Exchange Server Pro » Tutorials

Upgrading to Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2

Paul Cunningham — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:25:23 +0000

Microsoft has released Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2. Here is how you can deploy it to your existing organization.

Service Pack 2 deployment follows the same installation sequence as the initial Exchange install or any other update.

Client Access servers, starting with the internet-facing ones
Hub Transport and Edge Transport servers
Mailbox servers
Unified Messaging servers

Note: if you are installing to multi-role servers just prioritize based on the same order above.

Upgrading Client Access Servers to Exchange 2010 SP2

When you install Service Pack 2 on Client Access servers you may receive an error message for a missing IIS component. This issue and the solution are described in the following article:

Error Message “The ‘IIS 6 WMI Compatibility’ component is required” During Exchange 2010 SP2 Upgrade

If you’re updating a CAS array of servers in a Windows Network Load Balancing cluster then refer to the following article to learn how to perform the update without disrupting clients:

How to Install Updates on Exchange Server 2010 CAS Arrays

Upgrading Database Availability Groups to Exchange 2010 SP2

If you are updating the members of a DAG to Service Pack 2 then refer to the following article for instructions on how to perform the upgrade without requiring an outage for mailbox users:

How to Install Updates on Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Groups

Exchange MVP Andy Grogan has already released an updated version of his RUPS Tool for installing Service Pack 2.

Updated version of the RUPS Tool–Installing Service Packs

Upgrading Management Tools to Exchange 2010 SP2

Any management servers or workstations that have the Exchange 2010 Management Tools installed on them will also need to be upgraded to be able to manage some of the new features of Exchange 2010 SP2 and to avoid the initialization error that can occur due to mismatched versions. Simply run the setup wizard to upgrade those computers.

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Using Test-Mailflow with Exchange 2003 Servers

Paul Cunningham — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:32:49 +0000

One of the challenges of managing a large Exchange Server environment is that you often need to support multiple versions of Exchange.

That means that often when you write a PowerShell script you need to account for servers running different versions and adjust accordingly. It can turn a simple scripting exercise into a big task.

Recently I was looking at ways to include our Exchange 2003 servers in some monitoring scripts that are already running for Exchange 2007/2010 servers. I wanted to perform a mail flow test for the Exchange 2003 servers, because that is a test that (if successful) very quickly confirms a lot of the elements involved in email availability are in fact healthy (ie the server is up, reachable, accepting SMTP connections, processing mail queues, the Information Store is running, and more).

For Exchange 2007/2010 the Test-Mailflow cmdlet can be used for these. You can build it into a health check script if you want to. But if you try to run it against an Exchange 2003 server you’ll get an error like this:

[PS] C:\>Test-Mailflow -Identity EX2007SERVER -TargetMailboxServer EX2003SERVER

Test-Mailflow : "EX2003SERVER" is running a previous version of Exchange and does not support this task.
At line:1 char:14
+ Test-Mailflow <<<<  -Identity EX2007SERVER -TargetMailboxServer EX2003SERVER
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Test-Mailflow], OperationOnOldServerException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : 642F2C5C,Microsoft.Exchange.Monitoring.TestMailFlow

However, if the Exchange 2003 server is in the same organization you can use a different parameter with Test-Mailflow to achieve the same result. All you need is an email address for one of the mailboxes on the Exchange 2003 server. You might want to create a mailbox on each of your Exchange 2003 servers (or even each of the databases on those servers) specifically for this purpose.

Then you simply run the Test-Mailflow cmdlet with the -TargetEmailAddress parameter instead of the -TargetMailboxServer parameter.

[PS] C:\>Test-Mailflow -Identity EX2007SERVER -TargetEmailAddress EX2003SERVER_test@domain.com

TestMailflowResult         MessageLatencyTime          IsRemoteTest
------------------         ------------------          ------------
Success                    00:00:19.5014893            True

As you can see this is a nice, simple way to test your Exchange 2003 server health using PowerShell.

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How to Health Check an Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server

Paul Cunningham — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:51:55 +0000

How many times each day do you get asked, “Is there a problem with the Exchange server?”

If you’re like me then you get asked this question at least once per day. Of course there usually isn’t anything wrong with our Exchange servers but once the question has been asked then you have no choice but to investigate and confirm that everything is okay.

In this article I’m going to demonstrate how you can quickly check the health of your Exchange Server 2010 mailbox servers, and share a script with you that can help to speed up this task.

Exchange Server 2010 has a series of PowerShell cmdlets that make it easy to do a health check of mailbox servers. For example, we can:

Run Test-Servicehealth to check the required services are all running
Run Get-MailboxDatabase to check whether the mailbox databases are mounted
Run Test-MapiConnectivity to verify that the databases are responding to MAPI requests
Run Test-MailFlow to confirm that email is able to pass successfully between two servers
Run Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus for DAG members to check the database copy status, queues, and content indexes

That’s quite a few cmdlets to run, especially if we’ve got more than one mailbox server in the organization. And of course each of those cmdlets needs to run and show you output that you need to interpret.

I like to make life a bit easier and use PowerShell scripts to speed up these types of tasks. So naturally I put together a script for performing all of the above tests (and a few more) on my mailbox servers and display a nice simple colour-coded output so that I can tell at a glance whether there might be a problem.

This isn’t designed to do a diagnosis of any problems, it just checks the fundamentals and gives me a simple pass/fail and a few other indicators that I can then troubleshoot further if necessary.

Download the script file here: Test-MailboxServer.ps1 (downloaded 891 times so far)

Extract Test-MailboxServer.ps1 from the Zip file and run it in your Exchange Management Shell to see output such as this:

If you have any questions or bugs to report please let me know in the comments below.

