Meet the Exchange Team

Watch this 5 minute video where some of Exchange team members are introducing themselves and talk about their work.

Create Certificate for Exchange 2007 Servers using Windows CA

 

Ronen Gabbay [MVP], Microsoft Exchange Regional Director (and my Exchange 2007 course instructor), shows how you can create Certificate for Exchange 2007 Servers using Windows CA for SSL, OWA and SMTP use.

Exchange Server Documentation Updates

 

The Exchange Server documentation team announced new and updated Exchange Server 2007 documentation content. You can read the full post here.

With regards to PowerShell, there are two updated help files for Exchange 2007 SP1:

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Help (19.9 MB)

This download contains a standalone version of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Help.
To view the most recent version of the Help file within Exchange Server, extract the Help file (exchhelp.chm) to the folder where the Help file is currently installed (typically C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin).

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Shell Help (560 KB)

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Exchange Management Shell Help file (Microsoft.Exchange.Management-Help.xml) helps you use cmdlets in the Exchange Management Shell to perform day-to-day administration of Exchange 2007. You can view help in the Exchange Management Shell by using the Get-Help cmdlet. Extract it to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin\<Lang>.

 

 

 

 

TechNet Spotlight videos

 

New videos on TechNet Spotlight!

Advanced Windows PowerShell Scripting session (Jeffrey Snover)

This session provides a deep drill into advanced Windows PowerShell scripting techniques. Windows PowerShell provides an incredibly large dynamic range of capabilities from simple to very sophisticated. This session is for those people that have mastered the simple range and want to explore the high end techniques and mechanisms. This session will include a preview and demonstration of features from the next release of PowerShell including remoting and many other wonderful features.

 

Microsoft Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 Tips and Tricks (Scott Schnoll)

This session will provide information on how to get more out of Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 SP1. It includes tips and tricks on configuring Exchange, managing Exchange, using the Exchange Management Shell, and more.

Professional Windows PowerShell for Exchange Server 2007 SP1

 

New book, by WROX, on managing Exchange 2007 SP1 with Windows PowerShell has just released.

 

 

 

 

Book Description

If you want to dramatically improve your implementation and administration of Exchange Server 2007, then this is the book for you. It walks you through the ins and outs of PowerShell, showing you how to take full advantage of this scripting language for deploying, configuring, managing, and maintaining your Exchange environment.

You'll first explore Windows PowerShell and the Exchange Server 2007 Management Shell. Next, you'll discover how to work with the new Exchange server roles as well as how to use the cmdlets and features that are specific to these roles. You'll then discover how to successfully bring PowerShell into your environment and work with users and groups. Numerous examples are integrated throughout the chapters so you'll be able to quickly apply the information to enhance your Exchange experience.

What you will learn from this book

• All of the PowerShell for Exchange fundamentals so you can quickly get started

• Methods for working with Exchange User and Group Objects

• Ways to configure the Client Access Server, Hub Transport, Mailbox Server and Unified Messaging Server roles

• Best practices for utilizing PowerShell in a production environment

• How to work with routing in Exchange 2007, continuous replication, and single copy clusters

• Techniques for automating administration to ensure optimal performance

Exchange 2007 in Depth - Webcasts series

blogstrocity is delivering Part 1 of an 8 part series on Exchange 2007. Today is the Intro to the Exchange session. It reviews Exchange roles, why Exchange is 64 bit only, and demos on the new features in OWA, AutoDiscover, and Transport Rules.

There's a chance that by the time this post will publish you won't be able to register the first webcast cause its already broadcasting? If so, here is the link for the second webcast.

Exchange Certificate Command Generator

 

Having troubles figuring out how to use Exchange 2007 New-ExchangeCertificate cmdlet?
Not sure what parameters to use and how?

DigiCert, a security corporation specializing in providing High-Assurance SSL certificates came up with a web GUI 'wrapper' to make your life easier. Clicking inside each text box shows a brief explanation of each field.

Troubleshooting Exchange 2007 Transport Logs with LogParser

 

There is a series of posts on the Microsoft Exchange team blog on analyzing and troubleshooting your Exchange 2007 logs.

 
Part 1, gives an introduction to LogParser.
Part 2, drills down to analyzing various exchange logs and explains how to draw charts from your mail flow information.

Here are some of the queries you can find in part two:

- Identifying top senders to your system
- Identifying times of highest traffic
- Identifying top senders
- Identifying top email rejecting IP sources
- Identifying outbound email issues
- Content agent filtering log
- Message tracking log

Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1

 

Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 is available for download here.

See the full list of new features in SP1 here.

