Thursday, June 28th, 2001
If you have ever had to support, or use an Exchange server that uses RAS to send and retrieve email, and is used as a workstation by users (I can see people cringing, but I see this in a lot of small sites and small businesses) you will know the frustration of loosing your connection every time you log on as a different user.
To make matters worse, half the time the problem with these types of sites, is that there actual connection problems.
When you log on as a different user in NT4.0, it terminates the connection. Users of VPN’s will have come across this problem as well.
To resolve this problem, it’s a simple registry entry.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon, add the value entry KeepRasConnections: REG_SZ: 1, and reboot the server
This value is not entered by default. Now that’s resolved, you can concentrate on more important things, such as how to convince management to buy more PC’s so the users don’t use the server as a workstation
Tags: Proxy Server 2.0, SBS 4.5
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Thursday, June 28th, 2001
1. Launch the full product setup (with sbsetup from Disc 1 – or simply let autrun.inf start after inserting Disc 1 and select the SBS setup link)
2. Enter in valid Product Key/Outlook Product Key
3. Windows 2000 component will run — this will “look” like it’s doing a full upgrade, i.e. you’ll see all the OS setup screens again -but- it’s just removing the timebomb and the “evaluation copy” branding
4. You’ll see the component selection screen and SBS, Exchange and ISA will be defaulted to either install or upgrade, again they need to run to remove their timebombs and the “evaluation copy” branding. If you have SQL installed, you will need to manually set it to install to
remove the timebomb (this is release noted)
5. Setup completes, asks for a reboot and your machine is full product.
Tags: Installation, SBS 2000, SBS 2000 SP1
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001
To block all of napster’s sites set the firewall to disallow the following IP blocks:
64.124.41.0 — 255
208.184.216.0 – 255
Out of the box napster uses TCP ports 6699, 7777, 8875, 8888
Tags: Proxy Server 2.0, SBS 4.5
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001
Stopping the SA through the control panel or net stop most certainly does not stop services based on a timeout. It clearly brings up an interface that says “To stop this, I must stop these other things”, then if you answer Yes, proceeds to do so. In fact the control panel does better than the net stop commands in some ways – it is aware of the nested dependencies. The reason you have to run three net stop commands is that net stop can only track one level of dependencies. So, if I have all the services running, I have a dependency tree similar to:
System Attendant
Directory
Information Store
IMS
Event Service
KMS
INS
MTA
Net stop will figure out all the levels, but the first time you run it it will stop the IMS, Event Service, KMS, INS plus one level up – the IS. But then it quits. The second time you run “net stop msexchangesa” the MTA and Directory will get stopped. The third time, the SA gets stopped. There’s apparently a bug in the recursion that stops it too soon.
Tags: Exchange Server, SBS 4.5
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001
A copy of the incoming and outgoing SMTP messages are only maintained if the highest logging is turned on for the IMS. The files are stored in the imcdata\in\archive and imcdata\out\archive, respectively. (The UNCs are from memory.) Once the logging is turned off, the saving stops. They can be deleted from the archive subdirectory without harm because they have already been delivered to the destination.
Tags: Exchange Server, SBS 4.5
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001
Start Exchange Administrator and go to Mailbox Resources under your private information store (server level) in the Exchange Admin program. Make the right hand pane active and then do a File | Save Window Contents. This will allow you to dump info on user’s mailboxes including last logon/logoff time. There are a number of useful fields in the default view or you can add columns/fields doing a view|columns also in Exchange Admin.
Once in CSV format you can massage/sort data using Excel. Select mailboxes to be deleted based on the amount of time inactive. You can purge old mail held in mailboxes using the “clean mailbox function” under the tools menu in the admin program.
Tags: Exchange Server, SBS 4.5
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001
Temporary Redirection
If the forwarding is for a short period of time, then have the user create an Out Of Office rule himself.
If the forwarding is for an intermediate period of time, or is somewhat intermittent, have the user create an Out Of Office rule or an Inbox Assistant rule.
Permanent Redirection
If the forwarding is for an intermediate or long period of time, but the user will eventually be returning to use the mailbox again later, then use Exchange Administrator to create a custom recipient and specify it as an alternate recipient on the users mailbox.
If the forwarding is permanent, then don’t make a mailbox at all and just create a custom recipient whose E-Mail Address (in the General tab) is the external e-mail address, and the internal e-mail address is a proxy in the E-Mail Addresses tab.
Tags: Exchange Server, SBS 4.5
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001
In order to send meeting requests to external organisations over the internet, you need to ensure that you can send MS RTF formatted messages to each other. You can configure RTF to send to that particular contact by changing the properties of the contact accordingly, or if it’s an entire organisation, you can modify your Internet Mail Service to force all mail to their domain into RTF format.
Be careful though, as users who are unable to read the MS RTF in Outlook you are sending them will end up with a winmail.dat attachment to their email message.
Tags: Exchange Server, SBS 4.5
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001
Reprinted upon request, here’s the Ed Crowley Exchange Server Move Method(tm). My method should create much less potential for grief, because you have practically zero downtime. You can perform all of the steps below at your own pace and in just about any order, and most, if not all, of them during working hours. What’s more, you can usually very easily back out any of the steps if things don’t go as expected. While not the easiest method, technically, it is certainly the least risky.
1. Bring up a new server as a new server in the same site with a different name of course.
2. Move the mailboxes using the Exchange Administrator. Move all at once, one at a time, or at some rate in between. In many cases, you can move the mailboxes during working hours because each user is affected only during the time his own mailbox is the one being moved.
3. Create replicas of the public folders on the new server. When the contents of the folders have replicated (do wait a little while!), remove the replicas from the old server.
4. Create new connectors on the new servers. Change the costs of the old connectors you’re replacing to be higher than the new ones, then recalculate routing. Create MX records pointing to the new IMS as appropriate, and change the cost on the old MX record so that it is higher than the new one. When you’ve checked and verified that messages are flowing across the New connectors, remove the old ones, then recalculate routing again.
5. Follow the steps in Q152959.
6. Leave the old server up for a time while MAPI clients connect to the new server automatically. It’s true! You don’t have to do anything to MAPI clients!
7. Notify POP3 and IMAP4 users of how to reconfigure their clients to point to the new server.
8. Stop the Exchange services, then remove the server from the site.
Tags: Exchange Server, Not SBS Specific
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001
If you run your system using the Ed Crowley Never Restore Method(tm), you will likely never have to restore a single mailbox. (No guarantees, but it has worked for me.)
1. Implement deleted item recovery for 30 days or more. Users will be able to restore anything THEMSELVES that they have deleted for at least that long.
2. Don’t delete mailboxes right away. Hide them, remove SMTP addresses, make the departing user’s boss the mailbox owner, and enter the termination date in the Notes field. Then wait at least 30 days.
The sad fact is that for nearly all backup programs, to restore a single mailbox you have to back up a single mailbox. Do this for more than a few mailboxes and your backup becomes very time and tape consuming.
Tags: Exchange Server, Not SBS Specific
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