Khurram's Blog

Exchange 2007 unable to mount database

2010-11-10T18:41:00.001+03:00

Recently we had a power failure which caused an improper shutdown to our exchange servers. After recovered from power failure we restarted all servers and fixed some cluster issues but there is one database which is showing failed in cluster manager. I had tried to mount the database but it was not successful and showing that there are some log files missing due to which database cannot mount.

For checking what log files are missing I ran following commands against the database which was not mounting. For running this command we have to go to the log drive of the database first and then run this command.

eseutil /mh

The output of this command is showing that the database is in dirty shutdown state and also showing that what log files are missing. I have checked these log files and luckily I have all log files present in the log drives folder.

Now recovery is easy, I have just renamed the check point file to any other name and try to mount it again and this time it mounts successfully without any issues and new checkpoint file is created.

MOSS "trial period for this product has expired"

2010-11-10T17:27:00.001+03:00

Recently I faced an strange issue related to MOSS. One of my content admin is complaining that he is unable to add any link or page in his site anymore. whenever he is trying to create any page he is getting this error

"trial period for this product has expired"

Our MOSS farm has correct license and we haven't upgraded MOSS from trial version. After thorough analysis and research, I found that there is a bug in MOSS SP2 which reinitializes the license file and turns MOSS normal license to 180 days trial license.

For fixing this issue, you can go to MOSS central admin->operations->Convert license type->Enter product key and add the key again or apply the hotfix mentioned in the below KB article.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971620

Renewing Edge Synchronization

2010-10-19T18:33:00.001+03:00

If you have added any domain on HUB server and you are not able to see this domain on Edge server then might be your synchronization between your hub and edge servers are not working. To test this you can run following command;

Test-EdgeSynchronization

If the connection result is showing failed then you need to do edge subscription again for this edge server. Following are the steps for this

1. On the edge server which is not synchronizing run following command;

New-EdgeSubscription -filename "C:\temp\edgesub.xml"

now copy this .xml file to hub server and run following command

New-EdgeSubscription -filename "C:\temp\edgesub.xml" –site London

Please note the site parameter is required to bind this edge server to a specific AD site.

Now run following command

Start-EdgeSynchronization

You will notice that now the edge server is synchronizing data with HUB server.

For verification you can run test command again and this time it should show you the success message

Test-EdgeSynchronization

Enabling SCR on WAN

2010-10-18T14:56:00.001+03:00

SCR is an Exchange 2007 DR solution available from Exchange 2007 SP1 onwards. You can enable SCR on LAN and also on high latency networks. SCR also gives you benefit to recover from a Datacenter failover scenario. Since last month i was working to enable SCR between our DCs connected via MPLS. After a thorough analysis and lots of try and error i have compiled following results;

SCR Enabling Steps:

1. Seeding of .Edb File.

2. Enable Replication.

3. Monitor Replication

Step 1: Seeding:

Seeding is a prerequisite for enabling SCR, we can enable seeding by automatic way and manual way, because i have to seed .edb file on MPLS which is a high latency network i have to go for manual procedure. Following steps i have followed for manual seeding.

1. Take a snapshot of storage group on which i want to enable SCR (we are using snapshot based backup solution) you can also take the normal backup of the storage group. This will also truncate all the committed logs and we have less log files to copy from source to destination after enabling replication.

2. Run below Command

Enable-StorageGroupCopy -Identity StorageGroup1 -StandbyMachine London1 -ReplayLagTime 0.1:0:0 –SeedingPostponed

The above command will enable SCR on storage group “StorageGroup1”. Standby machine (destination server) used is London and the replay lag time i have mentioned is 1 minute. seeding postponed is used because i don't want to enable seeding automatically i want to copy .edb file manually to destination server.

After running the above command, log files for this storage group will not truncate unless until we enable replication. This means that the drive space of log files folder should also be carefully planned because if the latency is high and the .edb file is taking days to copy then the log file drive space might going to be fill which will affect the production environment.

3. Take a snapshot on the storage group again or take a normal storage group backup again.

4. Ask the backup team to provide the .edb file from the last snapshot.

5. Use TeraCopy to copy .edb file from source to destination server. make sure the drive letters for log and data drive are same on standby server because it is one of the prerequisites of SCR.

2. Enabling Replication:

Replication will copy all logs files from source to destination. Replication is an ongoing process and whenever a log file is created on source it has to be shipped to destination for making both source and destination mailbox databases in same state.

Following is the command for enabling replication

Resume-StorageGroupCopy -Identity StorageGroup1 -StandbyMachine London1

after running the above command you will see that the log files started to copy from source to destination server. Standby server will replay these log files after 50 logs files has been copied. The first log file after you enable SCR should be present on destination otherwise replication will fail.

3. Monitoring Replication:

It is very important to check the status of storage group copy. The below command will show us the health of SCR and how many files in copy queue and replay queue.

get-storagegroupcopystatus StorageGroup1 -standbymachine London1

If you are seeing failed in the summarycopystatus field then there is a possibility that the database you have seeded and the logs files copied are not at the same state (LSN number mismatch) or might be you don't have the first log file available to replay on the destination.

If you are seeing large number of files in copy queue length then bandwidth might be the possible cause.

You can also run following command on standby server for checking replication status;

Test-ReplicationHealth

Moving LCS databases to Different SQL server

2010-06-08T22:41:00.001+03:00

LCS use 2 databases for its configuration and user data

RTC
RTCConfig

If you want to move these databases to different SQL server then you need to follow below sequence

Stop Live communication Server Service.
Take backup of the above mentioned databases.
Restore to them to new SQL server.
Make sure you have all 4 LCS domain groups (mentioned below) added to new SQL server and have all the required permissions given (Compare permission with the existing SQL server).
LCS Domain Groups:
RTCABSDomainServices
RTCDomainServerAdmins
RTCDomainUserAdmins
RTCHSDomainServices
Run Following Command for setting new SQL server information;
LcsCmd.exe /forest /action:UpdatePoolBackend /poolname:[PoolName] /poolbe:[SQLSeverName]
Start LCS service again.
Open LCS MMC.
Make sure all services are running fine.

Exchange 2010 Unified Communication webcast

2010-04-11T18:00:00.001+03:00

During some searching i found an excellent webcast on Exchange 2010 unified communication features. Following is the link;

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032442908&CountryCode=US

SharePoint website not opening on same server

2010-04-09T16:20:00.001+03:00

I faced a strange issue recently, i have deployed SharePoint 2003 servers for one project and one of the requirements was to open SharePoint site from same server. when i was trying to open site from the same server i was getting authentication prompts and the site was not opening. I have even added the URL entry in the local host file but the issue remains same. After googling i found one Microsoft KB on the same issue which stated that “This issue occurs if you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 include a loopback check security feature that is designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, authentication fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local computer name.”

In order to fix this we need to disable loopback check on all web server which are facing this behavior. I have applied this fix on my both front-end servers and after restarting both front-end servers the issue solved and i can now open website on same server. Following is the fix i followed.

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.

Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.

In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.

Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer

Following is the KB for this issue;

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

Command for shrinking Log files

2010-04-07T17:38:00.001+03:00

Below command will shrink SQL log files and also release unused physical space on drives.

Use DatabaseName

Backup log databasename with no_log

DBCC SHRINKFILE (logfilename)

WSS search and SQL 2005 indexing issue

2010-04-07T17:02:00.001+03:00

Recently we have migrated our SharePoint 2003 from one AD forest to another forest, apart of this change we have also upgraded our backend DB from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005. Recently i faced a very critical issue, one of the heavily used site is not showing search result and the search is timing out. In order to investigate this issue i have identified the query in the SQL profiler and ran it directly on the SQL management studio. It took around 10 minutes to show results in new DB Server (SQL 2005) but the same query is returning result in 1 sec in the old DB server (SQL 2000) i ran the query again with the Query execution plan against both servers and compared it, i have seen the cost for referencing Clustered index is very high in new DB server as compared to old DB server. After some researching i have planned to update DB statistics by using following command;

update statistics tablename

SharePoint create its own indexes which we cannot alter and it uses the hard coded name for indexes such as ix_databasename. As per my analysis after moving DBs from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 the databases statistics were not updated and indexes were not using optimal path for searching for data that why it is showing results after long delays.

Exchange 2007 unable to view deleted mailbox

2010-04-07T15:54:00.001+03:00

In exchange 2007 if you delete any mailbox or any AD user, the mailbox will be there for 30 days in disconnected mailbox view and you can reconnect it again within 30 days if you want to restore the mailbox to its original state. After 30 days the mailbox will be permanently deleted and you can then only restore it from the backup.

Recently i faced a strange issue, one of the mailbox user was deleted by mistake and i am unable to see this user in disconnected mailbox view. The mailbox was deleted 2 days back which is under 30 days threshold but still the mailbox was not visible. After done some research and some help from one of my friend i figured out that i have to run following command in order to make this mailbox visible in disconnected mailbox view

Clean-mailboxdatabase –identity Databasename

As per Microsoft,

“use the Clean-MailboxDatabase cmdlet to scan the Active Directory directory service for disconnected mailboxes that are not yet marked as disconnected in the Microsoft Exchange store and update the status of those mailboxes in the Exchange store. This cmdlet is not able to update the Exchange store unless the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is running and the database is mounted.

A connected mailbox has two parts: the mailbox object in the Exchange store, and the user object with Exchange properties in Active Directory. A disconnected mailbox is the mailbox object in the Exchange store, but it is not connected to a user object in Active Directory

Under normal circumstances, it is not necessary to run Clean-MailboxDatabase because a mailbox is marked as disconnected immediately after the Disable-Mailbox or Remove-Mailbox command completes. If you used the Disable-Mailbox cmdlet or the Remove-Mailbox cmdlet while the Exchange Information Store service was stopped, or if a mailbox was disabled by an external means other than the Disable-Mailbox cmdlet or Remove-Mailbox cmdlet, you may want to use the Clean-MailboxDatabase cmdlet to scan for disconnected mailboxes.”

SQL 2005 services not starting

2010-03-30T16:10:00.001+03:00

When you have SQL server running in clustering and you changed any startup parameters, it is possible that SQL services will not run due to any incorrect parameter settings. As per Microsoft this is because the cluster service obtains an incorrect protocol setting from a cluster checkpoint when you start the SQL Server service.

