viveksharma.com: techlog

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ExchangeLabs will pwn you!: So its been a long time since I last posted (last December actually!). A lot has happened since then: Exchange 2007 has shipped, Vista has shipped, Office 12 has shipped... and I've been working on, well, new stuff. Since Terry unveiled on the team blog that we have a program called Exchange Labs, I might as well reveal that http://exchangelabs.com also happens to be the new stuff that I'm working on. I can't totally mention specifics, except that we are enabling a service at ** *** *, which by itself is really cool. And that's just the begining, we're also going to work on...; posted @ Friday, October 12, 2007 1:10 AM | Feedback (0)

Looking for feedback on PowerShell and Exchange: Every once in a while its important to take a step back and see where we can improve---I already have a list of around ~150 things I'd like to improve in the Shell (Exchange and PowerShell), but I'd like to hear what you a) like about the shell and b) would like to see improved. You can leave comments, trackbacks on your own blogs, or mail me directly at (munging the address to defeat the spammers): vivek (at) thiswebpage'sdomainname.com Here are some examples I found recently: Devin comments on how easy it is to move databases through cmdline and wonders why it isn't...; posted @ Friday, October 20, 2006 10:10 AM | Feedback (0)

Sorting top users and then moving them (2003/2007): Brian asked in the comments: "... I am looking for a monad scipt/command that will allow me to sort user on e2k3 by size then move either the top or bottom X number of users..." Try this on Exchange 2007, for 2003, you can use get-wmiobject cmdlet to read Exchange 2003 information using WMI. This is how you would get the top X users per server (you can optionally do this per database by passing in -database to get-mailboxstatistics): get-mailboxstatistics -server Myserver | sort TotalItemSize -desc | select -first 10 Then you can move this list directly using move-mailbox: get-mailboxstatistics -server Myserver | sort TotalItemSize -desc |...; posted @ Tuesday, September 19, 2006 5:09 AM | Feedback (1)

Community Run Scripting Contest: Thanks to Josh for organizing this. In addition to the offical Microsoft One-Liner contest for Exchange 2007, Josh has started his own scripting contest for PowerShell and Exchange. The best part about it is, that the winner gets a signed copy of the upcoming PowerShell book from Bruce Payette, one of the leading designers of PowerShell! Wow, nice job Jeffrey and Josh. So go forth and submit some scripts to both the official contest and Josh's. To sweeten the deal, if you end up winning either contest, I'll put your name, company, winning entry etc. on the official team blog (2 million readers per...; posted @ Saturday, September 16, 2006 2:09 PM | Feedback (2)

Blog hiatus or how to really enjoy your summer…: Well it had to happen. Now that Exchange 2007 Beta has shipped, its time for some rest and relaxation... as a direct result of that, this blog won't get updated for at least a month. Yikes! Where will people get their insider tips from?!? No worries though, I've been updating http://exchangeninjas.com with all kinds of good stuff (specially the FAQs). I'm hoping the community really gets active--just recently there was a massive article posted on understanding one of the cooles features in E2007: Autodiscover (thanks Ashish!). Of course, I can't leave on vacation for that long without leaving some tidbits of info...; posted @ Sunday, August 20, 2006 7:08 PM | Feedback (0)

Videos: History behind Exchange Management Shell and some cool demos!: Mihai (awesome lead developer for the Exchange Management Shell) and I did a video series on some of our design decisions as well as the history behind why Exchange partnered with PowerShell/Monad in the first place. The second video has some neat demos that we did---just a little teaser for all of you who want to get Beta 2 (hint, keep watchin msexchangeteam.com for exact details on where to get it). Here are the videos: Video: Vivek Sharma and Mihai Jalobeanu on Exchange Management Shell Video: Exchange Management Shell in action If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know.; posted @ Friday, July 21, 2006 4:07 PM | Feedback (0)

Register for Exchange 2007 Beta: Its almost time. In fact its so close to the beta that you might as well register for it now.Remember, this is how you get to play part in the PowerShell/Exchange scripting contest, try out all the cool new Exchange features (some that will be total suprises... in a good way) and start planning your upgrades. So go register now. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Ok that was annoying. Do it. :-); posted @ Tuesday, July 18, 2006 10:07 PM | Feedback (1)

Examples and more examples and Win A FREE trip to New York.: Guess what? I told a bunch of attendees at TechEd this so I will share it with the rest of you too. We will send one lucky person to NYC to attend the joint Exchange/Office/Vista launch event. Cool huh? All you have to do is submit a cool, useful one-liner for Exchange 2007 management. And you've got plenty of time too as the contest runs till September (read the rules). So to help you out we also up some great examples of how to use PowerShell with Exchange on the web. Check them out and remember to send us feedback: Exchange 2007 "Scripts"...; posted @ Saturday, June 17, 2006 2:06 PM | Feedback (4)

TechEd 2006: Boston. Be there or be rectangular.: I hope to see you in Boston--my session will be MSG324: Exchange 2007 Management Scripting and Shell (I believe the session is at 4:00 on the 13th, but times may change so be sure to check). Oh yeah, and I'm supposed to put this sticker on my blog. See you there!; posted @ Wednesday, May 24, 2006 9:05 PM | Feedback (0)

Get-Mailbox, the most popular cmdlet: I just noticed that I use Get-Mailbox everywhere in my examples. Why is that? I suppose its because this a) Exchange is all about Mailboxes (if you didn't know, Exchange is an e-mail / collaboration server) and b) its so easy to use. The basic pattern for Get-Mailbox is below: Get-Mailbox If you just run this, the cmdlet will return upto 1000 mailbox enabled users. Why 1000? Well we have to cap our results somewhere, as if we returned everything, very large amounts of data would be returned. Small companies will never notice. Large companies can do: Get-Mailbox -resultsize 99999...; posted @ Thursday, May 04, 2006 10:05 PM | Feedback (4)

Drumroll please… Monad is now PowerShell: It was an amazing honor for me to be able to represent both the Exchange 2007 and PowerShell 1.0 products today at MMS. Jeffrey has a great write up (thanks for the plug Jeffrey!) and so does Lee. Download, enjoy the new features and keep the great community going strong :) BTW: In no particular order, my new favorite features in the latest PowerShell RC0 drop: User customizable tab completion. Wow. Out of the box it works with parameters and variables. That means you can do: get-command - and it will complete the rest! I've customized my shell to complete directory names when...; posted @ Tuesday, April 25, 2006 10:04 AM | Feedback (1)

Roundup: More “first reactions”, tutorials and some press: Well, until I can write more myself, I figured I'd share all the good content that is already being created by the community. Press: Windows IT Pro: Exchange 12 Shows Promise - "As noted previously, the new Exchange System Manager (ESM) GUI is completely redesigned and far less complicated than the current version... This is powerful stuff." Infoworld: A First Look at Exchange 12 - "The new version’s scripting capability is going to be a favorite new feature among overworked IT managers." InformIt: As Exchange 12 Looms, Microsoft Fixes Monad Bugs - The main issue in the article seems to be the upgrade from...; posted @ Sunday, April 09, 2006 4:04 PM | Feedback (0)

Exchange 12 Beta 1 is out: Betanews says: [snip]…A lot of work on Exchange 12 has been focused on administrative tools. The new release has been componentized and administrators can choose to install only the pieces they need. Exchange will also be able to automatically detect and configure end-user systems.Microsoft’s new command line shell, known as Monad, will make its first appearance in Exchange 12. The scriptable shell can be used for automating tasks, essentially providing command line control of Exchange that goes beyond the standard Exchange System Manager…[snip] Zdnet says: [snip]…The company is also adding a scripting tool that enables power users to write code...; posted @ Wednesday, December 14, 2005 12:12 PM | Feedback (0)

More on Exchange PDC 2005 demo: To make a long story short: I gave Adam our demo VPC of E12, which includes Monad, but then gave him the wrong password to unlock the machine… Dang it! Check the orginal article at proudlyserving.com. Only one more thing to add. So what exactly did we demo? Here it is. We used Use monad cmdlets, written by Exchange team to: Install and uninstall a demo managed Transport Agent Get the list of all running agents, their status and their priority Create a set of users in the...; posted @ Saturday, September 24, 2005 12:09 PM | Feedback (0)

PDC 2005: Summary: This PDC we made some bug announcements as a company (Sparkle, Longhorn, VS etc.), as well as some related to Exchange and Monad: We have deprecated and cut some APIs, full list is available through this blog entry at the Exchange blog. Bob Muglia (VP of Windows Server) put Monad on the roadmap as appearing in 2006 Exchange announced that Monad will be the way that users manage Exchange through script and cmdline Exchange announced that Exchange cmdlets will replace our WMI providers and CDOExM...; posted @ Thursday, September 15, 2005 12:09 PM | Feedback (0)

News: A little slow these days as I'm busy working on exchangelabs.com. I will try and post tidbits when I get some time. Enjoy the older posts till then!

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