The Exchange Deployment Assistant helps you to migrate Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 or Exchange cloud.

In September and October Alexander Weiss wrote a series of articles here on 4sysops around the technical aspects of deploying Exchange 2010 roles and migrating from Exchange 2003. This time around I thought we’d focus on the planning phase of a medium to large sized migration from earlier versions of Exchange to Exchange 2010.

Microsoft has offered for some time, and recently updated, the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant. It’s an online wizard that asks a series of questions about your current environment and in the end produces a customized check list with instructions for each step you need to take in your migration. These types of “design” questions are crucial in controlling how your environment will look and are similar to the concepts behind questions you’d encounter on an Exchange MCITP certification exam.

Planning is vital as email is “mission critical”; thus a large and possibly complex setup that’s going to be migrated needs precise planning. Whilst this tool doesn’t give you everything (it doesn’t cover all different combinations – yet) it’s a good starting point.

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Universal Viewer is a free file viewer that can be integrated into Windows Explorer's context menu. It supports many different file types.

Submitted by Robert Morris

Universal Viewer is a free file viewer that allows you to view many file types without having to have the application installed. A portable version is also available, so Universal Viewer can be part of your USB toolkit.

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• Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 RTMed
• Download System Center Service Manager 2010 SP1 Evaluation 
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GDism ELDI is a free GUI for DISM of the WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) that allows you to manage WIM images.

A while back I introduced DISM, the new tool of the Windows 7 WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) for managing WIM images. I was complaining then that Microsoft doesn’t offer a GUI (graphical user interface) for such an important tool. The nice thing about Windows is that if Microsoft doesn’t provide a function, someone else steps into the breach. ELDI was kind enough to link to his free DISM GUI GDism ELDI in my original post. I’ve taken a quick look at the tool.

Let me start with the tool’s downside. It requires the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). I think it would be more useful if it were a portable application. However, if you use GDism only on your desktop, it is certainly more convenient than using DISM on the command prompt.

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• Oracle takes on Microsoft, Google with Cloud Office
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LogFusion is a free tool for log file monitoring in real time.

Submitted by Keith Lammers

LogFusion is a great tool for monitoring log files in real time. It allows you to tail the log files so that you can see new entries as they are added. One thing I really like is the real time Event Log viewing. This can come in handy if you are experiencing issues with a server or workstation and want to see if there are new entries getting added to the Event Logs without having to constantly mash the refresh button in MMC

The free version is available for personal use, while the Pro version is $20, allows for company use, and adds some useful features like row highlighting to identify custom strings, and text filtering, to hide rows that you don’t want to see.

LogFusion

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• System Center Service Manager 2010 Service Pack 1 available December 16, 2010
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HoverIP is GUI (graphical user interface) for ipconfig, nslookup, routing table, ping, traceroute, port scanning.

HoverIP is GUI (graphical user interface) for a free portable set of IP tools. You can view the IP configuration, launch nslookup queries, view and modify the routing table, ping hosts, use traceroute with a GUI, and do some basic port scans.

HoverIP hasn’t been updated for several years; however, the tool also works fine on Windows 7 and Windows PE 3.0.

Many comparable tools are available, and some have more functions. I like to add HoverIP to the 4sysops list of free admin tools because it is lightweight, portable, and has all the IP tools admins most often.

Note that the tool comes with an installer; however, you can just copy its folder from the Programs directory to your flash drive and launch it from there without installation on other Windows computers.

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• Microsoft puts the finishing touches on Small Business Server 2011
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• Paper: VMware High Availability: Deployment Best Practices
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Most IT pros hopelessly overestimate the importance of browser features. In the sense Carr doubted that IT matters, I question that browsers matter.

A new browser war is going on and I like it! Progress is everything for me. There is no doubt that the web browser is the second most important application on my computer. Since I use it all day, even slight improvements can make a big difference. A big difference for me and probably also for you. I discussed Internet Explorer 9 in detail because I know that it is an interesting topic for many IT pros. However, it appears to me that many people hopelessly overestimate the importance of web browser features for average users. This is why I couldn’t help myself from writing another somewhat ironic post as a counter balance.

