Exchange Server 2007 may well shake up messaging – and about time too!

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A colleague recently alerted me to a Network World article about how Exchange 2007 will shake up messaging. Whilst Exchange Server 2007 (formerly codenamed E12) will bring significant improvements that will require careful consideration and planning, I found the article to be highly misleading and thought I’d probably better set the record straight.

Firstly the article states that the new role-based architecture has the potential to require up to 5 types of Exchange server to be rolled out (up from just 2 with current versions); however it’s not that simple. The five roles are:

  • Edge transport (message hygiene).
  • Hub transport.
  • Client access.
  • Mailbox server.
  • Unified messaging.

Exchange Server 2003 and earlier do not have message hygiene or unified messaging capabilities (so that counts for two of the new roles); however many organisations will have a separate product already performing message hygiene functionality so even that is not really an additional server to deploy (simply a case of replacing a third party product with a Microsoft one). Also (and crucially), four of the roles (all except edge transport) can be co-hosted on a single server if required. What the new role-based model really provides is flexibility in designing an Exchange server infrastructure.

The move to 64-bit architecture has come in for much criticism from some people but quite simply that is the way things are going. All servers sold in the last 18 months or so by a tier 1 OEM (basically HP, Dell and IBM) have had 64-bit capabilities even if they have had a 32-bit operating system installed so the Longhorn Server wave of products that will hit us in 2007 are time to “get with the program”. A 64-bit architecture removes many constraints (e.g. memory limitations) and allows for applications such as Exchange to scale more effectively, allowing larger mailboxes and greater consolidation.

The new clustering features are where there is the most uncertainly at the moment (features may well come and go before release); however the article refers to one user who doesn’t want his server to fail over from LA to Chicago. That may well be the case for some, but for many wouldn’t it be good if we could easily fail service over between two data centres? In any case, Exchange Server 2007 is likely to support three forms of clustering (on mailbox servers) – the current Microsoft cluster service, local continuous replication and continuous clustered replication (for geoclusters) so there are many options. As for only mailbox servers supporting clustering – so what! All other Exchange server roles either hold transient data or perform a client access role – load balancing is probably more appropriate.

My final issue is that the article points out that upgrading from Exchange Server 5.5 is not supported. Whether or not there are many organisations using it, Exchange Server 5.5 will be 4 releases old when Exchange Server 2007 hits the streets and is already unsupported. It is time to drop legacy platforms in order to make better use (dare I say “leverage”) Active Directory more effectively. This is another case of needing to “get with the program” – e-mail is being viewed as more and more critical by organisations and should not be left languishing on an outdated and unsupported platform.

As one would expect after 4 years (and for a major release), there are many additional features and enhancements planned for Exchange Server 2007, each with their own implications that need to be considered during the infrastructure design and implementation planning. Much of the information I have on Exchange Server 2007 was supplied under NDA but everything I’ve written here is available publicly and other information sources include the excellent Microsoft Exchange team blog, as well as Microsoft UK’s Eileen Brown (and of course my own ramblings here).

Some more Microsoft videos

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few months back I blogged about the re-introducing the real Windows Vista videos that were doing the rounds and earlier today I blogged about a video of what could have happened if Microsoft had designed the packaging for the iPod. Here are a few more Microsoft videos that I found in a couple of misspent hours online this afternoon:

Enjoy!

What could have happened If Microsoft had designed the packaging for the iPod

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Late last night, Alex and I were (for once) agreeing on the success of an Apple product – the iPod – which may not be the best digital music player on the market (technically) but sure enough has the simplest “user experience” (the tight integration of the iPod with Apple’s iTunes music store may well be monopolistic but it is incredibly easy to use, especially when compared with equivalent offerings based Microsoft’s platform for digital rights management).

That’s the beauty of the iPod. Simplicity. From the packaging, to the hardware design, to the user interface.

I’m guessing that this has been around for a while now (with the 2005 product references) but I’ve just seen a short video of what could have happened if Microsoft had designed the iPod package:

Based on my professional relationship with Microsoft, this particular parody is uncannily close to the truth.

Addicted to the ‘net (I wish I’d brought a network cable away…)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Apologies for the lack of blogging these last couple of weeks (well, it will be a couple of weeks by the time I upload this to the blog), but I’m currently sitting in the shade, enjoying a nice drink, in 29 degrees of sunshine, in France’s Loire Valley. Normally, a family holiday would mean a ban on anything related to computers, strictly enforced by my wife, but the merger between my twin hobbies of photography and computing means that I do need to take a laptop away on holiday with me to at least back up my photos!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that our fantastic holiday cottage (La Sarmenti̬re, in Montsoreau Рbooked via French Country Cottages) had a funky Wanadoo.fr Livebox ADSL router installed.

