Archive for the ‘Microsoft Exchange’ category

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What Do You Know About Email Archiving Solutions?

February 16th, 2011

email-iconAn email archiving solution is a standalone IT application that is installed on an enterprise email server such as MS Exchange and Lotus Domino. Once up and running, this software will be in charge of saving copies of sent and received emails for record keeping and compliance purposes.

Most companies will benefit from choosing and installing one of the many email archiving solution available. However, the following types of companies will require such a system due to those compliance reasons: banks, financial institutions, police headquarters, healthcare facilities, government offices, and the construction industry.

Why Email Archiving is Important

Emails are very important communication tool for every type of business. According to recent studies, almost 97 percent of all business communication was handled through email. Another survey went further to investigate the importance of emails and uncovered that 79 percent of all businesses accept emails as conformation of approvals or orders.

A third survey also managed to highlight the importance of email in today’s business sphere by disclosing that 83 percent of a business’ critical information can be found in these electronic messages. With so much importance given to emails today, it is no wonder that the need for email archiving solutions is growing on a daily basis.

Most companies in the United States are bound legally to keep and manage their emails because of the delicate nature of the information exchanged through them.  Emails can be requested as evidence in legal cases, which is why companies make sure that they are stored in their original state and have to ensure that records are as complete as possible.

Email archiving is useful in this regard because it reduces the amount of time spent on searching for emails relevant to cases and eliminates the need to spend so much money on retrieving emails saved on a backup system.

Benefits of Email Archiving

By installing an email archiving system in your company, you will be able to take advantage of the numerous benefits these systems have to offer. Some of the benefits you can enjoy are:

  • Monitoring Employee Communication – Though some may say that this is an invasion of employees’ privacy, businesses need to secure themselves and ensure that their information isn’t emailed outside the company. Email archiving systems allow you to make flags for certain words and terms to ensure sensitive information isn’t being shared when it shouldn’t be.
  • Speeding Up the Email Server – One of the common problems which hinder an email server is the fact that many employees store data in their mailboxes. Larger mailboxes means the mail server has more to do to manage them. However, archiving emails creates more space on the server and ensures that it can concentrate on passing email traffic as designed.
  • Countering System Failure – Archiving emails prevents your information and correspondence from being deleted altogether if the system fails. With so much information stored in inboxes, it can be devastating to lose them.

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Posted in Archiving, Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange

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Database Corruption While Replication of Public folders

March 8th, 2010


While talking about Microsoft Exchange Server, it’s like a mandate to mention the public folders. The public folders contain user data as well as information critical to the system. The system information is needed for the swift operation of Exchange Server in the environment. Replication of the public folders is done in order to have better performance and effective and easy management of application.

Two types of replication are there: hierarchy replication and content replication. In some cases, replication of the public folders between the Microsoft Exchange Servers becomes troublesome. Replication may cause some inconsistencies in the database and render it inaccessible. These inconsistencies may cause severe data loss and may lead to database corruption while replication of public folders. Thus, need may arise for Exchange Repair using tools.

Practically, when public folder replication request is sent by a system running Microsoft Exchange Server, email scanning might also occur. Messaging Database may also get corrupted at the same time and you may encounter the following error message displayed on your screen:

“Multiple edits have been made. The conflicting edits have been attached to the conflict message.”

At this time, the public folders of the server may get inconsistent and inaccessible. It may lead to critical data loss and database corruption. The job of Exchange Server Administrator is to find out the cause of the problem and go about solving it.

Root cause of the Problem:

There may be cases that a database transaction is written inappropriately and there is an error. This can lead to an imbalanced Exchanged Server transaction state. If virus scanning is enabled, then imbalanced transaction state may promote virus scanning to be done on outbound replication emails. Database may also get corrupted due to imbalanced state of database transaction.

Resolution of the Problem:

To resolve these problems, a hot fix is provided by Microsoft on its website and is downloadable from there. After the installation of the hot fix, database integrity should always be checked by Isinteg.exe utility. The hot fix can solve the problem and the problem will not occur in the future. As far as damaged database is concerned, hot fix can’t repair it. Exchange Recovery is required for repairing and restoring the corrupted database.

There is an affective and advanced third party application available to resolve the problem, called Exchange Database Repair tools. An extensive scanning of corrupted Exchange Server is carried out by this software. The software restores all of the server’s objects intact. The software is equipped with easy graphical user and interactive interface, thus there is no need for prior and sound technical skills and you can save yourself from database corruption while replication of public folders.

