Exchange server 2010 SP1 – Step by Step installlation on the production server – Live

Earlier i’ve done the Exchange server migration – 2007 to 2010 – Live cast, Its been 10 months since Exchange team release the SP1 for Microsoft Exchange server 2010….today i’m doing Microsoft Exchange server 2010 SP1 upgradation…Live page is opened.

Click here to view this live page

Enjoy!!!!

Exchange 2010 – Distribution group email id – Not able to receive email from external source – Solution

On Exchange server 2010, If you create a distribution group with scope as Universal and type as Distribution, in your domain active directory.

and then you enable the mail from creating the mailbox server, then do the testing of email flow from internal and external.,

if you ever had face an error, “Technical details of permanent failure: SERVER tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.1.1 User unknown (state 14).”

Please do the following.

From your active directory, select the property of the group email id, then under mail flow settings, select Message Delivery Restrictions, then select Properties…, new window will open.

uncheck the box which states “Require that all senders are authenticated” and click ok..then apply and ok again.

Give some time to replicate this to Edge server…

Enjoy!!!!

Exchange 2010 – Attachment size – Global setting (for Send & Receive)

Attachment size setting inside Exchange server 2010 for global user settings.

• Go to your mailbox server
• open EMC
• goto Organization configuration
• goto Hub Transport
• select global setting tab

Edit the Transport settings and change the parameters as below.

Once you done it, click Apply and ok

Remember one thing, the more you increase the size of the attachment, the load on the CAS & Edge server increase…plus the Virus scanning engine too.

Thats all folks!!!

Un-installing/De-commissioning Exchange server 2007 Mailbox from Passive cluster node for Exchange 2010

1. Open the command prompt of the Passive mailbox server..make sure you logged in as domain administrator.
2. Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange SErver\Bin
3. Type the command setup /mode:uninstall

Now you have successfully uninstall the Exchange server mailbox role from the passive node, but the cluster environment server information still exists, and we need to remove that as well.

To do that we need to…

• Open the Cluster Management Tool
• Expand the cluster resource name
• Expand the Nodes
• Right click the passive node server
• Click on More actions -> click on “Stop cluster service”

 

 Once you “Stop Cluster Service”, then click on More actions again and click Evict and click the Evict Node….

Once you done this, restart the server.

Once the server is up…do the following too

1. Open the Server manager console
2. Click on Features and then click on Remove Features
3. Uncheck Failover Clustering
4. Click on Yes to reconfirm and click on NEXT
5. Click on Remove.
6. After the Server is restarted
7. Remove any remaining files and folders from the Exchange Server program files folder and subfolders.

Thats the end of Exchange Server 2007 Mailbox de-commissioning on a Passive node….Now go to the Active mailbox server of Exchange server 2007

This process is not as same like passive node. Here we can’t go with uninstall command only, because this server holds the culstered mailbox server information and it is online. In order to remove this,

Go to the command prompt..change the directory to C:\Program files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin

Type command setup.com /removeCMS /CMSName:<Clustername>

This will take the mailbox now offline from the cluster…

Now type setup /mode:uninstall

Once you finish this uninstallation, Exchange server 2007 last mail box has been remove from your domain..now do the evict

Goto command prompt (If the command prompt is open, close it and open it and then type

Cluster <mailbox cluster name> node <nodename> /force

That’s the end of the “EXCHANGE SERVER 2007 DE-COMMISSIONING PROCESS”

Now you are completely depended on Exchange server 2010.

Activating Product Key – Exchange 2010

Activate the product key for Exchange Server 2010 (for each role installed)..otherwise you can run it for 119 days…!!!!

To activate the same, from the Exchange Management console of 2010, right pannel, you will see “Enter Product Key”…and enter the product key which comes with it…!!

Exchange server 2010 – Edgeserver not able to save block IP

If you come across the issue of saving the IP which needs to block it under the “Edge server IP Block List” entry, following error receive “The server threw an exception. (Exception from HRESULT: 80010105 (RPC_E_SERVERFAULT))”

Why this is used : IP Block List is part of the connection filtering feature in Exchange. When the IP Block List feature is enabled on a computer, the Connection Filter agent analyzes all messages that come through all Receive connectors on that computer and it block all incoming messages from addresses specified in the IP Block list.

