Category Archives: Exchange 2010
Exchange 2010 Stuff…
Compatibility Exchange 2010 SP2 RU 1 CAS-to-CAS Proxying issue with NON-Exchange 2010 SP 2 RU 1 Servers
Author: Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange Server, CISSP
All those who have applied Exchange 2010 SP 2 RU 1 in their Exchange environment, will see a problem for Exchange 2010 CAS to CAS proxy between Exchange 2010 SP2 RU1 to non-Exchange 2010 SP2 RU1 Servers, because Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP2 RU1 introduced a new method of user context cookie which is used in CAS-to-CAS proxying.
Problem:
All those customers, who are using CAS to CAS Redirection will not be affected with this change, but all you those who are doing CAS to CAS Proxy in between your Exchange Servers, where some of your Internet and NON-Internet facing CAS Servers are still not been updated for Exchange 2010 SP 2 RU1, will be suffered from this problem.
Resolution:
Update your Non-Exchange 2010 SP2 Servers with Exchange 2010 SP2 RU1 to fix this problem, or read more here
Cheers!
Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool | Microsoft Outlook Configuration Troubleshooting | Troubleshoot Microsoft Outlook
Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange, CISSP
Microsoft Outlook is one of the software application, which remains open all the day on every desktop in the world, and sometimes Outlook configuration and its related issues takes time on the support side to fix, and make this support experience handy for the support personnels, Microsoft recently released Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer, which is a nifty tool, first analyzer the user Outlook Profile, and then provide the analysis for the current configuration, and if it does find any error, it also tells you that how you can fix it.
You can download MOCAT from here
What does OCAT?
The Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool (OCAT) is a program that provides a detailed report of your current Outlook profile. This report includes many parameters about your profile and highlights any known problems that it found in your profile. For any problems that are listed in the report, you are provided with a link to a Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article that outlines a possible fix for the problem. If you are a Help Desk professional, you can also save the report to file so that the report can be viewed in the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool on another client where the tool is installed.
How to start OCAT?
To start the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool, click the Microsoft OCAT icon on the Start menu. If you do not see the Microsoft OCAT icon on the Start menu, look for it under Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool on the All Programs menu.
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How to generate a report by using OCAT
After OCAT is started, click Start a scan in the left panel to generate a report of your Outlook profile.
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Note Microsoft Outlook 2003 is not a supported version of Outlook for OCAT. If you try to perform a scan on a client that has Outlook 2003 installed, you receive the following error message:
Error starting scan, please try again. If error persists, please send mail to ocatsupp.
This error message is shown in the following figure:
If Outlook is not running when you start a scan, OCAT displays the following notification.
For the most complete OCAT scan report, make sure that Outlook is running when you start a scan.
In situations in which you cannot keep Outlook running long enough to start a scan, you can still perform a basic scan. To do this, select Offline Scan in the Task drop-down list, and then click Start scanning.
Although an offline scan does not contain as many profile details as an online scan, an offline scan may still provide enough information to help you resolve any problems that you are experiencing with Outlook.
For an online scan, you may receive the following prompt to give OCAT access to information that is stored in Outlook. To give this access, select Allow access for, specify 1 minute, and then click Allow.
Note This prompt may not automatically take focus. To display this prompt, click the Outlook icon on the Windows taskbar.
After the scan is complete, click View a report of this configuration scan to display the report that is generated by OCAT.
Cheers!
Exchange 2010 Mailbox Database grown too big | Exchange 2010 Mailbox Store growing unexpectedly large
Author: Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange, CISSP
I have seen this issue in some organization, where their Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Store (Mailbox Database) start growing unexpectedly large, although it is understood that since SIS (Single Information Storage) is not available in Exchange 2010, Exchange 2010 mailbox database grows twice as fast as the legacy Exchange version, but due to a bug in Exchange 2010, Mailbox Store grows unexpectedly fast and become bigger after the small time period.
Cause:
This issue can occur if the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service does not remove the deleted messages from the database.
Resolution:
To resolve this issue, install the following update rollup:
2645995 Description of Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2
You can also install this hotfix to overcome this problem.
Cheers!
Exchange Client Network Bandwidth Calculator (Beta) | Exchange Server 2010 Network Bandwidth calculation
Author: Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange, CISSP
Microsoft Exchange Server Team blog recently announced the availability of Exchange Client Network Bandwidth Calculator (Beta).
