Exchange on Evan Hoffman

Exchange (OWA) CAS crashes with 503 error - again

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 12:22:46 +0000

This just started happening again, with these errors appearing in the event viewer:

Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-WAS
Date: 9/18/2011 11:16:33 AM
Event ID: 5011
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: exch2010fe1
Description:
A process serving application pool 'MSExchangeOWAAppPool' suffered a
fatal communication error with the Windows Process Activation Service.
The process id was '3760'. The data field contains the error number.

Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-WAS Date: 9/17/2011 6:47:07 AM Event ID: 5009 Task Category: None Level: Warning Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: exch2010fe1 Description: A process serving application pool ‘MSExchangeOWAAppPool’ terminated unexpectedly. The process id was ‘3108’. The process exit code was ‘0x800703e9’.

Renaming a single-label domain to a FQDN

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:56:54 +0000

Long ago – eons, perhaps – before I had anything to do with the Windows environment here, someone created the AD domain in my company as a single-label domain (e.g. instead of “example.com” our domain is just “example”). Over the years this has led to lots of “fun” on the part of Windows admins who’ve worked here as the implications of this choice became more apparent.

Since I inherited this system about a year ago, I haven’t really bumped up against any problems stemming from the single-label domain issue… until now. I recently attempted to add a new Windows 2008r2 file server to our DFS replication group/namespace. This totally failed for some mysterious reason. Well, I shouldn’t say “totally” failed, as I was able to add it to the DFS replication group, but unable to add it to the DFS namespace. In my attempt to debug the namespace issue, I deleted the namespace and attempted to recreate it, but just kept getting this error: The namespace cannot be queried. The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.. I couldn’t do anything with the namespace - even clicking on it in the DFS Management console brought up an error. After some searching I found that this was likely due to having a single-label domain. I wasn’t sure why the error was happening even on Windows 2003 machines though, maybe joining a 2008r2 box to the domain made some schema changes? I tried a few suggestions like editing the hosts file but nothing seemed to resolve this.

Autodiscover mysteriously stopped working (Exchange 2010)

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:30:30 +0000

I had Autodiscover working for months but recently it just stopped. I’m not sure why, but it may be related to removing the last Exchange 2003 servers from service recently. Maybe some setting got wiped from AD when I uninstalled Exchange 2003 (as per the procedure Microsoft gives). Basically what was happening was that the email address field was being autopopulated by the user’s UPN rather than their email address. Since we have a single label domain, the UPN isn’t a valid email address, and autodiscovery fails.

Wasted time with Exchange 2010, SquirrelMail, and IMAP-SSL

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:32:11 +0000

I’m setting up SquirrelMail to point to my Exchange 2010 server via IMAP (don’t ask) and couldn’t get SM to talk to Exchange on port 993 (imaps). Even though the servers on the same subnet, any time passwords are being sent over the network I like to opt for SSL. I found a couple of sites suggesting that the problem was that there was no SSL certificate installed, but I knew for a fact there was a valid certificate because I could get to https://webmail.example.com/ for OWA.

Exchange 2010 Post-Upgrade weirdness: can't edit Mail Non-Universal Group or Security Group

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:29:38 +0000

Now that everyone’s been moved to Exchange 2010 we’ve started using the 2010 Exchange Managment Console/Shell exclusively which has revealed some weirdness. First, we created a new group in AD using an old script (which used LDAP) and created a Mail-enabled Global Security group. We put people in the group, and everything seemed to be working fine until it was discovered that users in the group couldn’t see the group in the Global Address List. Users not in the group had no problem seeing the group. Additionally, users in the group couldn’t see users added directly in 2010. This only appeared to affect the GAL; the users were able to send/receive email fine with the full SMTP addresses.

Exchange 2010 Post-Upgrade weirdness: can't edit Mail Non-Universal Group or Security Group

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:29:38 +0000

Changing all Exchange mailboxes to use database defaults for quota limits with PowerShell

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:38:03 +0000

Here’s an example of why I’ve come to love PowerShell. Under Exchange 2003, we set users’ mailbox quota limits per-user, since we initially set them ridiculously high (around 20 GB). The reason we did that was that prior to this year we actually didn’t have any quotas on user mailboxes and the average mailbox was about 9 GB. In preparation for moving Exchange to the datacenter (over our measly 5Mbps upload line) we introduced quotas and over the course of about 2 months gradually lowered the limits as people whittled away their old email until they were under the quota we had established (about 2.25 GB for the no-send limit – I forgot the rationale for that number – and 1.75 GB for the warning limit [the no-receive limit was set to about 40GB since I never wanted users to hit that limit]).

Finally, all users moved from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:29:44 +0000

I’ve been working on migrating our Exchange environment from 2003 to 2010 for several months. My first post about this is from April 14th, when I was just trying to virtualize our existing Exchange 2003 system. Once that was complete, I started playing around with Exchange 2010 around June or July, and had most of the users moved over to 2010 by the end of August. The last holdouts were Blackberry users. I couldn’t move their mailboxes because our BES was hosted on our original Exchange 2003 server.

Converting Exchange 2003 conference rooms to Exchange 2010

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:25:27 +0000

I’m wrapping up moving mailboxes to Exchange 2010. The last ones to be moved (except for BlackBerry users… thanks BES) are the conference rooms. So the first step was to move them using the Local Move tool, which was pretty simple. But I don’t want them in 2010 as user mailboxes if they can be designated as “rooms,” which they can. So here’s how I’m doing it:

Identify the mailboxes to be moved

Exchange 2010 - Out-of-office response (OOF) won't turn off?

