Ali's Knowledge Base

Exchange 2003 can detect link state changes, notify other Exchange servers about the changes, and advise them to use other routes. A minor state change is when a link is detected as either available or unavailable. The notification actually sends the entire state table. A major state change is an administrator-made manual routing change, such as adding a new connector or changing an existing connector’s attributes.

Sometimes, minor state change notifications are undesirable, such as when the notification sending of the entire state table could flood a network. This could happen in a large Exchange environment. It could also happen in a combined Exchange Server 2007and Exchange 2003 environment with multiple routing group connectors between routing groups and different Exchange 2003 bridgeheads in different routing groups.

To disable minor link state changes, use the following commands on each Exchange 2003 server:

1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe).
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesRESvcParameters.
3. From the Edit menu, select New – DWORD value.
4. Enter as a name SuppressStateChanges and press Enter.
5. Double click the new value and set the value to 1, then click OK.
6. Close the registry editor and restart the SMTP, Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine, and the Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks services.

Click Start, select Run, type in: services.msc
then press enter
Now look for the Automatic Updates Service, right click it and choose to stop

Click Start, select Run, type in: %windir%SoftwareDistribution
then press enter
Open the Datastore folder and delete its contents.

Click Start, select Run, type in: type services.msc
then press enter
Now look again for the Automatic Update Service and choose to start

Try running the Updates again.

Virtual Server has commonly created a shared disk over the emulated SCSI controller to use for clustered storage. However, Server 2008 clustering doesn’t support parallel SCSI.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Server 2008 clustering supports the majority node set model, which means a cluster doesn’t need shared storage. Server 2008 can use node-voting with three nodes or more, or a file-share witness instead of the quorum disk for two-node clusters.

If you want shared storage, the easiest option is probably iSCSI because the iSCSI initiator is built into both Server 2008 and Windows Vista. For the iSCSI target, you may have access to an iSCSI SAN/device, a software solution such as Windows Storage Server, or an add-on iSCSI

t’s common to install the SMTP service on servers that require limited mail-sending capabilities–for example, on a Microsoft SharePoint server. I recently had a problem in which the box got a new IP address, and at that point the services that used the SMTP service could no longer send email. The problem was that the server had a relay restriction list in place, and the list didn’t have the new IP address listed.

To resolve the problem, you need to update the relay list. Start the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Internet Information Services Manager snap-in by accessing Start, Programs, Administrative Tools, Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Right-click the SMTP virtual server and select Properties, then select the Access tab. Click the Relay button. Be sure to add the IP address of the server trying to connect or a subnet containing the servers trying to send via the server by clicking the Add button. When you’re finished, click OK on all dialog boxes.

The transaction log size in Exchange 2007 is now 1MB instead of 5MB, which was the transaction log size for Exchange 2003. The reason for the size reduction is related to the new log shipping clustering technologies in Exchange 2007. The smaller the log file means a smaller amount of data loss because you can’t ship a transaction log until it’s closed and it needs 5MB of data written before you can close. With Exchange 2007, you only need 1MB of data written. In addition to the reduction of size of the transaction logs the naming scheme has been changed from E<2 digit storage group identifer><5 hexidecimal digits> to E<2 digit storage group identifer><8 hexidecimal digits> which means even though there will be five times the number of transaction logs the number of transaction logs you can have in total is over two thousand times the number of transaction logs you could previously have under Exchange 2003 (you don’t go all the way up to ffffffff, rather 7fffffec).

If you read the Microsoft article “XADM: How Circular Logging Affects the Use of Transaction Logs” (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=147524) carefully, you’ll see that circular logging is working just fine. When it’s enabled, Exchange can reuse log files instead of creating new ones. Under typical circumstances, Exchange will create no more than five logs when you enable circular logging; however, Exchange will create additional log files, if needed, during surge conditions of high activity–such as when you run LoadSim to create a bunch of sessions and messages. After Exchange creates those log files, Exchange won’t delete them until you purge the files by doing a full backup with an Exchange-aware backup utility. Exchange will reuse the first log files, but they’ll stay in place across reboots until you purge them.

The main difference is that using Tools, Options and setting permissions on the Delegates tab also grants the delegate Send On Behalf Of permission on the mailbox in Active Directory (AD). The user can then send messages as if he or she were the mailbox owner, and the From line on such messages will read From <sender> on behalf of <mailbox owner>. If you want to allow only folder access, without letting the user send on behalf of the mailbox owner, right-click the folder, choose Properties, and set access on the Permissions tab. You also need to use the Properties dialog box when you want to allow access to any folders other than Inbox, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Journal, or Notes.

No. You can’t introduce Exchange 2007 into an existing Exchange organization while an Exchange 5.5 server still exists in the organization. If you run Exchange 5.5, you must first upgrade to Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003, effectively Exchange native mode. After you move the mailboxes to an Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 organization, you can move the mailboxes to Exchange 2007 via the Exchange 2007 GUI if Exchange 2007 and the Exchange 2003/2000 installation are in the same organization or by using the Power Shell Move-Mailbox command for cross-organization migrations.

You can copy Exchange server 2003′s ESEUTIL to another machine, along with the database to run. First, create a temporary folder on the computer that you want to run the defrag on. Then, copy the eseutil.exe, ese.dll, jcb.dll, exosal.dll, and exchmem.dll files from the Exchange 2003 computer’s ExchsrvrBin folder to the temporary folder, along with the database and streaming files. At a command prompt, change the directory to the temporary directory folder you created and copied the files to. Finally, run the Eseutil command from this folder against any databases that you copied from the Exchange 2003 computer.

Exchange 2003 SP2 raises the maximum database size for the standard edition from 16GB to 75GB. By default, the size is increased to 18GB when you install the service pack, however you can raise this limit by modifying the registry, as follows:

1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe) on the Exchange server.
2. Navigate to the HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesMSExchangeISSAVDALDC01Private- subkey.
3. From the Edit menu, select New – DWORD value.
4. Enter a name of Database Size Limit in GB and press enter.
5. Double-click the new value and set it to a value between 1 and 75. Click OK.
6. Close the registry editor.

You can also set a warning level that writes a warning to the event log when the database size reaches a certain percent of remaining space. To do so, you navigate to the same registry subkey as the earlier instructions show, create a DWORD value named Database Size Buffer in Percentage, and set it to a value between 1 and 100 (the default value is 10).

This check of the database size occurs once a day at 5:00 A.M. You can change this time by creating a DWORD value named Database Size Check Start Time in Hours From Midnight in the same registry key as above and setting it to the number of hours past midnight at which to perform the check (e.g., a setting of 12 means the check would occur at noon). You need to dismount and mount the Store for the changes to take effect.