Alexander’s Blog

One of the advantages of being an MCT is that a lot of vendors are anxious to give you their products for free for demonstration purposes and personal use. The idea is that if you like their product they can get a lot of free publicity. In the past I’ve tested GFI’s MailEssentials. Recently I evaluated two anti-spam software packages for Exchange 2003:

1. Red Earth’s Policy Patrol Enterprise
2. Vamsoft’s Open Relay Filter (ORF) Enterprise Edition

I evaluated these products based on their functionality, ease of use, and features…..not based on their pricing. Here are some pros and cons for both the products.

Policy Patrol Enterprise
I found Policy Patrol Enterprise to be fairly easy to configure and I was also impressed by its ability to filter spam. You can also install the software on a Windows XP computer and manage the server remotely. I didn’t like the way it sorts the lists (blacklists and whitelists). Although it lets you sort the list temporarily, it doesn’t let you change the default. One workaround is to export the list, sort it out and then import it back……too much hassle. One annoying thing about this product is that you need to make a connection to the server every time you start the Policy Patrol Administration console, even if you open the console on the Exchange server. This takes some time. I liked the ability to look at the past history that shows all the messages that have been filtered. The ability to filter out Words/phrases and attachments is great but they filtering wasn’t always perfect. You could use the Bayesian filtering for detecting spam and it helps. The product comes with lots of sample filters, which is nice, but the monitoring of messages is rather cumbersome. You have to go to at least 6 different folders to properly monitor the messages. The good thing is that you have the ability to look at individual messages and decide whether to forward, move to another folder or to delete. The worst part of this package was that it doesn’t have an easier method to reject messages at the server from spammers that are on your blacklist. You can reject messages on the Real-time Blacklists but the messages on your own blacklist must go through your e-mail server before you take an action on them. Obviously, this wastes bandwidth and causes administrative overhead.

Open Relay Filter (ORF) Enterprise Edition
The Open Relay Filter (ORF) Enterprise Edition from Vamsoft was also very easy to install and configure. The help file walks you through the installation and setup. The product is simple to configure but doesn’t do quite the job that Policy Patrol Enterprise does in filtering spam. The big advantage is that this product will let you reject messages on your own blacklist, in addition to rejecting messages from Real-time Blacklists. The lists are easy to sort and easy to import/export in XML format. One of the coolest features of this product is the real-time statistics about its activity, as shown below in the screen shot.

Conclusion
Overall, I liked the Open Relay Filter (ORF) Enterprise Edition better. I should also point out that the folks at Policy Patrol Enterprise will only give a restricted version of their product for free that only allows a few accounts to be tested. The Open Relay Filter (ORF) Enterprise Edition gives out a complete product with no restrictions. I found the Open Relay Filter (ORF) Enterprise Edition to be a better overall anti-spam solution for Exchange 2003, compared to GFI’s MailEssentials and Red Earth’s Policy Patrol Enterprise. The fact that they offer a fully functional product to MVPs was a bonus but it did not have any affect on my recommendation. I should point out that even if you are using one of these anti-spam products, I encourage you to use the free Exchange Intelligent Message Filter.

Today I was teaching Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Best Practices Workshop and ran into a problem where the students’ Virtual PCs refused to raise Domain Functional level from Windows 2000 Native to Windows Server 2003. The two DCs were able to ping each other by name, the replication (repadmin /syncall /P) worked fine and revealed no errors. The error said that the domain controller was too busy so the functional level could not be raised. The Event Viewer showed error 2042.

This TechNet article explains in more detail how to resolve the issue. According to the article “If a domain controller has not replicated with its partner for longer than a tombstone lifetime, it is possible that a lingering object problem exists on one or both domain controllers. When this condition occurs, inbound replication with the source partner is stopped on the destination domain controller and event ID 2042 is logged in the Directory Services event log.”

By adding the Allow Replication with Divergent and Corrupted Partner registry key and then replicating the A.D. database, the students were able to raise the Domain Functional level.

You may know that loopback is used for testing, or debugging system problems by sending the data out and then delivering back to the source without actually sending it across a network. For example, you ping IP address 127.0.0.1 to test the loopback. Loopback adapter has several advantages. For example, you can configure protocol software and test device drivers even if your computer is not connected to a physical network. Microsoft provides a loopback adapter that can be useful under several situations.