Wanadoo/Orange Livebox
I’m not sure if the owners intend it to be used by guests (the wireless connection was secured) but I always carry at least on CAT5 Ethernet cable. Except this time. Because I’m not supposed to be using the Internet on holiday. But I neeeeeeed to. Just think of all the tourist information that I could research on the ‘net.

Finally, Windows Vista beta 2 goes public

Posted on By Mark Wilson

The betas are ready! Windows Vista

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the confusion caused by Bill Gates’ announcement of Vista beta 2 availability (the fact that I could download it from a Microsoft site but that other Microsoft channels were saying it was not yet available). Over the following days it because clear that although registered beta testers could get hold of beta 2, it had not yet been released to the public. That all changed this week – the beta is now available for download or order via the Windows Vista Customer Preview Programme – but if you’re going to try it, beware.

I’m running Windows Vista beta 2 on my main notebook PC with no significant issues but others are reporting that beta 2 is not as stable as it should be. The key point to note is that unlike products from some vendors (e.g. Google, who seem to leave products in a perpetual beta cycle – Google Mail for example!) in Microsoft “beta” really does mean pre-release software – not the final product, so don’t use it on your main PC unless you know that your data is safe should Vista implode on you.

DNS and operations master roles placement with Active Directory

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I had a call last night from a client who is implementing Active Directory (AD) in his organisation and was trying to resolve some replication issues. Like so many problems in AD the issue was related to the DNS configuration and once I had made a few configuration changes on the DNS servers to build a forwarding hierarchy from the remote sites to the head office and then on to the ISP, everything started to work.

Whilst I was looking over his domain I also noticed that there was only a single global catalog (GC) server – the first domain controller that he’d installed (the same DC that was holding all the operations master roles, although in his single domain forest the co-hosting of the infrastructure master and GC roles will not cause problems with phantom indexes as described in Microsoft knowledge base article 248047).

Microsoft knowledge base article 825036 describes best practices for DNS client settings in Windows 2000 Server and in Windows Server 2003 whilst Microsoft knowledge base article 223346 discusses the placement and optimisation of operations master roles.

Keeping files synchronised between data sources with SyncToy

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Several months back, my mate Toffa told me about a tool called SyncToy that is great for keeping two disks synchronised (e.g. a primary and a backup). Last night I installed it (to make regular backups of my digital photos and music to my new external hard disk) and was very impressed. It’s actually a free Windows PowerToy and I was using v1.0 – SyncToy v1.2 is available and includes a number of enhancements.

The tool offers five modes of synchronisation between pairs of folders (left and right) and users can also preview the changes before running the synchronisation job:

  • Synchronise: New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other.
  • Echo: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right.
  • Subscribe: Updated files on the right are copied to the left if the file name already exists on the left.
  • Contribute: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions.
  • Combine: New and updated files are copied both ways. Nothing happens to renamed and deleted files.

Microsoft are positioning this as a tool for photographers but to be honest it looks good for anyone who keeps data in multiple locations (like backing up a laptop to a server at home). I know people who swear by Novell iFolder (for keeping data synchronised, secure and available wherever they are) but SyncToy looks like a perfect synchronisation solution for many Windows users who just need to make sure that a second copy of their important files is available if the first one is lost or who want to synchronise files stored on multiple devices in a number of locations.

OWA 2003 ActiveX control issues from IE 6.0 and 7.0

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Since switching my everyday PC over to Windows Vista, I’ve been unable to reply to any e-mails using Outlook Web Access (OWA) whereby the reply pane opens, but the ActiveX control doesn’t load. I tried various browser settings before a bit of googling turned up a thread on the microsoft.public.exchange.admin newsgroup that seemed to describe an annoying “click to activate the control” message that I’d been experiencing with fully-patched Windows XP clients (caused by the Internet Explorer update described in Microsoft knowledge base article 912945).

Microsoft knowledge base article 911829 describes the problem as well as highlighting that Windows Vista does not support the ActiveX control used by OWA for HTML editing. Once I’d installed the associated hotfix on my Exchange Server 2003 server the issue was resolved for both my XP and Vista clients.

P2Ving my notebook PC: part 2

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last week I wrote about how I’d lost most of my bank holiday weekend trying to perform a physical to virtual (P2V) conversion of my corporate notebook PC. Well, I’m pleased to say that I’ve resolved the remaining issues and I’m very happy with the results.

