Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Enterprise Vault, stubbing, and competition

    Last March I wrote a post about the early history of the product now sold as Symantec Enterprise Vault. I’m now delighted to see that Nigel Dutt has published a comprehensive account of the history of the Vault. The account is compelling reading as it wanders through corporate politics, a…

  • Outlook 2013, swelling OSTs, and retention policies

    Speaking about OST sizes and the change made in Outlook 2013 to drive down the amount of data cached by users, another thought came into my mind (I know, a very unusual occurrence). Just how big can an OST grow to given that we’re in an era of 25GB-plus mailboxes?…

  • Exchange Unwashed Digest August 2012

    Another month has gone by so here’s the digest listing of posts to my “Exchange Unwashed” blog on WindowsITPro.com. After a year or so of posting to WindowsITPro, I’ve settled into a routine of publication every Tuesday and Thursday. Given the imminent arrival of Exchange 2013, I’m trying to split…

  • Overcoming common issues when installing Exchange 2013 Preview

    Every new version of Exchange brings its own tweaks and peculiarities for the installation process. Exchange 2013 Preview is no different. For one thing, its progress is as slow as a wet week in a caravan on the west coast of Ireland. Of course, this is based on perception and…

  • What to do about Outlook’s synchronization logs?

    Those of you who read my “other” blog (at WindowsITPro.com) are probably aware of my views on Outlook’s continuing failure to be able to suppress or otherwise deal with the generous number of synchronization logs that the client generates. Last May, I wrote about the fact that it is impossible…

  • Priorities for MEC 2012 attendees

    With the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) just a month away, thoughts turn to the hot topics that will be discussed there. Of course, Exchange 2013 is the top order of business and Microsoft will dedicate the majority of their sessions to discussing the new server. Although I will pay attention…

  • Analyzing Exchange 2010 SP2 RU4

    Another six weeks has gone by and it’s time for another set of Exchange roll-ups. The splendidly-named Customer Experience Team released RU8 for Exchange 2007 SP3 and RU4 for Exchange 2010 SP2 on August 14. The big story around Exchange 2010 SP2 RU4 is the expansion of retention policies to…

  • How curious! Outlook 2003 can’t read Exchange 2010 PSTs

    Microsoft has released KB2742408 to report that Outlook 2003 clients can’t read PSTs generated by Exchange 2010’s New-MailboxExportRequest cmdlet. This is kind of curious, if understandable. New-MailboxExportRequest is processed by the Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) running on a CAS server. It creates a PST in the newer Unicode format (rather than the older…

  • Lots of new cmdlets appear in Exchange 2013

    Some people do an excellent job of tracking the details of new software releases. I’m not one of them, but I am very happy to learn of the results of their work. Thus we find that MVP Tom Arbuthnot (a Lync MVP, not Exchange) took the time to analyze the…

  • MEC 2012 Agenda appears (eventually)

    Behind the scenes I have been critical of the folks organizing MEC as I consider them to have been too slow to publish the agenda listing speakers and session content for a conference that’s coming up very soon (49 days, according to the counter on the MEC web site). The problem…