2010-12-15 · 16:34

Of NICs and DAGs in Exchange 2010

Tony posted a blog article discussing the tradeoffs inherent in choosing a number of NICs for your Exchange 2010 DAG members. While I don’t disagree outright with anything he said, I think there are some additional factors that are worth mentioning.

Bottom line: I always recommend– and practically require– two NICs in all DAG members. Why? The answer is threefold, but to get there we have to do a bit of digging.

It’s important to understand that DAG members process two distinct types of network traffic: "MAPI traffic" to and from CAS servers (and AD, and pretty much everything else) and "replication traffic" to and from other DAG members. (See this TechNet topic for more on the distinction between the two.) First, the way DAGs handle network traffic is that you can specify separate networks for replication traffic and normal traffic. It’s perfectly supported to put both types of traffic on the same NIC. However, if you segregate the traffic onto two separate NICs, you get a bonus– think of it like a saving throw against failover. A failure of the MAPI network will trigger a DAG failover, but a failure of the replication network will merely move replication traffic onto the MAPI network without a failover.

With that in mind, here’s why I think you should plan on using two (or possibly more) NICs in your DAG members.

First, you get additional protection against several potential points of failure. Provided that you’ve designed your environment properly, having two NICs means that you’re protected against failure of a single cable, switch port, or switch. (This assumes, of course, that you haven’t just plugged every DAG member into the same physical switch!) Even if you’re using the tried-and-true method of linking two DAG servers together with a simple crossover cable, having a second NIC insulates you against failure of that cable.

Second, you gain flexibility. All other factors being equal, I’d rather have the ability to shift MAPI or replication traffic to a different physical path when necessary.

Third, the vast majority of modern servers (where by "modern" I mean those sold since the release of Exchange 2007) already include at least two, and often four, onboard NICs. Many IT staffers are suspicious of the quality of onboard NICs due to various problems with chipsets and drivers of old, but I have seen many perfectly stable and well-functioning Exchange environments using modern NICs and drivers so this seems like a legacy concern to me.

Tony makes an important point when he says that companies who have the ability to notice and respond to outages quickly will be OK running a single NIC. I don’t disagree, but I’d point out that even such companies would rather not have outages in the first place. Admittedly, a failure of the MAPI NIC in a DAG member will trigger a failover, but it’s a simple matter at that point to reconfigure the network to use the replication NIC if need be, or to replace or repair the failed NIC if it makes more sense to do so.

If it costs you literally nothing extra to gain the additional benefits of flexibility and protection, in my opinion you’d be well advised to grab those benefits with both hands.

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2010-11-18 · 12:05

Exchange Server Cookbook script archive

A long time ago… well, OK, it wasn’t that long ago. Anyway, back in 2005 (ed note: that was a long time ago!) Missy, Devin, and I (along with Tom Meunier) wrote the Exchange Server Cookbook for O’Reilly. I maintained a web site for it for a few years, but as interest in the book waned, so did my efforts to maintain the site.

I find that I still use it a few times a week as I work on various Exchange 2003 content. Devin was kind enough to gather up the scripts into an archive, and I’m finally posting it. Feel free to share and adapt these, but please give us credit; it was rather a lot of work.

Get the script archive

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2010-11-15 · 12:13

Thursday trivia #28

  • The boys and I have had a grand time playing with the Kinect, even though we only have the included Kinect Adventures game. I think the real potential of the sensor is yet untapped but it will be fun to see how different game developers make use of it.
  • Speaking of Kinect: at Microsoft’s Lync launch yesterday they demonstrated using an Xbox with Kinect for video conferencing with a Windows PC running the Lync client. I can’t wait to get this operational, especially if it means we can put an Xbox in the control room in our Pensacola facility.
  • And speaking of Pensacola: I continue to be impressed by the young sailors I get to teach. Your Navy is in good hands.
  • And speaking of Pensacola: I continue to be impressed by the young sailors I get to teach. Your Navy is in good hands.
  • And speaking of hands: I am not a fan of the TSA’s new groping procedures, nor their porn-o-scope scanners. I think this guy had the right idea, as does this one. It interests me to no end that flights entering the US– you know, like the ones the underwear and shoe bombers took– don’t have these screenings. Shouldn’t we be focusing on the most likely threat sources?
  • And speaking of focus: I saw the Samsung Focus at the Pensacola AT&T store, and I quite liked it. I am waiting for a review unit to give it a more in-depth test, but it certainly looks promising so far.
  • And speaking of so far: I am so far from being ready to run my Thanksgiving-day race that it’s not even funny. I seem to have developed a hacking cough over the last two days that has kept me off the streets; I’m hoping it gets better soon.
  • And, finally, speaking of soon: thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday! I won’t soon forget!

