Script: Get transaction log count (EXCollect)

Posted on 06/24/2008 by Jason Sherry

7/21 Update: 

I’ve created a wiki page for this script: http://info.izzy.org/Wiki/EXCollect.aspx go here for the latest info.  I’ve also renamed the script to "EXCollect" 🙂

 

At my new company (Mimosa Systems) we have a sizing XLS that we use to estimate the storage and IOPS requirements for our (archiving) product.  The best\simplest metric we have found on growth & amount of data is TLOG count (at least the best metric with minimum impact).  Asking the customers for this count has been problematic, so I decided to script a better solution.

 

The script auto discovers all storage groups in the forest and then uses a basic DIR command to get the count.  It then keeps track of the last TLOG for each SG from its previous run, in the registry, and calculates the # of new logs since the last run.  The results, with additional info on store size, path, etc, are saved to a tab delimited TXT files, which makes creating a Pivot table chart & graph of the data pretty easy.  The script needs to setup as a scheduled tasks, for best results, running as an account that has local admin rights on the Exchange server (it uses the admin$ shares).

 

Anyways, here’s the script:
EXCollect.vbs : http://info.izzy.org/Technical/Scripting/Documents/Forms/DispForm.aspx?ID=42

 

If anyone out there has comments or additions or want to assist on some of the To Do’s feel free to ping me.

 

This script would also be usefull for collecting TLOG data as input for the updated Exchange 2007 storage caculator.

 

Parts of this script came initially from a script originally posted by Michael B. Smith to his blog (http://theessentialexchange.com/blogs/michael/) on 7/11/06.  Original script.

Mostly rewritten by Jason Sherry on 6/18/08 to do the following:

  1. Enumerates the AD to get the log path for all SGs
  2. Gets the last “newest” log from the a registry key for that SG (HKLM\Software\Mimosa\PS Tools\<Server>\<SG>)
  3. Calculates the difference between the last newest log file (from registry) and the current newest (from file system), if there is no newest log value in registry it uses the oldest log file (from file system)
  4. Saves current store info (time stamp, EDB path, STM Path, EDB & STM size) in StoreData.txt
  5. Saves current SG info (time stamp, Size, path, current TLOG count, oldest TLOG, newest TLOG, # new logs since last run) in SGData.txt
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Blog upgraded using free Community Kit for SharePoint

Posted on 06/04/2008 by Jason Sherry
This free, open source, add-on\upgrade to SharePoint is a major improvement over the standard blog site in SharePoint 3.0/2007.
 
You can download it and view the docs at:
 
Posted in Microsoft, SharePoint | Tagged | Leave a comment

Two-way Sync with Excel 2007 and SharePoint 2007 requires this add-in

Posted on 04/25/2008 by Jason Sherry
In Excel 2003 you could edit a SharePoint list using Excel.  For some reason, probably because they are trying to push users to use Access for this now, Microsoft dropped two-way sync support in Excel 2007.  This ability was listed as a deprecated in WSS 3.0.
 
I came across this blog post today, which had a link to an Add-In from Microsoft to add this support back in.

BUT the Microsoft plug-in sucks…

In the comments of this blog post I found this ActiveX control that has MUCH better support.  The above add-in really only lets you create an XLS and then post it to SharePoint.  Once this is done you can then edit it in Excel.  What it is lacking is the ability to edit an existing list that’s already in SharePoint in Excel and then sync the changes back up. 

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Got to love corporate influenced politics…

Posted on 04/21/2008 by Jason Sherry
I friend of mine, Glenn Deans from Atlanta, forwarded this to me, asking me why I didn’t ask Steve Ballmer about this last week at the MVP Summit. 🙂
 
Anyways this post "The Norway Vote – What really happened" goes over how the VP of Standard Norway removed everyone from a voting process until the vote went the way he wanted!  This relates to Microsoft since the vote was for the OOXML standard (Office Open XML), which Microsoft created and is pushing for (criticism of it).  Microsoft has since turned the standard over to an independent committee, called Emca International.  The standard was intial based on an XML file storage format used by 1st by Excel in 2000 and is like the default format used by Office 2007.  (Based on my quick read of the wikipedia page about it.)
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MVP Summit 2008

Posted on 04/18/2008 by Jason Sherry

Well this year’s Microsoft MVP Summit is over and MVPs from around the world are heading home. This year’s summit was great, minus the food, again. The highlights were the deep technical information on what’s coming out in E14 (next version after Exchange 2007) and the attendee party last night at the Experience Music Project (EMP). Sorry, I can’t go over any of the details on what’s coming in E14 (all MVPs are under VERY strict NDAs).

The party at the EMP was great mainly due to the geek factor (not counting the 100s or 1,000+ geeks [MVPs] there. There is a sci-fi museum that had props, books, and other items from sci-fi going back at least 50 years. Paul Allen (one of the founders of Microsoft) owned most of the items, so he must be an über sci-fi fan. The main focus of EMP is on music and it had a lot of interactive exhibits and memorabilia all around the building. The building itself was also quite amazing, no square angles and very organic looking from the outside. The different exhibits ranged from electric guitars, drums, and keyboards that people could just jam on in a "booth" to "Simon says" type interactive training sessions with an instrument. Besides the standard stuff at the EMP there was a live band and karaoke setup so the MVPs or their guest could get on-stage with a live band and sing or scream their heart out (most were pretty bad). There was also a setup with all four instruments for the game Rock Bank projected on a large screen in an auditorium room, which had a good size audience. A bit/lot of alcohol gave people the liquid courage to get on stage at both places and the distortion of senses to enjoy it also J

