How To Do Brick Level Backups on Exchange 2007

At my company we recently setup our first Exchange 2007 server and are in the process if migrating our 2003 users over to it. Before doing that though we needed a good way to do brick level backups.

In Exchange 2003 that is really easy. In fact, I wrote an article about how to script that using Exmerge a little while ago. You can check that post out here: (Brick Level Backup Using Exmerge)

For 2007, it isn’t quite so straight forward. In fact, I saw many articles saying how to do it, but when I actually tried it, their method didn’t work. Maybe it would if you only had one mailbox store, but at my company we have several. Here is the commands I use:

get-mailboxdatabase "servername\*" | get-mailbox | Export-Mailbox -PSTFolderPath \\fileserver\backup$ -MaxThreads 10 -Confirm:$false

NOTE: The above command is all on one line.

As you can see in the first section, I used “servername\*”, that wild card allowed me to pipe all of the mail stores into the next segment which listed all of the mailboxes on all of the stores which piped it into the next segment that actually exports the contents to PST. I used the maxthreads switch to increase the number of mailboxes that can be exported at a time as the default is 4. Finally the confirm:$false switch lets the script run without a prompt. That is important for scheduling the task.

Which brings me to the next point which is how to schedule that task. Once again, I did a Google search for it, and the answers I found were not accurate. In order to make my command run correctly, I had to take my command above and paste it into a text file where I named it BRICK.ps1. Next I had to create a batch file called BRICK.cmd. In that I pasted the following:

powershell -PSConsoleFile "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin\exshell.psc1" -noexit -command ". 'C:\BRICK.ps1'"

NOTE: The above command is all on one line.

After that, schedule the BRICK.cmd file to run as you normally would.

Please note that the first time I tried running this script I would get the following error on most of the users mailboxes:

MAPI or an unspecified service provider.
ID no: 00000000-0000-00000000, error code: –1056749164

I got that because for some reason the backup administrator account was not given full mailbox access to all of the mailboxes when Exchange 2007 server was first setup. To give global full mailbox access I had to run the following from the Exchange Management Shell:

Get-Mailboxdatabase | Add-AdPermission -User “username” -AccessRights GenericAll

NOTE: The above command is all on one line.

Now we are getting full Brick level backups to PST similar to the way we were doing it in Exchange 2003. Has your company moved to Exchange 2007 yet? What do you use for backups? Have any questions? Let us know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: export,pst,exchange 2007,how to,brick,level,backup,mailbox,exmerge,powershell,schedule

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Calling Dick Tracy… Calling Dick Tracy…

I was perusing the internet today, randomly looking at cool stuff. I mean, between Stumbleupon, and now my awesome Entrecard toolbar, I have a lots of browsing opportunity.

Anyway, I came across two very cool looking phones from two competing companies, LG and Samsung, who are both releasing wrist watch phones this year.

The first one is from LG, and is called the GD910. Here are some of it’s features:

• Touch Screen Interface
• Stereo Bluetooth
• Speakerphone
• Built-in Music Player

Here are some pictures:

The next awesome wristwatch phone is the Samsung S9110. Here are it’s features:

• 1.76” Touch Screen
• Speakerphone
• Music Player
• Bluetooth
• Voice Recognition
• Email with Outlook Sync

Here are some pictures of that bad boy:

Both of these look like they would be really awesome to have. I mean look at Dick Tracy, or Michael Knight from Knight Rider! both of those guys had wrist watch communicators. How many of you pretended to talk into your wrist watch when you were a kid? I know I did (Sadly).

Both of these watches come with a hefty price tag, but if the quality is good, I say it is worth it. What do you think? Are you going to run out and get one of these?

Technorati Tags: wrist watch,cell phone,samsung,lg,GD910,s9110,dick tracy,michael knight

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Twitter Outage

So there I was actually trying to Tweet my early 5am away. Then suddenly Bam!!! Twitter.com blew up. I can only imagine that so many people out there are probably getting the shakes while waiting for their coffee not being able to update and read their twitter messages.

Is this the death of twitter? Is this the beginning of the end of the world? Only time will tell. Stay tuned here and feel free to post your comments as you can’t update your twitter. We will bring you updates as soon as we find out more.

I have had 2 other people confirm they can not reach twitter.com. I can not reach it from my work, home and cell phone.

 

“Site is down We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly.”

Update:

According to http://status.twitter.com

The site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack.

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Backup Your Tweets and Your Blog For Free

I saw a tweet from @hispong_elbayne mentioning a new service called BackupMyTweets.com so I thought I would check it out. I never really thought about backing up my Twitter ramblings before, but hey, some people might. According to that site, Twitter only keeps your most recent 3,200 tweets. If you want to keep them longer, then you need a backup service.

It all looks pretty cool. They give you a free 1GB if you tweet about them. If you don’t want to Tweet, then they charge you about $10.00 per year. Not a bad deal. Send a tweet, and get a free GB. They also offer some other services that sounded a little more useful to me.

• BackupMyEmail
• BackupMyBlog
• BackupMyPics

Those of course are not free. Each of those services costs about $20 per year. Obviously it costs more if you need more space. Makes sense right? If you ask me, $20 isn’t a lot of money to backup some of the most important items you may ever have, certainly the pics and the email are worth it.

What if you don’t want to spend money though? What if you are on a tight budget? What if you are a cheap ass bastard like me? I certainly don’t want to have to pay to backup my blog, or my tweets. If you are like me, then I found a free solution at least for your blog and your tweets.

