From Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, what do you mean I can't install 2007 now?!

Exchange 2010 is out!  What?  It's been out for a while now?  I was planning a cross country move and .. ok that's not a good excuse.  Truth be told, I've been in government contracting world where they still run exchange 2003.  Come on.. how much longer can anyone really run Ex2003?  Even the government has hopped on the vmware band wagon with ESXi 3.5 and even 4.1 now.  Yet, still plugging along with a mail server almost a decade old.  I'm sure there is an upgrade of massive proportion on the horizon.. will it be to Ex2007 or the "new" Exchange 2010?  Did you know that if you stand up a Exchange 2010 server in your domain, you can no longer stand up an Exchange 2007 server?!  I can't take credit for this little tid bit of info.  Eva Soohoo of Convergent Computing was kind enough to school me on this little, but very important detail.  A little about Eva.. it's become apparent to me that Eva really brings things together for cco.com.  Convergent is known for their "unleashed" series of books such as Exchange 2010 "unleashed", SQL 2008 "unleashed", etc.. (you can go see for yourself at http://www.cco.com/Publications/tabid/61/Default.aspx)

CCO is just one of the things that Rand Morimoto does and generally gets all the press for things, but Eva deserves a lot of credit.  (oh.. and since I didn't clear any of this text with Rand or CCO.. Eva is most likely the one that'll be contacting me to take this down or they'll be suing me for something or other..lol)

Anyway.. back to the point.  If you're in a 2003 exchange environment like I know there are still a lot of... and thinking you'll skip 2007 and just go straight to 2010... you might want to stand up a 2007 box before that first 2010 box, just in case plans change.

Where I.T. all began, Silicon Valley

If you had to pack all your belongings into a pickup truck, what would you take?  To most people this is a hypothetical question that is fun to talk about over a drink.  To others (like myself), this is a reality that will come to fruition tomorrow.  I'm off to move cross country from Florida to California.  I only know 2 people in California on a personal basis, but they love it there.  My exploratory nature requires me to move from time to time and luckily the IT field allows for that sort of behavior.  I chose the San Francisco bay area because, well that's the only place I've visited in California. (technically I've been to places from santa cruz to sacramento)
I did pick up one of those fancy new iPhone 4's since this will be the first job in a long time that won't be issuing me a cell.. one of these days I'll work at a place that issues cool stuff like iphones instead of blackberries.. but no time soon I imagine.  I'll be flying out, but my truck will arrive with the culmination of my life's belongings a couple of weeks later.

Jason goes to Europe

I'm departing from the regular I.T. techie post. It's my blog, I can do what I want.  I've gone on vacation to England for starters. However, before I go into England, a word about the airline I used to get here. British Airways (http://www.ba.com/), I've never used this airline before. Prior to departure I wanted to change the date/time, but was met with an awful $300 fee plus whatever the flight difference was (had I made the change I wanted to, it would have cost as much as the original ticket... not much of an option). I stuck with my original booking... the flight was near empty as far as a 777 goes. An exit row was easy to get and lots of rows had no one in them (easy to stretch out and try to get an hour or so of shut eye). Hopefully for their sake this isn't a normal occurrence being so empty. While I was annoyed by the inflexibility of the airline, I have to say they won me over. Once in the air they came around with the cart and asked what I'd like. What I didn't know at the time was that alcohol was free on British airways!?! The fellow sitting to my left (beyond the empty seat between us, ordered up a couple of little bottles and fizzy water (he was English ;). A quick chat and I found I could order anything I wanted without charge. I've flown around quite a bit in the US. Sometimes you're lucky to get peanuts, much less booze. While it was a nice surprise, that's not won me over. While contemplating in my head which powerbar I would eat to ward off hunger, I was asked "beef or pasa" in an thick English accent. I replied "uh?", "beef or lasagna" she thought I miss heard "pasta" (which I did, but compounded by my loss of comprehension that there could be hot food on a flight anymore.. did we loose that to terrorist or something..lol.. I'm kidding, but you get the idea.. there hasn't been hot food on US flight for.. what.. 20 years?). I went with pasta (which was also vegetarian as she pointed out). Even though I'm not a vegetarian, this was damn good lasagna. I mean for how they have to keep it hot, and servable on a plane.. just top notch British Airlines (I'm picking up some proper English, hence the "top notch" ;)). If we could some how combine southwest flexibility in booking and British Airways service.. we'd have an airline everyone would flock too. Anyone wanting to give this airline a go, I'd be happy to run the I.T. department of such a company. We would have to beware of the unions and strikes. I was unaffected by the strike British Airways is dealing with right now.

