Shep’s Pondering’s

Proofpoint Upgrade

This month persistence has paid off; we are finally on version 5.03. With that persistence has come a few problems mostly the way the custom rules are read. It seems one of our rules was the culprit on why the machines kept restarting the filters. Once that rule was removed, performance was again stable.

Office communications Server and Unified Messaging

This month my priority has been changed to get this up and running in a full featured model as quickly as possible. Microsoft’s documentation on the products is not the most informative and easy to follow. Certain documents omit the information on certain roles you must have in your AD, like a mediation server, or an audio/visual edge server. Once we found out all the servers we had to have to get a full functioning pilot, there came the issues of configuring them.

Integration OCS and Exchange 2007 takes two steps…..there is the EXUMutil tool that needs to be ran on the Exchange side, and the OCS side there is a utility called OCSUMutil.ext. The one on OCS was the part that I was missing. Once that was ran, I could get to voice mail!

Normalization of the dialing patterns that the mediation server passes to the sip gateway was probably the hardest part of the configuration. Even though the normalization rules can use .Net regular expressions….you have to know them to use them. Luckily there were a lot of blogs out on the web explaining the syntax. Also the tools in the OCS resource pack helped out. The Enterprise Voice route Helper program helped eliminate most of the confusion, and even allowed for testing of the pattern before implementing. Bravo for the programmer that wrote that tool!

We are slowly working on the issues, but as of now, we have exchange 2007 email, voice mail, outlook voice access, Office communicator integration, presence, live meetings, and Outbound dialing. All in all it has been a pretty productive month, at least on this project.

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Octel Replacement

This month has been more of a refinement of each of the vendor’s proposals, to compare them side by side. Each vendor has different strengths. A new twist that was thrown at the team is a full exchange 2007 implementation of Unified Messaging to handle the voice mail. This new direction from management has led the team to re-engage one of the vendors who withdraw early. This also has brought the comparison of the other three vendors to a halt while we do our due diligence. This impacts the OCS prototype project.

OCS Prototype

I tried to rebuild the OCS server this month; all do to the address book synch issue. Found out a lot about the issues that are incurred when you remove a OCS server from the environment. Also found out that you need to be familiar with the lcscmd.exe command tools. This commandlets let you do everything from install a role, to unprep the forest. When I finally had it totally removed from the environment, I re-installed the standard edition, on an all in one server. Reinstalled the certificates, re-enabled the users. Now the issue with the address book has changed, it is now a 403 error.

Exchange 2007 prototype

Working on the exchange prototype, I installed the forefront software to get anti-virus support, and started a local backup process to backup the database in case of hardware failure. The major change to this project is the new requirements that are surrounded with the integration of OCS and VoIP into this prototype. This means two new servers will need to be installed. These are Unified Messaging role and the Edge server role. These will be done over the next couple of weeks.

VUexchange Quota Increase

We have had movement on this project, we are moving to a 1gb quota on our exchange system. The hardware has been ordered, and has been shipped. We should be getting them in over the next couple of weeks. We will be doing a more stringent design this time with 1 store per lun, and fewer mailboxes. This will give the iops that Exchange 2003 needs to perform well. We will not only be distributing the load over more stores, but we will be adding more machines to the DR site also.

Listsrv replacement

This project has been repeatedly pushed back on the back burner, mostly do to resource contention. Other projects have taken more urgent priority, but we did have some movement. We came to the decision that we want to keep the same name and addresses for the lists, this helps with the design decisions. We also know that we need to have admin training before deployment because of all the new features that will be available to the community.

Mail FrontEnd Replacement (lifecycle)

The replacements have been ordered, and are on site. We will be looking at putting these behind the CSM, with different options depending on what is found out about the vip to vip communications issue. This is a pretty straightforward replacement.

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Exchange 2007

Migrated the vm’s off of the DEV cluster and onto the new ESX server (behemoth). This was in the thought that the pop-ups experienced by Scott Hogan and myself were due to resource constraints. Even though the servers have moved, there is a considerable fewer pop-ups but they have not disappeared altogether as we would have hoped.

Office Communications Server

The issue of automatic groups has caused me issues this month. The beta tool I was using now crashes after a MS patch. Not sure if the tool is being updated, but have not seen a OTC tool yet on the market. Have been researching the method that OCS integrates with Outlook, to try and see if we can get conversation history without moving to the exchange 2007 server.

Octel Replacement

This project is now down to the proposing of a solution to management, We have decided on the one we will suggest, and have pros and cons for all of the vendors to help explain how we came to the outcome that we came to. This should be proposed in the next couple of weeks.

ProofPoint Lifecycle

The new p845 appliances were put into production, as mailgate02, and mailgate03. This was done after hours, and consisted of taking the old hardware out of the cluster and bringing up the new hardware as the old server names. This allowed us to get the benefit of the new hardware in production before the upgrade to 5.03. The next step is to raise the ratio of mail distribution to a 3:1 ratio favoring the new boxes to see if they perform as expected.

