Sathish Veerapandian

Author Archives: Sathish Veerapandian

SysTools – Exchange EDB Recovery Software

Exchange2013, Monitoring Tools April 20, 2014 Comments: 4

I just found this amazing exchange database recovery software developed by SysTools and I would like to share the functionality of this tool.

SysTools is a company delivers innovative software applications to enhance the lives of millions of IT Admins and computer users around the globe.

About Exchange recovery software (SysTools)

By using this software the email contents of single user ,multiple users can be extracted from a corrupted exchange database (edb,stm) file.

The emails can be extracted in the form of PST’s (even split pst’s), message format, eml format and also emails from damaged edb files can be directly imported into an active Exchange mailbox.

Even though if we maintain a proper exchange backup in a healthy environment there is a lean possibility in scenarios where the Exchange admin would be totally running out of options if the backup is not healthy,and the edb files are no longer recoverable.This software can be used in those kind of scenarios.

Also this tool can also be used in recovering the emails from a (older edb file/older backup ) in scenarios where their exchange environment is no longer existing or they have transitioned to new version of exchange.

Below is the installation and functionality of this tool

This tool can be run on environments which has Exchange 2003,2007,2010 & 2013.

Prerequisites

We just need to have .net 2.0 installed on the member server where we are going to install this tool. However even though if we do not install .net 2.0 manually this tool automatically detects ,downloads and installs during the installation.

IMP: We need to have Outlook 2007/2010 installed on the PC where we are installing this tool.

And of course we need to have the edb files from which we need to extract the PST

Below is the installation procedure

1) Download the setup from the below link.

http://www.systoolsgroup.com/exchange-recovery.html

2) Open the setup and click install

3) Installation is pretty simple and just navigate through the setup one by one.

4) There is an option to create desktop icon and quick launch as well.

Once the installation is completed launch systools Exchange Recovery software.You might get the below error if there is any of the following prerequisites missing.As I mentioned earlier we need to have an Outlook profile configured on the PC where we are installing this tool.

Also we need to have outlook component which needs to be registered. When you click on details you have an option to register the outlook component and you will get the below message once done.

Now let’s explore the functionality of this tool.

Launch Systools.

It opens a window and asks for the associated edb file which needs to be opened.

Open the EDB file from associated location.

Once the file is selected we get the below screen if the scan of edb is successful.

Now we get below option after we click on ok.

It displays all the mailboxes with sub-folders,calendars,contacts which are present in the edb file.

Also we have an option to view all the emails on the right hand preview side.

You can click on the export option and it displays the below limitation for demo version.

Click on ok and then it displays the below screen with the following options.

Option 1 : Exports the emails into PST. There is an option for split pst’s as well.

Option 2 : Exports emails in the MSG format. We can export individual emails as well.

Option 3 : Exports emails in the EML format.

Option 4 : Directly exports email to an active Exchange mailbox.

Note : The user account running systools should be having full access to the mailbox where we are going to export the emails if we are choosing option 4.

Choose the required method of export and once the export is completed we get the below screen.

As a final result we also get a report generated.

When we open the report we get the list of mailboxes exported nothing much information.

Though this report gives info about the list of mailboxes exported it could be better if there is few more additional information like number of mailbox items imported successfully and number of failed items as well.

This tool is available in 2 versions as demo as well as full version. The demo version is restricted to 25 items per folder in a mailbox. The full version does not have any restrictions in exporting the emails as well as in the size of edb files.

Overall this tool will be really useful for scenarios where we do not have an option to recover an edb file due to required log files missing, in-case of backup failure and finally in recovering emails from a database for a environment which is no longer existing.

Changes in msexchangemailboxreplication.exe.config file from Exchange 2013 SP1

Exchange2013, General Information April 18, 2014 Leave a comment

I just happened to check maximum active moves per server before starting the migration batch for one of our client who is running Exchange 2013 SP1 and was excited to see the values increased from the earlier versions.

The XML file is located in the same bin directory as it was in Exchange 2013 CU3

<Exchange Installation Path>\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\

The interesting part is that we don’t need to increase the values of these anymore. Because they have increased the numbers to more than sufficient value while comparing from Exchange 2013 CU3 . Also I don’t think there should be any problem if we modify this XML file.

