A couple of days ago I mentioned the .NET Rocks show with Sue Mosher. If you liked that kind of show, you’ll be glad to know that RunAs Radio has similar programs, but its target audience are the IT Professionals, as opposed to the developers of .NET Rocks.

“RunAs Radio is a weekly Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals working with Microsoft products. The full range of IT topics is covered from a Microsoft-centric viewpoint.

RunAs Radio was launched on April 11, 2007 with a nod from its sister show, .NET Rocks!, which started as a weekly downloadable mp3 in August, 2002! Coincidentally, the first RunAs Radio show featured Patrick Hynds, who was also the first guest on .NET Rocks! “.

Looking at the past shows, I spotted a good collection of Exchange related programs:

• Adam Cogan is Reporting Against Exchange!
• Chris Avis fights Spam on Exchange Server 2007!
• Tony Redmond Manages Exchange with Powershell!
• Brien Posey Secures Exchange!
• David Sengupta on Exchange Email Policy Issues

Kudos to Paulo Morgado for pointing me out that site.

Microsoft Transporter Suite v08.02.0053 was released yesterday.

Brief Description
Microsoft Transporter Suite is a set of interoperability and migration tools to migrate content from Lotus Domino servers or Generic POP/IMAP servers.

Overview
Transporter Suite contains a set of tools for migrations from both Lotus Domino Servers, and generic IMAP/POP sources. For Lotus Domino the suite contains a set of tools for Directory and Free/Busy interoperability between Lotus Domino 6 or 7 and Exchange Server 2007 and Windows Server 2003 Active Directory. In addition for Lotus Domino the suite contains migration tools to migrate users, groups, personal address lists, mailboxes, personal mail archives, and applications from Lotus Domino 5, 6 or 7 to Active Directory, Exchange Server 2007, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. For generic POP/IMAP servers the suite contains a set of tools to bulk migrate mailboxes from any generic email servers that support the POP3 or IMAP4 protocol to mailboxes in Exchange Server 2007.

Please read also the Release Notes for the Transporter Suite of Tools.

Five Considerations for Choosing a Microsoft Exchange Continuity Solution is a new whitepaper sponsored by NEC (free registration required).

Overview:
Microsoft Exchange is the leading messaging and collaboration server application software that many organizations depend on for execution of critical business processes and communications. If your Exchange application stops or email and contacts data is lost, critical business operations and revenue streams could be disrupted.
Given the variety of available technologies and products with numerous features and cost differences, it can be confusing and time consuming to evaluate and select the right solution to ensure continuity, high availability (HA), or disaster recovery (DR), of the critical MS Exchange systems in your organization. This whitepaper discusses five topics you need to consider when evaluating the right solution for your business.

The Microsoft Exchange Team published on their blog, the new and updated Exchange Server content.

Here’s the highlight:

• Overview of Namespace Planning: Planning your namespaces involves examining your physical and logical network structure and choosing an organizational topology. This article presents several different topologies and provides information about how using the different topologies would affect your Exchange organization.
• How to Move a Client Access or Hub Transport Server to a Different Site: Added a step to set the Client Access server Autodiscover site scope due to Active Directory Site change.
• How to Perform a Dial Tone Recovery Using and Staying on an Alternate Server for the Dial Tone Database: Fixed incorrect example code by using Get-Mailbox instead of Get-MailboxStatistics.
• How to Seed a Standby Continuous Replication Target: Updated topic to specify that seeding with Update-StorageGroupCopy should be done on SCR target computer. Also, corrected permissions section that incorrectly referenced CCR.
• How to Upgrade a Single Copy Cluster to Exchange 2007 SP1: Removed step for starting Windows Firewall service, because that step is not needed.
• Planning for Cluster Continuous Replication: Removed old guidance to use DNS CNAME record for file share witness alias in UNC path.
• How to Configure the Node and File Share Majority Quorum: Removed old guidance to use DNS CNAME record for file share witness alias in UNC path.
• How to Configure Network Connections for Cluster Continuous Replication: Fixed incorrect configuration steps for the private network by specifying that Client for Microsoft Networks and File and Print Sharing need to be cleared.
• Applying Exchange 2007 Update Rollups to Clustered Mailbox Servers: Fixed incorrect statement, “The amount of downtime varies based on how long it takes each organization to perform the installation procedure for the entire cluster,” by stating that the true downtime is only for as long as it takes to move the CMS between nodes and have it brought online.
• How to Configure Deleted Item Retention for a Mailbox Database: Fixed incorrect example code by using -DeletedItemRetention instead of -ItemRetention.
• Understanding How Transport Rules Are Applied in an Exchange 2007 Organization: Text added to clarify rules only have access to envelope headers in encrypted messages. “Transport rules can access envelope headers contained in encrypted messages, and process messages based on predicates that inspect them. Rules with predicates that require inspection of message content, or actions that may modify content, cannot be processed.”
• Help Reference - Recipient Properties > Mailbox Settings Tab > Messaging Records Management (RTM): Removed incorrect information about pre-Outlook 2003 SP2 clients not being able to access a mailbox if Managed Folder Mailbox Policy is applied to the mailbox. Modified to state that older clients do not support Managed Custom Folders (similar text as seen in dialog box when a policy is being applied).

