Learn Exchange 2010

For those that are looking at learning more about Exchange 2010 there are tones of blogs out there with really good information and there is also TechNet. But many people forget or over look Microsoft Learning.

There are two Learning Snacks available for Exchange 2010 now for Unified Messaging and High Availability and Storage this link will take you straight to the page.

There are also a number of Clinics, Courses and hands on Labs available here.

And best of all most of it is free so take a look and blow your mind.

Exchange 2010 – Create a custom role to enable user’s to manage distribution groups but not create them

I love RBAC in Exchange2010, gone are the days of having to hack around AD to try and control what users could do or see. I remember talking to a security guy at one of the big 5 company’s about how they chop up AD to control what users/hosted companies could see and I was gob smacked how applications could run in this type of environment all together, it amazed me as we are not just talking about one product that needs to work with AD but many.

But it is new and with new things there is always a learning curve, I am not about to try teach you all about RBAC there are far better people then me who can do that, not only TechNet . But I have seen a re-occurring question asking how to not only restrict end users from creating distribution groups (save that for another post) but also allow them to manage distribution groups , to do this follow the steps outlined below:

 

Create the new customized role:
new-managementrole -name:customizedRole -Parent MyDistributionGroups*

Remove the new-distributiongroup:
Remove-ManagementRoleEntry customizedRole\new-distributiongroup -Confirm:$false

Assign the new customized role to the policy to apply to all users in the tenant:
$policy=get-roleassignmentpolicy
New-ManagementRoleAssignment -name:customizedRoleRA -Role:customizedRole –Policy $policy.identity

Remove the old role assignment on the policy:
$oldRA=Get-ManagementRoleAssignment -RoleAssignee $policy.identity -Role MyDistributionGroups*
Remove-ManagementRoleAssignment $oldra -confirm:$false

UK Driving License

Kind of a note to myself

 

Car licences obtained before 1 January 1997

If you passed your car test before 1 January 1997 you will also have categories BE (B+E), C1 and D1. These additional category entitlements are referred to as ‘Grandfather Rights’ and allow you to drive these vehicles without the need to take any additional tests. However, be warned! These are not full vocational licenses and have restrictions: C1 for weight (7500 kg) and D1 ‘Not for hire or reward’. As such, although you may drive them, you cannot accompany or instruct a learner driver for category D1 unless you are over 21 and hold the full licence (as a result of passing the appropriate test) and have held that license for more than 3 years.

DSA News regarding Cat D1 D1E C1 C1E

 

Car licences obtained on or after 1 January 1997

Category B Licence (for tests passed on or after 1st January 1997):You can drive motor vehicles with a MAM (Maximum Aurthorised Mass = Uladen weight + weight of the load it is allowed to carry) not exceeding 3500kg having not more than 8 passenger seats with a trailer up to 750kg. Combinations of towing vehicles in category B and a trailer, where the MAM of the combination does not exceed 3500kg and the MAM of the trailer does not exceed the unladen mass of the towing vehicle.

Drivers who passed a car test on or after 1 January 1997 are required to pass an additional driving test in order to gain entitlement to category B+E which allows them to tow trailers with a maximum authorised mass in excess of 750KG, behind a car/van (up to 3500kg).

Most caravans when fully loaded will be over 750 kg. This limit can be exceeded without taking a B+E test under some circumstances: The gross laden weight / MAM of a trailer can be upto the unladen weight of the towing vehicle, up to a maximum of 3500 kg in total for the combination. e.g. Land Rover Defender 90 has an unladen weight of 1740kg and therefore you might think you would be able to tow a trailer with a MAM of 1740kg, but beware that the load capacity of the Land Rover, over 20kg, would put you over the 3500kg MAM for the combination! So as the MAM of the Land Rover is 2400kg you can only tow a trailer with a MAM of 1100kg (If your trailer has a MAM above 1100kg but only weighs 1100kg because it is not fully loaded it would still require a B+E licence). If you had a Land Rover Freelander weighing 1640kg unladen, with a 2060kg MAM then your trailer could have up to a 1440kg MAM and would not exceed the 3500kg MAM for the combination and therefore only a category B licience is required (If your trailer has a MAM above 1440kg but only weighs 1440kg because it is not fully loaded it would still require a B+E licence). e.g. If you have a trailer with a 1400kg MAM you could tow it with a Land Rover Freelander (1640kg unladen / 2060kg MAM) without B+E, but the same trailer would need B+E to be towed by a Seat Ibiza, and the actual load towed would be less as the Seat Ibiza towing capacity is only 1200kg. If your trailer is below 750 kg MAM it can be towed by a vehicle up to 3500 kg making a total train weight of 4250 kg.* The best way to check is take whatever you are towing with to your local public weighbridge and get its unladen weight. When you know the unladen weight and MAM of the towing vehicle & the MAM of the trailer/caravan and the combination, you can work out if a B+E licience is required. You can find the MAM from the manufacturers handbook / plate. Also check the manufacturers plate to be sure none of the axle/nose weights or MAM for any trailer are exceeded.

