Included in this month’s Exchange Web release (direct link) is a new analysis tool called the Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool. ExBPA is a revolutionary new analysis tool tha...
Published Sep 21, 2004
Version 1.0
Blog Post
From Win2K news, any comments?
Exchange Best Practice Tool Flunks On SBS 2000 Server
Tony Gore from the UK sent me this. "Good link. However, I used this on SBS 2000 server and it came up with the fact that the IFS drive was enabled and that it should be turned off and a post SP3 rollup. Following these two, Exchange no longer worked.
Re-enabling the IFS drive got exchange to work, but the Symantec protection for Exchange would not work; fixing this to manual startup at least got it running (there is a documented problem in Win2k with services locking). Two things from this:
A lot of the MS advice, KB etc. applies to W2K server, Exchange server etc. However, this is not the first time that the SBS 2000 has been found to be different. I don't think that Microsoft ever test most of the fixes on the SBS 2000 product - they assume that if it works on Windows 2000 server or Exchange 2000 server (or ISA 2000 server etc) separately, then it will work for SBS 2000 server. My experience is that something like one patch/fix/recommendation in 20 does not.
There is no easy way of providing feedback to Microsoft in these cases - in the UK, you have to call them up and give them your credit card number before they will talk to you; there is an online email, but it just seems to go into a black hole. I don't know why they cannot have a simple link on each KB article "report problems with this article".
OK, Redmond, again... anybody listening?
Exchange Best Practice Tool Flunks On SBS 2000 Server
Tony Gore from the UK sent me this. "Good link. However, I used this on SBS 2000 server and it came up with the fact that the IFS drive was enabled and that it should be turned off and a post SP3 rollup. Following these two, Exchange no longer worked.
Re-enabling the IFS drive got exchange to work, but the Symantec protection for Exchange would not work; fixing this to manual startup at least got it running (there is a documented problem in Win2k with services locking). Two things from this:
A lot of the MS advice, KB etc. applies to W2K server, Exchange server etc. However, this is not the first time that the SBS 2000 has been found to be different. I don't think that Microsoft ever test most of the fixes on the SBS 2000 product - they assume that if it works on Windows 2000 server or Exchange 2000 server (or ISA 2000 server etc) separately, then it will work for SBS 2000 server. My experience is that something like one patch/fix/recommendation in 20 does not.
There is no easy way of providing feedback to Microsoft in these cases - in the UK, you have to call them up and give them your credit card number before they will talk to you; there is an online email, but it just seems to go into a black hole. I don't know why they cannot have a simple link on each KB article "report problems with this article".
OK, Redmond, again... anybody listening?