If I cannot bring you comfort, than at least I bring you hope…

It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day here in the US, and most of my compatriots are taking vacation days.  As I work with a sales team (see disclaimer below the blog) I’m working, but I’m still in the spirit of the holiday season.  So, instead of my usual Exchange-specific stuff, I’m going to give my annual Three Toasts blog entry this week.

Each year, at New Year’s Eve, I offer three toasts at whatever party I find myself attending.  They sum up my feelings on the turning of the year pretty well, and so I’d like to share them with my blog readers as well. 

First, a toast to everyone who’s stood with us this year.  Friends and family who took the walk through our interesting times side by side with us, and who will walk again with us in 2010.  May we celebrate together for many years to come.

Next, a toast to those who cannot be with us.  Kept away by physical limits, or distances of the heart or spirit. Just know that you are missed, and that you will never be forgotten.

Finally, a toast to those who we will meet this year.  May we learn from each other, and leave each other better than we were found.

Good luck, good health, and thanks for reading BeingExchanged for the last year.  I’ll keep writing as long as you keep listening, so here’s to a great 2010!

For those interested in where the title came from, there is a truly beautiful song in (the otherwise horrible) movie Toys.  I quote it in my blog posting each year around this time (whichever publication I’m writing for), and it’s worth a listen.

If I cannot bring you comfort,
then at least I bring you hope
For nothing is more precious than the time we have, and so
We all must learn from small misfortunes
Count the blessings that are real
Let the bells ring out for Christmas
At the closing of the year

- The Musical Cast of Toys Featuring Wendy and Lisa

Holiday M’s

This is my last post for 2009 (barring any emergency stuff that is) and so I would like to impart my usual holiday wisdom to everyone who reads my blog.  There are a lot of things we as admins and engineers do every day of every year, but around the holidays at the end of each year, it’s nice to take a step back and review a few things.  I’ve got three M’s that each of us would do well to follow.

1 – Maintain: Maintenance is critical to a well-running technology plant.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a 1-server SBS shop or have hundreds of servers in dozens of countries, you need to make sure things are kept up to date.  This includes making sure you have the appropriate patches and fixes for applications, including your OS.  Windows and Exchange 2003 and 2007 have both undergone significant upgrades this year with Service Packs and system roll-ups.  Windows Update should cover you for Windows and Exchange 2007, but you’ll need to check the Exchange 2003 area of TechNET to get the updates for that platform.

Take the time to make sure you are up to date, the smooth running and security of your systems depend on it.

Also, now is the time to consider your offline maintenance runs, especially on Exchange 2000 and 2003.  MSFT doesn’t really require these tools be run, but after a long year of employee shuffling and database reconfiguration, an offline defrag can definitely help keep the system running optimally.  Exchange 2007 and 2010 do not generally require this, but it’s not a bad idea if you’ve removed or moved a large number of mailboxes around during the course of the year.

2 – Monitor:  So many of my clients don’t have any form of proactive monitoring on their systems.  There are inexpensive (and sometimes even free) tools that can keep an eye on your servers and systems, alerting you if things start to go south even before you start to see problems in the network itself.  More advanced tools like System Center from Microsoft and Tivoli from IBM can help hunt down issues that have eluded you up until now.  Monitoring should never be a “nice to have” item.  You need it, and as soon as possible.  At the very least, make a point of checking out the event logs on your Exchange servers once a week or so to see if there are any repetitive error messages cropping up.  Knowing about errors now saves you from dealing with corruption or failures later.

3 – Make Merry! Let’s not forget that no matter what holiday you celebrate (Christmas, Solstice, Chanukah, Kwanza, something else, or nothing at all) this is typically a time of year when people take a break from the day-to-day activities of their lives. Try to take some time, get some rest, and clear your head.  Every one of us deals with so many issues every day, that sometimes stepping back and looking at them with a new perspective is just the ticket.  The servers will be there when you get back, and the monitoring systems (see above) can let you know if they need you in the meantime.  Some of us don’t have the ability to take some time, but if you do, take it – you’ll be much more effective for it.

See you all in January, and thanks for reading along this year.  I always welcome questions and comments to miketalonnyc@gmail.com – so fire away!

Bury the Berries? Not yet.

Research in Motion (RIM) changed the game when they introduced their Blackberry devices to provide mobile email solutions for Exchange and other email platforms.  Over the last few years, many other companies have stepped up to produce handheld messaging devices, mostly centered around mobile phones and carriers.  There are so many good competitors these days, that some companies are considering if they want to ditch the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) platform in exchange for… well… Exchange.

