TenBrink Tech Technology | Life

Join me Live

Xbox LIVE that is. I'm a long-time casual gamer. A proud member of that middle-aged group that likes to work hard at our normal corporate-style jobs, but gaming can be a nice adventure away at times. I've also been a member of Xbox LIVE since its birth as a beta tester for the service.

I always describe my antics on Xbox LIVE as the bowling night of today's adults. My circle of friends consists of like-minded career and family guys (and gals) who like a little fun on the Xbox 360 after work and family are done. Trying to keep up with the kids and muting them liberally for their language provide hours of entertainment.

Lately, you'll find me enjoying some Forza Motorsport 2, Rainbow Six Vegas (get your free maps), and Carcassonne. September will bring the return of the king, Halo 3.

If you'd like, and you see me online sometime, drop by and say hi. Maybe we can lose together!

Recovering mail for a user that does not exist (or moved, etc.)

This issue has come up a couple times lately, and was being discussed this morning internally, so I thought it would be helpful to provide some updated links on Exchange 2003 recovery of mailbox data.

From the Exchange 2003 Operations Guide, first up is the How Recovery Storage Groups Work in Exchange Server 2003. This is your first stop for the when you can and when you can't use RSG's. In general, RSG's work well for environments that don't change their Exchange infrastructure often, and near-term recovery for users that still exist (you have turned up your deleted item retention days, right?).

They have some limitations though, and those are spelled out in the article. The most notable one for business day-to-day operations is that RSG's cannot be used for mailboxes that have been deleted from the current system (AD or Exchange mailbox no longer exists), or that have been moved to other databases or servers since the backup date.

In these cases we consult the How to Recover a Purged Mailbox from an Online Backup Using the Original Database Server article. Or, as is my preference, use your recovery server for this task.

If you would like to find out more about why these restrictions exist for RSG operation, see How the Recovery Database Links Back to the Original Database.

Exchange 2003 Management Pack (SCOM 2007) Updated

The Exchange 2003 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 has been updated to version 5000.11.

Postini goes to Google

Continuing the trend of our awesome small spam fighting companies getting bought up by the giants, Postini gets acquired by Google this morning.

I don't know what this means, but now the "big 4" are all in this space: Symantec, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco.