1. Another tool that can help identify if there are issues that are impeding migration throughput is the script that is published on Microsoft’s official Exchange EHLO Blog, Mailbox Migration Performance Analysis.  An another script that can help assist idenitifying issues is published on Microsoft’s Technet Gallery called MRS Explorer
2. Yet another Network based performance tool is mentioned on Exchange Online migration performance and best practices:

1. There are also optimizations that can be made to the Exchange servers that are acting as MRS Proxies, to increase throughput.

This is a comprehensive compiled list of exclusions for just about every product, from Exchange, Lync, to AD and clustering. Book mark it, RSS it, and enjoy!

Here is the link to the TechNet Wiki:

Microsoft Anti-Virus Exclusion List

I've been getting asked this question a lot lately, and so I thought I would consolidate the conditions that I have been able to identify that will cause the unwelcomed prompt in Outlook:

This may not be a comprehensive list under which conditions may cause this prompt, rather its an aggregation of the scenarios that I have been able to identify.

I'd imagine that some of the readers that arrive at this post are here as a result of having Outlook issues. As a gratuitous plug, in case you haven't tried it or are not aware of it, please take a look at the OFFCAT- the Office Configuration and Analysis Tool (available HERE ) that allows you to scan an Office/Outlook installation and review known and potential issues. 

You can expect to see the prompt under the following conditions:

If the RPCClientAccessServer property changes.

-Cross AD site mailbox moves may trigger this, as each AD site may have a different RPC Client Access Array.

-If you are not using a CAS Array, if the RPC endpoint changes after a mailbox move. An example of this is when a user on the source database has a specific CAS as its RPC endpoint, and the destination of the mailbox move has a different CAS specified as its RPC endpoint.

If the Public Folder hierarchy server changes after a mailbox move. (if get-mailboxdatabase|fl identity, publicfolderdatabase are different between source and target databases )

If The user does has additional mailboxes open in Outlook where the additional mailboxes do not meet the above conditions when being moved. So, if you have Joe User's mailbox open in Outlook, and they are moved from Server A/DB A, which has an RPC endpoint of CASARRAYA, and they are moved to Server B/DB B, with an RPC endpoint of CASARRAYB, then you will receive the prompt after Joe User's mailbox is moved. There are additional considerations in this scenario, regarding ALLOWCROSSSITERPCACCESS, which are detailed in the EHLO blog post "RPC Client Access Cross-Site Connectivity Changes"

If you are on Outlook 2013, and your mailbox is moved from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013, and you do not have http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2934750 installed. Key takeaway: keep Outlook up to date, as there are other, earlier hotfixes that also addressed the prompt issue.

Certain conditions when you have a CAS/Mailbox server that is also hosting your public folder database:

You can expect to see these prompts when a public folder exists on a multirole server that is part of the Exchange Server 2010 CAS array. This issue occurs because the VIP of the CAS array is being returned to the client instead of the hosting server.

The problem arises when an Outlook client connects to the CAS array and initially, if outlook connects to the CAS array member that contains the PF role, then Outlook converges all connections and displays both the Public and Private logons as one single connection (the CAS array name). When the Clients IP address changes, and it Re-connects, if it gets connected to a CAS array member that does not have the PF server, then we get an ECwrong server Response from Exchange, Outlook in its reconnect logic Cannot follow the Redirection Result that contains the correct PF server name, and displays the Error "The Administrator has made a change that requires you restart Outlook"

If you use the -DoNotPreserveMailboxSignature parameter with the New-MoveRequest cmdlet

Mitigations:

You have the option to completely suppress the dialog:

How to suppress the pop-up "The Microsoft Exchange administrator has made a change that requires you quit and restart Outlook" in Outlook 2010

• Uncheck the option “Show Microsoft Exchange Messages” from the Outlook icon on taskbar, and test the behavior.

This setting is controlled by the registry value..

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Display Types\Balloons

Name: Exchange

Type: DWORD

Value: 1 (on) / 0 (off)

Also see

RPC Client Access Cross-Site Connectivity Changes

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/05/30/rpc-client-access-cross-site-connectivity-changes.aspx

Restart Outlook prompt post Exchange 2010 SP2 rollup 3+

http://blogs.technet.com/b/nawar/archive/2012/09/04/restart-outlook-prompt-post-exchange-2010-sp2-rollup-3.aspx

Obviating Outlook Client Restarts after Mailbox Moves

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/01/24/obviating-outlook-client-restarts-after-mailbox-moves.aspx

(Updated to fix link to Offcat)

1. Always size/spec servers and configure as if they were physical. For example, when configuring a DAG node, ensure that it has both a network interface dedicated for a MAPI network, and at least one NIC for a dedicated replication network.

