2009-05-03 · 23:53

Exchange 2010: information protection and control

There’s a whole lot to talk about from an information protection standpoint in Exchange 2010. The two biggest features I want to talk about are transport protection encryption (TPE) and protected voice mail. Oddly enough, these two are related even though they may not seem to be.

Transport protection encryption is what Microsoft calls the new integration between Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) and Exchange transport rules. Simply put, you can define transport rules that automatically apply AD RMS templates to messages in transit. You can use the same predicates and conditions available to transport rules in Exchange 2007. However, there are now actions that let you automatically apply a selected RMS template to messages that match the conditions and exceptions in your rules. For example, you could automatically apply a “company confidential” template to any messages sent to your outside law firm– not a bad idea given the ease of accidentally sending messages where they don’t belong.

Outlook Protection Rules is a new client-side feature (implemented via an add-in for Outlook 2010). The add-in allows you to apply a transport rule-like mechanism to get client-side protection. For example, you can push an Outlook protection rule that automatically applies a certain AD RMS template to a message before it’s sent. The user may or may not be able to override the rule, depending on whether you made it mandatory or not. When you use these rules, the message is protected at the desktop so that administrators can’t read it. This is useful protection for scenarios where a third-party hosted service (like, oh, this one) might otherwise be able to gain access to sensitive items.

In Exchange 2010, the transport and journaling components can read IRM-protected messages. This means that these messages can be journaled, indexed, filtered, and so on, and that transport agents can apply signatures, disclaimers, and message hygiene policies.

Another thing that’s very, very cool: AD RMS is supported in OWA 2010 and on non-Windows Mobile devices. This builds on the AD RMS prelicensing agent shipped with Exchange 2007 SP1, which will proactively request a license for protected content before delivering the message containing that content to your mailbox. The client access server (CAS) will request the license and, on the fly, render the message for the client’s display.

Now, I promised to mention protected voice mail. Many legacy voice mail systems let you mark messages as private, but Exchange 2007 didn’t include this feature. Exchange 2010 does, though. It’s implemented using AD RMS; when a caller marks a message as private, the UM server applies a do-not-forward template to the message before it’s submitted to the hub transport server. (Often-asked question: can you use other RMS templates instead of do-not-forward? No, you can’t.)

Moderation is another awfully interesting feature, but I’ll have to write about it later– my dinner, a bag of tasty microwave popcorn, is done!

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2009-05-03 · 23:36

“It takes work”

While in Monterey, I had the chance to attend the local ward. I’d forgotten that it was the first weekend of the month, so I was a bit surprised to discover myself in the midst of a testimony meeting. One testimony in particular caught my ear. A young woman (whom I’ll call Jackie) got up and said that her husband was gone, “but not for that long– it’s only for four months!” That made my complaining about a two-week business trip seem very minor in comparison. She went on to tell the story of Barbara, a family friend who, though somewhat eccentric, was unfailingly cheerful and outgoing. Barbara was well known in her ward for cheerful and willing service to others. She was going through a rough patch, and the speaker said she thought to visit Barbara and cheer her up. Barbara greeted her at the door with hair askew, no makeup, and swollen cheeks from a recent visit to the dentist. However, Barbara’s greeting was as heartfelt and cheerful as always. Jackie marvelled at this and said “Barbara, how can you always be so cheerful?” Barbara’s reply, delivered by Jackie with a wonderful swooping voice, was simple: “Well, it takes work!“

Jackie’s point was simple: we can choose whether to be happy, or not. We can choose to be positive about our circumstances, or not. We can be thankful for what we have, or we can complain and lament what we don’t have. Being positive and cheerful is as much a choice as deciding what clothes to wear in the morning. That’s not to say that it’s always easy to choose that mindset. We’re all often tempted to be bitter, angry, resentful, or just plain unhappy. Sometimes we have good reasons for these feelings; other times, we take small things and blow them out of proportion, then use them as justification for these feelings. These are choices we get to make. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent– for that matter, they can’t make you feel anything else either!

