December 08, 2005
SP2 updates to the Cookbook
One of the projects I have on my mental plate to tackle during the holiday season is taking a look through the Cookbook and making note of any guidance that needs to be updated thanks to the release of Exchange 2003 SP2.
I already have two new recipes mentally running around my head: how to configure SenderID (which, coincidentally, is a talk I'll be giving in April at Exchange Connections Spring 2006), and how to raise the database storage limit from 16GB in Standard Edition. There is some good guidance out there on the net for these topics already, but it would be a nice exercise to squeeze them down into typical cookbook recipe format.
While I'm at it, are there any other things you think we should have included but didn't? While it's way too early to even be thinking about a second edition of the book for Exchange 12 (which is going to change a lot of the recipes pretty drastically, thanks to the power of Monad!), I still want to provide some nice value through this blog.
Posted by Devin Ganger at 02:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 15, 2005
Exchange 12 developer roadmap
Cool stuff from the PDC: the developer roadmap for E12 was unveiled at PDC today. Terry Myerson has a post on it at the Exchange team blog, or you can just go straight to the PowerPoint deck from the session. I've got a lot of catching up to do, since the Cookbook depends on WMI and CDOEXM, both of which are being "de-emphasized" in E12.
Posted by Paul at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2005
Sending email via scripts
One common question I get is how to send email via scripts; Joseph Neubauer wrote a good article that explains how to do it using various dialects of CDO, as well as the SMTP pickup directory.
Posted by Paul at 07:25 AM | Comments (1)
July 20, 2005
Cool script: flip RPC-over-HTTP heuristic bits
Evan posted about this last month year, and I'm just now getting caught up. With Exchange 2003 SP1, you can use the new ESM UI to set up RPC over HTTPS, which is about a million times easier than the RTM way of doing so. However, you have to set up all your BE servers first, because the FEs will scan AD for the heuristic bits that indicate whether the BE is part of a managed topology or not. Problem: you have to set this manually on every BE, and you'd better not miss any! Solution: use this script to do all the work for you.
Posted by Paul at 04:48 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 18, 2005
Cool Exchange backup script
John Howard posted a nifty script for backing up Exchange servers.
Posted by Paul at 09:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 06, 2005
Live from TechEd: Cookbook samples
If you're at TechEd, drop by the O'Reilly Media booth and pick up a sample of the Exchange Cookbook. It's about 25 pages of some select recipes that gives you a good flavor of what the full book is like.
Posted by Paul at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2005
A Theme of Synchronicity
One of the last original recipes I wrote for the book (for the revised Chapter 8) dealt with the topic of creating custom OWA themes. It's horribly easy to do.
So what do I see last night on You Had Me at EHLO but this wonderful article by Eileen Brown, containing a great 8-minute webcast on how to create a new theme. It uses the Xbox look and feel and gives you the various graphics files so you can examine everything closely. I even caught one small omission I made in the recipe, so I'm making a mental note now to fix it when that chapter comes back from tech review.
Posted by Devin Ganger at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2005
Patch time!
Time to patch Exchange again! MS05-012 (Vulnerability in OLE and COM Could Allow Remote Code Execution (873333)) has been released for pretty much every version of Windows, Office, and Exchange, since they all use the component. It's rated severe, so don't wait; grab it now, get it into testing, and get it into production.
Note that if you're using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) faithfully, you probably already know about this patch. If you're not running version 1.2.1, go download that and start using it. It helps you figure out exactly what you need.
And if you were using Software Update Services (SUS) or its currently in beta replacement Windows Update Services (WUS), you'd automatically be notified about this patch and be able to control deployment throughout your organization.
Posted by Devin Ganger at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2005
Call for Papers: Exchange Connections Fall 2005
Ordinarily I wouldn't post this announcement here, but I'm going to break tradition and do so because I'm one of the conference co-chairs. As such, I have to help find speakers, so I want this call for papers to go out far and wide.
Windows IT Pro is now accepting session proposals for the Oct-Nov. 2005 Windows Connections conference. We're heading to San Diego October 30 to November 2, 2005, for the premier Windows technical conference, and we'd like to hear from you!
If you're interested in speaking on Exchange-related topics at the show, send your abstracts to paul@robichaux.net by February 18. We want proposals for regular 75-minute sessions, as well as 1/2 day and full day pre-conference and post-conference sessions.
Note that we have a limited number of speaking slots, and all participants must be able to present a minimum of three 75-minute sessions. There are three basic requirements:
• Send a minimum of 3 session proposals (4 or 5 is ideal for discussion purposes)
• Include a biographical statement with your session proposals
• Include any additional pre- or post-con session proposals, if applicable
Please adhere to the February 18 deadline as we need to make speaker and session selections right away. (We plan to have a conference brochure ready to distribute at TechEd in June.)
Posted by Paul at 07:30 AM | Comments (1)
January 31, 2005
Hey, Scripting Guy!
If you're not reading the "Hey, Scripting Guy!" Q&A at Microsoft's site, you're missing out. See the archives for some great background material on scripting, including answers to questions like "How can I enumerate all the objects in an AD OU?" and "How can I delete all files older than a certain date?" (hint: this latter one is highly useful for cleaning up your badmail directory!) Highly recommended!
Posted by Paul at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2005
Programmatically getting white space size
Here's a very cool trick: Glen Scales wrote a script that finds all of your mailbox and public folder stores, then queries their servers' event logs to find event ID 1221s indicating how much white space is available. This is a slick solution to the vexing problem of monitoring how much white space is lurking in your databases.
Posted by Paul at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)
Inter-organization DL migration script
Rui J.M. Silva posted a cool script on his blog for migrating distribution list objects between Exchange organizations. The script is meant to be run against an Exchange 5.5 directory, from which it extracts the DLs with ldifde. It then extracts the 5.5 directory with csvde, matches the display and account names, and outputs a file that can imported using ldifde. The last step actually imports the DLs as universal distribution groups. If you want the DLs to be populated, you must already be using the ADC so that user accounts are synchronized, but the script is still a nice bit of work.
Posted by Paul at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2004
Great scripting site: Glen Scales
If you're interested in Exchange scripting, go directly to Glen Scales' site, where you'll find (among others), scripts for making RSS feeds of public folders, sending mail from OWA, and recovering items from the Deleted Items dumpster. Highly recommended.
Posted by Paul at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2004
Exchange 2003 Security Hardening Guide released
Microsoft's released the Exchange 2003 Security Hardening Guide, which is basically the Exchange 2003 remix of the well-received Exchange 2000 Security Operations Guide. Like its predecessor, it's meant to be used in conjunction with the Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003 hardening guides. The Exchange guides provide a set of security templates that can be applied to automatically harden Exchange 2003 servers; it also provides prescriptive guidance on protecting against viruses, spam, and DoS attacks. Of course, it's no substitute for a good book on security :)Posted by Paul at 06:44 AM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2004
Exchange team blog launches
There must be an echo in here. Anyway, the Exchange team now has a group blog: You Had Me at EHLO. Recommended reading.
Posted by Paul at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)