Office 365: A pretty good first year

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Tony Redmond

On June 28 it will be a year since the formal launch of Office 365 in New York. I guess that we’ve learned a lot since. When they brief the press, Microsoft likes to discuss the 50-odd enhancements that they’ve apparently made since launch and the fact that Office 365 is now available in 88 languages and 32 markets around the world. All of this is good. My take on the year is as follows.

First, there’s no doubt that Microsoft has learned an awful lot about how to run a reliable cloud service that millions of “regular” users depend on in a very public sense. By this I mean that when Office 365 experiences a failure, people tend to become very agitated because they lose access to email (in particular). The same kind of reaction is experienced when Gmail has a glitch.  I think calmer reactions happen when cloud services that are more IT-centric (think of Azure or Amazon Web Services) run into difficulties as the IT professionals that build on top of these services understand that computers and networks have problems from time to time. Thankfully, Microsoft hasn’t experienced any major Office 365 outage since the initial problems in August and September 2011. I still think that these problems were a result of initial growing pains as the system settled down. Hopefully the trend will continue and Office 365 will remain reliable for the foreseeable future.

Second, although Microsoft has been successful in deploying application updates into their Office 365 datacenters without disrupting users, I think that they’ll run into some tougher challenges when the time comes to move users to the Office 2013 wave of products, especially Exchange 2013. This is because all indications are that the user interface for applications will change to align with the “Metro” style. The experience of the past is that UI updates are painful for users. Think about when Office 2010 introduced the ribbon… Now think of how millions of Outlook Web App (OWA) users who connect to Office 365 mailboxes might feel when their well-known UI morphs to take on a new persona. Large organizations will prepare for the changeover by telling their users what to expect and having the help desk work up processes to help people understand how to use the new interfaces. Smaller organizations might be surprised and even a tad confused when the changeover happens. We’ll see. The fact remains that Office 365 is heading into a period of its first big platform change so interesting times await.

On the other hand, I think that the changeover to Office 2013 will probably bring some better browser-based administration tools to relieve the current mismatch of interfaces and capabilities across Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync. Time will tell.

Third, I think there’s still some confusion in the market about Office 365 plans. Microsoft has done their best to help customers understand the available plans and to navigate through the different offerings, but I can’t help still feeling that there are too many options in the Office 365 catalog and that some rationalization and simplification might help. In passing, it’s worth noting that the prices for some Office 365 plans fell during the last year by between 13% and 20%, which is always a good thing. On the other hand, Microsoft failed to reduce the price of its entry-level Plan P, which was regrettable.

Fourth, it’s been good (and appropriate) to see the level of investment made by Microsoft in interoperability and other capabilities to link the on-premises and cloud platforms. The biggest splash during the year was the introduction of the Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) in Exchange 2010 SP2 as this automates a lot of manual twiddling that administrators had to do previously to make fundamental sharing like free/busy lookups function. Other tools have also been updated or introduced like the Remote Connectivity Analyzer (RCA) and the Office Configuration Analyzer (OCAT). All signs that the cloud ecosystem is maturing and building out in a reasonable manner.

Last, although it can still take a long time (or even too long) for a company to move from on-premises to Office 365 (largely because of a continuing lack of cross-platform migration and interoperability expertise), I think the fact that Office 365 now supports tens of millions of mailboxes indicates that Microsoft is having success in moving companies that run either older Exchange platforms (Exchange 2003 and previous) or competing email systems to Office 365. Things are a lot slower with major customers (those who support more than 10,000 seats) simply because these environments tend to be more convoluted and so require a lot more planning to make the transition.

All in all, despite the hiccups last August and September, it’s been a pretty good first year for Office 365.

– Tony

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Bad week for Microsoft partners

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Tony Redmond

This week has been some week for Microsoft partners. First, all of the OEMs who have faithfully followed Microsoft’s weaving way through operating systems towards the Promised Land of Windows 8 had their collective noses rubbed into the dirt when Steve Ballmer introduced Microsoft Surface. Dreams of a happy 2012 holiday season selling new PCs and tablets running Windows 8 evaporated for HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Sony, and all the other companies who create hardware for the Microsoft O/S.  The effect can be seen in the fall in stock prices as analysts rushed to slash predictions for revenues and shipments.

Next up we had the announcement that Windows Phone 8 won’t support current phones that run Windows Phone 7.5. The bone that these phones will receive an interim update (Windows Phone 7.8) in the near future wasn’t enough to make those who had invested in brand-new Windows Phones very happy. But the biggest effect has been on Nokia, which has seen analysts at Nomura cut revenue predictions from €10.9 billion to €6.0 billion for 2013. Windows Phone unit sales for Nokia will decline to 34 million, 41% lower than previously predicted.  The reason: current phones can’t be upgraded, leading to an immediate loss in market attractiveness. The rumors that Microsoft is developing its own Windows Phone hardware heaps further pain on top of Nokia, a proud company that must surely be ruing its decision to go “all-in” on Windows Phone last year.

There hasn’t been much in terms of formal responses or adjusted plans from partners, probably because it will take time to digest the news and figure out just what Microsoft’s massive shift in hardware strategy means. Acer’s founder, Stan Shih, is reported that Microsoft isn’t really serious about tablets and might just be using Surface as a way to force the OEMs to up their game to be more competitive with Apple. This could be true. After all, so far Microsoft has only announced their intention to sell Surface devices through Microsoft Store and online. Nice as the Microsoft Stores are (the one in Palo Alto, CA is eerily Apple-like and very well laid-out), they hardly have worldwide reach. The closest one to me is probably some 4,000 miles away. And Microsoft isn’t exactly set up yet to sell and support tons of devices online. That might be changing though as rolling out an online sales capability is much easier than creating a network of physical stores and Microsoft could well be doing this behind the scenes in secret, much as they kept the details of Surface very close to their chest until they were ready to talk about it. Then again, there’s no real detail yet of when Surface devices will be available apart from “soon after Windows 8”. That doesn’t sound like Microsoft will make the major holiday selling season later this year.

