Fans of Microsoft Exchange Server

Wow!! I know I just told you about the Fans of High End Storage facebook group and are already 21 members and a few lively discussions!! This was all before I could mention the counterpart – Fans of Microsoft Exchange Server!! There are loads of Fans from Exchange admins, to ex-users (who wish their company would convert), to softies, to partners, to ex-softies, you should be there too!! Give your feedback – maybe even win prizes!!

Even if your not on facebook you should join to check it out – it is certainly worth it!!

Related articles today:

• MSCS Clusting in VMWare for Exchange (btw, VMWare IPO is Aug 14th)
• Exchange 2003 front-end server “Loading” message when using OWA

Exchange Connections 2007

Paul is a busy guy, but he is taking the time to get the Exchange Connections conference organized for next spring. Everyone is buzzing about it already. That’s right this year’s fall connections hasn’t been held yet, but he is already getting ready for next years!

The Call for papers is out…..

If you want to present feel free to send your information to Paul.
If you don’t want to present, then let me know what you want to learn about, I am taking ideas for next year’s connections from you. Let me know what you want to know and the most voted for or best topic will be it

This could a panel like I’m planning for the local user group in december, information on a specific MS technology, information on a non-MS technology (storage, mobility – including blackberry or SyncML, etc), or information on implementations, cost justification, testing, etc…..just let me know

If you are in between wanting to present and wanting me to present your topic…. I am also offering a way for you to partner up with me or someone else to get on stage and present. That’s right, you get the experience, with a little help (I did my first presentation this way and it really made things easier).

Btw, if you are going to the Fall Exchange Connections 2006, be sure to stop by the Ferris Research Booth!

MEET FERRIS RESEARCH AT EXCHANGE CONNECTIONS, LAS VEGAS
Get Free Technology Planning Advice

If you’re going to Exchange Connections and would like to meet Ferris Research, do get in touch. David Ferris, Lee Benjamin, and Bob Spurzem will be there November 7-9 at our booth, #222. The Exchange Connections registration page is here. It’s a good show for Exchange support staff.

Free Technology Planning Advice

We’ll be happy to provide free technology planning advice. Or if you’re a vendor, perhaps you’d like to brief us on your offerings and plans. We’re available as follows:

• Tuesday, Nov 7
  • 5pm-7pm
• Wednesday, Nov 8
  • 9am to 10:30am
  • 12:45pm to 2:30pm
  • 3:30pm to 5:30pm
• Thursday, Nov 9
  • 10am to 11:30am
  • 12:30pm to 2:15pm

Deploying Exchange 2003 on a CX-3?

If you are considerring the task of deploying Exchange on a CX-3, I highly recomend you check out EMC’s new ESRP submissions….

I just heard the smart guys over in Hopkinton submitted three more Solutions to ESRP based on the CX-3 platform. This is actually pretty cool (even though I like the DMX), because they have it setup in a choose your size model, 4000 users? pick a CX-20, double the users? pick a CX-40 or two CX-20s, double again? well just pick up a CX-80 or two CX-40s, or four CX-20s!!! This is super easy!! I really like this approach. (btw, short plug the DMX is done like this too, we generally start at 16k users and go up though…..hmm right where the CX platform stops….)

Btw, I have it on good word that the Exchange 2007 layouts across platforms are just as good, if not better, to pick from and implement!!

UPDATE!! <Note to self> “When boasting about a group of people, make sure the entire group responsible is included” <End Note>

The Cork team made some very large efforts to ramp up and get these things done as well. I have heard about the facilities they put together and some of the designs they have come up with. The Cork guys rock just as much as the Hopkinton guys (which by the way are the two datacenters that make up our solutions group, so they are all one team)…..

Improve Exchange Disk Performance

That’s what the article that came across my techtarget RSS feed said anyway, so I thought…. I’m an Exchange Disk Performance kind of guy, I wonder what they have to say about it. I followed the link to find this article about disk alignment. Usually I am a big proponent of disk alignment, I talk about it in almost all of my papers, presentations, and training material. Unfortunately this article did not have all of the details correct. This is a common problem that I address regularly with people. After explaining what alignment is and where it can improve performance, most people understand and are better for having discussed it.

The key point if you are working with disk alignment and Diskpar or Diskpart is to understand that they do different things to align disk partitions.

Diskpar sets the number of hidden sectors, 128 hidden sectors will align the starting offset to 65536 (which is the size you want).

Diskpart sets the size of the starting offset using the “create primary partition align=64” command (64 KB will align this section correctly and produce hidden sector count of 128).

I reccommend using either diskpar or Sysinternal’s DiskExt to verify your alignment. Diskpar -i <> will show you both the starting offset size and the number of hidden sectors. DiskExt will show you the starting offset size for all disks in a quick format.

ExBPA helps plan Exchange 2007 Migrations

The Exchange Team recently posted some information about a beta feature in ExBPA that will help to identify problems with your existing Exchange 2003 installation.

If you do have items identified as needing work, I recomend that you take a look at the Exchange 2007 Planning Your Deplyment guide. This includes help on planning Active Directory configurations for small medium and large installations, HA components, and Interoperability. I’m sure you can wait a bit for Jim McBee or the folks at msexchange.org to digest it and post something as well….