Exchange DB Defrag

Why you need to perform defrag on Exchange DB?

Basically, you have reached 16GB DB size for Exchange 5.5 Std Exchange 2000 Std and Exchange 2003 Std pre SP2. Before doing such, something you will need to know:

You will need over double the size of the database to do an offline defrag. This size needs to be in on one drive.

Is there risk? You are working on a database file, so yes there is a risk.

If your DB grow till near 16GB before you perform such action, please visit MSFT website, temporary increase the store to 17gb: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=828070

Although Exchange 2003 standard now support 75GB, upgrading to Enterprise Edition is the primary solution. This is what you need to aim for long term. In addition, Exchange Enterprise will give you more features, like supporting cluster, support multiple storage groups and stores, up to 4 storage groups with 20 databases.

Just an advice for shorter term, limits on the size of the mailbox is probably something that you need to look at. Try to encourage users to get rid of some email, archiving or deleting what isn't required. Some users can just store non office stuff in the email, eg: movies, MP3 ++

How to perform defrag? Short answer is eseutil /d. Please visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/254132/ before performing such action.

Lastly, we always encourage to offline backup the DB in two locations.

Exchange 2007 licensing - something you need to know

Just had lunch with Microsoft Malaysia Exchange in-charge person. Knowing some changes about licensing. Think its good for us to share:

1) Exchange 2007 Std, Ent server license
2) Exchange 2007 now got Std and Ent Client Access License as mentioned in the past post
3) Outlook license that comes with Exchange CAL is now no longer valid, which previously valid in Exchange Server 2003

Knowing these will definitely change the strategies on how to think for customer, bringing value added to them.

Netsh command adding primary and secondary DNS

Currently, we are doing a migration for a company. They prefer to use static IP, which give us a challenge on how to modify the TCP/IP setting with the minimum effort.

Just a share on how we perform this, take a while for us to figure out how to add in secondary DNS using netsh, a cool command that available in Windows 2000, XP and 2003.

command is like this:

netsh interface ip set address local static 10.1.2.10 255.255.255.0 10.1.2.254

netsh interface ip set dns local static 10.1.1.1

netsh interface ip add dns local 10.1.1.2

If you want to change back to DHCP,

netsh interface ip set address local dhcp

Hope this help others, which took us 2 days.

Exchange ActiveSync with Symbian

Exchange ActiveSync provides great email access from the mobile phones. Lots of the users prompt this question, shall we let go our existing mobile phones? Specially Nokia Navigator which invested quite a bit.

There is a company DataViz, which provide access to Exchange 2003 SP2/Exchange 2007 activesync. Bravo, this definately will change the way of what it usually run.

From our point of view, it is good for Microsoft as well as other manufacturer, like Nokia, Palm, Java based phone etc.

Interested? Do let us know or simply visit http://www.dataviz.com

Exchange 2007 version

Hi all,

We just a got news on what Exchange 2007 version will be? Standard or Enterprise? What features are there?

Exchange 2007 similar to Exchange 2003, yes, with Standard and Enterprise. Good news are, standard no longer only support one DB, its now 5 with 5 storage group! No more 16/75 GB limitation, hardware is the answer.

One new thing that we will need to know is, CAL license now got two types: standard CAL and Enterprise CAL. The concept is, anyone that is using Exchange will need a standard CAL, for those who wants more features besides those standard feature (Forefront, Per-user journaling, Unified Messaging), need to purchase Enterprise CAL.

Need to know more information? Please visit

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/preview/edition_compare.mspx

Nice day!