the DAC mode, this for preventing split brain syndrome. Which means that you end up with having same database mounted on two (or more) different servers. More info about DAC mode can be found on the link in the end of the post.

This can’t be done through EAC (maybe that will change to RTM). So let’s start up Exchange Management Shell (EMC).

Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup –Identity DAG01 –DatacenterActivationMode DagOnly

Database copies

On each mailbox database we now need to add a copy to another server for having the redundancy.

In the menu, go to Databases and select one database, then press the Add database copy button.

Specify mailbox server that at the moments doesn’t hold a copy of the database and add it by pressing the browse button. Press Save.

Note: In this menu you also have the option to configure lag time (if using lagging node).

The database now get’s copied (Seeding).

Then do the same procedure on all of your databases.

Press Close, when the operation is done.

Do the same procedure on all of your databases.

The seeding operation is running.

Press Close.

It might take a while (some minutes..) until it get’s Healthy and everything has been checked and verified.
In my test environment it took around 15min to be fine. It should look like the picture below when everything is completed.

Using PowerShell: The Web interface is nice to work with. But I prefer the PowerShell, because I have the full control over what’s going on.

Let’s start with creating the DAG by using the command below:

New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup –Name DAG01 –WitnessServer TLCAS01 –WitnessDirectory C:\FSW_DAG01 –DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIpAddresses 172.16.1.15

Configure the DAG so that the networks can be manually configured:
Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup –Identity DAG01 –ManualDagNetworkConfiguration $True

Add the mailbox servers into the DAG:
Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer –Identity DAG01 –MailboxServer TLMB01
Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer –Identity DAG01 –MailboxServer TLMB02

Enable DAC mode for the DAG:
Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup –Identity DAG01 –DatacenterActivationMode DagOnly

List the DAG Networks:
Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupNetwork

Create two new DAG Networks, one for Mapi and one for Replication:
New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupNetwork –DatabaseAvailabilityGroup DAG01 –Name Mapi –Description “Mapi Network” –ReplicationEnabled $False –Subnets “172.16.1.0/24”

New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupNetwork –DatabaseAvailabilityGroup DAG01 –Name Replication –Description “Replication Network” –ReplicationEnabled $True –Subnets “10.0.0.0/8”

Remove the automated created network, it will not be used:
Remove-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupNetwork –Identity DAG01\MapiDagNetwork

Database copies

On each mailbox database we now need to add a copy to another server for having the redundancy.

Specify a mailbox server that at the moments doesn’t hold a copy of the database and add it by running the following commands.

Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy –Identity DB01 –MailboxServer TLMB02
Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy –Identity DB02 –MailboxServer TLMB02
Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy –Identity DB03 –MailboxServer TLMB02

Verify the replication status on each mailbox server:
Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus –Server TLMB01
Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus –Server TLMB02

Public Folders

The Public Folder databases are now gone, and transferred to “normal” mailboxes instead. The advantage of this is that the mailbox itself can now be replicated using DAG technology. This doesn’t mean that the public folder contents is replicated, it’s still required that you configure the public folder replication for the contents.

With “normal” mailbox I mean that they reside in the mailbox databases, just like user mailboxes does. However they can in someway be compared to shared and room, those are also special mailboxes.

If you decide to use the Public Folders in Exchange 2013, the first step will be to create a mailbox that holds the public folder hierarchy. This will be the writeable copy, you can have copies of the hierarchy. But you can only have one that is allowed to make changes/writeable.

How can the hierarchy mailbox be created?

Using EAC: Go to Public Folders section, this is the first warning/error message you will receive.
It means that you don’t have any public folder hierarchy (mailbox) created yet.

Go to the second public folder selection called “Public Folders Mailboxes”. Add (+), create the first mailbox for the public folders, so it’s hierarchy can be saved.

Give the mailbox a friendly name, example: PF_Hierarchy, place it into an organizational unit and select a mailbox database where it should be saved into. Press Save.

Now when the hierarchy is created, let’s create some test folders too.
Go back to “Public Folders”, press the Add (+) button. Give the public folder a name. Press Save.

