Quote of the Day

I saw this in reference to the liberal (generally) media of the Western culture (both Euro and USA).

"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."

Winston Churchill

OCS 2007 passwords

Just had serious fun with a failing install of OCS SE.

Ended up being service account passwords that had a space in them.

WOW.  You gotta be kidding me.

There are a variety of hotfix and QFE and updates that purportedly fix this, but how the fsck are you supposed to get that stuff in place when the silly thing won't even finish the install?

AAR, changed the passwords and now we are good.

 

Dayum!

OCS 2007 and ISA 2006

Do you have a need to publish the various OCS 2007 components to the internet for remote users, federation, PIC and the like?

Go here for an awesome tutorial on how to accomplish this.

 

http://www.isaserver.org/tutorials/OCS-2007-ISA-2006-Firewall-Design-Architecture.html

Beer and Taxes

For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Let's see if the politicians can figure this out...

Tax System explained in beer.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
• The fifth would pay $1.
• The sixth would pay $3.
• The seventh would pay $7.
• The eighth would pay $12.
• The ninth would pay $18.
• The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:

• The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
• The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
• The seventh now pays $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
• The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
• The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
• The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
  

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.Professor of EconomicsUniversity of Georgia

e2k7 message size limits

not my material, I am just posting it.  Good stuff though!

http://exchangeshare.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/exchange-2007-where-to-set-message-mail-size-limit/

---

I was contacted by some person who bitched me out regarding me having cross posted some material, and that I did not link back, suck up, or somesuch.

So, I removed the content and replaced it with a link.

 

Seeing as how this blog is really so I can always access information I need, I sure wonder who this IAMME person is...Amit Tank did not seem to have any issue, I never claimed it was my own material, gees, something for free, and someone complains about it.

Go figure.

HT role sizing guide

This link here:  http://telnetport25.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/suggested-hub-transport-hardware-config-for-exchange-2007-installations-of-5000-users/

represents an excellent e2k7 HT role sizing guide.

Enjoy!

Standby Continuous Replication (SCR)

Exchange 2007 SCR Setup

(or, subtitled, Patience is a Virtue)

1. Make sure that the drive array setup for the source server and the target server are identical. At a bare minimum, the same drive letters must be available. With enough space.

a. For this specific example

i. F: (logs)

ii. G: (SG1\DB1)

iii. H: (SG2\DB2) (public folder DB)

iv.  Full paths are not needed upfront, but will work if they are present.  What is needed is the duplicate drive arrangement.  If the source server has the logs and whatnot on Drive F, then the target needs to have the same arrangement.

2. Ensure that the servers both have Exchange 2007 SP1

3. Modify the registry for remote streaming backup – this is “on” for RTM, “off” for SP1. This needs to be enabled or SCR will not work.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
Name: Enable Remote Streaming Backup
Type: DWORD
Value: 0 = default behavior (remote backup disabled)
1 = remote backup enabled

4. Restart msexchangeis on each server.

5. Commands will work from each server, but for simplicity sake, we will operate commands from the target server because there is a chance that the update-storagegroupcopy may need to be run manually – and that requires working from the target server (same as CCR).

6. Commands that will be used – these are the same commands used for CCR and LCR. The difference is that SCR needs to have “-standbymachine targetserver)” at the end of them, or things don’t look right or work right.

a. Enable-storagegroupcopy

b. Suspend-storagegroupcopy

c. Resume-storagegroupcopy

d. Update-storagegroupcopy

e. Get-storagegroupcopystatus sourceserver\* -standbymachine targetserver

7. Enable-storagegroupcopy sourceserver\sg1 –replaylagtime 0.0:10:0 –truncationlagtime 0.0:10:0 –standbymachine targetserver

a. This enables the storagegroup for SCR, with a log file delay of 10 minutes, and waits for 10 more minutes before truncating the log file.

Replaylagtime- Time that the Microsoft Exchange Replication Service should wait before replaying logs. Default is 24 hours and max time is 7 days.

TruncationLagTime- Amount of time Microsoft Exchange Replication Service waits before truncating log files that have been copied to the target

b. Do this for each SG that is needed.  Be Patient!

c. Be patient after running this command. About five minutes will do.

d. If there is a need to manually seed, wait the five minutes.

a. If needed, update-storagegroupcopy sourceserver\SG1 –standbymachine targetserver

b. Be patient. The command should resume the storagegroupcopy status to active when it gets done.

OK. So we have good SCR: