Help Stop Your Email being Marked as Spam Using SPF

Last week I setup an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record for one of my clients to try to help them stop their emails being marked as spam by their suppliers and clients. These days, with so many businesses and individuals using Spam checking services and software to prevent Spam every business should have a SPF record on their domain. Its a simple concept and easy to setup:

How a SPF Record Works to Improve the Delivery Rate of your Emails.
The SPF record is added to your DNS as a text record and it describes all the mail servers that are allowed to send emails from your domain name. Once setup the SPF record can be checked by the receiving end to make sure the email you sent has come from one of your mail servers, and not from someone who is spoofing your domain.

How to Setup a SPF Record
There is an easy to follow wizard on the SPF project website which will create the text for your record for you. Once you have the SPF record text for you must add it as a TXT record to your DNS. Its quite straight forward, if you have any problems and want some help you can get in touch with us here.

OEM licenses and Virtualisation (VMware)?

Recently we were asked to provide an improved DR solution for one of our clients - we suggested virtualisation / virtualization (for USAers). We started the project and soon discovered that when you virtualise a physical server with an OEM license, computer says no. It complains because an OEM license is only allowed to be used on the hardware that it was supplied with and originally installed on. We knew this but did not anticipate the problem when we told the client how much the project would cost. I read on the Internet that you can upgrade an OEM license by running a repair on the server using a full licensed product CD and key.

My questions are these:

1. If I run a repair on my exchange server, domain controller etc. to upgrade from OEM to full license will it goose the server or will it continue to function correctly?

2. Does anyone have a plan for me so I can virtualise / virtualize my clients network with OEM servers without having to buy full server licenses and without having to make any changes to the existing network (this is only a DR solution - it will not be in use every day)?