In order to fix this issue you have to first remove the last check point by running this command (after making SQL server resource offline)

cluster res "SQL Server (Instancename)" /removecheck: "Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.x\MSSQLSERVER

and then fix the startup parameters for all nodes and then run following commands

cluster res "SQL Server (Instancename)" /addcheck: "Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.x\MSSQLSERVER"

Following is the Microsoft KB for more details.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912397

Exchange 2007- Mapi session exceeded the maximum of 32 objects of type "session"

2009-07-17T01:11:00.001+03:00

Two days back i faced a strange issue from one of the user that he is not able to open his outlook. Although he can open his OWA but whenever he open his outlook he is getting following error

“Unable to open your default e-mail folders. You must connect to your Microsoft Exchange Server computer with the current profile before you can synchronize your folders with the offline folder file”

After further investigation i found that there is an event logged in the application events of the mailbox server for the same user

Event Type:      Error
Event Source:      MSExchangeIS
Event Category:      General
Event ID:      9646
Date:            XXXXX
Time:           XXXXX
User:            N/A
Computer:      XXXXX
Description:
Mapi session "/o=firstorganisation=XXXX/cn=Recipients/cn=username" exceeded the maximum of 32 objects of type "session".

After researching i found following KB on the same issue

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842022

As per this KB this issue may occur if the following conditions are true:

You have installed Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) on the Exchange Server computer.
A program that is running on a client computer opens many MAPI sessions to the Exchange Server computer. The number of MAPI sessions is larger than the permitted limit.
You are using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, and you add a large additional mailbox to your profile. For example, this issue may occur if the additional mailbox contains more than one thousand folders.

I am unable to found any of the above condition in my case. Also fixes mentioned in this article is not relevant to my case except the last registry change which i don't want to apply for one user.

Then i decided to view the connections on the mailbox server. I downloaded TCP view utility from sysinternals (one of the best sites for troubleshooting tools). After running TCP view i have seen lots of connections coming to mailbox server but the user name which i was searching was not visible in the list of connections, then i ran following command on exchange management shell for finding out the source IP of the user having problem

Get-logonstatistics username | FT ClientIPAddress

After viewing the IP Address i searched the IP address in the TCP View and was able to found lots of connections coming from the same IP, i killed these sessions by using Kill option in TCP view and then again tried to open the outlook and the issue gone !!!! I have also informed the user to have a look on his PC for checking if there is any third party software or any other MAPI program which is causing this issue for having a permanent fix for this.

Storage in Exchange 2010: Webcast

2009-07-10T16:26:00.001+03:00

Join the new webcast on exchange 2010 storage technology planned to be delivered on July 13 2009. Following is the registration link

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032418920&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Exchange 2010 updates for Windows Mobile

2009-07-10T16:04:00.001+03:00

During some researching i found an interesting video on Exchange 2010 mobile features and thought worth to blog. As per this video introduction

Adam Glick shows us the newest Exchange 2010 features for Windows Mobile 6.1/6.5 and explains the goals the team had for the client mobile experience. On his WM 6.5 device, he walks us through conversation view, ignore/move conversation, voice mail preview, voice to text, and get free/busy. Additionally, he tells us about the new allow/block/quarantine phone list and reporting built in to Exchange 2010.

Check out this video on following link

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Exchange-2010-updates-for-Windows-Mobile/

Publishing Exchange 2007 OWA via ISA 2006 Reverse Proxy

2009-07-06T02:02:00.001+03:00

The best way to publish OWA is to publish via ISA reverse proxy deployment. In this blog i will discuss the process for publishing OWA via ISA reverse proxy. The process will be like this;

1. Generate CSR for Exchange 2007 CAS server(s).

I have discussed CSR generation in my previous blogs (http://khurramullah.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/exchange-2007-certificate-request-generator/ and http://khurramullah.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/command-for-generating-csr-for-exchange-servers/) if you have more than one CAS servers then you have to repeat the steps for all of them.

Make sure you have included all Subject Alternative Names (SANs) in your certificate requests such as for webmail, auto discover services etc.

2. Submit this request to online Certificate Authorities such as VeriSign, Thwate or Entrust for purchasing UCC (Unified communication certificate). (Exchange 2007 only supports UCC type certificates, UCC=multiple SANs).

3. Now we have to import these certificates to Exchange CAS servers.( I have discussed these steps in my previous blog http://khurramullah.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/importing-certificates-to-exchange-servers/)

4. Now we have to deploy this certificate to ISA servers. In order to do this you have to first Export certificate from CAS server in .PFX format and then imports it to the ISA servers. Following is the process for doing this;

Open Certificate MMC Snap in on the CAS server for local computer.
Go to personal container and locate the certificate which you want to Deploy on ISA Server.
Export this certificate with private key in .PFX format.
Copy this certificate on ISA Server.
Open Certificate MMC Snap in on the ISA server for local computer.
Import the copied certificate.
Repeat steps 4 to 7 if you have more than one ISA Servers.

5. Forms-based authentication can be configured on the Client Access server when not using ISA Server to publish Exchange Web client access. When ISA Server is being used to publish Exchange Web client access, forms-based authentication should only be configured on the ISA Server computer following are the steps for validating this;

Start the Exchange Management Console.
In the Exchange Management Console, expand Server Configuration, and then click Client Access.
Select a Client Access server and then select owa (Default Web Site) on the Outlook Web Access page.
In the action pane, click Properties under owa (Default Web Site).
Select the Authentication page, and confirm that the following are selected: Use one or more of the following standard authentication methods and Integrated + Basic authentication (password is sent in clear text).
Click OK.
Review the Microsoft Exchange Warning dialog box and click OK.
Restart IIS by running following command: "iisreset /noforce".
Perform this procedure for every Exchange Client Access server.

6. On the CAS server please make sure that “Forms based authentication” is not configured on the Exchange Client Access Activesync folder. By default it is configured for basic authentication.This folder is configured to Basic authentication by default.

7. On the enabling page for Outlook Anywhere, we will use Basic authentication (default).

Note: The external host name used here should match the common name or FQDN used in the server certificate installed on the ISA Server computer

8. Now we need to publish a Rule for OWA on ISA but before doing this we need to configure web Listener for OWA which will be responsible for listening OWA requests, following are the steps for configuring web listener for OWA

In the console tree of ISA Server Management, click Firewall Policy:
For ISA Server 2006 Standard Edition, expand Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006, expand Server_Name, and then click Firewall Policy.
For ISA Server 2006 Enterprise Edition, expand Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006, expand Arrays, expand Array_Name, and then click Firewall Policy.
On the Toolbox tab, click Network Objects, click New, and then select Web Listener. Use the wizard to create the Web listener as outlined in the following table

Page	Field or property	Setting
Welcome	Web listener name	Type a name for the Web listener. For example, type Exchange Web Listener.
Client Connection Security	Select what type of connections this Web listener will establish with clients	Select Require SSL secured connections with clients.
Web Listener IP Addresses	Listen for incoming Web requests on these networks ISA Server will compress content	Select the External and Internal networks. Check box should be selected (default). Click Select IP Addresses
External Network Listener IP Selection	Listen for requests on Available IP Addresses	Select Specified IP addresses on the ISA Server computer in the selected network. Select the correct IP address and click Add. Notes For ISA Server Enterprise Edition with an NLB-enabled array, you should select a virtual IP address.
Listener SSL Certificates	Select a certificate for each IP address, or specify a single certificate for this Web listener	Select Assign a certificate for each IP address. Select the IP address you just selected and click Select Certificate. Choose the certificate corresponding to the url mapped to this IP in the public DNS/NAT configuration Example: External 192.168.1.101 for abcmail; .102 for xyzmail and .103 for autodiscover Internal: 192.168.12.101 for abcmail; .102 for xyzmail (autodiscover is resolved differently in intranet)
Authentication Settings	Select how clients will provide credentials to ISA Server Select how ISA Server will validate client credentials	Select HTML Form Authentication for forms-based authentication and select the appropriate method that ISA Server will use to validate the client's credentials.
Single Sign On Settings	Enable SSO for Web sites published with this Web listener SSO domain name	Leave the default setting to enable SSO. To enable SSO between two published sites, such as abcmail.Contoso.com and autodiscover.Constoso.com, type .Contoso.com (with the dot)
Completing the New Web Listener Wizard	Completing the New Web Listener Wizard	Review the selected settings and click Back to make changes or Finish to complete the wizard.

9. Now after creating web Listener we need to publish a rule for OWA, following are the steps for this process;

In the console tree of ISA Server Management, click Firewall Policy:
For ISA Server 2006 Enterprise Edition, expand Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006, expand Arrays, expand Array_Name, and then click Firewall Policy.
On the Tasks tab, click Exchange Web Client Access Publishing rule.

Use the wizard to create the rule as outlined in the following tables. For a single Web server, use the table in New Exchange Publishing Rule wizard for a single Web site. If you are using a server farm, use the table in New Exchange Publishing Rule wizard for a server farm.

Page	Field or property	Setting
Welcome	Exchange Publishing rule name	Type a name for the rule. For example Constoso OWA Publishing Rule
Select Services	Exchange version Web client mail services	Select Exchange Server 2007. Select the desired access method – begin with OWA, then Outlook Anywhere (Select to publish additional folders) and finally choose ActiveSync
Publishing Type	Select if this rule will publish a single Web site or external load balancer, a Web server farm, or multiple Web sites	Select Publish a single Web site or load balancer.
Server Connection Security	Choose the type of connections ISA Server will establish with the published Web server or server farm	Select Use SSL to connect to the published Web server or server farm. Note A server certificate must be installed on the published Exchange Client Access server, and the root CA certificate of the CA that issued the server certificate on the Exchange Client Access server must be installed on the ISA Server computer.
Internal Publishing Details	Internal site name	Type abc.contoso.com or whatever you like Important The internal site name must match the name of the server certificate that is installed on the internal Exchange Client Access server.
Public Name Details	Accept requests for Public name	This domain name (type below) Type the domain name that you want ISA Server to accept the connection for. For example, type abc.contoso.com. This must match the FQDN of the certificate selected when creating the Web listener.
Select Web Listener	Web listener	Select the Web listener you created previously, Exchange Web Listener
Authentication Delegation	Select the method used by ISA Server to authenticate to the published Web server	For Outlook Web Access, select Basic Authentication. For Exchange ActiveSync, select Basic Authentication For Outlook Anywhere, select Basic Authentication
User Sets	This rule applies to requests from the following user sets	Select the user set approved to access this rule. Replace the default All Authenticated users with All Users Pass the warning
Completing the New Exchange Publishing Rule Wizard	Completing the New Exchange Publishing Wizard.	Review the selected settings, click Back to make changes or Finish to complete the wizard.

Note: When publishing Outlook Web Access, after you click Finish, review the Remaining Exchange Publishing Tasks dialog box, and then click OK.

In the path tab (properties of the OWA rule), add the path “/” in order to be able to access OWA without typing /owa at the end of the url

Microsoft Antigen for Exchange

2009-07-04T03:33:00.001+03:00

If you wan to try Microsoft Antigen for Exchange before purchasing it then here is your link

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=866b63bf-6207-4197-9c5d-511b7212e40c

You can download this trial version and test it for free.