IPhone Beta Testing

At first receiving the IPhone for testing I was pretty sure I was going to hate it, but I have been pretty surprised. The biggest complaint is the ability to dial via voice command; it is hard to find a contact and drive at the same time, the touch screen doesn’t like the bumpy interstate systems. The best feature that I like is the ability to actually read email on the device. Depending on the settings that are set for font size, it is very easy to read. If they get the horizontal screen working it will be even easier to read.

Exchange 2003 Performance redistribution

This month we brought down the mailstores on mailbe16, consolidated them down to one mailstore per storage group. This brings the databases in line with one database per disk lun. This should improve the performance on the read/write times. During this migration, we came across a couple issues, the main one being that I do not have access to move certain accounts. This proved to be frustrating when it came time to bring down the old mailstores.

Over all this month was a lot of changes, most of them pretty significant. The impact to the user base was considerable, but the some of the maintenance had been put off for over a year due to Email Oneness., while the other changes were due to lifecycle replacement.

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Octel Replacement

We have had demonstrations by the top three candidates for replacing the Octel voice mail system. Each one had its good qualities, and each one had its bad. Over all each one will be a good fit with the university. It is hard with today’s technologies to find a comparable workhorse like the Octel, but for a 5 year solution they are all comparable.

Exchange 2007     

The Exchange 2007 project has come to the next phase, we are redoing the architectural diagrahm to get more users onto the system. The new architecture will be a mixture of Virtual Machines and Physical machines. This should give the best performance. We are also looking at different types of clustering that would be applicable for a 5,000 user deployment.

Office Communications Server

The requirements for this project have mandated more research on tying this implementation into the current pbx system. There were a couple of options, one is to build a Linux sip gateway, and the other would be to buy a pre-built gateway. Even though the first option gives more flexibility, the second option comes with configuration and pretested compatibility.

Proofpoint New Hardware Deployment

After purchasing new hardware last month, we have spent this month planning out how to implement the new hardware, and get the cluster upgraded to 5.03. This planning is due to the two upgrading attempts that had to be backed out. The new plan takes a cautious, more methodical approach, while getting the new hardware in place as quickly as possible.

Exchange DR

This has been one of the operation issues that have been open for most of the month. RMSE was the product that we were using, we now must upgrade to RM. This is due to a Fliar upgrade on the Clariion. This has had to be coordinated with EMC and their support, due to the different parts that have had to be upgraded. This issue is still open, while engineering works out one of their bugs.

Certifications

I passed the MCSE 2003 Upgrade Exam, Yes, that means that I am now totally certifiable. or is that certified. Now I will be looking to find a more generic Messaging certification to round out my skills.

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Certifications

I recently found out that Microsoft was going to retire their upgrade exams on March 31^st, finding this out I broke down and took the time to study for the exam to upgrade my MCSA to a current certification. Panicking thinking that I had until the 31^st to get my other exam taken, I have been cramming to prepare for my last test. When I called to schedule the exam, I was told I couldn’t get in until the 1^st of which was a day late. Noting this to the person on the phone, she informed me that Microsoft has extended the retirement date, so I have been given a reprieve, but I have renewed my MCSA from a MCSA 2000 to a MCSA 2003, I will be upgrading my MCSE in April.

Exchange 2007 Prototype

This month has been more of a refinement of issues on the Exchange 2007 environment. After putting a second person on the system, Scott Hogan, he was able to help find some of the inconsistencies that were between the systems. Then a feature of Outlook 2007 of looking for Autodiscovery in DNS when it first starts up, had a brief issue of people on 2003 getting a login prompt. This was fixed with the removal of the A record for Autodiscovery. Vanderbilt.edu. This left only the dns entry for autodiscover.uc2k7.vanderbilt.edu. From this addition we also have concluded we need to move the VM’s off the test cluster onto a more dedicated system, or physical hardware, then we can proceed to move the rest of application hosting onto the 2007 system.

Office Communications Server/Office Communicator

With the start of the prototype for Office Communicator the server side was finally stable enough to get the whole department onto it. This allowed for instant messaging to stay within our network. Some of the features that will be useful is the tying it into outlook to set free busy, and being able to do PC to PC voice communications. Some of the issues that have been noted, and are configuration changes needed, is the ability to change passwords, the ability to have a preset group to pre-populate the contacts, transfer of files, and sending hyperlinks. This is still in its early stages of development, but shows a lot of promise of being a useful tool.

Tying this into the current VOIP system will take some concerted effort.

Proofpoint renewal

This month we spent a considerable amount of time discussion with Proofpoint representatives the different offerings that were available to the university. After all was said and done, we were able to save the university a considerable amount of money, improve the service by adding Dynamic Reputation Service, and refreshing the hardware to accommodate a large growth in traffic .

