Devin on Earth

Pretty sure I'm not from around here, but currently configured as human. I am a Social Justice Monk.

Post-Conference report

As I typically do, I’m posting links to my slide decks for the presentations I just finished giving. I apologize to the Connections folks; I was supposed to get this done Monday afternoon or Tuesday and got ambushed by a travel-induced migraine.

Orlando was nice this time of year; not too hot, so the humidity slipped under the radar. It was nice to see a bunch of familiar faces and meet some new ones, and I was very pleased with the attendance at all of my sessions. Doing all three sessions back-to-back is definitely a drain, but the conference organizers helped out a lot by keeping me in the same room for all of them, and had I stayed for a couple of days I’d definitely have had the fun of shuttling back and forth. And I have apparently finally beaten my notorious string of demo failures; my demo DPM environment (provided by Jason Buffington of Microsoft, thank you Jason) worked quite nicely.

For the MMS folks, I can’t put my deck up directly; you’ll need to get it from the MMS CommNet or wait for your attendee DVD to show up. Las Vegas is still completely over the top; the Venetian was opulent and provided a nice venue. For some reason, the casino didn’t seem nearly as intrusive as it could have been (and is in other venues). I am, however, glad I had new shoes — my feet didn’t hurt from all the walking. For the flight home, I picked up 21: Bringing Down the House – Movie Tie-In: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions at the airport and read it cover-to-cover; a great story told well.

Greetings from Orlando!

I’m posting from a break between sessions at Exchange Connections in Orlando, FL. I just had a good session on protecting Exchange with DPM — thanks to everyone who attended and gave lots of good feedback.

Next up — a session on DCAR with Exchange, and then Exchange 2007 update best practices.

The weather is actually the best I’ve ever seen here — not too hot, with a nice breeze, so the humidity isn’t overwhelming. However, the A/C is up full in the room I’m presenting, so I’m glad the speaker shirts are long-sleeved.

More later!

New Exchange 2007 migration whitepaper

A couple months back, I was able to work with Quest Software on a new whitepaper for Exchange 2007 migrations. As you probably already know, Reader, Quest makes some of the slickest migration software on the market. They also make Quest Archive Manager, which offers (of course!) email archiving capabilities. Quest’s notion, and the one I explored in this whitepaper, is that by deploying an archival solution such as Quest Archive Manager, you can actually reduce the risks you’ll face during messaging migration. The paper is specifically about migrating to Exchange 2007; while I didn’t focus on the details of Exchange migration, I do cover some of the possible risks you face during a migration to Exchange 2007.

If you’re interested in reading the whitepaper, you can get it for free from Quest; you simply need to register your email address with them.

New blog about the archival industry

Hey, all. I’m not dead yet, just heads-down in work and the forthcoming DPM book that Ryan and I are writing. (Ignore the “2008” bit; that’s a typo and the good folks at Wiley are working on fixing it.)

Just wanted to take a minute to tell you about a new blog that Exchange MVP Martin Tuip has started: Archiving101.com. It’s sparse on content right now as he’s just kicked it off, but Martin’s been around the archival industry and worked for many of the key players in the space (and has earned himself a lot of teasing and heckling from his fellow MVPs because of it!) I’ll be interested to see what insights he has to offer.

Post-Connections post

Another Exchange Connections event has come and gone. As nice as the venues are, I really wish the spring Connections events weren’t in Orlando — the town itself is spread out, limiting how easy it is to get out of the event venue for a couple of hours and go do anything on your down time. I was lucky enough to get direct flights to and from Orlando, thus limiting the amount of horsing around I had to do in airports, but the flights are correspondingly longer. consequently, even though I managed to snag an aisle seat in an exit row on my flight back (with no one in the center seat), I awoke today with a killer migraine, a lovely parting gift from seat 15C.

The other thing I lucked out on this year was getting to do all of my sessions on the same day. That may sound like a lot of work — and it is — but there’s a large amount of mental energy I have to invest in getting ready to go up on stage and present, so only having to do that workup once (and sustain it for the day) actually ends up being easier on me. Here are the slide decks for my presentations, along with comments:

  • EXC16: DCAR with Exchange
    I received an interesting comment from several of the attendees at this session, which was that they were not originally going to come to this session because the acronym DCAR meant nothing to them. I know that few people in this industry use it other than Paul and I, so I need to see what I can do about that.
    Key take-away from this session: as far as Exchange 2007 comes with out-of-the-box functionality aimed at discovery, compliance, archival, and retention, you still need third-party software to do a proper job of it — and you need to consider these activities all as facets of the single larger task of messaging data management. Thing I learned from this session: my job gives me the luxury of examining these types of tasks and looking for the bigger picture, but the people who work to keep production environments running don’t often have the time. I need to not be afraid of talking about things I think are “obvious,” because they may be coming from a new perspective some of my attendees don’t get the chance to share. In return, they share their experience and perspective with me, which helps me better fine-tune my message for others.

