Sam has been working in the IT industry for nearly 20 years now, and is currently working for VMware as a Senior Technical Marketing Manger in the Cloud Management Business Unit (CMBU) focussed on Automation. Previously, he has worked as consultant for VMware PSO, specializing in cloud automation and network virtualization. His technical experience includes design, development and implementation of cloud solutions, network function virtualisation and the software defined datacentre. Sam specialises in automation of network virtualisation for cloud infrastructure, enabling public cloud solutions for service providers and private or hybrid cloud solutions for the enterprise.
Sam holds multiple high level industry certifications, including the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) for Cloud Management and Automation. He is also a proud member of the vExpert community, holding the vExpert accolade from 2013-present, as well as being selected for the vExpert NSX, vExpert VSAN and vExpert Cloud sub-programs.
So I was testing the configuration on my Exchange 2003 server in preparation for the roll out of some Windows Mobile devices when I recieved the following error:
Outlook(R) Mobile Access is supported only on Microsoft(R) Exchange Server 2003. Currently your mailbox is stored on an older version of Exchange server. Please contact your system administrator for additional assistance.
“That’s odd”, I thought, “I only have Exchange Server 2003 in my organisation, how can I have an older version of Exchange?” It turns out that this has nothing to do with the version of Exchange you are using. I have set up my Exchange OWA to require SSL (see previous article on SSL and Integrated Authentication
) and apparently this can cause issues for OMA.
Recently I wrote a little utility for a client using the excellent Html Agility Pack to read and navigate through a HTML page, selecting the data that was needed and parsing it - basically a screen scrape. I downloaded the source, compiled it, added a reference to the dll in my project and tapped away for a few minutes and et voila, within a few minutes a working screen scrape. A fantastic library.
I needed to use PowerShell for something today on my Vista laptop, but was unable to install the file. I had the normal UAC permission required when I ran it, but then it failed with this error
Installer encountered an error: 0x80070422
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it
has no enabled devices associated with it.
It turns out that you need to enable the Windows Update service in order to use an MSU file. How backwards is that? Well, lets see, I have to run a SERVICE in order to be able to install applications.
*** Unfortunately the Real Man Cycling challenge has been cancelled for this year due to planning issues - I’m disappointed but I hope to do it again next year ***
I’m doing the Real Man Cycling Challenge in London on the 14th September. It’s a 34km ride through london in aid of The Prostate Cancer Charity, which is a really worthwile cause. If you’d like to sponsor me, head on over to http://www.justgiving.com/
sammcgeown and you can sponsor me there - you can even gift aid it if you pay tax!
I thought this would be fairly common knowledge by now, Exchange 2003 being quite mature in it’s 5th year, but it’s not something I’ve had a problem with before and therefore I’m going to write about it!
So a big email comes in; lets say it’s 8MB. Your Exchange 2003 server, set to it’s defaults for size restrictions, rejects the email. Why? Take a look at this Exchange TechNet article:
We have a Bonded ADSL solution for our servers to provide the necessary upstream transfer speeds for the applications we host. We have bonded ADSL because our exchange still doesn’t support SDSL, and a leased line is overkill. Theoretically, we should have 28.1 Mbps download and 3.2Mbps upload - what I am actually seeing is about 1.7Mbps down and 1.9Mbps up. I have tested this on various servers, over various times and file sizes, there is no doubt that the performance is POOR.
We recently needed to upgrade one of our applications, and the new version requires an addition server instead of the application and SQL it requires a back end search, a front end web server and a SQL server. The specifications of the new server which are “required” to qualify for support are pretty high. The problem is that the actual processor usage is very light, and it is very hard to justify buying a whole new server that I know is going to be barely used.
“Nothing can come of nothing” - to quote King Lear, but it seems this is not always true. Marc Andre is giving away an album, and all he asks in return is that you mention it to your friends. I’ve not listened to it yet, but even if I hate it…it was free!