The last remaining problem after I’d used PlateSpin PowerConvert to carry out the conversion to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 was getting the Cisco Systems VPN Client to work. I spent two days trying various settings, removing and reinstalling the VPN software (and the Zone Labs Integrity Client that my corporate VPN connection also requires) but was getting nowhere.

With or without a VPN solution, my end goal was a VMware virtual machine, as Microsoft Virtual Server is intended as a remote/server virtualisation solution, and Microsoft Virtual PC only runs on Windows/Macintosh platforms (I needed a cross-platform solution as I intend to run my virtual machine as a guest on both Windows and Linux). That’s where VMware Server beta 3 came in useful, as I used its virtual machine importer feature to import the Virtual Server configuration before installing the VMware Tools and copying the whole virtual machine elsewhere to run it using the VMware Player.

If this sounds complicated, then there are some good reasons for taking the physical hardware – Microsoft Virtual Server – VMware Server – VMware Player route.

  • Firstly, PlateSpin PowerConvert didn’t recognise my VMware Server beta 3 server and I don’t have a licensed copy of VMware Workstation/GSX/ESX (except an old VMware Workstation 4 licence) so Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 was my only viable route.
  • Secondly, whilst VMware claim that their Player supports Microsoft virtual machines, my experience is that the import fails.
  • Finally, VMware Player does not include VMware Tools. Although VMware Tools can be installed to a virtual machine within VMware Player, the use of VMware Server to carry out the import provided an ideal opportunity to install the tools.

Incidentally, VMware Server’s virtual machine importer was very impressive, giving me the option to use the existing Virtual Server disks or to copy them to VMware Server format (I chose the latter) as well as options for legacy or new VMware formats. It can also import from certain disk image files and that may well be a method of avoiding the use of the software that I used to carry out the P2V operation.

Once I’d rebuilt my notebook with a different base operating system (I’m using Windows Vista beta 2 at the moment), it was simply a case of installing the VMware Player. Although I don’t recall any errors on installation, I did need to manually configure the VMware Bridge Protocol on my Ethernet connection as VMnet 0 (and reboot), before VMware Player would allow the guest to connect to the network.

Plug and play dealt with the virtual hardware changes along the way and the VPN connection worked first time (without any obvious changes) – I can only assume that the VMware bridged network connection works in a different way to the Virtual Server network that was causing my VPN client to fail in a Virtual Server virtual machine.

After spending most of today working with my Windows XP virtual corporate client running as a guest under Windows Vista, the whole project seems to have been a success, although I’m still planning on dual-booting Windows Vista with Linux (keeping the virtual machine on a partition accessible from both operating systems) so there may well be a part three to this story yet.

Amazingly, excellent customer service in PC World!

Posted on By Mark Wilson

PC WorldI honestly never thought I’d see the day when I would praise PC World (or any DSG International store) for their customer service but, credit where credit’s due, tonight I was pleasantly surprised (although a Google search for DSG Retail will turn up many unhappy customers).

Toshiba PX1223E-1G32 320GB External Hard Disk

A few weeks back, I bought myself a Toshiba 320GB 7200 RPM external USB 2.0 hard drive with 8MB data buffer – a bargain at £109.99. It’s been so good that last night I dropped by on my way home to buy another one (to back up my data – disk is so much easier than tape). The price had increased to £119.99 but after making the effort to visit the store, I bought one anyway.

When I got home, I checked the web and found that the best online price was also from PC World, who were selling the same item online for £99.99 with free shipping (or collection from store). I understand that online prices should be lower than instore (lower overheads, etc.) but decided to return the disk and buy it again online at the lower price. Before I did that, I needed to call PC World and check the returns policy (for unwanted goods it is “at the manager’s discretion”) before committing to buy another.

Unfortunately for me, the Internet price increased overnight to £109.99 but that’s still a tenner less than I had paid, so this evening I returned the disk, explaining that there was nothing wrong with it – I’d just be saving myself a few quid by buying another one on the ‘net.

Unexpectedly, the staff member that I spoke to not only refunded my original purchase, but then ordered me one at the web price, which I then “collected” and paid for (of course, it was the same one I’d just taken back). She explained that they are not supposed to do that, but understood that it saved me from making another trip (or waiting for delivery). I won’t name the store or the staff member because I don’t want to get them into trouble; but if you’re reading this – thank you.

(I then drove home very carefully, watching out for flying pigs and an ice-skating Devil).