One advantage of Microsoft Loopback Adapter is that you can install Active Directory (A.D.) on a Domain Controller (D.C.) that doesn’t have a network adapter. Normally, this is not a possibility as A.D. requires that a network adapter be installed first. If you have a need to install A.D. on a computer without a network card, such as a test or a lab environment, you can install Microsoft Loopback Adapter instead of physically installing a network adapter.

Another situation where Microsoft Loopback Adapter can be advantageous is Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2004. With Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 you can create a more complex network environment on a single physical computer, without installing multiple physical network cards, by using multiple instances of Microsoft Loopback Adapter on the host operating system, such as Windows XP. Here’s a step-by-step procedure on how you can add Microsoft Loopback Adapter on your Windows XP computer.

1. Click Start, Control Panel, Add Hardware.

2. In the Welcome to the Add Hardware Wizard, click Next.

3. On Is the hardware connected? screen, select Yes, I have already connected the hardware.

4. The next screen shows you a list of installed hardware. Select the last option to Add a new hardware device, as shown below, and click Next.

5. When asked What do you want the wizard to do?, select Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced) and click Next.

6. In the Common hardware types screen, select Network Adapters and click Next.

7. On the Select Network Adapter screen, select Microsoft under Manufacturer and Microsoft Loopback Adapter, under Network Adapter, then click Next.

8. Click Next one more time to install the hardware, then click Finish.

9. If you are running Microsoft AntiSpyware, you may see the following alert message. Click Ignore.

Redmond Magazine has an interesting article this month called Microsoft Math. They’ve examined Microsoft’s track record in hitting the product ship dates. Although the results don’t surprise anyone because everyone, including Microsoft employees themselves, assumes their products will not ship on time.

Microsoft has been late delivering products going back to Windows 1.0. Looking at the numbers, it has been a common practice for them to deliver products that are 12, 14, 18 or even 21 months late. According to the graphics from Redmond Magazine below, the Windows desktop products are delayed on average 10 months and the Windows servers on average 9 months. Windows NT 3.5 was the only server product that was shipped on time.

I believe having these numbers published would help Microsoft make more realistic promises for the release of their products because they would realize that it’s pretty embarrassing for a company to not deliver on time so consistently. I would rather see a product that works and is well tested, instead of seeing it released on time. But why not say that Longhorn will be released in the Spring or Summer of 2007, instead of end of 2006? Perhaps Microsoft will release Longhorn on time and surprise all of us. I also don’t mind at all if Microsoft drops or adds features at the last minute. They have every right to do that. They want to release a product that works properly. If they can’t include WinFS in Longhorn then that’s fine. They will offer that at a later time when it’s ready. However, I do have a problem when organizations don’t deliver their products on time because it shows that the company is not organized, lacks project management, and doesn’t care what the impact might be on their customers.

It’s unfortunate that being consistently late in delivering products affects Microsoft’s credibility because there’s a lot of time, talent, and energy goes into each and every product.

If you try to add a Hotmail account to Outlook Express you may notice the following error when you try to synchronize the folders.

**********************************************************************************
Could not connect to Hotmail as MyAccount@hotmail.com.

Account: ‘MyAccount (Hotmail)’, Server: ‘http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp’, Protocol: HTTPMail, Server Response: ‘Access to Hotmail via Outlook and Outlook Express now requires a subscription. Please sign up at http://upgrade.msn.com’, Port: 0, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0×800CCCF6
**********************************************************************************

MSN Hotmail no longer supports Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) for free user accounts. Outlook Express uses the DAV interface to connect to Hotmail. Only paid Hotmail accounts will work correctly with Outlook Express. If you configured Outlook Express or Outlook to access your Hotmail account before DAV support was ended, you may still be able to use Outlook Express to open a free Hotmail account. However, eventually Hotmail will no longer support DAV for all free Hotmail accounts.

I’ve been able to use the accounts I’ve added before DAV support was discontinued and they work just fine. Check out Microsoft’s KB article 878462 for more details.