Released: Exchange Server 2010 SP2

SP2 for Exchange 2010 is out!

SP2 includes much anticipated features such as the Hybrid Configuration Wizard, Address Book Policies, Outlook Web App Mini and Cross-Site Silent Redirection for Outlook Web App as well as customer requested fixes and rollups released prior to Service Pack 2.

Check out the features in more detail or download SP2.

Link: Current Issues with ActiveSync and iOS, Android

Applies to: Exchange 2010, Exchange 2007

This document lists common Exchange ActiveSync issues with vendor devices that synchronize with Exchange, such as Android and iOS devices.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2563324/

Windows 8 Demo

Good times ahead for Microsoft in the tablet space! Microsoft isn’t just catching up on tablet and mobile phones … Windows 8 Partner Demo.

Exchange 2010 Management Tools Crash After Installation of KB 2449742

Applies to: Exchange 2010

The Exchange Team has been aware of a problem that impacts the Exchange management tools on servers running Exchange 2010 on Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows 2008 R2 RTM. Windows 2008 R2 SP1 systems do not seem to be impacted.

The symptoms of the problem are:

  • Exchange Management Shell does not start
  • Exchange Management Console does not start
  • There might be a crash in Exchange Mailbox Replication Service

The following events could be logged in the Application event log:

  • Event ID: 1023
    Source: .NET Runtime
    Event ID: 1023
    Level: Error
    Description: .NET Runtime version 2.0.50727.5653 – Fatal Execution Engine Error (000007FEF9216D36) (80131506)
  • Event ID: 1000
    Source: Application Error
    Level: Error
    Description: Faulting application PowerShell.exe, version 6.0.6002.18111, time stamp 0x4acfacc6, faulting module mscorwks.dll, version 2.0.50727.5653, time stamp 0x4d54a59c, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x00000000001d9e19, process id 0x%9, application start time 0x%10.

The failures start after the .NET security update KB 2449742 (MS11-028) is installed.

UPDATE: The Exchange team has identified the problem and has a solution for customers that were impacted by it.

Please see the following KB article for the resolution of this problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2540222

Exchange 2010 Purge Disconnected Mailboxes

Applies to: Exchange 2010

There is sometimes the need to permanently delete disconnected mailboxes. For example, if you moved mailboxes between databases, the previous database will still hold a copy of the moved mailboxes (by default for 30 days). If you’re tight on disk space, you might want to delete the disconnected mailboxes manually.

Note: Your Exchange database file size will not decrease right-aways, however, the Exchange Mailbox Server(s) will immediately have free space inside the .edb file for new emails.

Step 1: Retrieve List of Disconnected Mailboxes

Get-MailboxDatabase | Get-MailboxStatistics | where {$_.DisconnectReason -eq “SoftDeleted”} | Select DisplayName,ServerName,Database,ItemCount

Step 2a: Permanently Delete an Individual Disconnected Mailbox

Remove-StoreMailbox -Database (Database) -Identity (useralias) -MailboxState SoftDeleted

Step 2b: Permanently Delete all Disconnected Mailboxes across all Databases (enter below commands into a .ps1 file before executing)

$var1 = Get-MailboxDatabase | Get-MailboxStatistics | where {$_.DisconnectReason -eq “SoftDeleted”}

$var1 | foreach {Remove-StoreMailbox -Database $_.database -Identity $_.mailboxguid -MailboxState SoftDeleted}

Script for Available Free Space Within Exchange Databases

Applies to: Exchange 2010

This Exchange Management Shell Script returns the available free space (whitespace) within your mailbox databases. This may by useful to know when you purged disconnected mailboxes.

Get-MailboxDatabase -status | fl Name,AvailableNewMailboxSpace

The result will look similar to this.

Name : Mailbox Database 1
AvailableNewMailboxSpace : 14.41 MB (15,106,048 bytes)

Name : Mailbox Database 2
AvailableNewMailboxSpace :
5.251 GB (5,638,553,600 bytes)

Name : Mailbox Database 3
AvailableNewMailboxSpace : 142.3 MB (149,258,240 bytes)

Script for User Count Per Mailbox Database – Exchange 2007

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007

Here an Exchange Management Shell script that displays the user count per database.

Step 1: Create a new text file in C:Scripts named “Get-MailboxCountPerDatabase.ps1” and paste the code below into the text file.

write-host -fore yellow “This script will get each mailboxdatabase and the current user count ”
foreach($name in get-mailboxdatabase)
{
$count=(get-mailbox -database $name).count
write-host $count -nonewline
write-host ” mailboxes in $name”
}
write-host -fore yellow “The system has a total mailboxes of “$user=(get-mailbox –resultsize unlimited).count
write-host -fore red $user

Step 2: Once you have saved the text file, run the script file by entering it’s name into the Exchange Management Shell, (C:ScriptsGet-MailboxCountPerDatabase.ps1).

Assign License to VMware ESXi 4.1

Applies to: VMware ESXi 4.1

Problem:

You have downloaded and installed the free ESXi 4.1 installable iso file, then installed it on your server. Later you downloaded and installed the vSphere Client 4.1. When you login to ESXi 4.1 using the vSphere Client, it displays a warning that your evaluation license will expire in 60 days.  You can’t find any way to install/assign the license key nor on the server or the vSphere Client.

Solution:

  1. Login to the ESXi server using vSphere Client and navigate to Home->Inventory.
  2. On the left-hand side, select your host.
  3. On the right-hand side, select the “Configuration” tab.
  4. Under “Software”, click “Licensed Features”.
  5. Click “Edit” on the right top corner.
  6. Select “Assign a new license key to this host”, and click “Enter Key”
  7. Click OK twice.

Link: Configure SSL Offloading in Exchange 2010

Applies to: Exchange Server 2010

This Exchange Wiki article explains how to configure SSL offloading for the Exchange 2010 protocols and client access services on an Exchange 2010 Client Access server (CAS).

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/how-to-configure-ssl-offloading-in-exchange-2010.aspx

Resetting NTFS Permissions in Windows 7

Applies to: Windows 7

Here’s the scenario. A friend of mine gave me his old disk drive to have it copied to a new drive. The old drive had permissions set on files and folders. Some of the files were not accessible, I was getting “Access Denied”.

I tried to right-click/properties on the folders that were not accessible and changed their owner and changed permissions but some folders were still inaccessible not matter what I did.

After some research, it turned out the tool “cacls” that allows one to display or change ACLs (access control lists) can help to reset ACLs.

In Windows 7 it is called “icalcs”. To reset files permissions simply do this:

  1. Run “cmd” as Administrator
  2. Go to the drive or folder in question, for example:
    cd i:
  3. To reset all the files permissions, type:
    icacls * /T /Q /C /RESET

That is it!

After that, the files permissions were reset and I could access them just fine.

icacls is a handy tool to change permissions of files en masse.