Joel Oleson has an interesting post on the differences between Exchange public folders and email-enabled lists in WSS v3/MOSS. He was kind enough to point to my column discussing migration tools, too. I pointed out Joel’s post for a simple reason.
Joel Oleson on public folders and SharePoint
Comments Off on Joel Oleson on public folders and SharePoint
Filed under UC&C
09-20-06: how Exchange UM answers the phone
For my inaugural podcast, I thought I’d talk about how Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging servers answer the phone, and what has to happen in order for everything to go smoothly. Enjoy! (It’s in AAC format only for now until I can dig up a decent MP3 converter…)
Comments Off on 09-20-06: how Exchange UM answers the phone
Filed under UC&C
3CX releases free Windows IP-PBX
Now here’s something I’m looking forward to playing with: a Windows-based IP PBX! 3CX offers two versions: the free version and an enterprise version. It looks like the primary differences between the versions are that the enterprise edition has product support and will have Exchange integration, although they don’t specify how it will integrate with Exchange. I’ve got a query in to the PR folks who sent me the release, and I’ll post the answer I get.
Comments Off on 3CX releases free Windows IP-PBX
Filed under UC&C
Fantastic Xbox 360 news
At the Tokyo Game Show, Microsoft made a couple of huge announcements about the Xbox 360. First, they announced some new games for the Japanese market, where the Xbox family has traditionally been pretty weak. They announced some excellent new Xbox Live Arcade titles, too, including Gyruss, Rally-X, and Track & Field. Konami and NAMCO BANDAI have really jumped on the potential of XBLA; Konami alone had three or four titles released just within the last couple of months.
Comments Off on Fantastic Xbox 360 news
Filed under General Stuff, HDTV and Home Theater
Exchange UM event ID 1082
When your Exchange unified messaging server logs event ID 1082, what do you do?
The first step in answering this question is understanding what event ID 1082 means. The error message itself is pretty clear: “No Hub Transport server available to process header file C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\UnifiedMessaging\voicemail\70683b04-5e47-4d24-a143-1cf331a4f121.txt.“. If you look in the referenced directory, you’ll probably find a bunch of pairs of files, with each pair consisting of a .wav file that contains the actual voicemail plus a .txt file that contains routing information.
Comments Off on Exchange UM event ID 1082
Filed under UC&C
Instructional “Talk Like a Pirate” video
This may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen: an old-school classroom instructional video on how to properly talk like a pirate.
Comments Off on Instructional “Talk Like a Pirate” video
Filed under Friends & Family
Restricting camera access on mobile devices
All sorts of folks are calling for restrictions on camera phones. Some propose legislative remedies, while others just want the phones banned from their facilities.
Comments Off on Restricting camera access on mobile devices
Filed under Security
Test enclosure post
I’m getting ready to launch (or, more properly, relaunch) my podcasts, so I added the MTEnclosures plugin and one of my favorite dance songs as a test.
Comments Off on Test enclosure post
Filed under Uncategorized
Using Entourage with Exchange 2007
I’ve seen several queries in various fora about using Entourage with Exchange 2007. I’ve been using it for a while and have had absolutely no problems. There are a couple of issues to be aware of, though.
Comments Off on Using Entourage with Exchange 2007
Filed under UC&C
New release of OABINTEG
My main man Dave Goldman just released a new version of his extremely useful oabinteg tool. Oabinteg is very useful for identifying problems with the offline address book generation process; I used it (along with some helpful suggestions from Dave) to pinpoint a problem with OABs with Exchange 2007 against an Office 2003 client running on Vista RC1. Most admins find that OAB generation just ticks along in the background, never calling attention to itself; however, it never hurts to run oabinteg to see what’s happening under the covers.
Comments Off on New release of OABINTEG
Filed under UC&C
The Exchange MVP Guide to Exchange Availability
Last fall, I had a lot of fun writing a “top 10” list of availability principles and tips for Exchange. Part of the fun was that I got to work with fellow Exchange MVPs Ben Winzenz and Chris Scharff, along with some other cool folks at MessageOne. The list came out as a nifty little pocket guide, printed on heavy glossy paper with a slick cover. MessageOne was giving them out at various trade shows. Turns out that now Windows IT Pro is making the guide available too as a download (registration is required.) You might also find some of these other whitepapers interesting, too.
Comments Off on The Exchange MVP Guide to Exchange Availability
Filed under UC&C
Exchange unified messaging scalability
I thought I’d blogged about this before, but apparently not. I’ve gotten a few questions at roadshow events about how the Exchange Unified Messaging server role scales. Now, it’s not entirely fair to ask scalability questions about products that are still in beta because the answers are almost guaranteed to change (and hopefully for the better). However, in discussions with Microsoft’s Michael Khalili, I understand that the current guideline is that a single server should be able to handle 80-100 concurrent calls (the direction doesn’t matter, whether inbound or outbound). If you co-locate the UM role on another server, you may be able to handle fewer calls, but as with so many other scalability questions, the ultimate answer is “it depends”.
Observationally, I’ve been able to easily handle 4-5 concurrent UM calls on a 32-bit VM running as a UM / mailbox / CAS / hub transport server. I’m sure once Microsoft IT rolls out Exchange UM across the company they’ll be publishing one of their nifty “IT Showcase” white papers that describes in detail what their architecture looks like.
Update: forgot to mention Michael Wilson’s excellent post on the number of users you can put onto a UM server.
Comments Off on Exchange unified messaging scalability
Filed under UC&C
My first posts with Naturally Speaking
On Friday, I posted that I was starting to experiment with Naturally Speaking. The results are in: here’s my first post written using NS.
Comments Off on My first posts with Naturally Speaking
Filed under General Stuff
Professional Live Communications Server (Schurman)
This is the only current book that covers Live Communications Server 2005. Fortunately, it’s a good introduction. Joe Schurman has written a readable, useful book that covers much of what you need to know to install and manage LCS, even if you are fairly inexperienced. The book assumes medium familiarity with Active Directory, and it helps if you have some Windows admin background.
Comments Off on Professional Live Communications Server (Schurman)
Filed under Reviews
Naturally Speaking and Office 2007 first look
I just bought Dragon Naturally Speaking and was eager to try it, then I had second thoughts: what if it doesn’t work well with Office 2007? I installed it anyway. Unfortunately, despite what Marc says, in my initial tests performance was quite poor. This may be because I was running it in Parallels on my MacBook Pro. However, other people seem to be pleased with its performance in Parallels. I’m going to try it on the Thinkpad tonight and see if it’s any better. If not, back to Amazon it goes.
Comments Off on Naturally Speaking and Office 2007 first look
Filed under General Stuff
Paul's Down-Home Page 