I am a firm believer in this principle. Most people, I think, are as happy as they make up their minds to be. While this is probably a gospel principle, it sure isn’t exclusive to Latter-day Saints. Some of the kindest, most service-oriented, happiest people I’ve ever known are those who despite poor health or other circumstances choose to be that way! I’m reminded of Sister Morgan, an elderly lady in our ward who is probably the most positive person I’ve ever met. She always seems to be in good spirits,and if she ever wasn’t she’d probably be thinking about what good spirits she’d like to be in. I try to emulate her example, and y’know what? It works, but it takes work.

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2009-05-03 · 23:17

Twitter integration test 1

This is a simple test to see whether MT properly runs the MT-Twitter plugin when I post a new item. (I know that Ecto’s plugin works already.) (Update 1: nope, it didn’t work.)

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2009-05-03 · 23:01

A grand day out with Chris

Today I got a chance to see a dear old friend, Chris Larsen. Chris and I were roommates in college, but the last time I saw him was at his wedding in 2002 (see here, here, and here). I’ve had several business trips planned to the Bay Area, but each of them has been cancelled for some reason or other. This was the first time that I was actually going to be in the neighborhood (sort of), so we’d made plans to link up. He came down and met me after church.

For lunch, we hit the Persian Grill. I noticed it yesterday when at the laundromat, but it was closed until dinnertime. I had the makhsoos, which was excellent (I also tried the spiced yogurt, which wasn’t bad). As we were talking, I said something about Perrysburg and a man at the next table overheard us– he’s from Perrysburg, and his friend is a former Toledo resident. It’s a small, small world!

We then drove the 17 Mile Drive. The weather was fairly poor– around 55°F with heavy fog. We couldn’t really see much of anything until we got near Spanish Point, and even then there was so much overcast that the sea and sky blended pretty much seamlessly. I got a few good pictures of the beach and water, along with the below shot of the Lone Cypress. along the way, we had a great time talking about energy policy, nuclear reactors, the economics of coal-fired power, and the EPA. In other words, just a garden-variety conversation 🙂

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After 17 Mile, we headed over to Cannery Row and hit Ghiradelli’s for some ice cream. Chris tried to talk me into ordering the Earthquake, a $30, 8-scoop concoction. Wisely, I declined (though I did ask if they had one I could photograph for the kids!) Chris had his laptop, so he showed me recent photos of his family. I retaliated by whipping out my iPhone and subjecting him to pictures from our whale watching trip and our recent spring break visit to Louisiana. We walked around Cannery Row for a while, still talking about abstruse technical topics, then visited at my apartment for a while. I issued an advance invitation to come visit us in Seattle, and he kindly volunteered to be a trail and mountain guide for the boys and I so we can visit some of the excellent scenery in central California. All in all, it was a great visit, long overdue. I look forward to the next time I get to see him!

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2009-05-03 · 02:14

Monterey training week 1 wrapup

Yay! I survived the first week of my training in Monterey! A few random observations:

  • Training people 1:1 for 10-12 hours a day is quite demanding. I have to give my students a break every hour or so, not because they need it but because I need it. The energy and enthusiasm of the sailors I’m working with is definitely motivating, though.
  • Exchange 2003 looks really old after a year of working with Exchange 2010. It’s a little scary, in fact, how old some of the hardware and software that the Navy has to use is; some of the shipboard routers our sailors depend on are so old that the manufacturer doesn’t support them any longer.
  • Our lunch and dinner meals are catered by the local Whole Foods. Those folks can definitely cook, but it’s not as good as Arlene’s home cooking. Thankfully they’re not providing desserts, or I’d probably blow up.
  • I had forgotten what apartment life was like. Arlene and I lived in an apartment the first year and a half of our marriage, but that was a long time ago! The apartment I’m in has noisy upstairs neighbors, plus a cat infestation that results in nightly catfights somewhere not far outside my bedroom window. On the other hand, it’s nice to not be in a hotel; I have a real kitchen.
  • In Monterey, apparently caffeine-free diet Coke is illegal, because I sure can’t find it anywhere.
  • The Monterey Bay Aquarium really is as good as you’ve heard. However, it wasn’t much fun going there without the kids. It’s just not the same without my family around!

