Ehlo Tech - Focusing on Exchange Server & Technology

When is 64 bit not really 64 bit?

2008-07-22T08:22:00.004-04:00

Hello Everyone,

My journey, and I can call it that, for deploying a test environment (running multiple OSes, 32 & 64 bit OSes) based on VMware ESx 3.5 has taken a LOT longer than I expected and has taught me a thing or two about 64 bit. This also explains the bigger problem affecting the uptake of "64 bit" products and how with an idea if adopted can hopefully help dramatically increase admins buying into "64 bit".

There is a lot of talk about 64 bit applications, 64 bit operating systems, 64 bit hardware and all the wonderful things it brings. Well, that might be true, but the current software & hardware state of affairs is that 64 bit is not really 64 bit and can cause a lot of headaches, delays, and stress. Most vendors do not seem to be ready for it. Many "64 bit" applications are coded to run using an emulator (WoW64) for insuring "64 bit" compatibility, a software package might have some 64 bit apps but not all, lack of what level of 64 bit hardware is required, and others. Why? My guess is lack of clear standards and documentation. There is an answer though! 64 bit needs an easy to understand marketing association that can help insure end users that when something says 64 bit, it really is. Something similar to the hugely success compatibility standard called Wi-Fi (aka 802.11b). When someone bought a Wi-Fi card by one manufacturer and an access point by another, there was no doubt it would work. Why? The Wi-FI Alliance tested for compatibility and worked with vendors to insure everything "just worked". This is what we need for "64 bit" if we think it's going to take off. Otherwise, everyone will stick with "32 bit" until it simply does not exist anymore and based on that, that will be a long time. So, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, IBM, etc need to create a 64-bit alliance or call the Wi-Fi Alliance for some marketing assistance. Let's call it "64 bit-Tested for Performance" and a check-mark. Plaster that logo on everything that is fully 64 bit developed & supports Intel's VT or AMD-V.

Now, back to my story about my journey of ESx starting around January 2008 with no end in sight yet. The first step for VMware ESx 3.5 or Hyper-V 1.0 is a foundation based on a quality server. I considered a generic box, but realized, that ESx has a compatibility list (aka Systems Guide http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_systems_guide.pdf) for servers due to the drivers since it installs on bare metal (no Windows here folks). So I strongly strongly recommend you read that to insure the server, cpu, and RAID card are all compatible. Hyper-V's requirements are a lot easier since if Windows 2008 installs and it support Intel VT or AMD-V, you *should* be good to go. I've included below all the CPUs that support virtualization.

On to my VMware sage. The first server hardware I attempted to use was an IBM x346. I purchased all the components (e.g. dual core CPUs, 16GB of ram, 6 x Fijitsu U320 300GB 10k HDs) and was ready to start the process. To make a long story short and summarize, the IBM server I was using does not like end users using non-IBM hard drives and a serious bug causing HDs to go offline which affected an entire line of RAID controllers card which prevented the use of the server. I did quite a bit of research and in the end the only answer I found was to replace the HDs with same Fujitsu model # HDs but IBM branded for $1300/each (about $1k more than I paid per drive) or use other IBM branded HDs. Another major flaw in the design of the IBM branded RAID card 7k is the need to boot an IBM RAID CD to gain access to almost any functionality (put a HD back online, replace it, config change, etc). This is horrible and slow process compared to Adaptec, Dell, or HP cards where you simply enter into the card BIOS by pushing a key combination and you make all your changes there. I was not impressed with my first foray with an IBM server. So, I will not be upset if it's my last. Goodbye IBM Servers.

Further reading on my battle with the IBM x346 Server.
To read the issue in more detail, check this out. I'm Benx346 if you're in doubt.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=207574&tstart=0
A "friend" suggested that I try and replace the IBM RAID card with an Adaptec (on VMware compatibilty list) and then connect the new RAID card to the backplane connector with my replacement SCSI cable. Well, a month or so later and trying to get SCSI cabling companies to custom manufacturer a SCSI cable simply isn't possible unless I plan to buy 1000 units. Feel free to look at the rare SCSI connector (micro centronics 80 female SCA) I was dealing with.
http://photos.serebin.com/gallery2/v/ben/temp/ibmx346-cable
Content Alert: anyone who can find me an 18" micro centronics 80 female SCA to LVD high density 68 pin male with ultra 320 data speeds will get a $100 reward.

The 2nd server was a Dell PowerEdge 2850 which supports 2 x dual core 64 bit 2.8GHz CPUs, 6 x UltraSCSI 320 HDs, and 16GB of ram. The unit arrived dead on arrival. So, the vendor only had one unit since it was off lease and ended up credit-ing me back for it. Still no server after 6 months. One of the major downsides of eBay. Things frequently take longer.

3rd Server was a Dell PowerEdge 2850 from another vendor I found via eBay which arrived operational (there are many companies that work with companies giving up servers on leases). I took the 6 HDs from the IBM x346 and installed them and configured them for RAID 10. Moved over 12GB of the memory (only 6 slots versus the 8 on the IBM) and powered it up. Still good and very fast. So, I installed Windows 2003 32 bit, and it went smoothly. I then reinstalled with Windows 2003 R2 64 bit and started my 48 hour burn-in. This burn-in stresses the hard drives, CPU, & ram. The application I use is PassMark's BurnInTest (http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm). Make sure you buy the "Pro" version for 64 bit support. Then I started looking at upgrading the ram to 4GB chips to hit the magic 16GB of ram of which I had calculated to need. I'm not sure what caused me to look at this, but something caught my eye. It turns out ESx 3.0 & 3.5 does not support 64 bit OSes without hardware assisted virtualization (e.g. Intel's VT or AMD-V). I was shocked. I wondered why does VMware Workstation, VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server support 64 bit OSes without hardware assistance? The reason was performance. VMware felt performance was too big of an issue, so it was removed. But at least 64 bit was an option under those applications. To be honest, CPU performance is rarely the bottleneck for VMware Workstation/Server or Microsoft Virtual Server, it's I/O which is all hard drive based bottlenecks. So, now I'm back in search of another server. I'll probably bite the bullet and purchase a new Dell Server 2950 Series III or 2970 since I'm familiar with them. Once I start my environment, I'll definitely share it with the blog.