Change log:

V1.0, 20/11/2011 – Initial version
V1.1, 10/01/2011 – Fixed $null’s, bugs with Recovery DBs, and ping failure scenarios

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How to Install Updates on Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Groups

Paul Cunningham — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:30:54 +0000

An Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG) provides several benefits to an organization, primarily that of continuous availability of mailbox databases.

To update the DAG members with new patches, update rollups or service packs, the update process should be managed to prevent all of the DAG members from being offline at the same time.

To do this you can move the active mailbox databases off a particular server so that it can be patched, and if necessary rebooted, without causing any downtime for mailbox users on that database.

This tutorial demonstrates how to update the servers in an Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Group without causing downtime. Because this process differs depending on the version of Exchange Server 2010 you’re running I’ve covered each method here.

Preparing an Exchange Server 2010 RTM DAG member for updates, or
Preparing an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 DAG member for updates
Stopping Conflicting Services
Disabling Server Monitoring
Updating the Server
Verifying the Update
Returning an Exchange Server 2010 RTM DAG member to production, or
Returning an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 DAG member to production

For this tutorial Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 is being installed.

Preparing an Exchange Server 2010 RTM DAG Member for Updates

The first step is to move active mailbox databases to another DAG member so that the server can be updated.

To see a list of mailbox databases and their current active server use the Get-MailboxDatabase cmdlet.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase

Name                           Server          Recovery        ReplicationType
----                           ------          --------        ---------------
Mailbox Database 02            EX1             False           Remote
Mailbox Database 01            EX2             False           Remote

In this example I want to apply updates to server EX1, and I can see that it currently hosts the active copy of Mailbox Database 02.

If your environment has a lot of DAG members and mailbox databases you can refine this query to only show active mailbox databases for a specific server.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | where {$_.Server -eq "EX1"}

Name                           Server          Recovery        ReplicationType
----                           ------          --------        ---------------
Mailbox Database 02            EX1             False           Remote

Move the mailbox databases using the Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase cmdlet.

[PS] C:\>Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase "Mailbox Database 02" -ActivateOnServer EX2

Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Moving mailbox database "Mailbox Database 02" from server "ex1.exchangeserverpro.local" to server
"EX2.exchangeserverpro.local".
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [?] Help (default is "Y"): y

Identity        ActiveServerAtS ActiveServerAtE Status     NumberOfLogsLost   RecoveryPoint MountStatus MountStatus
                tart            nd                                            Objective     AtMoveStart AtMoveEnd
--------        --------------- --------------- ------     ----------------   ------------- ----------- -----------
Mailbox Data... ex1             ex2             Succeeded  0                  14/09/2010... Mounted     Mounted

All of the mailbox databases are now active on server EX2.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase

Name                           Server          Recovery        ReplicationType
----                           ------          --------        ---------------
Mailbox Database 02            EX2             False           Remote
Mailbox Database 01            EX2             False           Remote

As another example, if there were multiple databases active on a server you can move all of them with a single command.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | where {$_.Server -eq "EX1"} | Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase -ActivateOnServer EX2 -Confirm:$false

Identity        ActiveServerAtS ActiveServerAtE Status     NumberOfLogsLost   RecoveryPoint MountStatus MountStatus
                tart            nd                                            Objective     AtMoveStart AtMoveEnd
--------        --------------- --------------- ------     ----------------   ------------- ----------- -----------
Mailbox Data... ex1             ex2             Succeeded  0                  14/09/2010... Mounted     Mounted
Mailbox Data... ex1             ex2             Succeeded  0                  14/09/2010... Mounted     Mountede

Note the use of -Confirm:$false to avoid having to confirm each move. Use this option with caution.

After moving all active mailbox databases off the server that you are planning to update, the final preparation step is to block activation on the server to prevent it from automatically reactiving a database copy while you are performing maintenance.

First check the current activation policy on the server using Get-MailboxServer.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxServer EX1 | fl Name,DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy

Name                             : EX1
DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy : Unrestricted

Next, use Set-MailboxServer to block activation.

[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxServer EX1 -DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy Blocked

Preparing an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 DAG Member for Updates

For Exchange 2010 with Service Pack 1 the process is a little easier thanks to some scripts provided by Microsoft. Open the Exchange Management Shell and navigate to the scripts folder on the Exchange server.

cd $exscripts

Next run the StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 PowerShell script.

.\StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 -serverName ho-ex2010-mb1

The script will automatically do the following tasks for you:

Calls Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy on the database copies.
Pauses the node in Failover Clustering so that it can not become the Primary Active Manager.
Suspends database activation on each mailbox database.
Sets the DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy to Blocked on the server.
Moves databases and cluster group off of the designated server.

Stopping Conflicting Services

If the mailbox server is running any Exchange-integrated services, such as antivirus software, these should be disabled prior to the update.

For example to disable Forefront use the FSUtility command.

C:\> fsutility /disable

Another example is Data Protection Manager 2010, which may be configured to perform Copy backups from passive database copies at frequent intervals through the day. Make sure these jobs are paused to prevent errors or conflicts from occuring.

Disabling Server Monitoring

If the DAG members are monitored using SCOM or a similar system then this should also be disabled or placed into maintenance mode.

This will prevent alarms from being raised as well as prevent any automatic remediation actions from being run by the monitoring agent that may cause the server updates to fail.

Updating the Server

Install the update following the deployment notes for that update type.

