Month: August 2005

Microsoft Cluster Summit

By clusterhelp

Yep, this is a commercial… Rodney R. Fournier and I will be in NYC enjoying the life of teaching others all about Microsoft clustering. We will cover NLB and server clustering with labs on installing SQL and Exchange server clusters. So, if you have 4 days to spare and can get to NYC, you should sign up. See www.clusterhelp.com for more information. Check out the Schedule link to see how to sign up. Please return to your regularly scheduled newsfeeds. Update: Four days of cluster training can lead to bleeding from the ears. Several students left looking like they had … Continue reading Microsoft Cluster Summit

Exchange Q&A with David Elfassy

By clusterhelp

David Elfassy IM’d me yesterday and asked me to play a game of word association. I hate word associations. It seems that word associations always lead to people thinking I am insane, and I get locked in padded rooms.   Anyways, he said it would really help him with some Exchange materials that he is working on, so I agreed.   David: SAN optimization. (First word that comes to your mind) Russ: Banana (I was hungry and was reaching for a banana)   David: You *&(%$__*(&*(@#** – (wow, that was rude)  🙂 Russ: Cheerios (what else do you say to that?) … Continue reading Exchange Q&A with David Elfassy

Unicast vs. Multicast – Original Posted Feb 21, 2005

By clusterhelp

As usual, confusion motivates me to blog some more. In this case, I have blogged this because I was confused, and I am pretty sure that I have it straight now. Comments may prove me wrong. When designing, planning, testing, and implementing Network Load Balancing (NLB) Clustering, a choice has to be made regarding unicast vs. multicast. There are a few differences, but the main difference is in the way MAC addresses are implemented. Unicast – Each NLB cluster node replaces its real (hard coded) MAC address with a new one (generated by the NLB software) and each node in the … Continue reading Unicast vs. Multicast – Original Posted Feb 21, 2005

Costs of High Availability – Clustering Windows Server 2003 – Original Posted Jul 29, 2005

By clusterhelp

NOTE: For anyone looking for an actual cost, sorry, there isn’t anything in this blog entry about the actual dollars needed.   I am having a flash back today, it must be the new medication. 🙂   The costs of HA seems to be a normal topic of discussion when a company looks into clustering and has sticker shock. I can’t stress enough that clustering is not the end-all solution. Please do a quick read on my blog about my HA definition.   I was just talking to a client about how much clustering costs and how much the services … Continue reading Costs of High Availability – Clustering Windows Server 2003 – Original Posted Jul 29, 2005

Can’t Send or Receive Email – Original Posted Apr 14, 2005

By clusterhelp

One of the most common posts when it comes to Exchange is a request for help troubleshooting Internet email traffic. This really isn’t that hard as it is almost always one of a few issues that are very easy to fix. Can’t send email to the Internet – There are a few simple and easy steps to help identify the problem. It is almost always DNS or port 25 is blocked. Log onto the Exchange server Open a command prompt (no, it is not a DOS prompt) and type nslookup and press enter. You will then connect to a DNS … Continue reading Can’t Send or Receive Email – Original Posted Apr 14, 2005

Clustering is not the solution all the time – Original Posted Feb 8, 2005

By clusterhelp

Everyone repeat after me, “I will not waste money trying to cluster every freaking service offered by Microsoft servers.” I just feel the need to scream this out loud today. That there are often simpler and easier ways to provide redundancy for some services than using Microsoft server clusters. A couple of quick examples (please write these down) include: Domain Controllers (and Global Catalog servers, too) – It is simple. Install more than one. If one goes down, you still have more. Yes, users can log into a different DC. Yes, users can even log into a different DC in a … Continue reading Clustering is not the solution all the time – Original Posted Feb 8, 2005

Exchange Cluster – Is Active/Active worth it? – Original Posted Feb 5, 2005

By clusterhelp

This is kind of a regurgitation of a couple of threads on the microsoft.public.exchange.clustering newsgroup. In the threads, there are questions regarding the whole Active/Active issue. Several people, including a couple of good friends and a couple of top-notch Microsofties pointed out the evils of Active/Active. To be clear, Microsoft supports A/A for Exchange but does not recommend it. Best practices are developed based on the experiences of Microsoft’s internal usage (often referred to as eating their own dog food), the early deployment programs, and through trouble reports and the experiences of many customers as reported and tracked though PSS. Over … Continue reading Exchange Cluster – Is Active/Active worth it? – Original Posted Feb 5, 2005

OK, now I am ready to start fresh

By clusterhelp

I finally decided that MSN Spaces was too structured for me, and it has has serious performance problems for me. So, I just spend the last 30+ minutes copying all of my old posts from MSN Spaces to here. OK, no, I didn’t copy them all. I left some of the personal ones, like my cigar ones, on the old blog and did not bring them here. I think, for the near future, I will maintain both blogs, but will keep my personal bits of stuff over on MSN and try to keep this blog focused on professional stuff only.

E-mail Reputation Score – Original Posted Aug 3, 2005

By clusterhelp

From the MS Exchange Blog post by Chris Meirick…   You can send email to reputation@ironport.com and receive a reputation score that evaluates the possibility that your email is spam. I highly recommend that you read Chris’ blog entry for more information about Ironport and his evaluation of the product.   Based on his evaluation, I have to say that Ironport looks like a good product and it should be strongly considered for email filtering.

Exchange Server 2003 /3GB and /USERVA=3030 – Original Posted Jul 13, 2005

By clusterhelp

One more time…   I am sure it has been posted before, but it doesn’t seem to be getting out there to everyone. Hopefully this will hit at least one person that hasn’t read it.   There are many documents out there that say if your Exchange Server 2003 server has 1 GB of RAM or more, you should edit your boot.ini to include the /3GB and /USERVA=3030 switches in the boot configuration. What seems to get missed is that you should only do this if the Exchange server is a: Mailbox Server Public Folder Server Connector Bridgehead (MTA, x.400, … Continue reading Exchange Server 2003 /3GB and /USERVA=3030 – Original Posted Jul 13, 2005