Category: Management

30/09/2020

Exchange Online finally has plus addressing!

During the virtual Microsoft Ignite 2020, the Exchange Product Group announced the general availability of plus address support in Exchange Online. This has been a long request feature; I blogged about this in 2014 and Microsoft already announced it during Microsoft Ignite 2019. But now it’s here! Considering enabling Plus Addressing And if your re-read my 2014 post, you might...

Categories Exchange/Management/Office 365/Uncategorized Comment: 1

31/03/2017

Can I place my Exchange hybrid management server in Azure and use Azure Domain Services?

As some might know (although I and others have to repeat this regularly…), if you enable directory synchronization from your on-premises Active Directory (AD) and you migrate all you Exchange mailboxes to Exchange Online you still require an Exchange server to manage mail(box) objects. It is the only supported solution, even though some use third party tooling or ADSIedit. Luckily...

Categories Active Directory/Azure/Exchange/Exchange 2013/Exchange 2016/Management/Office 365 Comments: 10

07/06/2015

Checking security protocols and ciphers on your Exchange servers

Microsoft states that Exchange 2010 and 2013 are secure out of the box. With this they mean that every traffic coming in and out of Exchange is one way or another encrypted with security protocols. Whether this is web traffic or specific for SMTP. Even IMAP and POP are enabled with mandatory encryption (although the services are disabled by default). However...

Categories Exchange/Management/Security/Uncategorized Comments: 2

12/03/2015

Using your browser to check Exchange 2013 protocol health

Sometimes you’re not at work and you suspect there is something wrong with your Exchange 2013 servers and you can’t access your environment remotely for whatever reason. Well, in some cases you can check this with just a browser. For each Exchange protocol, there is an URL you can use to check the health. The format would be: https://<External FQDN>/<protocol>/healthcheck.htm If...

Categories Exchange 2013/High Availability/Load Balancing/Management Comment: 1

27/02/2015

Tool Tip: RBAC Manager R2 for Exchange

This week I had a session at a customer to customize the default RBAC roles, for instance removing the mobile device remote wipe feature from Recipient Management. Customizing RBAC roles is in most cases not something that is a frequent task, so it can take a while to familiarize and re-familiarize with the concept and all cmdlets. But if your...

Categories Exchange/Exchange 2010/Exchange 2013/Management/Question of the day Comment: 1

14/01/2015

Do not update your Office Web Apps Server with automatic updates

Although it is not exactly required to deploy with Exchange Server 2013, Office Web Apps Server (OWAS or also referred to as WAC server) provides a more user friendly experience instead of the standard Web Preview. For Lync Server 2013 it’s a requirement if you want to be able to present PowerPoint files in a conference. And well, for SharePoint...

Categories Exchange 2013/Issue/Lync/Management/Question of the day/Update Comments: 0

19/11/2014

Mail address sieve and Exchange

During a discussion about fighting spam, a coworker mentioned an interesting Gmail feature. As that service doesn’t provide aliasses, you can’t have a specific mail address alias for your internet services. Some use a different email address for each service they sign up for, a practice which is understandable with some services that (sometimes illegally) opt-in bulk mailings or more...

Categories Exchange/Management/Office 365 Comment: 1

01/08/2014

Managing Mailbox quota’s: databases with different settings?

So, a while back I discussed an on-premises Exchange design for a customer. When discussing database distribution in an Exchange 2013 Database Availability Group (DAG), the topic of mailbox quota’s came along. They insisted on having different Database (DB) level quota’s and move mailboxes to other databases when the user requires more storage space. It’s a tactic I have seen...

Categories Exchange/Management/Question of the day Comments: 0

11/11/2013

Exchange RBAC might be more granular than you think

Most Exchange admins probably know (or should know )  the permission model since Exchange 2010 is Role Based Access Control, RBAC for short. With it, you can regulate quite granularly what admins and end-user are able to do, without the hassles of Access Control Lists (ACLs). However, it recently became clear that it might be more granular than you think....

Categories Exchange 2010/Exchange 2013/Management/Question of the day/Security Comments: 0

18/10/2013

Blocking the Windows 8 Mail app in Exchange 2010 & 2013

I think I might start a new tradition: every time a major/important OS or update is released, I try find out how to block it from Exchange . Now, I know the Mail app has been around for some time now. If you recollect, I did some research on how Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) within the Mail app works in general...

Categories ActiveSync/Exchange 2010/Exchange 2013/Management/Update/Windows 8/10/Windows Phone / Mobile Devices Comment: 1

19/09/2013

Blocking iOS 7 in Exchange 2010 & 2013 (updated)

Now that iOS 7 available, it might be interesting to know how to block this version. In the past there were some issues with the Exchange ActiveSync implementation in specific iOS DeviceOS versions (read this and this). Please note that I did not encountered or heard of any ActiveSync issues with iOS 7, but it might be prudent to be...

Categories ActiveSync/Exchange/Exchange 2010/Exchange 2013/Management/Security/Windows Phone / Mobile Devices Comments: 0

29/04/2013

Script converting Mail-User to Mailbox-User

Not all organizations need to have every user to be mailbox-enabled, sometimes a mail-user (also referred to as mail-enabled user) with a forwarding SMTP address to an external mailbox is enough. However, it is surely possible that the requirements over time change and the mail-enabled user does need to be mailbox-enabled, making use of the calendar or perhaps even more...

Categories Exchange 2010/Exchange 2013/Management Comment: 1

28/12/2012

The UC Architects episode 14 is now available!

Episode 14 is now available for download! It is hosted by Steve Goodman and co-hosts were John Cook, Serkan Varoglu, Johan Veldhuis and Stale Hansen. Christmas Exchange 2010 SP2 RU5 Version 2 Issues with the Windows Management Framework on Exchange 2010 and 2007 Lync Pilot Kit Lync Conference 2013 Tips for early adaptors on Lync 2013 Issues with Live.edu to...

Categories Exchange 2010/Lync/Management/Migration/Transition/Podcast Comments: 0

24/12/2012

Simplifying the OWA URL with Citrix Netscaler

Next to Content Switching (which I recently wrote a post about), Citrix Netscalers can also do URL Rewrites. This enables us to simplify the OWA URL. First, be sure the Rewriting option is enabled by going into System, then Settings and choose Configure Basic Settings. Check the tick box for Rewrite After this, first make an Rewrite Action by going...

Categories Exchange/Exchange 2010/High Availability/Load Balancing/Management Comments: 0

21/12/2012

Load balancing Exchange 2010 with Citrix Netscaler using Content Switching

Next to F5, KEMP technologies and a lot of other network load balancing vendors there’s also Citrix with it’s Netscaler brand. Especially when an environment also has Citrix servers, it could mean that well scaled Netscaler devices are present and can also be used for other purposes next to Citrix Secure Gateway access. Obviously Exchange 2010 comes to mind. Citrix...

Categories Exchange 2010/High Availability/Load Balancing/Management Comments: 0