Reason for the above error : Duplicate IP exist inside the IP block list.

Resolution : From the EMS (Exchange management shell) use the following. You use the Add-IPBlockListEntry and Remove-IPBlockListEntry cmdlets to manage the addresses in the IP Block list. You can specify individual IP addresses, IP subnets using the CIDR notation, or IP ranges.

From the EMS,

If you want to list all the IP blocklist for verification, type  Get-IPBlockListEntry . This will list all the Block IP, and you can see the duplicate entries. Write down each of the dupicate entry seperately and then run the following command for each entries.

To remove an address from the IP Block list using the Shell, you must specify this IP. However, an easier way to remove an address is to pipeline the output of the Get-IPBlockListEntry cmdlet to the Remove-IPBlockListEntry cmdlet.

For example, if you want to remove the IP address 192.168.1.100 from your IP Block list, run the following command:

Get-IPBlockListEntry -IPAddress 192.168.1.100 | Remove-IPBlockListEntry

This will remove 192.168.1.100 from your IP block list, which is a duplicate, identified by you. For each entry, do the same by changing the IP. Once it is done, Your block list will start accepting the IP to block and  save it on the list, without throwing the error (as above mentioned)

Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 – Sneak-peak

Exchange Team Blog that provides the first public details about Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).  SP1 will of course include fixes and enhancements in the areas customers have helped us identify (including code from all of the Exchange 2010 post RTM update rollups we’ve released to date).  But SP1 will also include some new features and functionality changes, as well….cool

• A new search preview helps with early case assessment by providing you an estimate on the number of items in the result set-with keyword statistics-before e-mail located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox.
• And, a new search result de-duplication option, when checked, only copies one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox.

Look at the below  menu for the DAG…what a cool feature it will be

With the release of Exchange Server 2010 last November, Microsoft introduced integrated archiving capabilities aimed at helping you preserve and discover e-mail data. In SP1, this has enhanced its archiving functionality based on the great feedback you’they got since the launch. This includes adding the flexibility to provision a user’s Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. This means your organization can now more easily implement separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail. And, we didn’t just stop there! We’ve also added new server side capabilities so you can import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange, as well as IT pro controls to enable delegate access to a user’s Personal Archive.

To help streamline the implementation of retention policies, SP1 updates the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags, so you can automate the deletion and archiving of e-mail and other Exchange items. New optional Retention Policy Tags give you even more flexibility in defining your organizations retention management strategy….coooool

Can’t wait to get hold of this…Announcement blog from Microsoft Exhange Team …click here Yes Virginia, there is an Exchange Server 2010 SP1

Learn more about our approach to archiving by reading the Archiving with Exchange 2010 whitepaper.

Scott Schnoll’s weblog…click here

Exchange server 2010 – SAN certificate creation for autodiscover,EWS and OWA etc…!

Good News for installations guys out there, Exchange server 2010 SAN certificate creation very easy…click here to read my blog

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sender Policy Framework…need to know about how to protect the Mail spam

If you have not already done so, I highly recommend you create an SPF record for your domain as this will make it much more difficult for spammers to forge your domain in order to spam domains in other organizations.

Sender Policy Framework..WikiPedia Definition

Creating your own SPF record is a relatively simple process, Microsoft even provides a web-based GUI wizard that will help you do this.. Domain holders need to complete an inventory and publish all IP addresses of their outbound e–mail servers in the DNS zone file. This is an administrative step that requires no changes to an organization‘s e–mail or DNS software. Even if your domain has no outbound e–mail servers, you can help protect your domain from spoofing by publishing an SPF record in the DNS that states this. Microsoft Safety Home Page click here

Implementation Tips for the Sender ID Framework—Creating Your SPF Record..Click here

Sender ID Overview Click here

Exchange server 2007 to 2010 Live migration!!!! Live blog!!! Live Platform…real time scenario!!!

Please find on my blog, one page dedicated to this task…you can see it on my blog top page… or click here

             TO                                          

 MIGRATION…Started on June 8, 2010 ….Today 20th of June..all the objects has been replicated to Exchange 2010..Now the decommissioning starts..Finish too