You can read more about Exchange Client network Bandwidth Calculator from here
Cheers!
Microsoft Exchange GAL Sync between two Active Directory Forest | GAL Synchronization with Quest ActiveRoles Quick Connect Express | GAL Synchronization | Mail-Enabled Contact Synchronization between Active Directory Forests
Author: Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange Server, CISSP
Microsoft Exchange GAL Sync between two Active Directory Forest
| Recently, I got to know about one very interesting post by one of my fellow MVP Exchange Server Tony Murray, for his postabout the GAL Sync with Quest Quick Connect Express for two different forest, where the forests do not have trust configured, while going through the step by step guide Tony made, I thought for share it with you all.Quick Connect is a freeware tool from Quest Technologies, where you can install the QuickConnect on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server, and on back-end it will be accessing a SQL Server Database Server, and then with very intuitive Setup Wizard and creation rules for Exporting contacts from source forest to target forest, and then scheduling these steps to run automatically without the Administrators intervention, are very cool.
Step by Step Guide for Configuring Quest Quick Connect for GAL Sync b/w two different Active Directory Forests: You can download the Tonys made guide for Quest Quick Connect for GAL Sync from here. |
Note: Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 also provides out-of-the-box GAL Sync functionalities.
I hope this post will help you to make your GAL Sync easy between business partners and group-companies.
Cheers!
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!
Microsoft PST Capture Tool is available for download | Download Microsoft PST Capture | How to capture PST files | How to import PST files into Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Author: Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange Server, CISSP
In past, I published a blog post as News: Microsoft Exchange 2010 PST Capture Tool Coming Soon!, and today, Im pleased to inform you that Microsoft has recently released a public version of this tool! You can download this from Microsoft Download Centre.
This tool is a good addition to Microsoft Exchange Server tools inventory, and will surely help the organizations to make their environment PST free, where lot of other E-Mail Archiving Solution provider has always been projected importing PSTs into the Microsoft Exchange Information Store, while capturing and importing these PST files from the users machine over the network, as one of the hot and out-of-the-box feature of their Exchange E-Mail Archiving product, and was also something, which I feel that something as major was missing from Microsoft Exchange Native Online-Archive solution, but with the addition of this great tool, now Microsoft Exchange Administrators have been given a great piece of flexibility to get the user PSTs imported into the Exchange Server with less pain and more control.
How Microsoft PST Capture Works? – Check out the documentation here.
To know more about Microsoft PST Capture Tool, visit below URL:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/01/30/pst-time-to-walk-the-plank.aspx
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,
Hyper-V Live Migration is not working | The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable | Cluster resource ‘Virtual Machine VM in clustered service or application VM failed | Virtual Machine VM failed to start.
Author: Zahir Hussain Shah | MVP Exchange Server
Applies to: Hyper-V Live Migration is not working | CSV is not accessible from passive cluster nodes| Validate Disk Failover failed | Failed to write file data on cluster disk 0 partition 1, failure reason: The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable | Virtual Machine VM live migration did not succeed at the destination | Cluster resource ‘Virtual Machine VM in clustered service or application VM failed | Virtual Machine VM failed to start.
Microsoft Hyper-V Clustering Recommendation and Best Practices for Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) – Quick Solutions Guide
This is my second blog post related to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Clustering for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 Clustering and High Availability, in my previous blog article for building Hyper-V 2008 R2 High Availability, in which I presented to you the links to a wonderful video series for building Hyper-V HA for creating Highly Available Virtual Machine work-loads with Hyper-V Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volumes.
In this article, I will walk you through the several post-implementation related issues and their resolution, which you may get encounter with your configuration and some of the best practices, for helping you to fix your problem, and get your highly available VMs running on Hyper-V Cluster.
Okay, now lets start here with each post-issue, I have seen occurs after Implementing Hyper-V Cluster with CSV and Live Migration, I will explain one by one.
1) Failed to write file data on cluster disk 0 partition 1, failure reason: The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable
By the way, it is not a post-implementation problem, but I would like to share this with you, this happened to me, while I was building my five nodes Windows Failover Cluster on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 for Hyper-V, this issue is related to Cluster Validation failure for Failover Disks, it happened to my newly attached CLUTER DISKs (LUNs), which I formatted and made offline before I ran Cluster Validation, but I got the failure that “The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable.”
