February 24, 2015 Dave Stork ActiveSync, Exchange, Office 365, Outlook, OWA, Windows Phone / Mobile Devices One comment

A quick look at the Sunrise Calendar app

Now that Microsoft has purchased the Sunrise Calendar app, it's probably a good idea to take a closer look to that app and see what we are or will be dealing with before everyone panics (again). The Acompli Outlook app for iOS and Android (from now on referenced as just the Outlook app) has received praise regarding it's functionality and usability, but also a lot of criticism on security and compliancy. A major issue is the temporary caching of data and

February 13, 2015 Dave Stork Active Directory, Exchange, Issue, Support, Update Leave a comment

Some things to do after leaving Windows Server 2003 (from an Exchange perspective)

Today the Exchange Team blog posted an article about upgrading the Domain Functional (DFL) level of your Active Directory environment away from Windows Server 2003 and the fact that raising the level might have some impact on your Exchange servers (and other applications). It is possible that they might not be able to authenticate. If you do run into issues after raising the DFL, the solution is either restarting the Kerberos Key Distribution Center service on all DC's or restarting all DC's

January 20, 2015 Dave Stork ActiveSync, Events, Exchange, Exchange 2013, OWA, Question of the day, Windows Phone / Mobile Devices Leave a comment

No, Windows Phone ActiveSync is not on par with OWA for Devices

Recently I came across this Twitter exchange: @WayneHRiddle You don't need it for WP. Native app handles all of that functionality. — Ben Rudolph (@BenThePCGuy) January 17, 2015 I've heard this argument before, that the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) implementation in Windows Phone doesn't require an OWA for Devices app (or MOWA as is the official acronym) like iOS has (for iPad and iPhone) and what is currently in preview for Android. Although the Windows Phone 8 ActiveSync implementation doesn't have the

December 9, 2014 Dave Stork Exchange, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, Update Leave a comment

Exchange 2013 CU7, Exchange 2010 SP3 RU8 and Exchange 2007 SP3 RU15 are out!

Update 12 december 2014: The fixed Exchange 2010 SP3 RU8 with v2 is now available. Same location as the plagued v1. Update 10 december 2014: Exchange Server 2010 SP3 RU8 has been pulled due to connectivity issues with Outlook. There is currently not ETA on the fix. Customers are advised to not install this RU8 or remove RU8 if they already installed it. The initial Exchange Team blog post has been amended with this new info. As of now no other

November 19, 2014 Dave Stork Exchange, Management, Office 365 One comment

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 nefarious mailings. Whenever a specific alias receives unwanted mails, you can see where it came from and take direct action

August 13, 2014 Dave Stork Exchange, Issue, Office 365, Outlook 3 comments

Optimizing the Outlook AutoDiscover process by skipping the root domain query

Updated 8/15/2014: see the bottom of this article for additional information on changed AutoDiscover behavior of Outlook 2013. Consider the following scenario: An Active Directory (AD) domain named equal to the SMTP Suffx, so the mailaddress dmstork@contoso.com in the contoso.com AD domain. No on-premises Exchange, this means that there is no Service Connection Point (SCP) in A. Outlook 2013 (or lower versions from Outlook 2007 up). Exchange Online (or any hosted Exchange for that matter). Additional issue: You’ve got an external

August 1, 2014 Dave Stork Exchange, Management, Question of the day Leave a comment

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 before, especially during Exchange 2003 (Enterprise edition) and Exchange 2007. I can understand why organization adopt this practice, it’s easy

July 6, 2014 Dave Stork Exchange, Issue Leave a comment

Exchange mail flow not working? Check your (Cisco) firewall!

I’ve come across this issue several times: External mail (or mail between Exchange servers) cannot be delivered, however when you check with telnet the Exchange server(s) are responding. When you check via telnet on the external IP you get something similar: In this case it was a Cisco ASA firewall that had (E)SMTP filtering feature (also called Mailguard) enabled, which is the default setting. Unfortunately, this feature filters very strict and blocks extended commands that are allowed by RFC5321 which

July 1, 2014 Dave Stork Exchange, Personal One comment

I am now an Exchange MVP!

For those who weren’t following me on Twitter (or Facebook or whatever), today I received an important mail: Dear Dave Stork, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2014 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Exchange Server technical communities during the past year. After checking headers for spoofing etc. (hey! It’s my expertise after all

June 30, 2014 Dave Stork Exchange, Exchange 2013, Migration/Transition Leave a comment

Legacy Public Folders to Exchange 2013 migration tips

A couple of weeks ago I performed a Public Folder migration from Exchange 2007 (aka legacy) towards the modern Public Folders of Exchange 2013. As you may know, the traditional migration method using Public Folder replica's isn't available due to a radical redesign of the Public Folder architecture. Instead of dedicated databases, the hierarchy and data are now stored in mailboxes. The biggest benefit is that Public Folders can now be protected via a Database Availability Group, the downside is

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