Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Zombie health mailboxes and EAS probes

    When I discussed how some corrupt health mailboxes came about following my flattening of an Exchange 2013 server, I called them “zombie mailboxes”, which might have seemed unkind to some. In fact, it’s an accurate reporting of the fact that the Exchange Health Manager service will faithfully recreate two health…

  • Announcing “Office 365 for Exchange Professionals”

    The world of technical book publishing is going through a transformation. More information is available than ever before online; software and hardware products evolve faster; people demand up to date knowledge that is also insightful and in-depth. These factors create enormous difficulties for the way that technical books were written,…

  • Exchange Unwashed Digest – February 2015

    February might be the shortest month but that’s no reason not to have lots to discuss on my “Exchange Unwashed” blog on WindowsITPro.com. Here’s what happened during the month – a lot about the new Outlooks apps and Delve, but some other stuff too, including a new estimate for the…

  • Corrupt health mailboxes from a flattened Exchange server

    I flattened an Exchange 2013 server the other day. I don’t mean that I took the physical computer out into the parking lot and drove a large vehicle over it to reduce the server to so many random bits of metal. Instead, I did what Exchange administrators have done ever…

  • Synchronizing the Exchange 2013 public folder hierarchy across public folder mailboxes

    For space reasons, this text is another bit that was cut out of my Exchange 2013 Inside Out: Mailbox and High Availability book. FWIW, here it is… As you’re probably well aware, public folders are scrubbed and polished to become bright, new, and modern in Exchange 2013. Instead of the legacy public…

  • Why Clutter generates so many FAIs in user Inboxes

    Playing around with the Get-MailboxFolderStatistics cmdlet the other day (as you do), I noticed that the number of items reported for the Inbox folder (8,443) didn’t match the number shown by Outlook (8,009). Of course, Outlook Web App has the good sense not to display the total number of items…

  • Exchange Online and Native Data Protection – No Backups Baby!

    Cloud-based email services such as Exchange Online bring a great deal of value to the table. A service delivered for a fixed known cost that is constantly refreshed with new features (“evergreen software”) and relieves administrators of the need to perform all the mundane tasks required for day-to-day server management.…

  • Exchange Unwashed Digest – January 2015

    January 2015 proved to be quite a varied month in my Exchange Unwashed blog on WindowsITPro.com.  Everything from technology transfer from the cloud, new mobile clients, some issues I had with Delve, the new Office for Windows, and Azure witness servers, all washed down with a good helping of opinion and…

  • Why Exchange 2013 doesn’t need the Microsoft Office Filter Pack

    For space reasons, this text is another bit that was cut out of my Exchange 2013 Inside Out: Mailbox and High Availability book. FWIW, here it is… If you’ve ever installed Exchange 2010, you’re probably aware of the need to install the Microsoft Office Filter Pack 2.0 (the latest version is SP2).…

  • A year with a Fitbit Flex

    I have been using a Fitbit Flex for a year. Well, I should say that I have used two Fitbit Flex in the last year, mostly because I lost one while collecting a hire car soon after starting to use this handy little device to track my activity levels. I lost…