Exchange Server 2007 Component Architecture

Microsoft changed the Exchange Server architecture dramatically in its 2007 edition and instead of just a Back-End and Front-End role there are five different roles; Hub-Transport, Edge-Transport, Mailbox, Client Access and Unified Messaging.

Download Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Component Architecture Diagram From Here:
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Component Architecture

GFI Endpoint Security

For those who are very concerned over host security in terms of information theft or malicious code infections through CD/DVD, USB Storages,Tape Devices, Serial and Parallell ports, Printers, etc. GFI Endpoint will be the solution.
It works in a client/Server manner which the Endpoint Server controls hosts by deploying an agent to every desired host. (GFI also provides its agent in .msi file which is very good for large Active Directory Deployments.)
Endpoint makes it possible to block or put restrictions on each device type (Read-Only or Full-Access) based on users or groups and provides great reporting on all events.
If someone has Full-Access permission over any kind of available devices it will log all applications which were used and the filenames which were transfered or printed.
If you are wondering how to block access to USB and CD drives try GFI Endpoint.
For more info check GFI EndpointSecurity Here!

Exchange Server Event ID:505

Yesterday I was called in by a customer to resolve a mount issue on a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 database. This one was new to me and easy to resolve!
I could see "Event ID: 505" in application logs saying:

Information Store (2028) An attempt to open the compressed file "drive:\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb" for read / write access failed because it could not be converted to a normal file. The open file operation will fail with error -4005 (0xfffff05b). To prevent this error in the future you can manually decompress the file and change the compression state of the containing folder to uncompressed. Writing to this file when it is compressed is not supported."

Exchange server 2000 service pack 3 and later versions can not open databases which are compressed with NTFS compression feature. So the only resolution would be to uncompress the folder holding exchange server databases. for me this worked nice but Microsoft also recommends running an offline defragmentation (eseutil /d "database location") before mounting the database.
For more info check this:
Database does not mount, and you receive error 0xfffff05b after you apply SP3 to Exchange 2000

Perl and Regular Expressions

I have been drawn into an exciting area called "Perl scripting!". It is a great fun and until I started studying Perl I didn't know how much I was lost in system and network administration!
Currently, what I mostly need to do with Perl is text processing.
In my first project I needed to telnet into a Fortigate firewall, send a couple of commands, fetch the output, process and reorder the output which was the main purpose of the job and store it in a file and trigger an action if specific pattern observed in the output.
All these required complex text processing which could not have been accomplished without "Regular Expressions".
The following are the references I found very useful for me to get a grasp on "Regular Expressions" in Perl.

Regular expressions in Perl
Perl regular expressions tutorial
Steve Litt's Perls of Wisdom: Perl Regular Expression