How to: Exchange 2010 archiving mailbox

Exchange 2010 introduces a new archiving capability. With the archive, users have a second mailbox, the archive mailbox that exists in the same Mailbox database and is available from both the Outlook client and Outlook Web Access. The Archive mailbox is associated with the user’s primary normal mailbox and the management of the archive and primary is identical. The primary mailbox is available online and offline and its content is stored in the Outlook OST cache file. The archive mailbox isn’t cached on the user’s local machine and is therefore only available online.

As you increase the size of mailboxes, you don’t necessarily want all the data stored locally on user machines, because it can lead to very long initial download times when users get a new machine. The data users frequently access is stored in the primary mailbox, which is ideally less than 10GB and is cached locally. Everything else is stored in the archive mailbox and available online, so it can be much larger and contain historical data. Because the archive mailbox is part of the same mailbox database, its availability is the same as the primary mailbox (it will be replicated as part of a DAG, database availability group).

Users will see their mailbox and their archive mailbox. They can drag and drop a PST file into the archive and the PST will be imported into the archive automatically. The viewing and navigation of the primary and archive mailbox is the same. If a user searches all mail items, the archive content is included. Users or administrators can set retention policies so that mail is automatically moved to the archive after a number of days, and different policies can be set on different folders.

Here are some keynotes for the archiving feature in Exchange 2010:

– Archive mailbox gets rid of PST files by giving the user an additional mailbox
– PST files are local to the user’s machine, gets corrupted easily and is hard to include the files in backup.
– Archive mailbox sits in the same mailbox database as the user’s main mailbox and can be included in the backup easily
– Archive Mailbox is available in Outlook as well as Outlook Web App (OWA), which is a huge improvement.
– Users can access their email archive irrespective of where they are
– Archive Mailbox is included as part of the Exchange Enterprise CALs and hence no extra cost is required (for those who have ECALs)
– Retention policies can be set for emails/folders in the archive mailbox
– User has the option to search for emails in archive only or both primary & archive mailbox
– Archive Quota can be set separate to the primary mailbox
– Emails in existing PSTs can be dragged into the archive mailbox very easily
– The archive and primary mailbox share the same user account
– Only one archive mailbox can be configured for a user
– Archive mailbox gets created on the same mailbox database as the primary one, which is a drawback.
– Future service packs might bring the option to create the archive mailbox in a different database
– The default quota warning for the archive mailbox is 10GB, which can be changed

How to configure a archive mailbox for a specific user:

1.) Open the Exchange Management Console
2.) Navigate to Recipient Configuration and select the specific user
3.) On the action pane, select “Enable Archive”
Note:
Online archiving requires an Exchange Enterprise Client Access License (CAL)!
4.) The icon of the specific user has changed to an archive  icon.
5.) Login to the Outlook Web App with the specific user and you’ll see the archive mailbox
6.) Drag and drop some e-mail into the online archive
7.) You can change the name of the online archive by navigating to the specific user, Properties, Mailbox Features, Archive
8.) Login again to the Outlook Web App and you’ll see the new name of the archive mailbox

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How to: Hide Address Lists in Exchange 2010

When you have a Exchange 2010 (or 2007) environment and you have multiple Address Lists in your Exchange environment, there are maybe some users who don’t have to see all the available Address Lists.

You can fix this issueu to put some permissions on this Address Lists. Let’s have a look on that.

1.) Open the Exchange Management Console
2.) Create a new Address List
3.) Give up the filter settings (in this example it is based on the Active Directory field “Department“)
4.) Open ADSI Edit, adsiedit.msc
5.) Open Configuration,CN=Configuration,DC=E2K10.local,CN=Services,CN=E2K10,CN=Address Lists Container,CN=All Address Lists,<your Address Lists>
6.) Open the Properties, and click the Security tab, Advanced
7.) Disable “Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent”
8.) Click Copy
9.) Remove the Authenticated Users
10.) Make a new Security Group in your Active Directory called for example “AL_ICT_Department”
11.) Place all the users of the ICT department in this Security Group
12.) Open the security settings again and at the group AL_ICT_Department
13.) Give this group the following permissions Read, Open Address List
14.) Login with a user that is member of the AL_ICT_Department. Make sure you see the Address List
15.) Login with a user that is not a member of the AL_ICT_Department. You didn’t see the Address List now.

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Exchange 2010 exams available

Microsoft has published the Exchange 2010 exams.

When you pass Exam 70-662 TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s):

  • Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): MIcrososft Exchange Server 2010, Configuration

Exam 70-662 TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring: counts as credit toward the following certification(s):

  • Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP): Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010

 EXC_2010_Exam

How to: Install Exchange 2010 prerequisites using XML

When you’re going to install Microsoft Exchange 2010, you first have to install some prerequisites. But what prerequisites do you need exactly?? When you unpack the installation source of Exchange 2010, you’ll see a folder called Scripts. Whitin these folder, there are some different XML files.

     – Exchange-all.xml
     – Exchange-base.xml
     – Exchange-cadb.xml
     – Exchange-cas.xml
     – Exchange-eca.xml
     – Exchange-edge.xml
     – Exchange-hub.xml
     – Exchange-mbx.xml
     – Exchange-typical.xml
     – Exchange-um.xml

In this example we are going to prepare a Microsoft Windows 2008 SP2 server for installing the Exchange 2010 Hub Transport Role, using the XML file Exchange-hub.xml.

1.) Open the command prompt (CMD)
2.) Browse to your installation source directory
3.) Type in ServerManagerCmd -ip Exchange-Hub.xml
4.) All prerequisites will be installed now
5.) After this is finished, you can start the installation of Exchange 2010

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Exchange 2010 Organizational Health

A great new feature is the Organizational Health. This gives you an overview of all the information available about your Exchange environment. Such as

  • Total Databases
  • Total Database copies
  • Total Exchange 2003 / 2007 / 2010 servers
  • How many Exchange server with a specific role installed
  • Total user mailboxes, distribution groups, contacts, legacy mailboxes

When you open the Exchange Management Consosle, go to Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange On-Premises. 

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Where’s the Move-Mailbox command in Exchange 2010 Release Candidate…?

When you’re trying to move a mailbox to another mailbox database, you’ll discover that the command Move-Mailbox is no longer available. What next….

In Exchange 2010 Release Candidate (RC), there’s a new command available to move a mailbox to another mailbox database, New-Moverequest.

In this example I’m going to move all the mailboxes, including the default arbitration mailboxes to a new mailbox database, otherwise you can not delete the default mailbox database created by Exchange!

1.) With the following command you can get a list of all the Move Requests. Get-Moverequest | fl
2.) Run the command Get-Mailbox -Database “database name” -Arbitration | ft -wrap -auto for a list of all the hidden arbitration mailboxes in the default mailbox database
3.) To move the arbitration mailbox to the new mailbox database, run the following command New-MoveRequest -Identity “SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}” -TargetDatabase MD01
4.) After moving all the arbitraion mailboxes to the new mailbox database, run the following command Get-Moverequest | fl
5.) Before we can remove the default mailbox database, you’ve to remove all the move requests associated with the source mailbox database
6.) To get a list off all the associated move requests, run the following command Get-MoveRequest -SourceDatabase “Mailbox Database 1205181900”
7.) To remove the move requests, run the command Remove-Moverequest -<Recipient ID>
Note:
For a list off all the Recipient ID’s you can run Get-Mailbox -Database “database name” -Arbitration | ft -wrap -auto
8.) After removing all the remove requests, you’re able to succesfully remove the default mailbox database

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Prepare your Schema, AD and domain using PowerShell for installing Exchange 2010

When you’re going to install Exchange 2010, you’ve to prepare your environment before you can start the installation.

The fist step is to prepare the Schema.

1.) Open the root directory of the Exchange 2010 installation files
2.) Run the following command: .\Setup /PrepareSchema
Note: make sure you’ve SchemaAdmin rights

The next step is to prepare the Active Directory.

1.) Run the following command: .\Setup /PrepareAD /OrganizationName:<Your-Organization-Name>

The last step is to prepare the Domain.

1.) Run the following command: .\Setup /PrepareDomain
Note: make sure you’ve DomainAdmin rights

Your environment is now succesfully prepared to install Exchange 2010.

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Exchange 2010 delete the first mailbox database

After you’ve installed a new Exchange 2010 environment and you try to delete the first automatically created mailbox database, you’ll receive the following error.

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The mailbox database ‘DB01’ cannot be deleted.

DB01
Failed
Error:
This mailbox database contains one or more mailboxes or arbitration mailboxes. To get a list of all mailboxes in this database, run the command Get-Mailbox -Database <Database ID>. To get a list of all arbitration mailboxes in this database, run the command Get-Mailbox -Database <Database ID> -Arbitration. To disable a non-arbitration mailbox so that you can delete the mailbox database, run the command Disable-Mailbox <Mailbox ID>. Arbitration mailboxes should be moved to another server; run the command Move-Mailbox <Mailbox ID> -Arbitration -TargetDatabase <Database ID>.  To remove the arbitration mailbox if this is the last server in the organization, run the command Remove-Mailbox <Mailbox ID> -Arbitration -RemoveLastArbitrationMailboxAllowed.
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You cannot remove the database, because there are some mailboxes in it. Oké….let’s have look what mailboxes are left in this mailbox database.

Get-Mailbox -Database DB01

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As you can see, there are no mailboxes left in de mailbox database, but why we are still receiving this error!! This is the answer…….there are two hidden mailboxes left in de mailbox database, called arbitration mailboxes. With the following command you’re able to see this mailboxes

Get-Mailbox -Database DB01 -Arbitration | ft -wrap -auto

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When you move these two mailboxes to another mailbox database, all the error messages are gone! So let’s do that!

Move-Mailbox “SystemMailbox{1f05a927-3be2-4fb9-aa03-b59fe3b56f4c}”  -Arbitration -TargetDatabase DB02
Move-Mailbox “SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}”  -Arbitration -TargetDatabase DB02

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