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Posted in Microsoft Exchange

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Exchange 2010 Transport Protection Rules

February 1st, 2010

One of the most important improvements in Exchange 2010 in my opinion is the new toolkit that allows administrators to implement policies that works with Outlook 2010 and Outlook Web Access too. The fact is offers many different tools that make Email Hosting better and easier to manage.

This is a significant step forward, as previously OWA was something of a unsubtle beast. You could either restrict access to mailboxes altogether or it was open season on emails. Now policies can be enforced across the board, whatever client the users prefer.

The Transport Protection Rules enable Exchange administrators to create rules that control every aspect of email, from content restrictions, size, approved recipients for sensitive emails, no copy and pasting and other neat tricks. While most of these features have been around in other incarnations, they have never been so easy to implement or ever worked with Outlook Web Access. The TPR system is new to Exchange 2010 and a welcome addition to the platform.

In a real life example of the TPR in action, say a project manager send a detailed email to his team listing a new product, it’s benefits, features and proposed release date. He can mark he email confidential so his people knew not to share it, which has always been the case. The mail would have a flag on it marking it as confidential.

Now, with Transport Protection Rules, Exchange can enforce a policy on confidential emails that includes not being able to forward them, copy and paste to or from them and other niceties. This means if someone absent mindedly forwarded it as part of a conversation the Exchange server would refuse. This is a significant step forward in information security, and allows administrators to control the flow of information with much more granularity than before.

Drilling deeper into the Transport Protection Rules, it’s also possible to restrict emails, by email address, location, recipient, whether it’s internal or external and a raft of other criteria. It also works seamlessly with Outlook Web Access too. Which is handy because Office 2010 doesn’t even have a release date yet.

The biggest bonus with these rules, and the closer integration with OWA is that everything will work with browsers other than Internet Explorer. No more will you need plugins to be able to enforce rules, or add functionality. Everything works out of the box, so Opera, Firefox or Safari users will also have full access to the available features, and also be subject to the Transport Protection Rules.

The Exchange 2010 was the largest beta Microsoft have ever run. From where I’m sitting, it was worth every minute. They have listened to feedback and integrated many of the improvements into the new system. While it’s still a big, cumbersome beast, it’s now a bit more manageable at least.

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Posted in Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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The Hosted Model

September 21st, 2009

hostedexchangeMicrosoft Exchange Hosting is a messaging platform built by Microsoft to enable email communication across the globe. It allows organizations to provide email, calendars, contact lists and collaborative technologies to their users either on-site or remotely.

Exchange by itself doesn’t actually do much, it has to be hosted on an Exchange Server. To access it remotely, the system will also need routers, network infrastructure and firewalls as well as a team of people to manage and maintain the system. For Blackberry access a Blackberry Enterprise Server would also be required, adding to the overhead.

Not only is hosting Exchange and expensive thing to set up, it’s also expensive to run. The upfront costs will include new servers, licenses, and all the things mentioned above. Then the running costs of maintenance add up to a significant investment needed by any organization.

Small to medium businesses simply cannot afford these kinds of outgoings, certainly not in the early days. However email is now an invaluable business tool that is essential to effectively communicate internally and externally.

The answer is to let someone else host the system for you and access it remotely. This is called SaaS, or Software as a Service. A vendor or service provider will have an existing infrastructure which a business can rent ‘space’ on. The vendor will supply a web application to their customers who will in turn make it available to their users. The process is completely transparent, the user would have no idea that the application was being hosted remotely.

The popular way to pay for a service like this is by the seat, or user. This provides great flexibility in a changing environment, or the growing business, as the service can be scaled to the exact needs of the organization. This saves money on the upfront costs, and saves even more by not having to build an entire infrastructure for a few users. With the Hosted Exchange model you pay for what you need.

There is also the subject of compliance to consider. Every business in America is subject to stringent compliance laws which mean all email communication has to be stored securely for a number of years. That number depends on the business and the nature of the email but is roughly around five years.

These emails have to be stored securely too, as well as easily searchable, indexed and retrievable. This adds more overhead to anyone running any kind of email system, let alone an Exchange one.

The hosted model also includes compliance in most packages. This again, takes the burden off the small business. The vendor will already have the supporting infrastructure and the expertise to store, index and retrieve the emails when requested.

Microsoft Exchange hosting is an ideal way for a business to have all the benefits of an established IT infrastructure without having the burden of setting one up and running it themselves. It is becoming more and more popular as existing hosts refine the process and improve reliability, and newer operations are springing up to offer credible competition.

