Exchange Online mailbox sizes are doubling

Those of you who use Exchange Online or Office 365 are lucky.

Yesterday 08/29/2013 Office 365 technology blog informed that size of all mailboxes in all Exchange Online and Office 365 service plans is doubling !!!!

Current mailbox size was 25GB, but since yesterday it’s 50GB and there’s no price
increase associated with this change.!!!

This new mailbox size should stisfy even most active email users.

 

You don’t need to do anything to take advantage of this new mailbox size.
Your mailbox size will automatically be increased.
The increase starts rolling out to customers yesterday and continues through November.

Also shared mailbox size limit is increased to 10GB.

 

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Microsoft.Exchange.RpcClientAccess.Service.exe process cause excessive CPU usage on Client Access servers in an Exchange Server 2010 environment

On Microsoft Support website you can find article about high CPU usage on Client Access Server.

 

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This issue can occur in following scenario:

  • You deploy some public folder databases in a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 environment that has Update Rollup 5 version 2 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) or a later-version update rollup installed.
  • The environment contains multiple Active Directory sites.
  • The default public folder server is unavailable. So, the Microsoft Exchange RPC Client Access service tries to connect to other public folder servers.

 

In this scenario, the Microsoft.Exchange.RpcClientAccess.Service.exe process consumes excessive CPU resources on one or more Client Access servers in the site. Additionally, Microsoft Outlook clients cannot connect to Exchange servers, or they encounter slow performance when they connect to Exchange servers.

To resolve this issue, install the following update rollup:

2866475 Description of Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 SP3

More information you can find here…

 

Exchange Online Protection Service Description Updated

Description of Exchange Online Protection Service has been updated and now it contains description of all available features in EOP.

The service description provides information about EOP features and their availability across the different subscription plans.

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Description contains topics for the following features:

 

You can find there following ways were you can use EOP for messaging protection:

  • In a standalone scenario   EOP provides cloud-based email protection for your on-premises Exchange Server 2013 environment, legacy Exchange Server versions, or for any other on-premises SMTP email solution.
  • As a part of Microsoft Exchange Online   By default, EOP protects Exchange Online cloud-hosted mailboxes.
  • In a hybrid deployment   EOP can be configured to protect your messaging environment and control mail routing when you have a mix of on-premises and cloud mailboxes.

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Updated Release of MS13-061 Security Update for Exchange Server 2013

Few days ago we wrote about security update MS13-061, after installation it caused few errors in Exchange 2013 environment.

We wrote about this here:

Exchange 2013 Security Update MS13-061 not recommended to install

 

This security update was removed from Microsoft Download Center on 08/14/2013

Today Exchange Team released updated security updates for both Exchange 2013 RTM CU1 and Exchange 2013 RTM CU2.

 

You can download security update here:

 

As always we recommend to test updates in lab environment first.

More information you can find on Exchange Team Blog

Multi-Tenant Scalability Guidance for Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

Microsoft released document contains high-level guidance for properly scaling and deploying a multi-tenant Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 solution.

 

It includes details of testing performed in Microsoft labs to validate the scalability of the product and suggests methods that can be used during the design and deployment process to mitigate potential risks associated with such solutions.

You can download it here:

Multi-Tenant Scalability Guidance for Exchange Server 2013

List of Exchange 2010 Mailboxes with Archive enabled

If you are using Exchange Archive Online, sometimes you need to identify mailboxes with enabled Archive.

To get list of Archive enabled mailboxes you can use EMS console and following command:

 

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | where {$_.ArchiveDatabase -ne $Null}

 

As a result you will get list of all mailboxes with Archive Online enabled, but you won’t get information about database where this archive is stored.

 

To get list of all mailboxes with information where are they in databases you can use following command:

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | where {$_.ArchiveDatabase -ne $Null} | Select Name, ArchiveDatabase, ArchiveName

 

 

 

Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Exchange Recovery

In Microsoft Exchange Server environment without CCR cluster or DAG yours databases are not protected enough.
During Exchange Server damage you can lost your databases or those databases can be corrupted after damage.