In the meantime, the OEMs will be reviewing every piece of intelligence they can gather about the Surface devices to figure out what they can’t and cannot replicate or improve on in their own Windows 8 tablets. This article has a nice list of some of the innovative features that could be considered, if not protected by patent. Hopefully the exercise will cause the OEMs to break out of the rut that PC laptops (in particular) have fallen into when compared to what’s happening elsewhere. I like the HP Envy Spectre, but would prefer to be able to buy it with a larger screen and bigger SSD, which might make it a little more competitive against the likes of the new Apple MacBook Pro. Apart from the Spectre, I haven’t seen a Windows laptop that convinced me to spend any money in the last few years.

The OEMs are somewhat to blame for the sad state of innovation in the Windows laptop space. A little less attention to seeking big chunks of cash for installing unwanted software on new PCs and more focus on creating great hardware would be nice. Then again, Microsoft shares a lot of the blame too after the Vista debacle. Windows 7 is very good though and Windows 8 shows promise, if you can get your head around some of the UI design decisions that Microsoft has made to accommodate tablets.

When working at HP, I was often told (mostly by colleagues who preferred Linux or UNIX) that I partnered with the devil when engaged with Microsoft. After this week, some of their bruised and battered partners might just conclude that my ex-colleagues were right. I guess time will tell.

– Tony

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Microsoft scores own goal with their sad attitude to Windows Phone upgrades

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Tony Redmond

Microsoft passed a really positive message to the people, like me, who invested in Windows Phone 7.5 when they announced that Windows Phone 8 won’t run on older devices on June 20 at the Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco. In particular, those who recently bought a Nokia Lumia 900 after it was released in various markets around the world must really feel happy about their decision to go with Microsoft rather than Android or iPhone.

Sure, Microsoft is throwing a bone to owners of Windows Phone 7.5 devices when they say that they’ll provide a half-way-house release called Windows Phone 7.8 to enable exciting features like “three sizes of tiles”. I just can’t wait. In fact, I’m quivering with excitement at the prospect of another tile size to play with. It should compensate for the other deficiencies in the operating system…

I think this is a brain-dead decision that looks pretty feeble when compared against Apple’s record of making sure that new releases of their O/S run on older versions of iPhones. For example, the iPhone 3GS that I used before making the now-lamentable decision to try Windows Phone 7.5, upgraded smoothly from iOS 3 to iOS5 over the time I owned the phone. Microsoft’s protestations that the platforms that support Windows Phone 8 will incorporate new hardware such as multiple cores and removable Micro SD cards fall on stony ground. After all, we’re dealing with software here and surely a few IF… THEN… ELSE conditions could be incorporated into the code to support older devices?

In addition, I think that this announcement will stall the market for Windows 7.5 phones because consumers are unlikely to want to buy a phone that is now officially obsolete with no future. Of course, manufacturers and carriers can dump phones onto the market to shift them at low prices. This will likely get rid of inventory but won’t help the profitability of Nokia in particular, so it’s likely to suffer even higher losses until it can get Windows 8 phones out the door and Microsoft releases the O/S. Not really a good situation at all for the folks in Finland.

This ham-fisted attitude to keeping customers happy coupled with the doubts that Nokia will survive long enough to release phones that support Windows Phone 8 are almost enough to make me revert to the iPhone. Maybe I’ll go the whole hog and buy a new MacBook Pro to go alongside the iPhone as the new Retina display looks quite stunning. Buying decisions are often influenced by small things… like not being able to upgrade your phone.

All in all, their stance on Windows Phone 8 is just a sad and arrogant indication of the way that Microsoft thinks about their mobile customers.

– Tony

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Roscoff: a good ferry port option even for those driving to the Riviera

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Tony Redmond

Traditionally I have used the Normandy ports when taking a ferry from Ireland to France. The original destination in the 1970s, first served from Rosslare by the rickety old St. Patrick, was Le Harve. Later Irish Ferries, the successor to Irish Continental Lines, shifted their focus to Cherbourg as the voyage is about two hours shorter, which I assume allows for a more predictable turnaround between each trip. Celtic Link Ferries also run ships on the Rosslare-Cherbourg route. I haven’t used their services but evidence from family members indicates that its boat is more basic than the Oscar Wilde, the current ship used by Irish Ferries. However, as in many travel decisions, I suspect that price and availability will be the criteria used to choose between the ferries.

In any case, before this year I had never taken a ferry to Roscoff. Irish Ferries operate the route on a less frequent basis than they travel to Cherbourg and don’t schedule trips year-round. However, during the operating period (March-September), the Roscoff route has its advantages. Those who don’t look forward to sea journeys will like the fact that the transit is shorter (17 hours versus 21 to Cherbourg). This doesn’t seem to affect ticket prices as Irish Ferries seems to charge much the same fare. However, there are other advantages, some of which might surprise.

First, Roscoff is a much better (shorter) route to take if your final destination is Brittany or the west coast of France (Nantes, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Perpignan, etc.) or Spain. Initially, the road network from Roscoff is not as good as coming out of Cherbourg, but it swiftly improves and it’s easy to make good time. On the other hand, Cherbourg is the best route for those heading to other destinations in Normandy, Paris, the east of France, or countries such as Germany, Italy, and Belgium.

