Federated Infrastructure

Autodiscover.xml failed (0x80004005) and BPOS

2012-03-21T21:32:27Z

A customer contacted to report a problem with Outlook's AutoDiscover feature. The customer was a former BPOS customer that was testing some mailboxes deployed onto a new on-premises environment. The testExchangeConnectivity validation tool was reporting consistent results, so it appeared to be client related, but given the general complexity of the environment (domains, networks, VPNs, etc.), we felt it necessary to first rule out the server as an issue. The connectivity checker for Outlook was running...(read more)

A Sandwich You Should Avoid Ordering

2012-03-01T03:00:00Z

Secure by default is a great response to the security problems that plagued Microsoft nearly a decade ago, but sometimes we, as consumers of a product, confuse the concepts of vulnerability and functionality. The receive connector is an example that I recently revisited, causing me enough confusion with a customer that I felt it might be time to collect and then share my thoughts on what exactly these things are. As described by TechNet, "Receive connectors are configured on computers that are running...(read more)

Event 1006 FailoverClustering: Cluster Service was halted due to incomplete connectivity with the other nodes

2012-02-22T22:25:01Z

Ran into this event on an Exchange DAG where the customer was reporting that Exchange seemed to be making arbitrary decisions to randomly failover from Node1 to Node2 of the mailbox cluster. Some investigation showed that the 1006 event always corresponded to a 4082 MSExchangeRepl event in the application log and the events seemed to happen consistently betwee 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM, but not every night and oddly at 15 minute intervals (7:16 one night, 7:31 a different night). Most of the reseach...(read more)

It's always the hardware

2011-07-29T22:52:00Z

It's always the hardware. If it's not the firewall, it's the network. If it's not the network, it turns out, it might be the CD drive. Strangest situation encountered today. Tyring to install Exchange 2010 SP1 integrated on a new server (virtualized). The CD is linked to the physical CD on the host. When we attempt to run the GUI setup, the scripts on the splash screen fail to load and setup cannot continue (in fact, we cannot even get a graphic to display). We switch to the shell, since that was...(read more)

How Do I Programmatically Extract Numeric Data From Get-MailboxStatistics?

2011-07-28T16:39:00Z

I recently was working with a customer to build a reporting solution for their Exchange 2010 environment. The report was going to be used for billing and compliance administration. Basically, the organization needed to know how many mailboxes per customer, what some key settings on those mailboxes were. We had a couple of challenges. The first was tying a user to a specific customer. The company attribute in Active Directory was not reliably used. Some customers could be tied to a domain or oganizational...(read more)

Beyond RBAC: Delegating the 'Mail-enable Public Folders' right

2011-01-21T19:31:00Z

In the RBAC world, it should be possible to create a new management role, based on the built-in role "Mail-enable public folders." The built-in role allows delegates/members to run the enable-mailpublicfolder cmdlet. When you add users to the built-in role, they can execute assigned duties without incident. However, when you create a new management role, or attempt to add the built-in role to a non-built-in role assignement, the cmdlet fails. It fails with the following access denied error. ...(read more)

Complex oPath Queries and the New-EmailAddressPolicy Cmdlet

2011-01-18T19:54:35Z

I've been working an interesting challenge this week in attempt to convert email address policies from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. As part of the conversion process, LDAP queries that define the recipient filter (to which the policy will apply) need to be converted to oPath queries. In most environments, these queries are pretty simple. One policy applies to everyone. In this organization, however, each department has its own email suffix. In Exchange 2003, this was easy. Each department had...(read more)

Why bartenders may soon love Excel as much as accountants

2011-01-18T05:28:00Z

UPDATE (3/28/11): I've been thinking about this post for awhile, unable to believe that someone else hadn't already thought of the obvious. Did a little research this morning and realized all my work was in vein (but I am happy about it). Excel does have an =CONVERT(number,from_unit,to_unit) function built in and is much easier than trying to manage the macros necessary to build your own solution. Just about every possible unit series(distance, length, weight, volume) is included and the friendly...(read more)