Values till Exchange 2013 CU3.

Values in Exchange 2013 SP1.

MaxActiveMovesPerTargetServer=”100″

MaxActiveMovesPerSourceServer=”100″

MaxActiveMovesPerTargetMDB=”20″

MaxActiveMovesPerSourceMDB=”20″

MaxMoveHistoryLength=”5″ RetryDelay=”00:00:30”

This is really a great stuff which has been modified from Exchange 2013 SP1 which reduces the time of modifying the config file during Batch Migrations.

Steps to Disable Managed Availability in Exchange 2013 for few Health Checks

Exchange2013, Managed Availability April 17, 2014 Leave a comment

Managed availability is one of the best feature which is been introduced and it’s an excellent feature from Exchange 2013.By using this feature it’s very easy for monitoring the Exchange servers without adding any monitoring software pack like SCOM and few more.

In addition to this it also has the capability to resolve the issues by its own if it finds something wrong on any of the Exchange Functionality. Also it drops an email to the Health mailbox and specified mailbox (administrators) if in case the solution is unidentified by Managed Availability.

In a real time scenario it’s very useful in monitoring the Exchange servers in all aspects and definitely reduces the impact of the exchange servers from any disaster by its own. There can be few scenarios where there can be additional monitoring software’s installed on the servers and in those cases we can disable the Managed Availability if at all we do not need the report to be generated twice for the same alert.

Also in case for few servers in environment which is running on low memory this feature can be disabled since it queries, polls hundreds of health metrics as it could consume extra memory.

It collects few logs and data by default which is present in the below location which occupies some disk space depending upon each environment which should be considered for low hard disk space servers as well.

Below is the location.

<Exchange Install Drive>program files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\Diagnostics\DailyPerformanceLogs

I just explored in this part and I found there is an option to disable this monitoring totally as well as for few parameters too for which we think we don’t need the monitoring to happen.

The reason why we need to consider disabling this for few parameters can be because it can generate alerts for some known errors that we are trying to rectify in the environment and it can generate the alerts and create associated logs in the event viewer as well.We can just disable only those parameters until we find solution for them.

The core service involved in this functionality is the Microsoft Exchange health Manager. You can disable this service if at all there is any SCOM pack installed on the server and you are satisfied with those reports.

Note: By Disabling this service will stop the whole monitoring functionality of the Managed Availability.

You can also disable the scheduled tasks Exchangediagonosticsdailyperformancelog & Exchangediagonosticsperformancelog which is running under the Task scheduler.

Open location \Microsoft\Windows\PLA in Task Scheduler and disable both of them

Note: By Disabling this scheduled tasks will stop the whole monitoring functionality of the Managed Availability

If you need Managed Availability to be working with few exceptional like not to monitor for few parameters we can also do that by setting those values to false so that monitoring will not happen for them.

Below is an example for disabling the probe monitors for Autodiscover probe

Navigate to the below location and select client access proxytest.xml file and open them with the notepad.

We just need to set the value for Autodiscoverprobeenabled value to false from true

Save the ClientAccessProxyTest.xml and close it.
Restart Microsoft Exchange Health Manager and you will not receive probe alerts for the value that you have set to false.

Note:

It’s not recommended to disable the Managed Availability until and unless there is any specific reason to be done because we will be losing this excellent monitoring feature available in Exchange 2013 at no additional cost.

Exchange Server Mailbox Statistics Report Tool

Exchange2013, Monitoring Tools April 14, 2014 Comments: 2

Managing the Exchange Servers in storage capacity is little bit difficult for administrators when the server gets older and older and when new users keeps adding in the list.

Even if there is any daily monitoring report for mail flow, databases, disk space monitoring and everything still it’s difficult for administrators to monitor the end users having lot of old emails still in their inbox,sent items,subfolders which occupies lot of space.

It could be better if there is any kind of statistics report that can pull out the number mailbox items, oldest messages for all user so that we can ask the users to move old items to their PST archives.

There are lot of scripts which are available in the internet which can be run on the mailbox server,DB’s to pull out these information.

