A common question that has come up through support is how can administrators determine if forwarding has been enabled on an account.  There are three main methods to enable forwarding on a mailbox:   The client creates a rule for either redirect or forwarding using Outlook. The client or administrator sets the forwardingSMTPAddress property of…

When migrating mailboxes to Office 365 administrators have the opportunity to have the move batch immediately completed or manually complete the batch at a later time.  The move to Office 365 for the majority of mailboxes is an online move – allowing the end user full access to their mailbox while the move process occurs….

For many Office 365 customers directory synchronization is the primary method of populating their Office 365 tenant with users, groups, and contacts.  The directory synchronization process allows for the centralized management of these objects.   In the service customers taking advantage of Exchange Online through Office 365 actually have two directory representations.  Objects managed with…

Customers may implement CRM applications that track customer interactions.  In some instances the CRM applications are configured to archive and record email transactions that are sent to and from customer service representatives.    I recently worked with a customer that has their CRM application configured to monitor a centralized mailbox.  When a new organization was…

In Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013 the process of mounting a database has changed since Exchange 2007.  In versions prior to Exchange 2010 the Information Store process on a server was solely responsible for tracking the creation of mailbox databases and performing mount and dismount operations.   In Exchange 2010 and newer the Active Manager…

Administrators of Office 365 may have been pleasantly surprised to hear that the large item migration limit for hybrid mailbox moves has increased.  Administrators may now migrate messages up to 150 meg.  Originally when performing a migration any item that was found in the mailbox over 35 meg was either left behind or it was…

In recent weeks I have had the chance to work with several customers on an inquiry regarding the SMTP address displayed in an Outlook profile.   Let us take a look at an example.  In Exchange 2013 a user account is provisioned and has a primary SMTP address of alias@domain.com.     When an Outlook…

In Exchange 2013 we introduced the concept of server component states.  This allows administrators a great deal of flexibility to control a server’s ability to service certain requests either partially or fully.  More information on server component states can be found here.   Normally when applying a cumulative update to an Exchange 2013 instance the…

At any given time, in every database availability group (DAG), there is one member that is responsible for the coordination of database actions across the DAG. This member is known as the Primary Active Manager (PAM). The current PAM can be determined by using Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup –Status, as shown below.   [PS] C:\>Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Status -Identity DAG…

Although Exchange no longer uses shared storage, it can be deployed in clustered environments where shared storage is used. The storage is not actually shared between nodes as was the case with traditional clustering. Instead, the storage is presented through traditional shared storage controllers including fibre channel and iSCSI.   When creating a cluster with…