Update rollups come in the form of a .MSP file (Windows Installer Patch) that is applied to the server. Simply double-click the file or launch it from a command line window.

Service packs are a complete reissue of the Exchange Server setup files and are installed by running setup in upgrade mode, which can be run in either graphical or command line mode.

C:\> setup /m:upgrade

Both update rollups and service packs can take some time to install, so plan a large window of time for these updates.

Verifying the Update

After the update has completed, and if necessary the server rebooted, you should check the server’s health before placing it back into production in the CAS array.

Event Logs – look for error or warning events that have started since the update was applied.

Setup Logs – service packs write a complete setup log file to C:\ExchangeSetupLogs

Services – check the Exchange services are running (or at least those that you expect to be running, some such as IMAP and POP will be stopped if you have not explicitly enabled them)

[PS] C:\>Get-Service *exchange*

Status   Name               DisplayName
------   ----               -----------
Running  MSExchangeADTop... Microsoft Exchange Active Directory...
Running  MSExchangeIS       Microsoft Exchange Information Store
Running  MSExchangeMailb... Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Assistants
Running  MSExchangeMailS... Microsoft Exchange Mail Submission
Stopped  MSExchangeMonit... Microsoft Exchange Monitoring
Running  MSExchangeRepl     Microsoft Exchange Replication
Running  MSExchangeRPC      Microsoft Exchange RPC Client Access
Running  MSExchangeSA       Microsoft Exchange System Attendant
Running  MSExchangeSearch   Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer
Running  MSExchangeServi... Microsoft Exchange Service Host
Running  MSExchangeThrot... Microsoft Exchange Throttling
Running  MSExchangeTrans... Microsoft Exchange Transport Log Se...
Running  msftesql-Exchange  Microsoft Search  (Exchange)
Running  vmickvpexchange    Hyper-V Data Exchange Service
Stopped  wsbexchange        Microsoft Exchange Server Extension...

Returning an Exchange Server 2010 RTM DAG Member to Production

If the update was successful and the server healthy then it can be placed back into production.

Re-enable services such as Forefront Protection for Exchange.

C:\> fsutility /enable

Re-enable monitoring agents and alarms for the server.

Set the server’s activation policy back to its original setting.

[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxServer EX1 -DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy Unrestricted

At this stage you might move all of the active mailbox databases to the server that was just updated so that you can update the other servers in the DAG. After all of the DAG members have been updated it is likely that mailbox databases will be active on servers that are not their first activation preference.

For Exchange Server 2010 RTM you can view the activation preferences for each database, and manually move active mailbox databases to their preferred server.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | fl name,activationpreference

Name                 : Mailbox Database 02
ActivationPreference : {[EX2, 1], [EX1, 2]}

Name                 : Mailbox Database 01
ActivationPreference : {[EX1, 1], [EX2, 2]}

[PS] C:\>Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase "Mailbox Database 01" -ActivateOnServer EX1

Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Moving mailbox database "Mailbox Database 01" from server "EX2.exchangeserverpro.local" to server
"ex1.exchangeserverpro.local".
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [?] Help (default is "Y"): y

Identity        ActiveServerAtS ActiveServerAtE Status     NumberOfLogsLost   RecoveryPoint MountStatus MountStatus
                tart            nd                                            Objective     AtMoveStart AtMoveEnd
--------        --------------- --------------- ------     ----------------   ------------- ----------- -----------
Mailbox Data... ex2             ex1             Succeeded  0                  14/09/2010... Mounted     Mounted

Returning an Exchange Server 2010 RTM DAG Member to Production

Once again Exchange 2010 with Service Pack 1 makes this task easier thanks to a script provided by Microsoft. Open the Exchange Management Shell and navigate to the scripts folder on the Exchange server.

cd $exscripts

Next run the StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1 PowerShell script.

.\StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1 -serverName ho-ex2010-mb1

The script will automatically reverse each of the actions made by StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 except that it will not move active mailbox databases back to the server.

To move the active mailbox databases you can continue to go to each mailbox server in the DAG and run StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 and perform your updates. When all of the servers have been updated you can rebalance the DAG automatically using a script from Microsoft which is demonstrated here.

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How to Set Up an Automated Exchange 2010 Database Backup Alert Email

Paul Cunningham — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:50:21 +0000

In recent articles I’ve taken you step by step through some techniques for sending email from PowerShell scripts. If you haven’t read those articles yet you can find them here:

I also shared with you a script that can be used to check Exchange Server 2010 database backups and alert you to any that have not had a recent backup.

Now it’s time to bring all of that information together and demonstrate how you can set up an automated database backup alert email for your Exchange Server 2010 environment.

The two components of this are:

The PowerShell script itself (we’ll use the one mentioned earlier but with some modifications to email-enable it)
Task Scheduler for automatically running the script each day

Script for Exchange Server 2010 Database Backup Email Alerts

To email-enable the script I’ve made just a few modifications. The original script used this conditional logic to display the report in the PowerShell window.

#If alert flag is true output the report
if ($alertflag -eq $true )
{
	Write-Host "The following databases have not been backed up in" $threshold "hours."
	$alerts | ft -AutoSize
}
else
{
	Write-Host "No backup alerts required."
}

To change this to send an email alert we can use this code instead:

#If alert flag is true send the email alert
if ($alertflag -eq $true )
{
	#HTML styles for nice formatting
        $style = ""

        #SMTP options for sending the report email
	$smtpServer = "ho-ex2010-caht1.exchangeserverpro.net"
	$smtpFrom = "reports@exchangeserverpro.net"
	$smtpTo = "administrator@exchangeserverpro.net"
	$messageSubject = "Exchange Backup Alerts"

        $intro = "The following databases have not been backed up in " + $threshold + " hours.

