This might be a controversial statement, but I kind of think it is too easy to setup database availability groups in Exchange 2010 and later. It’s not that I would want DAGs to be harder to setup, it’s just that the ease with which one can setup a basic DAG allows too many people to stop there and not work on really understanding the deeper features and configurations of high availability for mailboxes. With that in mind, I want to cover what I think might be the least understood DAG configuration feature, DAC.
Read moreSetting up 2 factor authentication for Office 365
Recently Microsoft has enabled 2 factor authentication for all Enterprise Office 365 tenants at no additional cost. Their offering is based on PhoneFactor’s 2 factor authentication system, a company Microsoft bought a couple of years ago. Setting this feature up for Office 365 accounts is fairly easy, but there are a couple of “tricky” parts that could use a bit of clarification so I thought I would run through the process for you here.
Read moreCorrecting an email alias in Exchange Online
I recently ran into an issue with a customer that took me a while to get a solution for. While doing a hybrid migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange Online, I had one user whose email alias showed up as alias3834@domain.com instead of the expected alias of alias@domain.com in the Exchange Online tenant.
Read moreSending encrypted email from Exchange Online
Microsoft has recently included email encryption in all Enterprise Office 365 tenants. Since then, I have had several customers ask me how to send encrypted email. The process is somewhat less clear than that I would expect, so here is a quick guide on how to setup and configure email encryption in Exchange Online.
Read moreNotes from MEC: Exchange 2013 Sizing Guidance
I’m writing a series of blog posts going over some of the things we learned at the Microsoft Exchange Conference this year. The next announcement from MEC I want to highlight is Microsoft updated sizing guidance for Exchange 2013 SP1. There are two main areas around which Microsoft has updated the guidance for Exchange 2013 SP1 server sizing; CAS processors and pagefile.
Read moreNotes from MEC: Exchange Multi-Org Hybrid
I’m going to do a series of blog posts going over some of the things we learned at the Microsoft Exchange Conference this year. For me, the number one thing I got from MEC was Microsoft’s announcement that they now support Multi-Org Hybrid deployments done by civilians (non MCS/ACS deployments). By “Multi-Org Hybrid” we mean connecting multiple Exchange on-premises organizations to the same Office 365 tenant. I’ve had several customers asking for this deployment for years now, so it is a great boon for me to be able to do these deployments now.
Read moreNew features in ADFS 3.0
With the release of Server 2012 R2, we now have a new version of ADFS that we can use for single sign on to Office 365 tenants. Of course the first question I had was “What does the new version of ADFS do that the old one does not?” I would say that the biggest new feature in ADFS 3.0 is a simple PowerShell based set of command that allow organizations to customize their ADFS log-in page. Let’s take a look at the new features of ADFS 3.0, and then we’ll take a closer look at how to customize your ADFS webpages.
Read moreExchange 2013 SP1: Loose Truncation
As we continue to explore the features of Exchange 2013 SP1, let’s take a look at loose truncation. Before we talk about this new feature, let’s go over the behavior of Exchange 2013 without loose truncation.
Read moreExchange 2013 SP1: MapiHttp
One of the major features of Exchange 2013 SP1 is codenamed “Alchemy”. “Alchemy” is Microsoft’s codename for the new MapiHttp communications mechanism in Exchange 2013 SP1. Before we can get into Alchemy, we first need to do a quick refresher on Microsoft Remote Procedure Call (RPC).
Read moreExchange 2013 SP1: DLP Fingerprinting
One of the major new features to Exchange in Exchange 2013 is data loss prevention. DLP aides your company in ensuring that sensitive data is not leaked from your organization. Exchange 2013 SP1 adds an improvement to DLP in a feature called DLP fingerprinting.
Read moreAzure is making my gaming awesome too?
Even now, with my 40th birthday behind me, I spend a fair amount of my free time playing video games. Videos games have been a pretty consistent part of my life for 30 some years, and I expect this to remain the case for most of the next 40 years too. Normally I reserve this space for my professional interests; things like Exchange, Office 365, Active Directory, and Azure. However, today I figured out that my professional interests have intersected with my personal video game interest so I thought this would be a good excuse to bring video gaming into this blog. It turns out that Windows Azure is a key component in making the new video game “Titanfall” work.
Read more#IAmMEC
After a long hiatus, the Microsoft Exchange Conference returned about a year and a half ago. Now it seems that Microsoft intends to make MEC (as well and the Lync and SharePoint conferences) a regular thing. I will be heading to Austin TX in a couple of weeks to participate.
Read moreWhy does Exchange 2013 use RPC over HTTP for all communications?
I was recently asked an interesting question, so I thought I would share the answer here. The question was “Why did Microsoft decide to use RPC over HTTP for internal communication between Outlook and Exchange 2013?” As with most questions of design for a product as complex as Exchange, there are a lot of reasons for this design but I think the best answer comes down to simplicity.
Read moreExchange 2013 SP1: What’s new?
Many IT departments still like to stick to the adage that a Microsoft product is not complete until Service Pack 1 comes out. While I do not necessarily agree with that, I do have to admit that in the case of Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 does put back a number of features that were in previous versions of Exchange but did not make it into the release version of Exchange 2013. Exchange 2013 SP1 brings back the following features that were available in Exchange 2010 but not in Exchange 2013 at release; Edge Transport Role, GUI cmdlet logging, and SSL offloading.
Read moreWhat I use: February 2014
Yes, I stole the idea for this post from Paul Thurrott’s Super Site for Windows. I will approach this from a bit of a different angle than Paul, but the idea is his.
I am an IT consultant. I assume that most people reading this will know that, but I figure it’s best to make that clear off the top. I travel a lot, and when I am not traveling I work from my home office. For this blog post, I am going to go over the products and services that I use professionally.
Read more