One of the most common questions that our support team receives with Hosted Exchange is “How can my client choose which email address I want to send as?” and many partners are shocked to hear the answer “You can’t”.

The above limitation has always existed in Exchange as you can only have one “outgoing” address. Sure, you can create another profile in Outlook and send via SMTP or create a distribution group and add send-as rights..but what do you do if you’re on hosted exchange and you don’t have the freedom to control addresses and configurations at will or find it rather rudimentary?

*Drum roll*

Now you can…

For the first time (as far as I can tell for any hosting provider) partners/clients will have the ability to control their outgoing address in our Hosted Exchange.

Utilizing our API and a brand new API designed by the ExchangeDefender team for direct client Exchange interaction we now can extend the ability for clients to control their outgoing address on the fly.

The current beta product is a windows based application and will soon be converted to an Outlook 2010 plugin.

If you or your clients are interested in test driving this software please reach out to me directly: travis@ownwebnow.com.

Note:  This only applies to rockerduck.

Travis Sheldon
VP, Network Operations, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x757
travis@ownwebnow.com

In my previous blog entry I overviewed the failover procedure for Rockerduck and what ‘technically’ goes on in the background during a failover. This blog entry will focus more on the client experience during and after an outage.

Imagine that Jim and Kelly are both a part of “ABC Company LLC”. Jim is very hip with his new Apple laptop using Office 2011 and his iPhone 4s. Kelly still uses Windows along with Outlook 2007 and when she is out of the office she uses her Blackberry Torch connected through Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Currently, everything is working properly and all systems are operational.

If MBOX2 was to go offline, MBOX1 would take over actively hosting DB2 (Which was hosted by MBOX2). This type of failure is an inter-site failure and results in an immediate switch to the passive copies. Customers will see no downtime as long as there is a good copy of the database available.

What happens if Dallas goes offline?

As described in my previous blog entry, disastrous failures are not automatically failed over. At this point, both clients would be offline from their mailbox and unable to access, create or modify items.

However, in following my previous blog entry we would be able to activate our fail over procedure.

After 15 minutes of electing to activate our fail over procedure clients should receive the update DNS records for cas.rockerduck.exchangedefender.com to point to Los Angeles. All clients would then be able to reconnect to their mailboxes and service should resume as normal out of Los Angeles with the exception of Blackberry Enterprise Server which cannot be setup for fault tolerance in our network design.

After repairing/resolving any issues in Dallas, we would then begin to resynchronize the databases from Los Angeles to Dallas. Once all database copies are up to date we would then reconfigure DNS to point to Dallas and resume service as normal. All in all with a disastrous failure we would be able to recover from the event in 15 minutes once the recovery process is executed.

Travis Sheldon
VP, Network Operations, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x757
travis@ownwebnow.com

Over the weekend (12/09/11 – 12/10/11) we performed critical, preemptive upgrades for Rockerduck. During our upgrade cycle we were able to increase memory resources for Mailbox servers, rebalance resource distribution on Client Access servers and add additional Mailbox servers for quorum retention and additional high availability.

Mailbox, mailbox, mailbox…

By utilizing the current mailbox server layout, we were able to increase memory in Rockerduck mailbox servers in a staggering pattern without disrupting service to clients on Rockerduck. As each mailbox server was prepared for the upgrade, we moved all active mailboxes from the server to any passive mailbox node and then blocked the mailbox server from activating any database copy. After the memory upgrades were completed we then stress tested each server for 8 hours with a memory stress test for consistency. Once the upgrades were completed on the nodes, we were being the node back into the DAG and back up to availability.

Labs vs. Real World Results

Mailbox servers were not the only servers in Rockerduck to be upgrades. Over the past two weeks we’ve been monitoring the response statistics on CAS servers with a new memory / processor configuration.

Originally when we performed initial testing / scaling Rockerduck we seen the overall lowest latency and response time for RPC and Web Services from having a fewer CAS servers with higher RAM and processor. Over time, we’ve noticed the real world utilization result of overall latency on RPC was significantly outside the scope of our original Lab results causing us to reevaluate our delivery of CAS services.

All CAS servers for Rockerduck sit behind a hardware based load balancer. Each client that connects to the load balancer gets assigned to a specific CAS node for up to 5 hours on certain services (RPC, EWS) based off of the client WAN IP. Original design for the CAS nodes was 3 nodes with 8GB of RAM and 4 Processor cores available.

Unfortunately, this “least connected” model had the potential (and sometimes did) tie larger groups of users together from different IP addresses, essentially choking the server with queued requests.

The new setup for the CAS nodes is a balance of 6GB of RAM with 3 Processor cores available. This new configuration allowed us to introduce two new CAS servers to more efficiently process requests across multiple nodes without any additional “upgrades” to the CAS roles.

During our statistical collection phase, the new configuration nodes had a 40% reduction in response time on RPC requests and Address Book requests:

Originally: 22 ms

Now: 13.2 ms

Travis Sheldon
VP Network Operations, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x757
travis@ownwebnow.com

Last week we have made a lot of improvements across several of our products. Monday & Tuesday were bug squashing days, we went through the bugs that have been submitted via https://support.ownwebnow.com/create.asp?item=development and resolved most of the outstanding issues. Remember, if you have an important bug make sure you submit it to our development queue. The rest of the week was spent implementing our new message decryption engine across several of our platforms.

