Running out of Disk Space? Toss the Big Dog on a New Volume. [aka move the Exchange Store]

Sometimes when you're running out of space, you need to take action: Fast. Here is the simple (no explanation) method for moving the Exchange store to a new location, preferably a new volume.

Moving the database & Log files:

1. Open Server Management


2. Expand " (Exchange)"


3. Expand "Servers"


4. Expand "<server name>"


5. Expand "First Storage Group"


6. Right Click "Mailbox store"


7. Click on "Properties"


8. Select the "Database" tab
   

   Change the location of the "Exchange Database" by browsing to a volume with more space        -Note: DO NOT CHANGE THE DATABASE NAME Change the location of the "Exchange streaming database" to the same location        -Note: DO NOT CHANGE THE DATABASE NAME

9. Choose OK
          ** This dismounts, moves and remounts the store and make take some time to complete.
   

Repeat the same steps for the "Public Folder Store" (If you want to move these)

Next, if you want to move the log files to another location too, you can follow these steps:

1. Right Click on First Storage Group


2. Choose Properties


3. On the General tab
   

   Choose Browse for each of the "Transaction Log Location" and "System Path location"



4. Choose Yes to the: Are you sure dialog
          ** This dismounts, moves and remounts the store and make take some time to complete.
   

Also note, that while you do this your Exchange Server is down, meaning you cannot send or receive mail, your Outlook clients will not be able to connect to the server.

Also, if you're running out of space, make sure you're doing Exchange-aware backups (either with a 3rd party backup solution or the SBS 2003 backup solution). If you don't do an Exchange-aware backup, the Exchange log files will grow indefinitely using up all your space until the volume fills up! This can lead to very bad news if these files are left on the system drive.

Disclaimer, I stole this information from KB 257184 but I still get questions on how to do it, so I'm posting to my blog. Perhaps these steps aren't as scary looking? Sure, Exchange is the big dog of SBS, but deep down it's just a big puppy! :)

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Lock your workstation, with just the mouse?

In Windows 2000, locking your workstation was pretty tedious: CTRL+ALT+DEL, then press ENTER (or "k"). Windows XP took it to the next level, you press the Windows Key and then "L" (Why can't you change these Windows shortcuts, I can think of 26 more shortcuts).

Well, what happens if your primarily a mouse user? How do you lock your workstation then?

Well, now you can! Here are the steps:

1. Create a New Shortcut, say, on the desktop, by right clicking and choosing New, Shortcut.
   
2. For the location of the item, enter this string: %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation.


3. Name the Shortcut, in this case I'm going to use Lock Workstation

You can also change the icon to say, the windows lock? Now you can put this handy shortcut in the Quick Launch bar, in the Start Menu or wherever else you feel like putting it.

Execute the icon and lock your workstation with a click of the mouse!

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Prevent a Dictionary attack on your Exchange (SBS) Server

Worried about some spammer trying a dictionary attack on your Exchange server to find existing email addresses? Well, Microsoft has a fix that will be coming out with Server SP1, fortunately you can get this fix today!

KB Article 842851 explains the details on how to do this, you'll have to contact
PSS to get the hot-fix if you don't want to wait for Server SP1 (or SBS SP1 for that matter).

I know the KB doesn't say it applies to SBS, but I'm running it at home and it works like a charm, oh and I'm also having the article update ;o) to say it applies to SBS.

The nice thing is, after you've applied the QFE, if a server emails you and gets the email address wrong, then the server will wait up to 10 seconds before responding that this is incorrect, making the attacking server waste a lot of time dictionary attacking for email addresses.

Now this is one more way we can fight spammers!

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Editing the SBS Admin Console

The SBS Admin console is a pretty cool idea, all your admin consoles in one place,
launched at login for you. You don't have to do anything else, just log into your box, and start the administration.

But what if you have SQL, Want to manage DHCP? What if you use AD contacts? All of these things are not in the admin console (well Contacts, are, but they are buried in the AD Users and Computers snap-in).

You can go ahead and right click the .msc file in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer\Administration called itprosbsconsole.msc and choose Author. Any changes you make to this console are saved and launched on startup.

Some good ideas are:

• Add a new query node for Contacts


• Add the DNS, DHCP, ISA, SQL snap-ins to the advanced section


• Change the startup section to save time


• Make the console not open up full screen

Personally, I think it makes administration a little easier. If you actually use Power Users, you can do the same thing with the mysbsconsole.msc located in the same directory.

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There Can Be Only One (copy that is)

My most recent goal, is around data management. I want only one original copy of the data, but I want this data on multiple computers. Using SBS, I was able to easly redirect My Documents to the server. This allows me to share the same My Documents experience on both mylaptop and my desktop. There are a few issues with offline files that I don't want to dive into on this post, perhaps I'll save it for a later
post if there is any interest.

