Tasks after installing exchange server - check list

1. Install Exchange Service Pack 1 and latest patches;
2. Configure Backups. Make sure you have at least one weekly full online backup;
3. Move the databases and logs to the definitive location;
4. Install Exchange anti-virus software;
5. Start planning (if haven't already done it) your anti-spam strategy. In today's messaging reality it's impossible not to have some kind of spam fighting tool;
6. Create System Policies for your stores and for your servers, even you have just one of each;
7. Install Exchange Best Practices Analyzer on a separate server and run it against your Exchange server. It will give you valuable suggestions, such as memory optimization and performance tuning;
8. Install (and use it!) some monitoring software.
   

Reading

When to use Move Mailbox Wizard or ExMerge to move Exchange mailboxes
Exchange 2007 SP1 Features with Communications Server 2007 and without Communications server 2007
Exchange 2007 and Domino Free/Busy Coexistence
Announcing the February Cumulative Update for Outlook 2007
Fun (& usefulness!) with color
A new build of OABInteg has been posted to the web
3 Data Centres and a File Share Witness
Content Filtering System Whitelist GUI for Exchange 2007
Recipients List
Mailbox Management
Exchange Recipients
Shared Mailboxes
Monitoring Exchange 2007 With System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Part 4)
A Practical Look at Migrating From Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 (Part 3)
Quick Tip - Mixed Physical and Virtual Domain Controllers - Access Denied
Quick Tip - Be careful with recipient SMTP addressing
Errors with Test-ReplicationHealth when using a multi-subnet Windows 2008 Cluster.
Permissions recommended for the CNO (Cluster Name Object) in Windows 2008 for Exchange 2007 SP1 setup operations.
Restore-StorageGroupCopy –standbymachine requires use of –force in order to complete successfully when activating a Standby Continuous Replication target in Exchange 2007 SP1.
RMS vs. S/MIME: When to Use Each One
How to Create and configure a meeting room mailbox with Exchange Server 2007
Why so much fluff?
You’ve just installed your 901st Exchange Server..
Outlook Live screenshots: upon first glances
Microsoft's Exchange 14 adds cross-browser support and more
Exchange UM questions
Outlook Connector and migration to Windows Live Calendar
Win2008 – Exchange 2007 move to new hardware – Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5
Exchange 2007 Sp1 Cluster Install/Recovery Issues
An inside look at the spammer’s business expenses
Blackberry without BES?
24 hour operation, several thousand mailboxes, high concurrency, heavy profiles – how do you tune Online Maintenance?
Item Counts, Search Folders and Restrictions
Applying Exchange 2007 SP1 Update Rollup 6
Are Distribution Groups really being used?
Replacing Exchange 2003 Frontend OWA Server with Exchange Server 2007 Client Access Server
Introduction to Exchange Online- Uncovering BPOS (Part 3)
MMC Conflict with Exchange 2007 Management Tools on Windows XP
Having issues with your Exchange servers after/during deploying updates?
Recommendations for enabling a two node Standby Continuous Replication target based on a Single Copy Cluster (Exchange 2007 SP1)
Maximum number of members in a Distribution Group?
Outlook Live: Microsoft’s efforts towards living in the cloud
How to troubleshoot performance issues in Outlook 2007
Five must-dos for Exchange Server 2007 (and 5 don'ts)
10 Reasons to Use MS Outlook for Company E-mail
7 Reasons Not to Use MS Outlook for Company E-mail
A new way to get Hotmail on your phone
Google Takes Patent License to Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync
Adoption of Microsoft Live@edu Continues to Grow With Universities Worldwide
Exchange Labs To Become Outlook Live
History of Phishing
Archive v Big Mailboxes
Get-storagegroupcopystatus = Initializing
How to Remove an Invisible or Corrupted "Out of Facility" message with MFCMAPI
Did pigs fly? Exchange embraces FireFox, Safari
Adding a Public Contact Folder Search to the OWA 2007 Address book
Client RPC Dialog box questionnaire for Administrators
MRM (Message Record Management)
A Practical Look at Migrating From Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 (Part 2)
Customizing Managed Folders in Exchange Server 2007
Publishing Exchange Services with ISA 2006 LDAPS Authentication
A known PFDAVAdmin error: cannot begin with the '0' character. hexadec
KB: XML schema validation errors when Exchange Web Service requests and responses have invalid XML characters
Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Rollup 6 and a Conundrum
Introducing Outlook Live for schools - and cool new features for everyone
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 performance tutorial
Securing your Exchange Server 2007 journaling archives
Why you need to keep false-positives to a minimum
Living in Outlook: Using Quick Parts
Is your email server an open relay?
The OAB Generation process fails to generate an OAB with error MAPI_E_FAILONEPROVIDER
Quick and Dirty UNIX Shell Scripting with EWS
How To: Customize RBL Rejection Response in Exchange 2007
Continous prompting in Outlook Anywhere
Managed Folders: Why aren't Calendar items expired?
From Address Rewriting in a Transport Agent for a Exchange 2007 Hub Server
Updated Exchange 2003 Perfwiz
How to find 10 Top mailbox users in Exchange 2007
Monitoring Forefront Security for Exchange with OpsMgr 2007 (SCOM 2007)
Introduction to Exchange Online - Uncovering BPOS (Part 2)
Configuring Ubuntu Server as a Firewall and Reverse Proxy for OWA 2007…
FYI: Exchange 2007 OnSyncSave Store Events and Plain Text Message Don’t Play Nice
Got Checklists?
Update Rollup 6 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 to be released on February 10th 2009
Tutorial: Secure journaling in Exchange Server 2007
Crash Course: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging for administrators
Unified Communications, Step by Step
Some mailboxes show up as Shared or Linked... after Migrating to Exchange Server 2007
Microsoft Exchange Server and PowerShell: The Debate Continues
Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008: Using Diskshadow for Online Exchange Backup (part 5 of 7)
Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008: Online Exchange Backup (part 6 of 7)
Spam Up 159% Since November 2008
Belated 2009 Spam Predictions
Creating Custom ISA Logon Page
Part 12 - I used to do it this way… Now how do I do it? Administering Exchange 2003 vs. Exchange 2007
Part 13 - I used to do it this way… Now how do I do it? Administering Exchange 2003 vs. Exchange 2007
Part 14 - I used to do it this way… Now how do I do it? Administering Exchange 2003 vs. Exchange 2007
Turning the Reading / Preview pane on and off in OWA in Exchange 2007 with EWS and Powershell
Introduction to Exchange Online - Uncovering BPOS (Part 1)
Recovering Deleted Items in Exchange Server 2003 (Part 2)
Exchange 2007 Sp1 RU5: download manually or use WSUS and size difference
Configure Exchange to show the simple display name in outgoing messages
Why You Shouldn't Use PST Files
Automating Exchange 2007 Prerequisites for Windows Server 2008
Get-storagegroupcopystatus = Initializing
Cluster stability issues with Exchange 2007 SP1 RU5 Single Copy Clusters (SCC) enabled for Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) on Windows 2008
Exchange Server 2007 Backup on Windows Server 2008
Next version of Exchange and Single Label Domain (SLD) policy under review
Language setup for a mailbox with Exchange Server 2007
Moving mailboxes? Make sure your Deleted Mailbox Retention is not set to "0".