Bear In mind that installing SP1 requires uninstalling the current version and re-installing
the SP1 version.So, Backup... Backup and Backup again!

TechNet Magazine Poster: Exchange 2007

Get your hands on this new Exchange 2007 poster of this month's TechNet magazine issue. This poster highlights the architecture and feature set of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007:

Management and Monitoring

High Availability

Client Access, Edge Transport, Hub Transport, Mailbox, and Unified Messaging server roles

 

Download it here (PDF)

Top 5 Exchange Server 2007 Security Best Practices

Devin L. Ganger, Exchange MVP, lists his recommendations for securing Exchange 2007. Read it here.

How to configure mail forwarding in Exchange 2007

 

This procedure describes how to configure a mailbox to forward mail to either a mail-enabled contact or another mailbox. It can be configured through GUI (EMS - exchange Management Console) but here I'll show how to do it via PowerShell (EMS - Exchange Management Shell).

 

$srcMbx="Test"  # forward copy of all messages from this mailbox
$dstMbx="ShayL"  # mailbox to receive forwarded messages from source mailbox

 

# list forwarded mailboxes for user "Test" (default settings for new mailbox, no one)

PS > Get-Mailbox -Identity $srcMbx | fl deliver*,forward*

DeliverToMailboxAndForward : False
ForwardingAddress          :

 

# Set forward messages (copy) to ShayL mailbox

Set-Mailbox -Identity $srcMbx -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true;
Set-Mailbox -Identity $srcMbx -ForwardingAddress $((get-mailbox -Identity $dstMbx).DistinguishedName);

 

# Check again

PS > Get-Mailbox -Identity $srcMbx | fl deliver*,forward*

DeliverToMailboxAndForward : True
ForwardingAddress          : DomainName/Users/Shay Levy

 

 
### EDIT ###
The command can be issued as a one liner:

Set-Mailbox user -DeliverToMailboxAndForward:$True -ForwardingAddress name@domain.com

###########

 

# Check the GUI, Exchange > Recipient Configuration > Mailbox > Test

Enable POP3 on Exchange 2007

By default, POP3 service is not enabled on Exchange 2007. Moreover, the Administrator account is explicitly blocked from POP3/IMAP4/SMTP for security reasons. To enable POP3 you first must enable and start the service:

 

PS > Set-Service MSExchangePop3 -StartupType automatic
PS > Start-Service MSExchangePop3

 

Enabling POP3 for clients can be achieved with the Set-CASMailbox cmdlet. To get a list of all users mailbox with their POP3 settings:

PS > Get-CASMailbox | Select Name,PopEnabled

 

To enable clients for POP3:
Set-CASMailbox -Identity <username> -PopEnabled $true

 

When trying to connect to a POP3 mailbox, a user/password dialog pop-up appeared. When I entered the user's credentials the dialog kept poping up again and again. Something did not work with the user's login.

I issued Get-Command *pop* and found the cmdlet Get-PopSettings (there is also the corresponding Set-PopSettings), I piped it to Get-Memebr and among all members there was a property called LoginType

PS > Get-PopSettings
...
LoginType       : SecureLogin
...

You can see that the LoginType is set by default to secure login. I needed to change it to allow clear text login (although not recommended), so I piped it to get-member:

PS > Get-PopSettings | gm l*

   TypeName: Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.SystemConfiguration.Pop3AdConfiguration

Name      MemberType Definition
----      ---------- ----------
LoginType Property   Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.SystemConfiguration.LoginOptions LoginType {get;set;}

 

Trying to find the valid values to set the property.

PS > [Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.SystemConfiguration.LoginOptions]

IsPublic IsSerial Name                                     BaseType
-------- -------- ----                                     --------
True     True     LoginOptions                             System.Enum

 

You can see that LoginType is a System.Enum type. To get all valid options for LoginType :

PS > [enum]::getnames([Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.SystemConfiguration.LoginOptions])
PlainTextLogin
PlainTextAuthentication
SecureLogin

 

Now you can change the value to "PlainTextLogin".
PS > Set-PopSettings -LoginType PlainTextLogin

 

After setting the login type to PlainTextLogin, All POP3 enabled users could login successfully.

.

Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007

 

The fifth rollup for Exchange 2007 has been officially released and can be downloaded here. The new rollup is a cumulative update and replaces all previous update rollups (1-4).

A complete list of changes for this update can be found here.

Exchange Terminology Roadmap

 

If you're confused by the Exchange 2007 new features, The following link provides a roadmap for administrators to understand the various terminology changes in Exchange 2007 and Windows Server 2008. It lists several features that have been enhanced, renamed, or that no longer exist.

