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Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


What edition of Apps are you on? This is the Business one.

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Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug

Caged posted:

What edition of Apps are you on? This is the Business one.

We're grandfathered in on the free plan.

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
00110100101101100011011
000110010101110010
What kind of storage are you using in your virtualized exchange deployment on Hyper-v hosts? For example, VHDs, iscsi mounted at the host, or iscsi in the VM? I typically mount at the host for my volumes and attach as scsi hotdisks, but could I run exchange stores in VHDs? I have a userbase of about 200 or so.

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
On our Exchange Vsphere clusters, we usually do the OS drive (thin provisioned), a thick eager zeroed Data drive for mailboxes that resides on the SAN LUN of the vSphere cluter, and then a third thick eager zeroed log drive for mailbox logs. I always try to do storage connected as the host level so that the VMs are portable instead of requiring iSCSI setup inside of the VM.

Also don't cheap out on iSCSI or SAN hardware as far as Exchange goes.

e: just saw that it is Hyper-V, not VMWare. Not sure how that would affect this config but I imagine it would be the same.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



At work we're running some experiments in a virtual environment. We'd like to have a VM running an Exchange server. We intend to send emails to that server via SMTP. We do not need to retrieve or read the emails once they arrive, the server simply needs to accept them. We're already doing this with a Linux server, so now we want to test with Exchange for completeness.

Everyone here is pretty much exclusively Unix, so we don't have any experience setting this kind of thing up. Talking briefly to the people who do corporate email, they recommended we set up one VM running Server 2008 R2 as our AD server, then install Exchange 2010 on another Server 2008 VM. Can anyone point me at good, reliable information on how to set up AD and Exchange in a very basic configuration? I have basically no Windows admin experience so I can't even gauge if an article is giving me the right information unless I try it.

We have people with MSDN access, so getting the software shouldn't be an issue. If Server 2008 + Exchange 2010 aren't the best choices, we can definitely use different versions.

nexxai
Jul 17, 2002

quack quack bjork
Fun Shoe

Pham Nuwen posted:

At work we're running some experiments in a virtual environment. We'd like to have a VM running an Exchange server. We intend to send emails to that server via SMTP. We do not need to retrieve or read the emails once they arrive, the server simply needs to accept them. We're already doing this with a Linux server, so now we want to test with Exchange for completeness.

Everyone here is pretty much exclusively Unix, so we don't have any experience setting this kind of thing up. Talking briefly to the people who do corporate email, they recommended we set up one VM running Server 2008 R2 as our AD server, then install Exchange 2010 on another Server 2008 VM. Can anyone point me at good, reliable information on how to set up AD and Exchange in a very basic configuration? I have basically no Windows admin experience so I can't even gauge if an article is giving me the right information unless I try it.

We have people with MSDN access, so getting the software shouldn't be an issue. If Server 2008 + Exchange 2010 aren't the best choices, we can definitely use different versions.
AD: http://www.howtogeek.com/99323/installing-active-directory-on-server-2008-r2/
Exchange: http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/datacenter/Installing-Exchange-2010-Step-by-Step-3877601.htm

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010




Thanks! I found the Exchange one earlier today, but as I said couldn't judge if it was any good. I'll give this a shot.

wwb
Aug 17, 2004

It appears that IE11 "breaks" exchange webmail: http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/the-wired-cio/61955-windows-81-internet-explorer-11-incompatibility-with-exchange-server-owa

Well, really, the way microsoft is looking at browsers is broken but it might be fixable, does anyone have any insight into how exchange looks at this? Might well be fixable with a little asp.net (or reverse proxy) tomfoolery.

Second, our webmail / activesync box has now started rebooting itself about daily. Seems to have started after they migrated it to HyperV-12 and turned on dynamic memory. My suspicion is it doesn't like one of those two, does anyone have any insight?

vanity slug
Jul 20, 2010

I don't think Exchange likes dynamic memory very much, considering it'll try to get as much RAM as possible (same with SQL, btw).