To recover corrupted database you can try to use Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Exchange Recovery.

Below we present product review:

 

Introduction

There is always some room for unpredictable behavior when it comes down to managing MS Exchange Server databases. The primary goal of managing these databases is ensuring database availability so that users can get what is required in a timely fashion. Surprisingly, you have to deal with the reality that corruption may creep in your system anytime and disrupt the services for an invariable length of time. Stellar Phoenix Exchange Mailbox Recovery comes in handy at the same time providing you a simple solution to repair the corrupt Exchange databases and ensure continuous uptime of Exchange data. The software helps Exchange administrators handle the most serious scenarios of database corruption and resume normal activity in no time.

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Exchange Server 2013 Deployment Assistant Updated

At the beginning of August Exchange Team updated Exchange Server 2013 Deployment Assistant.

New version include the following new scenarios:

  • Upgrading from a mixed Exchange 2007/Exchange 2010 deployment to Exchange 2013
  • Configuring an Exchange 2013-based hybrid deployment for Exchange 2010 organizations

These new scenarios provide step-by-step guidance about how to upgrade your mixed Exchange 2007/Exchange 2010 organization to benefit from the improvements and new features of Exchange 2013. Additionally, Exchange 2010 organizations can now configure a hybrid deployment with Office 365 using Exchange 2013 if you would like to leverage the newest improvements to the Hybrid Configuration Wizard.

You can use deployment assistant here:

Exchange Server 2013 Deployment Assistant

 

Exchange 2013 Security Update MS13-061 not recommended to install

Few days ago Exchange Team relesed the first Security Update for Exchange 2013 (MS13-061).

This security update was rated as Critical and resolves three publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server. The vulnerabilities exist in the WebReady Document Viewing and Data Loss Prevention features of Microsoft Exchange Server. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution in the security context of the transcoding service on the Exchange server if a user previews a specially crafted file using Outlook Web App (OWA).

More information you can find here:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-061 – Critical

Unfortunately after some people reported issues after installing new security update for Exchange 2013 MS13-061  (KB2874216), Microsoft pulled it untill further notice.

Installation of new security update MS13-061 can breaks your installation of Exchange 2013 and you can experience the following symptoms:

  • The content index (CI) for mailbox databases shows “Failed” on the affected server.
  • The Microsoft Exchange Search Host Controller service is missing.
  • You see a new service that is named “Host Controller service for Exchange.”

 

So now it’s not recommended to install MS13-061 on Microsoft Exchange 2013 servers.

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Exchange 2010 SP3 RU2 and Exchange 2010 SP2 RU7 released

Microsoft released Rollups for Exchange 2010 SP3 and Exchange 2010 SP2.

Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup 2 can be downloaded here:

Update Rollup 2 For Exchange 2010 SP3 (KB2866475)

and list of changes can be found here:

KB2866475

After installation of this rolllup you will get Exchange system version 14.03.158.1

Following fixes are included in this release:

  • 2861118 W3wp.exe process for the MSExchangeSyncAppPool application pool crashes in an Exchange Server 2010 SP2 or SP3 environment
  • 2851419 Slow performance in some databases after Exchange Server 2010 is running continuously for at least 23 days
  • 2859596 Event ID 4999 when you use a disclaimer transport rule in an environment that has Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 SP3 installed
  • 2873477 All messages are stamped by MRM if a deletion tag in a retention policy is configured in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • 2860037 iOS devices cannot synchronize mailboxes in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  • 2854564 Messaging Records Management 2.0 policy can’t be applied in an Exchange Server 2010 environment

 

Also Microsoft released RU7 for Exchange 2010 SP2 which can be downloaded here:

Update Rollup 7 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (KB2874216)

Description of RU7 for Exchange 2010 SP2 can be found here:

KB2874216

After installation of this rolllup you will get Exchange system version 14.02.375.0