TechNet for Exchange 2010

2009-07-04T03:20:00.001+03:00

If you have installed exchange 2010 and wants help on some features or stuck in some issue and wants to fix it, then don't worry there is a separate TechNet website dedicated for this purpose and contains plethora of information on exchange 2010, check it out

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/2010/default.aspx

Exchange 2010 Beta for Download

2009-07-04T03:14:00.001+03:00

Wants to try Exchange 2010 ? why wait, now Microsoft has published exchange 2010 beta on their website for downloading and using for 360 days, Following is the link;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd185495.aspx

Note: Exchange 2010 Beta can only run on 64 bit machines.

Exchange 2010 Virtual Lab

2009-07-04T03:04:00.001+03:00

Good news for all of those who wants to see and experience what is exchange 2010 look like. Below is the link of one of the virtual labs in exchange 2010 series

Exchange Server 2010 (Beta) Setup and Deployment Virtual Lab

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032419057&EventCategory=3&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Importing Certificates to Exchange 2007 servers

2009-07-01T01:53:00.001+03:00

In my previous blogs (http://khurramullah.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/command-for-generating-csr-for-exchange-servers/ and http://khurramullah.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/exchange-2007-certificate-request-generator/) i have discussed how we can generate CSR for different exchange roles. Here i will discuss how we can import certificates to different exchange roles. Following is the command for importing certificates;

Import-ExchangeCertificate -Path “c:\path\generated SAN certif_name.cer” –friendlyname “<Certificate Friendly Name>”

After running this command successfully you should be seeing the thumbprint of the new certificate. Copy the full thumbprint value because you will required this in the next commands.

Now you have to enable your certificate for specific services for example for SMTP and Web services.

For enabling CAS server certificates run this command:

Get-exchangecertificate <Thumbprint>| enable-exchangecertificate -services "IIS”

For enabling Edge server certificates run this command

Get-exchangecertificate <Thumbprint>| enable-exchangecertificate -services "SMTP”

After running above command run Get-exchangecertificate again for verifying if services are enabled or not.

You can also combine the above 2 commands like this;

Import-ExchangeCertificate -Path “c:\path\generated SAN certif_name.cer” –friendlyname “<Certificate Friendly Name>” | enable-exchangecertificate -services "IIS”

Following are the possible values for services parameter;

IMAP
POP
UM
IIS
SMTP
None

Do not import exchange certificate by normal certificate importing methods (import from certificate MMC Snap in) otherwise certificate will not going to work. Also make sure you have Trusted root CA and Intermediate CA certificates installed in their relevant stores otherwise certificate will have issues.

In case you want to import or apply the same certificate to another Edge or CAS server then you need to perform following addition steps;

1. Open Certificate MMC Snap in on the server for local computer.

2. Go to personal container and locate the certificate which you had just imported.

3. Export this certificate with private key.

5. Copy this certificate on the server where you want to configure this certificate.

6. Run following command on the second server which you want to configure from the same certificate;

Import-ExchangeCertificate -Path c:\path\<certificate file>.pfx –Password:(Get-Credential).password

The Get-Credential cmdlet in the above command pops up a standard username\password dialog box. This is little bit confusing because we don't need a username to get to the keys, just put whatever you want for the username, but put the password that you used when you ran the Export certificate wizard the Certificate Manager snap-in in MMC.

7. Run command Get-ExchangeCertificate to get the thumbprint of this certificate.

8. Run command EnableCertificate –thumbprint <copy the thumbprint> -services “IIS”

9. After running above command run Get-exchangecertificate again for verifying if services are enabled or not.

Command for Generating CSR for Exchange servers

2009-07-01T00:54:00.001+03:00

During Edge server configuration, you are required to bind a certificate to edge server for securing edge server communication. For this you have to run a powershell command which will generate a required CSR for you ( I have discussed a tool for CSR generation in my previous blog http://khurramullah.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/exchange-2007-certificate-request-generator/). Here in this blog i will discuss the powershell command for CSR generation. A typical command will be like this

New-ExchangeCertificate -GenerateRequest -Path c:\Server1_Contoso_com.csr -KeySize 1024 -SubjectName "c=SG, s=, l=Singapore, o=Fictious Enterprise, ou=Information Technology, cn=Server1.Contoso.com" -PrivateKeyExportable $True

There are some important parameters in this command which i will discuss below

Path: The path where the CSR file will save.

KeySize: possible values are 1024, 2048.

Subject Name: Subject name consists of different parameters which are;

c=Country, c=State, I=City, o= organization, ou=organization unit or department, cn=common name (for example the public name of your website)

PrivateKeyExportable: This will mark the key as exportable so you can backup it and deploy it to another server if required.

Exchange 2007 Certificate Request Generator

2009-07-01T00:14:00.001+03:00

Generating CSR for any exchange 2007 role is little bit tricky and required a quite long Powershell command to run. For making it lot simpler a company named as digicert has published a free tool on internet which is accepting different parameters and provide us a powershell command which we can run and generate CSR for any server role, Following is the link of this tool;

DigiCert's Exchange 2007 CSR generation Tool

https://www.digicert.com/easy-csr/exchange2007.htm

Disabling Message Subject Logging

2009-06-22T22:34:00.001+03:00

Message Subject logging is by default enabled in Message Tracking Logging. You might need to disable Message subject logging as part of compliance and Security requirements, in order to achieve this you have to run following command

Note: Before you enable or disable message subject logging, make sure that you verify your organization's policy about revealing subject line information.

Set-TransportServer <ServerName> -MessageTrackingLogSubjectLoggingEnabled $false

Changing Exchange server Queues and Logs directory Location

2009-06-22T22:19:00.001+03:00

When you install Exchange 2007 Edge or Hub Transport Role, by default Exchange setup configures Queues, Replay, Pickup and Transport logs directory on C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server Folder. In an enterprise environment where you have high volume of emails coming in and out it is good to have separate drive for these folders . Following are the steps for changing the these folders default location

Old Queues, Replay, Pickup and Transport logs directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server

New Queues, Replay, Pickup and Transport logs directory: F:\Exchange

Configuration steps for Queue Directory:

1. Create the following directory: F:\Exchange\Queue

Permissions Required for the Directory:

Administrator: Full Control

System: Full Control

Network Service: Full Control

2. Open the following file by using Notepad:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin\EdgeTransport.exe.config

3. .Modify the following line in the <appSettings> section:

<add key="QueueDatabasePath" value=" F:\Exchange\Queue " />

And

<add key="QueueDatabaseLoggingPath" value=" F:\Exchange\Queue " />

4. Save and close the EdgeTransport.exe.config file.

5.Restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport service.

(Make sure you have also added the same set of accounts with the same permissions on F:\Exchange folder otherwise Microsoft exchange Transport service will not start.)

Configuration steps for Pickup Directory:

1. Open Exchange Management Shell.

2. Run following commands
Set-TransportServer <ServerName> –PickupDirectoryPath "F:\Exchange\Pickup"

Permissions Required for Pickup Directory

Administrator: Full Control

System: Full Control

Network Service: Read, Write, and Delete Subfolders and File

Configuration steps for Replay Directory:

1. Open Exchange Management Shell.

2. Run following commands
Set-TransportServer <ServerName> -ReplayDirectoryPath "F:\Exchange\Replay”

Permissions Required for Replay Directory

Administrator: Full Control

System: Full Control

Network Service: Read, Write, and Delete Subfolders and File

Configuration steps for Transport Logs-Connectivity Logs Directory:

1. To change the location of connectivity logs run following commands
Set-TransportServer <ServerName> -ConnectivityLogPath "F:\Exchange\Logs\Connectivity"

Permissions Required for Directory

Administrator: Full Control

System: Full Control

Network Service: Read, Write, and Delete Subfolders and File

Configuration steps for Transport Logs-Protocol Logs Directory:

1. To change the location of Send Protocol Logs run following commands
Set-TransportServer <ServerName> -SendProtocolLogPath "F:\Exchange\Logs\ProtocolLog\SmtpSend"

2. To change the location of Receive Protocol Logs run following commands
Set-TransportServer <ServerName> -ReceiveProtocolLogPath "F:\Exchange\Logs\ProtocolLog\SmtpReceive"

Permissions Required for Directory

Administrator: Full Control

System: Full Control

Network Service: Read, Write, and Delete Subfolders and File

Configuration steps for Transport Logs-Routing Table Logs Directory:

1. To change the location of Routing Table Logs run following commands
Set-TransportServer <server name> -RoutingTableLogPath "F:\Exchange\Logs\Routing"

Permissions Required for Directory

Administrator: Full Control

System: Full Control

Network Service: Read, Write, and Delete Subfolders and File

Configuration steps for Transport Logs-Message Tracking Directory:

1. To change the location of Messaging Tracking Logs run following commands
Set-TransportServer <ServerName> -MessageTrackingLogPath " F:\Exchange \logs\MessageTracking"

Note: You might need to disable Message subject logging as part of compliance requirement, in order to achieve this you have to run following command

Set-TransportServer <ServerName> -MessageTrackingLogSubjectLoggingEnabled $false

Permissions Required for Directory

Administrator: Full Control

System: Full Control

Network Service: Read, Write, and Delete Subfolders and File

PowerShell Script for getting list of users having no Default Quota Set

2009-06-22T20:35:00.001+03:00

In a big exchange environment having more than 5000 users, it is hard to control Mailbox quota limit, you continuously gets pressure from the executive and top management for increasing their Mailbox quota and it is very hard to control that who has the default quota limit and who has not. Following commands can help in these type of situations by simplifying reporting and giving a list of users having no default quota set. The results from this command can be used for identifying the possible users who no longer need customized quota and should be configured back to default quota for ease of maintenance

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Database <Mailbox Server\Database Name> | where { ( $_.UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults -eq $false) }

Exchange 2007 DR Training

2009-06-18T17:29:00.001+03:00

Last week i have attended 3 day Exchange 2007 DR training. It was level 300 training and was delivered by one of MS Exchange PFE Pelin Taldilal (i think i misspelled her last name). This course was designed after getting feedbacks and inputs from lots of MS PFEs all around the world. This is a new course and as per my information its was first time delivered in ME Region. The course contains lots of excellent information on Exchange DR configuration such as CCR,SCR and SCC. This course was offered as part of Microsoft premier customer agreement. I will post some blogs on exchange DR in the future covering information which i learned from this training.

Exchange Mailbox Movement – BlackBerry issue

2009-06-01T14:53:00.001+03:00

Last week i faced a strange issue, we are facing some space issue on one volume so i draft a strategy to move selective mailboxes from one database to another database located in another storage group, on the weekend i ran one batch of users and moved them to another database. All goes fine. Next day was a working day and i got some complains that users are not able to sync and use their blackberry devices. Initially i thought that it is some other issue but after investigation i found that these are the same users which i have moved on weekend. After some search i found that Blackberry has some problem when we move mailboxes between storage groups in different databases on same server. It seems that blackberry services are not aware or are not updating itself for reflecting the database change. Although as per some articles the mailbox movements between servers is not an issues only within the same server has but i haven't tested it. By following the instructions on Blackberry support site i have restarted the Blackberry Enterprise service and the result was as per the expectation the problem goes away. I think Blackberry has to work on this glitch and should fix it in the next release or in the next service pack.

