Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Exchange 2010 SP1: Protecting data with a BSOD

    In conversation with an administrator of one of the world’s largest Exchange 2010 deployments, we talked about new Store behaviour in Exchange 2010 SP1 that can lead to Exchange forcing an abrupt termination of the server (a blue screen of death with a CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION). According to MSDN, a CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION error…

  • Exchange 2010 Maestro training in San Diego, London, and Greenwich, CT

    **** Registration now open **** See details below **** Paul Robichaux and I will be running three more Exchange 2010 Maestro seminars in San Diego, London (UK), and Greenwich, CT in May, June, and October. The site that we use for enrollment isn’t quite ready yet, but you can register to receive…

  • Lies, vile lies, and statistics

    I was in the middle of a perfectly pleasant briefing on some high availability solutions last week when a slide was presented that asserted that “32% of recovery operations fail”. The statistic apparently came from research done by a market research company that I won’t name here. I’m sure that…

  • Exchange 2010 Public Folders: Part 1

    This content comes from a chapter removed from my book Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out, also available at Amazon.co.uk (including a Kindle edition). For space reasons to keep the book to a reasonable size, the chapter on public folders was removed. This probably made sense as the book should really…

  • Super deal: Exchange 2010 Best Practices and Inside Out bundle

    Amazon.com has released the Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 Kit: Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out & Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices books priced at $56.69. This seems like a great price for two books covering Exchange 2010 in more than reasonable depth! I don’t see similar pricing available in…

  • Using Outlook 2003 with Exchange 2010

    I like Outlook 2003 a lot, mostly because it was the client that liberated users from the tyranny of extended synchronization sessions, often over a spotty dial-up connection, just to collect some new messages. In the bad old days pre-Outlook 2003, receiving a graphic-intense presentation from our friends in marketing…

  • Predictions for 2011: The Exchange Market

    On Tuesday, I had an interesting call with Matt Gervais of TechTarget to discuss my views on what will happen for the Exchange market in 2011. Matt is busy talking to some other folks and will share his best assessment of the distilled wisdom of the oracles in an article…

  • First appearance of an Exchange 2010 Messaging Appliance

    On January 19, 2011 HP and Microsoft announced the HP E5000 Messaging System for Microsoft Exchange. The name is a mouthful but the important point is the creation of a solution designed to make Exchange 2010 easier to deploy. This product is part of a set of four appliances that…

  • Where’s the 32-bit version of Exchange 2010?

    One question that Exchange administrators often ask me is how they can get a 32-bit version of Exchange 2010. Microsoft first moved Exchange to a 64-bit platform in Exchange 2007 but they also issued a 32-bit version to be used for testing purposes. The 32-bit version was also used for…

  • Does a suspended mailbox move request expire?

    A discussion on this point recently took place via the Exchange MVP mailing list. It doesn’t contain anything secret and I think it’s worth documenting for the benefit of others, so here goes… As you might know from this post or other sources, you can ask the Mailbox Replication Service…