  • EXC17: 10 Tips to Make Your Exchange Server a Good Net Neighbor
    This was a nice small session, the perfect wrap-up for the day, although I wonder if attendance was hurt slightly by the fact that it was the last session of the day. Nevertheless, I think there were some good questions and discussions, and I’ve definitely got some ideas for future blog posts (and possibly magazine articles).
    Key take-away from this session: you can significantly enhance the reputation your domains gather by thinking about how your Exchange organization interacts with the rest of the Internet and making some appropriate changes.
    Thing I learned from this session: so much of our understanding of email best practices in the end comes back to a fundamental understanding of proper DNS theory and operation — a subject that far too many admins do not have adequate grounding in. Especially in the Windows community, DNS tends to get treated as a black box, and someone who learns how Active Directory integrates with DNS may not learn that some of the assumptions AD makes about DNS are only valid in the context of an AD domain.

  • EXC18: Iron Chef: Using Powershell with Exchange 2003
    Definitely the one that took the vast majority of my mental prep time; I hadn’t realized when I proposed this session what a challenge it would be. On the other hand, I’m glad I did it, and I’ll be breaking it down into a series of detailed blog posts in the coming weeks.
    Key take-away from this session: cmdlets make things so much simpler, but once you’ve got your data in a PowerShell object you can still do some amazing stuff in a very small amount of script.
    Thing I learned from this session: logistics are everything in the success of a presentation; the problems I had with my demos came not from the scripts, which I was re-writing until an hour before the session, but from my last-minute decision to run the slides off the provided machine and run the demo scripting off my laptop. As a result, my practice run (which involved switching in and out of an RDP session) was useless and the attendees kept having to remind me to switch the screen to the right machine. I’m just glad they seemed to take it in good humor.

And finally…Chapter 6 of Email Discovery and Compliance ebook

At long last, Chapter 6 of the DCAR ebook is up. As always, it’s a free download (registration required).

I just exchange some email with my editor and found out that we’ve so far had over 1100 people register to download the ebook.

Wow. Eleven hundred. Thank you very much, everyone, for registering and reading. I’m blown away. I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts.

DCAR ebook Chapter 5: Implementation part 2: Hardware and Software

Chapter 5, Implementation part 2: Hardware and Software, of my ebook on DCAR (Discovery, Compliance, Archival, and Retention) is now available for download. This ebook is published online by Windows IT Pro. This was a fun chapter to write, because I finally got to discuss some of the technical issues.

All five chapters are a free download away (registration required) so please go download and enjoy. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. By no strange coincidence, I just turned Chapter 6 (the final chapter) into my editor last night, so it won’t be too long before the entire ebook is available! For those of you who have been following along since Chapter 1, thanks for your patience.

DCAR ebook Chapter 4: Implementation part 1: People and processes

Chapter 4, Implementation part 1: People and processes, of my ebook on DCAR (Discovery, Compliance, Archival, and Retention) is now available for download. This ebook is published online by Windows IT Pro.

Before you spend a lot of time thinking about the specifics of your hardware and software design, you need to design your solution. This chapter reviews your business drivers, examines the scope of your efforts, and talks about how to get the right planning team selected. It also discusses how to examine your processes and ensure that your planning team covers all your needs.

All four chapters are a free download away (registration required) so please go download and enjoy. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Also, I’ll be in Exchange Connections in Orlando in just a few days, and I’ll be presenting a session that is a condensed version of this ebook. If you’re going to be there, stop by and let me know what you think!

Book signing in Orlando

Paul, Missy, and I will all be speakers at this spring’s Exchange Connections 2006 conference, held at the Walt Disney Swan Hotel in sunny Orlando this April 9-12. Not only will we have 8 sessions of Exchange goodness to share with you, we’ll also be having a book signing at the conference bookstore. Come find us at 3:30pm on Monday, April 10th — if you’re going to be at Connections, I’d love to hear from you!

A good regulatory compliance resource

I know I’ve been on a Windows Mobile kick for the past few days, but it’s not all I’ve been doing. I just recently turned in the final draft of Chapter 4 of my DCAR (Discovery, Compliance, Archival, and Retention) ebook to my editors at Windows IT Pro, so I expect to be seeing that go live on the website in the very near future. As always, I’ll let you know once I know it’s up.

This chapter was a very difficult one to write, because it (by design) had very little to do with technology. The technological challenges of DCAR — especially the regulatory compliance aspects of DCAR — get a lot of airtime in our industry; we’re a tech-oriented industry, and frankly, tech solutions are a heck of a lot easier to figure out than people and process problems.

So, chapter 4 is all about people and processes. I have a fairly firm theory: any time you have an issue and need to make a change, it is either going to be a process change or a tech change. You won’t have to do one or the other — and if you find that you do, it has been my experience that you’re really making two changes, or solving two problems, at once. This leads directly to a quote from Exchange MVP Ed Crowley:

There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems.