If you want to configure any storage quota on the public folder content, press Edit and configure it. Statistics can also be found under Edit selection, which sometimes is valuable.

Just for testing purposes I did mail-enable the folder. By pressing the Enable button.

Press Yes.

Let’s check the properties for the folder again, now we see that we have lots of new settings. Here’s a small example how the Mail Flow settings looks like.

Using PowerShell: Start up Exchange Management Shell, the following commands will be used for creating the public folder hierarchy and contents folder.

Create the hierarchy by running the following command
New-Mailbox –Name PF_Hierarchy –Alias PF_Hierarchy –Database DB01 –OrganizationalUnit Users

This mailbox, like shared/room mailboxes is also disabled by default. This for not having the possibility to logon as this user.

Let’s create the folder named Testlabs
New-PublicFolder –Name Testlabs

Finally, mail enable the public folder
Enable-MailPublicFolder –Identity \Testlabs

We have public folders located in Exchange 2007/2010, what about them?

In the end of this post, you can find a link to a TechNet article, it provides you with a great step-by-step guide. I haven’t tried to migrate public folder contents from earlier versions of Exchange since SP3 for Exchange 2010 is required for having coexistence between Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013. SP3 is right now under development/testing and no official information can be found.

When I get my hands on SP3, this will be one of the first things to try out.

Client Access Server Array

In my previous blog post I did write about some news regarding MAPI and RPC, where I did mention what changes been made. It can be found here.

The “new” Client Access Server role can now been seen as more of a traditional Front-End server.
It utilize as a front-end connection point and redirects/proxies (depending on method) the clients to it’s correct mailbox server.

After the architectural change around the CAS role, it’s now “stateless” which means there’s no need for the load balancer to configure affinity/sticky session. For example, it means that the clients is not required to have the connection established to the same CAS server for having the OWA to work. This means that all CAS servers now will serve all clients with connections to it’s mailbox endpoint server.

How to create a client access array?

Right now, I don’t see any specific reason for creating the CAS Array, since the traffic will be proxied from the CAS servers to the correct active Mailbox servers.

In an upcoming blog post I will cover how to configure the load balancing for Exchange 2013.

Upcoming topics: load balancing Exchange 2013 using different load balancers, database fail-over, move mailbox reports, disaster recovery etc.

But first it’s time for 3 weeks of vacation, until then. Keep on reading the posts and you’re more than welcome to comment on them.

Thanks for reading, I hope it did gave you some valuable information.

More information:

High Availability
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638137%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

DAC mode
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979790.aspx

Client Access Server
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298114%28v=exchg.150%29

Public Folder migration scenario
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj150486%28v=exchg.150%29

Exchange Server 2013 Preview – Part 3: How to configure site URL’s, Databases and Outlook Anywhere

Jonas Andersson — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:11:18 +0000

I suppose you already have, but if you haven’t read my previous parts in this Exchange 2013 serie, have a look at the links below.

Part 1: Complete guide of how to perform the installation
Part 2: How to do the Basic configuration

This part will include details on how the configuration could be made for Site URL’s/Virtual Directories, Databases, Outlook Anywhere and MAPI vs RPC over HTTPs together with connecting using Outlook 2013.

In the previous part we did install the certificate which included the following names, so we can use these names in the site configuration. (If using HTTPS, the configured name needs to be included into the certificate.)

mail.testlabs.se
autodiscover.testlabs.se
tlcas01
tlcas01.testlabs.se

Sites / URL’s

Let’s go through the steps for configuring the sites with the ExternalURL and other settings.
I’ll go through both the EAC and the PowerShell, so you have the opportunity to select which method you prefer.

Let’s start..

In EAC: Go to Servers, select Virtual Directories.

Select the server in the menu and which type you want to show. Then press Edit.

Let’s start with Autodiscover.

By default, Integrated Windows Authentication and Basic authentication is enabled. Press Save.

Next, select Exchange ActiveSync (EAS). Press Edit.