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Posted in Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Hosting

Benefits of Microsoft Exchange Server

September 21st, 2009

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Exchange Server is a software package designed to make email communication fast and effective with an organization.

Email is now so intrinsic to the way we do business that many, if not most companies couldn’t work effectively without it. The vast majority of business is now conducted via email, with businesses generating hundreds of millions of them a day. All these mails have to be created, sent, received and stored somewhere, which is Exchange’s strength.

Not only is Exchange one of the most efficient email platforms in the world, it is also the most user friendly, scalable and offers a host of other applications other than email, such as calendars, contact lists, and other collaborative tools. It makes working smoother, communication quicker, and time management much more efficient.

It also has an effective security backbone that adds an extra layer of protection against spam, interception of email and other malicious attacks. Emails can be encrypted to protect company secrets, accessed via HTTPS to protect them when they are sent or received, securely stored to protect them while the company remains in compliance, then securely deleted when their life comes to an end.

The security is comprehensive though. Threats to corporate security are many and varied, and Exchange only offers a modicum of protection. Further security will be needed for total protection on the email infrastructure, such as firewalls and anti-virus.

Organizations that use Microsoft Exchange have more freedom than ever before. With remote working becoming more common, the Outlook Web Access (OWA), the cell phone interaction, and even Blackberry interfacing all offers the ability to keep in touch wherever in the world someone may be. Most of the features are available remotely such as the collaborative tools like public folders or shared calendars, email and the contact list, so any employee can function fully when out of the office.

As the Exchange platforms have developed and evolved, they have become more and more efficient. The front-end is now familiar to most users, who can now navigate it easily. The back end is more efficient, and allows for much easier troubleshooting. A comprehensive built-in maintenance package allows for technicians to find and fix problems easier than ever before. The ability to cluster Exchange means they can be scaled easily, grown with the organization and keeps downtime to a minimum. All important considerations for any business.

The improved monitoring capabilities of the platform also allow for effective pre-empting of issues, allowing engineers to take action before the event. Comprehensive logging, fault reporting and trend analysis tools built into the platform also help troubleshooting. Servers don’t always warn you when they are going to fail, so it’s vital that accurate and timely logs are retained to effective root cause analysis can be carried out.

Microsoft Exchange is one of many messaging platforms available on the market today. It is however the most comprehensive, and popular one. More emails are sent throughout the world to and from Exchange than any other platform.

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Server

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Migrating to Microsoft Exchange

September 21st, 2009

microsoftexchange

Before Microsoft Exchange became the powerhouse of communication it is today, businesses had to rely on a range of disparate systems to perform functions across the organization.

These systems didn’t always like to play nicely together or even work in the same, or a similar way. This prevented effective integration of the different features available with each product. So email would work on one system while contact lists would be managed by another, and calendaring by something else entirely.

While this gave users all of the applications they needed to communicate, they wouldn’t work together, and never offered a complete solution. When Exchange came along it was the first time users had a truly integrated system where everything was run from the same place and would work together in one seamless system.

Calendars would work with email, and contact lists could be created and used by all users directly with email. Later innovations to Exchange included voicemail, fax from desktop and other integrated tools. Third party software was also created to offer further functionality to the system, which increased usability and productivity.

While these features add a lot to the usability of a system, they also add a significant overhead to any IT budget. As good as Exchange is, one thing it isn’t, is cheap. Not only do businesses need servers to host the software on, they also need a network infrastructure and maintenance techs to keep things running.

This up front, and ongoing financial commitment is what put many businesses off using Exchange. The cost involved far outweighed the benefits for any but the largest companies, or those who could pool their resources.

Fortunately, these services are available to anyone, whatever the size of their business thanks to hosting vendors. These vendors offer an outsourced version of Exchange which provides all the benefits of the system without any of the negatives. While this may seem too good to be true, it is true.

Businesses wanting to make use of this service will pay the vendor on a per-seat basis for each user. This way there are no upfront costs, maintenance costs or anything like that. All the hardware maintenance, licensing, upgrades, network and the million other things involved in running an IT department are handled by them.

Exchange has a host of data migration tools which can make migrating from a different system much easier. The vendor should be well versed in taking care of migrating data and will have a toolset designed specifically for this task.

This means data can be copied from a non-Exchange system and migrated into Exchange, then Exchange can be brought online once the configuration is complete. This means no loss of continuity as users will have all their data and emails, and there will be no time without a system as downtime will be minimal.