Apart from being shorter, the route south from Roscoff involves fewer kilometres on autoroutes. For example, driving from Nice to Cherbourg (via Tours and Le Mans) incurs toll charges of around EUR95. Driving from Nice to Roscoff via Toulouse and Bordeaux costs around EUR72, depending on the exact route. Overall, the length of the journey is approximately the same at 1,350km or thereabouts. My normal approach is to cover this in two days, stopping in La Rochelle en route.

Forts guarding the entrance of the old port of La Rochelle

Third, traffic on the western corridor is usually less frenetic than you’ll encounter when driving up the A7 to Lyon and on to Paris; my preferred option on this route is to fork left towards St. Etienne and Clermont-Ferrand and up towards Cherbourg via Le Mans. This routing bypasses Paris, a city that has undoubted charms but awful traffic.

The pier at Roscoff looking back towards the town

Last, I found Roscoff to be a nicer place to spend a couple of hours waiting for the ferry, unless of course it’s being battered by a storm. Cherbourg is OK too (certainly better than Le Harve), but I prefer the small-town nature of Roscoff, even if some of its allure is lost by the many discount wine and beer emporia that crowd the approach roads. Quite a few people take maximum advantage of these outlets if the sagging rear ends of cars and pressure on suspensions are dependable indications. Better choice is often available in supermarkets in large towns as the larger E. LeClerc and Auchon hypermarkets offer surprisingly good ranges of wine while Carrefour can offer amazing value . Roscoff supports a small selection of bars and restaurants where you can get a meal before going to check-in for the ferry. This is a good idea as the food will be cheaper and better than anything served on the Oscar Wilde (breakfast served in the Berneval restaurant is the exception to this rule; it’s good value and usually tastes good too!).

Apart from its harbour, Roscoff’s major feature is a rather impressive pier spanning low tidal rocks to reach the ferries that commute to the île de Batz, roughly a 15-minute ride away.  You can get a great view of the town and the nearby coast by walking out on the pier.

The Roscoff route is a good option for those who want to travel from Ireland to France. Don’t discount it if you’re heading to the Riviera. You might find that you enjoy the drive more than having to navigate around the Parisian peripherique and the other challenges that you might otherwise face elsewhere. And remember, if you’re taking your car to France, be sure to stock up with some of the mandatory breathalysers that are now required by French law. These are available in supermarkets and other shops.

– Tony

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Decision time: into the cloud or stay on-premises

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Tony Redmond

HP and Penton Media recently asked me to write a paper outlining the critical issues that surround the decision that many companies are currently considering whether they should continue to run Exchange on-premises, move into the cloud with Office 365, or deploy a hybrid solution.

I think the decision is easy for some companies but much harder for others. After all, if you’re running a couple of old Exchange 2003 servers to provide an email service for a small company, it’s probably a much better and easier path forward to move to Office 365 than to work through all the complexities of migrating to Exchange 2010. On the other hand, if you work for a large multinational that has to meet specific regulatory or audit requirements that cannot be satisfied by a cloud platform, then staying with on-premises servers is the pragmatic decision.

In any case, if you’d like to read the document, you can download it from WindowsITPro.com.

– Tony

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The ethics of cut and paste blogging

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Tony Redmond

Blogging is good fun. After all, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t do it – right? But there are some blogging habits that are unacceptable. Abusing someone for instance would seem to be in pretty poor taste. So, at least in my mind, is the way that some populate their blog with content that is cut and pasted verbatim from other sites.

I guess copying happens in every walk of life. And in some circumstances to be copied is intended to be a compliment to the originator, which is fine as long as the person who copies material does not claim credit for the work or otherwise removes any potential gain that the originator might receive for their efforts. Last October, I wrote about the parasites who steal material from books and sell copies on the Internet or use the material from books such as Exchange 2010 Inside Out to populate their web sites in the hope that the information convinces potential customers that the parasites are really good people who know their stuff. When I delved into what happens to pirate book content, I learned from the lawyers who support Microsoft Press that this happens all the time and that any book worth its salt is available free of charge from multiple sources on the Internet. Such is life, I guess.

Lately it seems like there’s been a rash of people who have created their blogs based on material that they’ve extracted from other sites. Paul Cunningham runs ExchangeServerPro.com from Australia and puts in enormous effort to write about different aspects of Exchange. Paul takes the time to understand the technology, figure out its strengths and weaknesses, and then communicate the information to people who read his site. He doesn’t ask for anything from his readership as the site is financed through his hard word and (I imagine) some contributions from advertisers.

I follow Paul on Twitter and noticed some pain in his comments about people (“content scrapers”) who use his material. Three new sites popped up this week featuring content taken from ExchangeServerPro.com – the average is one new site weekly, so this is an ongoing problem.

Now, I have no issue whatsoever with someone who wants to create an interesting blog that features Exchange, another technology, or any other topic on which they care to focus. But it seems that it’s pretty slimy behaviour to simply take content from another person’s site and paste it into your own, complete with all of the accompanying screen shots. There’s no effort made to disguise the content – nothing new of value or additional insight is added. The only effort expended is cut and paste and the blogger then sits back to wait for plaudits to arrive for the amazingly interesting and useful content that they’ve made available to the technical community. I guess they feel good when they see how many page views “their” content generates. After all, search engines don’t distinguish between original and copied content when they deliver results to users.

