Essential Exchange

On Exchange Server 2007, especially post service pack 1 (I ran into this problem while installing service pack 1 update rollup 2), it appears that some of the assemblies (that is, parts of the various Exchange programs) are "signed with Authenticode". This is basically a public/private key...

Yesterday (Thursday, 2008-04-17) was the last day of the 2008 MVP Summit. Over one-half of the MVPs attending were from countries other than the United States. It was interesting to hear the dozens of languages being spoken around me this week. Very little of what was covered during the Summit is not...

I and 4,000 MVPs from around the world have accumulated in Seattle/Redmond this week. Where do we all go? To the bar, of course! Last night, a few Exchange MVPs and the odd PowerShell MVP were sitting around discussing stuff I can't talk about here, when another MVP came to join us (who happens to...

Sometimes, you need to step back and take a different look at a problem. When you are "in the weeds", you can't necessarily see the forest for the trees. Exchange Server is a networking application. Now, before you say "duh!", think about it. If your network is having issues,...

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Wrapping up SLDs and Exchange Server 2007 , anytime after PrepareAD is run, it is too late to run the Domain Rename (rendom) tool. As part of PrepareAD, the Exchange Server 2007 setup tool stamps the Active Directory with a number of server names in GUID and fully...

In Single Level Domains and Exchange 2007 service pack 1 , I commented on the fact that Microsoft was no longer going to support single label domains starting with Exchange Server 2007 service pack 1. Then, in More on Single Label Domains and Exchange 2007 I shared that Microsoft was going to change...

In Problem Between Exchange Server 2007 and MS08-03 , I wrote about a problem introduced by MS08-003 that affected large Exchange environments. Last week, a hotfix was released for this problem. Surprisingly for many, it was actually an Active Directory issue! (Although, I did hear an A/D engineer say...

Over three years ago, I wrote my most popular (in terms of number of times it has been read) blog post ever: " Exchange Server 2003 and Domain Controllers - A Summary ." Since it was written in January of 2005, Exchange Server 2003 service pack 2 has been released, Windows Server 2003 service...

I just finished installing Exchange Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 (single server install). It went smooth as silk and I'm as pleased as punch. You have to install the "PowerShell" feature and the "IIS" role, and then start setup. And off she goes... This is what it looks...

Once the spammers find your domain, which usually only takes a few weeks after it has come online, you'll start seeing lots of error messages being returned to your Exchange Server - for email that was never sent from your server! This is commonly called back scatter, and can be worse than spam itself...