Category Archives: Exchange 2007
Exchange 2007 stuff..
Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Troubleshooting | Exchange Server ActiveSync Reporting Script | iPhone iOS 4.0 ActiveSync Connectivity Issues | Exchange ActiveSync Server failed to communicate with the Exchange mailbox server in a timely manner
Author: Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange Server, CISSP
Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Troubleshooting | Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Reporting and Monitoring | Exchange ActiveSync connectivity issues due to Exchange resource consumption
With the extensive usage of E-Mails as an effective and efficient communication medium in the todays world, where it has been noticed that over the past years that, the fast growing need of providing and accessing E-mails over the SmatPhones (Cell Phones), has increased tremendously, where Microsoft ActiveSync protocol gave a handy way for both Cell Phone Manufactures, and the Enterprises, for providing E-Mails access to their corporate end-users on their Cell Phone. Microsoft ActiveSync protocol works hand-in-hand with Microsoft Exchange Server for allowing the end-users to access their fully-ready E-mail access on their cell-phones.
With the above short definition of ActiveSync, now lets focus on some of the common Active Sync issues, we face after the implementation or upgrading Microsoft Exchange Server, in past I posted a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Active Sync connectivity blog article, which I faced after I transitioned my Exchange Server from 2007 to 2010, and which I found as one of the common issue, when people upgrade their Exchange Server from legacy Exchange versions.
In the this blog post, I will discuss couple of other ActiveSync issues, which might occur in your environment as ActiveSync connection time-out and failures, and along with these troubleshooting guidelines, we will also discuss about Microsoft ActiveSync Report Script, which is a new addition to Microsoft Exchange 2010 tools inventory, so lets start now
I will divide the ActiveSync troubleshooting steps into two domains, as follows:
Illustration: With the above link of step I for troubleshooting ActiveSync issues, you can fix the inheritable security permission on the user objects, which got migrated from the legacy Exchange version to its newer version, usually this problem comes for the user account, which are part of the administrative security groups.
Step II: Exchange ActiveSync connection failures due to Exchange resource consumption
Illustration: If the first step of troubleshooting ActiveSync, does not fix your problem, and if the below mentioned error entries are getting logged in your Exchange Server CAS/FE for ActiveSync, then you can follow the instructions provided in the KB-2469722, for troubleshooting the possible causes of your ActiveSync connection failures for the smart-phones.
Step III: Exchange ActiveSync Reporting Script
Illustration: Exchange ActiveSync Reporting Script provides you a handy way for troubleshooting and monitoring your Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync communication with verity of Smart-Phones available todays, this tool can also be used as a performance and resource utilization reporting tool, where it provides various fabulous reports related to ActiveSync. You can read more about ActiveSync Report Tool here, and can download it from here.
I hope this blog post will surely help you to fix and troubleshoot your Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync issues.
Cheers!
Good News! Microsoft Open-Door Registrations for UAE are now opened!
Author: Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange, CISSP
Recently, I got to know that Microsoft TechEd Middle East event has been replaced by Microsoft Open-Door event, which will held on 12 13, March, 2012 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai.
So for what you are waiting for, go and get register yourself for two-days great learning and networking event in the town, register for Microsoft Open-Door UAE, click here
What is Open Door?
Open Door is Microsofts premier technical education event aimed at offering technology professionals and decision makers the chance to explore and connect with a broad set of current and soon-to-be-released Microsoft technologies, tools, platforms and services.
An all-encompassing 2-day event, Open Door is the perfect venue for customers and partners to engage and interact, while learning about Microsofts breadth of solutions, technologies and innovations.
Who is coming to Open Door?
Open Door will be attended by a wide range of Microsoft customers including IT professionals, developers and IT decision makers from small and medium-sized businesses, government institutions and large enterprises.
I’m also planning to visit, and if I get there, then you will probably see me around MVP booth.
Regards,
Exchange 2010 SP1 setup hotfixes links problem – Download Exchange 2010 SP1 hotfixes
While installing Exchange 2010 SP1, setup readiness checker will show you the required missing hot fixes, and will also provide you the links to download these missing hot fixes, but at the moment when you will try to open those links, provided by the Exchange 2010 SP1 setup, will show you the errors on MS site.