The first one is for your blog, it is called BlogBackupr. Here are some of it’s features:

• Runs over the Internet
• Daily backup
• No installation required
• Works with any blog

Now for your Tweets,  TweetBackup which is a sister site of BlogBackupr, offers free Twitter backups as long as you follow them. Here are their features:

• Runs Over The Internet
• Daily Backup
• No Installation Required
• Easy To Use
• No Twitter-Password Required

I signed up for both. I really like BlogBackupr because it backs up all the blogs I have. (I am managing four now! WTF?!?) I signed up for TweetBackup as well, but I am not sure I will keep it. Not that the service is bad, but because I really don’t give a crap about my tweets!

What do you use to backup your blogs/twitter? Know of any free backup services for your pics or your email? Hit me up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: backup,wordpress,blogger,twitter,free,blogbackupr,tweetbackup,tweets

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Top 10 Alternatives To The Pirate Bay

I have sort of been following The Pirate Bay (TPB) scandal off and on for the last few months. Mainly because I frequent Digg, and TPB stories dominate the front page.

If you didn’t know, The Pirate Bay is basically going legit soon. According to TorrentFeak, The Pirate Bay is in the process of being sold to Global Gaming Factory X (GGF). When that happens, they are going to pursue a more legal business model where copyright holders get their cut.

Since TPB was pretty much one of the biggest names in the legally questionable bit torrent business, I decided to compile a list of my top ten alternatives to The Pirate Bay which are (In no particular order):

1. Mininova – This is also a very well known Torrent search engine. According to their site, Mininova “…is the largest torrent search engine and directory on the net. [They] started in January 2005 as an alternative to the (at that time very popular) SuprNova, which went offline at the end of 2004 due to legal issues. Our goal is to provide an easy-to-use directory and search engine for all kinds of torrent files. Visitors of Mininova can anonymously upload torrents to this website, tracked by any BitTorrent tracker. Scrape data (amount of seeds/leechers) is collected a few times a day.
2. isoHunt – According to Wikipedia, isoHunt “…is a BitTorrent index with over 1.7 million torrents in its database and 20 million peers from indexed torrents. With 7.4 million unique visitors as of May 2006, isoHunt is one of the most popular BitTorrent search engines. Thousands of torrents are added to it each day as well as deleted. IsoHunt users perform over 40 million unique searches per month. On Oct 19, 2008, isoHunt passed the 1 petabyte mark for torrents indexed globally. Isohunt is the 3rd most popular bittorrent site as of 2008.
3. btjunkie – These guys have 5 key elements that make them awesome. They index both private and public trackers, they have a completely automated crawler that scours the Internet, free public torrent submission, They have torrent Mail, for immediate notification of new torrent additions and finally torrent reporting and comments.
4. Torrent Reactor - Torrent Reactor is the oldest and most reliable resource for torrents. Find and download everything you need in 5 minutes.
5. VerTor – I wrote about this a little while ago. This site checks every torrent listed on their site for quality so you don’t have to. All of their Torrents are top notch!
6. Torrent Hound - Torrent Hound "...crawls the web using a custom filter to find new torrent files as soon as they are made available. (or accepts them from users who upload their torrents directly). Next it subjects them to a few algorithm-based tests to ensure that they are healthy and that if they contain adult content they are flagged appropriately. Lastly, they are included into the index and they show up on the search results until they are removed by us or until they are dead (determined when nobody is left sharing it for 2 weeks). The process is completely automated.”
7. Fulldls – Yet another Torrent search site. This one has many popular titles, and good quality Torrents.
8. Torrent Matrix – These guys claim to have the Latest bittorrent files, free downloads for PC Games, Movies, PS2, Xbox. Don’t they all though :-P
9. Bushtorrent – Not sure what they were thinking here putting one of the most hated presidents of all time right on their front page, but these guys do seem to have the full Dr. Who collection which makes my buddy Sundance happy.
10. Torrent Monkeys – Seriously, who doesn’t like monkeys? Especially monkeys that bring you piping hot Bit torrents?

I am sure there are plenty good Torrent sites that I missed. If I missed your favorite, please hit me up with links in the comments!

Technorati Tags: alternative to,the pirate bay,top ten,bit torrent,torrent,bittorrent,searches,sites,trackers

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Scaling walls with DIY Vacuum Gloves

This video is so damned nerdy, I just have to share it with you. Apparently some guy in England created his own high powered vacuum gloves and decided to test them out by doing what only Spiderman can do... Scale a building!

I seriously want one of these. Well, I take it back, if it were more compact and could fit under my skin tight superhero spandex, then i would want one. The one featured in the video is a little too bulky for my taste. Check it out:

What do you think? Cool? Fake? Want one? Hit us up in the comments.
Technorati Tags: diy, vacuum, gloves, scale, building

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Get The Picture on What is Taking Up Your Drive Space

I happened upon a really neat portable program the other day and thought I would share it with you. Before I get into it I just want to say that at my day job we have a lot of older servers that were built four and five years ago. When they were built they were installed with very little space for the system partition (Between 4 to 6 GB) and the rest was allocated to data.

Well over time Microsoft releases lots of patches, hotfixes and service packs. Not to mention other junk that tends to fill up 4 measly Gigabytes with the quickness.

This program I found, which is free by the way, allows you to get a graphical view of your hard drive to see where all the space is going. The program is called SpaceSniffer.

Here is a description from their website:

SpaceSniffer is a freeWare (donations are welcome) and portable tool application that lets you understand how folders and files are structured on your disks. By using a Treemap visualization layout, you have immediate perception of where big folders and files are placed on your devices. Treemap concept was invented by Prof. Ben Shneiderman, who kindly permitted the use of his concept into this tool.

Here is a screenshot of my hard drive at work… Yuck! Time to clean up!

What utilities do you use to gain insight on your drive space? What do you use to cleanup? Let us know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: spacesniffer,hard,drive,disk,space,analysis,graphical

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