Outlook Anywhere runs best on 2008R2

Posted on May 1, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The Exchange team published a nice article on the different performance characteristics between Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 when running Outlook Anywhere against Exchange 2010. It seems Exchange 2010 Client Access Server can handle more than double the amount of clients when bound by CPU resources when running on Windows Server 2008 R2 instead of Windows Server 2008 SP2.

The team also expects big improvements in Exchange Server 2007 SP3, schedulded for 2nd half of 2010, because these improvements are caused by differences in the underlying Operating System, which means it will affect RPC/HTTP performance as well.

Another thing to notice is that above 3.000 users the MHz per Outlook Anywhere user for non-CAS roles, when used in combination with other server roles, are nearly flatline. Where Client Access Server shows a linear graph (steepness depending on Operating System used), Mailbox Servers show an average of 0.6 MHz per user and Hub Transport Servers around 0.25 per user. During testing, LoadGen’s OutlookAnywhere_100 profile was used, formerly known as Heavy User with 20 sends and 80 receives per day.

Be advised tests were performed with Basic Authentication; NTLM drops the number of users by only a small 2%.

You can find the article here.

MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects 1.2.1

Posted on April 29, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The MAPI and CDO libraries, still required by some applications or scripts talking to Exchange, have been updated.

The libaries are meant to unwind the application and storage layers, making applications and code using these libraries independent of the underlying Exchange or Outlook version. It also enables certain applications/scripts to run remotely (mostly apps/scripts from the pre-PowerShell era). Only problem you can encounter is when applications/scripts make use of certain functionality only to be found in certain Exchange/Outlook versions, requiring specific MAPI or CDO library versions.

These libraries may be required by certain 3rd party applications, scripts, etc. that need to interface with Exchange, e.g. Blackberry Enterprise Server, the Transporter Suite (for Notes-Exchange co-existence/interoperability), Quest Exchange tools, etc. etc.

Note that MapiCDO release follows Exchange Server 2003’s lifecycle and it is recommended you upgrade your application or port your application/script to and start leveraging new Exchange interfaces, e.g. Exchange Web Services, Outlook Object Model or the Outlook MAPI Client Library.

ExchangeMapiCDO 1.2.1 version 6.5.8165.0 can be download here.

Exchange 2010 Item Recovery

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The MS Exchange Team blog had a great informative article yesterday on discovering and recovering items in Exchange 2010 RTM as well as SP1. I suggest you check the article located here.

For people asking why it’s rather quiet over on my blog, I haven’t had time to blog/tweet a lot due to personal circumstances. But this is behind me now, so I’ll be picking up where I left off ASAP. Thanks for bearing with me.

Some numbers

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

After a post today from the Certified Master team I wondered, how does the number of Exchange MCA’s compare to the number of MCITP’s, MCTS’es etc. Finding any current information on the latter proves to be difficult. They used to be on this page of the Certification site, but now this redirects to the main portal. I don’t know why Microsoft doesn’t want to disclose this information since then.

I did find cached copies, someone who kept track of numbers until Augustus 2008 and a version on the Aussie pages of April 2nd, 2008; If someone has information about the blanks, contact me so I can update this information.

Certification	Jan 2008	Mar 2008	Aug 2008	Jan 2010
MCA Messaging 2003		61	65	67
MCA Messaging 2007				17
MCM Exchange 2003				146
MCM Exchange 2007				131
MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator		1468	2748
MCTS Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: Configuration		4729	9069
MCSE Messaging 2003	9116	9719	10632
MCSA Messaging 2003	57972	64162	78041

Knowledgebase articles RSS feeds

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Like most people I still use RSS feeds to keep track of news and updates from various sources. But did you know you can also keep track of Microsoft’s knowledgebase articles per product using RSS feeds?

Paul Robichaux mentioned on his blog that Microsoft recently added Exchange Server 2010 knowledgebase articles as an RSS feed. We were happy to see other recently introduced products as well, e.g. ForeFront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server and Windows Server 2008 R2. For a complete list of the knowledgebase articles RSS feeds check here.

Here are some RSS feeds on knowledgebase articles that might be of interest to you: