Exchange 2010 AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory

I recently had to spend a lot of time to try to fix issues related to Free/Busy and come to truth one more Certs in the Exchange 2010 playing big role. The AutodiscoveryVirtual Directory, OBA configuration, and how outlook finds Free/Busy is explained here in in Elan  Shudnow blog read here this excellent post…..

I wanted to share the CMDLET to blow the  AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory and re-create it, due to corrupted XML file.

Exchange Server name is “EXC01” replace this to comply your environment if you are about to delete the Auto Discovery Directory in IIS, it is pretty save to fallow the steps below….

Remove-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory –Identity "EXC01\Autodiscover (Default Web Site)"

 

New-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory -WebsiteName "Default Web Site" -WindowsAuthentication $true -BasicAuthentication $true

 

• Configure Exchange Services for the Autodiscover Service
• Use the Shell to configure the offline address book external URL for the Autodiscover service

 

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

TMG&EDGE server 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay

I have been working on one of our LABs last couple days to configure Exchange 2010 servers to work with TMG & EDGE. One of the problems I have faced was not being able to send mail from Exchange host to the TMG & EDGE and mail also was not coming in. Assuming the firewalls allowing traffic couple things I like to mention may save you time if you run into similar scenario.

First of all if you are not familiar with TMG and its configuration here what you need to have click here, this step by step doc will walk you trough the basic configuration.

Publishing Exchange Server 2010 with Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 and Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010

The best thing or way to find out if SMTP traffic is leaving the Exchange host is to install sniffer on the Exchange host itself to be honest. After installing WireShark ( sniffer) install PortQueryUI or similar tool to generate SMTP traffic.

 

In my case SMTP traffic was not leaving the host due to McAfee E-policy blocking by default SMTP port on the Exchange servers (-: , Uhhhhhh if you skip this part and start jumping somewhere else you end up coming back here anyways.

So though process should be simple, does SMTP traffic leaving the Exchange host? If yes you will hit eventually TMG& EDGE assuming any firewall standing on your way in the middle is passing SMTP traffic.

After fallowing TMG guide if you are still unable to get Exchange host TMG& EDGE SMTP conversation you may want to check this ,

 

Get-ReceiveConnector

 

Get-ReceiveConnector "Reinjection" | Add-ADPermission -User "NTAUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON" -ExtendedRights "ms-Exch-SMTPAccept-Any-Recipient"

 

Add-AdPermission "Reinjection" -User "NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON" -ExtendedRights ms-Exch-SMTP-Submit,ms-Exch-SMTP-Accept-Any-Recipient,ms-Exch-Bypass-Anti-Spam

• The safest way to check the SMTP flow is still the old way opening CMD and telneting on port 25 from host to destination and see what the response is IMHO.

Allowing application servers to relay off Exchange Server

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/12/28/432013.aspx

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

How to Create Team Calendar on Exchange 2010

Here is the way to create team calendar on public folders. Remember this is being done from outlook client and you need to have proper right to do it.

• Open outlook click on the bottom “Folder List” to see the PF folders if they are not visible.

• Make right click on your inbox choose new folder, give it a name , click on folder contains and pick Calendar items
• And make sure you are dropping the new folder the location you want, I pick PF folder locations.

 

• here is the new Calendar item , set permissions etc. accordingly..

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Some Tools for Day to Day Admin Life……

Sometime  often I get questions such, hey where did you get that , looks good. Beside looking cool (-: . I most often like to have tools make my life easy, and here some of them I like to share with you. I am sure there are many others and if you do know any other handy tool fell free to add it into list please……

Console. 

PowerCMD

VisionApp Remote Desktop 2011

PowerGUI

DNSquery

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

The Microsoft Exchange server reported 0x80190194 the operation failed….. OAB

Platform: Migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. This is another issue come up after successful migration

Issues: Downloading offline address book generation fallowing errors on outlook clients.

The Microsoft Exchange server reported 0x80190194 the operation failed

First thing I think you need to check if you are having similar issues are

• Check application logs to see if anything pertains the same issue
• Find out what database the users is residing in ( problems user) and check the PF folder database ( is it pointing correct server )
• Offline address book , can you create another one and let it replicate and use this new one on this DB to see if this resolves the issue?
• Go to properties of OAB , make sure Version2, and Version 3 , enabled, public folder distribution enables and correct PF server is in there

If you are still having troubles

• Delete the files under ( C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Client Access\OAB )
• Create new OAB
• Restart the Microsoft Exchange File Distribution service and make sure the OAB is got generated on the directory mentioned above.

You can also keep watching application logs, increase the diagnostic logon if necessary on the CAS servers.

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Deleted mailboxes will not appear in EMC

if you accidently delete user mailbox from EMC or got confused about Disable & Remote and clicked on remove for particular user and now needing to get the mailbox yet able to see it under disconnected mailbox , recipient configuration?

** Deleted mailbox will be visible after online maintenance runs and completes** so if you do not want to wait and wish to re-connect the disconnected mailbox to another AD user object here is what you need to do run Clean-MailboxDatabase  CMDLET.

Get-Mailboxdatabase | Clean-MailboxDatabase

This will clean  all DBs in given  SMTP organization.

My mail server name is mail2 , I would use fallowing CMDLET, substitute mail2 to your own mail server name.

Get-Mailboxdatabase | Where{ $_.Server –eq “mail2”}| clean-MailboxDatabase

Understanding Disconnected Mailboxes

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232039(EXCHG.80).aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232039(EXCHG.80).aspx

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

DAG with two Servers will databases fail over automatically if one server dies?

This seems to be one of the most asked question and answer will be yes and also no it depends the given setup scenario. I think the main point to understand is the new attribute called “RpcClientAccessServer” and the term Middle tier speaking of MAPI locating user mailbox.

let me try to elaborate in a simple way , now in your scenario you have two server member of let's say DAG1

• Ex1= DB1, DB2, DB3, DB4
• EX1= DB1, DB2, DB3, DB4

Now let’s take a look at your MAPI clients (they are the outlook clients) if I am user A and my mailbox is located on DB1 , how will I get to my mailbox?

In a simple way, I open outlook , my outlook finds out the DNS server configured in the TCP/IP Stack and DNS server finds out what DC (Domain controller to talk too) , DC has bunch of information in regards to my E210 Servers and their configurations , the DAG configuration is also is located in the ADDS database.

My outlook simply is trying to find out which mail server to connect too to get the mails. So outlook says, hey I need to know the mailbox box for user A , which mail server I need to connect too???? The DC will check ADDS database and look for attribute

 

RpcClientAccessServer=ServerName

• This is where the magic happens , this attribute tells the MAPI client & clients which DB to connect too.

Great, if you have not configured your CAS array yet, the attribute is set to first CAS server introduced within the SMTP domain, so most likely EX1 in this example ( Assuming we installed EX1 first and have not configured CAS Array yet)

Now let’s make assumption of this to connect this information to your question , you have two servers called EX1 and EX2 and you have 4 DB on these servers ( each)

Ex1= DB1, DB2 (Mounted, ACTIVE) --------DB3,DB4 (Healthy, WAITING TO BE ACTIVE IF NEEDED)

Ex2= DB3, DB4 (Mounted, ACTIVE)-------DB1,DB2 (Healthy, WAITING TO BE ACTIVE IF NEEDED)

 

• If user A mailbox is located on DB3 meaning my outlook needs to connect to DB4 on EX2 to get my mail.
• Now, I open my outlook
• Outlook asked the question-What is the value of the attribute
• RpcClientAccessServer
• Outlook Gets the Answer  by finding out the value in the attribute called RpcClientAccessServer=EX1
• EX1 says hey the DB is mounted-ACTIVE on EX2 this time
• DNS give the IP Address to MAPI to connect too
• I get connected to EX2

This is the story about “Middle Tier” has been removed from MAILBOX to CAS servers, you no longer connect to your mailbox server directly.

• Now lets come back to your question, EX1 is hard DOWN !!!!!! crashed what happens ????
• You go through same process and get same answer which is RpcClientAccessServer=EX1
• Your Outlook tries to connect to EX1 ( Which has blue screen) won’t happen , you see the Christmas balloon “Outlook trying to retrieve blah blah and desktop start difficult to manage (-: , uppsssss

**** IN reality EX2 is perfectly up and running you cannot get to it**** Because the ADDS is telling you to connect to RpcClientAccessServer=EX1

• To remedy this now we configured this attribute RpcClientAccessServer=outlook.mycompnay.com

I made this up “outlook.mycompnay.com” call it anything you like this is DNS A record

• outlook.mycompnay.com=X.X.X.X ( IP Address)

Now

• EX1=10.10.10.100
• EX2=10.10.10.101

outlook.mycompnay.com=10.10.10.10 ,  Are you seeing what is going on here??????

• If EX1 is death, all I need to do is to do to DNS and update the IP Address of existing A record
• outlook.mycompnay.com=10.10.10.101
• NOW THIS IS EX2 which will make your outlook happy (-:

To make this automated you need load balancer or use poor man method to update DNS (-: your own

Create a Database Availability Group

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351172.aspx

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

OWA 2010 Enable Redirection HTTP to HTTPS

 

One of the most frequent asked question is how to redirect HTTP request for OWA in Exchange 2010 to SSL port. I have post in the past showing how to make simple modifications on OWA page, with easy approach. I will go over this one more time. If you set redirection time to “0” second with simple HTML code you do not even need to make the first splash page. I do like seeing the splash page hence I will first show you how to modify / Create the default IIS welcome page with simple steps listed here.

 

Click Here for SkyDrive

• After downloading this file you need to open it with Adobe Photo Shop to make simple changes, your company name etc..
• Open your Exchange 2010 Server , go to C drive , on the C Drive drill down to “C:\inetpub\wwwroot” folder in this folder find HTML file called “iisstart” make a right click on duplicate this HTML file
• 
• Now the image you see in here called welcome, we will be replacing this with one we will be creating with sample file I have provided, pay attention the welcome file extension is PNG but you can make this image in any format, I will show you how to change the HTML file to point to welcome.jpeg file instead of welcome.png file.
• Once you have your own file same size as welcome file ( you can always modify this) place in this directory and open “iisstart.html” file by making right click and selecting open with notepad as shown below…..

