TechEd 2014 Sessions Available at Channel 9

In case you (like me) did not have time to make it down to TechEd 2014, they've posted recorded sessions on Channel 9. It's pretty much like being there.

• http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2014

Forward Messages and Leave in Mailbox

One of the fairly common tasks for Exchange administrators is to configure forwarding on a mailbox. Previous versions of Exchange gave you the option to leave a copy of forwarded messages in the mailbox and the option was accessible in the graphical administration tools. As you can see in the screenshot below, for some reason in Exchange 2013 this option was left out of the graphical/web interface.

When you enable forwarding in the web interface, by default the message will not be left in the recipient mailbox. However, the option is still there if you use PowerShell.

The Set-Mailbox cmdlet is your friend:

Set-Mailbox -Identity "user" -ForwardingAddress "otheruser@domain.com" -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true

Microsoft Exchange Conference 2014 - Sessions Online

I was too busy to attend the Microsoft Exchange Conference this year in Austin. Fortunately for us they recorded most (if not all) of the breakout sessions and made them available on Channel 9. It looks like over 50 session are online and available for free.

You can see them here:

• http://channel9.msdn.com/events/mec/2014

New Pagefile Sizing for Exchange 2013

Over the last few years, memory has become increasingly inexpensive. As a result, for scalability, you can often see Exchange servers with 64GB or 128GB of RAM.

In the past, Microsoft's guidance on pagefile size has been system memory plus some amount to allow for the contents of memory to be written to disk in the event of a crash. Basically, this is for troubleshooting information. For Exchange 2013, the guidance has been RAM+10MB.

Unfortunately this means that a large amount of disk space is used for that pagefile with little benefit because it's not typically used much. Certainly not the full RAM of the system. I've been arguing for a long time that unless you are troubleshooting bluescreen events with Microsoft support, there is no need for this large of a pagefile for Exchange or regular Windows servers.

As of Exchange 2013 SP1 the new guidance is to max out the pagefile at 32GB+10MB. Apparently Microsoft has been doing this internally for some time.

For more information:

• http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2014/04/03/ask-the-perf-guy-sizing-guidance-updates-for-exchange-2013-sp1.aspx

Remove Exchange 2007 Public Folder Database After Exchange 2013 Migration

After I was done performing a migration from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2013, I received the following error when trying to remove the public folder database from the Exchange 2007  EMC:

Object is read only because ti was created by a furture version of Exchange: 0.10 (14.0.100.0). Current supported version is 0.1 (8.0.535.0).

Ok. No problem. I'll just remove this from the Exchange 2013 side. However, I found that shell in Exchange 2013 does not have the Remove-PublicFolderDatabase cmdlet.

The only fix I found was to remove the public folder database by using ADSI Edit. You can find the public folder database in the following path in ADSI Edit:

• Configuration\Services\Microsoft Exchange\OrganizationName\Administrative Groups\Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)\Servers\ServerName\InformationStore\StorageGroupName\PublicFolderDBName

 After removing the public folder object, I could delete the storage group and uninstall Exchange 2007.

At this point, in the event log, I was seeing errors for the mailbox databases on the Exchange 2013 side like this:

Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Event ID: 2937
Process MSExchangeMailboxAssistants.exe (PID=XXX). Object (mailboxdatabase). Property [PublicFolderDatabase] is set to value [domain/Configuration/Deleted Objects/DatabaseName, it is pointing to the Deleted Objects container in Active Directory.

In Exchange 2013, the property is not used and you can't set the value to $null by using the Set-MailboxDatabase cmdlet. So, the fix is to yet again go into ADSI Edit and manually remove the value from the property in the mailbox database object as shown in the graphic below. Note that the property you edit is msExchHomePublicMDB.

The path to the mailbox databases is:

• Configuration\Services\Microsoft Exchange\OrganizationName\Administrative Groups\Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)\Databases\DatabaseName

Find Unused Exchange Mailboxes

Every once in a while you need to identify mailboxes that are no longer in use. This PowerShell command will find any mailbox where no one has logged on to the mailbox for 60 days.

Get-Mailbox | Get-MailboxStatistics | Where-Object {$_.LastLogonTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-60)}

You can use this information to further investigate whether these mailboxes are required.

If the LastLogonTime is $null (blank) it means that the user has never logged on. This is normal for shared mailboxes and resource mailboxes.

Samsung Network Printer Won't Wake

Yesterday I installed a new CLP-415NW printer for a client. Install was easy and the client loved the print quality. But we ran into one snag....

When the printer went to sleep after 5 minutes (default setting) it wouldn't automatically wake up when you sent a print job. The printer appeared offline and you needed to physically press a button on the printer to wake it up. When it was asleep, you couldn't print to it, you couldn't access the web interface, and you couldn't even ping it.

I figured this was crazy that there has to be an easy solution for it. So, I started looking at settings on the printer and nothing seemed to fit. I tinkered with when sleep occurred, but had no success.

I emailed Samsung support and they provided the following link, which described how to disable bidirectional support in the network port. This had no effect.

• http://tinyurl.com/p5xcmhr

Then today I spent a frustrating hour and a half on a web chat with Samsung support. I got the following suggestions, of which none of them fixed anything:

• Change to a static IP address. I had a DHCP reservation so, this had no effect. However, offline printers can occur when the printer changes IP. So, at least this was relevant.
• Install a new version of the Samsung  SyncThru software on my PC. This software wasn't in use.
• Set the sleep timeout to maximum value. This was the final bit where the tech support guy gave up and basically said it would need to print every 60 minutes to avoid needing to wake it  up with a button. Not cool.

 Here's the good news. I think I finally found the setting that fixed it.

In the network options there was a setting for Ethernet Power Save that was On. I've turned off this setting and several hours later I'm still able to connect to the web interface and it shows the printer status as in sleep mode.

It makes sense that if this Ethernet Power Save turns off the network connection that you wouldn't be able to wake it up over the network. It's also possible that there is a magic combination of switch and printer that causes the powersave to appear as off to the switch, but some switches may work properly with it. This particular printer is plugged into a small desktop switch in someone's office.