Quest product updates for Exchange 2010

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Only four days after BinaryTree announced their Notes migration product update, Quest announced and released an update of their Quest Notes Migrator for Exchange (NME) product today. NME version 4.2, now with Exchange 2010 support, supports Notes to Exchange/Exchange Online migrations. NME is part of Quest’s suite of Lotus/Notes migration products, which also contains products to support Notes to Sharepoint and SameTime to OCS migrations.

You can find the press release here, more information on Notes Migrator for Exchange can be found here.

Exchange 2010 DAG port

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The Technet site contains a nice reference to all ports used by Exchange 2010 and its various roles, as well as an overview of the firewall rules created by Exchange 2010’s setup. Very handy when you need to provide IP and port information to the network people.

One port which stands out from the rest is the port used for DAG log shipping and seeding, which is 64327 by default. Looking back at Exchange 2007 this is good; the port is static and DAGs use regular TCP, where CCR/SCR in Exchange 2007 uses 445 for log shipping (over SMB) and a dynamic port for seeding. And if it’s two things some network people hate it’s SMB and dynamic ports. On the other hand, 64327 in the dynamic range defined by IANA; according to IANA dynamic ports cannot be registered (claimed).

Fortunately, the port can be changed when required. To change the port for a DAG use the Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup cmdlet with the ReplicationPort parameter like this, where <n> can be any number between 1 and 65535:

Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Identity DAGID -ReplicationPort <n>.

Note that Exchange will not adjust the Windows Firewall rules accordingly, so you need to create a firewall exception on each DAG member to make replication work. Even better, you should do this before changing the DAG port to prevent interrupting the replication longer than necessary.

Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant updated

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Today Microsoft updated their Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant.It got updated after the initial release in mid-November where you could only select upgrading from Exchange 2003. Now all scenarios work, so you can select if you’re upgrading from Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2003/2007 or performing a greenfield Exchange 2010 installation.

After selecting the scenario you will be asked a few questions, such as “Are you running a disjounted namespace?” or “Are you planning to to use public folders in Exchange 2010?” (nooooo). When finished you’ll be presented a checklist.

While the tool is available online-only, you can download the checklist for offline use by clicking Download Checklist (top right). This will download the checklist in PDF format. It’s a good reference for planning and can be a useful tool to keep track of where you are in the process.

HP Exchange 2010 Sizing Tool

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

HP has released their sizing tool for Exchange 2010. This successor to the Exchange 2007 Sizing tool does recommendations for deployment and sizing of servers and storage and includes a (HP) bill of materials. The tool supports multi-site deployments, Database Availability Groups (DAG), DAS or or SAN-based storage and high availability and client options.

As with the 2007 version it uses a combination of technical and business requirements and projects best practices for high available Exchange configurations (when applicable). The tool can update itself and the product information it uses.

You can download the HP Sizer for Exchange Server 2010 here.

Exchange 2010 Update Rollup 1

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Michel de Rooij

Today, about one month after Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 RTM, Microsoft released Update Rollup 1. The following fixes are included in this RU:

977439 Exchange Server 2010 users cannot open certain attachments when they access their mailboxes by using Outlook Web App
977551 Meeting requests that are sent to a room mailbox are not processed in Exchange Server 2010
977552 Exchange RPC Client Access service crashes in the Handler.dll that is located on an Exchange 2010 Client Access service server
977553 Exchange RPC Client Access service crashes in Parser.dll on the Exchange Server 2010 CAS server
977554 The subject or body of a message that is hosted in an Exchange Server 2010 mailbox is not set as expected
977555 The message body is inaccessible when the property conversion from PR_BODY_HTML to PR_BODY fails
977556 The body text of an e-mail message is invisible after you create exceptions for a recurring appointment or for a recurring meeting by using a CDO application together with Exchange Server 2010
977557 An E_FAIL error occurs when you create an exception to a meeting request by using a CDO application for a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 mailbox
977558 A folder name is not changed when you try to move and then rename the folder in an Exchange Server 2010 mailbox by using the CopyFolder method of the IMAPIFolder interface
977559 The location of a meeting or an appointment is not updated on an Exchange Server 2010 mailbox
977560 Update fails when you use a CDO application to update a recurrence task on Exchange Server 2010
977561 VSS backup process stops responding when you try to perform a Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) backup for Exchange Server 2010 databases