This year I will be attending Tech-Ed North America 2010. The event will be held at the borders of the Mississippi in New Orleans, near the French Quarter. So the location could be worse.
Until today 809 sessions are scheduled, but of course my focus will be on the Unified Communications related stuff, like Exchange 2010 and the fresh new “OCS Wave 14” or Communications Server 2010 suite.
So stay tuned for the latest from New Orleans starting at the 7th of June 2010.
More info can be found at: http://northamerica.msteched.com/default.aspx
Last week Microsoft released cumulative update 5 of Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
This package consists of updates for the OCS Servers, Communicator, Attendant Console, Communicator Phone and OCS Group Chat.
The most easiest way to apply the necessary server updates is to download the Cumulative Server Update Installer "ServerUpdateInstaller.exe" and run this on all your OCS Servers.
The installer will automatically detect and update the appropriate OCS components.
There is also an update released for the OCS SQL Database called "OCS2009-DBUpgrade.msi". This update is not part of the update installer and needs to be downloaded and installed separately.
Before you install this update, the Office Communications Server Front End Service (rtcsrv) has to be stopped. After stopping the service run one of the following commands:
OCS Standard Edition: OCS2009-DBUpgrade.msi
OCS Enterprise Edition: OCS2009-DBUpgrade.msi POOLNAME=<ocspoolname>
The updates can be found on the following locations:
Office Communcations Server 2007 R2:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b3b02475-150c-41fa-844a-c10a517040f4
Office Communicator 2007 R2:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=515d6dba-4c6a-48bb-a06a-d99c5742676d
Office Communications Server Attendant Console R2:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=36beb56d-072e-4a92-b781-a1e8a548a5ac&displaylang=en&displaylang=en
Office Communicator Phone Edition R2:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=565595BE-6CF3-4A61-A1E4-12555749CA64&displaylang=en
Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e5924bf9-b042-4c53-b4a6-79c7e5c9749b&displaylang=en
On Saturday, February 13th 2010 our VX Company colleague Sander van den Burg, tragically passed away for no obvious reason. He was only 31. No words can begin to describe the devastation we all feel. Sander was the founder of the communified blog.
Sander has touched many lives, both privately as business wise. A big guy with an even bigger heart. A very talented IT professional, driven, passionate, energetic, a great and unique sense of humour and sensitive.
He had so many plans and ambitions. This year he wanted to become a Microsoft Exchange Master. But the most he looked forward to his upcoming fatherhood.
Our thoughts are with his wife, parents, family and friends. The best way of honouring Sander is to keep this blog alive.
Rui Maximo from Microsoft released a very nice and beautiful poster called "Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Workload Architecture".
This poster describes the traffic flow of protocols and ports used in each workload on Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
The poster can be downloaded at the following location:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=af2c17cb-207c-4c52-8811-0aca6dfadc94
I remember there was an unanimous desire for something like this in the meeting with the documentation team during my MCM rotation in May, and finally it's here, great job!
A few days ago the MS Exchange Team blog announced an updated version of the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator. The advanced Excel sheet allows for architects and consultants to calculate the amount of storage, I/O’s and servers to use for the new-to-built Exchange environment.
This version includes the following improvements and new features:
- Added processor core guidance for Hub Transport and Client Access server roles.
- Added the ability to define a custom number of databases that you would like to implement in the solution.
- Added support for 2-node site resilient Database Availability Groups.
- Added 1 and 6 processor cores as selectable options.
- Improved breakdown of the activation scenarios in a site resilient solution.
- Improved breakout of the role requirements section.
- The Storage Design tab now indicates that when you select a custom RAID configuration that the calculator ignores RAID-5 and RAID-6 for 5.xK and 7.2K spindles due to performance concerns.
- Updated processor utilization results to show the processor utilization even if it is above the recommended threshold.
- Made conditional formatting improvements throughout the calculator to warn you when you have a configuration that will not work.
- Improved various cell comments.
Full details here
Technorati Tags:
Exchange
Microsoft has released Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Release to Manufacturing . This article describes the following information about the update rollup: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976573
Important information for Outlook Web App users about Outlook Web App customization
When you apply an update rollup package, the update process overwrites the Microsoft Outlook Web App (OWA) files if it is necessary. If you have changed the Logon.aspx file or other OWA files, the customizations are overwritten to make sure that OWA is updated correctly. After you apply the update rollup package, you must re-create OWA customization in Logon.aspx.
We recommend that you always make a backup copy of any customized OWA files before you apply the update rollup
Note Make sure that you apply the update rollup to the internet-facing Client Access servers before you apply the update rollup to the non-Internet-facing Client Access servers.