"
	$report = $alerts | ConvertTo-Html -Fragment

	#Get ready to send email message
	$message = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage $smtpfrom, $smtpto
	$message.Subject = $messageSubject
	$message.IsBodyHTML = $true
	$message.Body = ConvertTo-Html -Body "$intro $report" -Head $style

	#Send email message
	$smtp = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
	$smtp.Send($message)

}

If any parts of that don’t make sense just refer to the previous tutorials on sending email with PowerShell.

Here is the full script code we’ll be using for this:

#
#.SYNOPSIS
#Checks the backup timestamps for the servers
#and alerts if a database hasn't been backed up
#in the last 48 hours
#
#.EXAMPLE
#.\Check-DatabaseBackups.ps1
#

#...................................
# Variables
#...................................

#Suppress errors
$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"
$WarningPreference = "SilentlyContinue"

#Load the Exchange 2010 snap-in
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.E2010

#Array to hold alert objects
$alerts = @()

#Set alert threshold for hours since last successful backup
$day = (Get-Date).DayOfWeek
if ($day -eq "Monday")
{
	[int]$threshold = 72
}
else
{
	[int]$threshold = 48
}

#Current time stamp to compare with databases
$now = [DateTime]::Now

#...................................
# Functions
#...................................

#...................................
# Script
#...................................

#Get all Mailbox and Public Folder databases
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Gray "Getting database list..."
$dbs = Get-MailboxDatabase -Status
$dbs = $dbs += Get-PublicFolderDatabase -Status

#Check each database for most recent backup
foreach ($db in $dbs)
{
	Write-Host -ForegroundColor Gray "Checking" $db.name"..."

	$lastbackup = @{}
	$ago = @()
	[bool]$alertflag = $false

	if ( $db.LastFullBackup -eq $null -and $db.LastIncrementalBackup -eq $nul)
	{
		$lastbackup.time = "Never"
		$lastbackup.type = "Never"
		[string]$ago = "Never"
	}
	elseif ( $db.LastFullBackup -lt $db.LastIncrementalBackup )
	{
		$lastbackup.time = $db.LastIncrementalBackup
		$lastbackup.type = "Incremental"
		[int]$ago = ($now - $lastbackup.time).TotalHours
		$ago = "{0:N0}" -f $ago
	}
	elseif ( $db.LastIncrementalBackup -lt $db.LastFullBackup )
	{
		$lastbackup.time = $db.LastFullBackup
		$lastbackup.type = "Full"
		[int]$ago = ($now - $lastbackup.time).TotalHours
		$ago = "{0:N0}" -f $ago
	}

	if ($db.IsMailboxDatabase -eq $true) {$dbtype = "Mailbox"}
	if ($db.IsPublicFolderDatabase -eq $true) {$dbtype = "Public Folder"}

	#If backup time stamp older than threshold set alert flag and create object for alerting
	if ( $ago -gt $threshold -or $ago -eq "Never")
	{
		$alertflag = $true
		$dbObj = New-Object PSObject
		if ( $dbtype -eq "Public Folder")
		{
			$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Server/DAG" -Value $db.Server
		}
		else
		{
			$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Server/DAG" -Value $db.MasterServerOrAvailabilityGroup
		}
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Database" -Value $db.name
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Database Type" -Value $dbtype
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Last Backup Type" -Value $lastbackup.type
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Hrs Ago" -Value $ago
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Time Stamp" -Value $lastbackup.time
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Currently Running" -Value $db.backupinprogress
		$alerts = $alerts += $dbObj
	}
}

#If alert flag is true send the email alert
if ($alertflag -eq $true )
{
	#HTML styles for nice formatting
        $style = ""

        #SMTP options for sending the report email
	$smtpServer = "ho-ex2010-caht1.exchangeserverpro.net"
	$smtpFrom = "reports@exchangeserverpro.net"
	$smtpTo = "administrator@exchangeserverpro.net"
	$messageSubject = "Exchange Backup Alerts"

        $intro = "The following databases have not been backed up in " + $threshold + " hours.

"
	$report = $alerts | ConvertTo-Html -Fragment

	#Get ready to send email message
	$message = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage $smtpfrom, $smtpto
	$message.Subject = $messageSubject
	$message.IsBodyHTML = $true
	$message.Body = ConvertTo-Html -Body "$intro $report" -Head $style

	#Send email message
	$smtp = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
	$smtp.Send($message)

}

If you’re using this script in your environment you will need to change the SMTP options to suit.

Save the script as Get-DailyBackupAlerts.ps1 in a folder called C:\Scripts on the server where you would like it to run each day. Note that the script depends on the Exchange Server 2010 management tools, so they will also need to be installed.

Using Task Scheduler to Run PowerShell Scripts

Now we need to configure the scheduled task in Task Scheduler. On a Windows Server 2008 server you’ll find this in the Administrative Tools. After you’ve launched Task Scheduler click on Create Task.

Give the task a meaningful name, set it to Run whether user is logged on or not, and also if necessary change the user account that it will run as (you may wish to create a special Exchange administrative account with a strong password for running these types of scripts).

On the Triggers tab click new and add a Weekly trigger for each of your normal business days that you want the script to run (eg Monday – Friday). Set the Start time to suit your normal backups finishing time and your own work schedule.

On the Actions tab click New and add an action of Start a program. Configure the program of powershell.exe and the arguments -command “c:\scripts\get-dailybackupalerts.ps1″

Click OK to finish creating the new task. You will be prompted to enter the credentials for the account that you configured the task to run as.

