Chris and Daves SharePoint and Tech Blog

Over the summer we moved mail to Exchange 2010 sp1 and being a school we also have new members of staff joining.
The result is that a few people are having trouble finding certain people in their outlook address book when they get back after their summer break.
I’ve done a quick powershell script to remove the offline address book files remotely. Make sure the user has closed outlook*, fire up Powershell ISE as administrator and then run this:

$comp = read-host “Computer Name”

$user = read-host “Login Name”

cd \\$comp\c$\Users\$user\AppData

dir -Recurse -Filter *.oab | remove-item

It will prompt for a computer name and a login name of the user you want to remove the files for. Obviously you will need appropriate network permissions.
When the reopen outlook they will have no problems finding all the new staff members they need to send to!

*If you want to go power(shell) crazy you could script the closing of the outlook process.

 One of the changes in Exchange 2010 with service pack 1 is that themes are back for end users and admins, this feature was in the beta of Exchange but was removed in the RTM version. For the end user they can choose their theme from the options button as illustrated below.

The amount of themes has grown considerably from the original 4 in Exchange 2007 to 27 available in Exchange 2010

To change the default theme for all users you need to use PowerShell but the good news is it is one single line, set-owavirtualdirectory “owa (default web site)” –defaultTheme blue-b

One gotcha I have discovered is that if a user has already applied a theme, the theme applied by the admin globally will not alter their choice. Although this can be combated by denying users changing themes using exchange policies.

Dave

 Today I started the job of installing service pack 1 for Exchange 2010 which can be downloaded from here.

  The first thing I must say is just how unhelpful the installer is, if you compare this with the SharePoint 2010 installer it is an absolute nightmare, as you can see from the screenshot below after running the prerequisite test it found I needed hotfixes before I could continue,

The big problem is this only presents you with a ‘Click here for help’ link that when clicked tells you the page cannot be found also the link to download the hotfix cannot be clicked or copied, so you then have the laborious task of manually typing into the browser the address which may not seem like a big deal but when you are dealing with long and complex URL’s it takes a lot of time and is prone to human error. So after going through this pain I thought I would share the error messages and links which you can click on.

Hub Transport Role Prerequisites Errors

 This was the first problem area and we have the exchange Backup Exec remote agent installed this service I had to stop running I also changed the start-up type to manual as this install requires a lot of restarts the next download required was the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs which can be downloaded from   

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5cd4dcd7-d3e6-4970-875e-aba93459fbee&displaylang=en

 Client Access Role Prerequisites

 The client access role required the most updates starting with KB982867 – WCF: Enable WebHeader settings on the RST/SCT but requires a restart download from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB982867

The next update was the .NET Framework 2.0-based Multi-AppDomain application stops responding when you run the application downloadable from http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=979744 but again requires a Restart after install

 Next is KB983440 Win 7 rollup package downloadable from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB983440

Again requires a restart after install

The final update for the client access role is FIX: An application that is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 and that invokes a Web service call asynchronously throws an exception on a computer that is running Windows 7 downloadable from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977020

And it will not come as any surprise to know that a restart is required after installation.

Unified Messaging Role Prerequisites

 The last area was Unified messaging role this only required 2 updates and no restarts the first update was Unified Communications Managed API 2.0, Core Runtime (64-bit) downloadable from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e5e7aa8d-e110-4736-81ae-2ef81338b46b&displaylang=en

 The final update was Speech Platform Runtime downloadable from

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=180958

 The way I handled the service pack install was download all the updates and then start ploughing through the updates/restarts, but I did manage success with the install of service pack 1 but I will never understand why these hotfixes and patches where not rolled up in the service pack itself. I hope this post helps with your SP1 install experience.

Dave

  One of the big outcry’s in the Exchange world was with the release of Exchange 2007 and Server 2008 and the omission of the ability to backup and flush your Exchange logs, this meant that a lot of Exchange admins had to go out and purchase a 3^rd party backup tool, with previous versions of Exchange and Windows server all backups could be done with the tools built into windows, but this was taken away, but now I am pleased to say that this feature is now available again.

 We actually went out and purchased Backup Exec for Exchange which is great and gives you the ability to restore an individual mail from a user’s mailbox backup but is costly and if you wish to just do a quick backup to flush your logs is a costly solution.

 So how do you backup and flush Exchange logs with windows backup? Read on and all will be revealed.

 From the server running the mailbox role launch windows server backup from the start menu

From the backup interface choose “Backup Once”

Click next and choose “custom” you can choose a full server backup but for this example I will just select the data drive “E:\” that contains the Exchange folders.

Click on “Add Items” and select the drive you wish to backup

The important thing to note is to clear your exchange logs you must click on “Advanced Settings” and choose the VSS Settings tab

To clear the Exchange logs you must choose “VSS full backup” then click ok

Click next and choose whether to backup to a local disk or remote file share

If you choose the inherit option and have used this location before you will see another dialog box open as illustrated below

After you have clicked OK. to start the backup job running just click “Backup”

You can at this point click close and the job will continue to run to completion.

Please note the consistency check for Exchange does take a number of hours to complete on my Exchange mailbox server so please stick with it and it will complete.

Windows server backup may not be the backup solution of choice but if you run a small organization mail environment and just need a quick backup to flush your logs perfect and i am very pleased that Microsoft have listened to Exchange admins and put this feature back into Windows Server.

Now how about a Windows Server SharePoint Backup?