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:44:34 +0000

Two users reported the same problem this week: they turned on their out-of-office reply while they were out, then came back and turned it off. Except even after they turned it off, the autoreply was still being sent out. I had them log in to OWA and make sure it was off (maybe some weird bug with Outlook not registering the change in the server), which it was in both cases. I Googled hard and fast and couldn’t find anyone with this same problem.

Exchange 2010 - Out-of-office response (OOF) won't turn off?

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:44:34 +0000

Changing Active Directory Password in Browser through OWA 2010

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:29:41 +0000

A few months ago I was on a quest to figure out how to change my Active Directory password via a browser (for Linux/Mac users). I finally figured it out, but since I’ve been working on this Exchange 2010 migration I noticed one of the features of OWA (Outlook Web App) in Exchange 2010 is that you can change the AD password right in the browser from within the app:

Outlook 2007 & Exchange 2010 Autodiscover SSL certificate error annoyance

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:51:54 +0000

One of the more annoying side effects of migrating my mailbox to Exchange 2010 has been the nagging of Outlook 2007’s Autodiscovery feature. Now, every time I start Outlook I get hit with a certificate error for autodiscover.domain.com. Now, autodiscover.domain.com is a CNAME to mail.domain.com, which is the OWA URL for the CAS. The SSL certificate is valid - but it’s valid for mail.domain.com. I could buy a SSL certificate from GoDaddy for $12.99 (an insanely great price, btw) for “autodiscover” but that would also require using another IP address on the CAS (since you can can only bind one SSL certificate to an IP:port pair), and that seems like a waste of an IP address.

The Joy of Migrating from Exchange 2003 to 2010

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:57:13 +0000

I’ve been working on migrating from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 for several weeks. Actually, at this point it feels like several months. Now that I think about it, I guess that’s because it’s actually been several months.

Back in January or February, I got fed up with the Exchange setup I inherited: our Exchange 2003 server was running on a server in the basement of our office, on non-UPS power, with a power company that likes to pull shenanigans (like 3-4 hour outages every few months). In addition, the physical machine itself has some weird bug where it would hang at the POST screen complaining about some USB device, even though there are no USB devices plugged in, and USB is disabled in the BIOS. Meanwhile, in the datacenter, I had recently finished migrating most of our ancient physical servers to virtual machines on beautiful new hardware. It didn’t take long to see the solution that seemed to be obvious: move Exchange to the datacenter, in a VM.

When single-sign-on isn't.

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:09:22 +0000

I’m looking into training courses for Exchange 2010, and to add a course to “My Learning,” which I guess is the equivalent of a shopping cart, I had to sign in with my Live.com ID. I have a Live.com ID because you need one to see your MS licenses and download ISOs, etc. It’s not as seamless as Google’s ID but it seems to work ok most of the time. But here’s an instance where it sucks:

When single-sign-on isn't.

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:09:22 +0000

Exchange 2010 and Set-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory Identity

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:43:21 +0000

I don’t really know why I put this blog up, but generally I write stuff here after I muddle through some ridiculous problem that may have ended up being easily resolved, but whose solution was hard to find. That’s definitely the case with this post. Currently I’m in the middle of moving my company’s email from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. Microsoft has provided some pretty good documentation on how to do this, but they do assume a certain level of familiarity with the product. For example, I probably spent 30 minutes trying to run Exchange cmdlets in Powershell before I realized there’s a special shell just for Exchange, the Exchange Management Shell.

Hygiene Management?

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:55:39 +0000

I’m installing Exchange 2010 and in the docs it shows a bunch of groups that get created in the AD Schema during the domain prep part. After running prep, I looked to see if the groups were there, and sure enough they were (yay). What caught my eye was that one of the groups is called Hygiene Management. I thought maybe this was an Easter Egg from MS, but apparently it’s just the name of the group of people who can manage the Exchange antivirus/antispam features. Still funny though.

Generate a report of Exchange mailbox sizes broken out by department and location

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:44:44 +0000

I found a script a few months ago that generated a CSV report of mailbox size, which included the Mailbox Name (usually the user’s name), size in Kbytes, number of items, which server it’s on, etc. This was very helpful, but I wanted to see which department within the company used the most space on the mail server, and the department wasn’t one of the pieces of data included in the report. It took a while but I figured out how to do LDAP lookups in vbscript and was able to add that info, so the report now has the user’s department, office location, and quota limit in it as well as the other fields. This makes it very easy to do a PivotChart in Excel to generate a pie chart of the size by department. The script is attached - change the extension to .vbs to run it. You’ll need to plug in your Exchange server and domain controller where the placeholders currently are.

Moving an Exchange 2003 server to another location with minimal risk and disruption?

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 01:38:51 +0000

So our Exchange server is located in our office building. This made sense at the time because that’s where the users are. Over time though, this has proved problematic for a few reasons. Primarily, our office is certainly not a datacenter and doesn’t offer the amenities of one - clean, reliable power, and redundant cooling. In an average year we lose power probably 10-15 times, often for an hour or more. The rest of our production environment is hosted in a top-tier datacenter, so after a while I started to wonder why our Exchange server wasn’t there, and making plans to move it there. Oh, and did I mention I’m not an Exchange admin in any sense of the term? I just inherited the Exchange server about 2 months ago.