autocomplete - Outlook

Each time that you send a new message in Outlook, the emails that you type in To/Cc fields, are automatically inserted into the AutoComplete list, so in the next time that you type an email address, Outlook automatically completes the right email address for you.

The AutoComplete file of Outlook is stored under [Your Profile]\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook , and it always saved as the profile name of Outlook with .NK2 extension. This utility reads the AutoComplete file of Outlook (with .NK2 extension), displays all email records stored in it, and allows you to easily export these records into text/html/xml file.

Using NK2View

NK2View doesn't require any installation process or additional DLL files. Just copy the executable file (nk2view.exe) to any folder you like, and run it. After your run it, NK2View utility displays the AutoComplete list of the default Outlook profile. If you want to view the AutoComplete list of other profiles, simply use the 'Open .NK2 File' option.

NK2View Columns
Display Name - The name that represents this email. If there is no name for this email, the email itself will be displayed in this field.
Email - The email address that you sent. If your Outlook is connected to Exchange server, you may get here the Exchange/Active Directory string (something like /o=xxxxx/ou=yyyyy/cn=Recipients/cn=name) instead of the real email address. In order to view the real email address, select the desired item, and press F9 (Open Item Details Window).
Type - The type of the address: SMTP or Exchange.
AutoComplete Value - The AutoComplete string, exactly as it appeared in the AutoComplete drop-down list.
Entry ID - The ID string of the specified address. This value is internally used by Outlook to identify the address record.
Index - Numeric value the represents the order of the address records in the .NK2 file (The first record is 1, the second is 2, and on...)
Recipient Type - To, Cc, or Bcc. This value is updated according to the last time that you sent a message to the specified address.
Delete AutoComplete Items

