Exchange Server 2007.

[HRG]

Fook me, what a pile of ste that is. If I'd wanted to manage everything through a command line I'd have grown a beard and bought some sandals. First impression, it sucks donkeys dicks!

Message ends

[neil_bolton]

God help you when you meet Windows Server 2008 and its Server Core minimilisation...

I'd suggest getting yourself aquainted with Powershell and getting funky with some scripts, as its really rather powerful...

[HRG]

If I need to do that I might as well get funky with some freebie *nix distro's instead!

[neil_bolton]

HRG said:

If I need to do that I might as well get funky with some freebie *nix distro's instead!

As much as you hate it, and so do I - its the way MS is going, and rightly so - it makes wholesale administration tons easier, and much, MUCH more secure (usual caveats apply).

I used to moan all the time - all I do now is read read read...

[HRG]

Problem is I haven't got the time to learn a new commandlet language. I need a product to hit the ground running and thus far Ex2K7 has massively failed to hit the spot.

Good for Corporates, diabolical for SME's.

[agent006]

HRG said:

Good for companies that invest enough in IT staff to allow development time, diabolical for shortcutters.

[dilbert]

HRG said:

Problem is I haven't got the time to learn a new commandlet language. I need a product to hit the ground running and thus far Ex2K7 has massively failed to hit the spot.

Good for Corporates, diabolical for SME's.

There are many cheaper mail servers available for windows, and I'm sure they represent much better value for money. Is it the mail that you are after, or a peripheral capability?

[HRG]

agent006 said:

HRG said:

Good for companies that invest enough in IT staff to allow development time, diabolical for shortcutters.

When it's your own company and the money comes out of your own pocket every single penny has to be accounted for. I've been a CNE in the past and TBH the vendors qualifications don't bring in that much extra.

SME's are a whole different ballgame to a corporate environment where you can afford to be focussed on an individual product.

Anyway, that's a whole different conversation. The point is, if I wanted a command line app/OS that's what I'd recommend for my customers.

SBS 2008, now that's going to be a hoot

[theboss]

Exchange 2007 pisses all over 2003... and I don't know what the fuss is all about because from what I've seen and done there is far more GUI functionality in Exchange 2007 SP1 than there was in 2003, and Powershell just extends that even further. In the few cases where I've been forced to use Powershell the syntax has been readily available for copying from online help or the MS website.

[HRG]

OK, lets take NTDSUTIL. Previously in 2K3 to remove a crashed server you had to start pissing around running metadata cleanups from within NTDSUTIL. Now the product has matured and MS has finally written the code you can delete from within two consoles and that's it, job done. I'm sure MS will finish coding the interfaces for 2K7 one of these days but for now it smacks of a product rushed to market.

Wait till someone damages your EX2K7 install and it won't uninstall or reinstall and you have to pick up the pieces. Currently the only way to get out of the situation is to pay PSS to fix it or roll AD back to a point prior to Exchange being installed and start from scratch.

As for copy/paste from MS, the whole point of a GUI interface is it's supposed to be intuitive.

[DucatiGary]

SBS 2008 has exchange 2007 included, the nightmare will continue!

EBS 2008 is looking rather good though, can link up to 3 servers together and has less limitation of SBS etc etc but still not that expensive.

[paddyhasneeds]

Apparently they've also taken exchange awareness out of ntbackup with Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008 unless you're running SBS (or whatever it's called) so if you want to back it up you have to buy an agent for your backup software.

[theboss]

HRG said:

OK, lets take NTDSUTIL. Previously in 2K3 to remove a crashed server you had to start pissing around running metadata cleanups from within NTDSUTIL. Now the product has matured and MS has finally written the code you can delete from within two consoles and that's it, job done. I'm sure MS will finish coding the interfaces for 2K7 one of these days but for now it smacks of a product rushed to market.

Wait till someone damages your EX2K7 install and it won't uninstall or reinstall and you have to pick up the pieces. Currently the only way to get out of the situation is to pay PSS to fix it or roll AD back to a point prior to Exchange being installed and start from scratch.

As for copy/paste from MS, the whole point of a GUI interface is it's supposed to be intuitive.

Sorry but you're still just ranting. ntdsutil metadata cleanup removes stale DC-related records from AD and has not a lot to do with Exchange. Removing a 'crashed' Exchange box from the org has only ever been a case of right-clicking on the server object in ESM and selecting delete. Anything more stubborn can be ripped out with Sites & Services or failing that adsiedit if you're half clued-up. I spend half my life picking up the pieces from other people's fkups and I rarely have to get PSS involved.

[HRG]

theboss said:

HRG said:

OK, lets take NTDSUTIL. Previously in 2K3 to remove a crashed server you had to start pissing around running metadata cleanups from within NTDSUTIL. Now the product has matured and MS has finally written the code you can delete from within two consoles and that's it, job done. I'm sure MS will finish coding the interfaces for 2K7 one of these days but for now it smacks of a product rushed to market.