My next issue was with Favourites. I add a favourite on my laptop, and then get frustrated I can't browse there on my desktop.

Since Favourites are not included in My Documents, they are not redirected as part of the My Document redirection to the server, they still live on the client computer, and as a result, are a different experience on both my desktop and my laptop.

Attempting to tackle this problem, I came across a gem in the registry editor:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders This part of the registry tells the computer where your special folders are.

If you've already redirect My Documents, you'll notice the My Pictures, My Music, My Video and Personal are already redirected to the server, so here is what I did.

I changed the location of My Music from my profile to a generic share on the server, so I can share the Music with other people on the network. I also changed the location of Favorites (spelt incorrectly of course ;o) ) to point to \\servername\users\username\favorites just to keep them on the server.

You can probably set these via Group Policy, but seeing as I only had 2 computers, I did them by hand. I will probably want to setup a Group Policy so that more computers added to my network will have these settings, without much configuration needed by me.

There are two problems I've discovered with this approach, which I think I'm ok with, so you will have to decide for yourself if you are ok with them.

• If "Offline Files" does not turn on but you still cannot access the server, IE will crash, creating a "Links" directory on the desktop. This commonly happens when you are joined to a network that has the same servername as your server, but you do not have access to this other server.


• When you look at My Music in the Lunar start menu, it will actually say something like "Music on ServerName" instead of My Music, and if you put a description on the server, that whole description will appear there as well. It makes the start menu look a little busier, but that's it as far as I can tell.

Despite the issues, I feel this keeps my data in order (and backed up via the Server), moreover, if I add a favourite on my laptop, after a synch with the server, the favourite appears on my desktop, and vice-versa.

Happy Computing!

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MapPoint shows me North America, where's the personalization?

If you're an avid Microsoft MapPoint user like I am, you probably get sick of having to zoom in to your small driving area from the entire map of North America. Here's a little trick I learned, which will probably also work for Streets & Trips (although I've not tested it)

Zoom in to the selected area of the map you'd like to start MapPoint at. Choose File/Save As..., then navigate to c:\Program Files\Microsoft MapPoint\Templates>. Then change the Save As Type to Map Template (*.ptt). You should see a file called "New North American Map.ptt". Select this file and copy and paste it (for a backup) using CTRL+C then followed by CTRL+V, this will copy and paste it while in the browse window, creating the file "Copy of New North American Map.ptt".

Finally, reselect the "New North American Map.ptt" and choose Save. Choose Yes to replacing the file.

Now when you open MapPoint, it will start in your custom zoomed map, so you don't have to zoom in forever just to see where to turn left.

Makes driving safer too :o)

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Want to Create a User Without an Email Address?

In some cases you want to create a user, but don't necessarily want this user to have an email account. Perhaps you want someone to look at the server to help out, or perhaps you want to use SharePoint as an extranet, and you want to allow a certain group of users to access SharePoint, but you don't want to host email for them. If you use the SBS Add User Wizard it forces you to create an email account right? Right?

Wrong.

In the SBS Add User Wizard, you can simply delete the email alias from
the User Account Information page and then complete the wizard.
Poof, a domain account that doesn't have an email address!

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Having Trouble Trusting Exchange From the Start?

I've been to a few network configurations where the small company was
upgrading from a peer-to-peer environment to Small Business Server 2003,
and they wanted to continue to use their Pop3 settings on each
individual client until the server was up and stable.

Personally, if you ask me, I think you should just get yourself some
solid hardware, install SBS and put the peddle to the metal! SBS just
works best in that scenario.

But, for those of you who have trust issues, here is a little tip that
might help out. By default, each time a user logs into their client
computer a script is run to change the default Outlook mail provider to
the Exchange server (SBS in this case).

Don't want this to happen?

No problem, create a DWORD in the registry under
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer\ClientSetup called
"NoTransportOrder" and set the value to "1" (without quotes).

The next time the user logs on, the transport order won't get changed,
and you may see the following in the logs: "DoOutlookTransportOrder() -
skipping because NoTrasportOrder was set."

The down side of this method is when you do decide to move over to
Exchange (and I strongly suggest you do), you'll have to go and touch
all your clients again.

Why not just configure the pop3 connector on the server instead?

UPDATE:
One thing you might consider, and might give you troubles that has recently come to my attention, is if you opted not to install fax (and hence the fax outlook transport is not installed from the server), and set this registry key, then if you ever DID decide to install fax; fax would now be the default profile. This could cause some issues, so just be aware of it.

