M365 and AZURE Blog

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

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)

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

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.

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.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

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

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

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