Today I spent some time driving around the city (which didn’t take long, hemmed in as it is by Monterey Bay). I toured the aquarium for about two hours (photos here), dropped by the local Goodwill to pick out a couple of new shirts, found a place to do my laundry, and so on. I briefly debated going to see the new X-Men movie but opted instead for some Whole Foods organic microwave popcorn and some more of season 2 of The Wire. Tomorrow I’ll be attending the Monterey ward, then my old friend Chris Larsen and I are going to get together and do some sightseeing. It should be a nice relaxing day, which is important given that I start teaching again bright and early Monday.

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2009-04-30 · 11:27

Great MailTips introduction

I had planned to write a long, detailed post on MailTips, but… well, you know the old saying: “you snooze, you lose.” I was beaten to it by EJ, who happens to be the MailTips program manager at Microsoft. If you want to get a sense of what MailTips are and how they work, see his post at the Exchange team blog. However, note that MailTips require support in the client (OWA 2010 or Outlook 2010) and on the server. The public beta version of Exchange 2010 has the server support, but not the OWA support, so you won’t be able to test them yourself unless and until Microsoft releases a more recent server build to the public.

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2009-04-30 · 11:22

The Weapon (Poyer)

The Weapon: A Novel (Dan Lenson Novels)

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2009-04-28 · 17:00

No Angel (Dobyns)

No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels

As soon as I saw this book on the net, I knew I had to read it. Here’s a capsule review. First, it has perhaps the most vulgar language of any book I have ever read. It made the worst cursing I heard in the Marines seem like a Sunday school lesson. If you are easily offended, definitely don’t read it. (Even the table of contents would be enough to get the book an R rating if it were a movie!) There’s a funny comment on Dobyns’ blog in which an 11-year-old complains that his dad won’t let him read the book, to which Dobyns responds “Your dad is correct. You can’t read No Angel until you’re 30.”

Second, the author is clearly as crazy as an outhouse rat. Infiltrate the Hells Angels? Why not do something less crazy, like jumping off a bridge with an anvil duct-taped to your head?

Dobyns recounts his early career in the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms and explains how his personality led him to seek risky undercover assignments. When he sees an opportunity to attack the Angels from within, he has a hard time convincing his superiors, but eventually wins them over through a combination of persistence, solid evidence gathering, and missteps by the Angels that make them seem like a bigger danger to public order than they might actually have been. If anything, I was surprised by how trusting the Angels leadership was, but that’s as much a testament to Dobyns’ skill as an undercover officer as it is to their desire to quickly expand throughout Arizona.

Dobyns (and his ghostwriter) tell a fascinating story in vivid detail. It’s clear throughout that Dobyns respects many aspects of the Angels culture, like their sense of brotherhood and honor. That doesn’t mean that he’s willing to excuse their actual criminal behavior, and he makes that clear as well. The story itself is fascinating; Dobyns starts by creating a fake chapter of a Mexican motorcycle gang and uses it to establish credibility with Angels leaders, culminating in their invitation to “patch over” and join the Angels. Along the way, hijinks ensue: there are beatings, gun sales, boozy motorcycle rides, and testosterone galore. (I don’t want to be more specific so I don’t spoil any surprises!)

At the end of the book, I couldn’t help wondering whether the sacrifices he and his family made were worth the eventual outcome of the case, in which internal squabbling amongst the prosecution team resulted in lower sentences and the dismissal of charges against a few key players. (As a bonus, now Dobyns has a lawsuit against the ATF claiming that they are failing to protect him and his family from reprisals.)

Highly recommended for those with thick skins and strong stomachs.