Downloadable contents for Office SharePoint Server 2007

2009-05-30T20:38:00.001+03:00

Microsoft is providing lots of books, white papers and articles on MOSS configuration and deployment for free. We as a MOSS consultant use these resources in most of the projects as a baseline for architecture. Below link contains a complete list of all downloadable contents available on MOSS, this list is continuously updating by Microsoft for covering new versions and service packs;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262788.aspx

Public Folder Mail Enabling issue

2009-05-29T20:16:00.001+03:00

Last week i faced an issue. whenever i mail enable any public folder and then double clicked it in exchange management console for setting email address, i am getting following error

“The mail proxy for this folder can not be found. This may be due to replication delays. The mail enabled pages will not be shown.”

After some time following event is logged in the event viewer;

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: MSExchangeIS
Event Category: General
Event ID: 9543
Date: XXXX
Time: XXXX
User: N/A
Computer: XXXX
Description:
Unable to create Public Folder proxy object for folder "XXXX" in the Active Directory.

After some search i found one KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327841) suggesting following fix;

“This issue may occur if the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service is not set to start under the local system account.”

I checked System attended service and found that it is configured under local system account which is a correct configuration. After lots of search i found nothing and all searches are directing towards the same article.

Because all peoples are pointing towards the same system attended service so i thought why shouldn’t i restart the service and see. I restarted the service and then again checked one recently mail enabled folder but the issue is same then i mail disabled it and then re-enabled it and guess what the issue gone! i it seems that there was some issue and system attended service is not communicating properly with active directory which has been solved after restarting the service.

Citrix Session Slowness

2009-05-29T19:29:00.001+03:00

Recently i faced a very strange issues regarding Citrix sessions. Users are complaining that they are getting very slow response whenever they open Citrix website from web interface. After initial analysis it has been noted that there is almost 3 minutes delay in displaying web interface page after successful authentication. After further analysis and also getting help from Citrix support it has been found that there is no reverse DNS zone entry in DNS servers for Citrix severs subnet. Because the environment is new and the application which is facing problem is the first application, so the issue has not been identified before. After entering Citrix Servers Subnet in reverse lookup zone the performance is dramatically increased and the web interface page is now opening in seconds.

As per Citrix support “You have a DNS resolution issue on the WI server just when the client machine send the login information to WI, the WI box does a DNS query to 10.201.X.X which fails for X.X.201.10.in-addr.arpa. after several DNS queries exchanges with different DNS servers, a NetBios call succeed to return 10.201.X.X and then the Citrix XML communication starts.” (They have also told us to disable SNMP which was not enabled because we are not using it)

Following tests has been conducted in order to narrow down this issues;

1. Network trace on the workstation.

2. Network trace on the XML broker server.

3. Network trace on the web interface server.

4. CDF trace on below modules on XML broker server:

IMA_Subsystems_ComSrv

IMA_Subsystems_MfServer

IMA_Sals_MfServer

MF_XMLRelay_Admin

MF_XMLRelay_Wpnbr

5. CDF trace on below modules on Zone Data collector server :

IMA_Subsystems_UserWin

IMA_Subsystems_ComApp

IMA_Subsystems_ComSrv

IMA_Subsystems_MfServer

MF_DLL_Ccticket

IMA_Subsystems_MfApp

IMA_Subsystems_User

IMA_Sals_MfServer

IMA_Sals_User

IMA_Sals_UserWin

IMA_RunTime_DynamicStore

For CDF tracing CDF Control Application is required which can be downloaded from following link;

http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx111961

MCTS (Exchange 2007 Configuration) passed

2009-05-27T00:27:00.001+03:00

Yesterday i cleared my MCTS exchange 2007 Configuration exam. The Exam was properly designed and most answers required experience and hands-on. Preparation of any exam always give you an overview of the complete product and normally one gets to now the features which he normally ignored in day to day operations.

For this exam preparation i used following items;

1. MS self paced guide.

2. Virtualized Exchange 2007 Environment.

3. TechNet Exchange Articles.

4. Practice Tests.

MS self paced guide are very well written and normally it gives you 70% preparation rest is your practical experience and TechNet research.

Edge server Configured as Regional or Remote Site Mail relay server

2009-05-21T23:44:00.001+03:00

I have one of the requirements from my regional Admins to allow mail relay for their regions. Mostly they want mail relay for;

1.local exchange or SMTP servers.

2. Printers and scanners wants to send emails

3. Devices and Application servers wants to send alert notifications.

4. Some of the devices and servers only support Anonymous permissions settings.

In order to provide this functionality, i can create a site specific receive connector on HUB and allow only their specific server IPs to allow relay emails, but there is a problem, i don't have any control on their site and server security and allowing relay directly to HUB server means their communication is directly terminating to our Enterprise/Business zone which is a high security risk. I thought why shouldn’t i use my edge servers sitting in DMZ zone and allow relay from them? . I have checked connectivity of these sites from DMZ and found that i can reach them. I was researching on it and had also discussed it with one of my friends (Nicolas Blank, an expert in exchange configuration and migration) he also agreed on my idea and had guided me to following article

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/security-message-hygiene/using-exchange-2007-edge-server-mail-relay-exchange-2003-organization-part1.html

After reading this article i am now more confident about this configuration, I think that in a scenario where we don't have any control on remote site security and we have a demand to open anonymous security then its better to open relay on edge servers rather then on HUB servers.

Active Directory Schema Modification Documentation

2009-05-21T23:09:00.001+03:00

I was working on one project and wants to get some details regarding AD schema, luckily i found following link contains plethora of information about AD schema and also discussing how Microsoft itself is managing their schema, check it out;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb687810.aspx

Exchange Public Folder information

2009-05-18T01:47:00.001+03:00

I was researching on some public folder stuff and luckily found a very good Microsoft TechNet article on same. check out the link;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124684(EXCHG.65).aspx

Sending Emails from external ids to Exchange Public folder

2009-05-17T15:43:00.001+03:00

If you want to enable external emails (hotmail, yahoo etc) to public folders then you have to make sure that anonymous permissions on PF is set to contributor. vice versa if you want to disable external emails to any PF then you have to set anonymous permissions on any PF to none.

Gartner 2008 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications

2009-05-05T11:28:00.001+03:00

Yesterday i reviewed Gartner report on UC and found it very informative and interesting. following is the link;

http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol6/article1/article1.html

Outlook Troubleshooting

2009-05-04T11:40:00.001+03:00

Most of the time we face lot of complains that users are not able to access their emails on outlook or exchange is not responding, in most of the cases client's outlook has some problem and users don't realize it. Following are some of the steps which will be handy in troubleshooting these types of issues and also narrow downing the problem scope;

Test 1 : Testing OWA:

1. Get the troubled user user id and password and test from OWA or ask him to open his mailbox via OWA.

2 . or create a test Mail account and Access OWA from it to verify that Exchange is working fine and user is able to access their emails.

If OWA is working fine then we have to concentrate on Client side troubleshooting else we have to look at the server side and check CAS servers and ISA severs (If reverse proxy is in use) (i will discuss server side troubleshooting in my next blog).

Test 2: Deleting Addins Registry Keys:

1. Logon to a troubled user machine.

2. Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Extensions (If it exists)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Extensions (If it exists)

3. Export the keys (for backup purpose), right click each subkey and click Delete.

Test 3: Configure Selected Startup:

1. Go to Run and type msconfig.

2. Select Selective Startup in General Tab.

3. Click to clear Process SYSTEM.INI file, Process WIN.INI File and Load Startup Items.

4. Click tab Services and select option Hide All Microsoft Services, and click button Disable All and click OK

5. Restart computer.

Test 4: Check if issue is occurring in Cached Mode:

Create a Outlook profile with Exchange cached mode and then test.

Test 5 : Check if issue is occurring in Online Mode:

Change Outlook profile in online mode, and open Outlook again and then test.

Test 6: Configure outlook profile for using RPC over HTTP:

1. Open outlook profile configuration and select Connections Tab

2. In the outlook Anywhere selection check connect to Ms exchange using HTTP.

3. Enter OWA address in exchange URL text box.

4. Assuming that user is sitting in a LAN environment, select “On Slow networks, Connect using HTTP first, then connect using TCP/IP.

5. Select Proxy server authentication settings based on your exchange server configuration.

6. Click OK.

7. Close Outlook completely. verify that there is no outlook.exe process visible in task manager.

8. Launch outlook again.

9. Hold control and press right click on outlook icon in system tray.

10. Click on connection status and verify that all connections are established by using HTTPS protocol not TCP/IP protocol.

Test outlook by sending and receiving emails. If this works then it means there might be some TCP/IP (RPC) communication problem between your client and server. You have to involve your network team and verify that if there is any network device causing issue or playing with the TCP/IP settings or TCP/IP packets.

Citrix Protocol Driver Error

2009-05-04T00:14:00.001+03:00

Today i faced a very complex problem. My Clients were complaining that they are are getting Citrix Protocol Driver Error. After initial troubleshooting i found that there were some http errors on my web interface servers. I restarted IIS on WIS but no luck. I restarted IMA service on Presentations servers but issue still remained same. It was strange that i am getting this error for all Applications published on different servers this means that this error is not server dependent. i have tried Citrix article http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX106531 published on same issue and also tried disabling Session reliability http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX108439 but no luck. My Citrix environment consists of 2 Access gateway servers, 2 Web interface servers, 4 presentation servers and 1 license servers and we are using Netscaler device for load balancing. For narrowing issue i have disabled one web interface server from Load balancer and configured application to use only one presentation server but it didn’t solved the problem. I also restarted whole farm but no luck. Then i focused on Access gateway appliance and removed 1 appliance from Load balancing but issue remained same after that i enabled 1st device in Load balancing and removed second device from load balancing then after test i found that the issue is not occurring again and it is solved. I then logged on to the the troubled access gateway and found that this sever is not able to connect to the license server also this server is not configured to accept connections on port 80 only https. i am not sure why the sessions are not going to the other Access gateway which have correct configuration. I have to still fixed the licensing server connection issue but till now i haven't got any complain from the user.

My Wordpress Blog

2009-04-30T02:05:00.001+03:00

I am now very annoyed with blogger and now decided to setup my wordpress tech blog also. Wordpress has more features and have awesome templates. From now onwards i will publish all my tech blogs on both wordpress and blogger. following is my wordpress tech blog address

http://khurramullah.wordpress.com

Powershell Command for public folder permissions

2009-04-30T01:55:00.001+03:00

If you want to replicate all permissions which parent public folder have to all child PFs, then you need to run following powershell script

adduserstopfrecursive.ps1 -toppublicfolder "<Parent Public Folder Name" -user "<User or group name>" -permissions –<permissions>

for example:

adduserstopfrecursive.ps1 -toppublicfolder "\SALES" -user "PFOwners" -permissions owner

BlackBerry Permissions Configuration on Exchange 2007

2009-04-12T23:45:00.002+03:00

If you are planning to install Blackberry services in your environment then you have to consider permissions required by BB on Exchange setup.

BB required following set of rights in order to perform operations on user mailboxes;

1. Send-As permissions on user mailboxes.

2. Receive-As permissions on mailboxes.

3. Ms-Exch-Store-Admin permissions.

You have to provide the above permissions to blackberry service accounts; following is the method for doing this;

Step one:

Provide View only Admin rights to BlackBerry Service Account

get-mailboxserver <mail_server_name> | add-exchangeadministrator BESAdmin –role ViewOnlyAdmin

Step Two:

Provide Send-As, Receive-As and MS-Exch-Store-Admin to BlackBerry service Account.

get-mailboxserver <mail_server_name> | add-adpermission –user BESAdmin –accessrights ExtendedRight –extendedrights Send-As, Receive-As, ms-Exch-Store-Admin

Microsoft Exchange Server Build numbers and release dates

2009-04-08T00:17:00.002+03:00

Following is the list of all exchange server versions released by Microsoft with their build numbers and release dates for reference,

Version	Build Number	Release Date
Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0	4.0.837	Apr-96
Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 (a)	4.0.993	Aug-96
Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 SP1	4.0.838	May-96
Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 SP2	4.0.993	Aug-96
Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 SP3	4.0.994	Nov-96
Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 SP4	4.0.995	Apr-97
Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 SP5	4.0.996	May-98

Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0	5.0.1457	Mar-97
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0 SP1	5.0.1458	Jun-97
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0 SP2	5.0.1460	Feb-98

Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5	5.5.1960	Nov-97
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 SP1	5.5.2232	Jul-98
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 SP2	5.5.2448	Dec-98
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 SP3	5.5.2650	Sep-99
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 SP4	5.5.2653	Nov-00

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server	6.0.4417	Oct-00
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server (a)	6.0.4417	Jan-01
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server SP1	6.0.4712	Jul-01
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server SP2	6.0.5762	Dec-01
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server SP3	6.0.6249	Aug-02
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server post-SP3	6.0.6487	Sep-03
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server post-SP3	6.0.6556	Apr-04
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server post-SP3	6.0.6603	Aug-04

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003	6.5.6944	Oct-03
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP1	6.5.7226	May-04
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP2	6.5.7638	Oct-05

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007	8.0.685.24 or 8.0.685.25	Dec-06
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1	8.1.0240.006	Nov-07

*Source Microsoft TechNet

Shrinking SQL 2000, 2005 Databases

2009-04-08T00:11:00.002+03:00

If you ever run in a situation like you have only MBs of space left on production SQL servers and your transaction logs are growing bigger and bigger and you want to claim disk space immediately then you might need to run following command

Backup log <Database name> with no_log

This command is not recommended to run in normal circumstances and after this you are not able to recover your database point in time. if you have proper backups configured then you don't need to run this command because after each full backup the transaction logs are automatically truncated. Also in case you have log shipping configured then this command will break your log shipping sequences. Only use if you don't have any space left on physical disk and you don't have any other alternatives available.

if you don't required point in time recovery then change your database recovery model to ‘Simple’ doing this will ensure that your transaction log will not get bigger.

The above command will not reclaim disk space, you have to run DBCC shrink statement or go to the SQL management studio and manually shrink log file.

Granting Permissions on Mailboxes using Power shell

2009-03-04T01:41:00.002+03:00

If you have some accounts which needs to have full access permission on lots of mailboxes then following power shell command is for you. In order to use this command you have to perform below steps;

1. Create one csv file name it users.csv and save it to C:\ drive.

2. Type text name in first line. Please make sure that there is no space or any other special character after text name otherwise the command will not run.

3. Copy all user ids on which you want to add permissions after text name in same column.

4. Open Exchange Management Shell and type following command and press enter;

Import-CSV "C:\users.csv" | ForEach{Add-MailboxPermission –ID $_.name –AccessRights FullAccess –User [Account id]}

Replace [Account id] with the account id which you want to grant full access permissions on mailboxes.

for verifying that the permissions has been granted, Run following command;

Import-CSV "C:\users.csv" | ForEach{Get-MailboxPermission –ID $_.name –User [Account id}

You can add more columns in you text file if you want by using comma ‘,’ and can reference it in the command as same as you are referencing the first column.

If you don’t have aliases or Ids and have only display names and these display names are in last name first name format such as smith, john then you have to add your names in your .csv file like this “smith, john”

if you want to do opposite and wants to add full access permission for lots users on one mailbox then following will be your command

Import-Csv c:\users.csv | foreach {Add-MailboxPermission –Identity [Account Id] -User $_.users -Accessright Fullaccess -InheritanceType all}

Replace [Account Id] with the mailbox alias or name.

Exchange 2007 Basics

2009-02-14T00:11:00.002+03:00

Exchange 2007 environment consists of following basic components;

1. CAS (Client Access Servers).

2. HUB servers.

3. Mail Box servers.

4. Edge Servers.

5. Unified Messaging servers

I will Explain basic functions of each server role in my upcoming blogs so stay tuned ;).

MOSS RSS Feed Reader

2008-11-11T00:43:00.001+03:00

If you are planning for using MOSS RSS feed reader for getting feeds from internal MOSS sites then you have to change your MOSS authentication settings from NTLM to Kerberos or set your site to run in Anonymous mode or have to use some third party RSS feeds solutions integrated with MOSS such as smiling goat otherwise you will get authentication error message in your RSS feed reader webpart. You can find steps for changing MOSS authentication from NTLM to Kerberos in following article http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=832769

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Removing Disconnected Mailboxes in Exchange 2007

2008-11-02T21:58:00.003+03:00

Whenever we disable ore remove any mailbox, by default it goes in disconnected state and can be viewed in disconnected mailboxes view in EMC.

For disabling any account you can run following command
Disable-mailbox user@domain.com

You can also remove any account without providing confirm parameter. Confirm parameter will permanently delete the account and this account will not be visible in disconnected mailboxes view
Remove-Mailbox -Database <Database-Name>

If your account is not visible in disconnected mailboxes view you can confirm it by running following command

Clean-mailboxdatabase -identity "<server name>\<storage group name>\<mailbox database name>"

If you want to permanently delete your account then you have to run this command Remove-Mailbox -Database <Database-Name> -StoreMailboxIdentity <MailboxGuid> -confirm:$false

For finding GUID you have to run this command

Get-MailboxStatistics -server <server name> | where-object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null } | Select DisplayName,MailboxGuid

You have to copy the GUID and then paste in the above command for permanently deleting any account

If you want to remove all disconnected mailboxes then you have to first run following command

$users = Get-MailboxStatistics | where-object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null } | Select DisplayName,MailboxGuid

Now you have all users in Variable users, you can run following command

$users | ForEach { Remove-Mailbox -Database "Mailbox Database" -StoreMailboxIdentity $_.MailboxGuid -confirm:$false }

Gmail for mobile 2.0

2008-10-26T17:21:00.001+03:00

Google has launched its Gmail 2.0 application for mobile devices, i have tried it on my Nokia N82 and found it very robust and interactive you can download this App by entering http://m.google.com/mail in your mobile device

for more information click on following link http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/10/introducing-gmail-for-mobile-20.html

"IT Evolution"- IT Event arranged by Microsoft

2008-10-22T10:24:00.003+03:00

There is an IT event arranged by Microsoft coming in Gulf region named a "IT Evolution ". Following is the Agenda of this event;

09:00-10:00

Registration & Refreshments

10:00-10:45

Keynote: Are You Ready to Move On?

10:00-16:00

Partner Showcase and Exhibition

10:45-11:45

Server Virtualization-Get Virtual Now!

Sliverlight 2.0-Light up the Web

11:45-12:00

Break

12:00-13:00

Hardware Virtualization Visual Studio Team System 2008

13:00-14:00

Lunch

14:00-15:00

App-V - Next Generation Client with Application Virtualization

Windows Presentation Foundation

15:00-15:15

Break

15:15-16:15

SQL Server 2008 - Your Data, Any Place, Any Time

SQL Server 2008 Database Development

16:15-16:30

Closing

Any IT professional working on Microsoft Technologies should attend this session. For more details check out below link.

http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/gulf/ITEvolution/IT_Times/default.htm

2008-08-07T18:35:00.006+03:00

If you are unable to start certificate services on your CA server and receiving following errors in your CA event viewer

Event Type: Error

Event Source: CertSvc

Event Category: None

Event ID: 100

Date: 8/7/2008

Time: 4:44:20 PM

User: N/A

Computer: XXXXXXXX

Description:

Certificate Services did not start: Could not load or verify the current CA certificate. XXXX Issuing CA The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline. 0x80092013 (-2146885613).

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Event Type: Warning

Event Source: CertSvc

Event Category: None

Event ID: 48

Date: 8/7/2008

Time: 4:44:20 PM

User: N/A

Computer: XXXXXX

Description:

Revocation status for a certificate in the chain for CA certificate 0 for XXXX Issuing CA could not be verified because a server is currently unavailable. The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline. 0x80092013 (-2146885613).

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

This issue should be occurring because CA is not able to find the CRL. For fixing this issue try to run following command on CA server

certutil –setreg ca\CRLFlags +CRLF_REVCHECK_IGNORE_OFFLINE

After this command restart the Certificate service again and the service should run without any issues.

IIS 6.0 thread access Issue

2008-04-29T20:51:00.004+03:00

Three weeks earlier i faced an issue in my MOSS environment.I have an enterprise MOSS farm environment consists of 6 Front-end servers and 5 Application servers. During installation of portal AV solution on these servers, i found that IIS on 5 of these servers were not responding. I opened IIS administration console but nothing was showing. I restarted IIS on all servers but no luck, then i did some research on it and found following MS KB on the same issue

"You may be unable to manage IIS 6.0 by using Server Manager if two threads access IIS 6.0 at the same time"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946517

As per this KB this issue is because "two threads access IIS 6.0 at the same time. In this scenario, you may be unable to manage IIS 6.0 by using Server Manager."
Also regarding SharePoint as per this KB "This problem is likely to occur for the SharePoint Timer service (OWSTimer.exe) in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. When this problem occurs for the SharePoint Timer service, you may experience the following symptoms:

In SharePoint Server 2007, tasks that are scheduled do not run.
When you try to manage IIS 6.0 by using Server Manager, you receive a blank page, or you receive the following error message: The path specified cannot be used at this time"

There is an hot-fix mentioned in this KB but it is not publicly available, one has to request Microsoft support for acquiring this. I got this hot-fix from my Microsoft account manager within an hour (because of our good relationship with them ;)) and had applied it instantaneously. The issue was fixed after this patch and haven't occurred yet.