I just found this excellent Tool developed by author Srinath Sadda and its available in the TechNet gallery for download.

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Exchange-Server-Mailbox-7dd53529

The interesting part about this tool is that it doesn’t need power shell or EMS.Its a GUI based tool which can be run manually whenever required.

Note: This tool can be run for a single mailbox, particular database as well as for all mailboxes in a server.

I just tested in my lab and its working fine and below are the results.

Downloaded the tool from the TechNet gallery (source file link above ) and installed.

Once the installation is completed open the tool and you will get the below screen.

Now we need to specify the DC,Exchange server and DB’s .If we select retrieve it fetches the above information automatically. Select the oldest and newest items accordingly and click on perform mailbox search.

Finally once the report is completed you can click on the report viewer.

Below is the final report status.

We have option to send this report through email as well.

Apart from this we have multiple options like searching for mailbox globally that are hidden from GAL, Number of Disabled mailboxes ,Mailbox Type few more options.

This tool is very useful in terms of monitoring the Mailbox statistics for individual users as well as all users.

Good for Enterprise Overview and Introduction

Good For Enterprise, Mobility April 4, 2014 Leave a comment

Good for Enterprise™, is a Good Technology product offered from AT&T.

Provides wireless synchronization of corporate emails outside the network.

Compatible with Android, IOS , Windows phone and palm mobiles.

Users can access and send their emails on the go through encrypted security without any data leakage.

Good works with integration of Exchange server through an service account authenticated.

Good for Enterprise further integrates with Good-secured apps such as Good Share™ and Good Connect™ to extend desk-based collaboration to mobile devices, increasing user efficiency and productivity outside of the office through ssl.

Good for Enterprise is built on Good’s next-gen containerization, which enables secure data sharing between Good-secured apps as well as app-level encryption independent of the device used In the event a device is lost or stolen, business data can be wiped or locked without impacting personal data

For example, IT can prevent employees from opening files in unsecured apps, backing up business data to personal cloud-based services, or copying and pasting business content into consumer apps or personal email.

Data transmitted over the air, and at rest on devices is secured with industry-leading FIPS-validated AES encryption. There is no need to change firewall settings or set up new inbound connections—all Good servers are deployed behind the firewall with a secure outbound connection using standard port 443. More importantly, Good’s Network Operations Center verifies device compliance before devices are allowed to connect to Good’s inside-the-firewall server.

Below table explains the complete feature of the Good compatible with the various versions of Devices.

Good Enterprise Administration

Good for Enterprise helps accelerate mobility adoption by including integrated device and application management capabilities, giving you complete control over your mobile deployment.

From a central, web-based console, you have full visibility of your entire device fleet. You can provision new devices; enforce security policies, and remote wipe enterprise data or the entire device from a single location.

Good Architecture

Good for Enterprise provides automatic synchronization of email, calendar, and contacts, notes the user’s Microsoft Exchange Server account and iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, or Nokia handheld.

Good Mobile Messaging Server software monitors the user’s Exchange account and forwards all account activity to the user’s handheld via the Network Operations Center and your wireless network.

Similarly, changes made at the handheld travel over the wireless network, and are returned from the Network Operations Center to Exchange via Good Mobile Messaging Server. The email arrives at both the user’s desktop and handheld, available to be read, forwarded, and replied to from either location.

A user can have his/her Outlook account synchronized to multiple handhelds

In a simple way lets have a look at the below example

There are 2 users User A and User B

User A has mobile account configured with Good

When user A sends email to User B mailbox below is the transaction result

Scenario 1:

User A sends email from mobile -> mail goes through wireless N\w -> Mail reaches Good operations Center -> Reaches our corporate firewall -> updates Good Messaging server -> Reaches MIcrosoft Exchange -> Finally reaches users outlook

Scenario 2:

When User B sends email from his outlook to User A

User B sends email from OUtlook -> Mail goes to Microsoft Exchange -> Reaches Onpremise Good Messaging Server -> Goes through internet -> Updates the Good Operations centre

More Similar it uses the same concept of RIM in BlackBerry Enterprise Servers.

Multiple Exchange and Good Mobile Messaging Servers

Good Mobile Messaging Server can maintain user accounts on multiple Exchange servers.

Good Mobile Control Server uses the Exchange Global Address List (GAL) to list, monitor, and manage handheld users across sites. The console is used to assign handhelds to users and to monitor and manage Good Mobile Messaging Servers.

If you have thousands of handheld users, you may need to install additional Good Mobile Messaging Servers to handle the synchronization tasks. Each new Good Mobile Messaging Server will need to be installed on a separate machine

When configuring Good Mobile Messaging Server to connect with an Exchange Server, the speed of the network connection must be a sustained minimum rate of at least 100Mb/s

In the next coming mobility blog i will further discuss about the installation of the GOOD Enterprise Servers in the Exchange 2010/2013 Environment.

Mobile Iron Overview

Mobile Iron, Mobility March 31, 2014 1 Comment

About Mobile Iron

The company Mobile Iron Inc., is headquartered in California

The company was founded by Ajay Mishra, Suresh Batchu and Bob Tinker, 2007. Tinker is current president and CEO of the company, Batchu is CTO.

What do they do?

They are the Manufacturer of solutions for Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) for the management of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers as well as the content and software distribution for these devices across the Messaging enterprise of an organization.

What is Mobile Device management (MDM)?

Mobile Device Management is a term used in information technology and stands for the centralized management of mobile devices such as smartphones, sub-notebooks , PDAs or tablet computer by one or more administrators with the aid of software. The management refers to the inventory of hardware in organizations that software and data distribution, and the protection of data on these devices. Because these devices via cellular / WLAN contact with the company network, and problems of wireless management must are dissolved.

What is Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)?

Enterprise mobility management (EMM) is the set of people, processes and technology focused on managing the increasing array of mobile devices, wireless networks, and related services to enable broad use of mobile computing in a business context. This is an emerging discipline within the enterprise that has become increasingly important over the past few years as more workers have bought smartphone and tablet computing devices and have sought support for using these devices in the workplace.

The main challenges of determining the right enterprise mobility strategy for an organization is to relate the available mobile IT to the overall purpose of the work conducted, to determine how closely the business process should be aligned to the mobile IT, and how to support mobile workers when they are using these devices in the workplace.

Confused about MDM and EMM?

Let’s compare the difference between MDM and EMM.

MDM – Is used for managing the software installed on the mobile devices and if any new mobile devices trying to activate it checks whether it meets the MDM policy configured. It has the list of permissible and non-permissible software’s/applications that can be used in the corporate mobile devices.

EMM – Is used to add/ remove users in Mobile Iron.

This MDM feature in Mobile iron can be administered and monitored in 3 ways.

VSP (Virtual Smart Phones)

Sentry Servers

Atlas servers

What is VSP?

The Mobile Iron Virtual Smartphone Platform (“VSP”) is the central hub of the Mobile Iron solution. It may be deployed as a physical hardware appliance or as a virtual appliance using VMware ESX or Hyper-V. The VSP interfaces with the Mobile Iron application and enterprise resources such as LDAP, Exchange ActiveSync, certificate authorities.

So in a simple term it is just acts as an interface between mobile iron server and Microsoft Exchange. Nothing more involved in VSP apart from interface.

What is Mobile Iron Sentry?

Mobile Iron Centry provides access control for email. Sentry connects to Microsoft ActiveSync-enabled email systems such as Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, Google Gmail, and Microsoft Office 365. Like the VSP, it may be deployed as a physical hardware appliance or a virtual appliance using VMware ESX. Mobile Iron Sentry is included in the Mobile Iron Advanced Management package, though the hardware appliance is sold separately.

In a Simple term Mobile Iron Centry acts as a security control and gives access control, authentication to connect to any messaging servers and access the data from them. So centry authenticates and connects to the messaging platforms whereas VSP is just an interface.

How to access VSP – https://serverfqdn/admin

What is Atlas?

Mobile Iron Atlas is an advanced management and reporting console that provides highly scalable administration, reporting, monitoring, and troubleshooting across the Mobile IT lifecycle. Atlas collects information on device and application metrics and status, identifies potential issues, and provides actionable insights that enable an administrator to assess critical information and apply corrective steps. Atlas is a part of the Mobile Iron Advanced Mobile Management product.

