Tim McMichael
Navigating the world of high availability...and occasionally sticking my head in the cloud...
Office 365: Determine accounts that have forwarding enabled.
A common question that has come up through support is how can administrators determine if forwarding...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 04/19/2015
Office 365: Move requests return status of Completed with Errors.
When migrating mailboxes to Office 365 administrators have the opportunity to have the move batch...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 03/04/2015
Office 365: Directory synchronization and object attributes…
For many Office 365 customers directory synchronization is the primary method of populating their...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 02/01/2015
Exchange / Office 365: Have a centralized mailbox for application processing with individual customer SMTP addresses
Customers may implement CRM applications that track customer interactions. In some instances...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 02/01/2015
Exchange 2010 / Exchange 2013: Attempting to mount a new database results invalidOperationException
In Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013 the process of mounting a database has changed since Exchange...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 02/01/2015
Office 365: Large item migration limits did not apply…
Administrators of Office 365 may have been pleasantly surprised to hear that the large item...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 01/21/2015
Outlook: SMTP Address displayed in profile does not change when the users primary email address changes.
In recent weeks I have had the chance to work with several customers on an inquiry regarding the...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 11/12/2014
Exchange 2013: In place upgrade places components in an offline state.
In Exchange 2013 we introduced the concept of server component states. This allows...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 10/21/2014
Exchange 2010 / 2013 – PAM and the Cluster Core Resources
At any given time, in every database availability group (DAG), there is one member that is...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 08/04/2014
Exchange 2013 / Exchange 2010: Database availability groups with shared storage on Windows 2012 and Windows 2012 R2
Although Exchange no longer uses shared storage, it can be deployed in clustered environments where...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 07/28/2014
Exchange and Office 365: Mail Forwarding
Exchange Server and Office 365 offer many different options for forwarding messages to different...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 07/28/2014
Part 10: Datacenter Activation Coordination – My nodes not invalid!
The Start-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup cmdlet is used to restore failed nodes in a Database...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 07/17/2014
Office 365: Add an embedded link to an object in Outlook Web App
Outlook Web App offers the ability for users to add hyper links to certain objects within a...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 06/08/2014
Office 365: Mail to deleted mail enabled user accounts results in NDR
Customers may have users with a security principal within their domain that do not have a mailbox...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/13/2014
Exchange 2010 / 2013: What constitutes a failure of the replication network…
In both Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013, customers can deploy one or more replication networks in a...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/06/2014
Office 365: More options button missing when configuring migration batch
In Office 365 mailboxes are migrated to the service by configuring a migration batch. When...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 04/16/2014
Office 365: Why do my distribution group names change?
I recently worked with a customer that was utilizing directory synchronization to create...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 04/09/2014
Cluster Network Thresholds – A Good Read
Recently I was re-reading a blog post from 2012 about on Tuning Failover Cluster Network Thresholds...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 04/06/2014
Office 365: Manage Office 365 features when Outlook Web Access is disabled on a mailbox.
When accounts are provisioned in Office 365, there are certain self-service features that end users...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 02/26/2014
Database Availability Groups – Storage Swing Migrations
In some circumstances it becomes necessary to migrate users quickly between servers within Database...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 02/25/2014
Exchange 2013: Health Manager service may not reliably start after server boot.
In Exchange 2013 we have introduced managed availability. The managed availability process...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 11/13/2013
Office365: POP and IMAP clients receive OWA links for calendar invitations
As you may know, Office 365 supports a number of different client protocols, including POP and IMAP...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 11/10/2013
Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 2 – Where are my databases?
In Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 2 (CU2) we introduced support for a maximum of 100 mounted...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 11/08/2013
Exchange 2010: Remove-databaseavailabilitygroupserver–configurationOnly does not evict the member from the cluster.
