Author Archives: Michel de Rooij

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About Michel de Rooij

Michel de Rooij, with over 25 years of mixed consulting and automation experience with Exchange and related technologies, is a consultant for Rapid Circle. He assists organizations in their journey to and using Microsoft 365, primarily focusing on Exchange and associated technologies and automating processes using PowerShell or Graph. Michel's authorship of several Exchange books and role in the Office 365 for IT Pros author team are a testament to his knowledge. Besides writing for Practical365.com, he maintains a blog on eightwone.com with supporting scripts on GitHub. Michel has been a Microsoft MVP since 2013.

iOS 4.0.1 fixes ActiveSync issues

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Apple published an update for iOS4 – iOS 4.0.1 – which should fix the synchronization issues between iPhone users using iOS4 and Exchange Server.

The issue was discovered after Apple released iOS 4.0, after which many people reported issues syncing their updated iPhone 4, iPhone 3G, 3GS or iPod Touch devices with Exchange. Initially Apple released a workaround in the form of a configuration profile which increased timeout values to 240 seconds, instead of 30. Note that iOS 4.0.1 also sets the timeout to 240 seconds as the new default.

You can view the support article (ts3398) here.

Exchange 2010 Design & Architecture at Microsoft

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Microsoft released a document describing their in-house upgrade from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. Interesting stuff because of Microsoft’s geographical orientation, the volumes involved and Microsoft usually dogfooding their own products.

You can retrieve the document here.

On a side note, I took 70-662 today (still had to take that one). I passed, but what a dissapointment; are these exams getting easier or is that a consequence of getting more involved with the products related.

Microsoft Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Rollup 1

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Microsoft released Hotfix Rollup 1 for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (KB2181692).

Here’s the list of fixes included in this rollup:

  1. There is a handle leak in FSCController when SQM is uploading data in Microsoft Forefront Protection for Exchange
  2. A Forefront Protection for Exchange scan engine update fails and generates Application Log errors
  3. Forefront Protection for Exchange replacing legitimate attachments with text files and quarantining legitimate mail
  4. Proxy credentials and UNC path settings for Forefront Protection for Exchange do not replicate to passive node during cluster failover
  5. Forefront Protection for Exchange is blocking all incoming mail
  6. A system state backup fails while attempting to perform anything other than a full backup on a server running Forefront Protection for Exchange
  7. Forefront Protection for Exchange filters email with attached .MSG files that contain a subject line ending with a file extension
  8. The Forefront Protection for Exchange client crashes when adding an IP address, or range, to either the IP Allow/Block List
  9. Forefront Protection for Exchange sends legitimate email to Exchange’s UNDELIVERABLE folder
  10. Store slows down and RPC request queue length rises when Forefront Protection for Exchange is running on Windows 2003 64-bit server
  11. FSCUtility fails if run on a non clustered server that the cluster service is installed but disabled on
  12. FPE detecting valid .xls or.csv file as Exceedingly nested
  13. Forefront Protection for Exchange does not send External Sender notifications
  14. The FSCManualScanner.exe process in Forefront Protection for Exchange terminates unexpectedly
  15. The FSECCRService.exe process in Forefront Protection for Exchange may stop responding generating a Dr. Watson crash that references Bucket ID 107626953990176: Customer experiences OOXML performance issues when scanning
  16. Customer experiences OOXML performance issues when scanning
  17. Dr. Watson reports a null reference exception in Microsoft.FSS.AntiSpam.dll (from Forefront Protection for Exchange); Bucket ID [838554094]
  18. Spam Reports may take an excessive amount of time to retrieve in Forefront Protection for Exchange
  19. A scan job in Forefront Protection for Exchange will not restart after hitting the MaxDisableWait time timeout threshold
  20. Forefront Protection for Exchange allows mail to go through unscanned if the MaxDisbaledWait time threshold is exceeded
  21. Forefront Protection for Exchange generates more Realtime Scan Timeout notifications than expected
  22. Sluggish or stopped mail flow resulting from the FSCTransportScanner process, within Forefront Protection for Exchange, crashing while scanning files with embedded object links.
  23. Forefront Protection for Exchange does not have a Skip/Detect action option for the MaxContainerScanTime action menu

For more details on the fixes consult the related knowledge base article (2181692). You can download the Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server Hotfix Rollup 1 here.

Forefront Threat Management Gateway SP1

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Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010.

Here’s the list of changes included in this service pack :

New Reports
• The new User Activity report displays the sites and site categories accessed by any user.
• All Forefront TMG reports have a new look and feel.

Enhancements to URL Filtering
• You can now allow users to override the access restriction on sites blocked by URL filtering. This allows for a more flexible web access policy, in that users can decide for themselves whether to access a blocked site. This is especially useful for websites that have been incorrectly categorized.
• You can now override the categorization of a URL on the enterprise level; the override is then effective for each enterprise-joined array.
• Denial notification pages can now be customized for your organization’s needs.

Enhanced Branch Office Support
• Collocation of Forefront TMG and a domain controller on the same server, which can help reduce the total cost of ownership at branch offices.
• When installed on a computer running Windows Server 2008 R2, SP1 simplifies the deployment of BranchCache at the branch office, using Forefront TMG as the Hosted Cache server.

Support for publishing SharePoint 2010
• Forefront TMG SP1 supports secure publishing of SharePoint 2010.

You can download Forefront TMG 2010 SP1 here.

Forefront TMG 2010 Capacity Planning Tool

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Version 1.0 of the ForeFront Threat Management Gateway2010 Capacity Planning Tool has been released.

This tool is to help you with planning and sizing (or verifying) your TMG 2010 configuration, and gives a calculation on the hardware configuration, number of concurrent users and bandwidth requirements using hardware, concurrent users or bandwith as starting point.

For its calculations the tool uses parameters like number of concurrent users and features you want to enable on the TMG. Regarding features you can make your own selection or use presets, e.g. “Mail Protection” for using TMG as an anti-spam/anti-malware e-mail gateway. The calculator has support for load-balancing and virtualization.

You can download the Forefront TMG 2010 capacity planning tool here.