Good examples of what I mean can be found on this blog (seems like a German blogger) and this one (Portuguese – at least it has “FONTE: exchangeserverpro.com” at the bottom of the post). Some non-English language blogs who “reuse” content protest that they do so in an attempt to make their local technical community aware of the material. It’s a reasonable thing to try and do, but it would be better accomplished by providing some overall editorial commentary about the article in the local language together with a hyperlink to the original article. Or, with the original author’s agreement, to translate the content into the local language. Neither of the examples that I cite attempted to take these approaches, possibly because it’s too much effort when a simple cut and paste gets faster results.

Protesting to bloggers that copy is usually unproductive as they hide behind the anonymity of the network and don’t care that they are behaving unethically. In fact, most don’t see the problem. If you care to track the reuse of your blog, you can create Google Alerts based on some unique phrase that appears in your articles so that Google will email you with details if the phrase pops up on another site.

Creating a Google Alert

Of course, receiving an alert won’t help if you get stressed about these things, but at least you’ll know when it’s happening. And once you know, you can take whatever action seems appropriate to you… Like posting suitably strongly worded comments on the blog or sending the blog’s owner a thoughtfully worded email that doesn’t begin with “Listen you dirtbag slime-sucking fraud…”

– Tony

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May 2012 articles posted on WindowsITPro.com

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Tony Redmond

Another month goes by, another set of articles have been posted to my “Exchange Unwashed” blog on WindowsITPro.com. Here are the set for May 2012:

The cloud is great, but what about Plan B? (May 31) discusses the need for companies who move applications to cloud services to have a back-out plan just in case things don’t work quite as well as expected. In particular, if you move your Exchange mailboxes to Office 365 and discover that the cloud is so much hot air, can you get your data back reasonably quickly to resume an on-premises service?

Twenty years of MIME (May 29) celebrates the 20th anniversary of the first use of MIME to encode email attachments and reflects on how essential MIME has become to the way that we exchange information today. I was chuffed to receive a tweet from Nathaniel Borenstein, who featured in the article and is still working on related technology as the Chief Scientist of Mimecast.

Thoughts on why one company decided not to move to Google Apps (May 24) looks at a report about why a company called New England Biolabs decided to stay with Microsoft Office applications after it conducted a review of Google Apps. Although you could get wrapped up in the Google vs. Microsoft technology battle, I thought that the more interesting aspects were those relating to productivity and how humans interact with applications.

Office 365 mailbox statistics (May 22) points to some useful PowerShell scripts that are available to help Office 365 tenant administrators understand their deployment a tad better. In particular, I point to a script that extracts statistics about mailboxes (quota used, etc.) and exports it to a CSV file. I discovered something interesting from the resulting data… you might too!

MEC early discount closing (May 17) – the topic is outdated now because you can’t get an early-bird discount to attend the Microsoft Exchange Conference in Orlando next September (24-26) any more. I was charmed to find that Microsoft is using my photo as part of their publicity for the event. However, I can’t guarantee anything from the simple fact that I’ll be attending.

Managing Outlook synchronization logs (May 15) discusses how Outlook can accumulate a great number of synchronization logs in its Sync Issues folder and what you can (or rather, can’t) do to get rid of the blessed things. Some relief has been subsequently gained through one of the fixes included in Exchange 2010 SP2 RU3, but only one of the underlying root causes have been addressed and this is still a problem that you might have to live with.

The idiot’s (me) guide to writing ESE applications  (May 10) arises from a session given by Microsoft’s Brett Shirley at the TEC conference in San Diego at the start of May. Brett is one of the developers who work on the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE), the heart of the Exchange Information Store. Whereas most of the code that Brett insisted on describing at great length went well over my head, I learned enough to find something interesting to write about.

EMS tip of the day: love it or hate it? (May 9). EMS is, of course, the Exchange Management Shell. Each time you start EMS, it provides an interesting or totally useless tip of the day, depending on your perspective and state of knowledge covering Exchange and its PowerShell cmdlets. Given that Exchange 2013 is on the horizon, a window of opportunity has opened up to allow people to lobby for changes in this area – you can find out how by reading this article.

ECP Performance revealed and some thoughts on future Exchange management (May 8). The future of Exchange administrative tools is likely to revolve around the browser and be based somewhat on what we see in Exchange 2010’s Exchange Control Panel (ECP), which also provides the primary management interface for Exchange Online in Office 365. This article discusses how you can reveal a performance-tracing component for ECP and speculates how the Microsoft developers will build on ECP for future versions of Exchange.

Microsoft updates the MCSE program for the cloud, but what about the other guys? (May 3) talks about the focus attributed to “the cloud” in Microsoft’s recent overhaul of its MCSE certification program and concludes that although it’s certainly valuable to spread knowledge about cloud implementation techniques and principles, on-premises deployments aren’t going away any time soon. Microsoft needs to keep this salient fact in mind as it develops the exams and other supporting material for the MCSE program.

Will “Death to Outlook” follow “Death to Word”? (May 1). An article in Slate.com that discusses Word’s fit for purpose some twenty years after its introduction brought me to wonder whether Outlook is also showing signs of an application whose best days have gone by. See whether you agree.

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Windows 8 upgrade smooth, but Skype’s a CPU hog

Posted on June 2, 2012 by Tony Redmond

Microsoft took the IT world a little by surprise when it made the Windows 8 Release Preview code available last Thursday (May 30). Ever prepared to take a run at the future, I promptly downloaded the code and upgraded my venerable HP EliteBook 8530w (8GB memory, 256GB SSD) from the previous Windows 8 Consumer Preview. I used the 64-bit version.

