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I would like to officially announce the formation of the Southern Ohio Exchange User's Group! I know SOEUG doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but it was the best I could do! This group is for IT Professionals in the greater Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio area with a concentration on messaging technologies; specifically Microsoft Exchange as well as mobility and messaging security.
The first meeting will be held in the beginning of September - hopefully at the Cincinnati Microsoft offices if all goes well. Watch this space for further details as the time gets closer. You can also leave a comment or send me a contact email and I will get back to you when everything is finalized. I plan to have guest speakers, food and drink as well as some giveaways. We are a member of Culminis so we also get all the benefits of that group's membership as well. Once the website goes live more information will be posted there.
Feel free to spread the word and invite anyone who has a genuine interest and fits our target demographic. This will not be a forum for hobbyists or people who just have a passing interest in Exchange; but rather those that work with it, live it and breathe it on a regular basis! I am very excited to be able to announce this and plan on making it valuable and rewarding - worth your time to attend.
Stay tuned!
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ISA Server 2006 Standard Edition RC has been posted to Microsoft Downloads.
Improvements include:
Making it easier to provide security for corporate applications accessed over the Internet by pre-authenticating users before they gain access to any published servers inspecting even encrypted traffic at the application layer in a stateful manner, and providing automated publishing tools. In addition, by providing HTTP compression, caching of content including software updates, and site-to-site VPN capabilities integrated with application-layer filtering, ISA Server 2006 makes it easier to securely expand corporate networks. ISA Server 2006 also makes it easier to manage and protect your network with a hybrid proxy-firewall architecture, deep content inspection, granular policies, and comprehensive alerting and monitoring capabilities.
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The Exchange team has posted the first beta of the online documentation for Exchange Server 2007. Read the post here and find the documentation here.
Listening to The Fray – Over My Head (Cable Car)
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I have finally squeezed out a blogcast (done during my lunch break so it is rough – be kind please) and have it posted here. I plan on ramping up in the next one to two weeks, especially with some Exchange 2007 content. Below are some links to the content I reference in the blogcast. Enjoy.
Ask the Experts: Windows Vista Disk Imaging with ImageX and Windows Imaging Format (WIM)
Windows Vista deployment is based on disk imaging, and the operating system will come with a built-in disk-imaging tool: ImageX.
Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) User's Guide for Windows Vista
This guide describes the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), a new set of tools designed to help Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), system builders, and corporate IT professionals deploy Windows Vista onto new hardware.
Windows PE 2.0 for Windows Vista
Discover how Windows PE 2.0, the core deployment foundation for Windows Vista, will enable you to greatly simplify deployments, recovery, and diagnostics.
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All my friends know I am a huge Ohio State Buckeyes football fan. Thanks for all the “Go Bucks!” I got while wearing my jersey around at TechEd. So when I saw this I just had to post it! I cant wait to mop up the ‘shoe with them in November. Go Bucks!
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The Exchange Scripting Center is holding a contest for the best one line PowerShell script that addresses some form of Exchange 2007 administration. See the contest announcement here. The winner will get a trip to the Exchange Server 2007 launch – whenever and wherever that is!
GOPWRSHL and unleash to capabilities of Exchange Server 2007!
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And the number one reason that Vista is so hard to love:
No client-based VPN support - from ANY vendor. I have heard even Microsoft's VPN client does not work on the beta 2 build of Vista. I have personally tested Nortel and Cisco with no success. Does anyone know of a major VPN client to work with Vista? This is a major show-stopper for most people trying to dogfood the beta in production. ![Embarrassed [:$]](/emoticons/emotion-10.gif)
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Vista, you sure are hard to love. I am trying my best, to love you unconditionally - I know you are a beta baby - but you make it very difficult.
I have loaded Beta 2 a couple of times already - but when the going got tough (which was usually pretty early on) I quickly bailed and re-installed XP SP2. This time, in my TechEd 2006, drinking the Kool Aide, hangover stupor, I decided to install it again and try my best to live through the tough times. Here is where I am at:
- Office 2007 Beta 2 works amazingly well with Vista. This is the bright spot in the experience. OneNote, especially, shines. Outlook is a close second. The improvements between the two continue to save me time on a daily basis.
- Performance is hit and miss. I am running it on Dell Latitude D610 2GHz processor with no Aero Glass and 1 GB RAM. With Outlook, OneNote, and an instance of IE open I am consuming the entire gigabyte of RAM. I don’t know of many corporations that have started embracing a standard of 2 GN RAM for their mobile workforce.