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2009-04-28 · 10:35

INTERACT 2009 keynote recap

Moz Hussein, Rajesh Jha, and Gurdeep Singh Pall delivered the INTERACT 2009 keynote. (I was liveblogging it, but couldn’t post it until after the event, then I forgot.)

Rajesh: software + services is a “very pragmatic, and I think in some ways, inevitable, part of every organization’s array of things to think about.” Every org has to decide what’s best for it based on constraints, goals, compliance requirements, etc. S+S means “no technology ultimatum” imposed by the vendor: you can move workload between the cloud and premises in whatever mix makes sense for you. “We think about 40% of organizations don’t offer e-mail or advanced communication services to their employees”– target for Deskless Worker Services. Experiences from running Exchange 2010 dogfood for Exchange Labs has provided great feedback, including accelerated innovation and stability.

Gurdeep: what’s OCS doing around services? “First and foremost, we’re letting Exchange go in and figure out our problems!” (this got a big laugh.) IM and presence being offered starting 15 April for Office Communications Online standard edition customers.

Rajesh: Consumer technologies aren’t manageable, but consumerization of IT is real– it’s happening. Every university, college, high school student is used to gigabyte mailboxes. Technology that works for the older generation may not be what you need to attract and retain the newer generation.

Gurdeep: “I’ll never forgive marketing folks for changing the INTERACT format.” (chuckles) Lots of change and transformation in the voice market, all going on with the backdrop of “the biggest economic event we’ll see in our lifetimes.” It’s both concerning and a great opportunity.

Moz: what does the economy mean for IT pros?

Gurdeep: a lot of things are out of our control. People deal with that in different ways. Within Microsoft, we discussed how to deal with this. Researched the Great Depression, including figuring out how many of the Fortune 100 survived and/or grew. Common thread: innovation and transformation (e.g. Sears transformed from exclusive mail-order to rural customers to a mix of mail-order and retail). Things to do: manage costs “like you’ve never done before”, but be careful not to eat away muscle– during a rebound, that’s when you’ll fail. #1 step typically is changing how you do things.

Moz: what does “unified” really mean?

Gurdeep: NYC is an amazing city. Latest discovery: you can buy great, amazing brand-name bags right on the street for real cheap! (laughs) What’s interesting: those were cheap imitations. Problem in this industry: we have expensive imitations in the UC space. After intro of UC technology, benefits have driven wide adoption of “unified” as a moniker, but lots of so-called UC systems are the results of acquisitions– multiple user experiences, multiple back-ends, complicated provisioning. Important for buyers to be savvy about what’s unified and what isn’t. Don’t be fooled by checkbox comparisons. How many distinct user experiences are users going to be subjected to? Video conferencing systems are semi-widespread, but why aren’t they used more? They’re too hard to use! MS focus on single directory, single set of components, single management experience provides a true unified experience. How did a billion people get on the Internet? Self-driven– you couldn’t intentionally train a billion people to do anything if you wanted to.

Moz: how are Exchange and OCS getting closer together?

Gurdeep: we’re already tied together in many ways: directory, common contacts, etc. “If you have Exchange 2007 deployed, then adding OCS 2007 R2, is much easier now than it has been in the past.” Still some areas of mismatch (like Powershell; Powershell support coming to OCS in the next release). As we move forward, we’re looking at other integration points, but “you cannot push this too far”– handling for different content types like voice and e-mail are fundamentally different.

Rajesh: my favorite OCS feature is that they’re going to be adding PowerShell, “giving everyone a unified way to manage. That’s a great example where we’re working towards giving you more common tools across workloads.”

Gurdeep: my favorite Exchange feature: 70% IOPS reduction from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007, then a further 50% reduction from 2007 to Exchange 2010.

Moz: how should people be approaching the architecture for UC?