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA
May 29, 2008

I'm going to migrate a few exchange 2003 servers to 2010 in a few weeks, roughly 300 mailboxes. This will be in-house, because of the requirements of the industry I work in. What am I going to forget to do?

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


Okay everyone I was really hoping I could remain unsubscribed from this thread - but alas...

I'm upgrading from Exchange 2007 to 2013. Server is in place etc. I migrated a test mailbox over and when I open that mailbox in Outlook 2010 (fully updated) it says "the connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable". Outlook 2010 is pointing to the correct server. OWA on new server works. Opening a mailbox on the old server works.

My thoughts are it's a security issue because things I found online say check RPC encryption or whatever, but that looks fine. Some other articles online say it could be a DNS issue but all the DCs and DNS servers are able to resolve the new mail server name. I will say that mail.company.com is still resolving to the old server and I'm not prepared to change that yet but that shouldn't matter.

edit: test-outlookwebservices gives me failure for scenario "autodiscover: outlook provider"
code:
VERBOSE: [20:16:36.201 GMT] Test-OutlookWebServices : Autodiscover response:
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.ServiceValidatorBase.InternalInvoke()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.ServiceValidatorBase.Invoke()

Dans Macabre fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Oct 21, 2013

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:

I'm going to migrate a few exchange 2003 servers to 2010 in a few weeks, roughly 300 mailboxes. This will be in-house, because of the requirements of the industry I work in. What am I going to forget to do?

you will probably forget to do this
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee832792%28v=exchg.141%29.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/mikelag/archive/2011/02/09/how-fragmentation-on-incorrectly-formatted-ntfs-volumes-affects-exchange.aspx


quote:

NTFS allocation unit size represents the smallest amount of disk space that can be allocated to hold a file.
Best practice: 64 KB for both .edb and log file volumes.

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
Best thing to do for Exchange 2007+ - C:\ partition with OS and Exchange, Mailbox partition with Mailboxes, Log partition for log files. That way, when you get some crazy bug or have issues with backups that fill up your log files, you don't crash your system and render it almost unrecoverable. Also goes for the iOS transaction log bug that happened a while back.

NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:

Okay everyone I was really hoping I could remain unsubscribed from this thread - but alas...

I'm upgrading from Exchange 2007 to 2013. Server is in place etc. I migrated a test mailbox over and when I open that mailbox in Outlook 2010 (fully updated) it says "the connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable". Outlook 2010 is pointing to the correct server. OWA on new server works. Opening a mailbox on the old server works.

My thoughts are it's a security issue because things I found online say check RPC encryption or whatever, but that looks fine. Some other articles online say it could be a DNS issue but all the DCs and DNS servers are able to resolve the new mail server name. I will say that mail.company.com is still resolving to the old server and I'm not prepared to change that yet but that shouldn't matter.

edit: test-outlookwebservices gives me failure for scenario "autodiscover: outlook provider"
code:
VERBOSE: [20:16:36.201 GMT] Test-OutlookWebServices : Autodiscover response:
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.ServiceValidatorBase.InternalInvoke()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.ServiceValidatorBase.Invoke()

Do your virtual directories exist in IIS on the 2013 server? How about 2010 Outlook - does it successfully autodiscover to the new mailbox server?

wwb
Aug 17, 2004

Jeoh posted:

I don't think Exchange likes dynamic memory very much, considering it'll try to get as much RAM as possible (same with SQL, btw).

Neither did I nor did my boss which is why we told him not to. By the by linux likes dynamic memory less than exchange it appears. I've learned alot about ubuntu recovery tools in the last week . . .

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


Gyshall posted:

Do your virtual directories exist in IIS on the 2013 server? How about 2010 Outlook - does it successfully autodiscover to the new mailbox server?

Yes to virtual directories - and the ecp and owa ones work perfectly. I went to the autodiscover one with IE and got an error 600 which I understand is normal.

Outlook 2010 successfully knows to use the new server - I put in the old server and it corrects to the new one.

Lord Dudeguy
Sep 17, 2006
[Insert good English here]
Here's a terrifying question:

Is it possible to restore an Exchange 2010 EDB to a completely different Exchange 2010 environment? I.E. I have a backup of the EDB for contoso.com (acquired company), and I need to pull some of its mailboxes into foobar.com's (purchasing company) Exchange environment.

Or... is there an application that can extract mailboxes from an EDB file? Possibly outputting PST files?

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


Lord Dudeguy posted:

Here's a terrifying question:

Is it possible to restore an Exchange 2010 EDB to a completely different Exchange 2010 environment? I.E. I have a backup of the EDB for contoso.com (acquired company), and I need to pull some of its mailboxes into foobar.com's (purchasing company) Exchange environment.

Or... is there an application that can extract mailboxes from an EDB file? Possibly outputting PST files?

http://www.kerneldatarecovery.com/exchange-server-recovery.html

Lord Dudeguy
Sep 17, 2006
[Insert good English here]

Oh hell yes. Thank you!

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


np. not sure what the free version can do, we have the paid version, works well

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
You can actually do that without a program, just takes some more work:

- Create a blank DB on the new Exchange environment
- Dismount said DB
- Rename those DB files to something else
- Check the "DB can be overwritten by a backup" box
- Copy the EDB files to the new DB directory
- Run ESEUTIL, do an integrity check, etc.
- Remount DB
- Create users and attach mailboxes to those users

Kind of janky though

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:

np. not sure what the free version can do, we have the paid version, works well

I have the paid version as well. Works extremely well.

JBark
Jun 27, 2000
Good passwords are a good idea.

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:

I'm going to migrate a few exchange 2003 servers to 2010 in a few weeks, roughly 300 mailboxes. This will be in-house, because of the requirements of the industry I work in. What am I going to forget to do?

I followed the ExDeploy instructions from MS to the letter when I migrated from 2003 to 2010 last year, and they were absolutely bang-on. Didn't hit a single problem during the migration that wasn't caused by my predecessor's completely messed up 5.5-2000-2003 upgrades. And man had he messed things up, I have never spent so much time cleaning things up in ADSI Edit.

My biggest recommendation is to really stretch out the migration if you can. I slowly migrated things like send/receive connectors/etc.. over the course of a couple weeks, until I had every single thing migrated to 2010 but the mailboxes themselves. Once I was sure that was fine, the mailbox moves were completely painless, requiring the users to do nothing but close and reopen Outlook. And even then, I only migrated a couple mailboxes for a week or so until I did the rest.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Hosted Exchange provider recommendations/warnings?

300 users, we need unlimited storage because the average mailbox is 20-30GB and many providers appear to only offer 25GB or less.

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


Bob Morales posted:

Hosted Exchange provider recommendations/warnings?

300 users, we need unlimited storage because the average mailbox is 20-30GB and many providers appear to only offer 25GB or less.

What's the driver for doing hosted exchange - if you are OK managing your own server and you're just looking for high availability/getting it out of your server room, you can spin your own up at rackspace or some other hosting company. I don't have much good to say about multitenant hosted exchange providers.

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
We use Rackspace for our customers who are jerks and won't go the self hosted/datacenter route. Haven't really had too many issues with it. 25GB limit is going to be the norm, though.

We have a similar client who has a few execs who have 30+GB of mailbox data, we ended up renting literal Rack Space in a datacenter, putting a VM cluster in and leveraging the Exchange 2010 online archive feature, which is a god-send.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:

What's the driver for doing hosted exchange - if you are OK managing your own server and you're just looking for high availability/getting it out of your server room, you can spin your own up at rackspace or some other hosting company. I don't have much good to say about multitenant hosted exchange providers.

Don't want to buy/admin/backup the server and we have huge mailboxes so I'd rather just have someone else run that poo poo. Plus we're already paying like $7 a user for mail filtering so why not just spend another $5 and get the email service as well.

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
Big mailboxes are actually a reason to not do hosted Exchange, for what that is worth.

sanchez
Feb 26, 2003
In this situation putting as much distance between Bobs boss and exchange as possible probably trumps all other considerations.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Gyshall posted:

Big mailboxes are actually a reason to not do hosted Exchange, for what that is worth.

Really? It's mostly people who refuse to never ever delete an email (and legitimately we have some government accounts that we have to hang onto for 7 years)

Do most of these places let you upload an existing PST file or is that only if you pay extra for the 'Archiving' feature?

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
I know with Rackspace the supported migration methods for existing PST/Mail accounts are:

1. https://www.migrationwiz.com/

2. Creating profile and importing a PST file into new profile ( :smithicide: )

We have another client that uses Rackspace 2010 email, and most people don't delete emails (not their fault, to be honest) and end up with close to 25GB mailboxes. They ended up paying a third party, Sonian, for archiving (both for compliance and to prevent hitting the 25GB limit), so combined with the yearly cost for 150+ mailboxes, archiving, etc, self-hosted Exchange would pay for itself in about two years or something along those lines.

I usually urge/recommend my smaller clients to go with hosted Exchange - anyone with less than 30ish mailboxes it should be good for. Once you get past 100 users/mailboxes, you're in Corporate territory, where you really should be looking at having control of your own systems/etc.

sanchez
Feb 26, 2003

Is this service a legion of people in some 3rd world country who aren't afraid to drag/drop hundreds of mailboxes worth of email when necessary? I dont know how else they could do it.

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
Not sure, I've never used it. There probably should be a :smithicide: next to that as well.

madsushi
Apr 19, 2009

Baller.
#essereFerrari
MigrationWiz is baller as hell. Used it like 40-50 times to move people to my last company's hosted Exchange environment, off of a ton of random services, from local Exchange to 365, from 365 to our hosted Exchange, etc. Works like a charm, easy pricing, etc. Highly recommend.

Blame Pyrrhus
May 6, 2003

Me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
Pillbug

Jeoh posted:

I don't think Exchange likes dynamic memory very much, considering it'll try to get as much RAM as possible (same with SQL, btw).

Limit your ESE database caching. Always. Calculate how much you need and set limits in ADSI. SQL has a UI for doing the same thing, which again you should always do.

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


ok so I have 2013 and 2007 coexistence going on and mailboxes on the 2013 servers cannot access the (new) Exchange server via Outlook while inside the LAN, UNLESS they use Outlook Anywhere. If they use outlook anywhere it works 100%. I can't google for this because I don't know what "non-outlook anywhere outlook" is called.

I'm guessing this is a DNS issue?

Anonymouse Mook
Jul 12, 2006

Showing Vettel the way since 1979

I thought RPCoHTTPS was the only way to access 2013 and MAPI was gone?

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.

Anonymouse Mook posted:

I thought RPCoHTTPS was the only way to access 2013 and MAPI was gone?

This is correct. MAPI is no longer A Thing. (Well, it is A Thing but not really A Thing.) You want all your Exchange related mail traffic to use RPC over HTTPS, all the time, everywhere (LAN/WAN/WiFi)

Blame Pyrrhus
May 6, 2003

Me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
Pillbug

NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:

ok so I have 2013 and 2007 coexistence going on and mailboxes on the 2013 servers cannot access the (new) Exchange server via Outlook while inside the LAN, UNLESS they use Outlook Anywhere. If they use outlook anywhere it works 100%. I can't google for this because I don't know what "non-outlook anywhere outlook" is called.

I'm guessing this is a DNS issue?


You don't know what it's called because it no longer exists. Post 2007 you only connect via HTTPS to the cas/cas array.

If you have public folder databases in 2010 then you will make RPC MAPI connections to the mailbox servers. 2013 not sure if this is still true (don't use public folder databases).

Legacy clients can reach the GAL and free/busy information if they are published to public folders rather than web (don't do this).

Run outlook /rpcdiag to see how the client is building the connection.

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


OK so that is interesting and cool but does that mean the users will have to authenticate when opening outlook even if they are already on the domain? I just created a new profile and it all worked except it asked me for my username/password. That's annoying.

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Anonymouse Mook
Jul 12, 2006

Showing Vettel the way since 1979

Sounds like some of your virtual directories need their authentication method changing. If you get the login prompt, most likely a folder is set to Basic auth instead of NTLM.

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