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SBS 2003 Backup Hack

I wanted to write and share a Windows Small Business Server 2003 backup tip with my reader(s) (is it possible I have more than 1 yet?). Since I am somewhat active in the SBS community, and I tend to listen to our Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), you can thank Wayne Small for asking questions about this. Wayne mentioned he wanted to backup to USB 2.0 hard drives during the day, and Tape drives at night. Interesting concept, I guess you can't be too secure with your backups right?

This got me thinking about my home setup, I have a tape drive and a USB hard drive: can I use both?

I wanted to backup to USB Monday through Saturday, then on Sunday, backup to tape (primarily so I could take the tape offsite on Monday morning). I quickly realized that adding a scheduled task to simply run NTBackup to tape wasn't going to display the backup status in the SBS Monitoring Reports. I needed another plan.

Outlined below is my solution that is currently implemented on my home SBS machine. Just to be clear, this procedure is not endorsed by Microsoft, or the SBS team.
The first step is to create some registry files that we can use to "toggle" the backup media.

1. Configure SBS backup (using the wizard) to backup to the USB disk


2. Export HKLM\software\Microsoft\smallbusinessserver\backup to BackupToDisk.reg and save this in the "%sbsprogramdir%\backup" directory


3. Configure SBS backup (using the wizard) to backup to the Tape drive


4. Export HKLM\software\Microsoft\smallbusinessserver\backup to BackupToTape.reg and save this to the "%sbsprogramdir%\backup" directory

The next step is to take advantage of these registry files. In my case, I ran the Backup Wizard and scheduled to disk 7 days a week. Next, I scheduled a separate task, following the steps below, for Sunday before the backup and Monday before the backup to toggle to Tape and then back again.

When you choose to toggle the backup media, schedule a task that runs the following command line: regedit /s "%sbsprogramdir%\backup\BackupToTape.reg" or regedit /s "%sbsprogramdir%\backup\BackupToDisk.reg" depending on which media you want to target.

That's all there is to it: hacky, but effective. Now the backup to disk and the backup to tape appear in the SBS Monitoring reports, and are easily monitored via email.

Finally, don't forget to attach the backup logs to the SBS Monitoring reports, so in the event you had a failure, you can just check what happened directly from your Inbox.

---

UPDATE
I wanted to update this article to reflect something Steven T. found when working on his own solution of this, and it's something that I just missed from the start. So thanks Steve!

One of the comments he had was around the "Last Log File ID" and "Last Backup ID" registry keys. We probably shouldn't be replacing those each time we flop between disk and tape. My suggestion would be to open both of the .reg files created above and remove these (using notepad) from the .reg file. Thus they will not be replaced each time the script runs.

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If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

Blogging isn't new to me; I've been following blogging, and specifically
some blogs (listed to the left) for quite some time now. I've been
planning on adding a blog to SeanDaniel.com since Susan Bradley sat me
down about a year ago and said "have you heard of RSS feeds?". It's not
often when someone can come up to me and ask me if I've heard of
something on the Internet and I have to say no.

So began the investigation that has been completed with this weblog.

I thought I'd make my first post a qualification about this blog. I
wanted the blog to be hosted on SeanDaniel.com, stretch the limits of
SBS, I pursued the route of using the ASP.Net .Text blog application.
The setup, while confusing, looked possible on SBS without much trouble.
Then I started thinking about Syndication. Running this site out of my
home on home-user bandwidth, with even a few people syndicating the site
every 15 minutes (if I'm so lucky) would be higher bandwidth traffic
then I wanted to offer out of my house.

Time to look into hosted blogging.

Why did I choose blogger.com? Well, first of all, it happens to be
linked in with my trusty Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) So I
can blog easily from any webpage I'm surfing on the web, second, my
friend (Jimbo) started using this blog engine, so it was kind of mutual
to help each other figure things out, and finally, the graphics on
blogger.com are just really cool!

Also, Blogger.com enabled me to get the look and feel of SeanDaniel.com,
without having to serve up syndication feeds. All the graphics on this
website are loaded from SeanDaniel.com, which might slow load time a
little, but I'm ok with that. If you got to the blog from
SeanDaniel.com, chances are the graphics are mostly cached on your local
client anyways.

So that's the story, here I am blogging.

What's the topic you ask? I'm planning on keeping it pretty much the
same as the rest of SeanDaniel.com; everything. If I can get around to
it, I hope to have random thoughts, possibly some good jokes, some
tech-tips, and a touch of SBS that I actually can share with the
community.

Oh, and for those of you who know my "day-job", this website is not, and
will remain unaffiliated with Microsoft. Postings here are as is,
confer no rights, and do not represent the thoughts (or support) of
Microsoft.

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