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2010-11-11 · 19:47

Veterans’ Day in Pensacola

Today was surprisingly busy for a Veterans Day. Of course, the best way to celebrate Veterans Day would be for veterans to get the actual day off while everyone else works. Until that happens, I’ll settle for getting the day off. The only reason I got this particular veterans day off is because I am in Pensacola teaching the Navy this week. They took the day off, so we did as well.

I celebrated by sleeping in, followed by a visit to the Omni fitness center. This is a Walmart-sized gym a couple miles from our hotel. It has an enormous open floor with every kind of weight machine you can imagine, plus a wide variety of cardio equipment. I got in a great run while watching “The Enemy Below“, a movie I will have to share with the boys when I get home.

Upon returning to the hotel, I started working on the next feature I wanted to add to the LDS Tools application. I have mostly confined myself to fixing bugs, but I wanted to add a “popover” controller to allow users to quickly copy address, e-mail address, or phone number when viewing a member’s record. This seems straightforward enough, although as I dug into it a bit more it turned out to be slightly more challenging. The trick is to use what Apple calls a gesture recognizer to notice when the user holds down a touch on the screen for a long period. The recognizer calls your own code when it fires, and you’re responsible for deciding what to do; in my case, I wanted it to display the popover with a single menu command.

My first attempt displayed the popover correctly… everywhere, not just for the cells that actually contain data. For example, a long press on the “add to favorites” button would trigger the popover. This wasn’t what I had in mind, but before I could fix it, I had to interrupt my programming to join my coworker Apolonio for lunch at Chick-fil-A. He had never eaten there before, but I daresay he will be enough air again. He was particularly impressed that someone came over to our table to ask if we wanted our drinks refilled. As a lifelong California resident, he isn’t used to Southern courtesy.

After lunch, we headed for Naval Air Station Pensacola for the scheduled performance by the Blue Angels. I had seen the Angels about six weeks ago, which did absolutely nothing to diminish my interest in seeing them again. Apolonio had never seen them, so we were both eager by the time we got to the seating area along the runway. The Blues put on a fantastic show; the weather was warm and clear, the crowd energetic and appreciative, and the flight maneuvering flawless. I could, I would happily go back tomorrow or Saturday to see their two upcoming performances, the last ones of the season. However, I have a previous engagement: finishing up my week of teaching exchange to her students at Corry Station.

This class is unique in that they seem to have more cohesion, more esprit de corps, than previous classes have. This is resulted in some great discussions in study hall. These young sailors are willing to help each other with explanations, corrections, or information sharing: exactly the kind of behavior that will help make them successful in the fleet. It’s really a pleasure to work with them, especially when I can see that the content and exercises I’ve been working on for the last few months are successfully teaching them some of the complexities of exchange.

Anyway, after the airshow I came back to the hotel and resumed working on my popover problem. It turns out that the solution to my problem was to always accept the user’s long press, but only to display the popover if the user was pressing within one of the data items I cared about. For example, if the user presses down on one of the action buttons and holds the press, I just ignore it. If they do the same thing on the displayed phone number, I display the popover. Once I figured that out, thanks to some of the sample code on the Internet, the actual process of copying the phone number (or whatever) was trivial. For an encore, I think I’ll add support for copying or pasting the member’s picture, but that will require a bit more work that I don’t think will fit into the current release schedule.

Now I’m officially done for the day. I plan to spend a few minutes reading some more of Mike Mullane’s wonderful autobiography, Riding Rockets, and thence to bed. Happy Veterans Day to all who have served our nation!

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2010-11-01 · 17:41

Halloween weekend: a success

Happy Halloween to all my readers!

I had the boys this weekend, and I have been promising to take them to Great America. For those of you who are not from Northern California, you may not be familiar with great America it’s the local equivalent of Six Flags, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to be. I had read some fairly negative online reviews (at Yelp, where nearly everything seems to be negative) and I wasn’t sure what to expect. However, a promise is a promise, and yesterday it was time to deliver. We bought our tickets online directly from the Great America website. This is substantially cheaper than buying them at the park.

I was a bit worried about the weather. The forecast called for highs in the mid 60s with a 60% chance of rain. Sure enough, it was raining in Morgan Hill when we left, but the further north we drove, the fewer clouds we saw. By the time we arrived in Santa Clara, it wasn’t exactly warm, but it also wasn’t raining.

We parked (an additional $12) and headed for the main gate. It would be an exaggeration to say that the crowds were sparse; there were no crowds! We breezed through the entry line, but only after passing through a metal detector. It turns out that pocket knives of any size are not allowed in the park, so I had to check my Swiss Army knife at the gate for later pickup. That done, we entered the park. It quickly became evident that the park was ready for Halloween; there were decorations-skeletons, zombies, and all manner of bloody and or gross stuff-everywhere. Many of the rides and activities were decorated in a Halloween motif, too, but none of it was scary. The scary stuff only happens at night, during a separate “haunt” event that is intended for teens and adults.

Matt doesn’t really like thrill rides, so we took turns riding on various things. There is a good-sized carousel-two levels, in fact-that we enjoyed riding, then we went on to the Vortex roller coaster. I’d rate it a 6/10; it was fun, but it buffets your head back and forth between the unyielding bars of the protective cage, so I ended up feeling as though I had just finished sparring class. The only other standout ride was Flight Deck, a fantastic hanging coaster with two loops, several twists, and a naval aviation motif. Matt and I also had fun driving the gas powered go carts, in which he drove his own kart and caused zero accidents, unlike his old man, who was rear ended by an even older man who wasn’t paying attention to where he was driving.

We closed out the park by riding the cable car, which turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable considering that neither David nor Matt are big fans of heights. It was neat to be able to look down and see some of the logistical parts of the park that are normally invisible to ground dwellers. Speaking of logistics; one of the common complaints I saw on yelp was that the park was dirty, rides were broken, and employees were at best apathetic and at worst actively hostile. It’s true that great America is not Disney World. Having said that, I didn’t notice any major disrepair; everything was clean, and the few employees we interacted with were pleasant enough. I’d go back, although it wouldn’t be my first choice to go in the summer, when it’s bound to be crowded and noisy.

I was not about to pay amusement park prices for what I knew would be terrible food. Instead, I took the boys to The Counter at Santana Row. The Counter in Palo Alto is one of my favorite places to eat, and the boys took to it like I thought they probably would. It was a rather late lunch, but we enjoyed it all the more for the delay. Then we went home to get ready for the church chili cookoff. This is apparently a widespread Mormon tradition; we had one each year in Ohio, and a friend of mine was just telling me about one in their ward in Texas. The one here actually combined three wards, so it wsa much larger than I was expecting, with many more varieties of chili than I could hope to sample. There were probably close to 75 cars set up for “trunk-or-treat” so the boys got a ton of loot. We finished up the night with a CHiPs marathon. OK, two episodes isn’t exactly a marathon, but it feels that way sometimes.

After church yesterday, we came home and broke our fast with various leftovers. David and I alternated between watching the Saints-Steelers game and game 4 of the World Series, then Matt and Tom got their costumes on and we went out to brave the elements– a cool, clear evening with throngs of kids wandering around Arlene’s neighborhood. Meanwhile, David stayed at my house to hand out candy. We got the better end of the deal; he said only 4-5 groups of kids came to my door, while we hit a large number of houses across town. Then we came back and watched the end of both games, flipping back and forth whenever things got dull or we hit a commercial.

Today I extended my weekend by staying home to take Tom to the pediatrician; Arlene was sick all weekend, and Tom’s cough had deepened. Turns out he had bronchitis, but nothing a Z-pack won’t cure. (And thank you, Wal-Mart, for selling me one for $6. Much appreciated!)

A quick technology note: I shot some video of Matt at the go-kart track with my iPhone 4. Sadly, I forgot that it wants to shoot video in landscape mode, so I was holding it upright. The video came out well, but when I used iMovie to rotate it 90°, it has a weird Jell-O-like motion that renders it unwatchable. The pictures I took using the camera, though, came out splendidly. I really like having the auto-HDR function; it helps quite a bit for novice photographers such as myself.

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2010-10-28 · 16:17

Thursday trivia #27

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2010-10-19 · 18:16

Exchange Maestro Anaheim days 1 & 2

I had to skip a day of recap postings thanks to a bit of extracurricular work, but better late than never…

Day 1 began right on time, with our attendees eager to get started. We made several structural changes to the course, mostly in the area of reordering material. Tony led off with an architectural session, followed by my presentation on the new Exchange management tools (now including remote PowerShell, formerly the subject of its own session). After a delicious lunch of Mexican food (including mariachi music, serapes instead of tablecloths, and some really excellent decorations), Tony presented the store content and I followed up with the CAS material. We ran a bit long in the afternoon, so I had to stop before I finished with the CAS material so that we’d have time for labs.