As per the lesson, make sure you know what is required for "64 bit" support. Is this a full 64 bit application (as opposed to a 64 bit application with 32 bit components), 64 bit operating system without 32 bit legacy support, or need for what I refer to as v2 of 64 bit CPU which is the CPU virtualization feature called Intel's VT or AMD-V. Or check and make sure it contains the logo of "64 bit-Tested for Performance" or I can only hope for that.

Best of luck with your "64 bit" projects,
-Ben

CPUs Support Virtualization with the Intel VT or AMD-V Feature.
Intel's Website for it as well
http://compare.intel.com/PCC/default.aspx?familyid=5&culture=en-US

Intel Quad-Core CPUs Series supporting VT
- Xeon 7300, 5400, 5300, 3000, X3200, LV

Intel Dual-Core CPUs Series supporting VT
- Xeon 7000, 5200, 3070, 3065, 3060, 3050, 3040, E3100 (fyi: not all 3000 series are supported)

AMD CPUs Series Supporting AMD-V (Virtualization)
- Opteron 1000, 2000, 8000
AMD does not have a website that I've found as easy to use.
------------------------------------------

A Solid Lie on Solid State (Hard) Drives

2008-07-04T09:40:00.009-04:00

Hello Everyone,

Happy July 4th. Quick multiple question test. A Solid State Drive includes which features?

A) Flash-based storage
B) Rugged and reliable
C) Low power consumption
D) High performance
E) Silent operation
F) Lightweight
G) All of the Above

If you answered "G", you're wrong! It turns out that low power consumption is not correct (only mistake above). SSDs actually use MORE power and so they reduce battery life on laptops compared to traditional hard drives. Many of the SSD vendors claim battery life is improved, but this is not the case. Crucial as of 7/4/08 listed the above features as benefits of SSDs. Sadly marketing cannot be trusted without independent tests. The folks at Tom's Hardware uncovered this little "lie" in an article called "The SSD Power Consumption Hoax: Flash SSDs Don't Improve Your Notebook Battery Runtime - they Reduce It". That title alone illuminates the issue, but dig into the article and testing and you see performance gains of about 10% for SSDs but battery life differences of an hour (15-20% difference)! How can that be possible? Turns out SSDs don't have an idle power mode like traditional hard drives do. So, they you're traditional hard drive is not working, it's using very little power, but not SSDs. They are always on. Whoops.

Also, the tests would have been a lot worse for SSDs if Tom's hardware had picked a 4200 or 5400 rpm drive. They used a power hungry 7200 rpm drive, and the difference was still as clear as night and day. Don't select SSDs for power savings, but for durability and speed. I was considering a Mtron SSD back in Feb 08 for performance and power reasons on my ultra-portable semi-rugged Panasonic Toughbook W5, luckily I decided against it since I wanted a 64GB SSD, and they were still too costly. Mtron does make excellent SSDs, so I would recommend folks look into them if battery life isn't an issue.

Summary of SSDs
- overall, for improved laptop performance and keeping battery life acceptable, I would stick with 7200 rpm HDs (10% performance difference)
- battery is a serious issue for SSDs (15-20% loss), right now. I suspect due to the Tom's Hardware article, this will draw attention to the issue and the next versions (6-12 months) will improve dramatically
- be aware there are 2 types of SSDs, SLC and MLC. SLC is faster and more durable. So, stick with SLC for the moment if you want to consider SSDs.

Comments and feedback is welcome...
-Ben

"Cheating" on an Exchange 2003 Hardware Upgrade

2008-06-30T23:33:00.002-04:00

Hello Everyone,

I "cheated" on an Exchange 2003 hardware upgrade I did 2 weekends ago (Fri-Sat), or that's at least how I feel since this was hands down the fastest and easiest upgrade I've ever done (and it was about 80GB of db's on an older server with direct attached storage). At the end of the weekend, I started to think maybe I should carry around one of these "things" for my clients for upgrades. I'll share what this "thing" was later in the posting. I don't want folks to think I'm pushing products. My role in the project was to insure the replacement of the Exchange Server hardware went smoothly. The client was in production 24/7 and literally the office was staffed 6 days a week. So, I was concerned originally how to insure minimal downtime.

Background on existing hardware & performance
We were upgrading from an Exchange 2003 Server that was installed with 3 hard drives in a RAID 5 hard drive configuration (direct attached storage) for the OS, transaction logs, and Exchange databases. Company had about 60 users and 30 BlackBerrys or so. 1 BES user adds a load similar to 2 Outlook users. So, total company usage was about 120 users. Performance was an issue, so some users were configured for cached mode to "improve" performance. Cached mode should not be required for LANs, unless Outlook end users are receiving "retrieving data from server". Always a bad sign to see unless you have poor network connection. Recommended another DAS server that used RAID 1 for the OS, RAID 1 for transaction logs, and RAID 10 for the Exchange databases.

The Migration for a hardware refresh
So, I checked the OS install (another admin handled that), Exchange install (using the /disasterrecovery switch for setup and service pack 2), Exchange config, and insuring the email & public folder migration completed successful. Only catch was during this server replacement, there was to be no downtime and no use of Exchange clustered services. Hmmm, that's a challenge. Or so one would think.

The Cheat
The client I was working for happened to have a 3rd party product (keeping read to find out) for Exchange that in essence allowed the "cheating". And I mean this in a very good way. It saved us a LOT of time. Meaning, we told the 3rd party product to take over all the existing Exchange services (MAPI, SMTP, OWA, IMAP, etc) and all data for the Outlook, OWA, ActiveSync, & BlackBerry was available to all users. This took a few minutes (3 or 4 minutes) on the switch-over. Meaning the appliance takes some time to take control. Once that was done, everyone was operating off the appliance and end users didn't know this besides restarting Outlook and re-authenticating to OWA (ActiveSync & BES users had a slight delay. BES users could be out of service for up to 15 minutes, but that's a limitation of BES). Once the appliance took over, we copied over the Exchange databases (.edb/.stm's) using robocopy to the new Exchange 2003 Server. We considered upgrading to 2007, but the appliance and all the associated Exchange applications would have had to been upgraded, and it wasn't cost effective (TCO reminder). So, after we started robocopy-ing, we went home.