One of the most common and repeating issues was in regards to rendering issues with messages viewed at https://encryption.exchangedefender.com and SPAM previews through ExchangeDefender. While most messages would render without any problems, there were still those handful of clients who had issues with some messages. Typically this was caused by the use of different 3^rd party e-mail clients that would use an unexpected RFC type or submit the data using a weird/foreign content-encoding type. This is even more prevalent in SPAM previews, because most of the time those messages are garbled or gibberish! So that makes the decryption process even more challenging!

So these last few months, we’ve been examining a new core technology to decrypt these messages and help bring more legible content to our users and their clients. With this new decryption core it handles most MIME types flawlessly and adheres to most RFC standards for messages. We ran it through several test cases where previously: “the messages was unpleasant to read” and it converted them to “a perfect rendered instant of the original message”. However, there are still the few instances where our old engine is better than the new decryption core.

That’s why we’ve implemented dual decryption core technology. This is a custom implementation that will programmatically decide which engine is best to use on a per message basis. First, it examines the message and tries to load it with the new decryption engine, while it decodes the message it makes note of any issues that have occurred upon the decryption process. If there was an issue, it will run the message through the second decryption engine and compare the results, then render the best instance of that message.

You’re going to see a lot of rapid development over the following months here at ExchangeDefender. Like I discussed in previous posts, we’ve starting to implement SOAP across several platforms and it’s really taking hold. The Compliance Archive enhancements, Decryption Engine enhancement and even planned Shockey Monkey Dynamic Callback Mechanism have all been made possible by the use of SOAP that we’ve implemented here at ExchangeDefender over the past several months.

Hank Newman
VP Development, ExchangeDefender
hank@ownwebnow.com

We are proud to announce an upgrade for ExchangeDefender Client Software Suite. You can read more about the software here. They are free and recommended for client interaction with ExchangeDefender service.

Bug Fixes – 03/10/2009
======================
- Fixed an issue causing some users spam/surespam to not be displayed correctly.
- Fixed an issue where the application would Pop-up each time the application loaded.

Features – 03/10/2009
=====================
- Added an “About Form”
- Automatic version checking has been added as a feature upon viewing the about page.

There are several other minor bug fixes. If the current software is working for you there is no reason to upgrade. However, if you do experience an issue our support teams will ask you to upgrade to the latest version before working the case.

Downloads are available at www.exchangedefender.com

The long awaited upgrades to our client software are finally out and available for download below. These updates address the issues found in the original releases that prevented the systems from rebooting in certain circumstances. This is a bugfix release only, if you’re not having problems there is no need to download them.

First up, ExchangeDefender SPAM Monitor that alerts you of SPAM waiting for you on the server:

ExchangeDefender SPAM Monitor

SpamMonitor_Setup_v.1.0.2.exe
SpamMonitor_Setup_v.1.0.2.msi

 

Second, the Shockey Monkey Server Agent software designed for Microsoft Windows (2000, XP, 2003, Vista and 2008) used to collect server inventory, logs, WMI data and intelligently feed it to Shockey Monkey for managed services and asset management:

Shockey Server Agent

ShockeyServer_Setup_v.1.0.2.exe
ShockeyServer_Setup_v.1.0.2.msi

Two builds are provided as .exe and .msi, you only need one. The .msi build is special because it can be used to roll out the software automatically using third party management tools.

Shockey Monkey 2.0 Beta (build 1.9.21) was upgraded on all portals last night and is fully supported by Own Web Now Corp as mentioned last week. We anticipate this beta interval to last roughly one month with most attention being paid to the sensible integration of all the Shockey Monkey features.

There are two threads activated specifically for build related bugfixes and feature requests. Simply login to https://support.ownwebnow.com and paste either shortcut to join the active development of the PSA system designed specifically for the needs of the small business specialists.

Roadmap: Once the beta is completed in late May, Shockey Monkey signup forms will be available on the homepage. In the meantime, Shockey Monkey is in a closed beta and only available to our valued partners that make it possible for us to build these solutions.

So join in on the fun and help us design something uniquely suited to your business. OWN is a dedicated partner company.

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp

Starting May 1, 2008, Own Web Now Corp will officially support Shockey Monkey 2.0 beta and further releases over the phone during business hours and over the web 24/7/365 as with all our other products. The support will be free and unlimited, a PSA first, and will not require extended support contracts that are a norm for this type of an application. We are also offering a 24 hour SLA, meaning your case will be assigned, processed and worked on within 24 hours of opening the case.

Scope of Support

Technical support will be limited to the use of the product as documented, installation and configuration, third party software integration and basic configuration troubleshooting. Any bugs or feature requests are not covered under the scope of support as they require development, testing, analysis, documentation and deployment management and will be handled by teams other than support. Should you encounter a bug or can think of a great feature, click on the Development tab in our system and provide a bug or a feature. If you create a support request that is a bug or a feature request we will move the support request to the feature request or bug sections of our portal on your behalf.

For support, https://support.ownwebnow.com