For other Exchange Server 2010 configurations, the order in which you apply the update rollup to the servers is not important.
Today Microsoft Learning announced that they allowed too many people to register for the new Exchange beta exam 71-663. Because they dont have the capacity to review all comments on the beta exam they decided that Prometric will unfortunately be contacting some candidates that were inadvertently allowed to register for 71-663 after they had reached the beta cap.
If you registered for the exam be sure to check if your appointment is still valid!
Full story and details: here
Over at Networkworld, John Fontana posted a great article on the new E2007 SP3 Service Pack and the changes MSFT is making to the Supportability Matrix:
After reversing course on Exchange 2007 support, Microsoft now says a third service pack for the messaging server that adds compatibility with Windows Server 2008 R2 will ship in the second half of next year.
In addition, Microsoft said it now supports write functions to Active Directory from Exchange 2003 SP2. The changes, according to Microsoft, were based on customer feedback. Microsoft stopped short of filling every Exchange request from users, saying it will not provide in-place upgrades for servers running underneath Exchange 2007. But company officials left the topic up for debate for future versions of Exchange.
Kevin Allison, general manager of the Exchange customer experience for Microsoft, said on the Exchange team blog Monday that the changes are now reflected in Exchange's Supportability Matrix.
Continue at source
Just to include all details on products surrounding Exchange: a few days after the Exchange 2010 launch at Tech.Ed Europe, both Forefront TMG 2010 and Forefront Protection for Exchange 2010 launched as well.
Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010
Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 allows employees to safely and productively use the Internet without worrying about malware and other threats. Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 is available for download in both Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition.
System Requirements
- Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008
Recommended system requirements:
o Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2
o A computer with 4 core (2 CPU x dual core or 1 CPU x quad core) 64-bit processor
o 4 gigabytes (GB) or more of memory
o 2.5 GB of available hard disk space. This is exclusive of hard disk space that you want to use for caching or for temporarily storing files during malware inspection
o Two disk for system and TMG logging, and one for caching and malware inspection
o One network adapter that is compatible with the computer's operating system, for communication with the Internal network
o An additional network adapter for each network connected to the Forefront TMG server
Get the bits!
Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server
Microsoft Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE) provides fast and effective protection against malware and spam by including multiple scanning engines from industry-leading security partners. It also integrates with Forefront Online Protection for Exchange to provide the defense-in-depth benefits of hosted and on-premise filtering in a single solution
System Requirements
- Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Server 2008 R2
Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server system requirements*
- x64 architecture-based with:
- Intel Xeon or Intel Pentium family processor that supports Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel EM64T), or
- AMD Opteron or AMD Athlon 64 processor that supports AMD64 platform.**
- Server software
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, or Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 ***
- 2 gigabytes (GB) of free memory in addition to that required to run Exchange server. For more information about the memory requirements for running Exchange server, consult your Exchange server planning documentation. ****
- 2 GB of available disk space. This is in addition to the disk space required for Exchange server. Utilizing a server as a redistribution server for updates requires additional disk space.
- A four core server with 2.0 GHz or higher processors is recommended. Lower performing servers are supported, but message throughput is decreased.
- Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) 6.0 SP1
- Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 SP 1 Windows Communication Foundation or Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (automatically installed with Exchange Server 2010). If you are installing the Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange Gateway, .NET Framework 3.5 is required.
- Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. If these controls are not already present, they will be installed during the FPE installation process.
- Windows PowerShell 1.0
- Client Access Server (CAS). Required only for use with the on-demand scan with Exchange Server 2010.
* All minimum system memory and disk space requirements for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 or Exchange Server 2010 must be met before you can install FPE. Too little available memory or disk space may impact the ability of FPE to scan large files. Also, you cannot install FPE if previous versions of the product are installed.
** For evaluation purposes, 32-bit operating systems are supported.
*** To protect Exchange server, if both the Exchange server and SharePoint Products and Technologies are installed on the same server, only FPE can be installed.
**** Less memory is required if Intelligent Engine Management (IEM) is not enabled and fewer than 5 engines are selected (approximately 250 MB of memory per engine.) The memory requirement increases by 1.5 GB on multi-role servers.
Get the bits!
Last week during TechEd Europe, Exchange 2010 officially launched. At the conference among a lot of topics on Exchange was a Q&A session hosted by Kamal Janardhan, Principal Lead Program Manager on the Exchange team at Microsoft.
During the session, a lot was clarified on the topic of the new archiving feature in E2010. In this article I'll try to summarize the most important things.