I was a little surprised to discover that the upgrade would preserve no settings as the only upgrade that maintains applications and user preferences is from Windows 7. Oh well, it’s always a joy to reinstall every application on a PC after first going through the process of realizing just how many applications and other pieces of random software you’ve accumulated over time.

The good news is that the upgrade process worked smoothly and produced a much more refined version of Windows than the Consumer Preview. For example, sometimes Windows Explorer didn’t refresh information after a file was renamed or deleted, a strange bug as you’d imagine that Explorer has being processing file renames and deletions since Windows 95. In any case, it all works as expected now.

I encountered no problems installing a range of applications from Office 2010 to VMware workstation either. In fact, the only issue that I’ve run into since the upgrade has been the tendency of Skype to take 50% of the available CPU, even after I’d downloaded and installed the latest and greatest code. This seems to be a common problem where Skype insists on keeping a CPU core all to itself. As my PC is a dual-core system, Skype takes 50% – maybe I need a new quad-core machine!

Skype also suffered problems with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview where the application would freeze after making video calls and cause the O/S to become unstable and require a reboot. Skype version 5.9.0.115 appeared to function better on the Consumer Preview but now has the CPU issue.

It’s strange that Microsoft hasn’t been able to coordinate matters internally so that high-profile applications like Skype function smoothly. At least, you’d assume that some sort of coordination takes place now that Microsoft owns Skype, even if, as reported by the New York Times, Skype is being run as a kind of independent fiefdom within Microsoft.  The same report quoted Steve Ballmer as saying “We always want Skype to be first and best on Windows…” so clearly there’s some work to do (or better communications) to allow Skype to shine on Windows 8.

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Update 6 June: Apparently Microsoft is well aware of the problems with Skype 5.9 and its insatiable appetite for CPU under Windows 8. A fix is coming, but in the interim, you can install an older version of Skype (download 5.1.0.112 here). This version works well with Windows 8 and takes 3% CPU…

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Exploring Exchange 2010 SP2 RU3

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Tony Redmond

On May 29, 2012, the Exchange Customer Experience Team (CXP) released Roll-up Update 3 (RU3) for Exchange 2010 SP2. RU3 comes some six weeks after its RU2 predecessor (April 16) and as always among the 42 individual fixes, this update contains an eclectic mixture of ho-hum and important fixes. My personal pick from this batch is KB2572029 because it fixes part of an irritating (but reasonably unimportant) synchronization issue that I recently discussed on WindowsITPro.com. Note that this fix doesn’t address all of the issues with the generation and retention of synchronization logs, but it is a start.

For the record, SP2 RU3 does not require any Active Directory schema update. Like every RU, once you install SP2 RU3 on your servers, you’ll be running the latest and greatest version of Exchange 2010, including having the ability to take advantage of some new cross-site capabilities that were originally scheduled to be in Exchange 2010 SP1 but were removed very late in the development cycle (I actually had included a description of the functionality in Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out and had to remove the text at the last moment). If you run Exchange in a configuration that supports the transition of databases from one site to another you should consider an early roll-out of SP2 RU3 as the new capability makes the transition process much smoother for Outlook users.

I imagine that some companies will struggle to deploy a new RU every six weeks or so. The normal public health warning applies in that you should always test an RU by installing it within an environment that duplicates your production systems just in case Microsoft’s extensive suite of automated tests has allowed a small bug to creep in that only affects your servers. It would be a pity to have to own up to management that you had deployed software without adequate testing so don’t depend on Microsoft to do the job for you.

Here’s my assessment of the bugs that are fixed in RU3 sorted in my own arbitrary fashion. Some of the individual KBs were unavailable as I write this post and might well be available when you read it (Microsoft follows its own processes to make content available online and one group might post information referencing another piece of data that hasn’t yet been cleared for publication). Please feel free to disagree with my description of the bug and attribute your own importance to each. After all, one man’s terribly interesting and worthwhile bug fix is someone else’s totally worthless update. It all depends on whether you’ve been affected by the bug in question.

Have fun!