Day 1’s highlight was that my friend Alice, a former co-worker from 3Sharp, brought me a Disneyland turkey leg! In Boston, I’d mentioned to Tony, Brian, and Melissa that I wanted to go to Disneyland and find one of the famous Disney turkey legs. Word apparently got out, and Alice, bless her heart, made a trip to Disneyland– her first ever– to see the sights and bring me back some of that oh-so-tasty smoked poultry awesomeness. I was shocked to see it; it’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me. Thanks, Alice!

We closed out day 1 with dinner at Roy’s here in Anaheim with our sponsors from Microsoft and Hewlett Packard. Dinner was quite good, as was the company, but I was out later than I wanted to be so it was hard to get rolling this morning.

Despite my sluggishness, day 2 began promptly at 0900, where I started with the remainder of the CAS coverage. In Boston, we had separate presentations for the CAS role and for client settings and management options, but we decided to combine them to save time. That strategy backfired badly, as I ended up running 30 minutes long. I then compounded that problem by running 40 minutes long on my RBAC session. In fairness, I got a lot of good questions from our attendees, so I didn’t mind going a bit long, but Tony and I had some catching up to do on the remaining sessions: the mailbox replication service (MRS), transport, and compliance. By day’s end, we had no margin left for lab time, so we’ll have to catch up a bit tomorrow.

On day 2, the most memorable quote was Tony’s solemn assertion that “we kill lingering orphans after 24 hours.”

He was talking, of course, about mailbox move requests as part of his session on the mailbox replication service (MRS). We were also surprised and delighted to get a nifty calendar from one of our students who’s active in the Back-Country Horsemen of Idaho. The calendar features some beautiful Idaho scenery, plus: horses! It will go up in a place of honor in my office as soon as I get home.

During a bit of intra-day-2 downtime, I was able to finish the final technical edit pass on chapter 17 of Tony’s book. That ends my involvement with this revision; it’s been a great learning experience to have the opportunity to pore over 16 months’ worth of Tony’s research and experimentation with Exchange. I’ve learned quite a lot from him, and I congratulate him on finishing such a large project– it’s roughly twice as long as the longest book I’ve ever written by myself.

Now it’s off to a class dinner at PF Chang (table for 25, stat!), then a rare evening off (provided I finish tech-editing a magazine article that I owe my editors…)

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2010-10-18 · 08:01

Anaheim Exchange Maestro day 1, pre-show

Clearly the only way I will be able to get a word in before Tony is to write about each day before it starts!

I arrived last night in Anaheim after a long (and expensive!) cab ride from LAX, preceded by a flight on Horizon from SJC. We were on a Bombardier Q400, which I’d never flown before. It’s a turboprop, but feels inside like a CRJ-class jet. It was not uncomfortable, and it wasn’t too noisy, so I’ll score that as a win.

The hotel assigned me to an absolutely huge guest room overlooking the pool. Given that it’s in the mid-60s, this is not the benefit you might assume. I was a bit startled to hear a series of loud boom! sounds starting about 9:30. This turned out to be the nightly Disneyland fireworks show; apparently the launch area is close by the hotel. Sadly, I couldn’t see the actual fireworks, but I’ll try to find a better vantage point tonight.

The hotel meeting facilities are about a million times nicer than the Doubletree we used in Boston. I was greeted this morning with a spacious, well-lit room, with a proper whiteboard. The entire corner of the room is occupied by a rather grand buffet of breakfast choices, which I appreciate; I love a good breakfast.

Today we have about 30 attendees, including my friend and former 3Sharpie Alice Goodman. Tony and I have been busy updating our slides to reflect feedback from the Boston attendees, and Brian has done a superb job of updating the lab instructions. The largest change is that the session on remote PowerShell has been removed, and its material integrated with the sessions on Exchange management tools and RBAC. There’s no reduction in the material covered; it’s just been reorganized to make things flow better.

The biggest piece of feedback from Boston is one we can’t do anything about; sadly there’s nothing we can do to make the labs any faster. We are trying to figure out a cost-effective way to help future attendees get SSDs to use with the labs. Their increased speed would help a great deal.

Now I’m off to finish my breakfast and get my game face on for another big day!

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2010-10-15 · 15:13

Exchange Maestro, day 3

We wrapped up the Boston Exchange Maestro event today, and it was quite good! (Except that I had hoped to finish my summary before Tony got his writeup done… perhaps I’ll have better luck next time.)

Tony kicked the morning off with an optional 8am session on migration considerations. As much of the class is still on Exchange 2003, this was well-attended. There’s a wide variety of environments out there, and I enjoyed hearing the attendees’ specific questions about exactly how to accomplish specific tasks in their environment.