Day 2 of the Migration & Failback
I'm not going to go into the details, but migrating took a few hours including getting the SSL certs for OWA and handling all that. Once the new hardware was setup with Exchange, it was time to bring back all the new email. As I previously said, the reason to copy over the databases to the new server, was the appliance then doesn't need to copy over all data, and just new email/data. So, this is a huge time saver. Once we copied over the databases and transaction logs, we were able to get the Exchange Server fully operational and enable the failback from the appliance. We then failed back from the appliance to the new Exchange Server. This took a lot longer to check that all data was copied from the appliance to the new Exchange Server. This took 10 hours or so and then everyone had to relaunch Outlook and re-authenticate against the new server.

Appliance Details
The "cheat" was an Exchange high availability appliance from Teneros. Even though this appliance runs 2 operating systems, Linux and Windows, the entire configuration is on 2 web pages. Meaning, the Teneros support team is really what runs this product, not the Exchange admin. As per the web interface, to say the amount of information and configuration is sparse, is putting it lightly. Overall the product worked well and we ran into 2 glitches due to permissions and resetting process of the AD name due to poor documentation. And the migration process took longer than expected since the status of synchronization is not very accurate. Not a big deal, since end users are working during the failover and failback. Overall solution is very impressive, but I have some doubts since I'm not a big fan of trusting secret functionality of a black box type solution. I like to know how applications work and I do have concerns over Exchange updates or patches breaking the Teneros functionality. If you are curious, pricing is around $10k, give or take a few thousands. If you wanted to see the demo, Teneros did present at the NY Exchange User Group meeting back in November of December of 2007 or check out their website.

There are many other software solutions on the market that do this, and so I'll blog about when I work with them. My user group has had demo's and presentation on a # of them, but this was the first real world usage of one.

Let me know your thoughts on this.

-Ben

2 Outlook Add-ons / Improving TCO for Exchange 2007

2008-06-20T00:09:00.005-04:00

Hello All,

I feel I owe an apology to my blog readers for the long period between blog posts. I've thought about my blog each time I read about a mail related topic. It's time to share my insight into Exchange and life as a ehlo tech. I've committed myself to post shorter if necessary postings, just to insure folks are kept up to date.

So, 3 things that I've wanted to share for a few months (actually a few years for one tool).

1) I personally use and recommend to all clients the best Outlook searching tool I've found for performance, ease of use, stability, and cost for Outlook 2003 (it's been around for years, and is still rock solid). The tool is called Lookout. A bit of background on the tool. The creators of this amazing tool were hired (software company was bought by Microsoft) and now this functionality has been incorporated into MSN Desktop Search. When I reviewed MDS, I still thought Lookout was better based on my 4 criteria above. It might have changed, but Lookout is pretty close to perfect. For clients, the easiest way to explain Lookout, is to refer to Lookout as Google for Outlook. Very fast and easy to use. You can download the latest version 1.30 before they closed shop to work for Microsoft via this URL. If you have any issues, drop me an email or add a comment and I'll post it since I still have a copy of both latest versions (1.30 & 1.28).

2) There has been a lot of talk about Xobni for it's built-in searching, stats functionality for Outlook usage, and handy access to recent attachment. I love the idea of stats (reporting how much email sent/received, etc), unfortunately, I don't need searching and can't afford to give up so much real estate in Outlook (it adds a side panel similar to the 3 paneled look) for very cool usage "stats" and UI change for attachments. But, let me know in the comments area any feedback on it. I'm curious. I'll probably need to fire up a virtual machine (VM) to take a look at this.

Joys of Lookout and Xobni by Windows IT Pro. (Site was done when I posted this, so I wanted to confirm no login was required for it. Not sure.)
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99326/new-add-on-changes-the-way-you-work-with-outlook.html

Xobni's Outlook 2003/2007 Tool for Improving UI, Searching, and Stats. Company's website of their FAQ URL .

3) My background in economics and accounting has always played a major role in insuring technology upgrades and improvements are cost effective. So, having said this, I was a bit surprised when I heard the UI had been changed dramatically in Exchange 2007. One feature that increased TCO was the requirement of using 2 UIs to create new users. The single ADUC (AD Users and Computers) is not adequate anymore. So, a vendor realizing the concern for companies created a single UI for AD and Exchange user creation and modifications. They also plan to add a # of very useful features. I think this is a great idea even though it's 3rd party software, especially considering they'll probably add a lot more functionality than MS would.

Product is called Exchange Tasks 2007 and is from U-BSmart. http://www.u-bsmart.com/WWW/ExchangeTasks/ExchangeTasks.html

Demo of Exchange Tasks 2007 by 3rd party (improving TCO for Exchange 2007)
http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/managing-exchange-2007-recipients-active-directory-users-computers-mmc-snap-in.html

Quote from MS Exchange.org about U-BSmart's Exchange 2007 Tasks

Besides what we covered here, the guys behind the Exchange 2007 Tasks utility have plans on adding features such as Export to PST, Export to Mailbox, a fully integrated Active Directory property page for valid recipient objects, the ability to handle and manage Dynamic Distribution Groups, a Hide Group Members task, the ability to handle and manage Resource Mailboxes, improved management of Unified Messaging and more to future versions of the product.

If you use any of the products above, post some comments and let me know your results.

-Ben

Microsoft's Unified Communication Solution

2008-04-11T00:02:00.006-04:00

Hello Everyone,

Our April 8th, NY Exchange User Group meeting featured Stephen Chirico, Sr. Tech. Solutions Professional presenting the details beyond the technical deployment needs of Microsoft Unified Communications (aka UC, which is Microsoft's VoIP, IM, video conferencing, and more solution).

1 word for the meeting, Wow. That's how I would sum up our last meeting and "Star Trek visits NYExUG". Also the concept of a "Communicator Call" is definitely forward thinking, see the highlights below for explanations. This meeting is one for the record books. Great topic, great hardware and software demo-ed, and fun.

It really helped in determining what was required for deployment of Microsoft's UC technology. I've listed some highlights from the slides. Stephen did 2 presentations in one (UC Vision & OCS Architecture). So, you'll see 2 PDFs posted online in addition to the sponsor's (Azaleos) presentation. I would recommend you review both in detail if you're interested in UC.

