Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Upgrading Office 365 to Wave 15: My support experience to date

    One of the great promises held out by cloud-based services is that you do not have to worry about software upgrades and other common maintenance operations as the service operators will take care of these mundane operations. In the eyes of the marketing staff, all you have to do is…

  • Exchange 2013 Inside Out appears on Amazon

    The wheels of the publishing market turn in mysterious ways. At least, their ways are mysterious to those who don’t publish books, including the authors who actually write the text. Earlier this month I let you know that O’Reilly will soon release draft chapters of my book Microsoft Exchange Server…

  • Citer – good service for a change from a car hire company

    Car hire companies, especially those who operate at airports, are often criticized for poor service and some pretty tacky habits, such as their desire to charge renters for a full tank of fuel when the rental commences even when the renter knows that they will only drive a few hundred…

  • Exchange 2013 Inside Out: Mailbox and High Availability makes an appearance

    The nice people at O’Reilly Media have posted details of book one of the two-part Exchange 2013 Inside Out set. My book covers the mailbox server and high availability while Paul Robichaux is deep in the process of writing all about the client access server, clients, and other wonderful topics…

  • Exchange 2013 CU1 appears

    Exchange 2013 CU1 has now appeared. My review of the new release is available on WindowsITPro.com, where I have also posted some notes on the approach needed to update mailbox servers that are members of a Database Availability Group (DAG). Happy Reading! Tony

  • Exchange 2013: Stuck messages in OWA’s Drafts folder and DNS

    One of the common things that OWA users notice about Exchange 2013 is that outgoing messages sometimes appear to get “stuck” in the Drafts folder. Not only do messages seem to linger in Drafts, no trace of the outbound messages ever shows up in the Outbox. Or so it seems,…

  • Microsoft CVP on the current state of Windows Phone and its competitors

    Terry Myerson, who previously ran the Exchange development group, is now the Microsoft Corporate Vice-President (CVP) for Windows Phone. He has always had strong opinions and it came as no surprise that Terry would voice some trenchant views when he was interviewed at the recent Mobile World Congress (the video stuttered badly when…

  • Exchange 2010 SP2 RU6 “can’t delete messages” KB released

    Microsoft has released KB2822208 in response to the problems that users reported where they were unable to delete messages when working with Outlook in online mode. After a great deal of hard word to investigate the possible root causes, Microsoft has determined that the issues lie with attachments generated by third party…

  • Exchange 2013: Using crimson events to track transaction log truncation within a DAG

    Prior to Exchange 2007, transaction log truncation (removal) used to be a pretty simple affair. A successful good backup would truncate the log set or, if you used circular logging, Exchange used a small set of logs to capture transactions and would reuse the files once the transactions in the…

  • SQL, OFS, Exchange file system, WinFS, and other murky dealings

    Like many people who are interested in Microsoft Exchange, I have followed the ESE versus SQL debate with some interest for as long as it’s been going on, or just about the entire lifetime of the product. ESE stands for Extensible Storage Engine (also known as JET-Blue, the Joint Engine Technology) and is…