I then gave a longer-than-expected presentation on Exchange scalability. It took more than the 90 minutes I’d allotted, and there were still many areas of the topic that I didn’t get to delve into. In particular, I would like to have enough time to walk through more of the details of the Exchange 2010 mailbox role storage calculator. There’s way more there than I can cover in such a limited amount of time, though we did have some interesting discussions around storage provisioning.

The high point of the day was our group work. Tony, playing the role of a hard-nosed corporate CIO, gave the attendees a high-level description of an Exchange 2003 environment with 12,000 users and a simple set of requirements. Their task was to break into groups and develop high-level designs, then present them. We were joined by two consultants from HP’s services organization who circulated around and helped the groups identify the key points required for their designs. At the end of an hour, Tony and I had the attendees mail us their presentations, then I chose three teams to present their designs for Tony’s scrutiny. Our presenters showed a great deal of mental agility in answering Tony’s sometimes-pointed questions.

The low point of the day was finding a live roach in my sandwich. As Tony points out, this can indeed happen at almost any hotel; however, we had a long string of problems here, ranging from noisy construction work during our classes (which Melissa quickly stopped) to numerous A/V problems to getting kicked out of the room earlier than we’d planned. This sort of thing does happen from time to time, but I think and expect that we’ll have better luck in Anaheim.

One of the most valuable things about this training is that we’re trying to move the emphasis away from the purely technical. The general level of training for Exchange is fairly low: the official Microsoft curriculum is too limited, and the variance in instructor quality too great. We wanted to deliver training with more technical depth and an exploration of the business issues behind Exchange 2010 deployment. I feel like we did that here, and we’re both looking for opportunities to sharpen that message in our future events.

Tomorrow I have an early-morning flight back to San Jose, where I’m looking forward to spending some time with the boys. Sunday night I head down to Anaheim for our next event, which I’m looking forward to quite a bit.

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2010-10-14 · 17:34

Exchange Maestro, day 2

If this is Thursday, it must be time for Thursday Trivia– Maestro style!

Tony’s produced another excellent writeup, this time featuring the second day of our Maestro training festivities (activities? either one works) here in Boston. A few additional notes come to mind.

First, I must confess to a degree of envy for the beautiful Nikon lens that Tony has been using to take pictures, although I would quite like it if he would take pictures of something other than me. I suppose you can’t have everything you wish for. (Ed. note: the actual lens Tony is using is this one. The one I linked to in the preceding sentence is the rough equivalent for my camera, which is why I got them mixed up.)

The RBAC session went quite well, though it ran longer than I wanted to. RBAC is one of the key areas where Exchange 2010 differs significantly from Exchange 2007. Most Windows administrators are so used to the standard Windows security model, which uses discretionary access control, that the concept of access control based on roles seems very foreign. When I teach RBAC, there are a few principles that I focus on to help keep the most important things at the forefront. First, RBAC role assignments are additive. If I assign you three different roles, you will have the ability to do anything that any of those roles allow. This is a big change from the standard Windows model, with its rules about most restrictive permissions.

Second, I often liken RBAC to sculpting using stone. When you create a new role, you can only take away from the entries that the parent role holds. A child role cannot contain role entries that were never present in the parent. This, again, is quite unlike the standard Windows model.

Third, understanding how the “triangle of power” works is key to understanding RBAC. I will probably include a quick review in tomorrow morning’s review session.

After I finished RBAC, Tony embarked on a lengthy disquisition on the mailbox replication service. This is another major difference in Exchange 2010, and he covered it thoroughly. After a quick lunch of hotel Italian, I covered the high points of the Exchange 2010 transport system. I think the students were probably glad to be on more familiar ground, as the transport system still has a lot in common with previous versions.

The afternoon labs went quite well. I was able to help one student fix a nagging problem with the CAS servers in his production system, resulting in him being able to use Outlook 2011 with his Exchange 2007 system. He was happy, as was I. It’s always very rewarding to be able to teach people things that they can immediately apply to their work environments. After all, that’s why we are here. Abstract knowledge is wonderful, but concrete, practical knowledge is better in my book.

(Speaking of book: Tony’s Exchange 2010 Inside Out is due to be released December 1. In related news, I am no longer the holdup in its production!)

One of the interesting things about this class is that we give the students a reasonably complex virtual environment to work with. This has its challenges, including the requirement for students to bring fairly powerful laptops. However, when I compare this class to other classes I have taught where the instructors provided the equipment, I like this model better. Students are confident in the quality of the equipment because it’s theirs. None of the instructor staff has had to spend any significant amount of time helping students with hardware issues, something that often happens when using rental equipment or equipment provided by a venue. In addition, students can take the lab environments with them when they leave for the day, so if they want to work on the more at home, or next week when they are back in their offices, they can easily do so.

