Exchange & Outlook UPDATE, Exchange Edition--Coming Out of Your Shell--April 5, 2007

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IN THIS ISSUE
*Commentary: Coming Out of Your Shell
*Windows IT Pro 2007 Community Choice Awards
*Exchanging Ideas: Office Communications Server 2007 to Pick Up Where Exchange Left Off
*Editor's Note: TechX Web Site and Email Newsletter
*New and Improved: Remotely Manage your Email Infrastructure

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OUR SPONSORS WHO HELP SUPPORT FREE DELIVERY OF THIS NEWSLETTER:

One Click Failover/Failback Solution for Exchange Server
http://www.sonasoft.com/products/exchange.asp

Preventing the IT Search Party: Be Prepared
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/seminars/symantec/itsearchparty/?partnerref=E&Omid0405

The Email Management Crisis
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/whitepapers/messageone/emailcrisis/?code=E&Ohot0405

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Sponsor: Sonasoft

One Click Failover/Failback Solution for Exchange Server
SonaSafe for Exchange Server is the only software that offers both backup/recovery and replication for Exchange Server as part of a single integrated solution. The solution provides automated one-click rapid recovery to the point of failure. Reliable replication—no distance limitation, can be anywhere in the world. Typically, customers have to buy multiple solutions from different vendors to get similar capability. Also, it would cost four to five times more to get comparable functionality offered by Sonasoft's SonaSafe solution.
http://www.sonasoft.com/products/exchange.asp

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***COMMENTARY: Coming Out of Your Shell
by Paul Robichaux, Exchange Editor, [email protected]

This week, I was at the spring Microsoft Exchange Connections conference in Orlando, Florida. I presented three sessions: one about Exchange Server 2007 unified messaging (UM), one about continuous data protection (CDP) for Exchange, and one providing a gentle introduction to Windows PowerShell for Exchange administrators. This last session was my best-attended, and I had a lively crowd, so I thought I'd distill some of the things I talked about into a column to help spread the word to Exchange administrators about what they should know about PowerShell. My goal with both the session and this column is to reassure people who aren't scripters or programmers that they can learn and use this tool effectively. Most Exchange administrators have never had the need or the inclination to write scripts, partly because of how difficult it is to accomplish most meaningful tasks with the scripting tools available in Exchange Server 2003 and previous versions. PowerShell changes all that.

The analogy I used to explain how best to learn PowerShell is that of learning a foreign language. Let's take Spanish as an example. If you speak English, French, or Italian, learning the grammar rules for Spanish is pretty simple. After you've mastered those rules, the trick is to acquire a big enough vocabulary to communicate. A 10-word vocabulary is pretty useless; with a 100-word vocabulary, you can accomplish very simple tasks; with 500 or 1000 words, you can really get some stuff done. PowerShell is the same way: After you learn a few secrets, the rest is just building the right vocabulary.

The first big secret to losing your fear of PowerShell is to remember that you can use Exchange Management Shell in two ways. First, you can use it as an interactive environment to run one-off commands. In this mode, you can use it to do things that are too complicated or too slow to do as a series of steps in Exchange Management Console. Also, you can use it for the few tasks that aren't implemented in the Exchange Management Console GUI, although the need to do this will be dramatically reduced by the release of Exchange 2007 SP1. By using Exchange Management Shell in this mode, you can fairly quickly learn the commands you'll need frequently, such as cmdlet verbs (get, set, create, enable, and disable are a good starting set) and objects (Mailbox, User, DistributionGroupMember, and MailboxDatabase are the first ones I'd learn).

The second mode in which you can use Exchange Management Shell is as a full-blown scripting language, where you write scripts to accomplish tasks that require multiple steps. In this mode, you can use Exchange Management Shell to automate tasks you need to do often, or to provide a repeatable way to do things that are too complicated or dangerous to do manually each time.