All trailers over 750kg MAM (Maximum Authorised Mass) should display a manufacturers plate with the MAM of the trailer – Remember this is the weight that counts regardless of the actual weight being less.

If your trailer has not got a manufacturers plate showing the MAM you should not exceed 750kg in total (trailer + load).

 

If you passed your car test after 1 January 1997, you are restricted to category B (car up to 3500kgs) only. If you want to drive vehicles in C1 (small lorries between 3.5 tonne and 7.5 tonne) or D1 (minibuses with between 9 and 16 passenger seats), you will have to take the additional test. If you pass category C, you are covered for C1 and, similarly, if you pass category D, you are covered for D1. You will also have to take the relevant theory (including hazard perception) test and have a medical.

If you pass a test for sub-category “+E” that will give you entitlement to lighter categories you hold full entitlement to +E. So C+E gives entitlement to C1+E, B+E and if you have passed category D, D+E & D1+E. Beware that if you pass a B+E test and later passed C (or C1) you would have to take the additional C+E (C1+E) test to gain entitlement to tow a trailer. Also remember that passing a test for a rigid vehicle does not give entitlement to a lighter category with a trailer even though the maximum weight is less

Exchange 2007 updated Language packs for SP2

Just a quick post, alot of people have been waiting for Microsofts updated UM language packs for Exchange 2007 SP2.

They are not available here:

32-bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=735518c5-acb1-4f9d-a973-80695dd0913e#filelist

 

64-bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=9eb9725a-affc-4051-99c7-1936e8c21031

 

Right now I am off on vacation, happy days

Exchange 2010 Public Beta is Here!!!

It has been a while coming, and I have avoided my blog for so long as it was dangerous, I may have said something I shouldn’t, but now it is here.

You should be able to find a article that PC World wrote on Tuesday here.

The Exchange 2010 Product site can be found here.

The Exchange 2010 Beta TechCenter should be here, I say should as at the time of writing this the site is not live and just give me a page not found error.

You will find a download for the beta here, so get yourself over and download a copy and tell us what you think.

I will be keeping an eye on the forums for a few days, it is really going to be interesting to see what you all think of this release, I can say that all of the Exchange team have worked really hard and I think it shows in the product.

Take a look at Exchange-Genie blog as well, I know he will have some really good blogs posted soon

There are some forums and no doubt articles appearing over on msexchange.org, so there should be plenty places for you to find information and see what others think of the product.

 

There are a few other related releases that went live today

· Exchange 2010 Beta UM Language Packs – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3fdf49db-cb84-4dfe-8b8b-b30178b1a514

· Exchange 2010 Beta Language Pack Bundle – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3c0314ab-daa5-457f-8c61-c51182c38187

· EWS Managed API Beta – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a8c9d043-c66c-4971-9459-8d1df1608c8b

First Look At Exchange 14

I have been working on the Exchange team now for a short while and the frustrating thing was not being able to blog anything  it seems that we are now starting to show you what you might expect to see in Exchange 14.

KC one of our Exchange Guru’s has had a interview with Jim Lucey a Product Manager for Exchange Labs

You can see KC’s post and video on the Exchange Teams Blog here

Microsoft Press continues its 25th Anniversary ebook giveaway

Celebrating 25 years

For 25 years, Microsoft Press books have focused on helping you take your skills and knowledge to the next level. Celebrate there 25th Anniversary with a “Free E-Book of the Month” offer! Simply sign up for the Microsoft Press Book Connection Newsletter for notification of offers, register, and download the selection of the month.

