During a recent deployment we ran into an issue that had us scratching our heads. The deployment was smooth (once we took care of the 2.4GB mailboxes the executives had), users were happily sending and receiving mail, and all looked great.

This was a simple migration - an Exchange 2003 environment where we added an Exchange 2007 server, and configured it so that mail would route out of the Exchange 2003 environment into the Exchange 2007 server and out to the Internet.

But then we started getting calls from the helpdesk that some users intermittently were able to receive mail, but mail was being held in the outbox. Oddly enough, these calls were from users who had not yet being migrated off of Exchange 2003.

On March 21, 2005, Azaleos came uncloaked. That's a term where a startup company stops operating in what's called "Stealth Mode" --- we start talking about the cool things that we've actually been working on since the company was started. Typically at this time a few customers are already up and running on the company's new software --- in our case, these were Compass Health, Zumiez, and K2 Sports.

By March 21, 2006, we had spent a year supporting our customers, had added a large number of new customers, and had spent a lot of time working on upgrading our feature set to support their needs. Based on customer feedback, we expanded our OneStop Services to add backup, full fidelity disaster recovery, and started to hint at archiving services that were coming in the fall - integrated archiving capabilities that we shipped in August 2006.

I spent the morning today with a large financial services company and the topic of Daylight Savings Time updates required for Exchange 2003 and Outlook came up.

According to this company, quite a few organizations in the financial services vertical have decided to "tough it out" and will not be applying the recommended Microsoft updates to Outlook and Exchange to address DST issues. This is based partially on their attendance at industry-wide calls to discuss the issues, and partially based on their own experiences.

Reasons cited for not updating the toolset:

1. Application of the toolset causing issues with organizations, combined with evaluation of the possible exposure to end users
   

I received the following note yesterday from Microsoft Global Partner Support regarding Exchange and Daylight Savings Time issues and decided to pass it along to help folks subscribed to our blog. Hope it helps!

Hello Keith,

In last couple of weeks the Exchange team has been getting a substantial number of calls regarding the Error 0x80004005 (DST). I thought I’d preemptively share some of the known causes of the issue, which might reduce turnaround time of resolution with your customer.

Error 0x80004005

Currently identified causes:

* The tool was not able to find any time zone values in the mailbox of that specific users. To resolve this, try adding “ReadCalendarTimeZones=1” (without the quotes) to the MsExTmz.ini file to force the tool to examine recurring calendar items for time zone information. You can create a new input file by using the DNs from the error log you received from the last run.

The Year 2007 Problem

Update: 2/19/2007 - Microsoft has released a wizard to walk people through the process of all of the updates required for various Microsoft operating systems and applications. For Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 SP2, for instance, the following is the general list of steps required to update the systems (unfortunately it misses noting the update required for the domain controllers that Exchange also relies on):

• Apply and verify updates to server operating systems (KBs 931836 and 914387)
• If you are running Outlook Web Access, Exchange Lotus Notes connecter, or BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange , install the Exchange Patch CDO.DLL (KB 926666)
  

No Rush to adopt Exchange 2007

This was a solid and accurate article by Elizabeth Montalbano, of IDG News Service, which feeds into InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, and NetworkWorld around the globe.

It's almost a duplicate template to the December 27, 2006 article of the "After month, no rush to adopt Vista" she also wrote.

The reality is, although Exchange 2007 has its warts, many companies that we've talked to are seriously considering the move to Exchange 2007 in 2007. From talking with our customers, here are the top 10 (well, 11) reasons they are making the move:

We’ve been spending a lot of time in the Azaleos engineering team trying to select the correct approach to supporting business continuity needs with Exchange 2007.

Hypothetically, using Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR), customers can deploy stretch clusters for Exchange 2007. This is where Active and Passive nodes of a server cluster are deployed at geographically disperse sites. But do you really want to do this?

Exchange 2007 offers the following options for business continuity and disaster recovery:

1. Use new Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) feature in a stretch cluster configuration. This ships log files from the active to passive Exchange cluster nodes, replaying them on passive nodes to synchronize mail store databases across the cluster nodes

Next week, on February 6th and 8th, Azaleos is sponsoring Exchange 2007 events in Vancouver, BC and Calgary, AB, with the help of Microsoft, IBM, Network Appliance and XSM Systems, our first Canadian reseller. We're also doing an evening event on February 15th in Pittsburgh, PA.

For the very first time, Azaleos will be talking about our brand new (version 3) managed Exchange 2007 appliance. We're also choosing to forgoe traditional methods over "new media" and don't expect to announce our Exchange 2007 solution via the press until mid-March --- so attendees at these events will get the first information about how we've already optimized Exchange 2007 and delivered it in an appliance form factor.