Exchange Server Maintenance Functions

Exchange server maintenance requires some specific steps in 2013+. There is no specific maintenance mode, as in previous versions, but you can complete a few actions to take a server out of production. You will need to drain the SMTP queues on the server, tag the services as unavailable, then disable transport entirely. Each step needs to have some rest time, so that is built into the script.…

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Clearing Logs from All Exchange Servers

Log file management in Exchange is an extremely important part of your work as an Exchange Admin. Now, I don’t mean transaction logs, here, I mean IIS logs, performance logs, protocol logs, and other log files that abound in modern versions of Exchange. Clearing these files weekly will keep your servers from getting clogged and the transport queues from getting halted due to a lack of space. …

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Exchange Autodiscover – The Active Directory SCP

In a previous post I explained how you can use a SRV record to resolve certificate issues with Autodiscover when your Internal domain isn’t the same as your Email domain. This time, I’m going to explain how to fix things by making changes to Exchange and Active Directory that will allow things to function normally without having to use a SRV record or any DNS records at all, for that matter.…

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PowerShell Error Correction Functions

One of the more annoying things that you have to deal with in building scripts that accept input from users is error correction. Error correction ensures that users who are using a script that requires some input from them (the location of a file, a menu with numbered selections they have to choose from, etc.) can’t input incorrect information and get confused by the weird errors that PowerShell throws out.…

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Removing Addresses from an Exchange Server with Powershell

This is probably a rare issue, but something I’ve come across in my work. Occasionally an Exchange Administrator may need to remove an Email address domain (The part of the email address that comes after the @ sign). For instance, you may be in a situation where a portion of the users in an Exchange environment are migrated to a Cloud based email solution.…

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