After the class was over, we left the hotel with fellow MVP Lee Benjamin to have dinner at a nearby restaurant. The food was quite good, the service was excellent, and the vintage clothing worn by the waitstaff was remarkable in its variety, a most welcome change from the doll clothing worn by weight staffs at most other restaurants. On the way back to Lee’s car, I spotted a plaque marking the location of the first long distance telephone call. I thought that was worth a picture, and the results are below or did I am pleased with how well the brick turned out using the built-in flash on my iPhone.

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Now I’m off to do a bit more editing work on Tony’s book, along with some last-minute changes to my slides for tomorrow. I’m covering exchange unified messaging, as well as server sizing, scaling, and planning. Should be a fun day!

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2010-10-13 · 16:46

First day of Boston Exchange Maestro training

Tony beat me to it; while I was presenting during the latter portion of the day (and, I admit, catching up on e-mail) he was busy writing an excellent summary of our first day of the Exchange Maestro workshop here in Boston. As he pointed out, timing was one of the key issues that we had to struggle with. For events like this, there is always a tension between the amount of time you would like to have and the amount of time you do have. Exchange 2010 is complicated enough that we could easily, and very productively, spend a full week covering the topics we’ve selected for this three-day event. I feel that we have done a good job sticking to the schedule and managing our time well, but there’s so much material to cover that staying on the schedule can sometimes be challenging

Tony pointed out a couple of minor issues with the venue: for one thing, we got thrown out about 90 min. sooner than I thought we should have. Furthermore, during the morning, we were serenaded by the sounds of an ongoing bathroom renovation, complete with the dulcet tones of a reciprocating saw, some kind of rotary hammer, and other percussive power tools. Now, don’t get me wrong: I am a huge power tool fan and use them every chance I get. However, it’s fair to say that they were not the ideal accompaniment for our technical material. Fortunately, the hotel paused construction, and we will be moving to a different room for tomorrow and Friday– hopefully one with less ambient noise.

The attendees were engaged in asking questions, and they stayed busy with the labs. Tomorrow morning first thing I will be presenting on RBAC, a difficult topic to begin the day with. Hopefully the attendees will come with bright eyes and at peak alertness; they will need it. After RBAC, Tony will present on the mailbox replication service, followed by my presentation on the Exchange transport core. Rounding out the day, Tony will cover the retention and compliance aspects of Exchange 2010. That will be unknown territory for most of our attendees, so I expect that we all will be enlightened by the resulting discussions.

I would be remiss if I failed to point out the important contributions that Brian made during the day. In addition to making sure that the labs went smoothly, he made a number of very helpful suggestions about how we can better streamline the material to fit the allotted time, as well as catching a number of minor mistakes in our slide decks and accompanying presentations. It’s been great to have him here!

One thing that Tony failed to mention about today’s sessions is that he continually gave me a hard time about my progress (or lack thereof) in finishing the technical edits for his book. Don’t tell him, but I’m going to go work on it now so that I can finish it and avoid further harassment.

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2010-10-03 · 23:02

General Conference wrapup

So, the big deal this weekend was the 180th semiannual general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The reason I say “big deal” is because, for Mormons at least, we believe that this is an opportunity for us to hear counsel from people whom we believe are influenced by, and often speaking on behalf of, God.

This may seem a bit radical to members of other churches. One of the unique defining beliefs of the Mormon church is that we believe that revelation after the ancient pattern is still with us. In fact, that belief is one of the 13 articles of faith that form the equivalent of the Catholic catechism. The Ninth Article of Faith states:

We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

With that in mind, are a few impressions that I got during this weekend’s conference. There are a number of places on the Internet that have full summaries of the conference talks. My intent is not to repeat the summaries; instead, I want to highlight a few of the things that I found the most valuable or the most personally applicable. (One of the cool things about believing in Revelation is that it entitles you to believe that sometimes God will reveal things that directly to you that are pertinent to your individual life, job, family, or stewardship. The personal aspect is very exciting to me.)

Probably the standout talk for me was the one given in the Saturday morning session by Pres. Dieter Uchtdorf. Because of his long career as a pilot, his talks often have something to do with aviation, and that has led to a bit of a running joke. In this talk, he spoke about turbulence, pointing out that every airframe is optimum speed for penetrating turbulence. Novice pilots may speed up to try to pass through the turbulence quickly, but it is almost always better for the passengers if the pilot moderates the speed to get optimum. His point is that when we are in distress or turbulence ourselves, the natural response is sometimes to occupy ourselves with as much busyness as possible. Better, he said, to slow down instead, making sure that we take time for the fundamental observances of what’s really important. This was definitely what I needed to hear, especially because things have been unusually busy at work lately.

