Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Windows Server Backup Exchange 2010

Here are the steps to backup your exchange server with Windows backup.Once in a while you may need this due to disk space  issues , log have not been flushed, or do budged to spend for 3th party utility for backup. What ever your reasoning is, just fallow the simple steps to get the work done.

Log into your mail server, open server manager and click futures, select “windows Server backup Features”

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  • you can also use
servermanagercmd.exe -install Backup-Features

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  • Now open SWB

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  • or  wbadmin.msc

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Click backup once

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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)

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

Sizing for Exchange 2010 is one of the most common scenarios these days from any Exchange administrators. Correctly sized Exchange deployment will carry you to success hence paying attention to this is very important.
There are many resources available on the net I am going to post some of them here and hoping to clear our some of the questions.....
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2010: Sizing and Performance - Get It Right the First Time

Get Microsoft Silverlight


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  • HP Sizer for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
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  • Deployment assistance
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  • Upgrade Process from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010
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  • msexchangeteam Blog
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  • Getting Started With Exchange 2010
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  • Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer
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Microsoft Exchange Solution Reviewed Program (ESRP)
  • This is great to dig to see what Vendors have done to test E210 on their hardware.


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)

Sunday, July 25, 2010

EXCHANGE 2010 and Load Balancer Story

 

You probably heard so much about Exchange 2010 and excited already. The one of the most exciting future in Exchange 2010 is DAG ( Data Availability Group) which makes Exchange redundant just like Active directory domain controllers. Now you start planning your exchange server and found out you can run your entire mail operations from two physical servers, with 7200 RPM SATA drives. You also want to make your messaging environment redundant by taking advantage from DAG technology which comes out the box with Exchange 2010. I think at this point you need to be aware of some limitations as I will try to explain shortly.

Summary of Limitations

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Scenario

We set up Exchange 2010 servers and utilizing DAG with two Physical Servers, Servers called mail1 and mail2 with fallowing roles.

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As you can see each server has two database copy. When MAPI Clients connect to their corresponding mailbox databases by using & utilizing MAPI end-point to get their mail, they don’t talk directly to mailbox server, they talk to CAS server instead. This is also called middle tier facilitation, the new services handles client and database connection communication now is running from CAS server role in Exchange 2010.

  • RPC Client Access service
  • Handles all data connections for mailboxes
  • Address Book Service
  • Handles all data connections for access to Active Directory

Each database must be unique and each database has attribute called “RPCClientAccessServer” which tells MAPI client what database to connect too.

Imagine MAPI clients opens outlook, outlook goes out there and finds CAS server, CAS server  looks at the databases DB1, DB2, DB3, DB4 ( in this example) and read the attribute called “RPCClientAccessServer”  to find out where outlook MAPI clients needs to connect too.

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Now if you have not set the CAS array the attribute is set to first servers introduced as CAS server, which is mail1 in this example.

Imagine now you are user 1 and your mailbox database is MB1, MB1 has two copy on both server but you will only get connected to “Mounted” database in this example it will be Mail1  Server and outlook will open up, you are happy.

Imagine now you are user 1 and your mailbox database is MB2, MB2 has two copy on both servers but you will only get connected to “Mounted” database in this example it will be Mail2  Server and outlook will open up, you are happy. ( in this example both servers are up and running ) you get connected to Mail2 because mail1 is up and running. Remember MAPI client ask CAS where to connect CAS server check the Attribute RPCClientAccessServer=Mail1 ( First CAS server)

image *** Fact all databases set to same attribute which is pointing to MB1.***

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Now if mail1 goes down , what will happen while Mail2 is up and running?

MAPI Client goes to CAS server ( mail2) , CAS server looks at databases and reads the attribute called RPCClientAccessServer=Mail1 and MAPI clients tries to connect to Mail1, which obviously wont work since mail1 is hard shutdown!!!!!!! now you have to deal with outage, even though you have mail2 is up and running and you have mounted databases there. The problems is MAPI clients do not know how to connect to mail2.

Now lets set CAS array and do this, we go to AD/DNS and create A record called

Outlook.smtp25.local=10.10.10.19 

Now we set the attribute RPCClientAccessServer

RPCClientAccessServer=Outlook.smtp25.local=10.10.10.19 

Here are the Databases will look like

DB1 RPCClientAccessServer Outlook.smtp25.local 10.10.10.101
DB2 RPCClientAccessServer Outlook.smtp25.local 10.10.10.101
DB3 RPCClientAccessServer Outlook.smtp25.local 10.10.10.101
DB4 RPCClientAccessServer Outlook.smtp25.local 10.10.10.101

If you remember the IP addresses for Mail servers

Server Name IP Address
mail1 10.10.10.101
mail2 10.10.10.100

Now all you need to do is to change this A record and update the IP address as 10.10.10.100 which will tell MAPI clients to connect to mail2 and get their mails.

As you can easily see if you do have load balancer this will be handled automatically as well as you will not be tied up into these restrictions we have talked about earlier.

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)

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Failed to create a new named property for database Event ID:9667

I bumped into another interesting issue during migration Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. Mail from E210 to E03 was miserably failing with fallowing  bounce backs.

