Now for post #2 for today!

Ever since the melt down of our server (which we have thankfully gotten back up and running!) if I were to remain logged in remotely to the server for more than an accumulated hour (yes, logging in AND out adds up), the server would lock up and just plain wouldn’t do anything with the only way to get it working again to reset the machine physically.

After recently attending the Microsoft TechDays 2008 Event here in Winnipeg (Yes, I AM A PC!) it was brought to my attention I had been slacking off in making sure that my system was properly configured by utilizing the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer and the Internet Security and Acceleration Server Best Practices Analyzer.  Now, before I ran and installed these, I had been assuming that the system instability was due to ISA 2004 and it’s MSDE issues.  Well, I was flat out wrong!

The Exchange BPA told me that due to the number of mailboxes I had on the system (I have an excess of users that really shouldn’t have mailboxes as they’re using logins to just connect to a SharePoint site) and the amount of RAM in the system (4GB) I needed to adjust the HeapDeCommitFreeBlock Threshold registry setting to decimal 262144 so that the Virtual Memory didn’t become quickly fragmented and result in system instability.

So, I went in, set the registry setting to what it needed, rebooted and things were humming along much faster than before.  So, lesson learned, use the BPAs, they make life a lot easier