In this second mode lies the second big PowerShell secret: Many useful Exchange Management Shell operations fall into a simple three-step pattern. First, get the set of objects you want to manipulate; second, filter or select the specific objects that you want to work with; and third, do something to them. (If you're familiar with the German language, you'll recognize the idea of having the verb at the end!) Let's take a simple example. Say you want to find all the files in a given directory that were modified on a specific day, then move only those files somewhere else. (This is a great way to roll over Microsoft IIS logs or other kinds of regularly generated files that you don't want to keep forever.) Here's one way to do it:

dir *.eml | where-object {$_.LastWriteTime -like "04/02 *"} | move-item -destination c:oldSpam

The first part finds the set of files—in this case, all of the .eml files in the current directory. The second part selects only the files that were written on the given date. The third part moves the files to the specified location. Even if you don't recognize the specific PowerShell commands in this example, you can clearly recognize the intent of this snippet if you understand the three-step pattern.

Of course, there's a lot more to being productive with Exchange Management Shell than I can cover here, but the important thing I want to get across is that Exchange Management Shell is much more approachable than you probably think. You might not be a power scripter, but that's no reason to avoid Exchange Management Shell and PowerShell. After a brief, initial learning curve, you'll probably be surprised at what you can accomplish.

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Sponsor: Symantec

Preventing the IT Search Party: Be Prepared
Does your company have $500,000 to spend on one email discovery request? Join us for this free Web seminar to learn how you can implement an email archiving solution to optimize email management and proactively take control of e-discovery—and save the IT search party for when you really need it! On-Demand Web Seminar
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/seminars/symantec/itsearchparty/?partnerref=E&Omid0405

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*** Windows IT Pro 2007 Community Choice Awards!

We Need Your Help Picking the Best Products
Vote for your favorite products from the Buyer's Guides we published in Windows IT Pro over the past 12 months. The first six categories are now open for voting on the Windows IT Pro forums, but only for a limited time. Voting will remain open for three weeks per category. To see the list of products in each category and place your vote, follow the links below.

The following three categories will remain open for voting through Wednesday, April 11: Host-Based Intrusion Prevention Systems
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=42&threadid=84647

KVM over IP Switches
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=47&threadid=84644

Ultra-Portable Laptops
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=47&threadid=84643

The following three categories will remain open for voting through Wednesday, April 25: iSCSI Storage Arrays
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=46&threadid=84901&enterthread=y

UPS Products
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=47&threadid=84903

Two-Factor Authentication Products
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=42&threadid=84902

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***EXCHANGING IDEAS

Focus: Office Communications Server 2007 to Pick Up Where Exchange Left Off

As Microsoft gets set to ship the public beta of Office Communications Server 2007, Paul discusses this evolutionary step in messaging.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/95510/95510.html

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Tell Us About the Products You Love!
What products are you using that save you time or make your workload a little lighter? What hot product discoveries have you made that other IT pros need to know about? Let the world know about your experiences in Windows IT Pro's monthly What's Hot department. If we publish your story in What's Hot, we'll send you a Best Buy gift card! Send information about your favorite product and how it has helped you to [email protected].

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Have a question? Got answers? Join your peers in the Exchange discussion forums:
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/categories.aspx?catid=40&entercat=y

Here are some current threads that your colleagues hope you can help answer:

The Goat Ate My Email
This is a very serious inquiry: How can I change the Outlook "Deleted Items" icon to look like a goat's head?
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=40&threadid=84927&enterthread=y

Recipent Policy: Can This Be Done?
Is it possible to use a recipient policy specifically for the [email protected] inbox to permanently delete big emails, greater than say 15MB. If not, how else can I delete these messages without having to manually delete them?
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=40&threadid=84874&enterthread=y

Help with Distribution Lists
We have an All Users distribution list setup as a Distribution Group in AD. When someone sends email to this distribution group, some but not all people receive the message on their BlackBerries, although everyone receives it in Outlook.
http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=40&threadid=84839&enterthread=y