Solution:
While today I was finding these hot fixes (all from one location), so I found a good article of Rajith, where he uploaded all the bunch of required hot fixes on his SkyDrive, so I thought to share it with you for saving your time and efforts.
Download the hot fixes from the below “Download Here” link.
Cheers!
Zahir Hussain Shah
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What is the Real Effect of Removing Single Instance Storage in Exchange Server 2010
While today reading my blog rolls, I found a very good article about the removal of Single Instance Storage from Exchange 2010, which I also a very important element for my organization to plan our Exchange 2007 Transition / Upgrade to Exchange 2010, so I found it to be as interesting topic, and sharing you from ExchangeServerPro.
Here you go…
What is the Real Effect of Removing Single Instance Storage in Exchange Server 2010
When Exchange Server 2010 was released a lot was made of the decision by Microsoft to remove Single Instance Storage (SIS) from the Exchange database engine.
Plenty of articles have been written about this so I won’t revisit the issue in much detail, except to summarise with these points:
- Disk storage technology has basically plateaued in speed capabilities (ie, disks aren’t getting faster)
- Disk storage technology is a lot cheaper in high capacity, lower performance types (eg SATA II, SAS)
- The previous Exchange database engine used a schema that permitted SIS but did not permit further optimization of performance (specifically, allowing sequential reads)
- Removing SIS and redesigning the database schema to permit sequential reads resulted in massive performance improvements (as much as 70% less disk IO for typical behaviour)
Does This Mean More Exchange Storage?
The major concern from Exchange Server customers was the impact this would have on their Exchange storage requirements. If SIS is removed, does that mean more disk and tape storage is going to be required? Especially as more and more organizations are already moving to larger mailboxes?
Furthermore, is that increase going to be exponential because of the increasing popularity of disk duplication (eg SAN mirroring) and the nature of Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Groups (multiple database copies across many servers)?
Short answer, yes. All of those storage requirements are likely to increase when your organization moves to Exchange Server 2010.
How Much More Storage is Needed?
In real world migrations I have seen mailbox databases grow by between 20% and 50% just from moving all of the mailboxes from an Exchange 2003 or 2007 server to Exchange Server 2010.
Similarly, growth of email storage over time also increases by similar factors.
So with that in mind, how can an organization mitigate the risk of storage costs getting out of control when they move to Exchange Server 2010?
Reducing Storage Costs for Exchange Server 2010
Firstly, take advantage of the Exchange Server 2010 database performance improvements by deploying Exchange 2010 on lower cost storage (eg SATA II or SAS instead of 15k SCSI). Some customers are tempted to use “what we’ve already got” and deploy on their existing high performance SAN, when in reality a smarter move would be to provision the Exchange 2010 mailbox servers with lower cost, lower speed direct-attached storage (DAS) for storing mailbox databases.
Secondly, don’t duplicate Exchange 2010 data unnecessarily. If you have deployed an Exchange 2010 DAG, don’t also utilize SAN mirroring for mailbox database storage. Let the Exchange 2010 application-layer replication handle it for you (Exchange 2010 SP1 introduced block-level replication to resolve one of the remaining criticisms of the Exchange 2010 asynchronous file-level replication).
Finally, look to alternative methods of de-duplicating Exchange mailbox data in organizations utilizing large mailboxes. For example, many backup applications are now including data de-dupe capabilities, as do enterprise-grade email archiving solutions.
Zahir Hussain Shah
Infrastructure Practice Consultant – Unified Communications
MCSE, MCTS, MCTIP Enterprise Administrator, CCNA, ITIL
Blog: http://zahirshahblog.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
How To Configure Exchange 2010 Disaster Recovery Site Using DAG
Exchange 2010 feature called Database Availability Group (DAG) is the new High Availability feature of Exchange 2010.
DRP Design
In both the production site and the Disaster Recovery site we need a server with Windows Enterprise edition since DAG relies on Microsoft Failover Clustering which is only available in the Enterprise edition. Both sites need a Domain Controller and a GC role. The DR site will be in a different Active directory Site so that users want log in to it
Installing
Installing Standard installation of Exchange 2010 edition on Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise that includes HAB,CAS,Mailbox – Roles. configuring all the basic configuration simillar on both servers and testing sending and reciving mail.
Creating a DAG.
In the Exchange Management Console
- Expand Organization Configuration.
- Click Mailbox.