- Vista just "goes away." Many times a day (more than I can count) Vista will just "go away" while performing the simplest tasks - browsing a directory, running a program install or inserting a CD in to the CD drive. It will eventually come back - but it seems to only do so when it feels good and ready. I can not find a correlation between events or environment that seem to trigger this. Even when reproducing the same steps that led to this in the first place.
- IE7 is good and bad. I love the new interface. I love the RSS integration. I love the Favorites Center. I hate how long it takes at least 50% of the pages I visit to load. IE will seem to do the same thing the OS does - just decide to grind away for five minutes before the page finally loads. It will do this for pages it previously loaded with no problem as well. I am also prompted to now authenticate to internal web sites that key off of my domain account membership that I never had to when using IE6 under XP. Something has clearly changed there.
- Search is awesome. The search implementation in this beta is far greater than it has been in any previous builds. It is very accurate and very fast. It found every item that I challenged it to look for.
- Vista hates my CDRW\DVD drive. Perhaps it is just a driver issue, but anything I try to do from the drive is a miserable experience. Install a program, access data, browse directories or burn an .iso file. It is all a pain in the butt. Autoplay almost always fails as well. Inserting a CD does nothing.
- WMP is also a performance nightmare. Along the same lines as IE and the OS, WMP will also check out on me. If I do anything other than try to play a simple .mp3, it is, again, painful. URGE has been impossible for me to experience. I cannot even get WMP to behave enough to experience it. I hear it is great.
- The mobility center is an excellent idea. Almost all OEM Laptop manufacturers have something like this developed for their laptops. However, the implementation so far isn't stellar. Many of the features are unavailable - again perhaps due to the beta nature of the OS and the lack of driver support from Dell.
- I thought the Sync Center would be the built-in answer to Good Sync or Sync Toy. However, I cannot get anything other than the default sync to work. Clicking on the link to create a new sync never results in anything.
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My beloved Miami Heat have finally got their ring, as promised by The Shaq, two years ago. They defeated the Dallas Mavericks, in Dallas, during game six of a seven game series. Returning from a 0–2 game deficit, they are the first team to do this since moving to the 2–3–2 game rotation format for the championship series. Read more here.
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I had an idea for a desktop wallpaper when visiting Fenway Park tonight for the TechEd attendee party. I was walking around with Kevin Remde and he was kind enough to snap some shots with his camera for me (I accidently murdered mine a couple of days before TechEd). They came out exactly as I had hoped they would – high enough res to see all the details in the grass and clay. Here is a shot of it on my laptop. If anyone would like a copy of it, just leave me an address to send it to in the comments.
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Day 4 continued with more great sessions like Scott Schnoll’s Clustering Exchange Servers, a chalk talk on the new Exchange 2007 Edge server and and a cool little lunchtime session on how to get started writing articles for Microsoft’s TechNet magazine. I tried to stay away from the expo hall as my suitcase is already about to explode. My zipper is hanging on for dear life! Instead I found more and more great information and content roaming around the Technical Learning Centers. TechEd really hit a home run with this one!
And, I also have to put my two cents in on the bags (I know – no one cares!) – they are the worst ones ever; sorry guys!
There were around six different parties (that I knew of, and probably a lot more) tonight and I am sure a lot of people were having a lot of fun all around Boston! I decided on the Microsoft Influencer party at Ned Devine’s Irish Pub. Not feeling well from some bad food, I didn't stay long — but enough time to catch up with some old friends, make some new ones and meet some people I had not had the pleasure of meeting in person before. One of them was Jeff Julian who runs the wonderful GeeksWithBlogs website. He is also part of the team doing the aggregation for the TechNetBloggers.net RSS feed(s). This is a thankless job and I am sure it consumes much, if not all of his time while he is here at TechEd. Thanks Jeff!
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If Joel was ejected simply for being a male, then someone needs to step up and explain why. That is completely uncalled for. Reverse sexism as it were. If he was booted out for acting like a dolt, then he gets what he deserves. But I know that several men attended last year’s luncheon and everything went just fine!