Wait till someone damages your EX2K7 install and it won't uninstall or reinstall and you have to pick up the pieces. Currently the only way to get out of the situation is to pay PSS to fix it or roll AD back to a point prior to Exchange being installed and start from scratch.

As for copy/paste from MS, the whole point of a GUI interface is it's supposed to be intuitive.

Sorry but you're still just ranting. ntdsutil metadata cleanup removes stale DC-related records from AD and has not a lot to do with Exchange. Removing a 'crashed' Exchange box from the org has only ever been a case of right-clicking on the server object in ESM and selecting delete. Anything more stubborn can be ripped out with Sites & Services or failing that adsiedit if you're half clued-up. I spend half my life picking up the pieces from other people's fkups and I rarely have to get PSS involved.

It was someone elses fk up I was fixing. Wait till you come across an "installed" Exchange org that doesn't have any servers or roles and you want to reinstall them. There's no gen on it available currently as PSS specifically ask for it not to get into the public domain. Install won't run no matter how many switches you throw at setup.com

The point about NTDSUTIL is the management utils were only half coded at release. Now, they are actually properly coded and work as expected. Sorry, but I AM ranting because MS are in the habit of releasing almost completed product into the public domain and letting people pay PSS to fix it.

Anyway, I fixed it in the end, but it was a pain to say the least. Thank god for system state backups!

[theboss]

HRG said:

theboss said:

HRG said:

OK, lets take NTDSUTIL. Previously in 2K3 to remove a crashed server you had to start pissing around running metadata cleanups from within NTDSUTIL. Now the product has matured and MS has finally written the code you can delete from within two consoles and that's it, job done. I'm sure MS will finish coding the interfaces for 2K7 one of these days but for now it smacks of a product rushed to market.

Wait till someone damages your EX2K7 install and it won't uninstall or reinstall and you have to pick up the pieces. Currently the only way to get out of the situation is to pay PSS to fix it or roll AD back to a point prior to Exchange being installed and start from scratch.

As for copy/paste from MS, the whole point of a GUI interface is it's supposed to be intuitive.

Sorry but you're still just ranting. ntdsutil metadata cleanup removes stale DC-related records from AD and has not a lot to do with Exchange. Removing a 'crashed' Exchange box from the org has only ever been a case of right-clicking on the server object in ESM and selecting delete. Anything more stubborn can be ripped out with Sites & Services or failing that adsiedit if you're half clued-up. I spend half my life picking up the pieces from other people's fkups and I rarely have to get PSS involved.

It was someone elses fk up I was fixing. Wait till you come across an "installed" Exchange org that doesn't have any servers or roles and you want to reinstall them. There's no gen on it available currently as PSS specifically ask for it not to get into the public domain. Install won't run no matter how many switches you throw at setup.com

The point about NTDSUTIL is the management utils were only half coded at release. Now, they are actually properly coded and work as expected. Sorry, but I AM ranting because MS are in the habit of releasing almost completed product into the public domain and letting people pay PSS to fix it.

Anyway, I fixed it in the end, but it was a pain to say the least. Thank god for system state backups!

I'm intrigued to know more about this one, surely if an 'empty' org exists and you have Enterprise Admin & Full Org Administrative rights you just bang a new server in? What happens when you run setup?

I'm now in a habit of creating local ntbackup system state daily scheduled jobs on every individual customer DC that I come into contact with!! This saved my life on one occasion where I applied some planned SCW / GPO-based hardening templates and fked up a critical application which the customer - a FTSE100 - had not backed up in 4 years despite assuring me otherwise beforehand.

[HRG]

Setup is where the fun really begins. The schema has been extended so knows all about Exchange and off it goes to contact the (broken) Exchange server to uninstall itself. Except in this case the server object was missing somehow (don't ask, that was how I found it ) So, if the server object is missing it goes "Err, I can't contact the Exchange server to perform the install". Well, like durr, I know that, that's why I want to uninstall it.

Well sorry Sir, you can't. Well can't I just like force it off? I know what I'm doing. Sorry Sir, we don't allow seizures round these 'ere parts

No amount of running setup.com /Uninstall /NoIReallyDoWantToUninstall /IDoKnowWhatI'mDoing /Force /ReallyForce /ReallyForcePrettyPlease switches will allow setup to run. It just bombs out

Now I could possibly have gone into ADSIEdit and created or deleted references but as it's all undocumented there was no way to uninstall or reinstall anything Exchange related.

Fortunately they're a relatively small organisation and I was called in only a week after it all went tits up so I could restore the system state on the DC's and get AD back to a state prior to the install and then flatten the Exchange server.

I'm sure there are more graceful methods of doing it but as MS wants to hide the techniques for repairing failed installs I had to hit it with a big stick in the end. Bloody annoying if you can't get access to the information you need to complete the job properly.