Now you can test the scheduled task by right-clicking on it in the Task Scheduler Library and choosing Run.

Assuming you have some databases that have not backed up recently you should receive an alert email shortly after running the scheduled task.

Note: if your backups are all up to date you can test the script by changing the $threshold variable to something very low such as 1.

Get more Exchange Server tips at ExchangeServerPro.com

Exchange 2010: How to Grant Send As Permissions for a Distribution Group

Paul Cunningham — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:37:50 +0000

In a recent article I demonstrated how to grant send on behalf permissions for a distribution group in Exchange 2010.

In this article I’ll show you how to grand send as permissions for distribution groups in Exchange 2010. If you’re not sure what the difference is between “send as” and “send on behalf” it is as simple as this:

“Send on behalf” is when the email message has a From address of “Person A on behalf of Person B”. This is fairly common with executives and their assistants who send things like meeting invitations on the exec’s behalf.
“Send as” is when the message has a From address of Person B with no indication that it was actually sent by Person A. In other words this is more like impersonation, whereas “send on behalf” is more like delegation.

So let’s take a look at this scenario. Here we have Alannah Shaw, a member of the Payroll department, sending an email to Alan Reid and attempting to send as “Payroll Team”, which is a distribution group.

The email is not delivered because Alannah does not have permissions to send as the Payroll Team group.

Fortunately configuring “send as” permissions is not difficult at all. There are two ways to grant the permissions.

Grant send as permissions to a mailbox user (eg, grant Alannah Shaw permission to send as “Payroll Team”)
Grand send as permissions to a universal security group (eg grant “Payroll Team Leaders” permission to send as “Payroll Team”)

You can grant the permissions by using Active Directory Users & Computers. Simply open the properties of the group, switch to the Security tab, add the mailbox user or group, and then tick the Send As box and apply the change.

After making this change you may notice that it does not take effect for up to 2 hours. This is due to caching on the Exchange servers. Though you can speed up the change by restarting the Information Store that is obviously not going to be practical in most production environments, so you’ll often find that you just need to wait.

Once the change has taken effect the user can send as the distribution group.

Get more Exchange Server tips at ExchangeServerPro.com

PowerShell Script: Check Exchange 2010 Database Backups

Paul Cunningham — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:23:58 +0000

In almost any Exchange Server 2010 environment there will be a good reason for adding some additional monitoring of backups.

Perhaps the environment is large enough that the backups are managed by a separate team to the Exchange administrators, and so the Exchange admins just want to keep an eye on their database backups. Or even in a smaller environment the administrators may just want to be sure that their backup software isn’t reporting successful backups when in fact they may be failing.

In this post I will demonstrate a PowerShell script that you can run in an Exchange Server 2010 environment to report on any databases that have not successfully backed up in the last 48 hours. Let’s take a look at how this works.

Firstly, backup time stamps are retrievable using the Get-MailboxDatabase cmdlet for mailbox databases, or Get-PublicFolderDatabase for public folder databases. Here is an example:

PS C:\Scripts> Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | ft name,last* -auto

Name     LastFullBackup       LastIncrementalBackup LastDifferentialBackup LastCopyBackup
----     --------------       --------------------- ---------------------- --------------
MB-HO-01 11/6/2011 1:40:19 PM
MB-HO-02
MB-HO-03
MB-BR-01

You can see that one of the databases above has been backed up, but the others have not. In a script that checks both mailbox and public folder databases we could use this code to generate the report.

$dbs = Get-MailboxDatabase -Status
$dbs = $dbs += Get-PublicFolderDatabase -Status
$dbs | ft name,last*

Now we can see both the mailbox and the public folder databases.

Name                    LastFullBackup          LastIncrementalBackup   LastDifferentialBackup  LastCopyBackup
----                    --------------          ---------------------   ----------------------  --------------
MB-HO-01                11/6/2011 1:40:19 PM
MB-HO-02
MB-HO-03
MB-BR-01
PF-HO-01                11/6/2011 1:40:20 PM
PF-BR-01

It would be a simple matter to run that command and read the output every single day, but that would not be the most efficient way of checking database backups. There could be dozens or even hundreds of databases in that output, and we’d have to mentally perform the calculations to determine whether the backup time stamp is within the last 48 hours or not.

Instead we want to only to see databases that have not been backed up within the 48 hour threshold. To do this we can use some date maths. Because we’ve already retrieved the database objects into a collection called $dbs we can loop through them to perform the date calculations like this. Note that in this example only Full and Incremental backups are being considered.

foreach ($db in $dbs)
{
	Write-Host -ForegroundColor Gray "Checking" $db.name"..."

	$lastbackup = @{}
	$ago = @()
	[bool]$alertflag = $false

	if ( $db.LastFullBackup -eq $nul -and $db.LastIncrementalBackup -eq $nul)
	{
		$lastbackup.time = "Never"
		$lastbackup.type = "Never"
		[string]$ago = "Never"
	}
	elseif ( $db.LastFullBackup -lt $db.LastIncrementalBackup )
	{
		$lastbackup.time = $db.LastIncrementalBackup
		$lastbackup.type = "Incremental"
		[int]$ago = ($now - $lastbackup.time).TotalHours
		$ago = "{0:N0}" -f $ago
	}
	elseif ( $db.LastIncrementalBackup -lt $db.LastFullBackup )
	{
		$lastbackup.time = $db.LastFullBackup
		$lastbackup.type = "Full"
		[int]$ago = ($now - $lastbackup.time).TotalHours
		$ago = "{0:N0}" -f $ago
	}
}

