November 04, 2005
Thanks!
Devin, Missy, Tom, and I just got back from Exchange Connections. Thanks for buying out the bookstore's entire stock of the book (we were one of only 2 titles to sell out), and thanks for all your feedback on the first edition of the cookbook! Although I couldn't be at the "Secret Sauce" session, Tom, Missy, and Devin did a great job as evidenced by the number of people who told me so at the show.
Posted by Paul at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2005
Upgraded to MoveableType 3.2
All I can say is "wow!" There are a ton of new features and enhancements-- very impressive for a point release. Please let me know if you find anything that doesn't work properly.
Posted by Paul at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
Welcome, Andrey!
Exchange MVP Andrey Fyodorov has kindly offered to join us here at the Cookbook; his first post is for a nifty-neat-o Exchange backup script. Welcome, Andrey!
Posted by Paul at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2005
Please post your reviews
If you bought the Cookbook, and liked it, please post a review on Amazon. Reviews help generate both word-of-mouth and sales-- but don't take my word for it. A real live Yale professor, Judy Chevalier, wrote a paper in which she determined that good reviews actually do help boost sales. Bad reviews inihibit sales, so I guess if you didn't like the cookbook you should just keep quiet :) (Hat tip: Freakonomics, which you should probably be reading regularly).
And, of course, if you didn't buy the Cookbook, well, you know what to do.
Posted by Paul at 01:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2005
It's shipping!
Amazon is now shipping the Exchange Server Cookbook. The book is now ranked at 8,930 (not bad for a debut title), and it's holding steady at #17 on the "computer early adopters" sub-list. Thanks to all of you who pre-ordered! If you haven't ordered your copy yet, now's a good time :)
Posted by Paul at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
Script revision
Robbie convinced me that my earlier plan of posting each individual script as a blog article was a poor user experience. Instead, I'll be posting zip files of the scripts for each chapter, and I'll upload individual scripts as files. I wanted to post the entire contents so that Google could find key words (or, more precisely, key WMI/CDO/CDOEXM methods and properties that people will be searching for); this will accomplish that without requiring me to spend my entire natural life pasting in VBScript code.
Posted by Paul at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)
Trackbacks == off
I've turned off trackbacks for all posts older than 5 days. I'm tired of having to clean up spam every single day.
Posted by Paul at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2005
Cookbook now on Amazon
w00t! The Exchange Server Cookbook is now officially available for preorder from Amazon! Get yours now before they, er, run out... Yeah, that's the ticket. They might run out, so rush out and order yours now!
Posted by Paul at 02:29 PM | Comments (2)
May 18, 2005
Houston, we have a cover
We just got our review copy of the book's cover.
.
Yes, that is a baboon. I can't wait to see what the colophon says!
Posted by Paul at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2005
Bookstores or bust!
We just finished QC1 (our review of the book in layout) and the book's page has appeared on the O'Reilly website. According to this, it's due out next month.
Posted by Devin Ganger at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2005
Scripts: coming very soon
We're in the last push to get the book finished. Part of that is that I'm making one last test and cleanup pass on the scripts. As I get them done, I'll post them here in the "Scripts" category... but to give you a reason to come back, I'll post one per day. Each chapter will have a post that lists the scripts in it, so you can see what's coming and when.
Posted by Paul at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2005
We're *this* close
We are so close to being done! The first half of the book has gone to O'Reilly's production department; they take our original Word docs and lay them out in FrameMaker, adding the artwork, icons, and formatting that give the finished book its distinctive appearance. We have a few more chapters to do technical review on (Devin has two, Missy has one, and Tom has one), and I have to test and clean up all the scripts-- all by 11 March! Once those things are done, the second half of the book can go off to production; at that point, the authors are done until the initial proofs of the book come back. Those proofs are our last chance to catch mistakes, so we'll be poring over them pretty closely.
The big question on everyone's mind is probably "what animal has O'Reilly chosen for the cover?" Your guess is as good as mine. Robbie may tell us beforehand, or he may keep it as a surprise (although I bet Missy can coax it out of him).
Posted by Paul at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2005
Moving towards completion
Just finished up the preface chapter and sent it off to Robbie; now to turn my attention toward addressing the technical reviewers' comments in my assigned chapter (we just got a new batch in last night). I've already found one incredibly stupid error I made in one of my recipes, and thanks to their vigilance the world will never know how dum I am.
