As I work through migrations to Exchange Server 2010 with my various clients, I’m developing a list of Exchange 2010 “gotchas”. Not necessarily things that are earth-shattering, but do have the potential to be surprising to administrators.
Gotcha #1 revolves around the fact that an Offline Address Book is no longer automatically specified for a new mailbox database. Surprise!
So, just like most other things that require specific processes in Exchange, you should develop a list of items to be performed when you create a new mailbox database, whether you use the Exchange Management Console or the Exchanage Management Shell. Consider this as a list:
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Create the database, specifying an individual folder for the database (e.g., E:\DB-Zippy\Zippy.edb) and an individual folder for the log files (e.g., E:\Logs-Zippy). If you are using the EMC, and you do not want to take the default paths, you will have to type the entire path into the path fields (there is no browse button). As a suggestion, using Windows Explorer, first browse to the path where you want to put the files, and copy them into the clipboard, then you can paste them directly into the fields in EMC (or into the EMS, where you always have to enter the entire path).
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Set the Offline Address Book (OAB). If you are using the EMS, you can specify the OAB (e.g., “\Default Offline Address Book”) when you create the database. When using EMC, you’ll have to open the property sheet for the mailbox database, click the Client Settings tab, and select the address book via the Browse… button. You should also take this opportunity to verify that the Public Folder database is a valid public folder database (if you still have public folders in your environment).
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Set the Journal Recipient. You cannot specify the Journal Recipient during creation when using either EMC or EMS. With EMC, you’ll have to open the property sheet for the mailbox database, click the Maintenance tab, check the box to select the journal recipient, and browse for the particular user.
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Set external permissions. If you are using Cisco Unity or RIM’s BlackBerry Server (Enterprise, Professional, or Enterprise Express), then you’ll need to set additional permissions to allow those software packages to access mailboxes contained in this mailbox database. There is no mechanism for performing this operation using the EMC. For BlackBerry, this is the relevant command, executed from the EMS (assuming that your BlackBerry administrative user is named BESAdmin):
Get-MailboxDatabase | Add-ADPermission -User BESAdmin -AccessRights ExtendedRight -ExtendedRights Receive-As, Send-As, ms-Exch-Store-Admin
Obviously, there are additional parameters that can be set. However, these four meet the needs of all my clients and probably will work for you too!
Watch this blog for more “Exchange 2010 gotchas”.
Until next time…
If there are things you would like to see written about, please let me know.
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