Running a close second was the talk given in the Saturday night priesthood session by Elder Patrick Kearon, a member of the first quorum of the 70 of whom I had never heard. In brief summary, he ascribes all occasions when we know what is right and choose not to do it to one of two things: laziness or rebelliousness. Rather strong medicine, but definitely true in my case. (And no, I’m not going to tell you what the relative mix of those two causes is for me!) He cited an example from his own life where, as a boy, he went walking in the desert in flip-flops despite many warnings from his parents that he should always wear shoes. Predictably, he was stung by a scorpion. Although not life-threatening, the experience was painful enough to remind him of exactly why his parents made that rule.

Then there was the talk given by Pres. Monson in priesthood session: he covered what he called “the 3R’s of choice”: the right of choice, the responsibility of choice, and the results of choice. It was a superb talk, but I’m not sure that I have absorbed it fully yet. That’s okay, because…

I did something unusual during this general conference: I took notes in my journal. I have always been a poor journal keeper. That might be because I blog, or it might be because I never developed a habit as a young man, or it might be because I’m either lazy or rebellious. Whatever the reason, I have definitely fallen off my journaling pace over the last six months or so–since the last conference, in fact. I’m glad to have accumulated some notes about the thoughts and impressions I had about the talks as they were being given. I expect to refer to them in the future.

Oh, and speaking of in the future: the talk of that elder Allen H Oaks gave today, on the difference between priesthood lines of authority and personal lines of authority, is one which I suspect we will see cited in many future conference talks. One of my favorite things about Elder Oaks is that his talks generally combined a very pragmatic, direct approach to the topic with a solid logical and scriptural underpinning. Perhaps it’s his background as a lawyer and judge, but his talks often appeal to me because they make, and then buttress, an argument rather than being completely based on appeal to the spirit.

The boys and I tried something new this conference. We played a game with snacks. Each snack had a label, like “prophet” or “Savior” or “Temple”. Whenever the speaker said a matching word, everyone got to eat one piece of the matching snack. We did this for about 45 min., until the boys were actually sick of the snacks. After that, because they were full, they were much more attentive than they had been in the morning session. I think we’ll probably try that again next time.

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Overall, I definitely feel as though the time I invested watching the conference broadcasts was time well spent. Perhaps it was the influence of the turbulence talk, but taking the opportunity to “listen to a prophet’s voice,” and reflect on what I heard, was just what I needed this weekend.

If you’d like to know more, the church has a comprehensive page that includes both audio and video downloads of individual talks, as well as separate downloads of only the musical performances are the various choirs. If you’re not Mormon, and you’re curious, I encourage you to drop by, download a talk or two, and give them a listen. I think it will be worth your time!

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2010-09-30 · 17:36

Thursday trivia #26

Wow, 26 editions– that’s nearly six months worth, except that if you count all the weeks I’ve missed, it’s more like a year. Anyway, on with today’s edition.

  • New Soundgarden album? Yes, thank you. Too bad it’s not all new material. Still, the bundled videos made it a decent purchase.
  • I am really close to being done with the technical edit on Tony’s book. I can’t wait to see the finished product!
  • September 30 is the last day of my MVP award period, so I’m waiting on tenterhooks to see if I get renewed or not.
  • Speaking of MVP: Alaska Airlines now offers upgrades to Delta Medallion members, so I was hopeful about scoring an upgrade on my recent trip to Seattle. No luck, though. To request an upgrade, Medallions have to go to the ticket counter or gate and request to be added to the list. There’s no automatic mechanism, and my flights were full anyway. Maybe next time…
  • I really like to listen to C89.5 FM when I’m in Seattle, and I’ve discovered the joy of listening to their broadcast stream.
  • Herschel Walker said it best: "When you look up, you go up." Right on!
  • My engineers at work are the best. I would explain why but a) it would bore you and b) then I’d have to kill you. Trust me, though, they’re amazing.

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2010-09-30 · 09:49

Padding oracle attacks and Exchange

In my Exchange Server UPDATE column last week, I described a security vulnerability known as the padding oracle attack and described how Microsoft’s ASP.NET framework is vulnerable to it. I left open the question of which versions of Exchange might be affected, and what Microsoft might plan to do about it. A week later, the answers are somewhat clearer.

