Exchange 2010 Lab: Things I've Learned So Far

This month, I've been trying to concentrate on working on my test lab for Exchange 2010.  I've done a lot of reading about Exchange 2010, but now is the time where the rubber hits the road and I can start seeing what I've been reading actually means in practice.  Also, this gives me a reason to start paying attention to PowerShell, since I've have little need for it so far and I know I need to start learning it!

I did a pretty standard, "out of the box" installation of Exchange for this first test and I was having a problem moving mailboxes and creating databases.  If you are already a member of the Organization and Recipent Management groups in AD, then you might need to rerun the "setup.exe /PrepareAD" command to reapply the permissions. 

Yes,  the PrepareAD switch is run when you do the standard install.  And yes, even when I manually checked all the permissions they looked fine.  However, rerunning /PrepareAD solved my issues. Want to read more about Exchange Trusted Subsystem permissions and how they fit in?  Go here, to Richard's Exchange Ramblings on TechNet Blogs.

And for a little useful PowerShell, here's how to find the versions of Exchange you have installed in the entire organization:
Get-ExchangeServer | Format-Table Name, *Version*
For reference, all build numbers listed in this KB Article - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/158530

Finally, if you've been tweaking the Rentention Policies and want to kick off the Managed Folder Assistant immediately to see if your policies work for a particular user, here's the PowerShell for that too.
Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity *MailboxOrMailUserIdParameter*
The full explanation of that command can be found here.