– Tony

Exchange 2010 SP2 RU3 bug fixes

KB Number and Title Comments
System Administration Fixes
2510607  “Cannot open the free/busy information” error message when you try to view folder permissions in Outlook Fixes a bug with the Set-MailboxFolderPermission cmdlet that doesn’t set permissions on a folder correctly.
2514700  Extra.exe does not trace a single user whose legacyExchangeDN attribute contains one or more special characters in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Extra.exe is otherwise known as the Microsoft Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant. In some scenarios, it fails to trace a specific user correctly because it assumes that any special characters in the legacyExchangeDN attribute are separators and so ends up with what seem to be references to multiple users, which then leads to traces for all users rather than being able to filter on just one.
2589233  Meeting requests bypass the requirement for delegate approval and instead book resource mailboxes automatically in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Fixes a bug where Exchange’s Calendar Meeting attendant process fails to observe meeting policies that are created for rooms. In other words, someone can book a room when they shouldn’t be allowed.
2633043  “There were no writeable domain controllers found in Active Directory site” error message when you run the ExBPA tool in an Exchange Server 2010 organization ExBPA uses an incorrect query to locate writeable domain controllers and so complains bitterly that it can’t get what it wants. It’s a happy puppy now.
2668900  Event ID 2915 is logged when you apply a fallback policy to a service account in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Fixes a problem with throttling policies that surfaces particularly with BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Given the ever-reducing number of BB users, this might not be quite such an issue soon.
2673542  MRM retention policy in the Junk E-Mail folder does not work when you manually move email messages in an Exchange Server 2010 environment If you discover some spam and move those items to the Junk Mail, the Managed Folder Assistant won’t apply the retention policy to those items and they will probably linger on until removed manually – or you apply SP2 RU3.
2674445  You cannot change the access permissions of a Calendar folder in an Exchange Server 2010 environment The KB description seems to place the blame for this bug on third-party applications that play with access permissions on calendar folders. If you do this, and then move the mailbox containing the updated calendars, bad things happen.
2677872  You cannot use a distribution group in the hierarchical address book when you create the group in Exchange Server 2003 Basically any group created using Exchange 2003 can’t feature in a HAB because the version number is incorrect.
2682047  You cannot access a mailbox for several hours after you disconnect and then reconnect the mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 SP2 environment The DSAccess cache is not updated with details of the newly reconnected mailbox so users aren’t able to access it with Outlook or OWA. The cache is now updated when mailboxes are reconnected.
2698927  Resource mailbox that has AutoAccept configured does not process a meeting request that contains custom code or script in Exchange Server 2010 The Resource Booking Assistant doesn’t care very much for calendar meeting requests that contain custom code or scripts so it basically ignores these items.
2698976  Managed Folder Assistant does not process a mailbox that has external contacts in another tenant organization in an Exchange Server 2010 environment The problem only happens when Exchange is deployed in hosting mode. This won’t happen in the future as Microsoft has decommitted from the feature, so we don’t really have to worry too much here.
2700544  Multiple recovery items are added to a subfolder of the Recoverable Items folder in an Exchange Server 2010 environment The Store creates unnecessary (and unwanted) versions of items in the Recoverable Items folder and can therefore exceed the Recoverable Items cache.
2705555  The Set-Mailbox cmdlet takes a long time to complete configuration in an Exchange Server 2010 environment It takes far too long for configuration changes to occur when the database holding the mailboxes is offline. The root cause is a time out that occurs for each mailbox.
2706523  You cannot create a mailbox or mail-enable a mailbox for a disabled user account in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Exchange is being just a tad careful by preventing administrators creating mailboxes for disabled accounts.
Public folder fixes
2571342  The Folder contacts list is empty when a user views the properties of a mail-enabled public folder in an Exchange Server 2010 environment The Microsoft Exchange Address Book service doesn’t use the PF Contacts attribute to present contact information when users view properties of mail-enabled public folders. It does now.
2647396  You cannot disable a public folder by using the “Disable-MailPublicFolder” cmdlet in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Fixes a bug that occurs when public folders are mail-enabled in one domain and an attempt is then made to disable them in another domain. The Store doesn’t quite get it right when it attempts to convince Active Directory that this is the right thing to do. Everything is now aligned.
2682895  Error message when a role assignee runs the Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics cmdlet in an Exchange Server 2010 environment In certain situations, RBAC interprets the scope for the Mailbox Import Export role incorrectly and prevents users running the Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics cmdlet.
Outlook-related fixes
2572029  Synchronization of an organizational forms library fails when you use Outlook in Cached mode in an Exchange Server 2010 environment This is quite an important fix because it stops synchronization logs accumulating in Outlook’s Sync Issues folder and addresses a problem that has been around for quite a while. See this blog post for more information.
2670099  You cannot open calendar folders that are shared by hidden users in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Fixes a problem where Exchange didn’t filter hidden users correctly in address lists which meant that Outlook couldn’t open the calendar folders of hidden users, even if the right folder permissions etc. were in place.
2674185  MAPI_E_CALL_FAILED errors occur when a MAPI application that uses the MAPI function in Outlook 2007 MAPI or in Outlook 2010 tries to access an Exchange Server 2010 server Outlook 2007 or 2010 clients running in online mode can force a MAPI failure when they connect to Exchange. It’s a bug. What more can one say?
2684583  You cannot delete an empty folder in a .pst file by using Outlook in an Exchange Server 2010 environment KB not available online. However, the title makes the fix seem pretty straightforward.
2699577  GAL-related client-only message rule is not applied in Outlook after you apply RU1 for Exchange Server 2010 SP2 in an Exchange Server 2010 environment KB not available online. Looks as if Exchange 2010 SP2 RU1 might have introduced a bug that prevented Outlook applying a rule that depends on the GAL (for example, messages sent to a distribution group).
2699582  Error message when you play a voice mail by using Outlook 2007 in an Exchange Server 2010 environment KB not available online.
Transport fixes
2586828  The EdgeTransport.exe process consumes 100 percent of CPU resources on an Exchange Server 2010 Edge Transport server Looks as if this fixes a bug where the transport system process can basically take over the CPU because of threads clashing when attempting to read configuration data.
2648263  You cannot open routing log files on Exchange Server 2010 Hub Transport servers in a mixed Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2010 environment Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2003 don’t quite see eye-to-eye when the time comes for Exchange 2010 to track message routing logs back across a bridgehead server.
Client Access Server (CAS) fixes
2667120  MSExchangeAutodiscoverAppPool application pool crashes on an Exchange Server 2010 Client Access server when you try to view the free/busy information about a user in a trusted domain Exchange 2010 CAS servers don’t like accepted domains with “*”. This causes them problems (headaches) when clients attempt to fetch free/busy information. A headache pill has now been consumed.
2671128  RPC Client Access Cross-Site connectivity issues occur in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Some problems occur for Outlook clients as they reconnect after mailboxes are moved between datacenters or when a cross-datacenter failure event occurs. In both situations, Outlook doesn’t know where to locate a mailbox because it should really be listening more attentively to AutoDiscover. It is now. This is the fix that should have appeared in Exchange 2010 SP1 but was removed at the last minute.
2673591  Crash occurs in the Autodiscover application pool in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Autodiscover crashes after an authentication failure, perhaps because the problem handler wasn’t quite there. An improved version is now available.
2681250  “550 5.6.0” NDR when a journal report is sent to an external contact in an Exchange Server 2010 environment Fixes a problem when journaling messages are forwarded by Outlook to an external contact.
Exchange Web Services (EWS) fixes
2689810  A meeting request that you send from an EWS application is in plain text format instead of HTML format when an attendee opens the request by using Outlook in online mode EWS sends in HTML but Exchange disagrees and displays plain text when Outlook opens the meeting request (in online mode).
Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) fixes
2695011  Junk Email settings do not work as expected after you migrate or move a mailbox to an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Mailbox server MRS doesn’t carry over Junk Mail settings when mailboxes are moved from database to database.
2695836  You cannot move a mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 environment that has a message size limit configured MRS uses Exchange’s maximum message size value in various places (such as importing items from PST). In this case, you’re moving mailboxes with BadItem limit set to zero and MRS encounters a message that is over the maximum size, so it bails. Not a good thing to do, but it’s better now.
2698960  You cannot move some users’ mailboxes from one Exchange Server 2010 mailbox database to another For some reason, some mailboxes do not have a replication identifier attribute. When MRS meets these mailboxes it cannot move them. Hence the problem and hence the fix.
Outlook Web App (OWA) fixes
2695022  The E-mail Signature text box is not editable in Outlook Web App when you use Google Chrome in an Exchange Server 2010 environment For some reason, OWA disables its rich text editor box for the email signature text box when Chrome is used as the browser.
2696642  An additional line of space is added in each paragraph in an email message when you click the Printable View icon in Outlook Web App in an Exchange Server 2010 environment OWA simply doesn’t do a good job of formatting text when it presents a “printable view” of messages. What’s surprising is that the bug is only just being fixed now. Maybe people don’t bother using the view printable view option much.
2705570  An error occurs when a user whose mailbox is hidden from the Exchange address list tries to open the Scheduling Assistant tab by using the light version of Outlook Web App The LDAP lookups generated by the light version of OWA don’t quite work the way that they should…
2705647  A user cannot log on to a mailbox that is full by using Outlook Web App in an Exchange Server 2010 environment KB not available online. The wording of the title makes you believe that OWA blocks log-ons to mailboxes whose quotas have been exceeded.
2705682  Post-reform spelling rules are not used in the Portuguese (Portugal) dictionary in Outlook Web App in an Exchange Server 2010 environment The joys of internationalization. OWA doesn’t comply with the 2012 requirements of the Portuguese government about how to spell words.
Miscellaneous fixes
2682408  AddOrganizerToSubject parameter does not take effect when a recurring meeting conflicts with another meeting in an Exchange Server 2010 environment KB is not available online. My interpretation of the problem is that Exchange doesn’t correctly update the conflict notices sent out when recurring meetings create clashes.
2699023  Event ID 9646 is logged on the Exchange Server 2010 mailbox server when you access a mailbox that has more than 250 folders by using an IMAP4 client KB not available online. Looks like some IMAP4 users have created lots of folders in their mailboxes and have encountered some problems when they try and access the mailboxes.
2705425  UMWorkerProcess.exe consumes large amounts of memory when you try to listen to voice messages by using Outlook Voice Access in an Exchange Server 2010 environment A logic error causes the process that processes voice mail messages to access voicemail incorrectly and consume too much memory.
2708880  You cannot set the “Country/region” attribute of a user mailbox to “Curaçao,” “Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba,” or “Sint Maarten (Dutch part)” by using the Exchange Management Console on an Exchange Server 2010 server More internationalization woes.
Posted in Exchange, Exchange 2010 | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Flying the B-17