Below screenshots are examples of Atlas consoles

Administration part in Mobile Iron:

Issues related to the Mobile Iron VSP can be separated into two categories:

Admin Portal

System Manager

Admin Portal

Helps in user reporting user deleting mobile iron profile, user deleting mobile iron app, unable to download mobile iron app. 99 percent In Most cases device needs to be retired and reregistered from Mobile Iron.

System Manager

After installation, most configuration tasks are performed in the System Manager portion of the Mobile Iron Admin Portal. The System Manager enables you to: Complete the configuration steps necessary to implement the Mobile Iron VSP, manage basic network settings established during installation, manage how Mobile Iron fits into your infrastructure, upgrade the VSP, troubleshoot VSP issues and perform basic maintenance tasks.

So we do not need to have access system manager always especially for Help-desk team as it has all the configuration change that needs to be done which will not be required for user management tasks.

Comparing the differences between Antispam agents from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013

Antispam, Exchange2013 March 21, 2014 Leave a comment

Microsoft has built in Anti spam feature which can be enabled from Exchange 2003 versions. We can enable this feature as a part of additional security along with additional spam configurations and settings that have been configured before it reaches our network.

But we need to always ensure that we are aware of all the settings configured in the spam filtering in our organization in all the levels as it can interrupt the end users in sending and receiving emails if this configuration is not correct.

In this article we will be looking at how about Anti spam features in Exchange 2013 and its features

Now we will look at how to enable the Anti spam feature in Exchange 2013

By default the Anti spam agents are installed in Exchange 2013 if enable Anti spam option during the time of installation. Else we need to install them after the installation.

In Exchange 2010 the Anti-spam will be enabled on the HUB & Edge servers.

In Exchange 2013 we need to enable Anti-spam agents in the Mailbox servers since the transport categorization takes place on mailbox server.

From Exchange 2013 SP1 we have edge servers in which we can enable the Anti-spam agents as well.

The installation of the Exchange Anti-spam agents is the same step as we do it for Exchange 2010.

We just need to navigate to the exchange installation path directory and navigate to below location and install the Exchange Anti-spam.

Once the Anti-spam is installed we need to restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service for the changes to take effect.

After we restart the transport service we can run Get-Transport agent and see if Exchange Anti-spam agents are installed.

We can further have a look at this by pipe-lining the output

Now comparing the differences between anti-spam agents in Exchange 2010 and 2013.

This is the output of the Exchange Anti-spam installed on Exchange 2010.

This is the output of the Exchange Anti-spam installed on Exchange 2013.

When we compare the Exchange Anti-spam agents between Exchange 2010 and 2013 we can see in Exchange 2013 there is a new transport agent component called Malware agent which is been introduced. This is a built in Antimalware protection for on premise which can be enabled for additional security.

Also we can notice that the connection filtering agent is not present in Exchange 2013 mailbox servers and they are present in the Edge transport servers since the connection can be decided and filtered at the perimeter level itself.

Once after we enable this Anti-spam agents there will be a default Anti-spam created as we can modify them through EAC as well as shown below.

In addition to the default malware policy we can always create custom policies as per our requirement and assign to our organization. There are more parameters which can be altered. Below is an example.

This Exchange Anti-spam feature is a global level feature which cannot be altered server level and group level.

It’s always better to download antimalware engine and definition updates from Microsoft Download Engine and Definition Updates to keep the Anti-Spam Features up to date.

Steps to enable intraorgprotocollogginglevel in Exchange 2013

Connectors, Exchange2013 March 13, 2014 Comments: 2

Intraorgconnectors are the connectors used for the communication for the internal Hub servers from Legacy servers as well as from the same version of hub servers for communications between different Sites,shadow redundancy and safety net.

We can enable this protocol logs at the time of troubleshooting in scenarios where there is mail flow issues happening between Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013 and mailflow between sites .

In Exchange 2013 since the hub role is removed and split into 3 transport services it can be enabled only on the transport service running on mailbox server.