This Presentation and Past Meeting Presentations

http://meetings.nyexug.com

Highlights

Access Edge Proxy - DMZ based server that proxies all traffic. No AD or authentication done on this box unlike an Exchange Edge Server that uses ADAM or a Windows RODC.
PBX Integration Options - 1) PBX supports mediation server w/o gateway (new PBX), 2) use of an Advanced Media Gateway w/existing PBX, or 3) use of an OCS mediation server w/Basic Media Gateway w/existing PBX. Slide 16 explains this. In essence, the Advanced Media Gateway eliminates the needs for a Windows OCS Mediation Server while the other 2 options require that.
Identity and Presence - available, on call, in meeting, etc. Your status available in Office, SharePoint, Live Communicator, etc.
Communicator Call - call's an identity (not a method/location such as mobile, work, home, IM, email, etc).
MOS = Mean Opinion Scores (what a user thinks of the voice quality).
Star Trek and Microsoft's UC - We saw the Star Trekish Round Table in action. It's a 360 degree audio/video conferencing system that mere mortals can afford as opposed to other 360 degree audio/video solutions out there. See Slide 23 for what attendees saw demo-ed. Speaker is shown on video based on triangulation of voice. Very cool.

URLs to assist users with deploying Unified Communications.

Supported gateways:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123948(EXCHG.80).aspx

IP PBX and PBX Support

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996831(EXCHG.80).aspx

Office Communication Server 2007 Partners:

http://www.microsoft.com/uc/partners_hardware.mspx

Microsoft Unified Communications: Phones and Devices Optimized for Microsoft Office Communicator

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb970310.aspx

Don't miss our next meeting or the following ones... here are the summaries of the upcoming meetings.

May - Microsoft's Behind the Scenes Look at Exchange Hosting Services by Keith Keeler. (fyi: they don't host Exchange). Don't miss this, I expect this to be like our Dogfood lab backup meeting.

RSVP: http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=126627

June - Technical details between 2003 & 2007 & Why Companies Upgrade. Speaker Keith McCall.

July - Presentation/Sponsor of AppAssure's Replay for Exchange. (fyi: this is a interesting solution that offers the ability to backup direct to a virtualized file format [vmdk].)

-Ben

They are back from the dead... Exchange's next version will "re-emphasis" Public Folders

2008-04-08T10:52:00.005-04:00

Hello Exchange Folks,

Microsoft reversed course and now Exchange's Public Folders will stay a major component in Exchange Server. This is good news for all. I was a bit worried about the loss of such and the removal of the GUI for Public Folders management in Exchange 2007. Microsoft fixed this in SP1, adding such functionality. Now, Microsoft outlined the following at the URL below... (fyi: this is the Exchange team blog, and has a wealth of great information).

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/03/31/448537.aspx

Scenario
Use Public Folders Currently?
Document Sharing - SharePoint may be better option.
Calendar Sharing - No need to move
Contact Sharing - No need to move
Discussion Forums - No need to move
Distribution Group Archive - No need to move
Custom Applications - SharePoint may be better option
Organizational Forms - No need to move (or look into use of InfoPath)

From my experience, Public Folders are most frequently used at companies for Calendar Sharing, Contact Sharing, and Distribution Group Archive. So, the need to add SharePoint with it's entire line of support applications (e.g. backup agents [that's plural for SQL and SharePoint], anti-virus, server(s), is a great thing for everyone. Exchange is a great product, so obviously removing and then trying to convince existing users to add more products (e.g. SharePoint) and increase TCO (total cost of ownership) to have the same functionality was a bad idea. Thank you Microsoft for seeing this and making sure Public Folders stayed in Exchange Server.

-Ben

My "Enterprise Class" Home Theater Media Center

2008-03-15T00:25:00.007-04:00

At the last NY Exchange User Group meeting (March 2008 - StealthBITS Exchange auditing software), the topic of DVRs came up before the meeting. Not sure how, but it did. So, I figured I would share how I built the ultimate DVR for me. And this ain't your run of the mill DVR (e.g. cable company, TiVo, Replay, etc). This IS art to me. See the in construction HTPC photos.

The home theater media center (aka home theater pc, htpc) journey started about one and a half years ago, back in August 2006. A buddy of mine dropped me an email and literally told me he was building a "media center PC" due to a Maximum PC article and wanted to know if I was interested. Little did I know when I responded and told him "Cool. Until they can record HD off cable, I'm not building. I'd love to see yours." Well, I've learned quite a lot since then, and that the holy grail is not HD, but commercial skip and portability (think iPod/streaming/burning).

The journey, and it was one since it took over a year from start to finish involved determining what media center software to run, what hardware, and managing the whole process. So, we quickly determined that the media center software was going to be SnapStream's BeyondTV which is probably the most feature complete (e.g. multiple tuners, commercial skip, multi-format support on record [MPEG2, DIVX, WMV, H.264], no monthly fees [sorry TiVo], burn shows/films to DVDs, download them) and stable solution (runs on Windows and works - sorry MythTV) on the market.

The bigger and more complicated process was selecting what hardware to run this on. We quickly determined this could not be a standard PC (e.g. Dell, HP, laptop, etc) due to noise levels, looks, and functionality. We wanted more than those could provide. So, we quickly realized we must build a custom PC. This was something, I gave up in 2000 due to time constraints and deciding that once multi-processor computers were widely available, I'd be willing to accept an OEM one (fyi: main stream desktop OEMs started providing SMP support back in 2000). But, not on this. This HTPC was going to be in my living room so it was going to be very visible and so it needed to be unique and eye-catching. This was going to be our art work center piece.

So, before we could select the exterior case, we had to figure out which "heart" was going to run this. This was the most critical piece of the entire project, since a motherboard which is not stable or has not been sufficiently tested with hardware for compatibility, can easily derail a stable environment (e.g. lockups, hangs, reboots, etc). So, we spent months reading, discussing, and evaluating which motherboard to go with. In the end we decided on a Asus P5B Deluxe w/o WiFi motherboard. This was going to be the heart of our future HTPC.

Realizing that "just" selecting the motherboard was very difficult and time consuming, I realized we were going to need some help maintaining and managing this entire project. So, we quickly embraced and started using Google Docs (Spreadsheets). It's a great free web based collaboration tool. This made keeping track of parts #'s, comments, URLs, notes, etc a whole lot easier than the original back and forth email and phone calls.