One of the groups I’ve worked with at Microsoft, Microsoft Solutions for Security and Compliance(MSSC), is spending a lot of time focusing on regulatory compliance as a pain point for their customers. Via their secguide blog, I recently discovered the Regulatory Compliance blog, which is turning out to have some interesting and thought-prooiking posts from a variety of really smart and talented people. Give it a look-see.

I’d like to highlight one recent post of note: Regulatory Compliance Planning Guide Beta Coming. I eagerly await this guide; I think it’s going to be chock full of the same kind of crunchy usefulness as previous guidance produced by MSSC. Paul and I worked worked with them last fall to help produce the Windows Server 2003 Security Guide v2.0 and the Threats and Countermeasures Guide v2.0.

Don’t forget to check out the secguide blog as well; they have a lot of interesting and useful security content, much of which is applicable to DCAR solutions and concerns.

DCAR ebook Chapter 3: The Messaging Environment

Chapter 3, The Messaging Envrionment, of my ebook on DCAR (Discovery, Compliance, Archival, and Retention) is now available for download. This ebook is published online by Windows IT Pro.

This chapter takes a look at your Exchange environment and points out various aspects of your Exchange organization that you need to examine as you design your DCAR solution:

  • AD forests, domain, and sites
  • Administrative and routing groups
  • Routing and front-end servers
  • Mailbox servers
  • Public folder servers
  • Messaging clients
  • Mail-enabled applications
  • LAN and WAN bandwidth
  • Backup and recovery systems

This chapter also examines the critical importance of messaging hygiene in your DCAR solution, and even takes a look at the implications of using transport and message security protocols in your organization.

All three chapters are a free download away (registration required) so please go download and enjoy. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Looking forward to Exchange Connections Spring 2006

For some of us, it’s already time to start thinking about the next Exchange Connections, which has traditionally been held during the fall Windows Connections. This is the first year Exchange Connections will also be held during the spring conference, and they’ve got the speaker list up. Yes, that’s me up there, for my first full conference as a speaker. I’m excited and nervous at the same time. “What sessions are you presenting?” I hear you ask; well, look no further:

  • EXC02: All About SenderID: This session explains the concepts behind SenderID and the Purported Responsible Address (PRA). We’ll walk through how to implement a SenderID solution in your Exchange organization. We’ll focus on the built-in support in Exchange 2003 SP2, but we’ll list some of the common (and free) third-party add-ons. We will examine the history, present, and future of SenderID. We’ll also help you identify where Sender ID will help, where it won’t, and how it stacks up to other proposals such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS), and Yahoo!’s DomainKeys.
  • EXC03: Best Practices for Exchange 2003 Site and Server Consolidation: (with Missy Koslosky) Interested in learning whether it’s practical to reduce the number of sites and servers in your Exchange Server organization? We’ll discuss the reasons behind site and server consolidation and the methods you can use to consolidate your environment, and tell you when it makes sense to consolidate.
  • EXC05: E-Mail Discovery and Compliance on Ice!: Does the phrase “regulatory compliance” strike fear into your heart? This session is a condensed, live verison of the E-mail Discovery and Compliance eBook from Windows IT Pro. We’ll find out how discovery, compliance, archival, and retention (DCAR) are not separate concerns but rather are the cornerstones of an integrated approach to controlling your messaging data. We’ll explore specific business drivers, the components of your Exchange configuration, how to plan your own DCAR solution, and how to gain control over your own challenges through your implementation.

I’m honored to have been selected; there are many fine speakers and writers who will be presenting. I’ve got no easy standard to live up to. You can bet that I’ve taken close note of Jesper Johansson’s all-too-true blog post Death by PowerPoint and I’ve already started thinking of ways to make sure my slide decks don’t wind up being something banned by the Geneva Conventions.

[Ed. The website currently has my name misspelled as “Granger” which is, sadly, not an uncommon mistake. I’ve already alerted the folks and asked them to change it; I am confident they’ll get it straightened out quickly. Thankfully, the brochure has it spelled correctly. You would think that as often as it happens, I’d have learned to not get upset about it, but no, Ganger/Granger is the one mangling of my name that I have little patience for.]

[Ed. Like I figured, the fine folks at Windows IT Pro are all over the case. They’ve already got all the little typos fixed. Amy and Erik, you rock!]

DCAR ebook Chapter 2: Know Your Regulations!

My ebook on DCAR (Discovery, Compliance, Archival, and Retention), published online by Windows IT Pro, has been updated; the second chapter, Know Your Regulatons!, is now available for download. It gives an overview of five key pieces of federal regulation:

  • The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB)
  • The Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)
  • The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)
  • The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 17A-4
  • The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA Patriot Act)

It’s a free download (registration required) so there’s no cost to go take a look.

My new ebook on email DCAR is now available!

DCAR (Discovery, Compliance, Archival, and Retention) is a big topic these days. I’ve done some work with 3Sharp in this space, and I have been fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to write an ebook for Windows IT Pro on the topic.

The first chapter is now available for free download with registration; the remaining chapters will be coming out over the next few months. So if this is something that interests you, feel free to go take a look.

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