Shep’s Pondering’s

January has been one of the most productive months in a long while. Some of the projects I am on are starting to move forward. Which meeting and discussing are nice, but actually getting down to the technical work is a whole lot more fun!

Exchange 2007 Deployment

One of the first things we had to work on this month was the ramifications of adding a GC into our existing Campus AD Site. When we added the GC that was required for the prepdomain in the 2007 pre-deployment process, we didn’t realize that Exchange 2003 would pick it up in the DSaccess tab, and use it to expand groups. Since the GC is not in the same domain as the exchange servers, when it expanded the groups, it sent back errors. These errors were particularly felt when it was a security permission set on the groups.

The solution was to take the DSAccess off of automatic and manually set the GC’s that it would use for group expansion.

After that configuration was implemented and settled down, we installed three Hub transport servers into the new Exchange 2007 Administrative group. We then left the servers in place, and monitored mail flow, once we were certain that mail still flowed appropriately we then went ahead and introduced the Client Access servers (CAS) and the Mailbox servers.

We are now working on the configuration of the host based firewalls, and the load balancer configurations. After that our Pilot group of users will be ready to help iron out any irregularities’ that may have been introduced.

One of the lessons learned when deploying a new routing group connector was that each server in the legacy exchange organization that will be sending mail across the connector must be in the universal group Excahngelegacy interop group. This will grant them permission to send mail across the connector.

Octel replacement

We are currently looking at the bids again to further determine whos product would be the best fit for Vanderbilt.

Fax server deployment

This project is currently not being activity worked on. It is awaiting confirmation of the Unified Communications Project.

Unified communications project (lighthouse)

We have been accepted into Microsoft’s Lighthouse program for their unified communication product. We are currently waiting for the R2 release of Office Communications Server, and new hardware arrival. This project is dependent on the Exchange 2007 deployment project.