Now we will see how to enable this option

Run below command to see if the intraorgprotocollogginglevel is enabled or disabled

Get-Transportservice “mbx2013servername” |fl*intra*.

Run the below command to enable verbose logging in intraorg connector

Set-Transportservice CAS2013servername –intraorgprotocollogginglevel verbose

Below path is the location where we can see the logs recorded.

<installationdrive\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Mailbox\Connectivity

Now let’s send an email from Exchange 2010 server and see the output of the results

Test email sent from Exchange 2010 user to Exchange 2013 user

As soon as the email is sent from Exchange 2010 to 2013 you can see a separate queue created with Hub version 15 as shown below.

This is again a good place for us to note in case of scenarios where mailflow not happening between Exchange 2007/2010 and 2013 and mailflow issues between hub transport servers and sites. It can give us few more information in the last error state.

Below is the email received by Exchange 2013 user .

Now when you open the logs and below is the result of a successful transaction

This will be helpful in troubleshooting mailflow between Exchange 2007/2010 and 2013 servers.

Pipeline Tracing in Exchange 2013

Exchange2013, Pipeline Tracing March 10, 2014 Leave a comment

Pipeline tracing is one of the best feature which is available from Exchange 2007.

Like in Earlier versions of Exchange prior Exchange 2007 we used Microsoft Tool archive sink which we need to download and install them manually on the Exchange 2003/2000 servers. Also the main disadvantage of using this tool is unlike Exchange 2007/2010 & 2013 we do not have an option to enable it only for a particular affected user. Rather than it enables for the whole Exchange users and finally it fills up the drive space.

In this article we will be looking in working with Pipeline Tracing in Exchange 2013

In Exchange 2007/2010 we used to enable pipeline tracing on Exchange Hub Transport Servers and the Message snapshots are stored in the Hub Servers.

Now in Exchange 2013 where do we enable them? Is it Mailbox or CAS servers?

Answer is we enable them in Mailbox servers. The reason being why is because Microsoft Exchange Transport Service which is running in Mailbox server is the core component of Categorization and it takes care of the Message categorization where it processes the message in different phases and this is the right place for us to take the Message Snap Shots.

Now we will look into how to enable Pipeline Tracing in Exchange 2013

Pipeline Tracing can be enabled only Via Shell and there is no GUI option available right from Exchange 2007 and it’s continued same in Exchange 2013

1) Open Exchange Management Shell in Exchange 2013

Type in the below command to enable Pipeline Tracing First,

Set-TransportService Exchange2013 -PipelineTracingEnabled $true

Once we enable the pipeline tracing you will be getting the below warning message. You can safely ignore this alert and proceed with the next step.

Now we need to enable pipeline tracing for the affected user (sender) with below command.

Set-TransportService Exchange2013 -PipelineTracingSenderAddress Sathish@exchangequery.com

Now we need to enable the pipeline tracing path i.e., the location where to store these message snap shots by running the below command. This step is optional since for the Transport service on a Mailbox server, the default location is %ExchangeInstallPath%TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\PipelineTracing. For the Mailbox Transport service on a Mailbox server, the default location is %ExchangeInstallPath%TransportRoles\Logs\Mailbox\PipelineTracing. If you specify a custom path, the path must be on the local Exchange server.

Run the below command to enable pipeline tracing in a custom path

Set-TransportService Mailbox01 -PipelineTracingPath "D:\Hub\Pipeline Tracing"

After we enable them you get a warning message as above. You can safely ignore them.

Now we have enabled the pipeline tracing. It’s better to restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport service after you perform above steps.

Now we need to ask the affected user to send an email for the Message snapshots to be recorded.

In our case since Sathish is the affected sender (just an example) I’m sending email from Sathish account for recording Message snapshots.

Once after the email is sent you will see the below folder created with the name Message snapshots and in turn there will be a folder created with some alpha numeric.

When you open this alpha numeric folder you can see the Message transactions as below. Also it has the original eml file for comparing with the message transactions.

Now we can copy these eml files in your local machine where you have Outlook installed. We need to open each eml files with outlook and can see in which categorization part the message gets stripped out.