Once we had selected the motherboard, we spent a few months repeating this process for the case (roomy for all the components and works with the motherboard), hard drives (they had to be quiet, fast, and reliable), the video card (had to be passive, no fans on this one), and the CPU heat sink (quiet and efficient). The rest of the components were figured out in a matter of mere weeks. I know, sometimes one of my flaws is I'm too thorough and detail oriented. My buddy didn't help me on that since there were times he was performing calculations on sizing of the CPU heat sink and case.

In the end, I purchased the following hardware components:
1 x Asus P5B Deluxe w/o WiFi, Intel LGA775
1 x Zalman HD160XT HTPC Enclosure with 7" LCD Touchscreen LCD
1 x XFX GeForce 7600GS 256MB DDR2 PCI-E GPU (PV-T73P-UMH4) RoHS, HDTV ready, HDCP Ready, SLI ready, Vista ready
2 x Samsung HD080HJ, 80GB, SATA, 8MB - 8.9ms, 2.5/2.9bel
2 x SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
1 x Pioneer DVR-112D IDE, 18x DVD+R, 10x DVD+DL
1 x Processor, Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB
1 x Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro for All Pentium D
1 x OCZ OCZ2G8002GK 2GB Kit DDR2-800 PC2-6400 Gold Gamer eXtreme XTC Edition Dual Channel Memory
1 x Antec NeoHE 500W Power Supply
1 x SnapStream Beyond TV PCI Bundle (Digital)
1 x 3ware 8006-2LP SATA RAID Card
1 x Hauppauge PVR-500 for 2 tuner support (Ben only). Card supports 2 inputs. My buddy purchased the PVR-150.
1 x Adesso WKB-4000US, wireless SlimTouch Mini 2.4GHz USB Touchpad Keyboard (Ben only)
1 x APC 1500VA UPS (Ben only)

So, after waiting 2-3 weeks and getting all the equipment, we started the process to unpack and build one HTPC. The reasoning behind building one at a time, was to see what issues we might run into, and to limit the confusion of having duplicate items out. Our first issue was getting the CPU (w/ brand new 1333 FSB support) working on the motherboard (Asus P5B Deluxe). The motherboard had a sticker claiming support of 1333 FSB, but this took a few hours of upgrading the BIOS firmware 2 or 3 versions later and doing this only via a USB memory stick (we didn't have a floppy drive of course - make sure all servers you buy have a floppy drive). The next issue was getting the BIOS configured in the correct RAID configuration. The RAID configuration we wanted to run was two RAID 1 configuration. One RAID 1 for the operating system and one RAID 1 for the media files. Who wants to lose their TV shows/movies or all that configuration? This is a mission critical application like Exchange, hence the need for redundancy. ;-) More on that later. So, we ran into a problem that the motherboard only supported 1 array (this took hours to figure it out since you needed to plug the SATA HDs into different ports on the motherboard to get the RAID array working versus standard SATA ports, the technical writers for the documentation first language is probably not English, and none of the folks we read using this motherboard on the internet were running/writing about 2 arrays difficulties). So, you could not configure 2 separate arrays of RAID 1, but a single RAID 1 array. This would have meant combining our OS and media drives, which was unacceptable. So, we ended up purchasing the 3ware SATA RAID card above. This obviously delayed the HTPC build by another week. Once we had this, we configured all 4 HDs off the RAID card to two separate RAID 1 arrays.

After this, we connected the motherboard up and connected all the cables for the Zalman case. This turned out to be an issue, since when we installed Windows XP Pro w/SP2 (pre-applied), the SD/CF/Memory Stick and those ports took drive letter C and forced XP to install the boot onto drive letter D. So, back to powering off and disconnected those ports and then another re-install. Once this was done we shutdown all the extra services and tweaked it for speed. This HTPC will not get Windows Updates, anti-virus, or any firewall above the XP one. Speed and stability are too important for this. Hence the importance of running a locked down XP for the HTPC.

One would think we are done, but we still had a full day of work ahead of us. I had bought special heat resistant tubing (www.wirecare.com, F6 - self wrapping braided sleeving) for the best cabling job one could do. Cabling is very important when designing an ultra quiet PC. So, we spent about 7 hours dedicated to just cabling the inside of one of the HTPC's. A bit excessive, but it's a master piece in increasing airflow which reduces fan noise. Keep in mind, this is for the living room, so you don't want to hear it at all.

Current Configuration
HTPC is connected via HDMI (audio + video on this single cable) to a Sony Bravia 40" LCD.
Switched from RF Firefly remote for BeyondTV control to an IR Firefly remote (Firefly is the BeyondTV remote). Using an IR remote for the Sony TV.
7" touchscreen LCD on Zalman is used for performance monitoring and photo showing.

Planned Upgrade
Convert both IR remotes (TV & BeyondTV) to a single unified Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote
Connect second cable box connect to second TV tuner card already installed.

Redundancy and Data Protection on the HTPC
One would think two RAID 1 arrays for the operating system and media files would be sufficient, but not in Ben's book. So, I run Symantec Ghost 12 (image the entire OS volume) before any major configuration changes (e.g. software changes, version updates, hardware additions, etc). I run a Ghost Server on my home network which makes it easy for backups and have prepared the boot CD in case of the need for a bare metal restore. And I have already prepared (slip streamed) the Ghost boot CD for the RAID and motherboard drivers for the HTPC.

So, in the end, we spent about 1 1/2 years from brain storming in the beginning to completed product. During this time, about 3 or 4 full days (7-12 hrs) over a period of about a month building the base configuration of the hardware and getting Windows installed. It was weeks longer to get all the software (e.g. BeyondTV, video card, remote software, etc) and hardware configured correctly. As of Fall of 2007, the HTPC has been fully operational, and it's a pleasure to look at it and use it (even my wife uses it, it's that easy). Will I get my money's worth out of subscription fees, no, but sometimes in life folks work on something because they love it. This is what I love.... computers, technology, and increased productivity.

Any questions, drop me an email.

-Ben

My Research into dimmable compact fluorescent lights

2008-03-05T19:41:00.004-05:00

Hello All,

I figured I would share this with everyone. I spent a few hours over a few weeks researching compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) that are dimmable (versus standard on/off CFLs). And in the end, I've decided not to purchase or recommend dimmable CFLs yet. The best dimmable solution I found was from TCP though.