- In the middle pane, click the Database Availability Group tab.
- In the right control pane click "New Database Availability Group".
The Create a DAG wizard starts.
Enter a name for your DAG. If you have a server with a HUB role but no mailbox role, then the wizard will select the HUB server and create the witness directory for you. If you don’t have an available HUB server, then you must manually specify the ‘Witness Server’ and a ‘Witness Directory’.
For macking sure that we want have permission problams with the Witness share directory add the ‘Exchange Trusted subsystem’ group to the witness server local administrators group. This is also necessary becasue in order to create a DAG you must also create a computer account in Active Directory. You might need to delegate ‘Exchange Trusted subsystem’ group to create and manage the computer account in Active Directory.
EMS Command for creating the DAG
We can also create the DAG with a Power Shall command instead of the GUI process -
New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Name E10DAG -WitnessDirectory C:DAG1 -WitnessServer FQDNofaServerinPrimarySite -DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIpAddresses 192.168.15.233,192.168.25.233 -Verbose
| with the Wizard you cannot set a fixed IP on your DAG. Instead, it will use DHCP to assign an IP. This is important to consider since it is recommended that you have an IP in every subnet that contains DAG members. |
The next step is to add your Exchange mailbox servers to your DAG
Right Click ‘Manage Database Availability Group Membership’ and then add the mailbox servers to it.
the Failover Cluster role will be installed on the servers you added to your DAG.
EMS Command For adding an Exchange server to DAG
Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity E10DAG -MailboxServer FQDNofMailboxServer -Verbose
The next step is to add databases to your DAG members in order to enable replication.
- Return to Exchange Management Console and expand Organization Configuration.
- Click Mailbox. In the middle pane, click the Database Management tab.
- In the lower pane, right-click the database you wish to replicate within the DAG.
- Choose Add Mailbox Database Copy.
- When the wizard launches, browse for the server in the DAG to which you want to replicate the mailbox database. Pick a Replay lag time and a truncation lag time.
EMS Command For adding a Database to replication
Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity ‘Mailbox Database 2010A’ -MailboxServer FQDNofServerInDRSite -ActivationPreference 2
| This step can potentially take a long time since the database is seeded to the DR site,the amount of time it takes depends on the database size and available bandwidth.
Set the ActivationPreference on all the Databases to 1 on the server in the production site; then, set the database copy on the server in the Disaster Recovery site to ‘suspended’ for activation. |
Now we must set some parameters on the mailbox database so that it is not automatically activated.
EMS Command
Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity ‘Mailbox Database 2010AFQDNofServerInDRSite’ -ActivationOnly -Verbose
Configuring Replay Lag Time
Configuring Replay Lag time is something that you should seriously consider doing. Lag time is how long the passive copy will wait until the transaction log is replayed into the database. Replication is still happening as fast as possible.
EMS command
Set-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity ‘mailbox database 2010AFQDNofServerInDRSite’ -ReplayLagTime 0.1:0:0 -Verbose
There is also another paratemeter that you might want to use–the Truncation Lag Time.
EMS command
Set-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity ‘mailbox database 1976375852FQDNofServerInDRSite’ -TruncationLagTime 0.1:0:0
| Please note: 0.1:0:0 means 1 hour |
How long you set the ReplayLagTime and TruncationLogTime for depends on two things
- How long it takes you to notice a corruption on the production site.
- How long it takes to replay all transaction log files if you activate the DR site.
Creating the CASArray
New-ClientAccessArray -Name CASArray-HQ -Fqdn FQDNofYourDesiredEndpoint -Site ADsiteInPrimaryDatacenter
Now configure all your databases to have the CASArray-HQ object as the RPCClientAccessServer. This will ensure that Outlook conencts to CASArray FQDN instead of the actual server name.
Get-MailboxDatabase | Set-MailboxDatabase -RpcClientAccessServer CASArray-HQ
You must also create a record in DNS with FQDNofYourDesiredEndpoint with an IP of your Exchange server in the primary datacenter. Set the TTL to a low value, such as 5 minutes, to make the switchover go faster to the Disaster Recover sit
Real Life Exchange 2010 Disaster Recovery
Real Life Exchange 2010 Disaster Recovery
Friends,
Today while I was searching on Internet, for reading more to design Exchange 2010 Disaster Recovery Methodologies, this is what I got, and I found it will be quire helpful for everyone, because this got tested and carried out for one Real World Exchange 2010 Disaster Recovery Scenario:
Method goes as follows:
1 | Find some live mailbox servers that had the spare capacity to mount 22 databases. Split the list of databases to be mounted among them.
