Exchange 2007 SCR (Standby Continuous Replication)

SCR is one type of Exchange 2007 Disaster Recovery.

How SCR works?

Requirements:
- To use the server recovery process, the installation path for Exchange Server must be the same for the SCR source computer and the SCR target computer.If these install paths do not match, the server recovery process will fail because the install path in the registry will not match the value for the msExchInstallPath attribute of the Mailbox server object in Active Directory.

- Using the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in, the computer account for DR Mailbox Server Role is configured with full permissions on the Headquarter Cluster Mailbox Server/Mailbox Server computer object. This is done so that the computer account for Headquarter Cluster Mailbox Server/Mailbox Server can be reset by DR Mailbox Server in the event that DR site is activated because of a failure of Headquarter.
P/S: This step is used only on failover clusters running Windows Server 2008. This is because the Cluster service runs in the security context of the local system. This step is not needed on failover clusters running Windows Server 2003 when the same Cluster service account is used for both failover clusters.

Example:

SCR is configured so that transaction log files are being replicated from three storage groups on EXCMS1 to SCR targets on NODEC. This was configured using the following commands:

Enable-StorageGroupCopy EXCMS1\SG1 -StandbyMachine NODEC
Enable-StorageGroupCopy EXCMS1\SG2 -StandbyMachine NODEC
Enable-StorageGroupCopy EXCMS1\SG3 -StandbyMachine NODEC

To simultaneously enable all of the storage groups on EXCMS1 for SCR, run the following command:

Get-StorageGroup -Server EXCMS1 | Enable-StorageGroupCopy -StandbyMachine NODEC

Verify health and copy status:
- Test-ReplicationHealth
- Get-StorageGroupCopyStatus

e.g. Get-StorageGroupCopyStatus EXCMS1\SG1 -StandbyMachine NODEC

When disaster happen, how to recover?
1. Verify directory services and DNS
2. Prepare the SCR targets for mounting.

Restore-StorageGroupCopy -Identity EXCMS1\SG1 -StandbyMachine NODEC -Force
Restore-StorageGroupCopy -Identity EXCMS1\SG2 -StandbyMachine NODEC -Force
Restore-StorageGroupCopy -Identity EXCMS1\SG3 -StandbyMachine NODEC -Force

3. Remove the existing DNS record for Headquarter Mailbox Server (e.g..EXCMS1) from DNS.
P/S: This step is used only on failover clusters running Windows Server 2008. This is because the Cluster service runs in the security context of the local system. This step is not needed on failover clusters running Windows Server 2003 when the same Cluster service account is used for both failover clusters.

4. SCR is disabled for all storage groups to prepare for the /RecoverCMS process. If SCR is not disabled for all storage groups, Setup /RecoverCMS fails.

Disable-StorageGroupCopy -Identity EXCMS1\SG1 -StandbyMachine NODEC -Confirm:$False
Disable-StorageGroupCopy -Identity EXCMS1\SG2 -StandbyMachine NODEC -Confirm:$False
Disable-StorageGroupCopy -Identity EXCMS1\SG3 -StandbyMachine NODEC -Confirm:$False

5. The clustered mailbox server (EXCMS1) is recovered by using the /RecoverCMS option for Setup. The recovery takes place on NODEC using the following command to perform the recovery:

Setup.com /RecoverCMS /CMSName:EXCMS1 /CMSIPAddress:




Exchange 2007 - Export Individual Mailbox to PST

1. Prerequesites: Exchange management tools, Outlook 2007

2. Grant yourself the full permission to the mailbox.

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

3. Run this command to export mailbox.


P/S: If you export fail with the following error message:

"Error occur in the step: Approving object. An unknown error occured.."

VMWare - Never expand a disk with a snapshot running

You should never expand a virtual disk while snapshots are active.

In ESX3.5, although it will allow you to expand a virtual disk with snapshot and VC will report that the tasks completed successfully, but in truth the disk not actually expand.

It's worst if you expand disk with vmkfstools while snapshot active, the VM will no longer start and you will receive an error: "Cannot open the disk ".vmdk" or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Reason: The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created." Fortunately there is a way to recover from this scenario, it is detailed in the VMworld 2007 presentation IO44: Top support issues and how to solve them – Batch 2.

ESX ssh root login

ESX ssh root login was disabled by default, to enable it:

1. Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

2. Edit line "Permit RootLogin" to yes.


3. Restart ssh service.
- service sshd restart

Configure sudo on ESX

1. edit /etc/sudoers

2. add user under #User privilege specification

example:
# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
abcd ALL=(ALL) ALL

Error 0x80190194 when using an Outlook 2007 client to download a Web Distribution enabled OAB

If you'are in mutiple domain site, OAB may not works after migration to Exchange 2007.

Here the fix.

1. Identify Exchange server which have OAB working fine and locate D:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\OAB, looks for , something similar like this
96803b99-72ba-7b38-8a2d-6883f0f1b6d9

2. Copy the to the Exchange server D:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\OAB that has OAB problem.

3. Assign READ access to Authenticated Users.

Now it should works.

KMS - Key Management Server

Where to look for your KMS DNS record and identify your KMS hostname.

KMS requires minimum number of computers (physical or VM) in a network environments. At least 5 Windows Server 2008 R2 and 25 Windows 7 clients are needed. These minimums are referred to as activation threshold.