The archiving feature, just introduced in Exchange 2010 had - in my opinion - a few loose ends that still needed tying up. That or I just didn't understand the whole purpose of the feature J
Actually MSFT has a top three wish list of features that they want to have ASAP, being:
- Accessing your archive from a Outlook 2007 client
- Storing the archive in a separate mailbox database
- Importing PST files to a users archive
Especially the second feature surprised when I first heard that it wasn't possible. The news here, on all three features, is that they are planning to have them ready in the next big Exchange update (that being probably SP1, release date ~ 1 year after RTM)
The original idea behind the archiving was to have only the most frequently used data available. Most frequently being 2 years, which several studies mention as the time for data being access frequently. By adding an archive after 2 years (the default policy) the load on the Exchange server would be reduced.
The archive would only be available when connected to the Exchange server. Same idea. That and the mails from the last 2 years would be available offline via the ost file. The same situation that you now have when synching your smart phone.
Placing the Archiving mailboxes on a separate database is what we all want (just like e.g. Enterprise Vault does this) so we can place them on cheaper storage. MSFT's vision is that with Exchange 2010 you can have your databases on cheap SATA disks without RAID (or even JBOD). I will elaborate on this subject in a later blog post.
Archiving to a separate database will be available in the next update for Exchange 2010.
A few features on archiving:
- End user search will also work for the archive
- It will not be possible to have multiple archive mailboxes per user. The reason that people had multiple PST files was probably due to the 2 Gig size limit anyway
- The retention policies for the mailboxes can be configure via a GPO
- The dumpster size can be configured (using Power Shell)
- In the RTM version of Exchange 2010, delegates by default have no rights on the Archive mailbox. These can be set. It is likely that this will change in the next update
- The retention policy will work with the date received date and timestamp of the message.
- Accessing the archive mailbox from your smart phone is technically possible but currently not implemented.
- It is possible to have a retention policy based on message class (e.g. mail, contacts, calendar etc.)
Just released: OCS R2 Web Trust tool. The Web Trust Tool is a command-line tool (OCSWebIMTrust.exe) that can be used anytime there is a need to establish or remove a trusted sever entry for an Outlook Live server.
It works by searching the Active Directory and locating all instances of Outlook Live server or Exchange Client Access server. It then adds each server found to a list of trusted server entries, thus replacing the previous list of entries.
Get it here
As you have probably noticed, after the official launch yesterday at TechEd Europe, Exchange 2010 is now generally available!
Just to summarize, here are a few important and related links:
Exchange 2010 final bits are available at Technet and MSDN
Exchange Server 2010 Release Notes
Exchange Server 2010 UM Language Packs
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007
Exchange Team announcement
Yesterday was the first day of TechEd Europe (what happened to Middle East and Africa?). Berlin was a first for me, but apart from the weather, all is good here in Deutschland.
My first day started of with two sessions, one of which was about Windows Server 2008 R2, which is generally available by now. Nice and intereseting (but not new) session about the AD recycle bin, Powershell for AD and Djoin.exe (the easy way to join machines to your domain).
Second session was one by Mark Minasi, who I like as a speaker very much. Seldom to find good English, thorough knowledge and a sense of humor in one speaker 
The keynote hit of at 3.30pm, with a nice opening and focussed mostly on what MSFT calls "The New Efficiency". Herein different technologies combine to make our lives easier. These include Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 and Windows 7.
After the Efficiency intro, the official launch of Exchange 2010 was a fact! The demo by Julia White included all the new and cool feature of Exchange 2010 (online mailbox move, mailtips and Outlook Webapp)
The last part of the keynote included a number of System Center products such as SCOM, SCCM and SCVMM, all running on Windows Server 2008 R2. The demo of the Power Management - Management pack for SCOM with SCCVM combined, showed the feature to shutdown a physical host when the load of the combined virtual machines can be supported by fewer physical machines. This minimizes the carbon footprint of your datacenter.
The evening was all about the Fall of Wall memorial, very impressive to witness!
More on day 2, later!
As shown on the official supported apps page at the MSFT site, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will be officially supported on WIndows Server 2008 R2 starting next year.
The official words: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and later versions will be supported beginning Q1 2010
Today has been announced that the new DAG (Database Availibility Group) feature will also be supported on the Standard Edition of the new Exchange 2010 product.
Since the Standard version only supports up to 5 databases (compared to 100 db's for the Enterprise edition) this will be especially useful for the smaller corporations.
DAG still uses components from Windows Clustering, therefore the OS still needs to be Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition.
More Posts
Next page »