Why it’s a bad idea to send large email attachments

The Google Operating System Blog has a great post explaining why it’s not a good idea to send large attachments:

People who demand large message size limits rarely understand the limitations of the email transmission.  Because of the MIME encoding used when sending binary attachments, your files expand 33% when sent via email.

In other words, a 15MB attachment requires 20MB plus the message text, plus message headers.
When you carbon copy 20 of your friends & coworkers, a separate message is sent to each. 20MB x 20 = 400MB. That's half a freaking CD.

If 5 of those friends are on the same small company email server, downloading those messages saturates the entire bandwidth of their T1 data line for nearly 9 minutes. Because each message has separate headers, it isn't easily cached and gets completely downloaded by each recipient.

Compare this to uploading the same attachment to a web server, FTP server, file transmission service like YouSendIt, or video streaming site like YouTube. One copy is uploaded. The download is typically 8-bit so minimal expansion factor. The small business' network can cache the content, so it's only downloaded once then fetched locally from the web caching server.

Bottom line, sending a large attachment via email is relocating using the U.S. Postal Service as your moving company. It is painful, limited, and expensive.

As an email administrator, I couldn’t agree more…

Exchange 2007 SP2 is out.

OK all you admins, put in that Change Request, and get installing!  For an overview of the new features that are available in Exchange Server 2007 SP2, see "What's New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2".

[ Exchange 2007 SP2 ]

Use Excel to create easy batch jobs

Do you have to run a command on several servers remotely?  You can enter each command separately, but every good admin should know how to make life easier for him/her self.  For example, I wanted to use the psloggedon.exe tool to find out who was logged in to all the servers I manage (about 150).  Naturally, I could log into each server, check the Terminal Server Manager, and go on the next, but who wants to do that? 

The PSTool – psloggedon.exe is a nice little utility that I can run from my command prompt, and have it query a remote computer, returning who is logged on to that server.  So, starting in Excel (I already had a list of all the servers), I pasted the list of servers in the C column.

Next, in Column A, I entered "psloggedon.exe” – the name of the executable I want to run.  in Column B, I put a “ \\” – note the space in front of the \\.  In column E, I entered my first switch, “ –l” – and in column F, a second switch “ –x” again, note the spaces before the switches.

 

Now, to bring the whole thing together.  I LOVE the command Concatenate. 

In column G, I entered =concatenate(A1,B1,C1,D1,E1)

This will combine all the columns together (now you know why the spaces were above) for your final command.

You can now select column G, and copy and paste it into notepad, and save it as a .bat file.  You now have an easily made bat file, using Excel.

Export Outlook Contact Pictures

I recently made a mistake, and deleted the folder where I kept all the original headshots of all my contacts.  Don’t ask me why I keep them, I just do… I know I have them in Outlook, but I like to have the originals also.  Anyway, I wanted a way to export the picture from Outlook, back into the file system.  Well, I ran across this script that will do just that.  I could not get it to run correctly running Vista or Windows 7, running Office 2007, or Office 2010, but was able to get it to run on XP with Office 2003.  Guess the MAPI calls are different or something.  If anyone knows how to make this work on Windows Vista/7, using Office 2007/2010 let me know!~

Here’s the script:

Public Const CdoDefaultFolderContacts = 5
snServername = wscript.arguments(0)
mbMailboxName = wscript.arguments(1)
set csCDOSession = CreateObject("MAPI.Session")
pfProfile = snServername & vbLf & mbMailboxName
csCDOSession.Logon "","",False,True,0,True, pfProfile
set cfContactsFolder = csCDOSession.getdefaultfolder(CdoDefaultFolderContacts)
set cfContactscol = cfContactsFolder.messages
set ofConFilter = cfContactscol.Filter
Set cfContFltFld1 = ofConFilter.Fields.Add("0x8015",vbBoolean,true,"0420060000000000C000000000000046")
For Each ctContact In cfContactscol
	Set collAttachments = ctContact.Attachments 
	For Each atAttachment In collAttachments
		If atAttachment.name = "ContactPicture.jpg" Then
			fname = replace(replace(replace(replace(replace((ctContact.subject & "-" & atAttachment.name),":","-"),"\",""),"/",""),"?",""),chr(34),"")
			fname = replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(fname,"<",""),">",""),chr(11),""),"*",""),"|",""),"(","")
			fname = replace(replace(replace(fname,")",""),chr(12),""),chr(15),"")
			atAttachment.WriteToFile("c:\contactpictures\" & fname)
			wscript.echo "Exported Picture to : " &  fname
		End if		
	next
Next

Save the above code as a .vbs file, and run it from the command line:

exportOutlookPic.vbs mailboxservername exchangeAlias

Make sure that you have created the folder referenced in the script, or you will get an error (c:\contactpictures\).  Works like a charm!  I know have all my Outlook Contact pictures, in my folder system. :)

Exchange 2010 RC is Available!

Just heard from my friend Scott @ MS that the RC is available for download!  It’s been posted on the Exchange Blog here:  http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/08/17/451974.aspx

Exchange 2007 CCR – Move File Share Witness

Sometimes it is necessary to move the Exchange 2007 CCR’s File Share Witness.  This is easily done with the command prompt:

cluster CLUSTERNAME resource "Majority Node Set" /priv MNSFileShare=\\server\share
cluster CLUSTERNAME group "Cluster Group" /move
cluster CLUSTERNAME group "Cluster Group" /move

When moving the FSW location, don’t forget to set the correct permissions - for more information on File Share Witness, see Technet:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124922.aspx

Exchange 2010 & Office 2010 “Visual Pressroom” from Microsoft

Microsoft has posted a "Visual Pressroom" for their Upcoming Exchange 2010, Office 2010 and Office Web Applications.

Office Web Applications:

• Editing & Viewing PowerPoint presentations in PowerPoint Web application
• Editing & Viewing Word documents in Word Web application
• Editing & Viewing Excel spreadsheets in Excel Web application
• Editing & Viewing OneNote notes in OneNote Web application

Exchange 2010 and Office 2010:

• Conversation View. To reduce inbox clutter, Exchange 2010 provides an enhanced Conversation View that streamlines inbox navigation by automatically organizing message threads based on the natural conversation flow between parties.
• Ignore Conversation. This e-mail “mute button” allows people to remove themselves from an irrelevant e-mail string, reducing unwanted e-mail and runaway reply-all threads.
• Voice Mail Preview. Exchange 2010 further enhances voice mail functionality by delivering speech-to-text voice mail, allowing users to receive voice mail previews in their inbox.
• Outlook Web Access premium support is available for Mozilla Firefox & Apple Safari.
• MailTips warn people before they commit an e-mail faux pas, such as sending mail to a large distribution group, among other things. MailTips alert people if they do not have permission to send to certain recipients, if a message may be rejected or if a recipient is out of the office, among other things. 

[Microsoft]