Migrating to a hosted Exchange service has never been easier. It is now within reach of any business who can enjoy the benefits of the system with none of the downsides.

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Posted in Microsoft Exchange

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Features and Benefits of Microsoft Exchange

September 21st, 2009

microsoft-exchange

Microsoft Exchange was designed from the outset to be easy to maintain and manage throughout its operating lifetime. It delivers much improved communication capabilities to users while offering decent protection against outside attack.

One of the main benefits is remote access. Users no longer have to be in the office to access all the features of the system. They can be anywhere in the world with either an internet connection or a cell phone. All a users emails, calendars and contact lists can be made available no matter where they are.

Exchange, and it’s client, Outlook are now familiar throughout the world. The easy to learn, and use interface offers a single place to perform many forms of communication such as email, instant messaging, voicemail, fax and document storage. Text-to-speech features in later editions even added the option to have voicemail converted to text to read later.

Added compliance features help significantly in every organizations legal obligations to store and index email and electronic communications. It offers a secure storage facility where emails can be quickly archived, and retrieved as the various laws dictate. Exchange can also integrate with external storage mediums if space becomes an issue.

Built in spam protection features protects the infrastructure and the users from malicious or junk emails. Users won’t have to waste work time sorting through spam, or worry about viruses as the security system will check the emails before they are even delivered. Sophisticated filtering software keeps out the vast majority of junk mail without anyone even having to interact with it.

Some of the features of Exchange are;

Outlook auto-discover. This applet saves the time of the administrator by automatically configuring an account by searching for the email address input by a user and allowing access to the system. Account administration used to be one of the most time consuming jobs of any system technician.

The built-in search facility enables users to search emails and documents for a given term. This is a powerful tool, which can save a lot of time and effort when trying to retrieve an old mail or old information.

Outlook Web Access is also one of the major features of Exchange. It allows users to access their email and other tools from anywhere in the world.

Integrated encryption is also a feature of the platform. Emails can be sent and received securely using certificates. This protects the contents from malicious hackers or corporate raiders trying to gather information on an organization.

Document viewing tools enables users to view documents in all different formats directly from Outlook, even if the specific format reader isn’t installed on their machine. For example a user can read a PDF through Outlook without having Adobe Reader installed.

These few are just an overview of the features and benefits of using Microsoft Exchange. The full list would fill volumes, and would bore you long before you reached halfway. I hope these few are enough to pique enough interest to investigate further.

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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Setting up Outlook to Connect to Exchange

September 16th, 2009

microsoft_exchange_server_2010

Exchange servers are used by companies all over the world to pass messages both internally and externally. Email is now the primary method of communication in business. We send hundreds of millions of emails every day, and the vast majority of them are sent and received by Microsoft Exchange Server.

Exchange is a platform that sits on a server and co-ordinates email clients throughout an organization. It accepts emails from users, translates them into binary, packages them up and sends them to the recipient. The receiving Exchange server will unwrap the email, build it again and forward it on to the recipient. As well as email, there are also calendar and contact functions as well as Outlook web access and mobile features that allow email to be sent to laptops, cell phones and PDA’s.

Users new to Exchange may find themselves in a position of trying to configure Outlook to connect to the server. In most organizations, this will be done for you, but there are some that will leave it up to you to figure out.

That’s where we come in, this article will describe how to connect your client to an Exchange server in no time at all so you can get on with emailing in the shortest time. The process is pretty straightforward, as Outlook is often installed by default on any machine with Office. If your machine doesn’t have Office either, Outlook Express may be there.

So, click Start then Control Panel then Mail. See? Easy so far. Select Email Accounts and then Add New Email Account and then Next. Choose the Microsoft Exchange Server then hit Next.

Here you have some options for which you need information. You will need the address of the Exchange server. If this hasn’t been provided for you, ask a colleague and copy their settings. Depending on how things are set up this may be enough to get you going.

You need to input the Exchange Server address, this is often something like “mail.company.com”, but can in fact be anything. You will also need to input your username and password, which the administrator will need to provide you. It may be different than your system login, but give it a try if you don’t have the details.

Once you have input the information, the application should do a quick check to ensure the details are correct then return it’s version of your email address. Once this happens click Finish.

Outlook should now chug away a bit and start downloading your emails and email settings. It will also install any corporate signatures, calendar events, contact books and rules. Depending on the organization, this could take a little while, but can be done in the background.

That is all there is to it. IT support may make a big deal out of setting you up with the connection, but once your account has been created in Exchange, the rest is easy.