2. Add 10-12% more resources (RAM/CPU) to account for virtualization overhead

This section below has been condensed from Best Practices Whitepaper for running Exchange on HyperV

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2428
1.Memory oversubscription or dynamic adjustment of virtual machine memory must be disabled for production Exchange servers guest machines. (page 11/Guest Memory)

2. Storage: (page 11/Storage)

Consider the following best practices when configuring Hyper-V guests:

• Fixed VHDs are recommended for the virtual operating system.

• Allow for a minimum of a 15-GB disk for the operating system, allow additional space for the paging file, management software, and crash recovery (dump) files. Then add Exchange server role space requirements.

• Storage used by Exchange should be hosted in disk spindles that are separate from the storage that hosts the guest virtual machine's operating system.

• For Hub Transport servers, correctly provision the necessary disk space needed for the message queue database, and logging operations.

For Mailbox servers, correctly provision the necessary disk space for databases, transaction logs,
the content index, and other logging operations

3. Locating Guests on hosts:

• Never deploy Mailbox servers that are members of the same Database Availability Groups (DAGs) on the same root.
• Never deploy all the Client Access Servers on the same root.
• Never deploy all the Hub Transport servers on the same root.
• Determine the workload requirements for each server and balance the workload across the Hyper-Vguest virtual machines.
• Deploy the same Exchange roles across multiple physical server roots (to allow for load balancing and high availability).
  

4. Disable Dynamic Memory on the Exchange Guests (page 19)

Dynamic adjustment of virtual machine memory should must be disabled for production Exchange servers.

Below excerpted from the support policy at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794548(v=EXCHG.80).aspx See also "Demystifying Exchange
Virtualization" http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/10/11/demystifying-exchange-2010-sp1-virtualization.aspx and "Understanding Exchange 2010
Virtualization"

Virtualization Scenarios That Are Not Supported

The following scenarios are not currently supported in production environments when virtualizing Exchange Server with Hyper-V:

•Snapshots, differencing/delta disks
•Virtual processor/physical processor core ratios greater than 2:1
•Applications running on the root virtual machine (excluding antivirus, backup, management software,etc.).
•Oversubscription of memory on the host machine/dynamic memory on the Exchange Server)*

*technically supported, but strongly not recommended**

**Really, it is strongly not recommended. I have gone to numerous virtualized Exchange environments where static assignment of RAM to Exchange mailbox guests was overlooked, or not configured.

In some environments, in the application log, event ID 906, source ESE, was evident:

"A significant portion of the database buffer cache has been written out to the system paging file. This may result in severe performance degradation." (duh…)

I have yet to see a 906 event that does not show that at least 80% of the DB cache has been flushed to page file. You really don't want this to happen, as the DB cache plays a major role in reducing IO.

Not only does flushing your DB cache, which can be anywhere from 2-92GB, increase disk IO, it further compounds your IO performance by not giving you the benefits of page coalescing, detracts from performance by increasing paging (how many of you have a spindle dedicated to your paging file?). That's just the start of performance issues, the first domino to fall, so to speak. If you don’t understand how this can happen, you may want to read about memory ballooning, as that other hyper visor vendor calls it. See this link for more information, keeping in mind that Exchange never has been able to deal with “hot-add” memory (or “hot-subtract”, as the case may be). Statically assigning RAM to the guest, should prevent that behavior from occurring.


Live Migration:

Exchange server virtual machines, including Exchange Mailbox virtual
machines that are part of a Database Availability Group (DAG), can be combined with host-based failover clustering and migration technology as long as the virtual machines are configured such that they will not save and restore state on disk when moved or taken offline. . All failover activity must result in a cold start when the virtual machine is activated on the target node



With Exchange 2010 SP1 (or later) deployed:

•All Exchange 2010 server roles, including Unified Messaging, are supported in a virtual machine.
•Unified Messaging virtual machines have the following special requirements:

?Four virtual processors are required for the virtual machine. Memory should be sized using standard best practices guidance.
?Four physical processor cores are available for use at all times by each Unified Messaging role virtual machine. This requirement means that no processor oversubscription can be in use. This requirement affects the ability of the Unified Messaging role virtual machine to utilize physical processor resources

•Exchange server virtual machines (including Exchange Mailbox virtual machines that are part of a DAG), may be combined with host-based failover clustering and migration technology, as long as the virtual machines are configured such that they will not save and restore state on disk when moved, or taken offline. All failover activity must result in a cold boot when the virtual machine is activated on the target node.

