Best Practices for Virtualize Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

This is in reference to my earlier article, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Virtualization Support Compatibility with different Hypervisors | Microsoft Hardware and Application Virtualization Support for Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, where I tried to clear out some of the misconception for Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange, by taking all of you to the Microsoft Virtualization Support Compatiblity Tester site, which provides Microsoft Windows Server platform and Microsoft different products virtualization support compatibility support testing with different Hypervisor available in the industry todays.

Lets make our association with Exchange, well when it comes to the Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices for Virtualizing, so therefore, I would like to share a document, which covers all the ins and outs for Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2.

Check out this document, and make your self clear for how to virtualize your Exchange 2010 Server with Hyper-V

Cheers!

Im truly honored and thankful to Microsoft Gulf-Dubai, and especially Ms. Natasha Zaza and Ms. Naveen Nasif, for giving me this great opportunity to talked and represented Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Program and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 at Microsoft Virtualization Boot-Camp, held at Le Royal Mridien Beach Resort, Dubai, UAE from 14-Dec-2011 to 15-Dec-2011.

It was an amazing experience for me to meet all of you, who visit the event and gave me your precious time, while discussing some of your Microsoft Exchange Server related issues, and among these discussions, related to some of the Microsoft Exchange Server Deployment and Migration scenarios, they are already documented and available on my blog, and for some which I havent documented, soon you would be able to find them on my blog.

On-behalf of Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program, I would like to thank you all of you, those who have trust in ourselves to support you and to be at your doorstep for making your experience with Microsoft products more interesting and meaning-full.

Cheers!

Author: Zahir Hussain Shah, MVP Exchange

How to setup Hierarchical Address Book in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

If Email has become the blood for business communications in the todays business world, so it wont be wrong to say that, providing Email Services to the end-users along with robust Address Book service is the added Oxygen in this blood. Address Book gives a nifty way to end-users for locating their desired recipients from their own department, from the other departments from the same company, or sometime from the partners company. Since all of us, cannot remember the everyones email address, so it is essential for us to provide sound Address Book functionality to our end-users, to make their communication experience less time-consuming, and more productive.

What is Hierarchical Address Book?

Today, I will walk you through the Hierarchical Address Book feature, introduced within Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Hierarchical Address Book feature provides the end-users to locate and find personnel based on the Organizational Structure, created by the Email Administrator.

Below figure tells about the basic layout of Hierarchical Address Book for Zairosoft Int.

Lets go and hit the iceberg Below steps will guide you, how you can build your own Hierarchical Address Book for your company:

Note: In this article, I will assume that you know how to create a Email Distribution Group in Microsoft Exchange Server, but if you dont know, you can use below EMS CMDLet to see how to create one for you:

1) Lets first create the Zairosoft Root, you can use the below EMS command to create the Distribution Group:

2) Since, now we have created the Zairosoft Distribution Group, now we set this as Root for the Hierarchical Address Book, you can use the below CMDLet to make the Zairosoft Distribution Group as the Root:

Now we will set the Zairosoft Distribution Group as Hierarchical Group, which tells the system that this is going to be a Distribution Group, which will contain other Distribution Group, and at the event of drill down, it will show the other member Distribution Group in the Address Book.

3) Now as shown in the above image, you can see that Zairosoft (Root) contains three sub-distribution groups, as Administrative, Technical, and Operations, so we will create the three more Distribution Group, and will add them in the Zairosoft Distribution Group, but using the below CMDLets:

Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity "Zairosoft" -Member "Administrative"
Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity "Zairosoft" -Member "Technical"
Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity "Zairosoft" -Member "Operations"

So our Zairosoft Distribution Group, will look like as follows:

Interesting stuff: You can also add any individual Mailbox in the root Zairosoft, it could be any higher level personeel, e.g. CEO, so everybody will see CEO as the Root of all employees in the company, and if you want to make CEO Mailbox as the top one showing in the Hierarchical Address Book for Zairosoft (ROOT) istribution group, so you can use the below CMDLet:

4) Since, our Administrative, Technical, and Operations Distribution Groups are containing other distribution groups, so we need to set their identity as Hierarchical Group, so Exchange will now and it will show them as Hierarchical Groups, which will show others sub-groups in the event of drilling-down them:

5) Now use the above method for creating more distribution groups, making them member of their corssponding partent groups, and if they will contain sub-groups, so you have to set them as Hierachical Group, below snapshot will show you my configuration:

Zairosoft (Root)\	Zairosoft\Administrative\IS&TD\	Zairosoft\Administrative\IS&TD\Infrastrucutre Team\
Zairosoft\Administrative\IS&TDIS&T\Infrastrucutre Team\IS&TD-Systems\

After this all configuration, you have to restart Address Book Service, and File Distribution Service of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, remember, its an optional step, where you are forcing the clients to download the changes, made by you.

Zairosoft Hierarchical Address Book:

I hope you enjoyed reading this article, and it will help you to provide better and enhanced Address Book feature to your end-users.

Cheers!

Author: Zahir Hussain Shah, MVP Exchange Server

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Virtualization Support Compatibility for Hypervisor(s)

Recently, I had an opportunity to attend Microsoft Virtualization Boot-Camp for tow-days, where Microsoft invited several IT Pros from the different Emirates of UAE, and while we went through the different sessions, I have been asked many questions regarding the Virtualization Support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 for various Hardware and Application Virtualization Providers, like Hyper-V, VMWare and etc, so I thought to summarize, and correct some of the misconceptions related to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Virtualization Support.