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Posted in Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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Getting Exchange email on your iPhone

September 16th, 2009

exchange

Whatever your feelings about the iPhone, it has become a popular gadget to many people. What some don’t know is that you can configure a corporate exchange server to push email to it, just like a Blackberry as long as it runs the version 2.0 software.

You can then access calendars, contacts and emails on the move, on the iPhone.

To do this you will need the Exchange Server to be at least 2003 with service pack 2, or of course Exchange 2007. The servers will need to have a current, valid digital certificate for this to work.

Firstly we need to configure the server in order for it to push the email and allow access to contacts and the calendar. To do this we use ActiveSync to keep the iPhone updated. Without a valid digital certificate the phone will refuse the connection, which is why it’s vital here to have one.

If you use an ISA server, it must allow ActiveSync traffic through the network to the Exchange gateway. There is a test tool that comes with ActiveSync which can test the transmission through the network to ensure that packets can pass freely to Exchange. Test this a few times to ensure the path is clear.

Next is the firewall. The default port for Exchange traffic is port 25. You will need to allow traffic through the SSL port 443 and have it forwarded to the Exchange gateway. This again is to allow the ActiveSync traffic through the network to Exchange.

As you can see we are slowly building the highway through the network, working outwards. This is often the easiest way of making network changes in any environment. You are within the firewall up until the last change, which offers maximum protection until you open the door.

Once you can verify that traffic can pass freely through port 443 on the firewall to the Exchange infrastructure, and that the ISA server if you have one lets the traffic through, its time to configure the iPhone.

The iPhone has a list of mail services on it which should include Microsoft Exchange. Selects it then proceed through the configuration, inputting your email address, username and password. These details will be the same ones you use when logging in at the office. The iPhone will then auto discover the server, and will most likely fail doing so.

The next screen will ask you for the name of the Exchange server, but you will want to input the name of your corporate firewall. You can’t connect directly to the Exchange server from outside the network without passing through the firewall first.

This should allow you to connect, and you should then be prompted as to what you want to synchronize and how much mail you want to store on the phone. Once finished making decisions, press the Sync button and let the phone do its thing.

That’s all there is to it, pretty straightforward, and iPhone users can now access Outlook functions from anywhere in the world.

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Hosting

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Exchange 2003 The Top Five Mistakes in Configuration

September 16th, 2009

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Microsoft Exchange 2003 was the most deployed messaging system worldwide. There are literally billions of emails that travel through Exchange servers each week, and hundreds of thousands of Exchange servers to do the processing.

When building or deploying Exchange 2003 there are five easy mistakes to make when configuring the system. As an ex-IT engineer, I can describe them here, and tell you where you went wrong. While this list is by no means exhaustive, these are the most “popular” mistakes I have seen in my ten year career.

The first is not forwarding Port 25. In larger organizations this means talking to a network team. This port must be forwarded, or an alternative port allocated and configured for mail use. Firewalls and any DMZ routers must be configured to forward all port 25 traffic to the Exchange cluster in order for mail to work. If another port is specified it should only be internally as external messaging servers will send mail to the default port.

The second error is Improper reverse DNS. Reverse DNS is a useful anti-spam tool that is enabled by default on Exchange. Each message server of any type needs to be able to identify itself to other Exchange servers in order to reduce spam. If this is improperly configured, outgoing mail may be refused as junk and deleted. Both the forward DNS and reverse DNS should ideally resolve to the same address.

The third error is connection filtering that isn’t set up. Server 2003 and upwards has a connection filtering feature which is like a spam block list. It holds a list of “blacklisted” spam IP addresses which it compares the incoming email against. If this isn’t configured properly then one defense against spam is wasted. In the battle against junk mail, you need to use every weapon in the arsenal to protect your messaging network.

Fourth is incorrect MX records. MX records are held by a web host and specifies the DNS record of the server which accepts incoming email. If this has been configured with an IP instead of a hostname, or points to the wrong host, then email isn’t going to get through. This record needs to be the gateway mail server that sits on the edge of the network.

Last, but certainly not least is not having deleted item recovery set up. Deleted item recovery is an exchange tool that allows users to try an recover items they deleted. This saves time by letting the user do it themselves instead of calling on an administrator to recover it from storage. With a large user base, this is essential if you want to keep support costs down.

While these aren’t the only errors made when configuring an Exchange server or cluster, they are by far the most common. Fortunately they are also the easiest to remedy if you have administrator access to the system, and network, or know someone who does.

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Hosting

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