Disable AutoForwarding Rules

A problem many companies face is users who automatically forward all their e-mails to external addresses. The easiest way to prevent this is to use the Set-RemoteDomain cmdlet which is used to configure a managed connection for a remote domain. In this case, we will configure the Default Remote Domain (with an address space of “*”) which is the remote domain related to the Internet (if you changed its name or created a different one, please update the code):

Set-RemoteDomain Default –AutoForwardEnabled $False

Please note, however, that this will block any messages that are auto-forwarded by client e-mail programs in your organization from being sent to the internet, for everyone!

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Protocol Workloads Poster

A new version (5.12 – June 2012) of this great poster is now available. It shows each workload in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 communications software, describing relationships, dependencies, flow of information and certificate requirements.

This new version adds more details to the Enterprise Voice workload based on feedback from several Lync experts.

Get it now from the Download Center.

TechEd North America 2012 - Exchange 2010 Videos

TechEd North America 2012 is now over and, as usual, you can find online many of the presentations. HERE are some great videos regarding Exchange.

Empty Poison Queues

If for some reason you have e-mails in a Poison Queue and you can’t get rid of them using the Exchange Management Shell [EMS] or Console [EMC], here is another method:
1. Open the Windows Services MMC;
2. Find the Microsoft Exchange Transport service and Pause it;
3. Open the EMS and run Get-Queue –Server <server_name> until all the queues are empty (except for the Poison queue);
4. Once all queues are empty stop the Microsoft Exchange Transport service;
5. Navigate to the location where your transport database is located (by default C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\data\Queue\) and delete all files in that folder;
6. Start the Microsoft Exchange Transport service.

Exchange will create a brand new database and your Poison queue will be cleared!

Error with your new mobile phone partnership

By default Exchange 2010 SP1 limits the number of mobile devices each user can connect to Exchange to 10. This is done by a Throttling Policy but it is not limited just to ActiveSync [EAS].

A Throttling Policy allows administrators to limit the amount of resources each user can take to avoid possible performance issues. In regards with EAS, a policy can control 6 parameters:

• EASMaxConcurrency

• EASPercentTimeInAD

• EASPercentTimeInCAS

• EASPercentTimeInMailboxRPC

• EASMaxDevices

• EASMaxDeviceDeletesPerMonth

The one we are interested is EASMaxDevices which together with EASMaxConcurrency are the only ones set by default.

If the limit of 10 is reached, a user will receive the following message on the device he/she is trying to synchronize (in this case I changed the limit to 1 for testing):

To overcome this limitation, you can increase this limit using the Set-ThrottlingPolicy cmdlet. For example, to change it to 25, run the following cmdlet:

Set-ThrottlingPolicy <policy_name> –EASMaxDevices 50

If you don’t want to increase everyone’s limit, you can create a new Throttling Policy, increase its limit and assign it to the user(s) you want:

New-ThrottlingPolicy "Increased EAS" -EASMaxDevices 25
Set-Mailbox Nuno -ThrottlingPolicy "Increased EAS"

Alternatively you can delete any devices that you no longer need to sync with Exchange, if any. To achieve this, login to Outlook Web App, go to Options -> Phone -> Mobile Phones and delete any unused partnerships to reduce the number of devices associated with your account.

For more information: Set-ThrottlingPolicy

Archive Mailbox Statistics

Although Personal Archives in Exchange 2010 are often in cheaper storage than “normal” mailboxes, we still need to keep an eye on them to check how archives are growing and how (if!) users are using it.

Here’s a simple script to get some statistics regarding all the archive mailboxes in your environment:

$mbcombCollection = @()

$archiveMbxs = Get-Mailbox -Archive -ResultSize Unlimited | Select Identity, ArchiveWarningQuota, ArchiveQuota
ForEach ($mbx in $archiveMbxs)
{
 $mbxStats = Get-MailboxStatistics $mbx.Identity -Archive | Select DisplayName, StorageLimitStatus, TotalItemSize, TotalDeletedItemSize, ItemCount, DeletedItemCount, Database

 $mbcomb = "" | Select "Display Name", StorageLimitStatus, "TotalItemSize (MB)", "TotalDeletedItemSize (MB)", ItemCount, DeletedItemCount, Database, "ArchiveWarningQuota (GB)", "ArchiveQuota (GB)"

 $mbcomb."Display Name" = $mbxStats.DisplayName
 $mbcomb.StorageLimitStatus = $mbxStats.StorageLimitStatus
 $mbcomb."TotalItemSize (MB)" = [math]::round($mbxStats.TotalItemSize.Value.ToMB(), 2)
 $mbcomb."TotalDeletedItemSize (MB)" = [math]::round($mbxStats.TotalDeletedItemSize.Value.ToMB(), 2)
 $mbcomb.ItemCount = $mbxStats.ItemCount
 $mbcomb.DeletedItemCount = $mbxStats.DeletedItemCount
 $mbcomb.Database = $mbxStats.Database
 $mbcomb."ArchiveWarningQuota (GB)" = $mbx.ArchiveWarningQuota.Value.ToGB()
 $mbcomb."ArchiveQuota (GB)" = $mbx.ArchiveWarningQuota.Value.ToGB()

 $mbcombCollection += $mbcomb
}

#$mbcombCollection
$mbcombCollection | Export-Csv D:\Scripts\Reports\"ArchiveStats_$(Get-Date -f 'yyyyMMdd').csv" -NoType

Hope this helps!