According to their own words “.NET Rocks! is a weekly talk show for anyone interested in programming on the Microsoft .NET platform. The shows range from introductory information to hardcore geekiness“.

The show #287, Sue Mosher On Outlook, recorded on November 6, 2007 is now available to download from the Microsoft Download Center.

Brief Description
Sue Discusses her work in Outlook and Exchange issues as well as the coding of Outlook and the new features of Outlook 2007.

Overview
Sue Mosher is the acclaimed author of books and articles on Microsoft Outlook and Exchange and founder of the award-winning Slipstick Systems Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center web site (http://www.slipstick.com). Her company, Turtleflock, LLC, is dedicated to helping individuals and organizations get the most out of their desktop programs.

The Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.5 was recently released and it now offers Office Communicator Server.

Overview
HMC 4.5 brings together powerful Microsoft enterprise products such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, and now gives you Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, which manages all real-time communications such as instant messaging (IM) and audio and video conferencing.
Other new features and enhancements:

• Exchange Server 2007 SP1: Web-based OABs and resource mailboxes
• Windows SharePoint Services: multi-tenant People Picker functionality
• Provisioning capabilities have been expanded: Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) cross data store integration procedures and Individual Information Worker (IIW) tenant model

For more information, read this post from the Microsoft Consulting Services infrastructure team in Ireland.

Are you using Exchange Hosted Services? If you do, you may want to check the new Exchange Hosted Services Directory Synchronization Tool 8.1.

Brief Description
The Directory Synchronization Tool securely synchronizes valid end-user proxy addresses from your Active Directory to Exchange Hosted Services.

Overview
The Directory Synchronization Tool (DST) helps you keep your on-site Active Directory® directory service and Microsoft® Exchange Server environment synchronized with your Exchange Hosted Filtering, Exchange Hosted Archive, and Exchange Hosted Continuity services .

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

• Active Directory (single-forest topology)
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 (required for the Safelist Aggregation synchronization feature)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

Instructions
For users installing the Directory Synchronization Tool for the first time:
If you are installing the Directory Synchronization Tool in your environment for the first time, use the following instructions to download and set up the tool:

1. Do one of the following:
   • For i386 environments, click EHSSyncSetup_i386.exe.
   • For 64-bit environments platforms, click EhsSyncSetup_AMD64.exe.
2. Click Run to begin the installation and configuration process. Or, click Save to save a copy of the file to your local computer.

For users have previously deployed the 6.0 version of the Directory Synchronization Tool:
If you have previously installed the 6.0 version of the Directory Synchronization Tool in your environment, you will need to upgrade your system to the new version. Use the following instructions to upgrade from Directory Synchronization Tool 6.0 to Directory Synchronization Tool 7.3:

1. Do one of the following:
   • For i386 environments, click EhsSync_i386.msi.
   • For 64-bit environments, click EhsSync_AMD64.msi.
2. Click Run to begin the installation and configuration process. Or, click Save to save a copy of the file to your local computer.

Microsoft released the June 2008 version of the standalone Exchange Server 2007 SP1 help file.

Brief Description
This download contains a standalone version of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Help.

Overview
The Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Help can help you in the day-to-day administration of Exchange. Use this information to guide you through Exchange Server 2007 SP1 features, tasks, and administration procedures.

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Release Notes also got an update.

TechEd is always a time for exciting announcements related to Microsoft technologies. Scott had promised one of these announcements for his session: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Tips & Tricks.

Well the mystery is finally over: the Windows Server Backup utility that ships with Windows 2008 will support Exchange 2007 backups.

Although streaming backups have been deprecated for Exchange Server 2007, it is still possible (and supported) to use this kind of data protection with the NTBackup utility from Windows Server 2003. Microsoft dropped Exchange streaming backup support with the release of Windows 2008, a decision that was highly contested by the IT Community in general.

So, the good news is that a new Microsoft plug-in for Windows Backup that will do Exchange VSS backups will be released this summer.

If you read my 4-part article of Continuous Backup for Exchange Server with DPM 2007, this information is for you.

While reading the DPM Product team blog, I noticed some interesting resources related with Exchange 2007:

• Protecting Exchange Server with System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 - This whitepaper has recently been revised.
• Why does DPM use the Recovery Storage Group in Exchange? - One of the more common questions that we hear from DPM customers is around the DPM dependency on the Exchange RSG, while other backup technologies do not require it.
• Protecting and Recovering E-Mail Using DPM 2007 and Exchange 2007 - In this blog post, we look at Exchange data recovery goals and why Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) is an effective solution to protect emails and mailboxes on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 (Exchange).