However for troubleshooting/validation purposes you may want to know the exact host you’re connected to. There are a number of solutions for this but the easiest one by far is using Help > About in Outlook Web App in Exchange Server 2010:

A new pop-up appears to get you started;

Happy Christmas!

Full database backup/restores were working fine and we deployed the mapi toolkit as documented in the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Mail: Data Protection for Microsoft Exchange Server Installation and User’s Guide V6.1.2. Didn’t work. The customer subsequently contacts Tivoli support and comes back with the answer “install the CAS role on your MBX servers”.

That let to kind of a “huh?” moment as we used the Exchange Server role based architecture in our deployment. A clever colleague of mine came up with a document confirming that statement:

In order to perform Mailbox Restore (IMR) operations on Exchange Server 2010, the Exchange Server that you are performing the mailbox restore on must have the Mailbox Server Role and the Client Access Server (CAS) Role.
Workaround: Perform the mailbox restore operation on an Exchange server that has the Mailbox Server Role and Client Access Server (CAS) Role.

Source: Known Issues and Limitations: Version 2.2 FlashCopy® Manager for Microsoft Exchange & V6.1.x Data Protection for Microsoft Exchange Server

What we did not find were any “design” guidelines. So a couple of questions remain:

• Do we need to install the CAS role on every MBX server?
• Do we need database copies (we’re talking DAG here) on the server with MBX+CAS roles? Do they need to be active?
• Can we use a “management” server with an empty db, outside of the DAG for this?
• How are we going to shield this CAS from users and applications?
• …

Al lot of questions and few answers in a project that is nearing completion. Hence we recommended the customer to use the recovery database feature and restore-mailbox management shell cmdlet to restore individual items. Worked perfectly.

Anyway, I’m still interested to learn how IBM thinks we should set this up in an environment that does not deploy all roles on a single server. Which is not the type of customers that would pick TSM as there backup software of choice in the first place.

Great article

but I’m not sure I agree. From my point of view the article reveals nothing that isn’t known for months. Exchange 2010 is RTM for half a year already. What I really would like to see (and so are others) is a detailed comparison between both Enterprise Vault and Exchange Server. So far I’ve not been able to find such a comparison anywhere on the public internet, so let me have a shot at it myself:

Note: This info is preliminary. Both products are in need for E2K10 SP1 before they can be taken seriously. Enterprise Vault 9 is still in beta at the moment and will only support E2010 from SP1 onwards. Exchange Server 2010 will allow separating primary and secondary mailboxes starting with SP1. This highly anticipated Service Pack will probably be released somewhere around Q3 of this year.

Apart from that I’m convinced we’re actually seeing the trusted Microsoft strategy of entering the market with a basic feature set. They feel the temperature and then gain market share gradually. Release after release.

Whether you agree or not, or just want to contribute to the discussion; feel free to comment.

The number of subfilters exceeds maximum allowed number of 100. Processing stopped.

Apparently an e-mail address policy cannot contain more than 100 address templates. Read on for more details: Watch those recipient Policies!!!

Note: an individual recipient cannot have more than 100 e-mail addresses either.

The contents at a glance:

Planning the Exchange Server 2010 Infrastructure
* Design the Exchange Server 2010 installation.
* Design message routing.
* Design the mailbox server role.
* Design client access.
* Plan for transition and coexistence.

Deploying the Exchange Server 2010 Infrastructure
* Prepare the infrastructure for Exchange Server 2010 deployment.
* Deploy Edge transport server role.
* Deploy client access server role.
* Deploy hub transport server role.
* Deploy mailbox server role.
* Deploy server roles for coexistence and migration.

Designing and Deploying Security for the Exchange Organization
* Design and deploy messaging security.
* Design and deploy Exchange permissions model.
* Design and deploy message hygiene.
* Design and deploy client access security.
* Design and deploy Exchange object permissions.

Designing and Deploying Exchange Server 2010 Availability and Recovery
* Design and deploy high availability and disaster recovery for Exchange dependencies.
* Design and deploy high availability and disaster recovery for CAS role.
* Design and deploy high availability and disaster recovery for mailbox server role.
* Design and deploy high availability and disaster recovery for hub transport role.
* Design and deploy high availability and disaster recovery for Edge transport server role.

Designing and Deploying Messaging Compliance, System Monitoring, and Reporting
* Design and deploy auditing and discovery.
* Design and deploy message archival.
* Design and deploy transport rules for message compliance.
* Design and deploy for monitoring and reporting.

The first exam Exam 70-662: TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring is already available for a month or 2. For some reason it seems to have slipped through my RSS feeds without me noticing it. Guess I’ll need to add another one.

Time to start preparing.

One of the first warmly welcomed new features included with the next release of Microsoft Office Outlook, being 2010, is the ability to open up multiple mailboxes (up to 3 by default, and up to 15 using a registry entry) and the fact that when you send a message using one of the accounts the mail will be saved in the Sent Items folder of the sender’s mailbox. When opening a shared mailbox in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, it required you to create at least a rule to have the message moved from the primary mailbox its Sent Items folder, to the shared mailbox its Sent Items…

But…it seems that ever since June 2009, 30, this isn’t necessary anymore!

Read on…

The recently released Microsoft Exchange 2010 Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version, like its predecessors, includes a wealth of new features and improvements over existing ones. As a matter of fact, with this release, Exchange now consists of approximately 21 million lines of code.

Exchange developers had five main goals in mind for Exchange 2010: to help organizations achieve new levels of reliability, better performance, simplified administration, improved protection of communications and greater business mobility for users. In short, and with the global economic crisis in mind, they aimed to create a more flexible and optimized product that would lower the costs of running an Exchange 2010 infrastructure.

Since April 2008, I have spent a good deal of time testing Exchange 2010 beta and release candidate builds in my labs, as well as in two enterprise customer environments. In this article, I will take you on a tour through the most exciting changes and improvements in this latest and—without doubt—greatest Exchange version we have seen so far.

Read on.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate is now available.

As a participant in the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta experience, we invite you to download the new Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate version. Now you can evaluate the release candidate product to simplify your IT environment and give you more control.

Resources delivered right when you need them.

You will have access to resources that will help you optimize your evaluation of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 RC. Get started now to take advantage of the wealth of resources. Download Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 RC today.

Sincerely,
Your TechNet Team

More details on E2K10 can be found on the Evaluation Center.