Outlook Out of Office Replies not working

If you are running Exchange 2003 and you have applied SP2 then your Out Of Office replies may not be sent.  This is actually a hard problem to detect because the Out of Office replies work for internal users but not for external email senders.  So an external user would have to actual inform you that they did not receive the Out of Office autoreply which is somewhat of a Catch 22 since they probably don’t know you are gone. 

The service pack changed some of the settings to make it ‘more secure’.  To enable Out of Office replies for external users go to the Exchange System Manager >> Global Settings >> Internet Message Formats >> Default (or if you renamed this), right click and select properties.  Go to the Advanced tab of the properties page and check ‘Allow out of office responses’.  That should do it.

Check Your Internet Speed

Test your actual internet speed at www.speedtest.net.  The site allows you to test your actual internet speed you are receiving from your ISP.  The test is done through an easy to use graphical interface and you get ping, upload and download speeds.  So you can see if you are actually getting what you are paying for from your ISP.  I have also used the test to troubleshoot network problems – network traffic problems can be hard to diagnose and this test can eliminate many possiblities.

Daylight Saving Time change in 2007

Daylight Saving Time will occur on different dates starting in 2007.  This may not seem like a big deal but it will affect alot of electronic devices that keep time.  If you just look around your house most electronics have a clock and alot of them adjust the time automatically for daylight saving.  Furthermore and more to the point of this article are the effects this will have on computer systems.   The most concerning issue for most people will be the impact on their electronic calendars.  A typical business solution is to have an Exchange server with clients connecting with Outlook and some users syncing to pdas.  In order to prepare for this change all of these systems need to be updated or everything during the shifted time change dates will be off by one hour.  Microsoft has prepared for this and is working on updates to resolve the issue.  However you do need to actually apply the updates to avoid any problems.  See link below for a complete description from Microsoft.

In August of 2005 the United States Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which changes the dates of both the start and end of daylight saving time (DST). When this law goes into effect in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November) than what had traditionally occurred.

The change in DST will have an affect on many automated and technology reliant products. Individual consumers, small to medium size businesses, and large enterprises may be affected by the new change in time. Computer-system related issues include, for example:

•	Calendar / scheduling applications
•	Date / time calculations (current and historical)
•	Transaction logging (UTC vs. Local Time)
•	Tariff billing applications

In many cases, making the necessary changes to accommodate the new DST legislation will be a relatively minor task. Users may need to manually adjust the time on their devices when the change occurs.

In other cases, more substantial efforts may be required. In some cases, systems and applications may need to be updated directly, while in others, the application may simply inherit or “read” the date and time information from the underlying system that it resides on so the changes need only be made to that underlying system. Given the broad range of technology in use today-and the integration of systems between customers, vendors, and partners-business and IT managers should determine what actions should be taken to mitigate the affects of DST 2007 on their organizations.

Complete Article here

Small Business Server 2003 R2 Release

Microsoft recently released the next revision for the SBS product.  Despite the mixup with the release causing delays, the new release adds some nice new functionality.  Although SBS 2003 is a solid product packed with features and the new feature set in R2 is not that extensive, Microsoft hit the nail on the head with the new features.  The new feature set includes green check of health, exchange changes, SQL server changes and expanded CAL rights.

The Green Check of Health is actually WSUS bundled with and integrated into SBS 2003 R2.  This is not like the typical free WSUS product you can download and administer yourself (and then never use) - instead you’ll access a feature in Server Management called Update Services.  This features solves the headache of manually making sure (or just hoping) all machines are updated with the latest patches.  Software updates for all of your connected systems are stored locally on the SBS server and issued according to schedule and administrator approval.  In addition there is a report showing the status of all computers on the network so you can see at a glance whether SBS and all its connected clients are up to date with the latest patches and security updates.

SBS R2 includes the 75GB mail store limit for Exchange (increasing from 16GB in previous versions).  Although you can manually change this on existing Exchange servers with Exchange SP2, installing SP2 is not the simplest task.  This is a blessing most people cannot appreciate.  Even in small businesses the 16GB limit may not be enough and setting up different storage groups or getting users to constantly clean their mailboxes and defragging the Exchange databases is a real hassle due to the insuffient size limit.

SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition has been replaced with SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition.  This has caused alot of controversy but in reality it benefits the customer.  In truth, SQL Server 2005 Workgroup edition is more closely matched in features to SQL Server 2000 Standard  than SQL Server 2005 Standard due to all of the changes in SQL Server 2005.  The inclusion of SQL Server 2005 Workgroup edition enabled Microsoft to price SBS 2003 R2 at a lower cost than its previous version which may allow for more customers to choose the Premium edition of SBS.

Previously, each user or device connecting to a SBS needed to have a CAL, but the CAL was only applicable to that one server.  So if a second server was added they would have to purchase additional CALs for any user or device that connected to the new server.  Microsoft has changed the CAL so that it covers an additional Windows Server.  So as a business grows and needs to offload functionality to a second server (SQL Server, Exchange…) additional CALs are not required saving the business money.

SBS server has proven to be a great product with its feature rich and easy to use environment.  With the release of SBS R2 Microsoft has only added to the continued success of the product.