Changes in Exchange Server 2007

Here is a list of things that were considered a requirement or limitation in exchange 2003 but we can say "NO" to, in exchange 2007:

• Installing SMTP and NNTP services prior to exchange 2007 installation not required anymore.
• No need to run ForestPrep and DomainPrep manually. Exchange 2007 installation will handle this automatically.
• OWA users don't need to have Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and even PDF reader installed to view attachment of these sort. The new OWA will convert them to HTML.
• You don't need a VPN tunnel if you have received a link to a file share or sharepoint service via OWA. The LinkAccess retrieves the document.
• If clients are running Outlook 2007 there is no need to worry about the configuration. Exchange Server 2007 automatically discovers the client and configures its Outlook profile upon log in.
• No need to consider Exchange Routing Groups anymore. The exchange routing topology is simplified and is build on existing Active Directory Sites.
• No "Recipient Update Service" anymore!
• No "Front-end" and "Back-end" servers! In the new modular architecture things are different and the "Edge-Transport" role takes the position of front-end which is also more secure. An outstanding security relief is that "Edge-Transport" does not need to be joined to the domain! I like this very much.
  
• There is no "Recipient Policies" in exchange 2007. Instead we have "Accepted Domains" and "Email Address Policy". Changes to recipients apply in real-time now.
  
• In Exchange 2003, Journaling was possible at the mail-box level but Exchange 2007 has gone beyond that and journaling can be accomplished per-database, per-user, per-distribution group and also it can be narrowed to internal or external emails.
• No "Storage" size limit on Exchange 2007 Standard Edition (75GB on Exchange 2003+SP2)
• Global Address List browsing is possible in OWA 2007 like it is in Microsoft Outlook (We could only search GAL in OWA 2003)

Well, there are more cool stuff in Exchange 2007 and this list just points out the facts that I was interested in so it is incomplete because my knowledge on new features in Exchange 2007 is not thorough.
I will try to add more lines to this list upon progress in my findings.

When Things are Predictable!

When all services run as expected for a while and all implementations go as the documentations said, I get really bored! I like things acting different and unexpected. I love it, and I am sure Many Sys/Net Admins love it too ;-)

How to Add Persistant Static Routes in Linux

At times, when I work on my linux box I forget about the configuration file game and expect some tasks to be completed just by putting some commands in the line!
This is the second time that I forget adding my static routes to the config file and wake up after my server needs a reboot and things start going wrong afterwards!
The easy way, which works in any distribution is to simply add routes in /etc/rc.local but this is not welcomed by many professionals:
route add -net 192.168.125.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 192.168.110.1
route add -net 192.168.145.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 192.168.110.1

But to do it properly in Redhat and Fedora distributions we have to create a configuration file for each interface. For example, for all routes that need to go out from "eth1" a config file named "route-eth1" must be created in "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth1" containing the following:
(I will take the above route as example)

GATEWAY0=192.168.110.1
NETMASK0=255.255.255.0
ADDRESS0=192.168.125.0

GATEWAY1=192.168.110.1
NETMASK1=255.255.255.0
ADDRESS1=192.168.145.0

So if there are different interfaces that correspond to different routes we should expect config files like "route-eth0", "route-eth1","route-eth2" in "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/"

MySQL table crashed again on Syslog server!

A couple of days ago we were having a downtime so I had to shutdown all my servers including Syslog server which is a php-syslog-ng server, as mentioned in my previous posts. But after it came back online no logs were collected anymore and by closer examination I found out that the "logs" table in MySQL has been marked as crashed and automatic repair didn't help either(Through mysqld log files and "check table [tablename]" through mysql client).
I used "myisamchk" tool which is used to check and repair MyISAM tables as follow:
[root@logcollector]# myisamchk -rf logs.MYI (tried the quick mode first but not helpful)
It took eight hours to check and fix the indexes!
This was the second time that my syslog-ng server went down for about 2 days because of a failure in MySQL table. The first time a sudden and unexpected shutdown brought about the table crash but this time was different. I am doubting that mysqld couldn't shutdown its databases safely and that might be because there are more than 150 devices sending their messages to this server. Checking my past rotated syslog databases I see that each month I have a database of 15 to 20 GB in size. I am thinking of some way to split my database into different parts to make it easier to handle.