Administrators may encounter conditions where DAG members cannot be gracefully removed from a...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 09/23/2013
RPC Filtering and Exchange 2010 Database Availability Groups
Recently I’ve had the opportunity to work with customers who were having issues seeding databases...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 09/23/2013
Exchange 2013: OutlookMailboxDeeptTestProbe fails with Access Denied
I recently had an opportunity to work with a customer who was experiencing unexpected database...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 09/23/2013
Part 9: Datacenter Activation Coordination: An error caused a change in the current set of domain controllers
As a part of a datacenter switchover process, administrators run Stop-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup to...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 08/18/2013
Part 8: Datacenter Activation Coordination: Stop! In the Name of DAG…
Sometimes, even when following a specific process, it takes only one mistake to send the entire...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 08/18/2013
Part 7: Datacenter Activation Coordination: When to run start-databaseavailabilitygroup to bring members back into the DAG after a datacenter switchover…
When running Restore-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup as part of the datacenter switchover process, servers...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 06/02/2013
Exchange 2010: Page Zeroing and VSS Based Backups
In Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1, page zeroing is enabled by default and there is no method to...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/20/2013
Exchange 2010 Database Availability Groups and Disk Sector Sizes
These days, some customers are deploying Exchange databases and log files on advanced format (4K)...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 04/23/2013
Exchange 2010: StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1 resets server and database suspension states…
In Exchange 2010, when a database availability group (DAG) member needs service, it can be placed...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 04/23/2013
Part 6: Datacenter Activation Coordination – Who has a say?
I recently worked with a customer that had a three-member database availability group (DAG) that was...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 02/04/2013
Part 4: Datacenter Activation Coordination and the Prevention of Split Brain
In Part 1 of this blog post series, I discussed the rules for mounting databases when Datacenter...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 02/03/2013
Part 3: Datacenter Activation Coordination and the Single Node Cluster
In part 2 of this series, I provided a high level overview of how the witness server for a database...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 02/03/2013
Part 5: Datacenter Activation Coordination: How do I force automount consensus?
In order for any database availability group (DAG) that has Datacenter Activation Coordination (DAC)...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 01/27/2013
Exchange 2010: Adding database copies to databases with a single copy results in copy status failed after seeding is completed…
In recent weeks, I’ve worked with customers that have experienced database copies that go into a...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 12/04/2012
Another good read on vss backups…
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 06/24/2012
A good read on VSS backups…
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 06/05/2012
Exchange 2010: The mystery of the 9223372036854775766 copy queue…
Database Copy Self-Protection Mode What would you say if I told you that a copy queue length...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/30/2012
Part 2: Datacenter Activation Coordination and the File Share Witness
In Part 1 of this series, I provided a high level overview of how Datacenter Activation Coordination...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/30/2012
Exchange 2010: Using seedingPostponed results in a seeded database…
In Exchange 2010 the add-mailboxdatabasecopy command is utilized to add mailbox database copies to...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/21/2012
Exchange 2010: Mapping DAG network states to cluster network states…
In Exchange 2010 after a Database Availability Group (DAG) is created a series of DAG networks is...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/21/2012
Part 1: My databases do not automatically mount after I enabled Datacenter Activation Coordination
Datacenter Activation Coordination (DAC) mode is a property of a Database Availability Group (DAG)...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/21/2012
Verifying log file truncation…
In support we see cases from customers regarding log file truncation. One question that...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/14/2012
Backup dates and times are incorrect even though data has been committed to backup media successfully….
This week I had a chance to speak with a customer who raised concerns that their backups were...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 05/14/2012
Backups fail due to consistency check failure…
Last week I had the opportunity to work with a customer who was experiencing issues backing up their...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 03/28/2012
Exchange 2010: Log Truncation and Checkpoint At Log Creation in a Database Availability Group
In previous versions of Exchange, when a backup was completed, almost all log files prior to the...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 03/12/2012
Verifying the file share witness server / directory in use for Exchange 2010
If you’ve read my blog post on file share witness oddities you might be asking yourself “how can I...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 03/12/2012
Exchange and VSS -- My Exchange writer is in a failed retryable state…
In Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 many customers are leveraging VSS based backups to retain and...
Author: TIMMCMIC Date: 03/11/2012