If you have ever suspected that a slow performing server is down to slow access to a hard drive you may have started searching the web for a tool to help diagnose the root of the problem.
What you might not know is that Windows has a very handy built-in tool for doing just that and can provide some excellent real-time statistics.
As with a lot of new technologies the real power comes from when they are used by the masses.
Sender Policy Framework or SPF is no longer a new technology and is generally widely used to help preserve email domain reputation for large organisations, but it's as well-known about in the Small to Medium sized business end of the email market.
Spammers know this and have started to target domains that do not have valid SPF records as they can most easily be used to spoof and send spam claiming to be from valid companies. Often these types of spoofed email are used in phishing attacks to then harvest more valuable data, so the smaller companies that can adopt the use of SPF the better.
A long time ago in a galaxy far away....well....ok, just a long time ago, I learnt that in order to diagnose the email delivery problems of our customers, understanding the role of DNS would be absolutely fundamental.
Not only that, but I quickly realised the value of the 'NSlookup' DNS tool which is included within Windows.
You've probably picked up in the IT press that the developers of TrueCrypt, currently integrated within BackupAssist, are no longer actively developing the software.
A recent independent audit published by iSEC has not identified any security flaws in TrueCrypt, however at some point in the future, it's likely vulnerabilities may creep into it.
DISCLAIMER: We're not suggesting you need to switch away immediately and ultimately fully expect to see a new encryption application integrated into BackupAssist.
However....I like to tinker...
If you've ever needed to recreate your Outlook profile, or have migrated to a new PC, you may have noticed you'll lose your auto-complete information that Outlook keeps when you send a message to a recipient email address.
As somebody in a non-technical role who responds better to a more visual style of learning, I'm often asking our resident software gurus to spell things out for me in the necessary 'dumbed down' fashion on the office whiteboard.
It saves their sanity, a little of my ego and ultimately means that I'm able (eventually) to grasp those more technical of concepts.
In most deployments of MailStore we recommend your journalling job is configured to archive a selection of journalled or 'copied' emails for all your users.
This type of job is designed to interrogate each message that it archives and look for headers that it can match to decide which user's archive it should store the message under.
In a perfect installation where all of your MailStore users have been setup correctly, every journalled message should find the correct corresponding users archive. But it is common to overlook some addresses and you may find email appearing in the general 'Unknown e-mail archive' instead.
So it's here - we've reached the third and final part of our series of posts designed to arm you with all of the tools you need to survive the minefield that is IT support.
It's time for you to put the knowledge we've provided you into practice and to go it alone.
It's been emotional. God speed.
Our ultimate list is compiled by IT professionals from across the UK.
Out of the box MDaemon has some very detailed logging and real-time statistics built into the application.
In this post I'll show you how to learn more about what a server's doing using the free Performance Monitor feature in Windows.
Depending upon on the design of your network, it may not always be possible to let MailStore Server automatically synchronise its list of user accounts with your Active Directory.
If that's the case, you way well find the alternative is to add users manually.