The closing speakers were Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Architect @ Microsoft) and Steve Ballmer (CEO and early [1980] member of Microsoft). Ray talked a bit about his philosophy and the vision of Microsoft moving forward and thanked the MVP for helping Microsoft make their product better. He then took some Q&A from the crowd. Steve then talked about how the MVP program is really looked highly upon by everyone at Microsoft. He then did a Q&A session and there were two very interesting items that came out of this. The first was that Steve said if any Microsoft employee wasn’t responding to e-mail (one MVP complained about the lack of e-mail response from his local Microsoft reps) to send him the e-mail and he would make sure we got a response! The second was a challenge to the MVPs to switch their default search to Microsoft Live Search for a week sometime this year. He said Microsoft is planning to make some additional changes to Live Search and he wanted us to try it for a week and then send him an e-mail with our feedback. Even for those who are all Microsoft MVPs, Live Search is not the most commonly used search engine (by a long shot). So it will be interesting to see how that week goes since he has to know that most MVPs have a blog and are going to blog about that week’s (when TBD later) experience, in addition to e-mailing him. I’m looking forward to that week and to see what happens. As always it was great to see Steve speak, he is one of the most enthusiastic speaks and you can tell he loves and is VERY VERY passionated (spelling is an inside joke to my fellow MVPs who might be reading this) about his company!

Looking forward to next year!!!

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At the Microsoft MVP summit in Seattle this week

Posted on 04/14/2008 by Jason Sherry
I’m in Seattle this week for the MS MVP Summit.
At the summit MVPs get to spend two full days with the product groups (developers and managers) in their area of expertise.  At these sessions mostly the up coming versions  and issues/feedback about the current version are discussed.  The MVP summit really goes to show how much Microsoft is committed to working with the people out in the field to get, understand, and act upon “real world” feedback.
This year Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer, and Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, are the key note speakers.  Last year it was Bill Gates and I think Ballmer were.
Posted in Exchange, Microsoft | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Creating a Spam Quarantine with Exchange 2007

Posted on 04/03/2008 by Jason Sherry
My latest article has been posted to http://www.outlookexchange.com
 
Creating a Spam Quarantine with Exchange 2007
Out of the box Exchange 2007 has support to store/quarantine possible spam messages.  This articles goes over how to enable and fully utilize this feature.
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10 more years of Public Folders (Exchange)

Posted on 03/31/2008 by Jason Sherry
Well Microsoft has "officially" announced, at least on the Exchange Team blog, that E14 (next version of Exchange, after 2007) will support Public Folders 😦
 
Why am I sad?  Well Microsoft has been saying they are going to stop supporting Public Folders for MANY years but they haven’t.  Public Folder do work well at some things but SharePoint 2007 is a better solution for MOST things PFs are used for.  So we (Exchange MVPs at least) had hoped MS wasn’t going to support PFs in E14.  Now that they are, MS will have to support them for 10 years after E14 is released (support period for Exchange).
 
For more info see this Exchange team blog post.
 
Related blog posts:
 
The 1st link above is important since Microsoft currently doesn’t provide any tools to help people migrate from PFs to SharePoint.
 
The 2nd link goes over some ways to mitigate the issue that SharePoint, out of the box, can only host data at one physical location.  Multi-master replication is something PFs did pretty well.
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Exchange, SharePoint, and Outlook 2007 articles

Posted on 03/08/2008 by Jason Sherry

I’ve talked to a few technical friends of mine in the last few weeks about Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007. Most of them haven’t had the time to spend with either of these products since they were release, which was is Dec 2007. It came up in the conversation that I had a few articles I have written on these topics. So I thought I would post the links to them on my blog.

There are all posted on http://www.outlookexchange.com:

What’s New and Cool in Exchange 2007
Interested in what’s new, cool, and changed in Exchange 2007?  If so check out this article and the various links provided in it. 

Integrating SharePoint and Outlook 2007
This article covers how to integrate SharePoint lists with Outlook items. It goes over how to get Calendars, Tasks, Contacts, and Document Libraries in SharePoint to show up in Outlook 2007.

Testing Exchange 2007 – Part 1
In this series of articles I will cover the key areas that really need to be looked at for tested, before planning for, and definitely before starting your migration to Exchange 2007.  The first part covers how the changes in Exchange 2007 can affect applications and why it is so different from Exchange 2003.

Testing Exchange 2007 – Part 2
In the second part of this article series I cover DR, clustering, scalability, server roles, and calendaring.

Creating a two node CCR cluster with Exchange 2007
In this article I will cover setting up and configuring Exchange 2007 in a two node Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) cluster.  CCR clustering is new to Exchange 2007 and provides the ability to cluster without the requirement of an expense shared storage system.

Posted in Exchange, Microsoft, SharePoint, Windows | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The battle between Blue-Ray & HD-DVD is over

Posted on 02/19/2008 by Jason Sherry
Toshiba quits HD DVD!
 
It’s about time!  In the last few weeks NetFlix, Wal-Mart and others have dropped HD-DVD support.  Now that Toshiba threw in the towel it’s all over for HD-DVD.  Hopefully soon Microsoft will come out with a Blue-Ray player for the XBox 360 since they only have an HD one right now.
 
 
Update 3/11:
Another good article that you should read before getting a Blue-Ray player
http://www.techwarelabs.com/articles/hardware/blu-ray-decision/
Posted in Electronics | Tagged | Leave a comment