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Tony Redmond


Taking any recommendation from Paul Robichaux is always a risky business. Accepting that you should strap yourself into a World War II bomber that was built in 1945 and has been flying continuously seemed like one of his more outlandish suggestions, but it was absolutely wonderful and a fantastic thing for anyone who has any sort of interest in history to do.

The plane is a B-17G called the Nine-O-Nine. It’s operated by the Collings Foundation, a non-profit organization that maintains a collection of World War II planes and other equipment and takes them around the U.S. to allow people to see and experience the aircraft in use then. This B-17G is one of ten still flying in the U.S. but it was never actually in combat. Rather, it represents the thousands of aircraft that did fly over Germany and other places at that time. Interestingly, the aircraft was also exposed to three nuclear explosions in the 1950s and was involved in heavy crash in 1987, neither facts that I knew before I flew!

ME-262

In any case, the Collings Foundation had brought their collection to Moffett Airfield in Mountain View, CA. President Obama had flown into Moffett on Air Force One the previous day and it’s also the operating base for Google’s 767 as well as hosting some unique buildings, so it’s a great place to visit. The collection of aircraft included a two-seat variant of the P-51 fighter, an ME-262 (a replica of the world’s first jet fighter), and a B-24J Liberator bomber. Various other bits of military hardware were also present for people to examine. The foundation hopes that it will be able to offer ME-262 flights next year (they need FAA certification) – that would be quite an experience.

B-24 taxis in after its flight

Flights are available on either the B-17 or B-24. The Collings Foundation sells seats to fund the maintenance of the aircraft, an approach that seems an excellent way of allowing people to experience some of what it was like to fly in these bombers while balancing the books at the same time. At $425 for a half-hour, these flights will seem expensive to some. However, I think of it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a military history nut (like me) and it seemed like a real bargain. Apparently because the foundation is a non-profit organization, U.S. taxpayers can claim the cost back on their tax returns. I doubt that the Irish revenue commissioners will be so accommodating.