Exchange 2003 and up allowed for Exchange Active Sync, a series of mobile technologies that allow Exchange servers to communicate directly with mobile devices using push synchronization to deliver email, contacts, calendar items and other information.  Windows Mobile phones are natively equipped with the Active Sync technology; and the iPhone, PalmOS and WebOS, and various versions of software for Android phones have also licensed the Active Sync technology for those platforms. This means that these devices can communicate directly with an Exchange server and send/receive mail, sync contacts and tasks, and answer calendar requests without the need for an intervening server platform like BES.

However, there are two key reasons that I am (at least for now) sticking with my Blackberry device.  First, there is battery life. Talk time is a pretty standard 4-6 hours no matter what OS runs on the phone you’re holding.  But standby/messaging time is another story all together.  With push email active, I have yet to see a Windows Mobile phone go more than 6-8 hours without needing a charge.  If I turn off Bluetooth, push email and just about everything else that uses a transmitter, I can stretch that number to 12-14 hours, but then what’s the point of carrying the device?  Blackberry devices routinely go 24-36 hours of messaging, even with Bluetooth active (but not transmitting).  Android devices can go a bit longer than Windows Mobile, as do iPhones and WebOS systems. They typically run the middle-of-the-road between those two extremes.

Secondly, there is security.  BES allows for a remote device to be wiped natively.  Windows Mobile devices can also be remote-wiped if you’re on Exchange 2007 and up, but iPhone and other OS devices must use 3rd-party software to accomplish this goal.  Remote-wiping is used to provide security if a device is lost or stolen. Once activated, all personal/corporate data on the phone is deleted, rendering it both useless and safe.  Good Technologies has reinvented itself over the last few years as a great provider of remote-wipe and encryption systems for Android and iPhone platforms, but it is one more thing you have to manage in an environment that (based on who would use it) already has a BES server running.

Based on these two factors, I cannot envision organizations ditching BES in favor of an Active Sync solution set exclusively.  Battery life makes these devices difficult for mobile personnel to use successfully, and the need for additional security systems only adds to that concern. For non-mobile users, battery life isn’t as much of an issue (as they’re going to be near a power outlet in many cases).  Security, though, is still a huge concern.  Unless they are on Windows Mobile devices exclusively (no iPhones, no Droids, etc), they’re going to need additional server solutions to be safe.

My prediction is that BES will stay in the Enterprise space for quite some time.  We may see Windows Mobile, Android an WebOS take over more of the marketplace, but until these two issues are significantly improved, they will remain the minority for corporate mobile messaging.

Manage your migrations to minimize co-existence

Exchange 2010 is beginning to get traction out in the real-world, which is by no means a bad thing.  As folks begin to upgrade, though, there is a chance that you’ll end up with extended co-existence between different software versions and packages, and that can make life a living hell for technical staff. Multiple versions of multiple platforms can be difficult to manage at best, and if that management must continue for months (or longer) you could be setting yourself up to fail right from the start.

Co-existence of platforms is a necessary thing. Especially in larger organizations, the likelihood that you will be able to move all your users and systems from one software package to another in a weekend is slim at best. So, no matter if you are moving from a totally foreign system like Notes, or just upgrading between 2003 and 2010 on the Exchange platform, you will almost definitely need to have both systems running for a period of time as you move users and 3rd-Party tools.  The key is to keep that time period as short as you can, and here’s why.

When multiple versions of a messaging platform (or multiple platforms) you must make sure you’re patching both independently, staying up to date on multiple security threats and dealing with end users who have to have changes made across both system sets.  Since it is highly unlikely that you will have the benefit of extra staff during the migration, that means that the existing staff suddenly find themselves doing twice the work.

If the same number of people are forced to do twice the work, things fall through the cracks.  Patches get applied incorrectly or not at all, threats are left unaddressed and shortcuts abound.  It’s easier to open a hole in the firewall than try to deal with two sets of rules to manage connectivity. It’s easier to only focus on news and updates for the newer systems than to try to keep up with the influx of information for both platforms. The upshot of this is; that the longer you have both systems co-existing, the more opportunity you’ll find for something to break on one platform or the other.  This endangers both systems, and possibly everything else in your environment.

So, when planning for your migrations, work as much as you can to ensure that you do not require extended periods of co-existence if they can be avoided.  Sometimes you will need to have extended migration timelines – it’s unavoidable – but wherever you can do migrations quickly, you should.