Viewing Deleted Active Directory Objects Using LDP

2011-01-05T19:57:28Z

I am sure this information exists elsewhere, but it falls into that category of something I do just often enough to forget how to do it. So, if you find yourself needing to see which objects have been recently deleted from a domain, you can follow these steps to do it. Open LDP Select Controls from the Options menu Under Load Predefinied dropdown, select Return Deleted Objects . Choose the Check Out buton to load Obj Identifier 1.2.840.113556.1.4.417 Choose Check In without modification...(read more)

Dumping the RBAC Hierarchy

2010-11-17T21:23:00Z

One of the things I noticed between RTM and SP1 for Exchange 2010 is the changes made to the RBAC environment, specifically the introduction of many new parameters on individual role entries (cmdlets associated with a role). Using the shell to manage this can be difficult, which is why I posted a link back in May 2010 to a spreadsheet I created that depicted the RBAC components in a pivot table. Rather than giving out fish, it's time to share the code. You'll likely want a mechanism for not only...(read more)

38,505 Security Delegation Options in Exchange 2010

2010-05-12T17:56:00Z

With the introduction of Role Based Access Control in Exchange 2010, it seems we have a lot of options for delegation. About 38,505 if you consider drilling down to the attribute level. If you've been tasked with creating a delegation model, it might be frustrating in the RTM version of Exchange 2010 to wrap your head around all the objects and their relationships. To facilitate this, I've put together a Pivot Table in Excel and shared it at docs.com. It shows which management roles rollup to which...(read more)

New-ClientAccessArray: What is it?

2010-05-12T17:39:00Z

Having been through a few Exchange 2010 deployments, I've had plenty of questions without so many well documented answers. In many cases, I am merely seeking the validation of a simple premise. In this case, my question is, "what is a client access array and why do I need it?" The CAS Array is simply an Active Directory object. It's used by Exhcange as a reference for client connectivity, but the object itself has no specific link to the load-balancer hardware. The New-ClientAccessArry cmdlet...(read more)

Where can I get Single Instance Store (SIS) for Windows File Servers?

2009-01-23T23:24:00Z

The answer, it seems, is only from Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003, which goes by so many other names, it can be challenging to understand sometimes. However, the Single Instance Store, which is based on the Exchange and WDS technologies, detects multiple copies of the same document and consolidates them to a single document with mulitple pointers. However, this feature is NOT available on any other edition of Windows Server. Of course, this isn't well documented, as I tried to find out...(read more)

When Legacies Are Baggage (Resolving the #550 5.1.1 RESOLVER.ADR.ExRecipNotFound error during Migration)

2008-11-08T03:21:00Z

I was working with an education customer this week when I came upon an interesting problem related to mail routing for a specific user. This user was migrated from one domain to another and mailbox-enabled for the new Exchange 2007 environment after their historical information had come over. The user had three different SMTP email addresses, but the primary SMTP address, username@guessme.edu, kept returning mail as undeliverable. The error information looks as follows. Delivery has failed...(read more)

Windows Server 2008, IIS 7.0, Exchange 2007 and the Offline Address Book

2008-10-24T23:20:00Z

I've been working through an interesting situation with one of my customers during the past couple of weeks. For some reason, everytime Outlook 2007 clients attempted to download the offline address book (OAB), they would error out. We found a lead at http://lugies15.blogspot.com/2008/09/offline-address-book-connecting-to.html and noticed that the permission change recommended here fixed the problem. But we couldn't figure out why setting an open read permission to everyone on the c:\program files...(read more)

Putting the F in FERPA (Building Distribution Groups for Class Schedules in Exchange)

2008-08-09T00:35:00Z

One goal at many universities has been to provide a collaboration solution for students, based on email. To do this in Exchange, an administrator needs to create a distribution list to represent the class and populate it with the user accounts. Each distribution list has a members property and each user has a memberOf property, both of which are multi-valued attributes. This is where the problems begin. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) allow directory information on students...(read more)

NoMAS and Other Solutions to 9548 and 9551 Events (Exchange Server 2003)