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MSG338 Microsoft IT: How MSIT Deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Edge Servers was a great session that explained the internals of the new “edge” SMTP gateway server role for the Exchange Server 2007. No longer is IIS, NNTP or any of the other traditional services needed to run the edge server. The entire SMTP stack was re-written from the ground up using managed code that is not dependent on IIS whatsoever. There are a lot of other great features in the way the server handles mail hygiene. It has auto IP blocking based on thresholds you set for the SCL (spam confidence level) for certain senders. It can also receive automatic updates from Microsoft with its own block lists culled from all the mail Microsoft receives from MSN\Hotmail\Live Mail and FrontBridge. So over time the edge server can intelligently build up a dynamic database (JET database – I know) of known offenders and deal with them before they even traverse the SMTP stack. They are blocked right at the outset of the EHLO “handshake.” This really helps by keeping the mail out of the back-end mail environment where cycles are wasted by SPAM. The other exciting thing is that since it is an Exchange SMTP gateway (vs a third party SMTP gateway that has no hooks in to Exchange) the history that it gathers on mail can be leveraged by the whole messaging environment. And, in reverse, statistics gathered through user feedback on mail can be pumped up to the edge server and added to its database.
On the downside, the audience had a lot of questions around the things that matter to us (and our bosses) beyond the base technology. These were monitoring, management and reporting. I will assume Microsoft will keep good on its promise and deliver it to RTM with a Systems Operations Center 2007\MOM 2005 management pack. Microsoft didn't have any good answers about how we can report on the SMTP statistics (SQL Reporting Center?), manage the Jet database (eseutil anyone?) or even if it needs to be backed up. Microsoft recommended flattening it and rebuilding which is great in theory. I think Microsoft sometimes misses the “smaller” picture with answers like that. As a consultant I know that customers will many times choose a savings of dollars over best practices more than fifty percent of the time. So for the three-plus hours while the edge server is being rebuilt, no mail comes in to the environment.
So my homework for the Microsoft Edge Server development team is:
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Give us a way or best practice to maintain the DB and back it up so when the server has a disk failure we don't loose months of predictive analysis on the people who are spamming us. I don't want to start over!
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Give us something besides PowerShell to check configurations with and add exceptions to IP block lists, etc. I love PowerShell, don't get me wrong, but I am also not longing for a return to Novell 3.11\DOS CLI for all my administrative tasks.
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Give me a good reporting solution. MOM\SOC\SMS\DPM etc. all use SQL reporting services to generate some nice reports. Don't leave this entirely to third parties to develop.
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Here is a great blog post on how creating tasks and flagging them in OneNote 2007 automatically creates them (and keeps them in sync) in Outlook 2007. This takes the concept of managing information in OneNote one step further by not requiring you to keep tasks in two different places – or having to manually update them in Outlook after meetings. Very nicely done!
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Today was pretty eventful – lots of good sessions – lots of friends to meet. I finally had the opportunity to meet Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist for TechSmith, makers of SnagIt and Camtasia. 
We had an excellent Legal Seafood lunch and told some great TechEd and technology stories. I also went to a great session (MSG315 - Microsoft IT: Exchange 2003 Best Practices from MSIT) where the team that maintains Exchange for Microsoft Corp. talked about how they do it all, best practices and the decisions that led to them. These are the best “real world” sessions IMO where you actually see the “rubber meeting the road.”
I also saw some good TLC chalk talks on Exchange 12. I finally bumped in to Kevin Remde as well and was able to catch up with my friend who I haven't seen since last year’s TechEd. I then moved on to the Birds of a Feather sessions. I enjoyed again moderating “ISA Server 2004 Tips and Tricks.” This year they were structured a bit differently than in the past. From 6:00pm to 6:30pm there was food and drinks in the meal hall with discussions there after. The areas were signified with colored tablecloths and signage representing birds (birds of Massachusetts some guessed) such as the Robin (ISA Server 2004), Mallard, Bluebird, etc. We had a packed section and a lot of great things to discuss like network load balancing, RAS Quarantine, logging performance hits and what to expect in ISA Server 2006. Thanks to everyone who attended for taking the time to participate and share your experiences.
I then got to wrap up the evening with another fine meal at Legal Seafood Long Wharf. Everyone I work with met for dinner. Since it was my birthday I sat back and relaxed with some good wine and good food. It was quite the sight when someone with the party across from us got his four pound lobster brought to the table. I had to do a DoubleTake to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me!
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Wireless access while in the first session of the day has been pretty sweet! Earlier in the expo hall however, it was inaccessible with a large number of competing WAPs from the vendor exhibits and numerous ad-hoc computer connections thrown up either by the ignorant or malicious among us with laptops. Hopefully they can get it sorted in short order, but I fear it may be another bad week in the expo hall. I have my handy-dandy EVDO card just in case!