I think that this hot-fix will be included in new windows 2003 service pack(SP3) and also might addressed in IIS 6.0 successor i.e IIS 7.0.

Using SharePoint designer 2007 for backup and restore SharePoint 2003 sites

2008-04-13T15:12:00.020+03:00

Before release of SharePoint designer, SharePoint sites can be backed-up and restore by using “smigrate” or “stsadm” tool. Both of these tools are command line and required some background SharePoint knowledge. SharePoint designer is a new tool in this breed; one can easily backup and restore SharePoint sites by using SharePoint designer GUI and performing some basic steps. Following are the simple steps which can be followed for backing up and restoring any SharePoint site.

Site Backup:

Step 1: Open Sharepoint site in Designer

Step 2: Go to Site->Administration->Backup website

Step 3: Click OK

Step 4: Give Name and location of backup file and click Save.

Site Restore:

Step1: Create new SharePoint site for restore (Do not apply template on newly created site, Stop on Template selection screen and don’t click ok)

Step 2: Copy the URL from the Template selection screen (Don’t click ok)

Step 3: Paste this URL in Open site dialog box.

Step 4: Go to Site->Administration->Restore website

Step 5: Select backup file for restore.

Step 6: Click OK for restore.

You will get success message after successful restore

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Use Google Maps to find Google data centers

2008-04-13T01:07:00.003+03:00

Pingdom, using information from Data Center Knowledge, has put together an online map showing where Google has build 36 data centers.

View Original Article

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Microsoft ready to 'Mesh it up'

2008-04-13T01:06:00.002+03:00

Taking a page from Apple's PR playbook, the company sends out a teaser invitation for an April 24 event to launch Live Mesh, but offers no new details.

View Original Article

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Visualizing Computer Viruses

2008-04-12T23:41:00.002+03:00

Want to see computer viruses, funny isn't it? well now its possible to visualize computer viruses. MIT Media Lab's grad student Alex Dragulescu has created some algorithms which can be run on virus data for visualizing it. The algorithm analyzes virus data patterns and then draw imaginary virus which can be seen as a computer simulation.

View Original Article

Blogged with the Flock Browser

RSA 2008: Blanketing security

2008-04-12T23:23:00.002+03:00

The annual RSA Conference on information security opens this week in San Francisco, featuring such hot topics as cybersecurity, cryptography, and warrantless wiretapping.

View Original Article

Blogged with the Flock Browser

LCS 2005 End point Issue

2008-03-30T16:10:00.004+03:00

Recently I faced an issue in LCS 2005, the users were reporting that they are unable to login on LCS and getting Server not found issue. Some users were complaining that they are unable to send messages. After viewing events in server I found following error;

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Live Communications User Services
Event Category: (1006)
Event ID: 30903
Date: 3/30/2008
Time: 11:49:08 AM
User: N/A
Computer: XXXXX
Description:
The Endpoint expiration stored procedure failed. It will be retried, but if this error continues to occur, the Live Communications Server service will need to be restarted.
Error code: 0x80004005
Cause: Possible issues with backend database.
Resolution:
Ensure the backend is functioning correctly.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

after googling I found 1 KB article on this issue explaining the cause and fix of this issue
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/904951
As per MS KB "This problem occurs because of a deadlock condition on the back-end Microsoft SQL Server database. When there is a deadlock condition, SQL Server automatically selects one of the set presence calls as the deadlock victim"

I have checked my back-end SQL server and found some process in deadlock state. I have checked with my backup guy and found that there was an unscheduled backup running on LCS database at that time. I requested to stop this backup and tried to restart LCS services but it didn't work. Then I ran following command mentioned in the KB as a workaround of this issue.

OSQL.EXE -S local\<instance name> -d rtc -E -Q "exec sp_MSforeachtable 'dbcc dbreindex(''?'')'"

Apparently this command was succeeded and showing some messages. One of the messages was informing about a deadlock process and a returning transaction. After this I have restarted the LCS service and checked event viewer once again, but the problem remained same. Then I stopped the LCS service and then re-ran the above command which was succeeded without any issue. Then i restarted the LCS service and checked the event viewer and all were normal.

It seemed to have some indexing issues with the LCS database; I will further investigate on it and try to find out the core cause. Meanwhile I have already initiated a request to Microsoft for this hotfix.

2008-03-02T23:48:00.002+03:00

Bill Baer from Microsoft has recently released a white paper discussing Database Maintenance strategies specifically for MOSS. Must read for any MOSS or SQL DBA http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=111531&clcid=0x409

System Center Capacity Planner 2007

2008-03-02T23:28:00.002+03:00

You can find Capacity planner for exchange and Sharepoint from following link;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sccp/bb969059.aspx

capacity planner for MOM 2007 will be coming soon

MOSS Capacity Planning tool by Microsoft

2008-03-02T23:15:00.002+03:00

Microsoft has finally launched its long awaiting Capacity planning tool for MOSS and other Microsoft Servers. I haven't got ample time to go through this tool but will definitely install it and will share my experience. For those of you who wants an early look on it, please download it from the following link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DBEE0227-D4F7-48F8-85F0-E71493B2FD87&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2008 free Downloads for students

2008-03-02T23:07:00.006+03:00

If you are a student and wants to develop applications by using visual studio 2008 for free then here is a way "Microsoft DreamSpark Professional Developer and Designer for students tools at no charge" at channel 8 you can find 4 Microsoft products totally free for students these products are
1. Microsoft Visual studio 2008 Professional Edition.
2. Microsoft Windows 2003 standard Edition.
3. Microsoft Expression Studio.
4. Microsoft Game Studio 2.0
But wait please read this from Microsoft before you go;
“We are kicking this off in 11 countries/regions, giving DreamSpark to millions of students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. If you are not residing in one of the countries listed keep checking back, we will be adding more countries throughout the year”
So if your country is not in the list then wait for your turn ;)
Following is the link
https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

MOSS - Storage Planning and Monitoring

2008-03-02T21:45:00.003+03:00

Microsoft has released a new document for MOSS Storage Planning. The title of this document is "Performance Recommendations for Storage Planning and Monitoring". This document is intended for SQL DBAs and portal Architects who want to plan and monitor their MOSS SQL environment. This document has two sections namely planning and monitoring. A must read for any MOSS DBA. Following is the link http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=105623&clcid=0x409

Channel 8 - Portal for IT Students and Researchers

2008-03-02T17:50:00.005+03:00

If you want yourself to get updated about Microsoft events or want to read about Microsoft research projects and articles or have fond of reading interviews of Microsoft chaps then this is the place for you. Channel 8 provides all of these in one place, a portal worth to watch for students and researchers.

Windows Server 2008 Reviewers Guide

2008-03-02T17:32:00.002+03:00

For all of those peoples who need to know about windows 2008, its features and its offering, they can now benefit from this guide available on following link. http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/0/740ec042-5d5d-4f89-9fd2-8df554774ea4/Windows_Server_2008_Reviewers_Guide.doc

windows 2008 launched

2008-03-02T17:14:00.003+03:00

Microsoft Flagship operating system is now finally launched. According to reviews and as per critics this version is like a quantum leap from its predecessors. The canvas of windows 2008 is so expanded that it deserves lots of blogs and reviews. As a startup one should need to see its official website for having a deeper look on its features and offering. The website is worth to watch and delivering a novel idea by depicting server as a robot and OS features as robotic functions. Check it out http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/serverunleashed/default.html

Getting User Session information in SQL server 2005

2007-11-12T10:27:00.000+03:00

In SQL server 2005 if you want to check all SQL server sessions following is the command for viewing this;

1 . select * from sys.dm_exec_sessions

But the above command will show the user sessions and as well as the system sessions, if you want to only see the user connections then following is the command;

2. select * from sys.dm_exec_connections

you can also get the session id from the below command and match it with the session_id column of the 2 or 1 command for viewing the specific session information.

3. Select @@SPID

Back from Vacations

2007-07-22T15:49:00.000+03:00

I was on my Annual Vaccations from 29 June to 21 July to my Home Town (Obviously Karachi;)). Weather was kind of a rainy over there and had also enjoyed heavy rain fall. it was a very nice trip except for some unusual and annoying power outages and bad political conditions in the country (which is always there). I am planning to post some picninc experience in my coming blogs (if i get time ;)).

SQL 2005- Online Indexing

2007-06-13T17:00:00.000+03:00

In SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition we can create an index with option ONLINE, this option states whether the underlying tables and indexes will be available for queries and data modification while indexing operations are taking place. we can define its settings to OFF or ON:

while OFF Table locks are applied for the duration of the index operation. Clustered index operations acquires a schema lock, which prevents all user access to the underlying table for the duration of the index operation. Nonclustered operations acquire a shared lock on the table that allows for read operations but prevents data modification.

While ON Table locks are not held for the duration of the index operation. SQL Server will first acquire an intent share lock, which allows queries and data modifications. Then SQL Server acquires a shared lock at the start of the index operation and quickly releases it. If a nonclustered index is being created, SQL Server will acquire a shared lock again at the end of the operation. If a clustered index is being created or dropped, or a nonclustered index is being rebuilt, SQL Server acquires a schema modification lock at the end of the operation. ONLINE can’t be set to ON for indexes created on local temporary tables (tables whose names start with the # character).

Silver Light - Microsoft Implementation of RIA

2007-06-11T14:22:00.001+03:00

My previous blog was about Google Gear- RIA (Rich Interactive Application) implementation from Google. Silverlight is Microsoft RIA implementation. According to Microsoft "Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows."

"Silverlight will enable higher quality and better applications in the browser," says Microsoft director of product management Forest Key. "Silverlight is a factored version of .NET that is optimized for the Web and simple deployment. It carries with it proven technology, access to a variety of languages for development, such as JavaScript, VB, C#, Ruby and Python, WPF [Windows Presentation Foundation] support for controls and code-reuse, AJAX integration, and more. We are providing a highly integrated set of tools that facilitate new levels of collaboration between designers and developers and allows them to build amazing experiences while addressing the 'lost in translation' issue that is so common at most organizations."

Silverlight is also trying to eliminate various Flash deficiencies by offering much higher quality video. Microsoft says that Silverlight supports up to 720p video--1280 x 720 resolution much higher then Flash. And unlike Flash, Silverlight won't require any expensive back-end servers for companies wishing to rollout the technology also Silverlight supports all major Web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and even Apple Safari, which runs only on the Mac.