One of three possible scenarios will be true:

If the database has not been backed up at all then both Full and Incremental time stamps will be nul, so all of the resulting values are set to “Never”
If the most recent backup was an Incremental then the type is set to “Incremental” and the $ago variable is set to the number of hours that has passed since that Incremental backup finished
If the most recent backup was a Full then the type is set to “Full” and the $ago variable is set to the number of hours that has passed since that Full backup finished

Now, because we’re only interested in databases that haven’t backed up in the last 48 hours (or have never been backed up at all) we can compare the $ago variable to our threshold of 48 hours, and if an alert needs to be raised set the alert flag to True and create an object with all of the desired information for our report.

if ( $ago -gt $threshold -or $ago -eq "Never")
	{
		$alertflag = $true
		$dbObj = New-Object PSObject
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Server/DAG" -Value $db.MasterServerOrAvailabilityGroup
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Database" -Value $db.name
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Database Type" -Value $dbtype
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Last Backup Type" -Value $lastbackup.type
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Hrs Ago" -Value $ago
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Time Stamp" -Value $lastbackup.time
		$alerts = $alerts += $dbObj
	}

That code actually goes inside the ForEach loop for the $dbs collection.

The final piece of the script is the report itself. We output it based on whether the alert flag is set to True or False.

if ($alertflag = $true )
{
	Write-Host "The following databases have not been backed up in" $threshold "hours."
	$alerts | ft -AutoSize
}
else
{
	Write-Host "No backup alerts required."
}

This example outputs the report to the PowerShell window but you could write your PowerShell script to send an email report instead if you wish.

Here is an example report:

PS C:\Scripts> .\Check-DatabaseBackups.ps1
Getting database list...
Checking MB-HO-01 ...
Checking MB-HO-02 ...
Checking MB-HO-03 ...
Checking MB-BR-01 ...
Checking PF-HO-01 ...
Checking PF-BR-01 ...
The following databases have not been backed up in 48 hours.

Server/DAG     Database Database Type Last Backup Type Hrs Ago Time Stamp
----------     -------- ------------- ---------------- ------- ----------
dag-headoffice MB-HO-02 Mailbox       Never            Never   Never
dag-headoffice MB-HO-03 Mailbox       Never            Never   Never
BR-EX2010-MB   MB-BR-01 Mailbox       Never            Never   Never
BR-EX2010-MB   PF-BR-01 Public Folder Never            Never   Never

And here is the complete script.

#
#.SYNOPSIS
#Checks the backup timestamps for the servers
#and alerts if a database hasn't been backed up
#in the last 48 hours
#
#.EXAMPLE
#.\Check-DatabaseBackups.ps1
#

#...................................
# Variables
#...................................

$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"
$WarningPreference = "SilentlyContinue"

$alerts = @()
[int]$threshold = 48

$now = [DateTime]::Now

#...................................
# Script
#...................................

#Get all Mailbox and Public Folder databases
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Gray "Getting database list..."
$dbs = Get-MailboxDatabase -Status
$dbs = $dbs += Get-PublicFolderDatabase -Status

#Check each database for most recent backup
foreach ($db in $dbs)
{
	Write-Host -ForegroundColor Gray "Checking" $db.name"..."

	$lastbackup = @{}
	$ago = @()
	[bool]$alertflag = $false

	if ( $db.LastFullBackup -eq $null -and $db.LastIncrementalBackup -eq $nul)
	{
		$lastbackup.time = "Never"
		$lastbackup.type = "Never"
		[string]$ago = "Never"
	}
	elseif ( $db.LastFullBackup -lt $db.LastIncrementalBackup )
	{
		$lastbackup.time = $db.LastIncrementalBackup
		$lastbackup.type = "Incremental"
		[int]$ago = ($now - $lastbackup.time).TotalHours
		$ago = "{0:N0}" -f $ago
	}
	elseif ( $db.LastIncrementalBackup -lt $db.LastFullBackup )
	{
		$lastbackup.time = $db.LastFullBackup
		$lastbackup.type = "Full"
		[int]$ago = ($now - $lastbackup.time).TotalHours
		$ago = "{0:N0}" -f $ago
	}

	if ($db.IsMailboxDatabase -eq $true) {$dbtype = "Mailbox"}
	if ($db.IsPublicFolderDatabase -eq $true) {$dbtype = "Public Folder"}

	#If backup time stamp older than threshold set alert flag and create object for alerting
	if ( $ago -gt $threshold -or $ago -eq "Never")
	{
		$alertflag = $true
		$dbObj = New-Object PSObject
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Server/DAG" -Value $db.MasterServerOrAvailabilityGroup
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Database" -Value $db.name
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Database Type" -Value $dbtype
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Last Backup Type" -Value $lastbackup.type
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Hrs Ago" -Value $ago
		$dbObj | Add-Member NoteProperty -Name "Time Stamp" -Value $lastbackup.time
		$alerts = $alerts += $dbObj
	}
}

#If alert flag is true output the report
if ($alertflag = $true )
{
	Write-Host "The following databases have not been backed up in" $threshold "hours."
	$alerts | ft -AutoSize
}
else
{
	Write-Host "No backup alerts required."
}

Get more Exchange Server tips at ExchangeServerPro.com

How to Send SMTP Email Using PowerShell (Part 4)

Paul Cunningham — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:02:13 +0000

In the last part of this article series on sending email using PowerShell I demonstrated how to create HTML emails from PowerShell scripts.

