M. Omer Siddiqui's Blog

Infrastructure pieces on the web

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit v9.6

The new version of MAPS v9.6 has been released. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit makes...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 02/12/2017

Exchange Server 2016 Online Training Courses

Microsoft Exchange team recently released some Exchange Server 2016 courses that is great learning...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 08/22/2016

Integration of Windows Azure Pack, SPF and SCVMM

Recently i was troubleshooting some integration issues between SCVMM, SPF and Windows Azure Pack...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 12/13/2015

ADFS and SAP Integration

In a recent project I was working on ADFS with multiple applications and customer also had SAP to be...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 07/31/2015

Exchange team blog on How big is too big

Recently Exchange team has written an excellent article on Exchange processor and memory usage and...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 06/30/2015

Microsoft Exchange 2016 Initial outline

Microsoft has recently released an initial look at Exchange 2016 architecture and Exchange team has...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 05/12/2015

Microsoft Exchange team blog about Large message sizes in Office 365

Recently Microsoft Exchange team has written a blog about large messages in Office 365. I see many...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 04/24/2015

Missing SPN causing domain replication issues

I was recently working with a customer where one of their Active Directory would not replicate. They...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 03/24/2015

Protecting all Organizational Units (OUs) from accidental deletion

You can protect your organizational Units from accidental deletion by using Power Shell scripts to...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 02/15/2015

Step by step guide for upgrading Active Directory from Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2

Sometime ago, I wrote a blog about upgrading from Windows 2003 based Active Directory to Windows...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 02/08/2015

OWA Forms Based Auth Logoff Changes in Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 8 – And Good News for TMG Customers

Back at the release of Exchange Server 2013 CU1 we made some necessary changes to the way OWA logoff...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 01/13/2015

Sysvol migration - Migrating to the ‘ELIMINATED’ state

I was recently working with a customer helping them migrate to the Eliminated state of Sysvol...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 12/31/2014

Security Compliance Manager Baselines for Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2

I was recently working on a project using Security Compliance Manager (SCM) for Active Directory...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 12/23/2014

Microsoft Lync Server 2013, Planning Tool

I was recently working with one of our customers on Lync 2013 project and one of the questions...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 11/30/2014

On-Premises Legacy Public Folder Coexistence for Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 7 and Beyond

What are we talking about today?In Exchange 2013 CU5 (yes 5, V, cinco, fem, and cinque) we started...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 11/09/2014

Latest Exchange 2013 Calculator

We recently released updated versions of both the Exchange 2010 Server Role Requirements Calculator...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 10/26/2014

Introducing Microsoft Ignite – meet us in Chicago

At The Official Microsoft Blog, we revealed more details about our unified technology event for...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 10/20/2014

Take Advantage of EOPs new Bulk Mail Detection

Bulk mail is often mistaken for spam and is starting to become a larger problem for organizations....

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 09/28/2014

Protecting against Rogue Administrators

Occasionally I am asked the following question – how can I protect the messaging environment...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 09/16/2014

Released: Cumulative Update 6 for Exchange Server 2013

The Exchange team is announcing today the availability of our most recent quarterly servicing update...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 08/26/2014

Spam email and Office 365 environment - connection and content filtering in EOP

In the last related blog post we gave some introduction about Exchange Online Protection (EOP), what...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 08/19/2014

Managed Availability Probes

Probes are one of the three critical parts of the Managed Availability framework (monitors and...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 08/11/2014

ADRMS OWA Issue Code 2147160062

Recently I was working for ADRMS integration with Exchange which is rather simple however it became...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 07/02/2014

MAP Toolkit 9.1 Now Available!

We are pleased to announce the availability of version 9.1 of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 06/27/2014

Improved CalCheck integration with OffCAT

In the last week there have been two big improvements related to CalCheck and OffCAT that will make...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 06/18/2014

ADRMS Error - The operation being requested was not performed because the user has not been authenticated

I was recently helping a customer in ADRMS design and deployment where we faced an issue with ADRMS...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 06/08/2014

Microsoft Exchange 2013 and ADRMS Integration

I recently did an Exchange 2013 deployment at one of our customers and also integrated with ADRMS so...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 05/25/2014

Released: PelNet

With the huge scale environment I currently work in my team has had some difficulty when it comes to...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 05/02/2014

The Preferred Architecture (Exchange 2013)

During my session at the recent Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC), I revealed Microsoft’s...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 04/21/2014

Updated: Exchange Server Deployment Assistant

We’re happy to announce updates to the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant! These updates...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 04/18/2014

Certificate Planning in Exchange 2013

Now that we understand the load balancing and namespace planning principles and how clients connect...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 03/20/2014

Exchange 2003 migration toolkit

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 entered the market on September 28, 2003 and continued the great...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 03/10/2014

Load Balancing in Exchange 2013

This article is part 2 in a series that discusses namespace planning, load balancing principles,...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 03/05/2014

Released: Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1

Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now available for download! Please make sure to read...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 02/26/2014

Data loss prevention in Exchange just got better

With Exchange 2013, we released a new data loss prevention (DLP)capability based on deep content...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 02/25/2014

Exchange ActiveSync Guided Walkthrough

Many users rely on their smart phones and other mobile devices to access their email and calendar...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 02/09/2014

Deploy a Guest Cluster Using a Shared Virtual Hard Disk

This has been a great new feature added in Windows Server 2012 R2. The possible scenario of the...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 01/30/2014

Exchange 2013 database schema updates

Recently, we have seen some questions about what the Update-DatabaseSchema cmdlet in Exchange 2013...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 01/14/2014

Disk Read Error when migrating virtual machine from one cluster to another

Recently I was involved in a Private Cloud project and as part of the project, we were migrating...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 12/26/2013

Responding to Managed Availability

I’ve written a few blog posts now that get into the deep technical details of Managed...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 12/18/2013

MAP Toolkit 9.0 now available!

We are pleased to announce the RTM availability of version 9.0 of the Microsoft Assessment and...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 12/18/2013

Released: Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 3

The Exchange team has announced the availability of our most recent quarterly servicing update to...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 11/28/2013

Outlook Connectivity Guided Walkthrough (Exchange On-Premises)

Outlook prompting users for credentials? Outlook users disconnected from their mailboxes? These are...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 11/16/2013

Exchange Server: The Road Ahead

We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the release of Exchange Server 2013. This is...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 11/13/2013

Beta of Microsoft Office 365 Best Practices Analyzer for Exchange Server 2013 now available

Exchange team has released a blog about Office 365 best practices analyzer for Exchange 2013 as...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 10/04/2013

Released: The new Exchange Server Deployment Assistant

Exchange team has written a blog about new Exchange Server deployment assistance as below:...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 10/04/2013

Server Component States in Exchange 2013

In Exchange 2013 we introduced the concept of “Server Component States”. Server...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 09/28/2013

Assigning File Share permissions using Power Shell

Recently I was working on some Power Shell scripts for configuring my Windows Server 2012 machines....

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 09/14/2013

New Remote Connectivity Analyzer Tests for Mail Flow

Exchange team has written below blog on the remote connectivity analyzer tests for mail flow...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 09/10/2013

Hybrid Mailbox moves and EMC changes

As customers are upgraded or sign up for the latest version of Office 365 for business, they may...

Author: M. Omer Siddiqui Date: 08/31/2013

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