Starting from version 1.10, NK2View allows you to delete unwanted/obsolete AutoComplete items. After you delete the items, Outlook won't display them in the AutoComplete combo-box. However, before you make any delete action, you should always backup your .NK2 file, so if something goes wrong with the delete, you'll be able to restore the original AutoComplete list. Also, while you use the delete option, Outlook application must be closed.
Add AutoComplete items from your address bookStarting from version 1.15, NK2View allows you to add new AutoComplete items directly from your address book. In order to use this feature, close your Outlook, choose the "Add Items From Address Book" from the File menu, and then select the items that you want to add. be aware that the number of AutoComplete items that are allowed in NK2 file is limited to 1000.
Warning !!! Some users complained that their .NK2 file stopped working in Outlook after trying to add items from the address book. Before you add a new AutoComplete item, you should always backup your .NK2 file, so if something goes wrong, you'll be able to restore the original AutoComplete list. Also, while you use the add option, Outlook application must be closed.

Tips for migrating to Exchange server 2003

· Use the Microsoft® Exchange Server Deployment Tools. These are new in the 2003 release of Exchange Server, and will greatly help in guiding you through a successful deployment process. Included is an array of tools designed to diagnose and/or verify a wide variety of conditions that you might encounter.

· Keep in mind that Exchange Server 2003 makes widespread use of DNS.
Because Exchange is a major consumer of DNS, it will quickly and effectively expose any related issues.

· Confirm that your Mail Exchange (MX) records are pointing to the correct server or IP address.

· Verify that your DNS server is configured to use forwarders for addresses it is unable to resolve internally, instead of being pointed directly to an external DNS resolver. This is a good rule in general.

· Check that your local member servers are pointed to your local DNS server and not to an external resolver. The trick here is that you want to be able to find the other machines on your LAN and not just machines on the Internet.

· Certify that the Domain Controller (DC) acting as your schema master is using a DNS server that is accessible by your local servers. If the schema master is the DNS server, make sure that it is configured to use its own IP address for DNS and is the preferred DNS server of the member servers.

· Confirm on the first page of Properties on the zone that your DNS server is configured to Allow Dynamic Update.

· Verify that your DNS records contain entries under the domain, labeled _mcdcs, _sites, _tcp, and _udp, in addition to the Host records. If you do not see these entries and have already verified that Dynamic Update is enabled, go to your DCs and type "net stop netlogon" followed by "net start netlogon" from a command prompt. This will restart the Netlogon service and cause the DC to reregister its service resource records (SRV records).

· Verify that you can resolve the name of your mail server and your DC(s) by both short name and Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN).

· Ensure that the first Exchange 2003 server that you install is not a cluster if your current e-mail environment contains Exchange 5.5 and no subsequent Exchange versions. Some Exchange services are supported on a cluster, but some are not. One of the services not supported on a cluster is the Site Replication Service (SRS), which allows Exchange 2003 and Exchange 5.5 to be on speaking terms. It's important that the first server that goes in is able to create the SRS and start communications.

· Install the Active Directory® Connector (ADC) and configure Connection Agreements (CAs) if your Exchange organization is Exchange 5.5. I strongly recommend that you use the ADC Tools, included with your ADC installation, to generate these CAs.
· Check that all ADC servers are upgraded to the proper Exchange 2003 version before you embark on your Exchange 2003 rollout if you are upgrading from Exchange 2000 mixed mode. I also strongly recommend that after upgrading your ADC servers you use the ADC Tools to revalidate any existing CAs.
· Remember that if you have third-party applications running on your Exchange server, you should check with your vendor to confirm that they have a compatible version available, and acquire it for installation on your new Exchange server. If your migration is an upgrade of an existing Exchange deployment, uninstall your third-party applications prior to the upgrade and reinstall the new version after the upgrade. (Note: upgrading to Microsoft Exchange 2003 is supported only on an Exchange 2000 server.)

· If you are upgrading from Exchange 2000, verify that you account for services that are no longer supported in Exchange 2003. These include:
Microsoft Mobile Information Server
Instant Messaging Service
Exchange Chat Service
Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server
Key Management Service
cc:Mail connector
MS Mail connector
· If any of these services are running on the Exchange server you plan to upgrade, you should remove them with Exchange setup before you move on. If you're going to need any of these services, you will need to keep at least one Exchange 2000 server available to run the service.

· Make sure the time onthe server that you are installing on is in sync with the time on your DCs. If the time is off by more than five minutes, Kerberos authentication will fail and you won't be able to perform any operations that require permissions on the Active Directory. If the times are out of sync, you can type "net time /set \\" from the command prompt on the Exchange server to fix it.