B-17 engine – all four worked flawlessly throughout and never missed a beat

I’ve seen B-17s up close before and had some conception of what the airplane is like. However, nothing quite prepares you for the experience of actually getting into a very bare-bones interior painted in tasteful military olive green throughout and strapping yourself to the floor before takeoff. All of the complaints about bad and uncomfortable airline seats disappear from your mind (even those in the old United B757-200s that continue to fly when their competition has moved so far in advance that it’s unreal) as you cope with old-style seatbelts that you’re pretty sure will be absolutely useless in the case of a crash. Oh well, that’s why you sign the indemnity form before getting into the plane.

Rear cabin of the B-17 looking forward towards the bomb bay.

Once you’re strapped in the fun begins as the B-17 starts its engines and makes its way out to the active runway. The noise and vibration are very obvious at this point but get much louder and intense as soon as the throttles are fully open for take-off. Once you’re off the ground the crew gives a signal to the riders to indicate that you can move freely around the interior. There’s some basic things to be aware of such as not pulling on the control wires that are strung along the ceiling as this might interfere with the connection between the pilots and control surfaces at the rear of the plane. Also, if something is dropped you shouldn’t go after the object as it might end up in a place (like the bomb bay) where panels are prone to open (a major design feature of any good bomb bay). The B-17 flies with a mid-plane observation hatch open at the radio operator position, so there’s a good draft at this point that can whip off glasses or even cameras, so you have to pay attention when you’re looking out the hatch. Apart from that, the only control is a flow system to make sure that everyone gets a chance to crawl forward to experience the view from the front bombardier station.

Looking back from a side 50-cal gun position to Moffett Airfield

The view from the B-17 as it climbed over Moffett was amazing with the runways, hangers, and other aircraft clearly visible. The enjoyment continued as the B-17 flew towards Palo Alto and the foothills behind Stanford. I took the chance to stand at the observation hatch and enjoyed having the airflow rearrange my carefully groomed hair.

Looking back to the tail of the B-17 as it passes over the foothills close to Stanford

Even though it rearranged my hair, the airflow wasn’t at all unpleasant, so I can’t quite account for the somewhat pained look on my face. I was really enjoying myself at this point!

Yes, Tony is enjoying himself, even if he isn’t showing it…

It was now my turn to move forward. This involves walking across a very narrow passageway in the bomb bay. There are some dummy bombs slung in the left-hand bay to give an impression of what a loaded bomber was like. However, it left me with the thought that the B-17 is really a fragile contraption (in today’s terms) that didn’t really transport a lot of bombs. Of course, this is looking at things through the prism of today and the fact is that the B-17 was a highly effective bomber in its time. The passageway leads to an upper turret and then the pilots’ position.

The narrow passageway across the B-17 bomb bay leading to the pilots’ position

Once through the bomb-bay, you drop down to a crawl space to move forward into the nose of the B-17 to reach the bombardier’s position. This is where the aiming mechanism is located as well as the controls to allow the bombardier to drop the bombs when the desired aiming point was reached. Naturally, it provides the best view in the place.

B-17 Bombardier position

On flights like this the perspex nose of the B-17 provides a great view of the ground as it passes by. I can’t imagine what it would have been like when operating at 20,000+ feet, trying to locate a predetermined aiming point in combat conditions. The B-17 typically flew daytime operations and so all of the chaos of combat such as flak, enemy aircraft, and the other B-17s in action would have been clearly obvious from this position.

Looking out through the perspex nose of the B-17. The bombsight is clearly obvious

External view of the B-17’s perspex nose

We returned to Moffett after some 26 minutes of flight and landed softly before taxiing for a few minutes back to the tarmac outside the control tower. The total time from getting into the B-17 to getting back out lasted about 40 minutes and was great fun from start to finish.

Control tower at Moffett airfield

More interest was created by the presence of a Marines F/A-18D Hornet squadron (VMFAT-101) that was using Moffett for training purposes. The Marine pilots showed their stuff off by flying over the base and then landing before parking their five aircraft close to the control tower.

VMFAT-101 F/A-18 Hornet taxiing at Moffett Airfield

The B-24 had taken off for its flight after the B-17 so we were then treated to the rather unusual sight of a World War II bomber coming in to land and passing the five parked F/A-18 Hornets.

B-24 on final approach to Moffett with F/A-18s parked on tarmac

I can’t think of another experience that I’ve had in the recent past that has provided so much interest in such a short time as my B-17 ride. If you get a chance to sign up for a flight on either the B-17 or B-24, I’m pretty sure that you’ll enjoy the experience. Up to ten can ride these planes at one time – six is the minimum passenger load to ensure that the costs are fully covered. Be sure to bring along your camera. The people who rode with me used anything from an iPhone to several variants of digital cameras to a video camera. I elected to bring my Nikon D700 SLR. As I knew that space would be tight inside, I coupled it with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom lens.
This is a great piece of glass that takes amazingly clear pictures in confined spaces and I was very happy with my selection.

B-17 Nine-o-Nine

For most of the external shots, I used a Nikon 24-120mm f/4G ED lens. It would have been nice to have a longer lens for some of the shots (like the B-24 landing), but the 24-120 is truly a great “use anywhere” lens for Nikon cameras.

Now back to technology to earn a living – how boring!

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Posted in Travel, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments