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Earlier on today Symantec tweeted an article comparing archiving features offered by both Symantec Enterprise Vault and Microsoft Exchange Server. They might call it a

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.

When WordPress.com announced the e-mail subscription feature end of last year I immediately started thinking about using it in combination with Evernote to create automatic backups of my blog posts.

Here’s a little how to:

Add the e-mail subscriptions widget to your blog Log out of WordPress to make sure it doesn’t recognize your existing WordPress account. Log in to Evernote and copy you Evernote e-mail address from the settings page Surf to your own blog and subscribe with your Evernote mail address. As usual when signing up for something on the internet you’ll need to confirm that the e-mail address you provided is really yours by clicking on an activation link. In this case the mail is sent to Evernote. It will be automatically converted to a new note by their services.Choose daily or weekly schedule. Corrections made after publishing your post might not be included in the copy sent to Evernote when selecting  the “immediate” schedule. More details under “settings”:All posts will be automatically forwarded to Evernote and converted to notes.

I’m keeping them in a separate notebook as you can see. As far as I know there’s are no “inbox rules” that you can create to do that automatically for you, so you need to do some drag & drop now and then.

WordPress.com & Evernote; Better Together?

Note: WordPress (both *.com & *.org) offer you the ability to export.backup your entire blog to an XML file

While you can use it to restore your entire blog, it’s not a human readable format. So it’s not a solution for quick access to some of your old content.

I’ve got some Google Wave invites left. Put a reply in the comments if you’re in desperate need for one…

Hundreds of blogs already reported on the release of the beta of Exchange 2010/Exchange 14.

 Anyway, here are some resources in case you would want to catch up with the latest messaging bits from Microsoft:

• Product Home Page
• Download Beta Version
• Technet Documentation Library
• TechNet Forum

The most important changes:

1. SCR, LCR & SCC all dissapear. CCR will be enhanced with multiple replicas of the same database
2. Web based management console (on top of PowerShell)
3. OWA becomes “Outlook Live”
   1. Self-service features for the end user: e.g. request membership of a DL
   2. Premium interface finally supports Firefox (and Safari)
   3. Gmail like conversation view.
4. Role Based Access Control for an even more granular delegation model
5. Storage groups are replaced by Availability Groups.
6. All mailbox access passes through the CAS servers,  adding an extra abstraction layer.

A more extensive write-up of the new E2K10 can be found on simple-talk.com. Some installation guidance can be found on Scott Schnoll’s Blog on the other hand.

Note that the only supported Operating System so far is Windows Server 2008 x64 (no R2!)

Happy testing!

I have an Excel sheet I use for managing my to do lists. It consists of 2 sheets

• the first one contains the actual actions items
• the second one contains some lists to be used in drop down boxes in the previous sheet

When setting up data validation you cannot simply refer to a range (e.g. “List!$A$2:$A$4") on another sheet. You will get an error saying:

You may not use references to other worksheets for data validation criteria.

A workaround consists in defining a Name as MrExcel explains. Go to the second sheet, highlight your list and give it a name with Formulas > Define Name. Make sure you set the scope to workbook rather than sheet!

Now you can refer to the name you just defined in the the Data Validation dialog.

This solution works very fine for lists of a fixed length (e.g. priorities). Things get a little less pretty if your list doesn’t have a fixed length (e.g. the people possibly assigned to a particular task):

• you can change the definition of your name every time something gets added/removed to/from your list
• you can set a range that is too big, resulting in a number of empty entries in the drop down
• you can use a dynamic range. This is definitely the best solution.

The offset function used for easy cut’n'paste.

   1: =OFFSET(List!$B$1;1;0;COUNTA(List!$B:$B)-1;1)

The drop down will now expand nicely every time you add value to your list.

I learned about dynamic ranges in Excel here (Thx sak1n1 for sending me that link!)

While working on some presales material I was in need for some Visio stencils. A quick Internet search resulted in these links:

• Novell GroupWise
• IBM Lotus Notes

PS: Stencils for Microsoft Exchange can be found here, as stated before.

A couple of weeks a go I started using a Groove workspace to centralize all the information/knowledge/documentation we have for Microsoft Exchange Server. Synchronization has been set up with a SharePoint library to make all those documents accessible to people not involved with the product on a daily basis.

Whenever I would add a file to one of the folders I always got a sync error complaining that the folder already existed. (Like I didn’t know…).

The only way out was to delete the entire folder both in Groove and SharePoint, sync, and then add the folder back on the SharePoint side. I tried a number of things but ended up asking a more SharePoint-knowledgeable colleague for help. He promptly resolved the issue and made a screencast about it. Check it out: http://www.mylearning.be/?p=131

Dmitri over at Dmitry’s PowerBlog just posted about the integration between PowerGui and the VI client. I had already installed the PowerGUI 1.5.1 version but hadn’t noticed the plugin for the VI Client.

This makes managing your VMware environment using  Powershell even more easier. PowerGUI lets you write your own Powershell scripts and the VMware PowerPack is also compatible with the VI client plugin. The plugin uses your current connection to the VC. You don’t need to make a separate connection for every script.

I regularly need to administer EMC Clariion SANs for which Java JRE 1.4 is needed. Unfortunately some other websites/applications need a more recent Java version. Before I used a separate VM with an XP and Java 1.4 installed on it to administering clariions. This is some serious overkill and I was looking for a better solution. VMware released Thinapp 4.0, time to see if this is a better solution.

The Thinapp welcome screen.

Some info on how to use Thinapp. Make sure to always run it on a clean PC so you’re sure that you include all necessary files in your package. Under advanced settings you can select which drives you want to scan during the prescan.

Before installing the application Thinapp needs to scan your system to take a baseline snapshot.

The prescan is finished. Time to install and configure your application.

Once the application installation is finished, Thinapp does a postcan. It looks for differences on the file system as well as in the registry, all these changes become part of package.

Select the entry point you want to use.

Configure the security settings for the package and also the sandbox location. The user’s settings are configured in the sandbox.

Now it’s time to configure the isolation settings. Merged isolation lets you access the local user settings e.g. Firefox bookmarks. WriteCopy isolation all files are newly created and the application has no access to the local file system.

Select MSI generation when you want to distribute the package using any software distribution tool.

Thinapp copies all files and registry settings to the project location.

The final screen. Here we’re going to browse the project as we have to change some settings in the package.ini file.

As the Java JRE is packaged separately we have to edit the package.ini file and remove the ; from the OptionalAppLinks line.

We can now build the Firefox project.

Repeat the same steps for the Java JRE. Once that’s build create a “plugins” folder in the location of the Thinapped Firefox and copy the Java package to it. When Firefox is executed it will look for any exe file in the plugin folder and will link it.

No need to use a separate VM for administering Clariions anymore.

PS:  Marrs posted an excellent post on the VMware forum on packaging Firefox to run several versions of Java at the same time.

One of the changes that might puzzle administrators new to Exchange Server 2007 is the move of the recipient management interface from Active Directory Users and Computers to the Exchange Management Shell. (Microsoft is actually reverting to the pre-2000 situation)

The exchange team provided a nice overview on how to complete most popular recipient management tasks using the new tools: How to do your top Exchange Server 2003 recipient tasks in Exchange Server 2007.

Those that absolutely want to keep doing their job from within the AD console might want to look into the solution proposed on msexchange.org. (3rd party solution).