Gurdeep: I have all these disparate systems for conferencing, video, etc. I made disparate decisions to buy them because they’re separate silos. Microsoft’s UC vision unifies all these things, but you can’t just throw away what you already have. First priority: develop an overall UC architecture vision to get a “magnetic north”. If you’re ready to resign your expensive contract for audioconferencing service, having an architecture helps you consider rolling out OCS for that– and once the infrastructure is in place, you can easily and quickly add new capabilities. IM and presence are core features that are easy to get up and running. For many of your users, ask the question: is that desk phone still necessary? Would you rather buy a $300 netbook or a $300 IP phone? Lifetime costs for phones are baked into the system– you have to discover and eliminate them. Simple rule: if you can get down to 1 of anything, likely you’ll be paying less for it. PBX industry is a lot like the mainframe industry: vertically integrated, single source. Once they sold you the mainframe, they had you! “Don’t buy the mainframe!” The decisions you make now will lock you in for the next 5-6 years. Don’t get locked in, and be savvy about the cost and changes that are there.

Moz: as you think about the role of the IT pro, what’s the to-do list for prospering in the current situation?

Rajesh: Very important to have a vision of where you want to go. Economic environment imposes constraints. Resource constraints can be a huge clarifying factor: we force ourselves to impose constraints and use them to make progress on longer-term plans. Admins lead by understanding their organizational goals and technologies, then driving changes.

Gurdeep: no one ever calls telecom managers to ask them to help move solutions forward– they call to yell that phones are down. Change in roles: have to figure out how to get ahead and move the business forward. Many examples: if the economic situation stays like this, companies will have to ask whether it makes sense to have expensive real estate.

Moz: we’re announcing Exchange 14 tomorrow. What 3 things do you most want to talk about?

Rajesh: Let me do 4! Super-excited about Exchange 2010. Available in public beta on 15 April. First key investment: important for us to keep the end user in mind. What we do to make them productive translates into cost savings. $650 billion/yr lost to e-mail interruptions (based on Basex): 25% of IW workday is responding to e-mail. We give you access from broad range of mobile phones and browsers, but we also provide tools to manage information overload. MailTips, voice mail preview, “ignore conversation”. Archiving and compliance improvements.

Gurdeep: having IM contacts built into OWA is a very cool feature too.

Q&A

What are some of the developer opportunities for this combined platform?

Gurdeep: taking a software-centric approach opens up a lot of opportunities. Developer opportunity really isn’t there on traditional PBX systems.Single biggest opportunity for transformation isn’t replacing voice with OCS– it’s to allow you to think across all the software in your enterprise with communications-enabled business processes (CEBP). A word of caution: enterprise developers speak a different language! Example: “MSExpense is a tool that we use so that when you spend money we cause you pain.” We’re working with the internal app developers to IM and presence-enable MSExpense so the app can use presence status to alert people and make routing decisions.

Rajesh: Mac Business Unit moving to Exchange Web Services for Entourage. We’re also trying to get RIM to move their services over to EWS instead of MAPI.

How is Microsoft using software + services?

Rajesh: We’re moving some of our internal users over to the services platform. We’re using the high availability and DAS work that we’ve been doing for customers internally as a proving ground.

What are some of the biggest blockers to software + services?

Gurdeep: go back to 1997– knowing what you know now, would you buy a mainframe? There are industries where software as an application can become a blocker.

Rajesh: if you have a good sense of where you want to be a few years out, that helps inform what you should do now.

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2009-04-28 · 06:39

Happy birthday to Tom!

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11 years ago today, our family received a wonderful gift: a new baby boy. We named him Thomas Raphael: Thomas because we liked it as a good, strong name, and Raphael after my grandfather and great-grandfather. In the years since, Tom has been such a blessing to us. He is compassionate, energetic, smart, athletic, and generally fun to be around. Happy birthday, Tom!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

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2009-04-27 · 09:14

The busy, busy month of May

What a month May is shaping up to be.