2008-07-17T21:59:00Z

I thought I had posted this information several years ago, but a customer recently contacted me seeking it and I realized it never left the publishing stage. Please note that this post is more specific to 5.5 to 2003 migrations, but may still be relevant to many folks out there. After installing Exchange 2003 in your environment, you may see the following types of events in the event log of your Exchange Server 2003 machine. Event Type: Warning Event Source: MSExchangeIS Event Category...(read more)

Installing Exchange 2007 SP1 onto Windows Server 2008 with a WS2008 Active Directory

2008-01-29T21:32:00Z

This post consists of some notes that I took during the installation of Exchange Server 2007 SP1 (Integrated) into a Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Environment (green field, clean installation of everything). The AD environment was created on RC1 bits of Longhorn with 2008 Forest Functional Level during the DCPromo process. The lab consists of two servers: 1 DC and 1 Exchange Server. Install PowerShell Feature on both DC and Exchange Servers using the Server Manager - "Add Features" tool...(read more)

The procedure entry point_except_handler4_common could not be located in the dynamic link library msvcrt.dll

2007-12-06T23:48:00Z

Every now and then, I take a break from federated infrastructure to post something that is likely only relevant to me. I recently purchased a new sound card (Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Audio) for a machine that is still running Windows XP. I allowed the hardware wizard to recognize the device and pull the drivers from the CD that came with the card. Some way into the installation, I blue-screened. From that point forward, I could not keep the system up, so I rebooted to safe mode, pull the...(read more)

Pool Nonpaged memory Leaks on Exchange 2003

2007-11-28T03:10:00Z

I am working with two independent customers. Each of these customers is running Exchange 2003 on the backend, but have been working over the last several months to upgrade their clients to Office 2007, including Outlook 2007. In most cases, desktops were remaining on Windows XP, although some Vista clients were thrown in the mix. In both situations, as the number of Outlook 2007 clients increased against a 2003 backend, the customers have noticed Pool Nonpaged Memory problems. We've considered and...(read more)

Using Powershell to Correct 9325 Events in Exchange 2007

2007-08-23T21:58:00Z

Per knowledge base article 936197 , Exchange 2007 may be dropping recipients from the Offline Address book and generating any of the following errors in the event log (note that diagnostic logging on the Exchange server needs to be set to High or Expert to see these events). Event Type: Error Event Source: MSExchangeSA Event Category: OAL Generator Event ID: 9325 Date: 8/23/2007 Time: 9:25:43 AM User: N/A Computer: {Exchange Server where OAB is Generated} Description...(read more)

Mailbox Cleanup After Cross Organizational Moves

2007-08-08T21:51:00Z

I thought I would share some code I wrote for doing bulk mailbox cleanups on Exchange 2003 for cross-organizational mailbox moves. This code is nearly identical to that in my previous post , but this one takes an input file to process several mailboxes at once. The input file must be tab-separated and contain the distinguished name in the first column and the smtp email address in the second. No headers are necessary on the input file. '*****************************************************...(read more)

There is no primary SMTP address

2007-07-31T22:17:00Z

Although the mailbox was moved to the target Microsoft Exchange server, an error occurred while the policies were being applied. Proxy address policies, Unified Messaging settings, managed content settings, and Exchange ActiveSync settings may not be set correctly. There is no primary SMTP address....(read more)

Having ZUNE Shuffle Issues?

2007-07-13T18:33:00Z

Okay, so this has nothing to do with federated infrastructure, except that many of my customers have or are considering Zunes. I have one and I have what I believe to be a common problem. My music collection contains some content that may be inappropriate for children under the age of 30. I also like to shuffle the music around. It seems the easiest way to accomplish this is to create a playlist of all age-appropriate music and then shuffle that playlist. So I create a playlist with probably 2,400...(read more)

Moving Mailboxes Cross Organizations in Exchange 2007

2007-07-05T19:45:00Z

I've seen a number of posts on other blogs talking about the new features of Exchange 2007 and the ability now to move mailboxes across organizations. I currently have a customer engaged in a major consolidation of multiple Exchange 2003 organizations into a single forest, single Exchange 2007 organization. The design for this customer calls for the following: Users will continue to log onto and operate from their current domains for their primary job functions. Users will all have new...(read more)