Well, it is here. Exchange 2010 has been released, and there is a 120-day trial available at Microsoft. Of course, if you have a technet subscription, you won’t need the trial.

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/default.aspx

The trial is the final version (14.00.0639.021), released 11/09/09, while the Virtual HDD version is still the RC dated 10/12/09.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=168905

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This will allow the Out of Office Assistant (OOF) to work when it is enabled from within the Options section of Outlook Web Access for Exchange 2003. The following is disabled by default.

1. Start the Exchange System Manager.
2. Click on Global Settings, and then “Internet Message Formats.”
3. In the right-hand pane, right-click and select Properties for “Internet message formats.”
4. Click on the Advanced tab, select “Allow out of Office Responses.” Below is a list of all the options available:

Allow out of office responses
Allow automatic replies
Allow automatic forward
Allow delivery reports
Allow non-delivery reports
Preserve sender’s display name on message

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Here are the Dell MD1000 Direct Attached Storage Benchmarks I had promised earlier. The performance is great. I’m trying to squeeze some more MB/s out of the read performance. I’ve also included performance / disk. Looks as though 4x and 8x disks in RAID10 have the best performance per disk. All the disks are 73 GB Seagate 15K SAS.

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I’ve found there is neither rhyme nor reason for Outlook having difficulty connecting to Exchange over RPC. Many times the same configuration will result in errors or unpredictable behavior. It is frustrating to say the least. There is a decent work-around that alleviates most connection problems, especially the dreaded first attempted connection error. Below are the various errors that you may receive, and the fix.

1. Open the registry editor (at the run box type: regedit).
2. Locate or create the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\RPC
3. On the Edit menu, click New and DWORD value.
4. Type DefConnectOpts and press ENTER.
5. Right-click on DefConnectOpts and set the value to 0 if it isn’t already.
6. Exit the registry editor and Outlook should connect to the Exchange folders now.

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I purchased the Dell MD1000 15 disk Direct Attached Storage Array in November. The enclosure itself is a JBOD system (Just a Bunch of Disks) because the controller inside does not support RAID. The RAID functionality of the system is achieved through implementing a PERC 5/e or 6/e controller in the server itself. The MD1000 can be daisy-chained for a total of three units supporting 45 disks. The MD1000 has dual controllers and dual power supplies for redundancy – something that should be expected in an expensive (albeit inexpensive in enterprise terms) product.

I have it hooked up to a PERC 5/e dual SAS (x4-type external) controller that supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50. Dell says you can configure the controller through pressing CTRL-R after the BIOS, but the tools are lackluster at best. Be sure to download Dell’s OpenManage system.

Below is my final configuration for my database and file server.

1. 1 – “hot-spare” 73GB (SAS 15K Seagate)
2. 4 – RAID 10 – 73 GB (SAS 15K Seagate)
3. 10 – RAID 10 – 750 GB (SATA 7.2K Seagate)
4. 2 – “cold-spare” 750 GB (SATA 7.2K Seagate)

Why not RAID 5? I don’t want the write-penalty that RAID 5 comes with, especially on a database server with the 4 SAS drives. The SATA array is cheap enough at $160 CDN per 750GB drive.

Overall I am satisfied with the system. The main concern was reliability. When a friend of mine brought up the fact that he could have done it less expensively with a computer in a large case and a bunch of drives, I agreed. With the MD1000 you get dual controllers, dual power supplies, and the ability to connect to two servers, which also helps if you are in a cluster. If you need network storage, definitely get a SAN array (not to be confused with NAS).

I have a decent crop of benchmarks of the test system before I finalized my configuration. I’ll post it later today once I get to a computer with Excel (or OpenOffice) to do some graphs.

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