It actually feels like a book now. I am getting excited to see it. I have started checking the O'Reilly website on a regular basis to see when information about the book goes up. I know, I know; rookie move. I said I am excited.
Posted by Devin Ganger at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2005
Almost done!
Devin turned in his edited version of Chapter 7, which was the last remaining chapter for technical edit. This past week, all four of us have been busy addressing comments from our technical reviewers (William Lefkovics, Tony Murray, Michael B. Smith, and the redoubtable Joe Richards). The first four chapters are complete and ready to go on to production; the second chunk of chapters should be back from the tech reviewers this week, and they've just gotten the final three chapters. So what? Well, we expect to get the rest of the chapters through TE and wrapped up by month's end, which would put the book on the shelf sometime in late April or early May. No word yet on what our cover animal will be, but I'll post it here as soon as I find out.
Once the book's in production, that means the writing part is finished-- that'll free some of my attention to go toward this blog, so I can start posting the scripts included in the book. Stay tuned!Posted by Paul at 06:08 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2005
Tech review begins
After a (too-long) hiatus, we're back to rattling pots and pans in the kitchen. All but three of the chapters have been through the initial editing cycle: we wrote them, sent them to Robbie Allen for editing, and incorporated his comments and feedback. We're waiting on his feedback for two chapters, and I'm working to finish the remaining chapter. In the meantime, the first chunk of chapters have gone out to our ace staff of technical reviewers, so we're actually getting closer to printing time!
Posted by Paul at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)
January 06, 2005
Setting public folder permissions programmatically
For Chapter 9 of the cookbook, I needed a way to set public folder permissions from a script. The best answer I've found so far is Eric Legault's script, but it was too long and complex to include in the book. Rather than copy the script here, let me just refer you to it: Accessing Public Folder Permissions Programmatically.
Posted by Paul at 01:56 PM | Comments (1)
January 03, 2005
The growth of SMTP capabilities in Exchange
Chapter 7, "Routing, Transport, and SMTP," got sent off to our editor (hi, Robbie!) last night. This chapter was a departure for me because it was one I wrote myself beginning to end, instead of taking a few recipes here and there. I'd volunteered to write this chapter because it is, at heart, about SMTP, and with my years of administering UNIX mail systems, I have a fairly good handle on SMTP; my clearest handle on Exchange is coming from the SMTP side and working inward.
As I was researching several of the recipes for this chapter, I became aware that there was a lack of what was (to me) painfully obvious documentation on Exchange. One of the things that I needed to know was what SMTP and Extended SMTP (ESMTP) keywords and verbs the various versions of Exchange supported. I could find bits and pieces of this information all over the place, but nobody seemed to have a nice side-by-side comparison chart.
The obvious answer to that was to compile one. Since I didn't end up using it in any of the recipes directly (although it may yet end up somewhere in the book), I figured I'd share what I compiled. Please, feel free to let me know if you find errors or omissions; I have no ego invested in this.
Without further ado...
| ESMTP keyword or verb | 5.5 | 2000 | 2003 | Notes |
| 8BITMIME | X | X | Permits 8-bit message bodies | |
| ATRN | X | X | Authenticated TURN; requires SMTP AUTH | |
| AUTH GSSAPI | X | X | Kerberos authentication | |
| AUTH LOGIN | X | X | X | Basic authentication |
| AUTH NTLM | X | X | NTLM (IWA) authentication | |
| BINARYMIME | X | X | Requires CHUNKING; permits unencoded 8-bit data transfer | |
| CHUNKING | X | X | Streamed-mode data transfer | |
| DSN | X | X | X | Delivery Status Notification |
| ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES | X | X | ESMTP enhanced status codes | |
| ETRN | X | X | X | Extended TURN; requires DNS MX entries |
| PIPELINING | X | X | Performance enhancement | |
| SIZE | X | X | X | Maximum message size advertisement |
| STARTTLS | X | X | X | Draft TLS spec; start SSL for rest of session |
| TLS | X | X | X | Final TLS spec; start SSL for rest of session |
| TURN | X | X | Server delivers mail queued up for client | |
| VRFY | X | X | Verify recipients | |
| XEXCH50 | X | X | X | Exchange specific extended message properties |
| X-EXPS GSSAPI | X | X | Exchange org-specific authentication using Kerberos | |
| X-EXPS LOGIN | X | X | Exchange org-specific authentication using basic authentication | |
| X-EXPS NTLM | X | X | Exchange org-specific authentication using NTLM | |
| X-LINK2STATE | X | X | Cross-routing group link status updates |
Posted by Devin Ganger at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2004
Monitoring Exchange Services
I'm currently writing a recipe on how to monitor the health and status of your Exchange services. I haven't done much day to day administration over the past several years, so this is outside my realm of current expertise a bit. When I was responsible for operations in the past, we used the built-in monitoring that was available with Exchange 5.5 and simply dedicated a workstation to show the status of the monitoring all of the time. I haven't been able to find a way to make Exchange 2003 do the same thing , even though I've set up a monitor for all default Exchange services. The monitor doesn't seem to do anything that I can see, and watching the event logs constantly certainly isn't a great solution. So I figure I must be missing something. Do you have any ideas to help me, or did we lose a lot of functionality with the "monitoring" included in the newer versions of Exchange server?
Posted by Missy at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 29, 2004
Fresh Meat
Well, we're definitely back to spending time on the cookbook, and in order to increase our rate of productivity, we've asked Tom Meunier, another Exchange MVP who recently joined the staff at 3sharp to help us with the project. We're going to be better about letting you all know what we're up to, and look forward to refocusing on the book!
Posted by Missy at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2004
Cookbook: not dead
Missy, Devin, and I have been super-jammed up with our real jobs, so our cookbook output has suffered. However, our editor has, er, gently reminded us to get with the program, so you should expect to see more here soon.
In the meantime, here's a nifty tool by Darren Neimke that takes script or code and renders it in CSS-based HTML. I plan to start using it as soon as I get something written worth posting.
Posted by Paul at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2004
Chapter 13 (disaster recovery) submitted
After a lot of hard work, much cussin' and spittin', and lots of testing, chapter 13 has gone off to the editors. It covers disaster recovery, which is much easier in Exchange 2003 than its predecessors. One interesting problem is how to make correct backward references to recipes in earlier chapters when they haven't been written yet. We settled on keeping a big Excel sheet listing all of the recipes in various chapters; when we need a new recipe added somewhere, we tack it on to the end. As we begin each new chapter, we'll reorder its recipes so they make sense, and we'll fix the cross-references during (or maybe just before) the tech edit pass. Since each recipe cross-reference explains why you care ("see Recipe 11.2 for re-frobbing the framistan...") this makes it fairly easy to patch up ex post facto.
Posted by Paul at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2004
VBSEdit: so far, so good
I had to add a couple of scripts to chapter 2, so I thought I'd give VBSEdit a try. It features prominently in the Google ads on the script editor post I wrote a few weeks ago. So far, I'm very impressed: it's quick, it has a fairly robust syntax coloring engine, and the integrated debugger is extremely useful. I'll see how it holds up after more extended usage.Posted by Paul at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2004
It's shipping!
Secure Messaging with Exchange Server 2003 is now in stock at Amazon. It doesn't look like anyone's actually bought it yet, but hey, you can't have everything.Posted by Paul at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2004
PrimalScript: any good?
I'm tired of using Notepad as a script editor, so I've been on the hunt for a better solution. Right now, I'm using UltraEdit32, which I like. However, I noticed a Google ad (on this very page!) for a scripting IDE called PrimalScript. It seems fairly expensive, and it has lots of features that I don't care about-- but if it's a good tool, I don't mind paying for it. So, readers, has anyone used it? Is it worth a hoot? What other scripting development tools are useful to you?Posted by Paul at 05:40 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2004
Understanding Exchange's scripting interfaces
There's more than one way to peel a grape, and there's more than one way to script Exchange. This column explains Exchange's primary scripting interfaces and what they're for; you'll see most of them used in various recipes for this book.Posted by Paul at 05:44 AM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2004
Moving Right Along
Chapter 2, Installation and Infrastructure, is just about completed, and I think we're all pretty happy with the results. I know I still want (need?) to tweak a few of my recipes, but it's great to see progress on the book.
Some of the recipes include preparing a Windows 2000 server for an Exchange installation, using the ExDeploy tools (which are a GREAT addition to Exchange 2003 and are so useful for guiding you through the installation process), and enumerating all Exchange connectors.
Do you have suggestions for recipes to be included in this chapter? We think that we've covered most of the big ones, but are always interested in hearing ideas from the field.