All planned migration must either result in shutdown and cold boot, or an online migration that makes use of a technology like Hyper-V Live Migration. Hypervisor migration of virtual machines is supported by the hypervisor vendor; therefore, you must ensure that your hypervisor vendor has tested and supports migration of Exchange virtual machines. Microsoft supports Hyper-V Live Migration of these virtual machines.

Windows IT Pro has published our updated guidance regarding how to configure this family of network related features, specifically Receive-Side Scaling (RSS), TCP Chimney Offload, and Network Direct Memory Access (NetDMA).

My experience as an onsite PFE leads me to believe that a lot of admins take the network stack for granted, as I commonly see NIC drivers that are years old and terribly outdated. It strikes me that in many environments, things such as network card drivers are installed with the base image of the server, and are forever frozen at that particular driver revision forever.

So, take a few moments, and read the  updated guidance, and consider updating your NIC drivers (don't forget the teaming software too!). You just may spare yourself some grief.

In order to so, you must:

-Install Windows Management Framework (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968929). A reboot is required.

-By default, no WinRM listener is configured. Even if the WinRM service is running, WS-Management protocol messages that request data cannot be received or sent. You must run WINRM Quickconfig, and enter Y (for Yes) to enable it.

-The commandlet test-wsman can be used to ensure that the listener is actually working.

NOTE

Installing PS 2.0 will not change the behavior of Exchange 2007 CMDlets that still require running locally, such as get-exchangecertificate. You will still need to run them locally on the server you wish to query.

(Updated after fixing formatting)

(Updated after modifying Schema master replication statement) 

This is a slightly modified and updated version of my previous post regarding Exchange 2007.

Note before we begin:

It is was once considered best practice to disable outbound replication on the Schema master before conducting schema upgrades. If, for whatever reason, the schema update fails, you can then seize the Schema Master role and forcibly demote the former Schema Master. Once you have verified the success of the Schema updates, you can re-enable outbound replication on the Schema Master. However, this is no longer considered a best practice. It is recommended though, that you test application of the service pack in a lab environment before applying.

Let's begin:

I've broken this process down into two general scenarios, the first where you want to apply all pre-requisite AD and AD schema changes, and then the second where you may want to stage the AD and AD schema changes. I've then further broken down each of the 2 scenarios into 2 cases: single forest/single domain, and single forest/multiple domains. All scenarios assume you are upgrading an existing Exchange Org to Exchange 2010 from 2003 or 2000. So, to summarize, this post will cover the following scenarios and cases:

"All at once"

-Single Forest, Single Domain

-Single Forest, Multiple Domains

"Staged"

-Single Forest, Single Domain

-Single Forest, Multiple Domains

 All at once
 Single domain, single forest
 setup.exe /preparead (this is what the wizard/gui runs) Enterprise admin and schema admin

Single forest, multiple domains
 You must run the following commands on a computer in the same domain and in the same Active Directory site as the schema master

 (ROOT)setup.exe PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions (/pl) -Enterprise admin and schema admin
 (ROOT)setup.exe /prepareschema (/ps) -requires Schema admin
 (ROOT)setup.exe /preparead (/ad) - requires Domain Admin (unless domain created after preparead, then also needs exchange org admin rights)

You could run /preparealldomains, but there would have to be a GC from each child domain in the AD site you are running it from in order for that to work.

Staged:
 Single domain, single forest
 setup.exe PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions (/pl) -Enterprise admin and schema admin
 setup.exe /prepareschema (/ps) -Schema admin
 setup.exe /preparead (/ad) - Domain Admin (unless domain created after /preparead, then also needs exchange org admin rights)

Single forest, multiple domains

You must run the following commands on a computer in the same domain and in the same Active Directory site as the schema master
 setup.exe /preparead (or /ad)in root, then - Enterprise admin and schema admin
 setup.exe /preparealldomains (/pad) - enterprise rights

Then, in each child domain that is hosting:
 -Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 or 2010 servers
 -Mail-enabled objects
 -Global catalog servers that Exchange directory access components might use

Run the following:

 -Setup /pl:domain.fqdn
 -setup /preparedomain (/pd):domain.fqdn

Note: You must run this in the same AD site as the domain controller you are running this against, which should be in the domain you are running against.

References:

White Paper: Description of the Parameters Used With the Exchange 2007 Setup.com Tool
 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb288906.aspx

Prepare Legacy Exchange 2003 Permissions
 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997914.aspx

Prepare Active Directory and Domains
 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125224.aspx

Recently, I migrated my personal laptop over to Vista Ultimate.  It was a big step for me, as it was the last of my PC's that had XP on it. Not only did I leap over to Vista, and leave XP in the rear view mirror, I loaded 64-bit Vista, on a laptop that's pretty old (bit still 64-bit capable).

