Thank you for the kind words on your EHLO World blog regarding the recently released Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool (http://www.planetevans.com/blog/2004/09/microsoft-releases-exchange-best.html). I’d like to comment on the section in your blog entry entitled ‘Suggestions That Don’t Make Sense’ in hopes of making sense of some of the issues you have raised.

I’ve numbered my comments to correspond to the issues you have raised:

1. I believe this refers to ‘The msExchSmtpMaxMessageSize value has been altered from its default of 0.’ This issue is logged as a warning because there are known problems that can occur if the size limits for internal SMTP messages are set too low. One such issue, which is described in this article, is a failure to replicate the offline address book between Exchange Server computers. Basically, what we are saying here is that some organizations need to be aware that setting the size limit too low might cause problems. Setting the size limit to 20MB may make sense for your organization, but some organizations require greater size limits. For this reason, this is logged as a warning and not an error.

2. I believe this refers to ‘The primary WINS server address is blank.’ This issue is logged as a warning because some environments can successfully run Exchange Server without WINS, while many environments cannot. We state the following in this article to let folks know that this may or may not be an issue that needs to be addressed, which is one reason it is a warning and not an error:

Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange 2000 Server have several NetBIOS dependencies. Additionally, Microsoft® Office Outlook® clients that are earlier than Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 also require NetBIOS name resolution. For example, the following Exchange functionality depends on NetBIOS name resolution:

· The Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange 2000 Server Setup programs, especially on clustered servers.

· Exchange Mailbox Merge Wizard (ExMerge) on an Exchange Server 2003 or Exchange 2000 Server computer.

· Changing a password for an Exchange Server 2003 or Exchange 2000 Server mailbox through Outlook Web Access.

· Exchange System Manager on an Exchange Server 2003 or Exchange 2000 Server computer.

Depending on your organization’s network topology, you may be able to safely ignore this warning. On networks that are made up of a single subnet, NetBIOS broadcasts typically can handle the NetBIOS name resolution requirements of an Exchange deployment.

3. I believe this refers to ‘The msExchSmtpRelayForAuth value has been changed from its default of True.’ This is logged as a non-default configuration message. One of the benefits of using the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer is its ability to identify changes made to the out-of-box settings on an Exchange Server. In this case, the tool is pointing out something you already knew that you changed. The article does not suggest that you change anything; it is simply identifying a change you already made. For the convenience of those customers who were not aware that the setting was changed on their system, the article includes instructions for view and changing the setting back to its original default.

4. I believe this refers to ‘Suppress out-of-office messages to distribution lists has been set.’ This is also logged as a non-default configuration message. Here, too, we don’t suggest that you change it, but we do provide details on how to change it for those customers that might want to.

5. I believe this refers to ‘License Logging service is not running.’ There is some confusion regarding the need to have the License Logging Service running in order to have more than 10 concurrent SSL connections. There was a bug that was found and fixed with respect to this issue. However, that fix was for anonymous SSL connections. The bug was that anonymous SSL connections were decrementing available license counts. Licenses should only be decremented for authenticated SSL connections, and that is what was fixed. In order to get more than 10 concurrent authenticated SSL connections (which are the kind used by an Exchange front-end server) the License Logging Service does need to be running.

Thanks again for blogging the release of this tool, and for your time and feedback. It is most appreciated! If you have any questions about the above, or wish to provide additional feedback about the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer, you can send an email to exbpadoc@microsoft.com, or use the TechNet article feedback mechanism.

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scott schnoll
technical writer – Exchange user education

We have been running a no WINS world wide WAN over a VPN with mixed Exchange 2000 and 2003 servers for about 1 year now. We have not exhibited any of the problems listed. And most or our clients are Outlook XP.

On number 5, you’re correct. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;264908 />Looks like it also got rolled up in Win2000 SP2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;282524

I keep seeing references to this limit in a bunch of docs on Exchange 2000. Sure would be nice if someone went through and cleaned it up. -Hunter (hunter -at- huntercoleman dot net)