There are 2 major issues with the current dimmable CFL technology. First is only mechanical dimmers (e.g. sliders with a switch, or slider which clicks when power is off) are supported. Meaning, electronic (e.g. touchpad's, LEDs, etc) will cause pre-mature* failure since most electronic dimmers always have a small amount of electricity flowing to the bulb. This causes the ballast (analogy is the engine of a car) to cycle on and off rapidly constantly which is very bad for the longevity of ballast. And the mechanical dimmers are fine if you can configure them to cut-off all electricity to the CFL at 20% power. Power of 0-20% is bad for a ballast similar to the way a electronic dimmer is. It causes it to experience that on-off problem as well. So, if you ever see any flickering on a CFL, that's a bad sign. The second issue is some dimmable CFLs need to be used in non-enclosed fixtures due to heat generation. In other words, open lamps, sconces, etc. And the CFLs that can be used in closed fixtures tend to be significantly longer (up to 2" for a 23 watt CF dimmable) than dimmable CFLs & even traditional incandescent light bulbs. Due to these issues, I've decided to re-visit this towards the end of the year. Planned fixes within about a year according to the tech at TCP was addressing the 0-20% issue for mechanical dimmers, low voltage for electronic dimmers even in off position, and reduced size.

* I spoke with a technician (customer service rep was not helpful since I knew more about the products then she did) at one of the major lighting manufacturers (TCP) and he amused me with the term "pre-mature" failure. He explained that dimmers w/o 20% cut-off would cause the ballast to go into that on/off mode when within 0-20% and result in a failure sooner than normal. The ballast would just fail (versus a lamp failure). Which would be a problem especially since the TCP 161 Series is probably going to be discontinued since it has not sold well (it's 25% more costly than the 101 series). So, there will be a point in the future you will not be able to buy either the ballast or the lamp.

Good website for dimmable CF bulbs (they also talk about 3 way, and more)

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=633&fixture=0&shape=0&feature1=1&brightness=0&color=0

Considered the following before deciding not to proceed with the replacements.

TCP, 161 Series - enclosed fixtures

2 piece dimmable SpringLamp

Item # 16120L - 20 watt, 6.1"

Replacement Lamp - 36020

$19.30 http://www.lightbulbemporium.com/proddetail.asp?prod=TCP16120L

TCP 101, SpringLamp CF - open fixtures

# 10120 - 20 watt, 5.28"

# 10123 - 23 watt, 5.4"

20-100%

$14.90 - http://www.lightbulbemporium.com/proddetail.asp?prod=TCP10120

-Ben

Attended the NYC Launch Event for Windows Server 2008

2008-03-05T12:19:00.004-05:00

Hello All,

I attended the NYC Launch Event for Windows Server 2008 and while it was interesting (RemoteApp & beta look of Hyper-V), the venue really brought down the entire experience due to organization and layout. Some examples were finding different things (e.g. user group areas, hands on demo, etc) and making my way through the vendor areas. Microsoft should realize this is not the venue to use in the future. Also, the NFR software provided was a let-down. The only real piece of software provided that was non-crippled was Vista Ultimate w/SP1 & Visual Studio 2008 (I'm not a dev, so this isn't very useful to me). Nice, but we all received Vista a year ago or so at the Vista Launch. Oops. :-) So, a copy of Windows 2008 Server was expected. I'll be donating the NFR software to the user group at our upcoming meeting. On that note....

Our upcoming meeting for Tue, March 11 is a vendor presented Exchange auditing solution by StealthBITS. Keep track of Exchange Server changes via this solution. They are also sponsoring the meeting. Another major announcement for the meeting is my company donated an Xbox 360 Arcade System (includes 5 games) to be raffle off. So, you don't want to miss this meeting. Visit www.nyexug.com to RSVP to the meeting.

-Ben

Performance Testing your Disk Subsystem for Exchange

2008-02-07T00:17:00.000-05:00

Hello All,

So, I've spent some time (a few months) researching a major upgrade to provide a client higher performance for Exchange, near real time disaster recovery, and ability to quickly restore large Exchange databases (50-100GB). I just want to touch on the higher performance aspect of my research.

One of the major issues with Exchange 2003, is when users have large mailboxes (think 5-15GB (yes, GB) mailboxes, and they attempt to sort a column in Outlook that has thousands of items, Exchange has to work very hard to accommodate this request. This will stress an Exchange subsystem to handle this. So, in my quest to recommend a higher performing disk subsystem (they were using direct attached storage [aka SCSI], I proposed a scaled storage area network solution). So, one of my first tasks to determine how to get the best performance out of the SAN will be to use the following 2 Microsoft tools for performance testing of Exchange when I attempt to configure the SAN disk subsystem for RAID 1, 5, and 10. Also, these tools can highlight network related issues, so make sure to examine your networking especially if you are running on a SAN (e.g. MPIO, jumbo frames, teaming, etc). These can make a very big difference in performance as well.

1) Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb643093.aspx
*** Summary ***Microsoft Exchange Server is a disk-intensive application that requires a fast, reliable disk subsystem to function correctly. Jetstress is a tool that helps administrators verify the performance and stability of the disk subsystem before putting their Exchange server in a production environment.

Jetstress works with Exchange Server Database Storage Engine to simulate the Exchange database and log disk I/O load. If you run Jetstress and have missing libraries, you will receive a message that states that you must copy any missing DLL files from Exchange 2000/2003/2007 installation CD/DVDs to the Jetstress installation directory and rerun Jetstress.

2) Microsoft Exchange LoadSim

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996207.aspx#LoadSimulator2003

*** Summary ***
Use Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Load Simulator (LoadSim) as a benchmarking tool to simulate the performance load of MAPI clients. LoadSim allows you to test how a server running Exchange 2003 responds to e-mail loads. To simulate the delivery of these messaging requests, you run LoadSim tests on client computers. These tests send multiple messaging requests to the Exchange server, thereby causing a mail load. LoadSim is a useful tool for administrators who are sizing servers and validating a deployment plan. Specifically, LoadSim helps you determine if each of your servers can handle the load to which they are intended to carry. Another use for LoadSim is to help validate the overall solution.

-Ben

Upcoming Meeting for NY Exchange User Group

2008-01-28T20:17:00.001-05:00

I am looking forward to this meeting, since I had the opportunity to test out Good Technology's wireless sync solution, and found it very impressive and better than my BlackBerry in a number of ways except for the hardware's battery life it ran on (Palm Centro). This caused me to abandon the use of it since my BlackBerry can go 3-4 days without a recharge, while my Centro w/Good could barely go a day. So, I'm back to using ActiveSync and a BlackBerry. Here is information regarding the upcoming meeting.