Normally, Microsoft releases security patches on a regular monthly schedule: the second Tuesday of the month has become informally known as "Patch Tuesday" among many Windows administrators because that’s when Microsoft ships patches. However, from time to time they also release patches "out of band," or in between regularly scheduled patch releases. These out of band patches are typically reserved for serious problems, and the padding oracle attack definitely qualifies. Accordingly, Microsoft just released a patch for this vulnerability, which is described in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-070. Knowledge Base article 2418042 describes the patch installation process and identifies the multiple versions of the patch that exist for different operating systems and .NET Framework versions. (ed. note– seeing 7-digit KB article numbers makes me feel kind of old!)

What about Exchange? Well, this Exchange team blog post says that the team "…has not identified any issues related to the application of this patch on an Exchange server." That’s good news, as it indicates that Microsoft believes it’s OK to apply the patch. The post stops short of telling you to go off and install it everywhere, saying instead that you should install it on any Exchange server that has "an affected version of ASP.NET" At first I was confused that the post is tagged "Exchange 2007" and "Exchange 2010" but on rereading it closely, it’s clearly meant to apply to Exchange 2003 too.

If you don’t have a plan in place to push critical patches to your Exchange servers (preferably after validating them in your own environment), this would be a really good time to start on one. Happy patching!

Edited to correct the patch release date– it’s already out. Thanks to Bharat Suneja for catching my error.

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2010-09-27 · 07:10

More on the Microsoft Exchange Conference

Tony’s recent post on the history of the Microsoft Exchange Conference got me to thinking. Why is it that there is no independent Exchange conference?

“Independent” has a couple of different meanings in this context. One meaning is that of a conference that is not tied to other products. Another is that of a conference that is not sponsored by, or even closely affiliated with, Microsoft. I’d like to explore both of those meanings in more detail.

One of the things that made the MEC so special is that it focused exclusively on Exchange. At one point, the event organizers included SharePoint, but there was little synergy between the two products, and that affiliation didn’t last. Because of the focus on Exchange, there were many more opportunities for deep technical content to be presented and discussed. At the Boston in me see in 1998, I remember attending a presentation on the internals of the extensible storage engine given by Laurion Burchalll, one of the developers. It was actually at Fleet Arena, and it was very well attended. Most of the presentations at the MEC were given by Exchange program managers or developers. However, there was a sprinkling of material presented by Microsoft product support, and this was arguably the most interesting and valuable content.

Over the years, the focus on content has changed as an inevitable result of being tied to TechEd, Microsoft’s premier IT professional event. TechEd is a great show for launching products, evangelizing the features or business value of new products, or sharing some types of deployment information. However, the problem is pie.

Not literally, of course; how could pie ever be a problem? (Except when you run out of it!)

No, the problem is that Tech Ed is a pie of a fixed size. The more products Microsoft shoehorns into TechEd, the smaller the individual slices must become. For example, consider that there are roughly the same number of sessions available to cover both OCS and Exchange than used to be to cover Exchange only. Now factor and other products, like Forefront Protection for Exchange, that can legitimately claim to be part of the same product track. There just isn’t room for deep coverage of everything. The result is that interesting, valuable sessions don’t make the cut. Instead, the sessions that are chosen tends to be those that the product team believes will be of interest to the broadest audience.

That’s not a bad thing, because it means that non-Microsoft conferences like Exchange Connections and TEC have room to flourish. However, as Tony points out, there is value in having a Microsoft owned and sponsored event as the flagship for a product. In my role as Exchange Connections conference chair, one perennial frustration I have is that it is difficult to get Microsoft developers or program managers to speak. The juiciest announcements and launches are reserved for Microsoft’s own events, and internal politics often make it impossible to get the key technical support and development staffers– the folks who are most knowledgeable and passionate about their work– to come speak.  Microsoft’s marketing and PR plans often don’t allow us to get the most interesting speakers or topics covered with Microsoft’s official imprimatur.

(Side question: Microsoft still maintains a separate, unofficial conference for SharePoint, so why can’t we have one?)

Now, on to the second meaning of “independent”. The SQL Server community already has its own, completely independent event. It’s known as PASS Summit, and it is organized, sponsored by, and run by a user group of SQL Server administrators. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in the Exchange (or OCS) world. There certainly are user groups, but none have the national, or international, reach necessary to successfully put on such an event. I’m not sure why that is, given that the Exchange community is both large and lively, but it’s a fact nonetheless.

I think that there would be value both for the community and for Microsoft to have a dedicated conference, similar to MMS or the SharePoint conference, just for Exchange and OCS. Perhaps one day we’ll get such a conference. In the meantime, I hope to see you at Exchange Connections, which is coming up the first week of November in Las Vegas. We have some big and interesting things to talk about there, and I hope you’ll be part of it.

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