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Like last year Microsoft TechNet Denmark is playing Santa with a Christmas calendar quiz. On all weekdays in December, you can test your Microsoft knowledge in a daily for danish IT professionals and I have the honor of delivering and host a few questions.

The game:

Every morning (on weekdays) at 9 am (+1 GMT) during December, Bjarne Dollerup from Microsoft will introduce one of the Danish MVP’s or TechNet Influencer on his blog, and share a link to the blog, that will host the daily question.

All you need to do, to win the prize, is to be the first to the answer the question, and send it to the mail address specified right below the question. Answers to all questions should be available on the TechNet website and Bjarnes blog.

The first to send the correct answer to the mail address specified in the blog post, will win one of the great “geek” prizes sponsored by Microsoft, so don’t forget to let us know how to get in touch with you, and where we should send the prize if you win…

Important to note:

The quiz does not start until it has been publicly announced by Bjarne, so there is no need to start sending mails until it’s been announced…

Merry Christmas!

Here are some field notes from a recent Lync 2010 issue.

The Lync administrator encountered this this error: “Insufficient access rights to perform the operation” when trying to open the Lync Server 2010 Control Panel.

It is a fairly known issue and relates to the AdminSDHolder Elevation Issue as we known on Exchange 2010, see blog post: Exchange 2010 and Resolution of the AdminSDHolder Elevation Issue.

The Lync administrator tried to update the phone attribute of the Lync user and receive the following error:

Active Directory operations failed on "lyncfe.server.local".  You cannot retry this operation: "Insufficient access rights to perform the operation 00002098: SecErr: DSID-03150E8A, problem 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS), data 0"

The resolution is to open the user account using Active Directory Users and Computers.

Remember to turn on Advanced Features in AD Users and Computers.

Locate the user and select the security tab, click advanced and select "Include Inheritable Permissions from this object's parent" on the user object:

Now you should be able to change the Lync settings for this user.

A few weeks ago I presented at Microsoft Campus Days 2011 in Copenhagen. Now most of the presentations from the event, is available for download from the Microsoft Campus Days Mesh Site. Download the presentations here.

Recordings of the breakout sessions are still in production, and should be available for download on the Danish TechNet Edge site within a few weeks. I’ll post an update here when I see them online…

Looking forward to see you all again at Campus Days 2012.

Here are some field notes from a recent Exchange 2010 Retention and Archive case. We had to get data back from the Online Archive and back into the users mailbox, to it’s original location.

There are several ways of getting data back from an Exchange Online Archiving into the Mailbox of the user. One way is having the user copy the data back manually from his/her archive into their inbox using drag and drop.

Another way, which is described in this post – is to do it centrally on the Exchange 2010 Server using the New-MailboxExportRequest and New-MailboxImportRequest PowerShell commands.

To get statistics about the Archive content, see my blog post: Exchange 2010 Archive Mailbox Statistics PowerShell script.

Permissions to use the cmdlets

Make sure you have the permissions to run the Export and Import cmdlets.

Run the Exchange Management Shell elevated as Administrator

If your account does not have permissions to run the New-MailboxExportRequest and New-MailboxImportRequest cmdlets, then run the follow RBAC command:

New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role "Mailbox Import Export" –User Domain\AdminAccount

Export the archive to a PST file

The mailbox used in the example below is “IT”.

Run the following cmdlet to Export the Online Archive of the mailbox IT to a PST file located on a fileshare:

New-MailboxExportRequest –Mailbox IT  -IsArchive -FilePath \\fileshare\PST\ITarchive.pst

It is important to remember the parameter “-IsArchvie” which states that it is the online archive of the IT mailbox that gets exported.

Check status of the Export using the cmdlet:

Get-MailboxExportRequest

Import the exported PST file into the mailbox

The mailbox used in the example below is still “IT”.

Run the following cmdlet to Import the PST file (containing the Online Archive) into the IT mailbox and to the original location of the content:

New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox IT -FilePath \\fileshare\PST\ITarchive.pst

If you want to import the content of the PST file into e.g. a specific folder within the mailbox, use this command instead:

New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox IT -FilePath \\fileshare\PST\ITarchive.pst -TargetRootFolder "RecoveredFiles"

Check status of the Export using the cmdlet:

Get-MailboxImportRequest

Reference information about using Export and Import cmdlets

Here is some reference information about using those cmdlets below:

• A look at the Import/Export Mailbox improvements in Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 (Part 1)
• A look at the Import/Export Mailbox improvements in Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 (Part 2)
• TechNet: MailboxImportRequest
• TechNet: MailboxExportRequest
• Date range exports with new mailboxexportrequest

Last week I had the honor of presenting at Microsoft Campus Days 2011 in Copenhagen.

The session topic was about Exchange 2010 and integration with Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) and Forefront Protection for Exchange (FPE).

The session was recorded (In Danish) and will be available from Microsoft soon. I will post a link to the recording when it is available.

For now I have made the slides (PowerPoint) for you…

Session P14: Exchange 2010 and Forefront Online
Download slides here from my Skydrive.

Here are some field notes from a recent Exchange 2010 Retention and Archive case.

I have made a simple Exchange 2010 PowerShell script Get-ArchivedMBStats.ps1, that shows mailbox statistics for all mailboxes that have Online Archive enabled. It is great for following the progress of archiving of individual mailboxes.

