Looking for a good MS partner in OC Calif

[MRBRENT]

We have recently upgraded our exchange server and Active directory server to 2003 and exchange 2003 and it has been very unstable. The main problem is from our users workstations several times a day we get the message that outlook is trying to connect to the server. We have a IT employee that has done a good job keeping us online through our growth from 5 people to almost 90 in the last 3 years but he hasn't been able to fix this one and it is getting critical that we get this fixed. I am looking for some outside help. Can anyone make any recommendations for a really good consultant that could help us out??
Thanks

 

[mrdenny]

What's the load on your exchange server look like? Is your exchange server doing anything besides running exchange?

Hit me up through my site. I might be able to send someone your direction.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[MRBRENT]

Denny, thanks for your reply. Our exchange server only runs exchange and has Dual Xeon 3G processors with 4 Gigs of ECC ram. We have a Raid 5 drive array with about 900GB of space. I believe it just almost idles along most of the time. Our problems really started when our exchange database crashed and we had Microsoft tech support connect to help recover and according to my IT guy they also enabled a backup domain controller I had in my San Francisco office to be a part of the global catalog if I have my terminology correct. The network connection to that office is only a basic business DSL line and the up speed is like 384K. My IT guy says he has run some utilities or commands that are suppose to disassociate that machine but last night when we were experiencing some of the issues and we were restarting our active Dir machine and mail server some workstations were trying to authenticate to the SFO controller still. Today he powered down that machine so I'm not sure what the results of that may be. Another symptom I guess I would call it is on some workstations when you go to "save as" when saving a document it takes sometime 5 minutes for the directory tree to come up to try to pick your location but if you explore it seems ok. We are discussing today what our options are as we need to get this resolved very quickly.
Thanks

 

[mrdenny]

I'd recommend bringing the domain controller in SFO back online. If it wasn't removed from active directory correctly the client machines may still be looking for it.

Make sure that the sites are setup correctly with a slow link between the sites. I'd also recommend setting up the replication between the sites to only run at night (when people aren't using the link).

Do you have any exchange mail boxes that are large? Use perfmon and take a look at the exchange servers drives and see what the load on them looks like. If the drives are maxing out you may need to look into changing the layout of the exchange database files.

How large is your exchange database?

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com