Would I find all the drivers I would need?

Would my apps still work (primarily games)?

Would my old laptop be a dog under Vista?

The laptop in question is an HP NX6125, with the low-end AMD Turon processor ( the 6125 family had been offered with three different Turons, all with differing clock speeds and varying, increasing levels of L2 cache. The one I bought was the cheapest one). It had served me well with the 1GB of RAM I had been running it on for the last few years. And XP had served me well, but it was time to rebuild the laptop, if for no other reason then as a reorganisation.

My plan initially was to simply load Vista Ultimate, and bump the RAM to 2GB. First I had to find RAM, as the 6125 uses DDR2 PC2100. I went to the local Tiger Direct outlet, and they didn't have it.  I picked up some PC3200 thinking the PC would recognize it and just use it at the lower clock speed.

 No dice. It only recognized half the banks on the PC3200. Back to Tiger Direct, exchange the RAM, and order the proper stuff.

 Problem #2 was also self-inflicted. After backing up the XP installation, and installing a new 120GB HDD, I began loading 32-bit Vista. In fact, I had it loaded and was applying updates. It was at that point I had the idea to load 64-bit. What if I didn't like it?  What if it performed worse then 32-bit? What if I couldn't find the drivers? I would have to repeat the 32-bit installation again, and feel like an idiot on top of losing a few hours doing the installation.

The install went fine. 

I was able to find all the 64-bit drivers, and most of the HP programs too. I was concerned about the HP Protect Tools Security manager, which I used as a password manager.  Turned out it didn't work very well on the 64-bit platform, but no big loss, I am not very keen on password managers.

I ended up running with only 1GB of RAM for a week, with acceptable performance.  I dropped the extra gig in, and haven't looked back since.

 I have noticed that 64-bit IE tends to not like Flash, and also seems to be impervious to a lot of crap that regular 32-bit IE isn't.

In any case, I can honestly say I really don't miss XP that much. I remember first running across XP, as a factory load on a new ThinkPad while I was a network admin/it director/master of all I surveyed IT-wise at a previous job.

I hated it. I hated the UI. I hated that everything had been rearranged. Sound familiar? 

All my users were on Win2K, with its familiar Windows 9x interface, and I didn't have the time to retrain everyone on the new one. But I knew that eventually, I would have to roll it out. I started to load it on some test boxes, and tinker around with it. At the same time, I started looking at group policy and XP.  I discovered how to turn off that awful XP theme, and make it look like 9x/2000. My users wouldn't have to bother me or the helpdesk. After all, I wouldn't want to do a company-wide OS upgrade and disrupt the users with a differnet theme. I knew that if I deployed XP with the XP theme, with its different colors, I'd be swamped with calls.

After all, change is bad. People hate change. Users hate change. This doesn't look like my old computer...

Well, to compress 4 or 5 years, and spare you all the morbid details, the point I am trying to make is that after some teething problems, my IT team, my former employer, and my former company all got on well with XP. I forecd the Classic theme on everyone, and we did a rolling upgrade. XP served us well, and did what it needed to do.

 And as things would have it, my first laptop at Microsoft had the then trusty and stalwart XP...and then Vista RTM'd

I knew I had to upgrade.

I knew I had to bite the bullet, and make my primary work machine a new OS. In fact, MS IT told me so (as did the Windows team, and just about everyone else).As a field engineer, normally I could load up some test boxes with it. But I was busy, being in the field, doing field engineer things. There would be no testing for me. No ramp up period, no time to familiarize. It'd be jump off the high-dive, eyes open.

I was eventually able to steal away from the field for a day, and on a February 2007 day run into the Downers Grove office and RIS my Toshiba-san with Vista. I knew that the next week, I would be out of town, on the road, OOF, and if something went wrong, I'd be SOL.

And of course, the first thing I did was force the Classic theme.

After about 3 days or so, I started to have second thoughts about Classic theme. Maybe I should give Aero a try. And I did. And I haven't looked back since.

The Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer conducts the following tests of your CAS servers:

-autodiscover test
 -validates your login creds
 -tests RPC/HTTP
 -tries hostname/autodiscover
 -then autodiscover.domain.com
 -connect over 443, check cert, rpc ping on different ports
-RPC/HTTP test
-Inbound SMTP test
 -gets MX records
 -validates MX records
 -tests port 25
 -sends email

Stay tuned, as this tool is in it's infancy
-OWA test- coming soon
-EAS test coming soon
-POP/IMAP coming soon

http://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com