A day where LOVE is in the air

15 June 2008 is a great day. Working with CHHS Alumni and Rotary Club of Sri Petaling, we pay a visit to Ti-Ratana, an orphanage house in Malaysia.

That day is also a father's day, and about 150-200 of us, celebrating fathers' day with a big group of children.

Had some activities, including choir singing, Ti-Ratana chilren perform...

Sometimes, doing IT, computing, we are dealing with machines, social works like this will need to do more, thats the complete of life. As a group, we donated computers, water heaters as well as washing machines for them.

This day, some of our communities leaders and members are there too, feeling the samething - LOVE is in the air. We hope this will not stop here, more and more people will do this, showing that we care for the communities, we CARE.

Certificates in Exchange 2007

Lots of our customers, partners and sttudents has this problems while inplementing Exchange 2007 (With its client) - certificates.

Question now is, what certificate used in Exchange 2007?

• ActiveSync
• Autodiscover
• Internet client, like POP3 and IMAP4 client access
• Outlook Web Access
• Outlook Anywhere
• Edge Server

Now, since there are so many components, can we use all with the same name? The answer is no. Thus, in Exchange 2007, we will need certificate that support wildcards name. However, by default, when installing Exchange 2007, a self signed certificate is installed - can we use it? Yes, you can, but we will not recommend as it will not know the Internet domain name you are going to use, not supporting SAN extension supports (X.509 standard).

After knowing this, choosing a right certificate in Exchange 2007 is important. Knowing Exchange 2007 client that support wildcard certificate is also another challenge. For what we know as for now, the following client do support:

Outlook Express, Outlook, Internet Explorer (OWA)

However, clients running Windows Mobile 5.0 do not support secure connection to servers where wildcards are used in the certificate. Do take note.

Cheers

Storing PST on server? You should think few times...

Recently, we have been busy touring Malaysia to share our thoughts about Microsoft Exchange Server. Hope the Exchange business will just flow into not only Max Solution, perhaps Microsoft too :)

However, in one of the bank that we visited, there is an interesting question and idea - We want to store all the PST to the network storage. Is it recommended?

After thinking for few seconds, for sure, the first question is, WHY?

Some reasons for the summary:
1) We want to keep the Exchange DB small
2) We want to keep a copy of users' email
3) Storage nowadays can consider cheap
4) Do not want to heavy load Exchange server...

Hold on... Do we need to put PST file in server to get those features?

Few things to share:

First of all, it is not "possible" or recommended to put all user's PST in a network storage. See the following article - a good one from Microsoft.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019/en-us

Second of all, to meet the auditors, governance compliances, a company should think about a cool recent product - DPM 2007. This will fulfill the requirements for 1,2 & 3...

Guys, this is our advice, to ensure you will be able to gain the performance, yet, protecting your data.

Do read Microsoft or our blogs for the next version of Exchange - another great product to solve most of the industry issues.

Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging - supprted PBX and gateways

Its being quite a while Unified Messaging introduced to the IT market. Ya - it really flies. However, lots of people still asking - What do I need?; My PBX supported?; Do I need to buy a new PBX?

In Microsoft Technet, there is a good article mentioning about this - Its a telephony advisor!

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/telephony-advisor.mspx

For me, I bought a gateway about 1 1/2 years ago. me too, get the advice from the website too.

Hope this link will help most of folks out there deploying UM.

A valuable trip to Seattle - a meet up with my Guru

MVP Summit 2008 in Seattle from 14 to 18 April 2008 is a memorable and valuable time.
I have chance to meet up with my Guru/Mentor which met up about 5 years ago.
Visiting Microsoft HQ for sure an eye opener and understand the really meaning of "Passion" in technology.

This is a dinner, together with Lee and Pete - years of MVP for Microsoft. A special tribute to Lee, who nominated me to become the new MVP last year.

Advise to bloggers that have passion in Microsoft technology - its really a great experience and worth journey.