Octel replacement

The project is in to the phase of narrowing it down the candidates, and scheduling demos of their proposed solutions. After we see the demos we can better judge wich system will be the right fit for Vanderbilt.

Evaluation time

March also brought in with it the need to finish up team evaluations. This was made easier since we did a six month evaluation, and let people know where improvement was needed. This also made an improvement in the overall scores. A noticeable effort was seen from the members of the teams to take the necessary steps to improve their evaluation scores, which in the long run has made a better, more dynamic team.

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System Center Operations Manager

There wasn’t much work done on SCOM during this month. The focus has been on Nagios and getting information into it. The major issue with SCOM at the moment is to make sound when an error occurs. Kendra has found powershell commands to make the sounds, now we just have to make the event trigger.

OCTEL Replacement Project

This project is now in the RFP Stage, the RFP was sent out to 5 vendors, three have responded, one has taken themselves out of the running. Now we are working on the matrix to do an apples to apples evaluation, and inviting all three that responded in to demonstrate their product. We are still on track to have this project completed by July 31^st.

Unified Communications Pilot

The exchange 2007 portion of this pilot, has been an interesting bag of worms. Getting email up and running was fairly simple. Found out that it was simpler to get a valid certificate for Active synch then to try and put the certificate on the phones. Once I placed the geotrust certificate on the server, I was able to synch up my phone. The next big issue was the free-busy information, I loaded the IOrepl software and configured exchange 2007 to use public folders for Free busy. The IORepl software showed that it was loading successful but nothing showed up. Opened a MS Support ticket, and there was a powershell command that had to be ran, that allowed different domains to load free busy information in the public folder, Once this was ran, everything was good to go.

MCSE Training schedule:

Had to change up my schedule. Found out that MS70-292 and MS70-296 was at end of life March 31^st. Now I am cramming to pass both tests before that date. The biggest issue is finding time to study.

My Medical Training

Found out this month that Doctors could call your liver names. They called mine “Fatty” seems one can get Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis
from not drinking to much. But now I have a liver that tells me when I eat something that is high in fat. So I have started working on my low fat diet that the doctor has put me one. The only good thing about this is that I can honestly say that Vanderbilt Medical Center was thourough and professional, and not only am I an employee but now have been a patient too.

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System Center Operation Manager 2007
This month was a lot of activity on SCOM. A new workflow was created. There is now New, Acknowledged, Work In Progress, Pending OverRide and Closed. Along with these new workflows, aging was set up. If a Message sits in the new que for 10 minutes it sends an email. If it sits in acknowledge for 30 minutes it sends an email. If it is moved to work in progress an email is sent to Magic/BNC to create an ticket. At all stages an email is sent to the windows Team lead.

Next step is working on a procedure that explains the workflow.

Mailgate Load Balancing
This project is moving forward pretty well. The team has set a date of Dec 20th for migrating behind the CSM. There are some steps that need to be done ahead of time. These are being created into tasks. The big task is testing the vmdk for a virtual machine. IF the vm doesn’t work it will be a big bang event. It can happen either way, but a big bang event takes a lot more involvement of different teams in a very tight schedule. Defitently prefer to do this one at a time with VM’s/

Octel replacement
Octel project is down to sending out a RFP. We are going to bring in 6 vendors to let them pitch their solution. Over all there are 3 that need to be seen, because they are the big leaders. Another one is a new player in the market, with a call center style system. This can handle up a million mailboxes on their large end. We fall in the middle tier, while on other solutions we are on the extreme high end.

Exchange Patching
Exchange patching went well this month. We updated all the patches, including IE 7.

Proofpoint Support
This month there has been a couple incidents of boxes on our network sending out mass emails. Both times the NOC notified the oncall, and with in minutes we were able to assess the situation and either block them at the firewall level or the local level. The total interruption due to Max deamon errors, was less then 10 minutes both times.

Security Event Support
Another item that has been increasing each month, is time devoted to doing ediscovery or security related searchs. As these become more prominent and time consuming, either someone will have to have time devoted or project will have to suffer.

**Note there was a crash of word that took 10minutes to find an ASD file. Word didn’t autosave like it was set up to. Not sure if it was due to being a blog instead of a doc. Format. Will have to investigate this.

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By three methods we may learn wisdom:

First, by reflection, which is noblest;

Second, by imitation, which is easiest;

and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

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General Colin Powell’s Rules:

  1. It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
  2. Get mad, then get over it.
  3. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your
      position falls, your ego goes with it.
  4. It can be done!
  5. Be careful what you choose. You may get it.
  6. Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
  7. You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone
      else make yours.
  8. Check small things.
  9. Share credit.
10. Remain calm. Be kind.
11. Have a vision. Be demanding.
12. Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
13. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

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