2 | For each mailbox server, copy over the database and log directories so we had the data to use.
3 | Perform a soft recovery with eseutil /r on each database/log set to commit any uncommitted log files and ensure we could actually mount the data later in the process.
4 | Create the new mailbox databases: new-mailboxdatabase -name <name> -server <server> -EdbFilePath <path to recovery folder, e.g. c:\RecoverDBs\RecoverDB1\<name of original edb>.edb> -LogFilePath <path to logs, e.g. c:\RecoverDBs\RecoverLogs1>
Pro Tip: Use a new name for the database. If the old database was named DAG1-DB001, you might use DAG1-RecoveryDB001.
5 | Set the newly created databases to allow file restore: set-mailboxdatabase <db name> -AllowFileRestore:$true
6 | Copy in the database, logs and catalog data to the correct folders (those specified in step 4)
7 | Mount the databases one at a time: mount-database <DatabaseName>
8 | Once the database is mounted we can now re-home all the users with mail data there: get-mailbox -database <OriginalDatabaseName> | ?{$_.ObjectClass -NotMatch ‘(SystemAttendantMailbox|ExOldDbSystemMailbox)’} | set-mailbox -database <RecoveryDatabaseName>
9 | If you’re running with multiple copies then keep in mind that you’ve only got one live copy of the new database. You can either add a copy of the new database or do what we did and move them to databases on your new DAG that (hopefully) has multiple copies already. If you choose to go the route of moving them to existing healthy databases the command is: get-mailbox -database <RecoveryDatabaseName> | new-moverequest -TargetDatabase <HealthyDatabaseName>
Comments and/or questions are welcome in the comments. I just wrote this from memory so if I missed anything along the way please let me know.
Source:
http://jeremyphillips.org/2010/01/real-life-exchange-2010-disaster-recovery/
Zahir Hussain Shah
Allowing Photo Copier and Scanners to send emails using Exchange 2010, Configure Relaying in Exchange 2010
Hi Folks,
Just before couple of days ago, I got one request from my customer that they have photocopier and scanners machine, which synchs with AD, and on these Photo Copier / Scanner machines, they have to configure SMTP SERVER for sending notification and scanned images to users, but after creating a USER / MAILBOX in Exchange 2010, whenever they try to send a test email from these Photo Copier / Scanner machine or WEB CONSOLE, it gets failed.
So finally, when I looked into the Exchange to enable these machines to take advantage, and relay the customer’s Exchange 2010 for sending these Images and notification to users, so I found the below workaround for fixing this problem:
Environment details:
2 Server boxes for CAS / HUB Roles installed
2 Server boxes for Mailbox Role Installed
NBL Cluster configured on CAS Servers
CAS ARRAY FQDN: CASNLB.ABC.COM
Solution:
1) Open Exchange 2010 Management Console on CAS 1
2) Expend the SERVER CONFIGURATION working pane
3) Select HUB TRANSPORT and create a RECEIVE CONNECTOR
4) Select Receive Connector type as CUSTOM
5) Give the name of Receive Connector
6) In the Receive Emails from the remote host, you can add the IP ADDRESS or RANGE of a PHOTOCOPIER / SCANNER, to whom you want to allow for relaying using Exchange.
7) Finish
Now we will customize the properties of a receive connector:
In the below image you can see that in the “Receive mail from remote servers” section, you can add all those application and devices, to whom you want to use Exchange for relaying.
NOTE: In the authentication tab, you should uptick the TLS Authentication, and on the PERMISSION tab, you should TICK Anonymous permission for accessing this connector.
After customizing the connector for removing TLS authentication and giving the permission for Anonymous access, you are ready to use this connector for allowing Relaying through your Exchange 2010 Organization, and as I mentioned in the beginning of this article that in our environment we have TWO CAS / HUB, so repeat the same steps to create the replica connector on the another HUB TRANSPORT SERVER.
Thanks for your visiting, and take a interest to read this article.
Zahir Hussain Shah