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On the Exchange 2003 application logs

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    MSExchangeIS
Event Category:    General
Event ID:    9667
Date:        7/22/2010
Time:        11:05:09 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    EBE
Description:
Failed to create a new named property for database "First Storage Group\Mailbox Store (EBE)" because the number of named properties reached the quota limit (8192).
User attempting to create the named property: "SYSTEM"
Named property GUID: 00020386-0000-0000-c000-000000000046
Named property name/id: "X-LinkedIn-fbl"

 

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Quick Fix

  • Open Regedit on the Exchange 2003 server & Drill down to
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  • SYSTEM
  • CurrentControlSet
  • Service
  • MSEXCHANGEIS
  • Server Name

Click on the Private and locate “NonMAPI Named Props Quota” Change the value ***DECIMAL** to ***16394*** as shown below.

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Save and exit from register.

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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)

There's a problem with the recipient's mailbox. Please try resending this message. If the problem continues, please contact your helpdesk. #< #5.2.1> #SMTP#

 

This problem is related to migration Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. User mailboxes on Exchange 2010 are receiving bounce backs for valid users. The bounce backs are similar to fallowing.

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:
There's a problem with the recipient's mailbox. Please try resending this message. If the problem continues, please contact your helpdesk.

#< #5.2.1> #SMTP#

Cause

Possible Cause legacy RGC ( routing group connector) which was created on the installing fist Exchange 2010 server into existing Exchange 2003 org.

Solution

Delete the existing routing connector and create new one with PS, note there is no option to create the connector via GUI, deleting can be done from GUI or easily from PowerShell.

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See the existing connector open Exchange system manager on exchange 2003 server, or use fallowing PS


Get-RoutingGroupConnector

More information:

RoutingGroupConnector | FL

Remove connector you wish

Remove-RoutingGroupConnector  Name_RGC_Goes_Here

Create RGC from PS for single server

New-RoutingGroupConnector -Name "Legacy RGC" -SourceTransportServers "Ex1.smtp25.org" -TargetTransportServers "EFE.smtp25.org",-Cost 10 -Bidirectional $true -PublicFolderReferralsEnabled $true

Create RGC from PS for multiple servers

New-RoutingGroupConnector -Name "Legacy RGC" -SourceTransportServers "Ex1.smtp25.org","Ex2.smtp25.org" -TargetTransportServers "EFE.smtp25.org","EBE.smtp25.org" -Cost 10 -Bidirectional $true -PublicFolderReferralsEnabled $true

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See TechNet

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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997292.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)

Friday, July 16, 2010

Exchange 2007 SCC cluster some of the disk resources wont come online after failing over the cluster…..

This trouble has struggled us for a while, we are unable to find the permanent fix but here is quick way around it. In cluster Exchange 2007 configuration with NetAPP, after fail over some of the disk resources wont come up. By the way the issue is purely Windows 2008 Cluster related and has nothing to do with NetApp, since NetAPP uses build in Windows clustering.

Issue:

  • This scenario the active node is Node 2 and runs CMS and we failed over CMS to Node 1 by using fail over clustering. After initiating fail over command we are experiencing problem,as  some of the random disk resources wont come online, even you reboot the Node 2

After Exchange cluster fail over, some of the disk resources wont fail over correctly to failed over node, Exchange 2007.

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Solution:

  • go to Windows disk management on the Node 2  after reboot, under disk management , locate each disk and click “online” if the option is available. After finishing this, jump back on to Node 1, open fail over cluster management under services and applications locate the CMS server name. On the middle pane, you will see your disk resources. Simply make right click to problem ones and choose “Bring this resource online”

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)

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The name on the security certificate in invalid or does not match the name of the site

 

You might be familiar with fallowing error on Exchange 2007 and this time we are seeing same error after migration on Exchange 2010 with installing new certificate.

Problem:

The clients are receiving similar errors once they open their outlook. I am going to focus on how to get this fix quickly.

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Solution:

Open EMS and copy and paste fallowing PS commands after making proper changes explained as below…….

Get-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory | FL

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Set-ClientAccessServer -Identity EX2-AutodiscoverServiceInternalUri https://owa.smtp25.org/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

  • Replace the part   EX2 ( your own mail server name)
  • Replace the part “owa.smtp25.org” with your own  SMTP domain published record same as on the public certificate.

Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity "EX2`\EWS (Default Web Site)" -InternalUrl https://owa.smtp25.org/ews/exchange.asmx

Set-OABVirtualDirectory -Identity "EX2\oab (Default Web Site)" -InternalUrl https://owa.smtp25.org/oab

  • Replace the part   owa.smtp25.org with your own ……..
  • And finally to test it use fallowing

Test-OutlookWebServices -id:user1@smtp25.org -TargetAddress: user2@smtp25.org

 

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)

Friday, July 2, 2010

One More Year MVP Journey…………..

To all Friends and Friends,

I truly appreciate the supports  you have given in my MVP journey and carried me for another wonderful year. I could never achieved this much without your support to be honest. I will continue to do my best to pass the information and knowledge I gain as MVP and carry your voice to Exchange Team……

As always if there is any help in regards to Exchange I could be assist in providing please fell free to ping me Telnet25@gmail.com, , I will do my best to answer your e-mail.

Again, thank you so much to all my students and friends, I sincerely appreciate everyone's generosity, time and supports for the last years.

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Respectfully,
Oz Casey, Dedeal