I'll also post a TechEd presentation that compared all 3 solutions as well (Good, BlackBerry, ActiveSync) in the next day or so.

Tuesday, February 12, 2007 Meeting Topics
Doors Open 6pm
Meeting Begins 6:30pm

Visit www.nyexug.com for more information.

Partner Sponsor is The Never Fail Group
Meeting Sponsored by Motorola's Good Technology Group

Presentation Topics
1) Good Technology will be presenting Good Technology's PDA wireless synchronization solution compared to Research In Motion's Blackberry Exchange Server & Microsoft's ActiveSync. See how one of the upstarts has one of the most feature complete solutions behind BlackBerry and ActiveSync. Speaker is Scott Davenport.

Folks attending will be able to win a various raffle items including Microsoft software. Free food, and open to all simply by RSVPing. We'll also run a LiveMeeting session for folks who cannot attend the meeting at the NY Microsoft office

IMPORTANT RSVP DETAILS
Visit www.nyexug.com for details.

Thoughts on Upcoming Presentations at NY Exchange User Group Meeting (Tue 1/8)

2008-01-08T00:11:00.000-05:00

Vendor Thoughts
The NY Exchange (Server) User Group (nyexug.com) is having a vendor presentation meeting by The NeverFail Group on Tue Jan 8, 2008 at 6pm start. I'm curious to see how NeverFail's solution handles Blackberry Exchange Server (aka BES) replication since there is a "license key" (aka SRP) that is not allowed to be released on the internet via more than 1 BES server (if it does, it disables both until you contact RIM & ask for forgiveness). So, we'll see how that works & I'll post back. This meeting follows a few other replication solutions we have recently seen at the public monthly meetings for NYExUG (e.g. DoubleTake [software], Teneros [hardware], & Asempra [hardware]). This unintentional focus on replication definitely has allowed members to be more informed and know what to look for in an Exchange replication solution. I know some folks might not classify the Asempra BCS solution as replication, but it has the capability to replace such, so I figured I would classify under that.

My Presentation
I'll be presenting on "Tips to fix Exchange 2003 database problems". This will be a case study on the steps used to solve a serious Exchange database corruption problem that a law firm experienced. It affected the entire company until it was resolved, so there was a lot of pressure to resolve it as quickly as possible with minimal downtime.

First Hand Feedback of ActiveSync, Blackberry, and Good Wireless Syncing

2008-01-06T21:36:00.000-05:00

I'm a heavy email user. Maybe heavy isn't accurate, excessive/addicted email user/admin. So, I'm always looking for the best client side PDA email solution for my needs (since Outlook is on my desktop and laptop).

Digress
I digress for 1 paragraph.... on the PDA side of things, my 1st PDA (Kyocera 6035) was Palm OS based and the concept of replacing/upgrading a PDA/phone and simply syncing it and watching all the contacts re-appear was such a great idea, I swore never to go back to a "simple" phone (e.g. Razor, etc). My current (as of Jan '08) phone is still based on Palm OS (I don't need to get into the religious wars on why now), but I recently upgraded from the Palm 700p to Palm Centro). If you're wondering why, the hardware & software is the same, it's the form factor. Oh, back to the point of the post.

Intro to syncing
When I first started using the Palm OS, Palm (technically a 3rd party) had licensed the ActiveSync functionality to allow syncing of one's calendar, contacts, and email to an Exchange Server. So, I tested that out, and it was fine until I started running into other problems when one adds SSL and make sure other security enhancements to IIS. This broke ActiveSync, and after spending many hours troubleshooting it, I resolved it. But, in the past few years, every so often an IIS update or other weirdness just happens and I need to troubleshoot what's broken (delete my IIS config and reload it [what a pain]). The other thing I didn't like was typing was too slow on the Palm hardware. On Research in Motion's side, the Blackberry (aka BB), I can touch type and type faster on my BB than many folks on a standard computer keyboard. In other words, the keyboard is excellent on the BB. It's simple designed for typing emails. My first jump onto the BB ship was the Blackberry 6750. Excellent BB, even though it's a bit tall, allows for a lot of email to show. I know it's B&W, but who cares when it's email (I have a color BB 7250 now, I don't need any donations ;-). Then about 3 months ago (Oct or so) I had the opportunity to test out Motorola's Good Technology. I've know about Good and have heard it's the most feature complete out of the BIG 3. I refer to those as Microsoft ActiveSync, RIM's Blackberry Exchange Server (aka BES), and Motorola's Good Technology's Mobile Messaging (aka GMM).

Testing out GMM (Good's Mobile wireless sync solution)
Most folks would probably watch a flash demo and read the product datasheet. I decided it was worth the time to see if I could combine all my needs on 1 device, my Palm Centro running the Palm OS and replace my Blackberry (FYI: Palm hardware can run Palm OS or Windows Mobile OS. Palm is now a hardware vendor. It's confusing, I know). Many folks are amazed I carry 2 devices, then again they probably think about productivity & efficiency like I do. So, I fired up VMware Workstation on my test computer and powered on an available Windows 2003 Server OS and started the install of GMM (there were a # of steps in between, such a VPN site a site to site link so I could connect to my Exchange Server at the colo facility it's housed in and test to insure the latency was low enough, it all passed). Then I started testing GMM on my Centro. The GMM functionality is impressive but you need to use the Good applications which are loaded on the handheld (Pro & Con) wirelessly of course. They run a bit slower (e.g. switching between views, opening, closing, etc) than the built-in ones (e.g. calendar, contacts, etc), but have features that BES & ActiveSync 5 with an Exchange 2003 server don't (e.g. flagging, searching, etc). I was very impressed with GMM except for the fact the hardware's battery usage on EVDO (on Sprint) can barely handle a day of usage & password protected units take about 2 seconds to unlock (not sure why it's so slow, but that's AFTER you enter the password and click OK). So, after almost a whole day of syncing (I receive about 150 messages and send about 100 messages a day), battery life was almost dead on a new fully charge Centro. Based on that usage, the battery life was a serious issues. So much, I had to give up the Good functionality and returned to the basic ActiveSync on my Palm for quick reviewing of email on weekends when I might step out without my Blackberry.

