Ever notice when you are shutting down a server that has Exchange Server running, it takes ~15 minutes? Exchange server relies on Active Directory and therefore DSAccess to provide a cache of AD information. When the server shuts down, LSAS is stopped before DSAccess can shut down cleanly and goes into a timeout mode, which is 10 minutes by default. Other processes experience similar timeouts when they are not shut down cleanly or in an effecient order. The quickest way to get around this is to create a .bat file to shut down the Exchange processes and run it before you shut down the server. Open up a text editor, put in the following code and save it as “shutdown.bat” – Doubleclick it before you shutdown. This will cut shutdown time to a few minutes or less.

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Looks like Spamhaus SBL+XBL has become Spamhaus Zen.

I have already switched my spam filter over to the new list and I must say, it is much more effective. Before I was averaging 19%-22% spam from Spamhaus SBL+XBL, and with Zen I am getting 29% spam rate, with only a few minor false positives. Spamhaus SBL+XBL will be discontinued soon, so I’d switch over immediately.

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In my relentless efforts to squash the ever increasing spam problem within our organization, I have added ORF Enterprise Anti-Spam by Vamsoft to our anti-spam arsenal.

ORF is not meant for Exchange Server only, it binds to any SMTP server and filters before/after arrival of messages. It seems any Exchange Server specific anti-spam product is much more expensive than it has to be. Perhaps it is because the cost of Exchange Server implies the owner has the money to buy an expensive anti-spam product? Maybe.

To the side are the stats from a typical day. 68% of all email received and tested is spam. By far the most effective feature is the DNS blacklist.

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