Industry Standard Mailbox Sizes for email

Gary McFadden wrote an interesting article discussing exchange 2010 and it's new features/functions.  I stumble upon while searching for "industry standard mailbox sizes".  I know the first answer is like a lot of things in IT "It depends".  For a SMB I'm thinking 1GB for exec's 500 meg for mid management and ..??  what for everyone else.  Actually, is 500 meg enough?  perhaps 1gig, 3/4 gig, and 1/2 gig for the tiers?
I'm hoping someone out there will reply with what they think is standard and what size company they are used to.
thanks!

ISA and sharepoint gridviews

Rather then bore you with all the details of hours spent to find this little gem.. I'll just say
"Link translation".
If you turn off link translation for the rule that publishes your sharepoint site in ISA, Gridviews (aka. dataviews of datagrid views) will work like you were hitting the IIS server and not looping through ISA. Now a little more about this scenario. The sharepoint site was up and running just fine and dandy with it's new ISA reverse proxy when came the calling.. the "gridviews are locking up". Turning off link translation either just for that firewall rule, or if you like.. turn off the "add-in" link translation filer all together (first way does one site, the second turns off the feature on the ISA server and all the sites it publishes).
I hope that saves one of you hours of work.

VMworld, the good, the bad, and the ugly

My first VMworld was great, confusing, and just weird at times. First off, the guest pass I previously questioned purchasing. I did purchase it and my guest and I attended the 2 events. While it was fun, I don't think it was worth the price. The food provided was... well not to our liking. I'm sure some were happy with it, and the free beer/wine was nice.. just wish it was something I actually drank or would eat. Maybe we're just too picky though.
Now from a technical stand point, VMworld is awesome. I had direct access to several of the vendors we actually use on a daily basis. I was able to walk 20 feet and discuss our plans for some new brocade switches, walk 20 feet and talk about an issue we're having with our bluecoat device (web filtering, they put me in touch with a top notch tech support guy.. I'll be holding onto his contact info like gold). Walk another 10 feet and talk about stuff you've been wondering about with whom ever. The classes given were outstanding as well. Now locating what class you could/should attend, was were the confusing came in. So much to pick from, and no indication of what was the hot stuff and what was an uneventful event. I missed the "super sessions" simply because I didn't know they were "super".
Now the great news for me... I won a conference pass for next year! Simply fill out the request to review vmworld that they email you to be entered and walla... real people actually win a pass! :)
Feel free to drop me a line if you're looking to check it out next year.. the more the merrier!

heading to Vmworld!

I'm back on a VMware project and just so happens VMworld is coming up again in San Fransico. I'm pretty excited about it as this will be my first VMworld. Also, I had a hard tyime figuring out if the "guest pass" was worth the $275. In the end I did purchase one and hope that the party(s) will turn out to be worth it (it's nice to have a company footing the bill for me.. but they aren't going to buy guest passes for people too). While the confrense is going on here is something for the spouces:
(this was taken from vmworld's website http://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/2009/agenda/evening)

Is your spouse unable to attend VMworld evening events? Crystal Lowe has graciously offered to arrange some fun activities for spouses this year at VMworld. She's gathered a lot of great information, and is planning day trips to the wine country, Alcatraz and more. So, while you are having fun at VMworld, your spouse can be exploring the sights and sounds of the Bay Area. For more information, contact Crystal at: Email: vmworldspouses@gmail.com

From one new Vmworlder... THANKS CRYSTAL!