First, I’m teaching a series of classes at the US Navy’s Center for Information Dominance, as part of a very cool experimental program on improving the ability of expert systems to teach. The program is named Skynet Digital Tutor. Read up on it here. For the duration, I’ll be teaching from 10a-10p each weekday. Jim said it was good fun, though, so I’m looking forward to it, except for being away from my family for two whole weeks. That’s the longest I’ve been away since 2000, and honestly I don’t like it one bit. Thankfully we have phones, web cams, and so on, so it won’t be as though I’m cut off from them completely. In the meantime, I stocked my apartment with yogurt, microwave popcorn, and fresh fruit, so I’m good to go.

Next, I get to go home for about a day and a half, then it’s off to TechEd USA 2009! I’m doing a session on OCS 2007 R2 deployment and management. Because I need a demo playpen, I’m building one in Hyper-V using OCS 2007 R2 and Exchange 2010 532.09, a later build than the public beta. It’s been fun to set up a clean environment from scratch, as opposed to the complicated environments we’ve been building for various demos and launch events.

After TechEd I have three whole days at home, then it’s back to Seattle to teach the UM portion of rotation 3 for the Microsoft Certified Master for Exchange class. I’m really looking forward to this, as it will be the first time I’ve delivered my new version of the material. After that, I’m sure I’ll be ready for some time off (though hopefully by then we’ll be ready to start househunting! No offers yet, though.)

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2009-04-26 · 21:35

Scheduled posting test

Hopefully this will magically appear at the correct time.

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2009-04-26 · 11:28

Exchange 2010 database naming

The fact that Exchange 2010 includes database availability groups has some implications that you may not have thought of. Most of them, I hadn’t thought of either, which is why it’s great that there are smart people like Ross Smith IV (the original; accept no substitutes). Ross sent some suggested practices for Exchange 2010 database naming to TAP admins, and I wanted to share them.

Here’s the deal: in Exchange 2007 and earlier, mailbox and public folder databases are children of server objects. That means that you can uniquely identify a database by a combination of its name (which may not be unique throughout the forest) and its server name (which is guaranteed by AD to be unique). In Exchange 2010, the database is no longer “owned” by a particular server. Instead, it’s a member of a DAG, and it may actually become active on any server in the DAG at any time. That means that your database names shouldn’t include the name of the server. DAGs can span AD sites, too, so guess what: don’t use the AD site name (or the name of the physical datacenter) either. Otherwise the name of the database may not correspond in any way to where the database is actually active.

Finally, consider carefully whether you want to include the name of the organization or company. This has nothing to do with DAGs per se, but rather with the overhead of updating database names after a merger, acquisition, or rebranding. Unless, of course, you work for Contoso, in which case you should be OK.

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2009-04-26 · 09:05

American Standard warranty followup

Last month I wrote about my experience with American Standard’s warranty process. I praised them a little too soon.

Friday, I installed the new “Champion 4 Accelerator” flush unit. Rather than the old-style flush tower, the Accelerator is a short, wide cylinder with a domed lid an an L-shaped overflow tube. When you push the handle, the lid lifts, and the accumulated water dumps into the trapway. Installation was easy, and the kit American Standard sent me included all the hardware I needed, including new tank bolts. Unfortunately, the new valve’s performance was actually worse than the flush tower.

It turns out that the design of the Accelerator leaves about 4″ of water in the tank. In other words, it doesn’t deliver enough water through the trapway to empty the bowl. Ooops. Its height isn’t adjustable, either. I set the water level to about 1/4″ below the overflow tube, and that didn’t do it. Thus it was with great irritation that I put the old, broken flush tower back into the hall bathroom yesterday. To compound the problem, American Standard doesn’t take phone calls on Saturday, so I’ll have to call them and find out what the suggested fix is.

Now I see why there’s a class-action lawsuit against them over these toilets.

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2009-04-22 · 12:10

Installing Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging

Following up on my post from the other day where I linked to Scott’s step-by-step install instructions: my homeboys at Gold Systems have posted a step-by-step install guide covering installing the Exchange UM role in Exchange 2010. The big difference from a regular install is that you need the Windows Server 2008 Desktop Experience feature, because it includes the necessary audio codecs.

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