If you have ever dealt with Microsoft's SQL Server in any capacity you have probably noticed a strange problem: You can never have enough memory!

As Ed Jones points out the communication between your operating system and SQL Server goes a little something like this:

Windows Server:  Hey, SQL Server, how much memory do you need?
SQL Server:  How much have you got?

A bit funny and totally true!

Thanks to Ed: http://brntpb.st/J4FbgC

I finally got home and had a chance to let Gus try on his new therapy vest.  It's large but it fits!

One of the tasks we recently had in our doctoral program was to build a model to assist with solving almost any problem possible.  Our team built a model we are calling the Circular Loop Model.  The model is able to navigate vertically as well as jump around to multiple locations as required.  In addition each step is followed by an analysis and resource capacity evaluation.  At the end of the process a solution is either kicked out or the model restarts.  In addition any where within the model the problem can be kicked out and abandoned.

Either way not too bad for a year 1 residency project.

We ran across a problem a week or so ago with a user who had accidentally deleted the majority of her inbox, twice.  Ignoring the obvious problem of the user deleting content twice it was a perfect time to exercise the Mailbox Search capabilities of Office 365 to attempt to recover e-mail.

A Little Background

Office 365 (a.k.a. Exchange 2010) provides a special folder called “Recoverable Items” folder.  This folder in older versions of Exchange was known as the dumpster and worked a bit differently.  Ross Smith with the Exchange team provides a lot of detailed information about the Dumpster/Recoverable Items function over at the TechNet Blog http://brntpb.st/HGxBaA.  In my scenario the user had just deleted the content they needed recovered.  Office 365 and Exchange 2010 by default keep deleted items for 14 days before permanently purging them from the system.

The Process

The recovery process I used requires Powershell access to Office 365.  In addition, my user account is setup as a Global Admin in Office 365 so you may also have to review the permissions for your account to ensure you have enough permission to perform the recovery operation.

The process starts by defining a Mailbox Search in the system.  You can read more about the command here http://brntpb.st/HbPxWD.  The PowerShell command below assumes you have already connected to Office 365 with PowerShell if you do not know how to do that Mike Pfeiffer has a great post here: http://brntpb.st/Hkn53b.

The Solutions

PS C:\> New-MailboxSearch -Name “Recovery” -SourceMailboxes myuser@brentpabst.com -TargetMailbox me@brentpabst.com -StatusMailRecipients me@brentpabst.com -SearchDumpster -LogLevel Full -ExcludeDuplicateMessages $true

The command does a couple of things.  First, it creates a new “Mailbox Search” and gives it a name called Recovery.  This is important as it allows us to search for the item and manage it later.  The rest of the command defines the mailbox to recover from, the mailbox to recover to and then some additional parameters that should make sense.  The main problem I found was that you had to recover to a different mailbox.  My guess is this is because it could create a circular reference.  The other important part to this command was where the Search Dumpster option is set.  This tells the mailbox search to search the Recoverable Items folder.

Once you run the command the system will chug away and create a new unique folder in your mailbox that, you can then export to PST and re-import into the original mailbox.  You will also get an e-mail when the process has completed or if it fails.  As I said before you can get a status of the search by running the following command:

PS C:\> Get-MailboxSearch “Recovery”

This command will display the status of the Recovery mailbox search job.  You can explore other verbs against the MailboxSearch commands to get additional information and even control the job itself.

Hope that helps!

-Brent

So I like to listen to music before bed.  I’m in Poland this week and there isn’t an alarm clock so I’m using my laptop to play some music.  Here’s the problem: I would have to manually turn it off, but the idea here is to go to sleep!  So here’s what I do to create a simple sleep timer so the computer turns off completely after a few minutes.

Note: You need to be a little comfortable with entering a command in Windows.  It’s not hard but the black window often scares people!

Create the Timer

1.      Click Start

2.      Open the Command Prompt

a.      Vista & 7: Type cmd and hit enter

b.      XP: Click run, type cmd and hit enter

3.      Type the following:

a.      shutdown -s -t 2700

4.      Hit enter

This will force the computer to shut down after 45 minutes, so essentially a 45 minute sleep timer.  If you want a different amount of time simply multiple the number of minutes by 60 seconds.  The command requires the time in seconds!  After you enter the command simply fire up your favorite music player, turn the volume down and your all set!  It’s perfect for saving a laptop battery overnight without plugging in.

Enjoy,

Brent

I’m doing some research and course work in a Leadership course and I have a question for everyone.  Do you think that leaders are born or made?

To clarify a leader is not just a CEO or en executive at some company.  They could be a president, prime minister, philosopher, philanthropist, etc.  With that in mind do you think that people are destined to become leaders simply because of their personality traits at birth or do you think that they can be created over time being shaped and molded throughout their childhood and young adult lives?

Take the quick poll here: http://brntpb.st/yDsQIB

Thanks,

Brent