Silverlight uses vector graphics for higher quality, Microsoft says, and can be used to display text, graphics, video, and video with text and graphic overlays. It will work with existing Web technologies such as Apache, PHP, JavaScript, and XHTML. Microsoft is also creating various Expression tools for creating and deploying Silverlight content, though these will be Windows-only.

Currently not enough documentation is present on SilverLight but there are some white papers present on Microsoft site discussing architecture and overview of SilverLight. Also there are number of videos present on Microsoft site featuring silver light implementation by different clients for different solutions.

Following are some useful links;

Silverlight Architecture: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb428859.aspx
Silverlight Site: http://silverlight.net/
Silverlight Demo: http://ds.pilot.serving-sys.com/BurstingRes/WPFE/msn_tech.html
BBC Radio Demo: http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/7/2/f72cff89-5769-4bd1-ab7d-f4333adbef16/BBC_mix.wmv

Google in Microsoft Boundaries- Google Gear

2007-06-11T09:45:00.000+03:00

Microsoft the ultimate and undisputed king of Desktop world is enjoying its dream spell for the past 10 years; on the other hand Google the "Innovator" is continuously releasing Internet centric software, based on fresh ideas and user demands such as Google Map, Google Desktop, Google Blogger, and lots of other Googlies. So far both empires have their boundaries defined and emperors were playing within it. Google Desktop search was the first attempt of Google penetration in Microsoft boundary which was not successful as it was countered by more powerful Microsoft Desktop search. Now Google is ready for a new attempt with its new weapon named as Google Gear! So what is Google Gear? A free, open-source multi-platform JavaScript application programming interface (API) that lets Web applications work offline. Below are the words from Google Representative

"With Google Gears, we're tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, in a statement. "We believe strongly in the power of the community to stretch this new technology to the limits of what's possible and ultimately emerge with an open standard that benefits everyone."

Google hopes Gears will become the standard for adding offline capabilities such as data storage, application caching, and multithreading to online applications.

David Mitchell Smith, Gartner web analyst, said that "The idea of taking Web applications offline is big," he said. While Google Gears can be viewed as a competitive move against Microsoft, he said that's not the only valid frame of reference.

Google Gears is also a threat for rich Internet applications. "Rich clients become less compelling the more the Web applications continue to grow," said Smith from Google. "Ajax has certainly taken a bite out of the opportunities that RIA developers thought they had."

Following are three Key features of Google Gear;

A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server.
A database, to store and access data from within the browser.
A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

Google Gear is currently compatible with following set of browsers;

Apple Mac OS X (10.2 or higher) o Firefox 1.5 or higher
Linux o Firefox 1.5 or higher
Microsoft Windows (XP or higher) o Firefox 1.5 or higher o Internet Explorer 6 or higher

Following are some useful links related to Google Gear

Google Gear: http://gears.google.com/
Sample Tutorial: http://code.google.com/apis/gears/tutorial.html
Sample Applications: http://code.google.com/apis/gears/sample.html

WSS 3.0 Application Templates

2007-06-10T17:05:00.000+03:00

You can download WSS 3.0 Application templates for creating scenario sepecific sites and solutions.

Some of these templates have to be deployed on Site level and some at server level targeting different scenarios.

Following are thier lists;

Site Admin Templates Board of Directors Business Performance Reporting Case Management for Government Agencies Classroom Management Clinical Trial Initiation and Management Competitive Analysis Site Discussion Database Disputed Invoice Management Employee Activities Site Employee Self-Service Benefits Employee Training Scheduling and Materials Equity Research Integrated Marketing Campaign Tracking Manufacturing Process Management New Store Opening Product and Marketing Requirements Planning Request for Proposal Sports League Team Work Site Timecard Management

Server Admin Templates Absence Request and Vacation Schedule Management Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects Bug Database Call Center Change Request Management Compliance Process Support Site Contacts Management Document Library and Review Event Planning Expense Reimbursement and Approval Help Desk Inventory Tracking IT Team Workspace Job Requisition and Interview Management Knowledge Base Lending Library Physical Asset Tracking and Management Project Tracking Workspace Room and Equipment Reservations Sales Lead Pipeline

There are currently 40 templates available. Following is the reference site; http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/wssapps/templates/default.mspx

SQL 2008

2007-06-10T16:39:00.000+03:00

SQL 2008 CTP has been released, following is the link; http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/futureversion/default.mspx I will be posting further information on it in my coming blogs.

MOSS 2007 Guidelines for Performance optimization and Capacity Planning

2007-05-01T16:47:00.001+03:00

MOSS 2007 has some limitations in terms of performance. These limitations and guidelines have to be followed in order to maximize MOSS performance and for avoiding any unpredictable behaviors or supportability issues.

Following are the details of performance guidelines along with their objects affected. This information will be handy for MOSS capacity planning and architecture design and also for checking product supportability.

The following table lists the recommended guidelines for site objects.

Site object	Guidelines for acceptable performance	Notes	Scope of impact when performance degrades
Site collection	50,000 per content database	Total farm throughput degrades as the number of site collections increases.	Farm
Site collection	150,000 per Web application	This limit is theoretical, and is dependent largely upon: · Performance of the database server on which the configuration database resides. · Performance of the Web servers in the farm. · Network bandwidth between the Web servers and the database server. This is not a hard limit, and assumes a single database server. Your environment may not be able to host this many site collections per Web application. Distributing content databases across additional database servers can increase the effective limit of the number of site collections per Web application. You should perform testing to determine the actual effective limit in your environment.	Farm
Web site	250,000 per site collection	You can create a very large total number of Web sites by nesting the subsites. For example, 100 sites, each with 1000 subsites, is 100,000 Web sites. The maximum recommended number of sites and subsites is 125 sites with 2,000 subsites each, for a total of 250,000 sites.	Site collection
Subsite	2,000 per Web site	The interface for enumerating subsites of a given Web site does not perform well as the number of subsites surpasses 2,000.	Site view
Document	5 million per library	You can create very large document libraries by nesting folders, using standard views and site hierarchy. This value may vary depending on how documents and folders are organized, and by the type and size of documents stored.	Library
Item	2,000 per view	Testing indicates a reduction in performance beyond two thousand items. Using indexing on a flat folder view can improve performance.	List view
Document file size	50MB (2GB max*)	File save performance is proportional to the size of the file. The default maximum is 50 MB. This maximum is enforced by the system, but you can change it to any value up to 2 GB.	Library, file save performance
List	2,000 per Web site	Testing indicates a reduction in list view performance beyond two thousand entries. For more information about large lists, see White paper: Working with large lists in Office SharePoint Server 2007 [ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262813.aspx ] .	List view
Field type	256 per list	This is not a hard limit, but you might experience list view performance degradation as the number of field types in a list increases.	List view
Column	2,000 per document library 4,096 per list	This is not a hard limit, but you might experience library and list view performance degradation as the number of columns in a document library or list increases.	Library and list view
Web Part	50 per page	This figure is an estimate based on simple Web Parts. The complexity of the Web Parts dictates how many Web Parts can be used on a page before performance is affected.	Page
Managed path	20 per Web application	20 managed paths is a soft limit. Managed paths are cached on the Web server, and CPU resources are used to process incoming requests against the managed path list. You should test for performance before exceeding 20 managed paths in a single Web application.	Web application

The following table lists the recommended guidelines for people objects.

People object	Guidelines for acceptable performance	Notes
Users in groups	2 million per Web site	You can add millions of people to your Web site by using Microsoft Windows security groups to manage security instead of using individual users.
User profile	5 million per farm	This number represents the number of profiles which can be imported from a directory service, such as Active Directory, into the people profile store.
Security principal	Approximately 2,000 per ACL (Access Control List) on any securable object (scope)	The total size of the ACL on scopes can be no larger than 64kb. Because each security principal is approximately 32 bytes in size, there can be no more than approximately 2,000 security principals or less for each scope. If this limit is reached, indexing of items in that scope, and all items below that scope, to fail. Also, because SharePoint Groups are expanded during the indexing process, having more than 2,000 users or Directory Groups in a SharePoint group and using that group for securing scopes may cause indexing of items secured with these groups, and all items below them, to fail. This limit only occurs when Windows Integrated Authentication is utilized.

The following table lists the recommended guidelines for search objects.

Search object	Guidelines for acceptable performance	Notes
Search indexes	One per SSP Maximum of 20 per farm	Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports one content index per SSP. Given that we recommend a maximum of 20 SSPs per farm, a maximum of 20 content indexes is supported. Note that an SSP can be associated with only one index server and one content index. However, an index server can be associated with multiple SSPs and have a content index for each SSP.
Indexed documents	50,000,000 per content index	Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports 50 million documents per index server. This could be divided up into multiple content indexes based on the number of SSPs associated with an index server.
Content sources	500 per SSP*	This is a hard limit enforced by the system.
Start Addresses	500 per content source*	This is a hard limit enforced by the system.
Alerts	1,000,000 per SSP	This is the tested limit.
Scopes	200 per site	This is a recommended limit per site. We recommend a maximum of 100 scope rules per scope.
Display groups	25 per site	These are used for a grouped display of scopes through the user interface.
Crawl rules	10,000 per SSP	We recommend a maximum 10,000 crawl rules irrespective of type.
Keywords	15,000 per site	We recommend a maximum of 10 Best Bets and five synonyms per keyword.
Crawled properties	500,000 per SSP	These are properties that are discovered during a crawl.
Managed properties	100,000 per SSP	These are properties used by the search system in queries. Crawled properties are mapped to managed properties. We recommend a maximum of 100 mappings per managed property.
Authoritative pages	200 per relevance level	This is the maximum number of sites in each of the four relevance levels.
Results removal	100	This is the maximum recommended number of URLs that should be removed from the system in one operation.
Crawl logs	50,000,000	Number of individual log entries in the crawl log.

The following table lists the recommended guidelines for logical architecture objects.

Logical architecture object	Guidelines for acceptable performance	Notes
Shared Services Provider (SSP)	3 per farm (20 per farm maximum)
Zone	5* per farm	The number of zones defined for a farm is hard coded to 5.
Web application	99 per SSP	This limit includes the number of Web applications on child farms consuming resources on this SSP.
Internet Information Services (IIS) application pool	8 per Web server	Maximum number is determined by hardware capabilities.
Site collection	50,000 per Web application
Content database	100 per Web application
Site collection	50,000 per database

The following table lists the recommended guidelines for physical objects.

Physical object	Guidelines for acceptable performance	Notes
Index servers	1 per SSP*
Application servers running Excel Calculation Services	No limit
Query servers	No limit	Because 100 content databases are supported for each query server, the number of query servers required per farm is based on the number of content databases in the farm. For example, if there are 500 content databases in your farm, you will need at least 5 query servers.
Web server/database server ratio	8 Web servers per database server	The scale out factor is dependent upon the mix of operations.
Web server/domain controller ratio	3 Web servers per domain controller	Depending on how much authentication traffic is generated, your environment may support a greater number of Web servers per domain controller.

