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When you use the Exchange Management Console for Exchange Server 2010 to generate a certificate renewal request, the format used is not compatible with Go Daddy. The EMC provides some sort of binary request. Go Daddy expects a standard text-based renewal request. You can use this process instead: Perform the certificate renewal on the Go Daddy web site and select the option to  reuse the existing CSR. If you do this then you do not need the renewal request from Exchange. Download the approved certificate in zip format and extact it to obtain the .crt file. Use IIS Manager (at the server node) to complete a certificate request. Provide the .crt file and a friendly name that you recognize. Note that .crt files are not displayed by default when browsing for the file. Use the Exchange Management Console to assign services to your renewed certificate. And my best recommendation for avoiding this process is using multi-year certificates. And remember to use the discount codes in the Go D...

I do occasional travel to the US for work and vacations. My biggest annoyance when traveling is the cost of cell phone roaming. It adds up to a ton of money for voice, text, or data (especially data). I had been considering getting a T-Mobile prepaid account and a separate phone to use just for travelling. They have prepaid service for $3/day. Which is pretty good with unlimited data, voice, and text. However, I recently learned about a new option that is based in Canada and it seems to work really well. Roam Mobility resells T-Mobile services for use when you are roaming. Roam Mobility has plans with unlimited voice, unlimited text, and 100MB of data for $4 per day. This is a bit more that T-Mobile, but Roam Mobility has a couple of advantages: You can keep your number for up to a year without using it. T-Mobile expires the prepaid cards after 3 months. Voice to Canada is included. I have not verified, but I believe that outbound T-Mobile to Canada would be long distance. I like the...

Microsoft is on a roll this week. Not only do we now have the role requirements calculator for Exchange 2013, but now we have the management pack for Exchange 2013. For many larger organizations that use System Center Operations Manager this was a critical components before considering the deployment of Exchange 2013. http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2013/05/14/exchange-2013-management-pack-released.aspx

Several weeks ago I was working on a project where we were implement a hybrid environment with Office 365 by using Exchange 2013 as the hybrid servers for an existing Exchange 2010 environment. Adding Exchange 2013 went pretty smoothly overall and I thought the hybrid wizard would be the easy part. When we ran the hybrid configuration wizard and selected the certificate, we got the following error: The length of the property is too long What a delightfully vague response. Well, after several days working with Office 365 tech support, the client was able to identify that the subject in the certificate was too long. The certificate was perfectly valid, but the hybrid configuration wizard was unable to handle the subject length. The client had obtained an extended validation certificate that included a lot of additional information in the subject such as a long organization ID. After replacing the extended validation certificate with a standard certificate it completed without any problem...

At long last, the Exchange 2013 Role Requirements Calculator has been released. Any Exchange 2013 deployments up to this point have been based on educated guesses. Now we have official guidance from Microsoft. http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2013/05/14/released-exchange-2013-server-role-requirements-calculator.aspx