In the Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions white papers, Microsoft provides examples of well-designed, cost-effective Exchange 2010 solutions deployed on hardware offered by some of our server, storage, and network partners.

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 16000 Mailboxes in a Single Site Deployed on IBM and Brocade Hardware

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 500 Mailboxes in a Single Site Running Hyper-V on Dell Servers

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 9000 Mailboxes in 2 Sites with Hyper-V on Dell M610 Servers & Storage with F5 Load Balancing

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c89c9e7b-9b70-4370-8db9-593cbe518791

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 16000 Mailboxes in a Single Site Deployed on IBM and Brocade Hardware:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=987882fb-5286-48a6-800f-64665a278613

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 500 Mailboxes in a Single Site Running Hyper-V on Dell Servers

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0e93251-fc04-4a18-8aa0-23817b6d0c97

Regards

Catastrophic failure “JV”

Multiple December Update Rollup Releases

Posted on December 14, 2010 by catastrophicerrors

Earlier today the Exchange CXP team released a number of Update Rollups for versions of Exchange Server to the Download Center and via Microsoft Update.

Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1

This update contains a number of customer reported and internally found issues since the release of RU1. In particular we would like to specifically call out the following fixes which are included in this release:

2322161 Passive DAG Copy Doesn’t Replay Logs if "Don’t mount this database at startup" is Checked
2431500 Cannot connect using Outlook Anywhere as the same user from multiple XP Clients
2409597 Implement OpenFlags.AlternateServer for PublicLogon

Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 is currently scheduled to release in February.

Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 SP3

972186 Need to include the server service as a required service for Exchange 2007 running on Server 2008
2290105 OWA Sharepoint/UNC Access is broken after SP3

Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 is currently scheduled to release in February.

Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2010 RTM

This update contains an internally found issue which can impact upgrades from RTM RU4 to Service Pack 1. We have opted to release an out-of-band update rollup for Exchange 2010 RTM proactively to ensure customers have as smooth an upgrade experience as possible.

2266458 Setup cannot perform a mode:/uninstall on a HT role server since RU2 delivered MSFTE.msi

Currently, we have no plans to release future update rollups for Exchange Server 2010 RTM. We strongly recommend customers upgrade to Service Pack 1 with the latest Update Rollup after installing this update.

Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 SP2

This security update was released earlier this morning via the Microsoft Security Response Center. Details of this bulletin and it’s fix can be found below:

MSRC 10-024

Currently, we have no plans to release future update rollups for Exchange Server 2007 SP2. Instead, we strongly recommend customers upgrade to Service Pack 3 with the latest Update Rollup.

General Notes:

Note for Exchange 2010 Customers using the Arabic and Hebrew language version:

We introduced two new languages with the release of Service Pack 1, Arabic and Hebrew. At present we are working through the process of modifying our installers to incorporate these two languages. Due to the timing of RU1 we were unable to complete this work in time.

Customers running either of the two language versions affected are advised to download and install the English language version of the rollup which contains all of the same fixes.

Note for Forefront users:

For those of you running Forefront, be sure you perform these important steps from the command line in the Forefront directory before and after this rollup’s installation process. Without these steps, Exchange services for Information Store and Transport will not start back up. You will need to disable ForeFront via "fscutility /disable" before installing the patch and then re-enable after the patch by running "fscutility /enable" to start it up again post installation.

Thanks

Catastrophic Failure “JV”

Source: Kevin Bellinger

Configuring inter-org Free/Busy lookups for Exchange 2007 mailboxes in an Exchange 2010 SP1 federated organization

Posted on December 4, 2010 by catastrophicerrors

To enable cross organization/premise Free/Busy lookup for users located on Exchange 2007 servers when there is an organization relationship in place with the business instance of the Microsoft Federation Gateway (default instance for Exchange 2010 SP1) it is necessary to add the availability address space for the remote organization and have at least one Exchange 2010 SP1 CAS. This is to provide the Exchange 2007 server with a valid path to route the remote availability requests. Because there is only an Organization relationship in place between the organizations then there is no way for the Exchange 2007 servers to utilize this connection without proper configuration. The following is the process to allow the 2007 servers to proxy the request to the servers that understands and can handle the federated Free/busy requests.

The main issue is that Exchange 2007 will first look locally for the free busy requests, when there is an external recipient that needs to be looked up it will then look to the availability address space that has been configured to see if there is a domain match. Exchange 2010 will perform the local lookup first just as the 2007 server but then will do the Organization Relationship lookup to see if there is a relationship in place with the External recipients SMTP domain.

The solution is to run the Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace CMDlet and the proxyUrl parameter to allow the relay to occur from the Exchange 2007 to the Exchange 2010 sp1 servers. The ProxyUrl parameter that is included with Exchange 2007 SP2 specifies whether to direct a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Client Access server to proxy its free/busy requests through an Exchange Server 2010 sp1 CAS when requesting federated free/busy data for a user in another organization for which you have an organization relationship in place. The proxyUrl should point to the local Exchange 2010 servers availability service (EWS URL).

After this is configured correctly, the flow of information will go as follows:

Exchange 2007 Mailbox in Organization 1 requests Free/busy for a user in Organization 2
The Exchange 2007 server submits the request to the Exchange 2010 server in Organization 1 because of the new Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace with the internal Relay option
The Exchange 2010 SP1 server in Organization 1 submits the request on behalf of the 2007 mailbox
The Exchange 2010 server in Organization 2 returns the requested data

Steps to Add-Availability Address Space for the 2007 Mailboxes

Open the Exchange Management Shell on the Exchange 2007 CAS server and run the following (the Fabrikam.com should be the external domain name you are trying to view the Free/Busy data for) (The Proxy URL should reflect the 2010 sp1 CAS URL that in the same organization as the 2007 mailboxes requesting the data). The Proxy URL can be a load balanced address or a single CAS.

Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace -AccessMethod InternalProxy -ProxyUrl https://Exchange2010CAS.InternalDomain.com/ews/exchange.asmx -ForestName Fabrikam.com -UseServiceAccount $True

Link to information on the Microsoft Federation Gateway:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335047.aspx

Link to information on the Organization Relationship:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351260.aspx

Link to information on the Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124122.aspx

Source: Timothy Heeney

Kind Regards
Catastrophic Failure “JV”