*Source Microsoft TechNet

Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization

2007-04-04T16:14:00.000+03:00

Microsoft SoftGrid virtualization is a virtualization solution designed for making applications available just like electricity. This concept changes applications into network services that no longer need to be installed. User can access their application by simply clicking application icon on their desktop and they will get their application from soft grid virtual application servers. I am comparing this solution with Citrix Access suite. Citrix solution provides web experience for all applications. This solution is providing windows application experience to the end-user and as well as web experience by using terminal services. The beauty of this solution is that application will run locally but in a protected mode thanks to the system guard which restricts OS from altering application dlls and other system files. Any existing application can convert in to SoftGrid enabled application by passing it through sequencer, a program records application interaction with OS and make it compatible for system guard. Application running through softgrid will use application code and DLL on demand. DLLs will be provided by virtual application server as soon as they needed. For further details, check out this site http://www.softricity.com/products/index.asp

Developer posters for Office 2007

2007-04-03T11:19:00.000+03:00

Microsoft has published Moss2007 posters for developer community. The set of poster contains following items. 1. Microsoft Office 2007 Road Map. 2. Microsoft InfoPath Object Model. 3. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Platform. Must have for any office 2007 developer. Check it out. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=771aeb45-9d27-4d1f-acd1-9b950637d64e&displaylang=en

Groove portal is live now

2007-04-03T11:09:00.000+03:00

Microsoft has released its Groove 2007 portal for developer community. This portal will contain all developer resources and architecture references for Groove 2007. Check it out http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb308957.aspx

MS Office Communications Server 2007 protocols

2007-01-10T16:26:00.000+03:00

Following are the protocols with thier descriptions which are using in Office Communications Server 2007. SIP Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard signaling protocol. Office Communications Server 2007 uses SIP to initiate, manage, and terminate interactive sessions between one or more participants during instant messaging, data collaboration, on-premise audio/video conferencing, or telephony on an IP-based network. HTTP HTTP is a standard request/response protocol used for communication between clients and servers. In Office Communications Server 2007, HTTP is used for communication between the Focus and conferencing servers, download of Address Book Server updates to Office Communicator clients, and download of meeting content on users’ computers. CCCP Centralized Conference Control Protocol (CCCP) is a custom protocol in Office Communications Server 2007. CCCP is used for the exchange of the conference creation information and the control commands between Office Communicator clients and Office Communications Server 2007. PSOM Persistent Shared Object Model Protocol (PSOM) is a custom protocol in Office Communications Server 2007 that is used for transporting on-premise Web conferencing content such as conference ID, associated security keys, expiration time, and user roles and privileges. SRTP Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP) is an IETF standard protocol that provides encryption, message authentication, integrity, and replay protection to the relayed Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) data. In Office Communications Server 2007, SRTP is used for the secure transport of audio and video content to various media devices such as microphones and speakers. RTCP Real-Time Control Protocol (RTCP) is an IETF standard protocol. Office Communications Server 2007 uses RTCP in conjunction with SRTP to convey information about the signal quality of an on-premise audio/video conferencing session among the various media devices.

More on Unified Communication platform

2007-01-10T14:47:00.000+03:00

Today we had a very good session with Danie Odendaal Microsoft solution specialist-portals & Collaboration for Middle East and Africa. He was presenting us the vision of Microsoft in terms of Unified Communication platform. He gave us a demo in which he dialed to MS exchange and listened voice mails, calendar entries and contacts. It is very good to see that now Microsoft speech technology is so much improved, we were able to give our commands easily without having accent problem. Also Ms is supporting number of languages but Arabic is not yet supported and it will be available in the second quarter of 2007. We got to know that office communication server (OCS) will be available in two versions, standard and enterprise. Standard will be the same as live communication server 2005 with some major enhancement. OCS enterprise will include MS live meeting bundled for live meeting and video conferencing. We also saw couple of IP phone models created by Microsoft partners. One of which has OCS client built in (not remember exact models) and one is connected to PC by USB. OCS client model can show you all the details such as dialed calls, missed calls, OCS users list with their status, conferencing facility and many other feature of OCS. USB phone don’t have any interface, it will connect with OCS client installed on PC and one can control it from there. If PC is off your calls will redirected to the exchange voice mail. We will be getting more information from Microsoft on unified communication.

Downloadable book for Sharepoint 2007

2007-01-04T14:06:00.000+03:00

A great book for Sharepoint 2007 deployment project. Contains all upgrade scenarios and do's and don'ts. Must require before beginning any Sharepoint 2007 deployment. http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/900143fd-5397-4fa2-92ad-5af4c116ee7d1033.mspx?mfr=true

Unified Communications Platform

2006-12-28T16:48:00.000+03:00

Microsoft has released its new unified communication platform. Microsoft joined hand with Nortel and other VoIP giants in 2006 to create a platform based on Microsoft technologies for providing users a single interface for meeting collaboration challenges. Microsoft vision is to provide its customers a platform to communicate with their team member, partners and vendors without geographical limitation. Major components of this platform are Microsoft live communication server 2007, Microsoft office communicator 2007, Microsoft Speech server, Microsoft Live meeting, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft SharePoint portal 2007 and other partner products for different functions. A user using this platform is able to place call or initiate a video conference with their partners or peers connecting from any communication device and from any geographic location. Now if you don’t have PC but have phone, you can still check your email by dialing Microsoft exchange server and hear your emails. People can leave voice messages for you while you are offline or away and you can get these voice messages directly in your inbox. Microsoft partners had already created some powerful applications based on this platform focusing on specific business needs such as managing human capital, Customer service excellence, Collaboration between remote offices in real-time manner and many other needs. For further details, following is the link http://www.microsoft.com/uc/default.mspx

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Scalability Project - Server Consolidation

2006-12-21T15:19:00.000+03:00

Following link contains the description of the test which Microsoft has conducted for finding out the optimized SQL server 2000 configuration for more then 500 databases hosted in ASP (application service provider) environment. Interested part is the architecture of PACE a financial software from Microsoft bCentral™ for medium business which create a new database for every customer. Which according to Microsoft is not a traditional application architecture and advocating that this architecture is suitable for maximize data security check it out http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql2k/html/sql_asphosting.asp

Time's Person of the Year

2006-12-20T16:43:00.000+03:00

Findout who is Time's Person of the Year ;) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

WSS 3.0-Feature FrameWork

2006-12-20T13:44:00.000+03:00

Microsoft WSS 3.0 is a new and totally revamped version of WSS 2.0 contains number of new enhancement one of which is "New feature framework". So what is New feature fame work well according to Microsoft it is the new model for defining templates for Windows SharePoint Services sites. It helps you to define lists and other features, such as menu items, by including sub folders in the site definition structure Developing site definitions by implementing features gives us a greater degree of control, flexibility, and reusability than the site definition model for previous versions of Windows SharePoint Services. Previously each list definition was defined inside the context of a single site definition. In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, each list definition can have its own feature. Features also offer a modular approach because they do not define the entire blueprint for a site. The feature framework also improves the manageability of Windows SharePoint Services sites. In Previous version there is no mechanisms present for modifying site definitions and then applying those changes to existing sites. Now in new version features can be activated or deactivated on an existing site. For example, you can create a feature that defines a custom list type, an instance of that list type, and an event handler or a workflow on that list instance. After the feature has been installed on the server or Web farm, it can be activated in any site. Feature activation can be done from following ways:

By Windows SharePoint Services user interface.
By command line.
Writing custom code by using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 object model.

If a site no longer requires a specific feature, it can be deactivated.

After reading this you will be thinking that what is feature in terms of WSS.3.0. Well according to Microsoft a feature is a set of elements that help a user to accomplish a particular goal or task. For example, you can create a feature called My Favorite Links that is used to store a list of links on a per-user basis. The feature might include:

A custom list for storing the links.
A custom menu item, labeled Add to Favorites, that is attached to the menus of all links in the site. When clicked, the menu item will add the link to the favorites list.
A Web Part that renders the user’s top 10 favorite links, based on usage and link tracking.

Each of these pieces of functionality is an element. Elements are not typically useful on their own, but they are packaged together to form a useful feature that adds functionality to a Windows SharePoint Services site.

You can create features for any of the following levels in the Windows SharePoint Services hierarchy:

Web Application
Farm
Site Collection
Site

SQL 2005 - Max Worker threads enhancement

2006-12-20T13:16:00.000+03:00

One of the great enhancement in SQL 2005 is its automatic worker threads adjustment. In SQL 2000 it is by default adjust to 255. Increment in this figure without proper testing will always result in degradation of SQL performance. A fresh installation of SQL 2005 initates it by 0 and adjust it according to system load and usage. One thing to remember that in case of upgrading, SQL 2005 will get the max work thread number from previous version which have to reinitialize to 0 for better performance.

Vista security holes

2006-12-20T12:31:00.000+03:00

Recently i heard about vista security, related to this i found a very good article discussing possible hacking attacks on vista in the future. According to this research a major component of vista so called PatchGuard, or kernel patch protection will face the heat from the hackers. check it out http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39285083,00.htm

Comparison between WSS 2.0 and 3.0

2006-12-19T16:49:00.000+03:00

Document for finding comparison between WSS 2.0 and WSS 3.0. http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/f/2/2f292511-8865-43ce-a241-5a4cc6dbfd03/WSSVersions.doc

R&D

2006-12-19T16:24:00.000+03:00

Now a days i am working on sharepoint 2003 migration to Microsoft office 2007. Microsoft has greatly enhanced its office server suite and create an enrich and truly enterprise suite for the new office platform. New suite contains following products:

MS Sharepoint 2007.
MS Project Server 2007
MS Project portfolio server.
MS Groove Server.
MS Live Communication server 2007 (Not Yet Released).
MS presentation point server

Addition to this WSS 3.0 (platform behind sps 2007) is also there which is not part of MOSS 2007 but is essential for SPS 2007.

Some other new products mostly related to BI was also released which is not directly related to MOSS but will complement it.

There are some very good documentation available on most of the products like sps2007 and WSS 3.0 but not enough documentation is present on some products like Project 2007 server, Groove and Project portfolio server. My R&D is currently going on and will post useful materials as soon as i find them

SQL server common Q/A

2006-12-19T16:17:00.000+03:00

SQL server common Q/A http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2005/01/SQLQA/?related=y

TechGuru competition

2006-12-19T16:14:00.000+03:00

Microsoft has launched a TechGuru competition. A great oppprtunity for winning very attractive prizes. last date for contest is January 31st, 2007. following is the link. http://www.microsoft.com/gulf/techguru