Part 1 – How to Send SMTP Email Using PowerShell
Part 2 - How to Add a Message Body to Emails Sent from Scripts
Part 3 - How to Add a HTML Message Body to Emails Sent from Scripts
Part 4 - How to Create Formatted HTML Output from Scripts

One of the downsides to creating HTML output from PowerShell scripts is that the formatting is not very nice. The default formatting results in messages that look something like this.

The HTML for that email message was created by piping the output from one command into the ConvertTo-HTML cmdlet. Fortunately ConvertTo-HTML has the -Head parameter that can be used to add style information to the HTML that it generates.

For example, by adding this line to the script used in the last article we can change the font to something a little nicer to look at.

$style = "< style>BODY{font:arial 10pt;}< /style>"

Note: extra spaces have been added to the style tags so that WordPress does not remove them.

Then modify the ConvertTo-HTML cmdlet to add the -Head parameter.

$message.Body = Get-ExchangeServer | Select-Object Name,ServerRole | ConvertTo-Html -Head $style

This time when the script is run the email looks like this instead.

That is a little better, but we can do a lot more. How about we add some more styles to the table and really make it look nice.

$style = "< style>BODY{font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;}"
$style = $style + "TABLE{border: 1px solid black; border-collapse: collapse;}"
$style = $style + "TH{border: 1px solid black; background: #dddddd; padding: 5px; }"
$style = $style + "TD{border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px; }"
$style = $style + "< /style>"

Again note that extra spaces were added to the style tags above to preserve them in WordPress.

Now the script produces an email that looks like this.

Although this requires you to know a little bit about how HTML styles work, it is a pretty easy topic to learn and once you get a few working styles in your scripting tool kit you can just use them over and over again.

Get more Exchange Server tips at ExchangeServerPro.com

How to Send SMTP Email Using PowerShell (Part 3)

Paul Cunningham — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:19:29 +0000

In the last article in this series I showed you how to add message body content to emails sent from PowerShell scripts.

Part 1 – How to Send SMTP Email Using PowerShell
Part 2 - How to Add a Message Body to Emails Sent from Scripts
Part 3 - How to Add a HTML Message Body to Emails Sent from Scripts
Part 4 - How to Create Formatted HTML Output from Scripts

In this article we’ll take it a step further by adding a HTML message body to an email.

For this to work we’ll be using an System.Net.Mail.MailMessage .NET object. This is basically a message object that can be sent via the SmtpClient .NET object that we used in the previous articles. The benefit of using this object in a script is that it can be used to create HTML email messages.

To create the script we can start with similar variables to last time.

$smtpServer = "ho-ex2010-caht1.exchangeserverpro.net"
$smtpFrom = "reports@exchangeserverpro.net"
$smtpTo = "administrator@exchangeserverpro.net"
$messageSubject = "List of Exchange Servers"

Next we create the new MailMessage object using the variables above as the To and From addresses, and then set the message subject as well.

$message = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage $smtpfrom, $smtpto
$message.Subject = $messageSubject

Now comes the important bit, setting the message body to be HTML.

$message.IsBodyHTML = $true

Now all we need is some HTML content to go into the message body. As an example let’s just get a list of Exchange servers and their server roles.

$message.Body = Get-ExchangeServer | Select-Object Name,ServerRole | ConvertTo-Html

All I needed to do above is run Get-ExchangeServer, pipe the output into a Select-Object command to grab just the server name and roles, and then pipe that into the ConvertTo-Html command.

The final step is to create the SmtpClient object and send the mail message.

$smtp = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
$smtp.Send($message)

The result is an email that looks similar to this.

Here is the complete example script.

$smtpServer = "ho-ex2010-caht1.exchangeserverpro.net"
$smtpFrom = "reports@exchangeserverpro.net"
$smtpTo = "administrator@exchangeserverpro.net"
$messageSubject = "List of Exchange Servers"

$message = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage $smtpfrom, $smtpto
$message.Subject = $messageSubject
$message.IsBodyHTML = $true

$message.Body = Get-ExchangeServer | Select-Object Name,ServerRole | ConvertTo-Html

$smtp = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
$smtp.Send($message)

As you can see this is a pretty simple technique that can be used to easily create basic HTML email messages.

Get more Exchange Server tips at ExchangeServerPro.com

Using Test-ServiceHealth for Exchange Server Health Checks

Paul Cunningham — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:04:32 +0000

Exchange Server 2010 (and 2007 for that matter) ships with a useful PowerShell cmdlet called Test-ServiceHealth.

As the name suggests, Test-ServiceHealth checks the state of the services that should be running on the Exchange server. One of the best things about this cmdlet is that it checks the services depending on the Exchange server roles that are installed.

So for example, for a Hub Transport server only those services relating to the Hub Transport role will be checked. While for a “typical” Exchange 2010 server the services for the Hub Transport, Client Access, and Mailbox server roles will be checked.

Here is an example of the Test-ServiceHealth results.

