Dynamic Distribution Groups

So i'm sure everyone agrees that it is an annoyance that through EMC the only attribs that can be used for dynamic groups are company, state, department or the custom attributes.

Much has been written on using opath filters in PS to get around this limitation, but since using office location is so common i thought i'd just post on how to create a dynamic distribution list in exchange 2007 using the AD attribute Office Location

New-DynamicDistributionGroup "*ALL at OFFICENAME" -RecipientFilter {Office -eq 'OFFICENAME'}
Of course you can do a whole lot more with the recipient filter, for details, see here: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/01/10/432143.aspx

A few thoughts about SCR target activation

I recently activated an SCR target as part of adding a mailbox server to remote office. I couldn't find much on the web about how long the activation would take, or what if any effect SCR activation would have on BES. All clients are outlook 2007, so i knew autodiscover would take care of the mailbox move. I used the activation procedure found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb738132(EXCHG.80).aspx

First, on the time to failover to SCR (or activate SCR target)

1. I used a target DB with the same log file prefix (E04 in my case) so i wouldn't have to mess with eseutil or worry about the DB being in a clean shutdown state (the mount-database operation would clear up a dirty shutdown with matching prefixes). I would suggest this if you have the ability to do so as it allows you to skip several potentially time consuming steps.

2. The resume-storagegroupcopy cmdlet took about 7 minutes to complete. There were 0 logs in the copy queue and 50 in the replay queue (kept with the defaults when setting up SCR).

3. I manually replicated AD after the move-storagegroup path, again after move-databasepath and again after move-mailbox, this might have been overkill, but with our site repl at 120 minutes, i didn't mind a little over kill. This added about 10 minutes to the process.

4. The move-mailbox -configuration only went extremely fast; 50 mailboxes in less than 5 seconds.

5. The mount-database was also extremely fast, but i would assume that is b/c it was in a clean shutdown state, it may take a little longer with a dirty db shutdown.

overall, the process took me less than 20 minutes of downtime, then add another 10 of bes downtime when i realized i had forgotten to give the BESadmin account the necessary permissions on the mailbox server.

Enumerate all members of a group

this works for any type of group; thanks to Amit Tank from the technet forums for the syntax! Again the actual pipe key doesn't show up in blogger so I've replaced it with the word PIPE.

$grp = get-group “Group Name”
$grp.members PIPE fl Name

My 15 minutes!

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Change-control-using-Sharepoint-2007-with-DPM/

Well, 9 minutes and 16 seconds anyway.

Some Handy powershell cmdlets with syntax (note the pipe doesn't show up in blogger, so i'll use the word PIPE)

Setup Resource Mailboxes (like a new conf room).
1st, add create the new mailbox with EMC, then with EMS:

Add-MailboxPermission -AccessRights FullAccess -Identity ResourceMailbox -User Test1
Set-MailboxCalendarSettings -AutomateProcessing:AutoAccept

Add Mailbox Rights
Add-MailboxPermission "Mailbox" -User "Trusted User" -AccessRights FullAccess

Get Mailbox Sizes for all users
Get-MailboxStatistics PIPE fl totalitemsize, displayname

Set Rights for BesAdmin on a mailbox server (any time one is added)
Get-mailboxserver PIPE add-adpermission –user BESAdmin -accessrights GenericRead, GenericWrite -extendedrights Send-As, Receive-As, ms-Exch-Store-Admin

Get Mailbox Size/Location for 1 user
get-mailboxstatistics user.name PIPE fl

To get detailed information about the mailbox and what folders might be large, run this:
Get-mailboxfolderstatistics user.name

Force the GAL to update:
Get-globaladdresslist PIPE update-globaladdress list

Godaddy.com Subject Alternate Name certificate (SAN cert)

I purchased the UCC cert for 5 domain names for $90 (they don't call it a SAN cert) and added the godaddy trusted root cert into the main certificate store, then with the SAN cert just from powershell :

import-exchangecertificate -path c:\owa.company.com.crt enable-exchangecertificate -services IIS, SMTP, POP, IMAP

the pipe won't show up on blogger but you need a pipe before the enable as you are passing the import command data along to the enable command.

Passed 70-238 with a 908

This test was just weird. 70-236 and 70-237 were right on with the MS objectives, however this one was just all over the place. I obviously can't say much about it, but like any other test, if you have real world experience and know your stuff, you'll pass. At the time of this post, neither 237 nor 238 have books released so I just took the tests blind (but with 2nd shot) and passed easily from being in the trenches with exchange 07.