Exchange: Co-existence Client Access Preparation Report

If you upgrade Exchange in a co-existence scenario (you want to keep the same client access namespace) there is one crucial moment of truth which must be overcome. This is the phase of the migration I’ve come to call the “dns flip-over” or the “client access part”. Without preparation this part of the migration can be a real headache as issues are directly experienced by your end users.  This is a simple report card you can use to prepare you for this moment.

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Create Your Own Network Assessment Appliance: Additional Tools

Introduction

I previously did a write up on a personal virtual machine I like to keep at hand for performing network analysis and discovery. I’ve since added a few tools to the VM and documented how they were installed so I figured I’d share on how it was done. Even if you don’t setup everything in this post it may be worthwhile to glance through it for some network engineering tools which are free to setup and use but not highly publicized. Anyone who cares to read this post has likely heard of Solarwinds but I highly doubt you have heard of all the tools in this list (let alone how to set them up). Regardless, I’ll start with a tool anyone worth their salt has heard of though, Cacti…

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Exchange 2010: Poor Mans Monitoring 1.5

Just a quick upgrade to the script I posted earlier. This script is for monitoring and/or maintaining your Exchange 2010 mailboxes. It is meant to help an admin be proactive in their exchange environment. I updated the script to be a bit more customizable and fixed some obvious issues. The primary changes are removing the requirement for the MS chart controls as well as introducing an area of code just for custom scripts. Continue reading