I’ve Made A Huge Mistake

Similar to the RPC dynamic port allowcation, FRS works in the same way. FRS is used in AD replication as well as file replication pre 2003 R2. Once again, putting in firewall rules can be difficult with this random port usage. This registry key can restrict it to a specific port making firewall configuration much easier.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319553/

A quick way to turn determine the FSMO for your domain is to run the command netdom query fsmo. Netdom is part of the 2003 Resource Kit which is on every 2003 cd. To find out more complicated FSMO roles for an entire forest, see this article.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/234790

The correct order to stop the BES processes is as follows.

1. BlackBerry Router.
2. BlackBerry Dispatcher.
3. BlackBerry Controller.
4. All remaining BlackBerry services.

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/articles/395/KB13718_f.SAL_Public.html

I’ve stumbled apon a very cool tool for determing the health of Windows systems. It is called PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs). It is free as in beer too!!! Basically if you give it a performance log with all the coutners, it will give you a detailed report (HTML, or XML) of what is going on with your system with key areas highlighted in Red where it has having problems. The best part is you are able to see the Performance Counters that are important for on each system. They have several pre-built counters and the levels (think MOM/SCOM but without proactive monitoring), for Exchange 2003/07, Active Directory, IIS, SQL Server 2000/05 and a few others.

http://www.codeplex.com/PAL

If you tried to install Exchange System Manger (ESM) on Vista you learned that this wouldn’t actually work. Until today. Microsoft released a verison of version that works on Vista.Thanks to MVP Aaron Tiensivu for posting this link.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3403d74e-8942-421b-8738-b3664559e46f&displaylang=en

Use the Error Code Lookup tool to determine error values from decimal and hexadecimal error codes in Microsoft Windows® operating systems. The tool can look up one or more values at a time. All values on the command line will be looked up in Exchange’s internal tables and presented to you. If available, informational data associated with the value or values will also be shown.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=be596899-7bb8-4208-b7fc-09e02a13696c&displaylang=en

Are you receiving Event IDs  9666, 9667, 9668, and 9669? You may have reached the maximum number of MAPI named properties in your Exchange message store. There is a quick registry key that can be updated to expand it. The max for Exchange is 32,766 property IDs for each database.

Useful links

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb851492.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb851495.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb851493(EXCHG.80).aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;820379

Once in a while you will need to update a registry key affecting a specific Message store in Exchange 2003 through the registry. Many times there is no way to do this through ESM (Exchange System Manager). When you look at the message store in the registry key it is typically written as Private {long hexadecimal number}. How do we find out which message store that actually is, the answer is the Object GUID. This is unique to every single object and is always the same. Even renaming an object doesn’t change the GUID. It never will change. This would be your private key in a database.

How to find the ObjectGUID

Launch ADSIEdit.MSC

Expand Configuration, Services, Microsoft Exchange, Organization Name, Administration Groups, Your Admin Group Name, Servers, Your Server, Your Storage Group.

Right click the Message Store in that group and look for OjectGUID. This is written backwards from the Registry key.

Example
Private-12345678 in the registry will be written as 0×78 0×56 0×34 0×12 in the ADSIEdit ObjectGUID

If you want to make LDAPS queries to a DC you need to have an SSL on the domain controller. It is a pretty straight forward process.

1.) Create the .inf file. Following is an example .inf file that can be used to create the certificate request.

To get some additional counters in Perfmon, such as MAPI Named Properties, you have to make a quick registry change and restart Perfmon.

After you modify this registry value, you must restart Performance Monitor to see the new counters. The new counters are located under the MSExchangeIS object.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;254606