The output of the script is the following information about each mailbox with archive enabled:

• Mailbox Display Name
• Mailbox TotalItemSize (MB)
• Mailbox ItemCount
• Mailbox Database
• Mailbox RetentionPolicy
• Archive Display Name
• Archive TotalItemSize (MB)
• Archive ItemCount
• Archive Database
  The output is show as:

  Display Name    TotalItemSize (MB)   ItemCount    Database      RetentionPolicy
  ————    —————–    ———    ——–      —————
  Peter Schmidt                 147         3572      EXDB01    Default Archive..
  Online Archive – Pet…       430         4798      ARDB01

Here is the code (download as zip at the end of the article):

###########################################################################
#
# NAME: Get-ArchivedMBStats.ps1
#
# AUTHOR: Peter Schmidt
# EMAIL: peter@msdigest.net
#
# COMMENT: Shows all mailboxes that are enabled for Online Archvie in Exchange 2010. Output shows both Mailbox and Archived Mailbox statistics.
#
# You have a royalty-free right to use, modify, reproduce, and
# distribute this script file in any way you find useful, provided that
# you agree that the creator, owner above has no warranty, obligations,
# or liability for such use.
#
# VERSION HISTORY:
# 1.0 2011.09.29 - Initial release
#
# OUTPUT EXAMPLE:
#	Display Name                 TotalItemSize (MB)               ItemCount Database                RetentionPolicy
#	------------                 ------------------               --------- --------                ---------------
#	Peter Schmidt                               147                    3572 EXDB01                  Default Archive and ...
#	Online Archive - Pet...                     430                    4798 ARDB01
#
# HOW TO RUN:
#	.\Get-ArchivedMBStats.ps1 | ft
#
# INPUTS:
#	None. You cannot pipe objects to this script.
#
###########################################################################

$combCollection = @()

Write-Host "`nPlease wait...`n"

$archiveMailboxes = Get-Mailbox | where {$_.ArchiveDatabase -ne $null} | Select Identity, RetentionPolicy

ForEach ($mbx in $archiveMailboxes)
{
	$mbxStats = Get-MailboxStatistics $mbx.Identity | Select DisplayName, TotalItemSize, ItemCount, Database
	$archiveStats = Get-MailboxStatistics $mbx.Identity -Archive | Select DisplayName, TotalItemSize, ItemCount, Database

	$mbcomb = "" | Select "Display Name", "TotalItemSize (MB)", ItemCount, Database, RetentionPolicy
	$archcomb = "" | Select "Display Name", "TotalItemSize (MB)", ItemCount, Database

	$mbcomb."Display Name" = $mbxStats.DisplayName
	$mbcomb."TotalItemSize (MB)" = [math]::round($mbxStats.TotalItemSize.Value.ToMB(), 2)
	$mbcomb.ItemCount = $mbxStats.ItemCount
	$mbcomb.Database = $mbxStats.Database
	$mbcomb.RetentionPolicy = $mbx.RetentionPolicy
	$archcomb."Display Name" = $archiveStats.DisplayName
	$archcomb."TotalItemSize (MB)" = [math]::round($archiveStats.TotalItemSize.Value.ToMB(), 2)
	$archcomb.ItemCount = $archiveStats.ItemCount
	$archcomb.Database = $archiveStats.Database

	$combCollection += $mbcomb
	$combCollection += $archcomb
	$combCollection += "`n"
}
write-output $combCollection
Write-Host "`nList of archived mailboxes done...`n" -Foregroundcolor Green

Download script here: Get-ArchivedMBStats.ps1.zip

As a consultant I often test SMTP connectors on Exchange. 

There are several ways of doing this. There is the good old way of using telnet, ExchangePro has a great article describing the Telnet way of testing you SMTP connection:

• http://exchangeserverpro.com/how-to-send-email-via-telnet

The other way of testing if a SMTP connector works on Exchange (2007/2010), could be using PowerShell. In PowerShell 2.0 there is a builtin cmdlet cmdlet: Send-MailMessage

You can run the following command in PowerShell to do some mail testing:

Send-MailMessage –From sender@testserverdomain.com –To recipient@recipientdomain.com –Subject “Test Email” –Body “Test E-mail (body)” -SmtpServer smtpserver.fqdndomain.local

This only works for PowerShell V2, since the command is now builtin.

Here is some notes from a recent issue error, I encountered at a client, doing a decommission of some Exchange 2007 servers.

We had followed the best practices for moving Public Folder database content to new Public Folder databases. But still could not remove the Public Folder databases on some of the Exchange 2007 servers.

The best practices for removing a Public Folder database is:

1. Move the public folder replicas to another server. See my previous post about Public Folder replica management.

2. Associate mailbox databases with another public folder database.

3. Remove the PF database and delete the database files manually.

This error you might see in step 3, when trying to remove the Public Folder database is:

——————————————————–
Microsoft Exchange Error
——————————————————–
The public folder database ‘Public Folder Database’ cannot be deleted.

Public Folder Database
Failed
Error:
The public folder database "SERVERNAME\Second Storage Group\Public Folder Database" contains folder replicas. Before deleting the public folder database, remove the folders or move the replicas to another public folder database. For detailed instructions about how to remove a public folder database, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=81409.

——————————————————–
OK
——————————————————–

If you have followed the best practices and you still cannot remove the Public Folder, check which folders still reside in the database, using:

Get-PublicFolderStatistics –Server SERVERNAME

 

If the folders left are folders you care about, you should continue troubleshooting replication issues. But if the folders are leftover that you know have been replicated or if it is system folders, such as OWAScratchPad, you can remove them using:

Get-PublicFolderStatistics –Server SERVERNAME | Remove-PublicFolder

 

Be careful with the above command, since it removes everything left within your Public Folder database.

Now you should be able to Remove the Public Folder database from you Exchange 2007 server.

Other great references on the issue:

• http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2007/11/13/3404348.aspx
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2007/07/09/3403373.aspx