The SMTP banner is the SMTP connection response that a remote SMTP messaging server receives after it connects to a Receive connector configured on a computer running Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 that has the Hub Transport server role or the Edge Transport server role installed. You may want to modify the default SMTP banner for Internet-facing SMTP Receive connectors on an Edge Transport server so that the server name and messaging server software aren’t disclosed by the SMTP banner.

Looking for other management tasks related to connectors? Check out Managing Connectors.

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the “Receive connectors” entry in the Transport Permissions topic.

Note:
You can’t use the EMC to modify the default SMTP banner. Don’t use the Specify the FQDN this connector will provide in response to EHLO or HELO field in the Receive connector properties page in the EMC.

You control the SMTP banner by using the Banner parameter in the Set-ReceiveConnector cmdlet or the New-ReceiveConnector cmdlet. The default value of the Banner parameter is $null. When the Banner parameter isn’t specified on a Receive connector, or the Banner parameter is specified with the value of $null, a remote SMTP messaging server that connects to that Receive connector receives the following response.

220 <Servername> Microsoft ESMTP MAIL service ready at <RegionalDay-Date-24HourTimeFormat> <RegionalTimeZoneOffset>

When you specify a value for the Banner parameter on a Receive connector, a remote SMTP messaging server that connects to that SMTP Receive connector receives the following response.

220 BannerText

Note:
The replacement SMTP banner text string must always start with 220. As defined in RFC 2821, the default service ready SMTP response code is 220.

This example modifies the SMTP banner on the existing Receive connector From the Internet so the SMTP banner displays 220 Contoso Corporation.

Set-ReceiveConnector "From the Internet" -Banner "220 Contoso Corporation"

Introduction

This article will describe how to export and import mailboxes with Exchange 2010; based on the Exchange 2010 Release Candidate. Although RC should be finally completed, this may be subject to change in the final release of Exchange 2010.

In the near future, we will take a deep dive into what you will need to prepare/ how to run your tasks with the new release of Exchange. You will realize that preparation-wise, once the prerequisites have been met, it will be as easy to deploy as other versions of Exchange.

 Why Export and Import

First off, we need to define if the task will be exported or imported in the mailboxes. In general, this is quite easy to define. This is what you should do:

• Migrate from mailboxes completely out of range of your Exchange server environment only when you get the PST file from a user
• Troubleshoot problems with existing mailboxes due to database errors or anything else
• Backup all mailbox data manually to a tape without having the backup agent available

Fulfilling the Prerequisites

Before you can start your task you will need to prepare a client system with the following requirements:

• Installation of 64 Bit Windows Operating System
• Installation of Powershell 2.0
• Installation of .NET Framework 3.51
• Installation of Outlook Office 2010 64 Bit (which is currently in CTP release available)
• Installation of Exchange Server 2010 management tools
• Create domain membership for this client
• Logon with an administrative account with Exchange’s full administrative permissions

Exchange Server 2010 comes with Roll-based Administration; you will need to run the following command first though:

New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –User “<username>”

This command gives the user permission to import and export mailboxes. Another way of doing this is creating an Active Directory group and adding permissions to this group using the following command:

New-ManagementRoleAssignment –Role “Mailbox Import Export” –Group “<usergroup>”

When you are done, you will only have to add users to this group to allow them to export and import mailboxes.

If we take a look at how to import a mailbox, you will see that the powershell command for this task is actually quite simple:

Figure 1: Importing a mailbox

If we now take a look at how to export a mailbox, you will realize how easy this is too! The following are the steps you need to take to carry out this task.

Figure 2: Starting a Mailbox Export

This procedure may take some time because this depends upon how big the personal folder itself is. Do not panic if it takes its time.

Figure 3: Finalizing the Mailbox Export

As you might have realized, all these steps are Powershell commands. In the Release Candidate of Exchange Server 2010 there is no way of doing this in the graphical interface.  With Exchange Server 2010 Beta Release there is a way of doing this there too.

Hopefully this feature will be back in the RTM release of Exchange Server 2010, I will show you now how this will work.

After having installed Outlook 2010 in 64-Bit on the “Ex-/Import-Computer”, you will have two new commands (if you look at the context menu of each mailbox). These are “Export Mailbox” and “Import Mailbox”.

Figure 4: Mailbox Export in Exchange Administrative Console

When this is done, we need to specify the location of the target mailbox and the target server or the location of the personal folder (PST).

Figure 5: Detailed information on Exporting Mailbox

Importing a mailbox is quick and easy. You can see what option to choose from the Figure below.

Figure 6: Importing a mailbox using Exchange Management Console

The reason why Microsoft has disabled this feature may be (apart from the fact that it may come back in the final release or a first Service Pack) this task is especially for a mail server administrator and not for the general administrator.

With Exchange 2010 RTM one of the disappointments for organizations that decided to move away from PST files and instead enable the native online archive mailbox for users within the organization, was the fact that they couldn’t import PST files directly to the online archive mailbox. Instead, they first had to import it to the primary mailbox of the user using the Import-Mailbox cmdlet, and then have the user drag and drop the content from there to the online archive mailbox or use retention policies.

The New-MailboxImportRequest cmdlet makes this a thing of the past as it allows Exchange admins to do exactly that. Let’s say I have a PST file that I used as an archive over the years, and I now want the data placed in my online archive. To do so I would use almost the same command as above but just add the “–IsArchive” parameter as shown below:

New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox HEW –IsArchive -FilePath \\EX02\PSTFileShare\HEW.pst

Figure 7: Importing a PST file to an Online Archive mailbox

When the import is complete, we can find the data in our Online Archive as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: PST content imported to Online Archive mailbox

If you are migrating from a third party archive solution or just want to eliminate all PST files in the environemnt by providing the users with an online archive, you can import all PST files from a share to their equalent mailbox’s online archive using:

Dir \\EX02\PSTFiles\*.pst | %{ New-MailboxImportRequest -Name PSTImport -BatchName Imports -Mailbox $_.BaseName -FilePath $_.FullName –IsArchive }

                  Figure 9: Importing multiple PST files to Online Archive mailboxes

If the basic commands we just went through are not sufficient when it comes to what data you want to import from the PST file, you can use the “-IncludeFolders” parameter to specify which folder or folders from the PST files should be imported. For instance, if I only want to import the data in the Inbox folder, I would use the following command:

New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox HEW -FilePath \\EX02\PSTFileShare\HEW.pst -IncludeFolders “#Inbox#”

I can also specify that content from the PST files should be placed in a new folder (target folder) in the mailbox. This is a good approach if you don’t want items from the PST file to merge with items in the mailbox. To do so we would use this command:

New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox HEW -FilePath \\EX02\PSTFileShare\HEW.pst -TargetRootFolder “Date from PST file”

Note:
If the target root folder does not exist, it will be created automatically.

In addition to the above commands, you could also choose to have the request created but in a suspended mode (using the “-suspend” parameter) until you are ready to start it. In addition, you can use the “-ExcludeFolders” parameter instead of the “-IncludeFolders” if that suits the situation better. Moreover, you can exclude the dumpster using the “-ExcludeDumpster” parameter. Also and as mentioned already, you can perform the import via multiple import requests running against the same mailbox.

If you need to import multiple PST files named after the mailbox alias of the mailbox to which they need to be imported, we can use the following command (will import all PST files in the share “PSTFiles” on server “EX02” based on mailbox alias and PST name):

Dir \\EX02\PSTFiles\*.pst | %{ New-MailboxImportRequest -Name PSTImport -BatchName Imports -Mailbox $_.BaseName -FilePath $_.FullName }                             Figure 6: Importing multiple PST files