Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

Category: Exchange 2010

  • Beware the effects of enabling an Exchange 2010 archive mailbox

    The introduction of archive mailboxes is one of the major new features offered by Exchange 2010. Matters are substantially improved in Exchange 2010 SP1 as it supports the separation of a user’s primary mailbox and their archive mailbox across different databases, giving administrators the ability to consider schemes such as…

  • Exchange in the Cloud

    I wrote this text as a “web-only chapter” for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out, (also available at Amazon.co.uk and as a Kindle edition, with other e-book formats for the book are available from the O’Reilly web site). Unfortunately the chapter doesn’t seem to have appeared on the O’Reilly web site…

  • Installing an Exchange 2010 Roll-up Update

    Microsoft announced roll-up update 2 (RU2) for Exchange 2010 SP1 amongst the set of updates for different versions of Exchange that the CXP team released in December 2010. I believe that CXP means “customer experience”; in previous times this team might have been known as “ongoing support” or “maintenance engineering”.…

  • On the naming of DAGs

    Most Exchange administrators, even those who don’t have much hands-on experience with Exchange 2010, are now aware that the Database Availability Group (DAG) feature is built on Windows 2008 failover clusters. Exchange 2010 does an excellent job of hiding the complexities of Windows clusters and in normal operation you aren’t…

  • Removing mailbox export and import requests

    Exchange 2010 SP1 introduces a new cmdlet set to handle mailbox export requests to avoid the previous requirement to install Outlook on mailbox servers. With SP1 you can run the New-MailboxExportRequest cmdlet to create a request for the Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) running on a Client Access Server (CAS) to…

  • One or two NICs?

    During the development of Exchange 2010, Microsoft originally required that any mailbox server participating in a Database Availability Group (DAG) had to be equipped with at least two NICs (Network Interface Controllers). One NIC handles “MAPI” or client traffic; the other handles the replication traffic generated by Exchange to keep…

  • Kindle edition of Microsoft Exchange 2010 Inside Out available now!

    I’m delighted that my Microsoft Exchange 2010 (including SP1) Inside Out book published by Microsoft Press is now available in a Kindle edition. The book is also available at Amazon.co.uk and other country-specific sites. Other e-book formats (ePub, MOBI, PDF) for the book are available from the O’Reilly web site.…

  • Exchange 2010 SP1 Store Driver throttling

    The Store Driver is a very important Exchange component. Running on all hub transport servers, its function is to provide the mechanism to deliver inbound messages to mailbox databases. Unlike Exchange 2003 and previous versions, all messages go through a hub transport server, even if they are sent between two…

  • Tweaking the Mailbox Replication Service configuration file

    The Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) is an essential component of any Exchange 2010 deployment as it controls the movement of mailboxes between databases. MRS runs on all Exchange 2010 Client Access Servers (CAS). MRS gets involved in migrations from Exchange 2003 or 2007 to Exchange 2010 because moving mailboxes is…

  • Batching Exchange 2010 mailbox moves

    My post from November 22 about clearing mailbox move requests prompted some questions about auto suspending moves. This is new functionality introduced in Exchange 2010 as all mailbox moves performed in earlier versions occur synchronously. In other words, an administrator decides to move a selected mailbox and the chosen management…