For automatic redirection we will add below code into this HTML page right after <head> tag.

<META http-equiv="refresh" content="4;URL=https:/mail.Inbase25.com/owa">

Rest of the HTML code is same as fallows

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <META http-equiv="refresh" content="4;URL=https:/mail.Inbase25.com/owa"> <title>INbase</title> <style type="text/css"> <!-- body {     color:#000000;     background-color:#FFFFFF;     margin:0; } #container {     margin-left:auto;     margin-right:auto;     text-align:center;     } a img {     border:none; }--> <META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=https://mail.Inbase25.com/owa"></style> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <a href="https://mail.inbase25.com/owa"><img src="welcome.jpg" alt="OWA" width="771" height="611" /></a> </div> </body> </html>

 

• You will need to replace :mail.inbase25.com to your own publish DNS a record as mail.yourcompany.com

• Simply change the HTML code it says “content="4;” to anything you like if you make this “0” redirection occurs fast and first page wont be visible at all.

As it is seen all we actually did was replacing simple HTMP code into default IIS page and direct port 80 request to SLL port. I assume you have proper firewall rules configured on your firewall to make this work.

This is supper easy way of accomplishing re-direction after deploying OWA in Exchange 2010.

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 has been released..

This is first update on top of SP3 Exchange 2007 , the updates included fallowing fixes………..

KB 980301 The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service stops responding during a Volume Shadow Copy Service backup on an Exchange Server 2007 server

KB 983529 The EdgeTransport.exe process crashes and then restarts on an Exchange Server 2007 server

KB 973637 Exchange Server 2007 creates incorrect Lotus Notes proxy email addresses

KB 982928 The Msftesql.exe process continues using memory on an Exchange Server 2007 server

KB 983296 Exchange ActiveSync crashes on an Exchange Server 2007 server causing the client synchronization to be unavailable

 

Description of Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3

Download here

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Exchange 2010 & Sp1 Deployment….

SP1 for Exchange 2010 release for sure was great news and made Exchange 2010 more stronger. Most of the migration scenarios and people who wanted to wait to see at least SP1 release start shifting into upgrade path after Sp1 release. Those of you you did upgrade early will remember , one of the most confusing part was collecting all required updates to get Sp1 rolling. Here is the good new Exchange team made great post helping to easy Sp1 deployment. I think it is great post and supper useful. I am including link , in this link you will get to all download you need and some of the issues came up in deploying Sp1 also addressed here……

Exchange 2010 SP1 FAQ and Known Issues

SP1 Prerequisites

SP1 requires the installation of 4-5 hotfixes, depending on the operating system – Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2. To install the Exchange 2010 SP1 administration tools on Windows 7 and Windows Vista, you requires 2 hotfixes.

Note: Due to the shared code base for these updates, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista share the same updates. Similarly, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 share the same updates. Make sure you select the x64 versions of each update to be installed on your Exchange 2010 servers.

Here’s a matrix of the up,,,, Read more click on above link

 

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Remove Public Folders from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010

If you are in the middle of migration or will start one and wondering how to deal with PF folders on your legacy Exchange 2003 server , here is the link and this is pretty much all you need to know and will do to move them from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.

  Click here

 

First create PF database on the Exchange 2010 server

Move existing Pf folder replicas from E03 server into this newly created PF database on E210 Server , by logging on E03 server…..

Make sure the Public folder is empty

Dismount the PF folders on E03 Server for a while to make sure no one is complaining

After making sure everything works fine delete the PF folder database on E03 Server , if you still have replicas you will receive fallowing… allow time for replication to finish

 

You could achieve same goal from PS on E210 server

\MoveAllReplicas.ps1 -Server MySourceServer -NewServer MyTargetServer

 

Get-PublicFolderStatistics -Server <server with public folder database to be removed>

   
    
   
   
    

• How to Remove a Public Folder Database
• http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/07/09/445967.aspx
• How to Remove a Public Folder Database
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998329.aspx
• How to Remove the Last Public Folder Database in the Organization
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201664.aspx

Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)

Exchange 2010 SP1 is available for Download

Finally Exchange 2010 SP1 has been released and here is the link for download. There are many changes in SP1 and to be honest most of you will be very happy to discover what they are. SP1 brings more stability in Exchange 2010 and  I believe will help for migration scenarios. Click on the picture below to download SP1


Archiving white paper
Yes Virginia, there is an Exchange Server 2010 SP1
The Future of Exchange Starts Here: Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Is Now Available
What's New in Exchange 2010 SP1
More Exchange 2010 links






Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
MCSE 2003, M+, S+, MCDST
Security+, Project +, Server +
http://smtp25.blogspot.com/ (Blog
http://telnet25.spaces.live.com/ (Blog)
http://telnet25.wordpress.com/ (Blog)