Exchange 2003 DST Updates Crib Sheet

1. Update OS patches on servers
   
   
   
   1. Taking care regarding security patches to Exchange and their effect on BES, or any other 3rd party email connector. http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=912918.
   
   
   
2. Update OS patches on clients. WSUS is your friend!
   
   
3. Use time zone edit tool (tzedit) on non-supported machines (Win NT)
   
   
   
   
   1. Tell everyone NOT to update their calendars once the patches are installed on the clients.
   
   
   
4. Patch the exchange server
   
   
5. Patch BES server with the exchange server patch (Exchange System Manager on BES server)
   
   
   
   1. There are no patches required for the Blackberry Enterprise Server itself.
      
   2. Get and install Blackberry Handheld patches.
   
   
   
6. Run the Exchange Calendar Update Tool (from a client machine or virutal machine)
   
   
   
   
   1. The tool has two parts, a GUI shell msextmzcfg.exe and the command line tool MsExTmz.exe. You need to get the LegacyDSN for the Exchange server to run the tool. It was found using adsi and checking the Exchange server object in Active Directory. Ours is: ServerDN=/o=COMPANY/ou=ADMINGROUP/cn=Configuration/cn=Servers/cn=SERVERNAME
      
      
   2. Run the GUI tool, which will step you through the process of creating batch files for the command line tool. 1st extract the list of mailboxes, then create batch files to update calendar entries in each. The GUI steps you all the way through this.
      
      
   3. You have a choice of updating recurring appointments. You will want to do this if your users have scheduled all day appointments that are now starting an hour into the previous day. We said "yes".
      
      
   4. Make sure to locate the executeable for Outlook. Outlook 11 is in a different directory than Outlook 12.
      
      
   5. Download and install the Office Outlook Time Zone Data Update Tool, and specify its location.
   
   
   
7. Given all of the above, the Exchange time zone update tool creates a batch file in a directory with the server's name. Run the batch file to update each mailbox using the client side Outlook update tool. This is a single threaded operation.
   
   
   
   1. Microsoft provides a downloadable virtual machine to facilitate multiple mailboxes to be updated at the same time. Scaling will require a serious evaluation of practical update speeds. (50 mailboxes with modest calendar usage took about 20 minutes in a single thread)
   
   
   
8. 
   
   
   
   1. Check the log files that the batch process produced.
      
   2. Remind everyone to check their calendar entries for the two target date ranges.
      
   3. Let everyone start updating their calendars.