[PS] C:\>Test-ServiceHealth br-ex2010-mb

Role                    : Mailbox Server Role
RequiredServicesRunning : True
ServicesRunning         : {IISAdmin, MSExchangeADTopology, MSExchangeIS, MSExchangeMailboxAssistants, MSExchangeMailSub
                          mission, MSExchangeRepl, MSExchangeRPC, MSExchangeSA, MSExchangeSearch, MSExchangeServiceHost
                          , MSExchangeThrottling, MSExchangeTransportLogSearch, W3Svc, WinRM}
ServicesNotRunning      : {}

Role                    : Client Access Server Role
RequiredServicesRunning : True
ServicesRunning         : {IISAdmin, MSExchangeAB, MSExchangeADTopology, MSExchangeFBA, MSExchangeFDS, MSExchangeMailbo
                          xReplication, MSExchangeProtectedServiceHost, MSExchangeRPC, MSExchangeServiceHost, W3Svc, Wi
                          nRM}
ServicesNotRunning      : {}

Role                    : Hub Transport Server Role
RequiredServicesRunning : True
ServicesRunning         : {IISAdmin, MSExchangeADTopology, MSExchangeEdgeSync, MSExchangeServiceHost, MSExchangeTranspo
                          rt, MSExchangeTransportLogSearch, W3Svc, WinRM}
ServicesNotRunning      : {}

As you can see that is a lot of useful information. But whenever possible I like to see just the minimum relevant information for my servers. In the case of Test-ServiceHealth the RequiredServicesRunning result is the thing I am most interested in.

So in this case I could run the following command to see just that information:

[PS] C:\>Test-ServiceHealth br-ex2010-mb | ft Role,RequiredServicesRunning -auto

Role                      RequiredServicesRunning
----                      -----------------------
Mailbox Server Role                          True
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True

Much better.

Now suppose I wanted to run that for all of my Exchange servers. I could do that with the following command:

[PS] C:\>Get-ExchangeServer | Test-ServiceHealth | ft Role,RequiredServicesRunning -auto

Role                      RequiredServicesRunning
----                      -----------------------
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True
Mailbox Server Role                         False
Mailbox Server Role                          True
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True
Mailbox Server Role                          True
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True

Interesting, especially the one that failed the test for the Mailbox server role. But in that output I can’t tell which server failed.

Let’s try this instead:

[PS] C:\>$servers = Get-ExchangeServer
[PS] C:\>foreach ($server in $servers) {
>> Write-Host "Checking" $server.name
>> Test-ServiceHealth $server | ft Role,RequiredServicesRunning -auto
>> }
>>

Now we get output that is a little more useful, and tells me which server failed the test.

Checking HO-EX2010-CAHT1

Role                      RequiredServicesRunning
----                      -----------------------
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True

Checking HO-EX2010-CAHT2

Role                      RequiredServicesRunning
----                      -----------------------
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True

Checking HO-EX2010-MB1

Role                RequiredServicesRunning
----                -----------------------
Mailbox Server Role                   False

Checking HO-EX2010-MB2

Role                RequiredServicesRunning
----                -----------------------
Mailbox Server Role                    True

Checking BR-EX2010-CAHT

Role                      RequiredServicesRunning
----                      -----------------------
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True

Checking BR-EX2010-MB

Role                      RequiredServicesRunning
----                      -----------------------
Mailbox Server Role                          True
Client Access Server Role                    True
Hub Transport Server Role                    True

But it still isn’t quite enough, so let’s wrap this up into a handy script that will do the following:

Run Test-SystemHealth for all of the Exchange servers in the organization
Tell me which servers passed the test
Tell me which servers failed the test, and why

Here is the script code that will perform those steps.

#Get the list of Exchange servers in the organization
$servers = Get-ExchangeServer

#Loop through each server
ForEach ($server in $servers)
{
	Write-Host -ForegroundColor White "---------- Testing" $server

	#Initialize an array object for the Test-ServiceHealth results
	[array]$servicehealth = @()

	#Run Test-ServiceHealth
	$servicehealth = Test-ServiceHealth $server

	#Output the results
	ForEach($serverrole in $servicehealth)
	{
		If ($serverrole.RequiredServicesRunning -eq $true)
		{
			Write-Host $serverrole.Role -NoNewline; Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "Pass"
		}
		Else
		{
			Write-Host $serverrole.Role -nonewline; Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "Fail"
			[array]$notrunning = @()
			$notrunning = $serverrole.ServicesNotRunning
			ForEach ($svc in $notrunning)
			{
				$alertservices += $svc
			}
			Write-Host $serverrole.Role "Services not running:"
			ForEach ($al in $alertservices)
				{
					Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red `t$al
				}
		}
	}
}

The output from running the script will look something like this.

You can now see at a glance which servers have passed the test, which ones failed, and which services aren’t running for the servers that failed.

Get more Exchange Server tips at ExchangeServerPro.com

Exchange Server Pro » Tutorials

Upgrading to Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2

Upgrading Client Access Servers to Exchange 2010 SP2

Upgrading Database Availability Groups to Exchange 2010 SP2

Upgrading Management Tools to Exchange 2010 SP2

Related posts:

Using Test-Mailflow with Exchange 2003 Servers

Related posts:

How to Health Check an Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server

Related posts:

How to Install Updates on Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Groups

Preparing an Exchange Server 2010 RTM DAG Member for Updates

Preparing an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 DAG Member for Updates

Stopping Conflicting Services

Disabling Server Monitoring

Updating the Server

Verifying the Update

Returning an Exchange Server 2010 RTM DAG Member to Production

Returning an Exchange Server 2010 RTM DAG Member to Production

Related posts:

How to Set Up an Automated Exchange 2010 Database Backup Alert Email

Script for Exchange Server 2010 Database Backup Email Alerts

Using Task Scheduler to Run PowerShell Scripts

Related posts:

Exchange 2010: How to Grant Send As Permissions for a Distribution Group

Related posts:

PowerShell Script: Check Exchange 2010 Database Backups

Related posts:

How to Send SMTP Email Using PowerShell (Part 4)

Related posts:

How to Send SMTP Email Using PowerShell (Part 3)

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Using Test-ServiceHealth for Exchange Server Health Checks

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