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The voting has ended in the Windows IT Pro Exchange & Outlook nonscientific Instant Poll for the question "What email client does your company use?" Here are the results from the 83 votes:
- 6% Outlook 2007
- 78% Outlook 2003
- 10% Pre-2003 version of Outlook
- 2% Lotus Notes
- 4% Other

Tell us what you think in this month's Instant Poll:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/MicrosoftExchangeOutlook/
"Is managing Exchange getting too complicated for your IT staff?"
a. No, it's about the same as it's always been
b. Yes, it's gotten slightly more complicated in the past few years
c. Yes, it's somewhat more complicated, but we can still handle it with current staff
d. Yes, it's significantly more complicated—we can't keep up!
e. We give up—we're outsourcing all our messaging functions!

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***Editor's Note

TechX Interoperability Web Site and UPDATE Email Newsletter:
Do you work in a mixed environment? Visit TechX World (http://techxworld.com) for information about Windows interoperability. The TechX World community gives you access to interoperability articles that aren't available anywhere else; news, tips, and tricks from interop experts and other users; and forums and blog posts by other community members.

Join the TechX World community and sign up for the TechX Interoperability UPDATE email newsletter:
http://techxworld.com/community/reg

~~~~ Hot Spot: ~~~~

The Email Management Crisis
Find out the 7 critical email problems to watch for, and how you can prevent them. Learn how to better manage your email environment including disaster recovery, compliance, data storage, security issues, and managing wireless devices. Download this free white paper today.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/whitepapers/messageone/emailcrisis/?code=E&Ohot0405

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***NEW AND IMPROVED
by Blake Eno, [email protected]

Remotely Manage your Email Infrastructure
Azaleos announced updates to its line of OneServer email appliances for Exchange Server 2007. The OneServer product family includes OneServer for High Reliability, a turnkey email appliance for up to 1,000 users; OneServer for High Availability, a clustered email solution that delivers up to 99.999 percent availability; and BladeMail, a clustered email solution on blades that supports up to 42,000 users per system. The product family is managed by OneStop Managed Services, which lets you remotely manage the health of every OneServer appliance. For more information on Azaleos and its OneServer product family, visit Azaleos on the Web or call 425-996-0539.
http://www.azaleos.com

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***EVENTS AND RESOURCES

These Windows-related events, papers, and resources will help you keep your knowledge and skills up to date and help you deploy, secure, and maintain the latest Exchange- and Windows-related technologies. For more Exchange related resources, visit
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/exchangeresources

Do you have visibility and control over your software licenses? Most organizations face serious challenges, including complex and confusing vendor licensing models, cost overruns, missed deadlines and business opportunities, and lost user productivity. Learn to address these challenges and prepare for audits. Register for this free on-demand Web seminar, available now!
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/seminars/macrovision/softwarelicensing/?partnerref=0402e&r

Having customers depend on your IT services in order to communicate, purchase, or manage orders is great for your business. But what happens when your applications or Web sites become unavailable? Download this free white paper and learn how to eliminate application downtime disruptions and ensure the continuity of your business.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/whitepaper/neverfail/businesscontinuity/?code=0402e&r

Are all your malware definitions completely up-to-date? If they are, then you're halfway home to total malware protection. Windows Vista might be the most secure Microsoft OS ever released, but malware is constantly evolving, and sometimes out-of-the-box security just isn't enough. In this exclusive podcast, Windows IT Pro Editorial and Strategy Director Karen Forster interviews Microsoft Product Manager Josue Fontanez about Forefront Client Security, Microsoft's unified malware protection package.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/podcast/coresecurity/forefrontclient/?code=0402e&r

You know you need to manage your email data, but how do you do it? What steps do you need to take? What additional measures should you enact? What shouldn't you do? Get answers to these and other questions and get control of your vital messaging data. Download this free eBook today!
http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/ebooks/ilumin/discovery/?code=0402e&r

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