Exchange 2007 Blog - Newest Entries first
Nov 12th
We made a change to the system so that we are blocking NDRs from Exchange to external systems. We did this to reduce the total SMTP messages and reduce the number of deferrals that pile up on the ZIX Machines. This was a new occurance for us once we moved to Exchange 2007. We were producing backscatter. This occurs when we accept a message before checking to make sure it is addressed to a “real account”. The best practice is that the system looks at the recipient field before accepting the email delivery connection. This ability used to exist on the Exchange 2003 servers but in Exchange 2007, this ability exists n the Edge transport server. We did not deploy the edge transport receiver because the Mirapoint servers support this role. We had a situation this week where we found a few loops where emails were bouncing back and forth.
Aug 26th
The actual mailbox moves have been going quite well. There has been some issues with getting client configured properly to work. There have been a few clients that we have no been able to get to work. It seems they cannot support the Secure POP or IMAP setting the Exchange server is now requiring.
Try as we can, we have not been able to get Eudora for Macintosh to connect to Exchange 2007. It appears as if this version of Eudora cannot negotiate the Secure POP protocol that Exchange now requires.
The Mac version of Eudora is version 6.2.4 and was released 10/11/2006. http://www.eudora.com/download/
As the email team, we no longer recommend Eudora as an email client. Qualcomm decided to end their association with Eudora as of Oct 11, 2006 and moved Eudora to an open source product. This means that Qualcomm no longer provides critical security updates or patches and will not offer technical assistance for Eudora.
http://www.eudora.com/faq/. We have been able to get the Windows version, 7.1.0.9 to work (released 10/11/2006 also). We recommend that users who insist on using Eudora with their Windows machines upgrade to 7.1.0.9 in order to be supported by the Help Desk. There is a beta version of Eudora 8.0. This is very new, Still an open source product and is being merged with the Thunderbird email client. The Email team is putting together screen shots for configuring Eudora 7.1.0.9.
Mac Users can be encouraged to use Mac Mail, which is built into the Mac and thus requires no downloads.
Outlook Express is does not work either (outside the UC Network) Microsoft has documented the problem and has no intentions on fixing it because they have developed Windows Mail as the replacement.
The Email team recommends that our users utilize the following clients.
Windows XP, Vista:
1. Outlook 2007
2. Outlook 2003
3. Windows Mail (Vista only)
4. Thunderbird 2.0 or later
5. Eudora 7.1.0.9
Mac OS X, 11.0, 11.5:
6. Entourage 2008 (with SP1, it’s necessary for Auto configure to work)
7. Entourage 2004
8. Mac Mail
Aug 13th.
The first two evenings of migrations have gone very smoothly. All new email accounts are being created on Exchange 2007.
We have heard that upon migration, smart phone users are being asked to resynchronize their folders.
Aug 7, 2008
So we have staff vacations out of the way. Backups are working fast, we are currently testing the Voice Mail integration. We have all of our Archived mail moved back into the inboxes.
We are on track to begin migrations Monday, Aug 11th. Today I plan to finalize the schedule and publish it here.
Fri., July 11, 2008
The 6 Exchange Mailbox servers are ready and the email team is installing Exchange on them as I type this. Five servers will be active and the 6th will be a hot failover server.
Next week we will move some mailboxes over to the new servers and begin testing. Here are the bullets on our test plan:
IMAP
POP
Active Sync
UM/Voice mail -
Outlook
Entourage
OWA
Outlook Anywhere
Confirm Connectivity from UCP & THA to UC accounts
Open Text
Backup and recovery
I welcome any other suggestions and/or volunteers to help.
We did create a small Exchange 2007 server and moved a couple of mailboxes with it. My personal mailbox is there. (Yes I am living dangerously because this server is not being backed up). But my experience has been good. I was one of the lucky ones whose Active Sync process on the smart phone did not stop working. (Maybe I have a later version of Windows Mobile?). Then on Tuesday afternoon I switched to a Blackberry device. All is well.
I did notice that my junk mail filter had a lot more items in it. A lot of the server notification emails I get were marked as spam by the smart Junk Mail filter. I had to go in and mark some of the senders as “not junk”. So be aware that that functionality might change.
The most exciting this is that I got Outlook Anywhere to work. Outlook Anywhere is a feature of Exchange 2007 that we have enabled that allows Outlook to connect to our mailboxes from a machine that is 1) Not on the UC Network or 2) Not connected via a VPN. In Techie-speak, it encapsulates the Exchange commands in a HTTPS Wrapper. HTTPS is a secure connection that web browsers use to communicate with servers. The new Exchange 2007 front ends “speak” HTTPS and will be the “interpreter” between the Outlook Client and the Exchange server. The Front Ends server is the only pathway from the internet to the Exchange mailbox servers.
Outlook Anywhere works with Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003. Outlook 2007 will actually configure itself. You will need to enter the server name ucmail.uc.edu and your mailbox name and your password and it will actually find the server and configure Outlook for you. It is slick.
I do encourage everyone Windows user to give Outlook a try. I realize in an environment like the University that there are members of the community who do not trust the Outlook software. I want to remind everyone that we are getting close to the 10th Anniversary of the disaster caused by the Melissa Virus. Microsoft has heard the demands that they do a better job of securing their products. Also, the catch rate of Spam filters has greatly reduced the outbreak of viruses.
July 2.
Outlook Web Access (OWA) /Front end server deployment.
We had submitted a Change Managemnt request to deploy the new front ends for this morning. We did test thischange in our test bed, but we ran into issues we did not see in the test bed becasue we were unable to simulate the load our production servers experience.
The first issue is the matter of bookmarked favorite shortcuts to the OWA server. When you connect to the server, simply entering ucowa.uc.edu into your browser, translates into a more specific location such as:https://ucmail.uc.edu/exchweb/bin/auth/owalogon.asp?url=https://ucmail.uc.edu/exchange&reason=0&replaceCurrent=1. This is the information that is bookmarked. When we changed over to the Exchange 2007 server, we did not tell people that they needed to reset their bookmarks until after the deployment.
The second issue we ran into was intermittent problems using OWA to access mailboxes on UCMAIL6 or UCMAIL8. It turns out that Exchange 2007 Cleint access servers (known as Front end servers is Exchange 2003) have higher resource demands on the backend/mailbox servers. Once we allocated more resources to the web application on those servers, OWA works fine.
Turns out there is also an issue with Plam Treo wireless devices. The Active Sync application on those devices requires an increase in resources.
I promise, No more changes without letting the entire Exchange user base recieving an email. We will also ask you to send us any personal information.
June 16
The Front end deployment has been postponed until June 28th. We did not have all of the necessary pieces to bring them on line. The weekend of the 21, we will be applying Windows updates to the current server.
On the good news front, we are exploring different options for backups. That has been the long pole in the tent. We need to make sure we have reliable backups during and after the migration. We are currently maintaing over 30 GB worth of backed-up data. We need to expand this capacity as part of the move to Exchange 2008.
We are looking to begin migrations the week of July 28.
June 5,2007
We have the hardware in the racks. There are currently 2 components to the hardware, two front end servers and six back end servers. There are some hardware issues that are being resolved for the backend servers.
The front end servers and ready to deploy,. We are going to test Outlook Web Access with these new front ends. They present a different website for mailboxes that are on Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007. We need to determine how they will work and create docuemtnation.
We have plans to bring them online on June 14th.
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