So I find it a pain that Server 2008 and 2008 R2 don’t come with the telnet client installed after the initial OS install, the telnet client is a great way to check ports are open for various services, like IIS or SMTP.

On 2008 R2 the quickest way I find to install it is through PowerShell, in a PowerShell window (running as administrator) just do the following…

This won’t work on Server 2008 though…

Instead you need to go with…

Hope you find this useful!

N3ib

I’ve recently come across a few Windows 2003 servers that were unable to start the DHCP Client service, instead an “Error 5: Access is denied.” message would appear.  Now I’d kind of inherited responsibility of these servers so I wasn’t really aware of their history.

Although the servers we’re using a DHCP assigned address, they were being moved to a new site and network range and as dynamic DNS registration relies on the DHCP Client service its failure to start was making my life harder than it needed to be.

A quick Google brought me to this Microsoft Support article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895149) which seemed to describe the problem well.  However upon applying the fix the service still wouldn’t start and gave the same “Error 5: Access is denied.” message. 

At this point I loaded up Process Monitor (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645) and started monitoring the registry while I attempted to start the service.  A bit of digging later and I noted an ACCESS DENIED result when trying to open the key “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dhcp\Parameters” as shown below

Process Monitor Screen Shot

So I granted the Network Service Full control over the key and retried starting the service, SUCCESS!!

If you come across the same issue give Process Monitor a go and keep an eye out for the ACCESS DENIED results when attempting to start the service.  This should point you in the right direction.

Hope you find this useful!

n3ilb

Hi All,

If you’re migrating from Exchange 2000/2003 to 2007/2010 you may well end up with some mailboxes that appear as Legacy Mailbox within the EMC… something like…

You’ll also see Legacy Mailboxes if you use the Exchange 2000/2003 extensions in Active Directory Users and Computers console to create new mail users.  [This isn’t supported and you should use the EMC or EMS]

Converting a Legacy Mailbox to a User Mailbox is simple.  Load the EMS and enter the following cmdlet

Set-Mailbox <alias> – ApplyMandatoryProperties

So for the example above…

Set-Mailbox spar –ApplyMandatoryProperties

Now if you’ve a whole heap of mailboxes you need to convert you won’t want to do them one mailbox at a time, so use the following which will get all the LegacyMailbox mailboxes and pipe them into the above cmdlet

get-mailbox – Server “ServerName” -RecipientTypeDetails:LegacyMailbox | Set-Mailbox –ApplyMandatoryProperties

The “ServerName” in the above command should be the name of your Exchange 2007/2010 where the legacy mailboxes are located.

Hope you find this useful!

n3ilb

Hi All,

In days gone by in Outlook 2003 and 2007 if you wanted to look at the message header information for an email you just right-clicked on the message in question and selected Message Options…

In Outlook 2010…

Double-click the message in question so it opens in its own Windows (i.e. not in the preview pane), click the File tab and the click the Properties button.

Easy when you know how!

n3ilb

Hi All,

I came across this problem recently…  A user had hit their Send Quota limit on their mailbox and was unable to send any emails (and refused to clean up their mailbox).  So being the nice sys admin I am I upped their send limit and sent them away with the standard give that 15 mins, and retry…  15 mins later they were back at my desk still unable to send.

I always knew that quota changes wouldn’t take effect straight away but I didn’t know how long it was before it did, and past experience told me it seemed to vary.  So I decided I’d find out once and for all and came across this technet article that explains how long it takes, why, and how to reduce it if you want. 

By default (for Exchange 2007) it can take up to 2 hours for the change to be picked up by Exchange.  The information store (IS) service is responsible for enforcing mailbox size limits and uses a mailbox information cache to hold data on the mailbox including quota limits.  The IS refreshes this cache every 2 hours… So worse case the IS may have just carried out a refresh before you adjusted the mailbox limits and you’re set for a 2 hour wait.  Of course you may get lucky and the refresh could occur just a few minutes after you adjust the limit.

Adjusting the refresh period involves creating some registry keys and restarting the Exchange IS service (which will disconnect clients from their mailboxes).  Full details are given in the technet article but to summarise… 

1. Load regedit (running as a user with Exchange Server Admin rights and Admin rights on the server).
2. Go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
3. Create a new DWORD value “Reread Logon Quotas Interval” (without the quotes) and give it a decimal value of 1200 (that’s 20 minutes in seconds)
4. Still under the key ParametersSystem create a new DWORD value “Mailbox Cache Age Limit” and give it a decimal value of 20.  It makes sense to keep this age limit the same as the refresh interval in point 3 above.
5. Restart the Exchange IS.

 

The technet article has an additional step of creating a registry key for adjusting the expiration interval for user object data, however this by default is 5 minutes which I think is short enough and the article states reducing this may impact Exchange server performance. 

Hope you find this useful, I’d recommend only changing the interval if you find you’re frequently having to increase mailbox quotas!!

n3ilb

On Server 2008 R2

Powershell with Admin Rights

Import-module ServerManager

 

Client Access Server

Set-Service NetTcpPortSharing -StartupType Automatic Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Dyn-Compression,NET-HTTP-Activation,RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy –Restart

 

Hub Transport Server

Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server –Restart Install – 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=137042

 

Mailbox Server

Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server –Restart Install – 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=137042

 

Edge Transport Server

Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,ADLDS -Restart

 

Installing the telnet client – useful to test mail relaying on the Hub and Edge Transport servers

Add-WindowsFeature Telnet-Client

<RANT>

Come on, what’s this about…

“Service Pack 1 is a prerequisite for installing Service Pack 2. Please make sure that your system is running Service Pack 1 before you install Service Pack 2″ as seen here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a4dd31d5-f907-4406-9012-a5c3199ea2b3)

I’m really not impressed by this, mostly because I’ve been running the RTM version of Vista since the 1^st attempt at installing SP1 onto it killed my machine. So I had been looking forward to trying out SP2… so now to get my machine up to SP2 I’ve to apply 2 service packs!!!

I say again… I’m not impressed!!!

I’m sure the idea is to keep SP2 as small as possible, but to be honest I’d rather have a single bigger download to deal with rather than having to download twice and install twice.

</RANT>

N3ilb

Here follows some EMS code to list all SMTP addresses in Exchange 2007… really rather useful!!

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize “Unlimited” | select name, EmailAddresses | foreach {

“Name: “+$_.name

$_.EmailAddresses | foreach {

if($_.SmtpAddress){

if($_.IsPrimaryAddress){

“Primary SmtpAddress: $($_.SmtpAddress)”

} else {

“SmtpAddress: $($_.SmtpAddress)”

}

}

}

write-output “”

} > c:\Addresses.txt

 

And if you only want mailbox info for users in a specific OU then add

-OrganizationalUnit “Distinguished Name of OU”

To the command, so…

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize “Unlimited” -OrganizationalUnit “OU=OUNAME,DC=MyDomain,DC=Com” | select name, EmailAddresses | foreach {

“Name: “+$_.name

$_.EmailAddresses | foreach {

if($_.SmtpAddress){

if($_.IsPrimaryAddress){

“Primary SmtpAddress: $($_.SmtpAddress)”

} else {

“SmtpAddress: $($_.SmtpAddress)”

}

}

}

write-output “”

} > c:\Addresses.txt

Hope you find this useful!

N3ilb

If you’re planning to use Forefront for Exchange (FfE) to filter emails for profanity then you can save a bit of time and effort and use the example keyword list that ships with FfE instead of creating your own.

The example keyword lists must be installed manually after installing FfE on the Hub Transport server and then imported into a keyword list you create… so…

1. On the server with FfE installed browse to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security\Exchange Server” and double-click on “KeywordInstaller.MSI”, Next à Check “I agree and…” and click Next, from the options available select the languages you want à Next à Install à Finish.

    

2. Within the Forefront Server Security Administrator console (FSSAc) select FILTERING à Filter Lists à List Types: Keywords. As shown below…

   

3. Select Add and give your list a name. As shown below…

   

4. With the list you created selected click Edit to launch the list editor.

    

5. Within the list editor click Import, browse to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security\Exchange Server\Data\Example Keywords” and select the appropriate file from those you selected to install in step 1 above.

    

6. Click the <=== button to move the imported text into the ‘Includes in Filter’ selection list and click OK à OK.

    

At this point you’ve now got a profanity list setup but you now need to make sure its used…

1. Within the FSSAc click FILTERING à Keyword à select Transport Scan Job.

    

2. On the bottom right of the FSSAc you should see a Filter section with a dropdown list, from the drop down list select Enabled

    

3. From the Action drop down list select the appropriate action

    

4. Click Save.

    

All mails flowing through this Hub server will now be subject to profanity scanning, repeat the above for your other Hub Transport servers!

N3ilb

Set-MailboxDatabase –Identity ServerName\DatabaseName –IssueWarningQuota Size –ProhibitSendQuota Size –ProhibitSendReceiveQuota Size –DeletedItemRentention NumberOfDays

Set-MailboxDatabase –Identity Exchange1\SG01DB1 –IssueWarningQuota 200000 –ProhibitSendQuota 220000 –ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 250000 –DeletedItemRentention 30

Or…

Set-MailboxDatabase –Identity Exchange\SG01DB1 –IssueWarningQuota 200MB –ProhibitSendQuota 220MB –ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 250MB –DeletedItemRetention 30

I quite like that you can specify the limits in MB!

N3ilb