The truth is that the vast majority of users don’t really care about what browser they are using. They want to be able to load websites and they also find it quite useful that they can click links. Those who still access sites other than Facebook might like the bookmark feature, but I think this already covers all the relevant features most users expect from a web browser.

The fierce discussion about the coolest and fastest browser is only of interest for IT pros, bloggers, and journalists. This distorts the picture of the importance of browser features because these are the guys who rule the web. Even though almost every adult in the developed world uses a web browser regularly, most don’t really consider browser features as something worth discussing. Try it! Ask any non-geek about important browser features and you will see that he or she will have problems naming a fourth function.

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• Microsoft To Patch 40 Vulnerabilities Tuesday 
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I wonder why Windows Explorer still has no tabs. All Explorer replacements and enhancements I have seen so far offer this feature. For me, the tabs were always the main reason to use an alternative file manager. However, after a while I always switch back to Windows Explorer, mainly because Explorer extensions often start up too slowly.

QTTabBar might be the first free Explorer extension that I will continue to use. It is lightweight and doesn’t slow down Windows Explorer. Even though the Open Source tool has quite a few features and settings, it can be used intuitively without studying a manual first.

After you install QTTabBar, you have to restart Windows Explorer. This makes not only the Explorer windows disappear and reappear but also all the other running applications. So it probably makes sense to close all applications before you install QTTabBar.

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• Windows 7 Grows to 25% Market Share (XP Drops to 50%) 
• IE9 and Privacy: Introducing Tracking Protection

Internet Explorer 9 64-bit speed benchmarks confirm that it faster than the IE 32-bit. Does browser speed really matter?

So if Internet Explorer 9 64-bit isn’t more reliable, perhaps it scores when it comes to speed? If you’ve been reading 4sysops for some time, you probably know that I don’t miss any opportunity to ridicule the browser speed obsession the IT community enjoys so much. Of course, I am thankful for yet another chance to make some fun of this irrational discussion. If you are one of those IT pros who are so proud to use the fastest and coolest browser, you had better skip the cynical part in this post. I will warn you early enough.

The question whether IE 64-bit performs better than IE 32-bit arises because of the undying myth that 64-bit in general improves speed. But let’s see what others have to say about the speed of IE 9 64-bit.

FavBrowser.com ran some speed benchmarks with the latest version of IE 9 32-bit and 64-bit. The results are quite remarkable. In most of the disciplines, IE 9 64-bit outpaced IE 9 32-bit by far. The same guys ran a comparable test with IE 7 64-bit and 32-bit a while back. The results are similar, although it appears to me the performance difference between 64-bit and 32-bit has become bigger with IE 9.

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Is Internet Explorer 9 64-bit more reliable than than the 32-bit version? In this article the author argues that this is not very likely.

In my last post, I explained why running Internet Explorer 9 64-bit has some severe downsides. Let’s see if better reliability outweighs these disadvantages. People often believe that 64-bit applications are more reliable than 32-bit programs. This might be due to the fact that Microsoft introduced a few features in Windows 64-bit, such as signed drivers and Kernel Patch Protection, that were supposed to make Windows more secure and reliable. Some older fellows might also remember that the move from 16-bit to 32-bit indeed improved reliably.

A topic that is related to reliability is performance (which I will discuss in more detail in my next post) because performance differences are usually only measurable with complex web pages and web apps. So often when a browser crashes it is because not enough resources are available and/or because it can’t handle the complexity.

Rich Menga discussed a similar question recently. His main point is that a 64-bit application is more reliable in handling large amounts of data. To prove this claim, he linked to two nice examples. The first page loads a couple of images, which keeps your browser busy for a while. The second page is even better because it loads a few more images.

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