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Post by MartinT on Dec 18, 2014 14:26:40 GMT
These last few weeks have been pretty stressful as I have been building a new Exchange Server 2013 installation on new metal in order to upgrade from our current Exchange 2010 system. For those of you who don't know, Microsoft Exchange is the worlds pre-eminent e-mail system used in most corporates worldwide (about 76% market share). It's also a bit of a pig to configure (as are all big multi-user systems, admittedly). Functionality-wise, it's simply amazing and is deservedly at the top of the pile.
So today I'm celebrating as I made the final breakthrough yesterday with a nasty firewall problem that took me fully a week to track down. I am currently migrating some 400 mailboxes over to the new system (allowing users to access their mail even while being migrated); send and receive work; webmail works inside and outside of the organisation; malware and spam detection work; voicemail works, extended validation certificate works. It all works!
Anyway, it explains my relative absence recently from TAS. Now I can think about Christmas. Cheers all! 
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Post by ChrisB on Dec 18, 2014 14:41:08 GMT
Well done for cracking what must have seemed like a monumental task. Sounds like your break will be well earned.
I can't see me getting my desk cleared in time for Christmas - I am still nagging our legal team to resolve some problems that I gave them in August 2013 and I have a massive funding deadline to meet. All I want to do is plant a few tens of thousands of trees -it should be simple really!
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Post by MartinT on Dec 18, 2014 14:45:44 GMT
I think the core of many of our jobs is fairly straightforward, really. It's decision-makers (and especially those who don't understand and interfere) that slow us down.
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Post by ChrisB on Dec 18, 2014 14:50:32 GMT
Yep - process and procedure trumps practical realities every time.
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Post by MartinT on Dec 19, 2014 6:39:43 GMT
That's more than half the mailboxes moved to the new server and it's taking the load quite nicely. Should be finished by Monday. The new webmail interface is very rich, amazing what can be achieved with just a browser.
Here's what a test account looks like, we could almost stop using Outlook altogether.
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Post by MikeMusic on Dec 19, 2014 8:05:49 GMT
Don't understand
Thought Outlook was the client and Exchange the server
Is this running a sort of webmail ?
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Post by MartinT on Dec 19, 2014 9:07:58 GMT
Exchange comes in two flavours: in-house and cloud hosted. We have our own server and run our own Exchange Server 2013 system. Small businesses, for instances, could go the cloud hosted route.
E-Mail clients from Microsoft come in three flavours: Outlook 2013 application, Outlook Web App (OWA) which is a browser webmail client sent by the server and requires no software installation, and Windows Mail which comes free with current Windows OS (including Windows Phone) and is particularly good for touch.
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Post by MikeMusic on Dec 19, 2014 11:41:36 GMT
Got it, thanks
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Post by MartinT on Dec 20, 2014 0:52:10 GMT
Chunter, chunter, the mailboxes are still copying over. It's been a couple of days solid now with about another 80 mailboxes to go. Should be done by Monday!
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Post by MikeMusic on Dec 20, 2014 9:11:22 GMT
That's what I remember about Exchange, a monster.
Some years ago I was told it could take a day or two just to come back up after a reboot
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Post by MartinT on Dec 20, 2014 9:42:15 GMT
It's very stable and efficient these days. Our server comes up in about 60 seconds. It remains on 24/7 for months with never a glitch, accepting about 3,000 incoming messages per day and about another 8,000 internal ones. This kind of enterprise system (together with Server, SQL, SharePoint, SCCM and others) is what Microsoft are really good at.
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Post by MartinT on Dec 21, 2014 22:37:48 GMT
All mailboxes transferred. Starting the decommission process tomorrow - you can't just switch the old server off, you have to properly decommission and uninstall it so that all trace of that system is removed from the Active Directory. By end of tomorrow it'll be gone. Then I can rebuild the 'old' server (which is the better one: eight processors, 32GB RAM, 2TB of very high speed 15k rpm SAS hard drives in a RAID10 array) and transfer the system from temporary back to permanent server. Then I can have a really good Christmas break!  |
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Post by MikeMusic on Dec 22, 2014 8:00:03 GMT
That is very high spec kit.
Don't envy what you do one bit
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Post by MartinT on Dec 22, 2014 9:11:28 GMT
It certainly shifts, Mike. I've never seen any rival school's webmail respond as quickly as ours.
The most impressive thing about Exchange 2013 is the search speed. I can now search for a key phrase in my e-mail (containing 34,891 messages) and it takes about 2 seconds. Including searching inside attachments. On the slower server!
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Post by MikeMusic on Dec 22, 2014 13:29:23 GMT
I use my backup Gmail for fast searching
*Just found All Mail Items search in Outlook - that's not bad. Pst local.
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Post by stanleyb on Dec 23, 2014 21:59:26 GMT
I am still using 2005, but I regret not having installed 2008 to try.
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Post by MartinT on Dec 24, 2014 2:30:10 GMT
I don't recognise those versions, Stan. There was 2003 & 2007. Are you talking about Exchange or Outlook? Those may have been versions of Outlook for Mac.
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Post by stanleyb on Dec 24, 2014 7:29:03 GMT
They were part of an account's package that MS used to make and sell. So it might have been specially put together for that accounts package. Never really looked into it or paid attention until you mentioned 2013.
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Post by MartinT on Dec 28, 2014 20:55:19 GMT
I was just inspecting our stats today as the mail server (still on temporary hardware) seemed a little slow. It turns out that we've been the target of high volume spam which our Barracuda spam firewall has been fighting day and night. On three days in the last week the incoming volume has been over 40,000 messages each day and on all days over 20,000. That's way over spec for a single server supporting 400 mailboxes. No wonder it's been having trouble!
I've no idea who these spam originators are but it does look like a directed attack. So far, the hardware is coping. Grrr! |
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Post by MartinT on Dec 29, 2014 11:44:29 GMT
In preparation for Friday's server move, I applied the wonderfully named 'Microsoft Exchange 2013 SP1 Cumulative Update 7', which is mandatory when using backups to restore a server: exactly what I'll be doing.
These are not like your normal Windows updates. I started this one last night and it took over 8 hours to apply  |
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