Problem:
Failed to write file data on cluster disk 0 partition 1, failure reason: The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable corrupted and unreadable.
Resolution:
To fix this problem, I formatted all the disks, made them offline again, and re-run the Cluster Validation Test, and this time it turned out as passed!
2) Live Migration Best Practices and Post-Implementation Issues and their Resolutions:
In this section, I will guide you the best practices for fixing issues related to the Live Migration, after the post-implementation of Windows Failover Clustering for Hyper-V with CSV:
I. Recommended Cluster Network Microsoft Failover Cluster Settings:
Lets assume you got two networks physical cards in your Server, as follows:
LAN Connected Server VLAN
Cluster Heartbeat Network Cluster Network for Live Migration
In the Failover Cluster Manager, you have to set the below settings for both of them:
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II. Recommended Cluster Network File and Printing and NetBIOS Settings:
As you know that disabling File and Printing Services and NetBIOS, for Cluster Internal Network, have always been a recommended practice, but with Live Migration and Hyper-V Clustering, it is required to turn on these both settings on the Cluster Network, which we will be using for Live Migration.
III. Refreshing Virtual Machine Configuration:
With my experience, while I saw that the Quick Migration was working but Live Migration was not working, so I gave a Refresh Virtual Machine Configuration from the Microsoft Failover Manager, and after that tried to give a live migration, and it worked, so you can say that after making any changes to VM (Highly Available) in Clustering, you should give Refresh to VM Configuration Cluster, so which tells the cluster that these are the changes made to the VM, and which directly interact with Clustering behavior of the VM.
IV. CSV- Cluster Shared Volumes behavior:
When you add CSV in the Microsoft Cluster Failover Manager for the support and funtionlity of Live Migration, you see a different behavior of these disk, as compare to the other type of storage on the Cluster Nodes, and over time, I have seen some misconception and misguided assumptions about these CSV LUNs, so let me explain the expected behavior of CSV LUNs on the Cluster nodes as follows:
a. Online / Offline: CSV LUNs will only be online on the Current Owner of the LUNs in the Cluster, e.g. as shown in the below image that only disk three is online and disk 1, disk 2 are both offline, is because that the Cluster Node 1 is the current owner of the DISK 3, and thats why it is showing here online, and both DISK 1, and DISK 2 are offline.
b. Reserved: When you add at LUN to Cluster as CSV, the Disk as become Reserved, means that it will only work for Windows Server 2008 R2 CSV functionality, where it is allowed for file-level locking, not the disk level.
c. Accessing CSV LUNs from Windows Explorer and over NetBIOS SMB session:
After adding the CSV LUNs to the Failover Cluster Manager in the CSV Tab, you will start seeing the below behavior in the C: drive of the Cluster Nodes, and when you will double click on the ClusterStorage, it will get buys, but will let you go inside the folder after sometime, depending on your Network speed and server performance, but as per expected functionality, you should be able to open this folder on all cluster nodes.
Additionally, while it is taking time to opening the folder, if you try to open the same location over SMB NetBIOS session, it will open it bit fast, but make sure that you enabled the File and Printer Sharing and NetBios settings on the Cluster Network, and others. E.g. \172.16.55.1c$ClusterStorageVolume1.
V. Same Hyper-V Virtual Network Settings on all Hyper-V Nodes in the Cluster:
Lets assume that we got five cluster node setup for Hyper-V clustering, and before building the cluster, as recommended we installed the Hyper-V role on these five cluster nodes, and as part of configuration, we will be creating Virtual Network in Hyper-V for VMs to communicate to the reset of the Network, and therefore we created a Network called Server-VLAN, and for allowing the any type of Migration, whether its a quick migration, live migration or VM move, it is required that you keep the same Virtual Network name on all Cluster (Hyper-V) nodes, because when the Virtual Machine moves in case of Live Migration with VM Configuration file, when the second node where you try to make the VM online, the migration process tries to open and make online the VM with the pre-configured VM configuration parameters, where if the Network Name would be different or the same name of Virtual Network (Server-VLAN example) is not there, VM migration and making the VM online will fail.
I hope with the all above explained as a best practices, will help you to make your Hyper-V High Availability Implementation a success project.
Cheers!
