Sphere IT Blog

Having your Exchange server fail both physically or from a database becoming corrupt is no enjoyable task to resolve. Especially when you can feel the client/users breathing over your shoulders. So what all admins should be doing is thinking ahead to either prevent it or have a quick plan of action to bring the server or database to a consistent state.

Although tape backups work they are expensive to keep recycling and also require a job role to correctly administer them. Our Online Exchange Backup service will backup your Exchange server at both the Database level and Mailbox level.

You will always have a valid Exchange backup off-site in the event you need to recover from this it is as simple as opening your backup set in the client and restoring it. If you want to just restore a single E-Mail/folder/mailbox you can use the Mailbox Level backup option.

The Exchange functionality is free of charge with use of our online backup client. The only charge you will incur will be £0.99 per GB PCM.

In most IT infrastructures backup are typically made to tape which is then taken off-site. It is best practice to make sure that these tapes are not used for more than 1 year to prevent an insufficient backup. Other alternatives are backing up to external storage or using a backup to disk job.

Unfortunately these methods all share a typical flaw in that the storage is on-site. In the event of a catastrophic disaster the backups will go down with the primary servers and data.

Businesses who are keen to keep their data safe should seek an Online Backup Service. Online backup is a method to perform secure backups over the internet to a data centre. Your data will always be available online no matter what happens to your main site giving you the peace of mind that your business data is safe.

When deploying a new Exchange server, moving ISP or simply changing MX records we need to keep many things in mind with regards to DNS.

Firstly we need to create an A record which points to the external IP address of your mail server.

Next we will create an MX record which references the A record we just created as to where the mail needs to be delivered.

This will now route mail in correctly but there is still some things we need to check.

RDNS (or PTR) is a reverse lookup and should resolve the IP address back to the A record which points to the mail server. If you don’t have an RDNS record you will find that many mail servers which require RDNS as a mandatory requirement to accept mail will block.

The next thing you need to check is that the external IP address that is port forwarded or NAT’ed to the mail server has a mirrored NAT rule. If for example you have a block of IP addresses and your LANs global NAT is set to a different IP address than the mail server, this mail server will use the incorrect IP address to send the mail. For troubleshooting you can find this in the header of the E-Mail on the recipients end.

Keeping these points in mind you should not have a problem with mail flow within your infrastructure.

Performing an in-place migration from exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 is generally an easy task.

Firstly you must make sure that your current Exchange 2000 server is running at least SP3 and that the Server 2000 server OS which is hosting the Exchange 2000 software is running at least SP3.

If these prerequisites are true then all that is left is to insert the Exchange 2003 server CD and run the setup wizard.

Select Exchange Deployment Tools, then Deploy the first Exchange 2003 server, then Upgrade from Exchange 2000 Native Mode.

From here check and perform the first 8 tasks before then doing step 9, the upgrade.

Once this completes restart your server and you will now be running Exchange 2003. It is recommended to install Exchange SP2 from here on.

On the 26th of July the latest version of 3CX has been released which contains a great range of new features. Customers who did not purchase upgrade insurance will be kicking themselves on missing out on this upgrade which adds video calling and in my opinion a real show stopper of a feature- a client for Android mobiles. It has been possible to configure some Symbian mobiles to connect to the phone system via a wireless LAN for a couple of 3CX versions but (in my opinion) the functionality was pretty limited and the end user experience quite poor.
Building on the reliability of the Android platform the 3CX client offers a great end user experience. The client allows a worker to receive calls into their landline extension number directly on their mobile, at no extra costs as the call is carried over the data, rather than voice network. This frees up the user to work from virtually anywhere without setting up complicated diverts on the phone system. The mobile device could potentially even replace the desk phone, while in the office, users could use a soft phone on their PC coupled with a headset if they are not comfortable using a mobile device.
This could allow companies who already have Android devices out in the field to realise significant costs savings. When the phones are connecting to a WLAN, internal calls to the device are totally free, if connected using the phones 3G connection, depending on the call plan the device is attached to, these calls could also be totally free. Of course this will allow the Android user to make all calls via the PBX rather than using the mobile data plan on the device, which could reduce the mobile call costs to virtually zero, the only mobile costs incurred are line rental and the data plan.
If you are planning a mobile phone update for you users I would implore you to consider a device with an Android OS, as coupled with 3CX you are virtually guaranteed to realise significant cost savings.

Becoming infected with a Virus or spyware is becoming an ever more increasing nuisance for home and business users. Once of the main causes these day of your PC becoming infected with a virus is due to websites being infected with spyware which auto install on to the end users PC without them knowing.

If you have a good AV product this should stop this but from my experience this isnt always the case and can become very frustrating for the end user.

There is a simply fix however to prevent this from happening even if you have no antivirus software. Both novice and experienced users always assign themselves local admin permissions in windows so that they can do what they want when they want. In theory this is fine but opens up a security hole which these viruses take advantage of.

Instead the best way is to set your primary Windows account as a User and not an Administrator. Then also create an Administrator account with a different password that you can use to install programmes and other devices like printers when you need to. Then log back in as your user account once done.

The reason as to why this works is because the user account you are logged on with does not have access to write entries to parts of the registry and the local hard drive where these viruses and spyware infections would usually place themselves.

When using the windows copy in some cases you may find that it will stop at a file that is unable to be copied possibly due to the reason it is already open or in use. To copy the content of a folder without any interruption you can use XCOPY with the following switches:

xcopy *.* /e /c /h/ o

Ethernet over power (Not to be confused with Power over Ethernet, PoE) technology has been around for some time now. In an ideal world every room and every wall in a room in an office will have a CAT5/6 RJ-45 wall port. unfortunately most of us don’t live in an ideal world and take these things for granted.

In most cases you would then contact your cablers to supply and present a new network port on the wall which would then be fed back to your comms room patch panel. If caught in this situation as a temporary or even permanent solution you can use a Ethernet over power plug solution. You can find suppliers and manufactures of these by searching “Ethernet plug adaptor” on Google.

Once you have your 2 Plug adapters you will plug one direct in to a power socket near to your corporate network switch, then plug a cat5 cable from this plug to a port on your network switch. Then with the other plug go to where you require the network connectivity in your office and plug this in to a power socket near this location.

The two Ethernet plugs will detect each other as long as they are plugged in to the same electric circuit and transport the Ethernet signals over the copper power cables. All you need to do from there is plug your network enabled device in to the other end and you have a full connection back to you main switch without having to get a cabler in to do any work.

The following steps will quickly show you how to remove a local storage repository in Xen server.

1. First we need to find the UUID of the SR to do this use the command:

xe sr-list

2. Take note of the UUID and paste it in to notepad.

Now we need to find the Physical Block Device. To do this use the following command:

xe pbd-list sr-uuid=your-SR-uuid-from-step-1

3. We now need to unplug the PBD using the following command:

xe pbd-unplug uuid=your-PBD-uuid-from-step-2

Again once you have this paste it into notepad.

4. We now need to delete the PBD using the following command:

xe pbd-destroy uuid=your-PBD-uuid-from-step-2

5. We now need to Delete the association of your SR and the PBD using the following command:

xe sr-forget uuid=your-SR-uuid-from-step-1

You will now see that your local SR has gone.

A common question asked on tech forums for Exchange 2010 is how to list the size of a users mailbox. Using the following quick power shell command will reveal these key details:

Get-MailboxStatistics | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -Descending | ft DisplayName,TotalItemSize,ItemCount

Once this is done you will need to enter the users mailbox identity then you will be shown the size of the users mailbox.