The Shortcut Guide to Exchange Server 2007 Storage Systems

New complete eBook : The Shortcut Guide to Exchange Server 2007 Storage Systems, by Jim McBee, is available for download on Realtime Publishers website. This web site is a great resource of free eBooks covering all aspects of IT. Register now and download it.

Here's the description for this title:

The conventional way of planning for Exchange Server storage is to throw a lot of disk storage at the server and hope that is sufficient. Mail storage requirements continue to grow for even average users; these users place more and more capacity requirements not only on disk storage but also on disk I/O capacity. As current capacity requirements are exceeded, the storage system must provide scalability. The Shortcut Guide to Exchange Server 2007 Storage Systems, authored by Microsoft Exchange MVP Jim McBee, covers Exchange Server storage capacity requirement planning, the basics of using iSCSI SANs, and best practices for scalability and SAN operations.

How to validate DistinguishedName strings

By nature, Exchange 2007 is strongly integrated with Active Directory (AD) and as such, it exposes new types to interact with AD. A lot of the user object properties across all the AD forest are made available through the Get-User command-let. 
If you need to pass strings as "DistinguishedName" this function can help you validate them.

 

function Validate-DistinguishedName{
    param([string]$dn)
    [Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.ADObjectId]::IsValidDistinguishedName($dn)
}

 

>> Validate-DistinguishedName "CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=homelab,DC=loc"
True

>> Validate-DistinguishedName "CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=homelab"
True

>> Validate-DistinguishedName "CN=Administrator,CN=Users"
True

>> Validate-DistinguishedName "Shay@homelab.loc"
False

>> Validate-DistinguishedName "AB=CD,EF= G H"
True

Introduction to scripting PowerShell for Exchange 2007

Great introduction to scripting PowerShell for Exchange 2007 by Evan Dodds
Program Manager at Microsoft Corporation. Watch the video on IT's ShOwtime!.

Session description

"This session covers the new Windows PowerShell-based Exchange cmdline and scripting interface. Learn how to convert your multiple page Visual Basic and COM scripts to mere one-liners in Exchange 2007. We cover the basics of the management shell, as well as the underlying design and key concepts. Additionally, we go into more depth on how to build larger scripts that can be used to automate small, medium, as well as enterprise business scenarios."

• Introduction to Powershell Scripting
• Basics of Powershell and Exchange
• Demo: Net Objects
• Demo: Finding Your Way
• Putting it All Together

List users with email forwarded in Exchange 2007

 

Here's the 2007 on-liner version of Bharat Suneja's post on ExchangepediaBlog. He Explains how to list all users with email being forwarded to another recipient. The sample in file is vbs and is ~35 lines long.

>> get-mailbox | where {$_.ForwardingAddress} | select name, ForwardingAddress, DeliverToMailboxAndForward | format-table -autosize

 

Name                 ForwardingAddress               DeliverToMailboxAndForward
----                    -----------------                      --------------------------
Administrator     homelab.loc/Users/Shay       True
User1                 homelab.loc/Users/User2     False

 

PowerShell is sooooooooo COOL!!!

Who logged on to my mailbox?

 

This on-liner lists all mailboxes and the user account that was the last to open it.

get-mailbox  | select name, @{n="LastLoggedOnUser";e={(Get-MailboxStatistics -id $_).LastLoggedOnUserAccount}}

 

Name               LastLoggedOnUser
------                ----------------------
Administrator   HOMELAB\Administrator
Shay                 HOMELAB\Shay
User1               HOMELAB\Administrator
User2               HOMELAB\User2
User3               HOMELAB\User3

 

As you can see, the Administrator account was the last user to open User1's mailbox.

 

UPDATED:

Actually here is a better one :)

# ? = where-object
# ft -a = format-table -autosize

>> Get-MailboxStatistics | ? {$_.objectclass -eq "mailbox"} | select DisplayName,Last* | ft -a

 

DisplayName   LastLoggedOnUserAccount   LastLogonTime              LastLogoffTime
-----------        -----------------------             -------------                    --------------
Administrator HOMELAB\Administrator       30/08/2007 12:32:40    30/08/2007 12:51:40
Shay               HOMELAB\Shay                    30/08/2007 12:13:11    30/08/2007 12:43:20
User1             HOMELAB\Administrator       18/05/2007 00:33:40    18/05/2007 00:33:40
User2             HOMELAB\User2                   18/05/2007 00:32:40    18/05/2007 00:32:40
User3             HOMELAB\User3                   18/05/2007 00:31:40    18/05/2007 00:31:40