Summary
- the GMM is an excellent synchronization solution for devices & users usage that can handle the always on network needs. I would consider it the most feature complete solution among the big 3.
- Good has better documentation than Microsoft & RIM on implementation (it's so detailed they explain how to uninstall and remove GMM, impressive)
- RIM's Blackberry hardware is a generation ahead of Palm & Windows hardware for battery usage on always on email
- RIM's Blackberry hardware allows for the fastest typing and I would consider it the gold standard for email synchronization
- ActiveSync is a good solution for low usage and companies not willing to pay for additional functionality besides the basic email, calendar, contacts, etc sync (e.g. more support, functionality, logging, etc).
- Good's sync is partnered with Palm & Windows Mobile hardware, which is a strength & weakness as I explained above. Good previously had RIM similar hardware, not sure when they stopped offering it.

My Final Thoughts
GMM is excellent, the probably is the hardware. So, if and when a hardware solution is smaller than a Blackberry with full keyboard and offer similar or battery battery life, I'll consider returning. Until then, I'll be waiting since I'm not a big fan of the current Mobile devices. I consider them too large or with keyboards that simply don't match those of the efficiency of RIM's Blackberrys.

Here is a photo comparison of my wife's Blackberry Pearl and my Palm Centro. I had originally hoped this Centro would be the sole device I carry. No thanks, I'll happily carry both (Centro & BB).

Ever wondering what happened with an Exchange Server database corruption?

2008-01-06T13:20:00.000-05:00

I presented this blog entry (ways to solve Exchange database corruption) at the upcoming NY Exchange User Group meeting on Tuesday, 1/8/08 at 6pm (see www.nyexug.com for more info).

Symptoms
Since I work with numerous clients and every client of mine uses an Exchange Server (in-house or hosted), I see a lot of things relating to Exchange most typical IT techs do not see. So, about a month ago, a client's Exchange 2003 Server starting showing signs of being non-responsive. The server would take an hour or so to boot-up if it did, and then when it did, logging in remotely was extremely difficult (it would hang after user/pwd login, or extremely slow refresh periods) via RDP (aka MS Terminal Services). My first thought was hard disk failure or other disk related problem. It was running on a RAID 1 setup with SAS 15k drives but those showed no signs of issues.

Found Issue
After reviewing the Event Logs, I saw reports of disk non-responsiveness. So, I checked the Dell OpenManage status for the disk subsystem, and it reported everything as fine. So, nothing there. I then performed a basic search with last modified date to last day, and reviewed all the recently modified files. Everything looked good until I saw that the 20 person's company's Public Folder Store had grown to 12GB from about 114MB. Yes, 114MB to 12GB! Information Store database files looked fine. So, I started reviewing the backup logs and noticed the Public Folder Store database was growing hundreds of MBs a day. Something was out of definitely wrong with it.

Approaches to Solve Corruption Problem
Before you do anything. Dismount the database in question. Then shutdown the Information Store service and copy the .edb & .stm to another hard drive or at a minimum to another folder. Then attempt to use the Microsoft's utility of Eseutil. Eseutil is a dangerous tool, so please make sure you thoroughly read the documentation & before a backup before proceeding. Sometimes, you can't make a simply copy/paste of the database. If so, you don't have much choice, but to proceed. As I warned above, you could lose data performing this. And only run if your databases are experiencing problems.

Commands to run from your bin directory and pointing to your databases.
"eseutil /g" - Integrity check in read only mode.
"eseutil /k" - Checksum check for header damage.
"eseutil /p" – Repairs table and page. Perform isinteg next.
"eseutil /d" - defrags db's and reduce the size based on empty space. You can safely run this if you dismount the databases.
"isinteg -s emailsrv -fix -test alltests" - emailsrv = name of server. Used to test and insure all corruption is solved.

After I ran these commands, the Public Folder store was reduced to 114MB and the server was responsive again.

Resources to Review Before Proceeding
MS Exchange Team Blog about database fixing with eseutil
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2004/06/18/159413.aspx

MS Support - Ramifications of running the eseutil /p or edbutil /d /r command in Exchange
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259851

MS Exchange.org - isinteg & eseutil demo-ed
http://msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-ISINTEG-ESEUTIL.html

MS Support - eseutil checksum feature
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;823167

MS Support - eseutil file header damage
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;825088

MS Exchange Team Blog on 2007 SP1 Changes for ESE
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/11/30/447640.aspx

A warm helo & ehlo to everyone...

2007-12-26T23:30:00.000-05:00

On my first blog posting.... I realize, most people do not know what "helo" and "ehlo" mean. So picking a blog name with this might not be the smartest marketing idea, but I'm not so concerned with that (more important to educate folks at least a little bit). So, Without either term (helo & ehlo), email would not work as it does. Meaning, no email would be sent or received. So, maybe you should read the next paragraph to under a bit more.

All email servers communicate using either term (technically, this is how the initiating server starts communicating with another mail server). "helo" is the term for saying hello to another server when the initiating server is not very sophisticated and just wants to perform a basic email send communication. More sophisticated servers that support more features (aka extensions) and wish to use them (e.g. security, reliability, speed, etc), start off with "ehlo", also meaning hello, but also "tell me what commands" you support. This allows the other server to know, that this server can support x feature and will respond to handle it and perform the email communication in the enhanced manner.

So, of course my favorite email server, Microsoft Exchange Server (2003 currently) supports this feature & so does my favorite email gateway server (IceWarp's Merak Mail Server v.8.x). Unfortunately, some folks use firewalls to block (aka proxy) smtp commands, which can slow down email flow and prevent the use of ehlo. So, I recommend disabling such smtp firewall features (e.g. Cisco's fixup protocol) since this is a false sense of security and slows down communication. I've also had not heard of a security risk for smtp or other used commands on Exchange & Merak. So, this is not a real risk in my book (I tend to error on the side of security, so if I thought it was a danger, I would not suggest it). The benefits of "ehlo" outweigh any theoretical risk. So, enough of the soap box for this blog posting. I'll step down...

So, my plans for the future: the blog will tend to focus on a number of topics since I am interested in such, email in general in relation to server-side spam filtering techniques, email security, and performance, Microsoft Exchange Server, wireless (e.g. 802.11a/b/g/n), physical security, and other technology related things I get involved with.