Exchange 2010 Certified!

I was excited when “71-662: TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring” Beta exam was announced but soon excitement turned out into sad emotion by knowing that the beta exams are normally restricted into India, Pakistan and China regions.

But on October 27, 2009 it is released to public and I decided to book the next available slot at Prometric Center to test out the knowledge I gained so far on Exchange Server 2010 and here is the score card!

More Info: Exam 70-662:TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring

Exchange MVP for 2nd Year!

Yesterday I got an email from Microsoft for the second time. It’s a great honor to get Microsoft MVP award for Exchange Server again.

 

I would also like to thank Microsoft and all readers of my blog and various articles published at different locations and providing feedback about them.

It has been a great year and I learned a lot about new Exchange server product, 2010. It is near to RTM stage and already started impacting industry, many organizations are waiting to get Exchange 2010 released for public while many are already using it under TAP program. Revolutionary change in messaging space is ahead so getting ready for another exciting year!

Exchange 2007 SP2: Self-Signed Certificate Validity Changed

When we install Exchange 2007, by default it install a self-signed certificate with one year validity. This causes a problem for the Admins when a year completes, specially when they are not much familiar with Powershell Cmdlets because self-signed certificate can be renewed with EMS cmdlets only.

However it is pretty simple to renew self-signed certificate and requires going through below 4 steps only.

• Get the list of Exchange Certificates with below cmdlet and note the ThumbPrint of the certificate which is about to expire or already expired but still some services are attached with it.

Get-ExchangeCertificate | FL ThumbPrint, isSelfSigned, NotBefore, NotAfter, Services

• Create a new certificate for the expiring certificate.

Get-ExchangeCertificate “ThumbPrintOfExpiringCertificate” | New-ExchangeCertificate

• When you create new certificate, by default it is enabled for POP, IMAP and SMTP services based on old certificate properties but if old certificate is enabled for IIS services too, then you need to enable IIS service for new certificate manually with below cmdlet.

Enable-ExchangeCertificate -ThumbPrint “ThumbPrintOfNewCertificate” -Services IIS

• Remove old certificate since it is no more required.

Remove-ExchangeCertificate –ThumbPrint “ThumbPrintOfExpiringCertificate”

So what’s new with Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2?

Fresh installation of Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 issues a self-signed certificate with 5 Years of validity. Yes, so you don’t have to renew self-signed certificate every year. This is a big relief for small organizations when they don’t use a certificate issued by anyone of the trusted 3rd party CAs.

Note: Self-Signed certificate validity doesn’t change in case of upgradation of existing Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 Server to Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2.

Since this change is already implemented in Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2, hopefully we can expect the similar behavior in Exchange 2010 by the time it RTMs !?!?!