Posted by Missy at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
February 05, 2004
Outside the Box
Hello, folks. As Paul said, I've got UNIX on my resume -- quite a bit of it, in fact. I come from humble systems administration roots, a good chunk of it spent babysitting ISPs. The key principle there was "Make the services that customers want to pay for work." That meant using Solaris, Windows, Linux -- whatever. As such, I've become quite agnostic over the years -- every piece of hardware and software is a result of design compromises and as such, everything has its warts.
That said, working with 3sharp and Paul and Missy has given me a new appreciation for Exchange. It's all too easy to become cynical and bitter about it if you don't take the time to really learn what it is capable of (and kudos to Microsoft for increasing those capabilities with each release!) and where it is strong.
I'd like to echo Missy's question and encourage you to let us know what sorts of things you want to see. My own slant on this, though, is that I want to know what you do with Exchange that might be outside of the typical Exchange box. These kind of real-world situations are useful to tell us how people are using Exchange and to uncover new general categories of recipes that need to be written.
Posted by Devin Ganger at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
Your Input Requested
So what's the deal with the Exchange cookbook? Basically, we're hoping to be able to mirror the type of book Robbie Allen produced with his oh-so-useful Active Directory Cookbook. We'll provide numerous recipes, many with scripts the reader can use, that will detail the important "How To Get Things Done" features within the last two releases of Exchange (sorry folks, but Exchange 5.5 is a very different animal than either of the 200x releases, and won't be covered). As Paul mentioned, we now have a list of 240 recipes, and expect that will expand a bit as we find more interesting subjects.
I think these cookbooks are brilliant resources - while you probably won't want to read them cover-to-cover, they're books that should be on any Exchange administrator's desk for easy access.
The burning question -- what tasks would you like to see in the book? Suggestions from those of you who manage Exchange every day would be very useful - while we think we've got most of the good stuff covered, I'd love to hear from the field on this one! So comment away!
Posted by Missy at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
Schedule
One of the questions I often get about book writing is how long it takes. This cookbook is a little atypical, since it's very modular-- each recipe stands more-or-less on its own, so it's possible to write several recipes in parallel. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what we're going to do. Devin, Missy, and I have committed to average five recipes per person per week, giving us an aggregate total of 15/week. Right now there are about 240 recipes, so figuring in a 10% fudge factor means that we need about 18 weeks. So, the schedule we agreed to with O'Reilly calls for us to turn in two complete chaptes on 16 February, followed by turning in 50% of the manuscript (and that's by chapter, not by recipe-- no half-chapters allowed!) on 12 April. Our 100% complete date is 6/28.
The money question: when does the book get on the shelf? Not until about 12 October. Why the delay? Well, O'Reilly allows for about four weeks of technical review (and if you're interested in being a tech reviewer, contact our editor at rallen AT rallenhome DOT com). The book should go to production about 26 July, and the entire time between then and October is required to design the cover; index, print, bind, and ship the books, and get them into the distribution system. You'd think that a smaller, more nimble publisher like O'Reilly would have a time advantage over behemoths like MS Press, but they don't. You might also think that technological advances would have shortened this time since the mid-1990s-- but they haven't, at least not so far as I can tell.
Posted by Paul at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2004
About the authors
This book is a little unusual in that it has three authors: Devin Ganger, Missy Koslosky, and Paul Robichaux.
This is Devin's first book, but he's been active in writing stuff for the Postfix community and for Steve Jackson Games. Plus, he writes a ton of stuff at work, mostly focused on (surprise) Exchange and security. Although he's from a UNIX background, we love him anyway, and his scripting expertise is a great addition to the book.
Missy is well-known in the Exchange community; she's a long-time MVP who taught Paul much of what he knows about Exchange 5.5 (but don't hold her accountable for it, 'kay?) She has extensive production experience with large Exchange deployments, and a healthy dislike for boring repetitive tasks. This is her first book too.
Paul is, well, Paul. He's been writing about Exchange for almost six years (yikes! has it really been that long?), and this is his fifth Exchange book: one MCSE book, one for O'Reilly on Exchange 5.5, and two Exchange security books (covering Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003) for Microsoft Press.
Posted by Paul at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)
First post
W00t. I got first post.
This site is the companion site to the Exchange Cookbook, forthcoming from O'Reilly and Associates.
Posted by Paul at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)