In the below couple of snapshots, I will show you how you can validate your Hypervisor, which is supported by Microsoft for any Microsoft based product, and especially Microsoft Exchange Server.

Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program helps Microsoft customers, to validate their Hypervisor before they go and install any Microsoft product in a Virtualized fashion, and to receive support from Microsoft, one of the nifty part of MSVVP Program is that it provides handy web based compatibility utility, which allows customers to select product, and then select their desired Hypervisor, which then provides results on the web related that what is supported and what is not.

Open the this link to browse Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program Support Compatibility Tester:

For more information: please visit the below links:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996719.aspx

http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm

I hope with the above information presented in this article, it will help various individual, those who are actively seeking an opportunity to Virtualize any Microsoft and Microsoft Windows Server based product, and it is always remember to first go through the deep research before virtualizing any software product, till now most of the Software Application vendor, does not support Hardware and Application Virtualization for their products.

Cheers!

Hello Folks, Greetings!

Tomorrow, 15th of Dec, 2011, I will be speaking and presenting Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, at Microsoft Virtualization Boot-Camp Event, which will held at Le Royal Meridien Beach Resort, Jumeirah, Dubai, so If you are from Dubai, UAE, I would recommend to attend this event, this event will provide you tremendous information and knowledge for Microsoft Virtualization Offerings and Microsoft System Center Suit of products for Cloud Computing.

On-behalf of Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Family, it would be an honor for me to speak about the program and the benefits associated with it.

See you

Cheers,

Author: Zahir Hussain Shah, MVP Exchange Server

Interesting Storage Power-Path software upgrade on Hyper-V Servers, where you are using SAN LUNs for VHDs and Pass-Through Disk for VMs internal storage.

Categories: EMC Power-path | Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 | Hyper-V Pass-Through Disks | Hyper-V

Introduction to Hyper -V Pass-through Disks:
Within Hyper-V, Microsoft introduced a method of taking the physical disk, mounted on Hypervisor to be taken inside the Virtual Machine (VM), which provides a nifty way for the Administrator, those who dose not want to create the second VHD for the D:\ (additional drive / application partition) inside the VM, for taking the Physically mapped SAN LUN or Physical Server disk as pass-through and taking inside the VM, you have to make the disk offline, and then you will go to Hyper-V for the particular VM, and needs to add SCSI Controller, and then ADD DISK, and from down, you will add the offline disk on the computer, with the DISK name, e.g. DISK 5.

Problem: How upgrading EMC Power-path will make issue for me?

Recently, while upgrading my companys SAN from EMC Clarion to EMC VNX, we had to upgrade the firmware and power-path version to the newest one, so what we did, we mistakenly first removed the power-path old version, which was earlier recommended by the Vendor, so when we removed it and then reinstalled, so all the drives came back only (physically mapped to Hyper-V Server), since they were offline when the came back after installing power-path, so we thought it is fine, because we want the m to stay as offline, as they have been taken inside the VM as pass-through disk, but when we tried to start the Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox Server, so it gave error that Microsoft SCSI Controller ID is different and Microsoft Hyper-V doesnt have permission on this GUID / UIIIDs (SID) of disk.

Solution:

So then we had to remove all the disk (pass-through), and start the VM, so we found that the VM came online successfully, then we added all the disk in the same original order, which we removed earlier, and then start the Server so this time Server came online with all the necessary drives, along with same Drive letters, which helped to continue Exchange Replication Services.

What if I dont remove the EMC Power-path and perform the in-place upgrade the EMC Power-Path?

After the removal of EMC Power-path, we also tried to perform the in-place upgrade of power-path newer version, and it went fine, but when we restarted the Server (Hyper-V), so we found the disk offline, and hit the VM start, but the we found the sam e error that the SID (UIID / GUID) has been changed or the Hyper-V doesnt have permission on this GUID.

Observations:
It seems that when we perform the power-path upgrade, whether by removing the old version first or perform in-place upgrade, it changes the GUID / UUID of the SCSI Con troller ID for the Disk, so when the Hyper-V searches for the same UIDs or GUIDs, which turn Hyper-V fail to start VM.

After upgrading Power-path, suddenly the Virtual Machine gets disappeared :$
During the same maintenance activity, I found that one of my critical machine got disappeared from the Hyper-V, I was so much shocked to see that, what exactly happened, whether I mistakenly removed it or something else happened?, but after that when I mounted and dismounted the Physical Disk where I was having the VHD created for the VM, and then Hyper-V sensed the presence of the VHD, and refreshed the Hyper-V Management Console, so I found that Virtual Machine came back, but UNFORTUNATELY, one of my VM got completed disappeared, and to somehow VM and its corresponding Virtual Machine Configuration files got deleted.

Best Practice, which I observed during this whole maintenance activities, shutting downing Hyper-V VM will not help in anyway, you have to Stop and Disable the Hyper-V related services on the Server, and only after that if you perform the Power-Path upgrade, so maybe, you will to pinch your hairs little less.

I hope with this information presented in this article, you will go through less pain, and will make your transition more smooth and seamless for your virtual environment.

Note:
It may be expected that the findings, which I presented here, could vary from your environment and experience.

Cheers!

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 is available now!

As all of us have been waiting to see this notification, It is my pleasure, as being early spreaders, to inform all of my blog readers that Microsoft has recently made Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 public, which is now downloadable from Microsoft Download Center.

Microsoft added various out-of-the-box features and functionalities in Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2, and among all others, GAL Segregation is one of my favorite one, now lets use it, and discover more about it.

Download Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2 (link)

Cheers!