For those for who are not on the Microsoft Press Connection newsletter list, below are links to download.  Please note that these download are only good till 24th of December, today is the 27th and still active so hurry

Understanding IPv6, by Joseph Davies
Writing Secure Code for Vista, by Michael Howard and David LeBlanc

A fantastic site

 

I have just found a really great site, it looks like it is in it’s early days, but Brian (Exchange Genie) and others have created a site where they are creating technical demos for Exchange.

I am currently watching Brian’s on OAB, found here it is a easy watch and explains everything you would want to known on OAB generation in a format that is perfect for someone wanting to learn about Exchange and more advanced admins wanting to explore more features in depth.

Good work guys, I look forward to seeing what you come out with next

 

Brian… that’s not your voice is it? or have you tweaked it…………. no that’s not you am I being cheated

 

Here is the site itself http://www.exclusivelyexchange.com

Why I haven’t posted for a while

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, as some of you know I have had a job change a while back. whilst I was settling down and sorting myself out that was all I wanted to concentrate on, and in addition to that I did not want to risk talking about something I shouldn’t!!

I left my previous job a while back and since then I have been working for Microsoft specifically the Exchange Team where we are currently working on the next version of Exchange.

Even now when I try and explain what this means to me personally, words fail me it seems odd that I cannot articulate it. Technology excites me and I believe that software has the ability to solve any problem, and working at Microsoft, learning its culture and listening to the emails that pass my inbox it often strikes me that I am working with some awesome people who I am going to learn so much from and not just from a professional standpoint but from a personal one too.

So what do I do?

I am working  on the Exchange TAP you can find the definition of this on the Exchange Team blog 

So that’s what I am doing, I hope to post more over the next year so stay tuned and thanks for reading.

Hope you all have a happy Christmas and a Happy new year

My virtool:win32/ceeInject.gen!j Malware

Well today is a interesting day, being Christmas eve I have driven down to my mother and farther in laws.

I arrived in good time with the wife and kids to enable me to work for the day, now having booted up my PC and attempting to log onto my lab at home (you got to love Microsoft Terminal Services Gateway) when my good friend Paul sent me a picture!!!!! on MSN messenger, being on auto pilot I opened this picture only to have now been infected by my first malware/virus/trogen.

I suppose everyone has to go through it at some stage, but why me on Christmas eve.

I generally sit here working but thinking I am generally safe from viruses and other such annoying things, I have a router that ( I won’t say firewalled) but it does not allow anything in, I have etrust antivirus (Computer Assiciates) with realtime scanner, windows firewall and windows defender but all this does not stop someone sending you a link in MSN messenger that has a virus on the end of it. Now if I had just thought for one nano second and read the actual link (which at first glance looked ok) I would have said not a chance and contacted Paul to advise him that Christmas prezzy’s  were not due for a few more hours.

 

So as the title suggests I now have  virtool:win32/ceeInject.gen!j doing  search on the web about this gives me a clue to what it is but there seems to be a number of things so I cannot be sure.

McAfee has the following:

Description
W32/Xirtem@MM is a mass mailing worm that also spreads through removable media using autorun.inf, and also by copying itself to Shared folders of Peer-2-Peer applications.Aliases Trojan-Banker.Win32.Banker.abbi (Kaspersky), VirTool:Win32/CeeInject.gen!J (Microsoft), W32.Degnax@mm (Symantec), W32/Autorun-RI (Sophos), Characteristics W32/Xirtem@MM is a mass mailing worm that also spreads through removable media using autorun.inf, and also by copying itself to Shared folders of Peer-2-Peer applications

 

But if anyone knows for sure I would really like to know.

 

So cleaning; Windows defender scan did not find it, nore did a quick scan with Malicious Software Removal Tool. But there is a new beta for live Onecare that will provide you the option of running a full anti virus scan from the web, which is found at the following link http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/center/whatsnew.htm it also seems to include registry cleaner, disk cleanup and other features

Interestingly I am still running this full scan and it already has detected 6 items and 2 issues lets hope it will clean me up or I will have to rebuild my laptop which I really do not want to do over Christ mas.

 

I will update this post with the results, keep your fingers crossed

 

20:04 GMT: 12 items detected 2 issues

Well some time later the online web scan failed at the last minute, so I downloaded live onecare client for a 90day trial and it removed the infection!!