Opening a calender from another user using OWA is not a very hard proces, when you have enough permissions you can easily open the other users calender. But what if you would like to do this via OWA?  This depends on the Exchange version you are using, let’s start with Exchange 2003:

http://ex01.company.om/exchange/johan/calender

In Exchange 2003 you can do this by specifying the url which is used to open but add the following part to the url username/calender. In this case we will open the calender of johan.

For both Exchange 2007 and 2010 you will need to use another method. This is because both the OWA from 2007 and 2010 are using web-parts to build the OWA. In Exchange 2007 and 2010 you will have the option to open another users mailbox followed by the calender, backside from using this is that you will need full mailbox access, this is not what you want in all scenario’s. To open a calender directly use the following syntax:

https://owa.company.com/owa/johan@domain.com/?cmd=contents&module=calendar

Almost the same as 2003 only the last part has changed to username@domain.com/?cmd=contents&module=calender. Besides this way there are a few other options which you can use in Exchange 2007 and 2010 to display the calendar, below an overview:

https://owa.domain.com/owa/johan@domain.com/?cmd=contents&f=calendar&view=dialy

The above command will open the calender folder by using the f parameter which makes it possibly to open a specific folder in a mailbox. Using the view parameter we will specify how we want to display the calender, when you don’t specify this it will be opened using the dialy view standard. The command above will do exactly the same, open the calender using the dialy view.

https://owa.domain.com/owa/johan@domain.com/?cmd=contents&f=calendar&view=weekly

This command will open the calender using the weekly view.

https://owa.domain.com/owa/johan@domain.com/?cmd=contents&f=calendar&view=monthly

And as last option this command will open the calender view using the monthly view. At least you may think this was the last one there is one other possibility:

https://owa.domain.com/owa/johan@domain.com/?cmd=content&f=calendar&view=daily&d=10&m=26&y=2010

This will open the calendar using the dialy view and will open it on the 26th of October 2010.

Gepost in Exchange ~ Geen Reactie

Microsoft has released security updates for Exchange 2000 SP3, Exchange 2003 SP2, Exchange 2007 SP1/SP2 and Exchange 2010. For both Exchange 2007 and 2010 this security fix is  included in a rollup. For Exchange 2007 SP1 this is the 10th rollup, for Exchange 2007 the 4th and for Exchange 2010 the 3rd.

The update applies a fix to the Windows SMTP service because of a vulnerability which was recently found. This made it possible to perform a DOS attack on the Windows SMTP service.

Below you will find the links to the patches and a link to the security bulletin which has been published about this  vulnerability.

Exchange 2000 SP3: open
Exchange 2003 SP2: open
Exchange 2007 SP1: open
Exchange 2007 SP2: open
Exchange 2010: open
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-024: open

Gepost in Exchange ~ Geen Reactie

By accident I found a bug in Exchange 2010. The issue only occurs in Exchange 2010 and if you have multiple CAS servers which are located in different sites and can’t communicate to eachother. Till now I only saw the issue with Exchange 2010 where an extra CAS server was added to the mainoffice. In this case this is the 3rd CAS server in the Exchange 2010 environment

Normally you will get a nice overview of all CAS servers when running the get-owavirtualdirectory command. But when no RPC traffic is allowed between the sites you will get the following result:

As you can see the command will display the first CAS server but it goes wrong when it wants to connect to the 2nd CAS server. This is normal because it can’t connect to it via RPC. Normally you would expect that the query will continue to run and will display the other servers, NOT. After contacting Microsoft they confirmed that this is a bug which will be fixed in a future update.

Workaround: open RPC

Gepost in Exchange 2010 ~ Geen Reactie

During the conversion of a pilot to production environment I found a nice issue. The mailboxes needed to be moved from the old mailbox server to the new mailbox server. Normally not a very exciting proces which can be done both by using the Exchange Management Console as Exchange Management Shell. But the move from the old Exchange 2010 mailbox server to the new Exchange 2010 mailbox server failed with a strange error. So first I had a look in the event log of the server and found the following error:

(PID 5988, Thread 954) Task New-MoveRequest writing error when processing record of index 0. Error: Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MailboxReplicationTransientException: The call to ‘net.tcp://cas.domain.local/Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService’ failed. Error details: The type initializer for ‘Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.LocalMailbox’ threw an exception.. —> System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[System.ServiceModel.ExceptionDetail]: The type initializer for ‘Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.LocalMailbox’ threw an exception. (Fault Detail is equal to An ExceptionDetail, likely created by IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults=true, whose value is:

System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for ‘Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.LocalMailbox’ threw an exception. —-> System.IO.FileLoadException: The located assembly’s manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80131040)

   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.LocalMailbox..cctor()

   — End of inner ExceptionDetail stack trace —

   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.LocalMailbox..ctor(LocalMailboxFlags flags)

   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.LocalSourceMailbox..ctor(LocalMailboxFlags flags)

   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MailboxReplicationService.<>c__DisplayClass25.<GetMailboxInformation2>b__24()

   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.CommonUtils.CatchKnownExceptions(GenericCallDelegate del, FailureDelegate failureDelegate, MrsTracer tracer)

   at Microsoft.Excha…).

   — End of inner exception stack trace —

   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.CommonUtils.CallService(GenericCallDelegate del, String epAddress)

   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxReplicationService.MailboxReplicationServiceClient.GetMailboxInformation(Guid primaryMailboxGuid, Guid physicalMailboxGuid, Guid targetMdbGuid, String targetMdbName, String remoteHostName, String remoteOrgName, String remoteDCName, NetworkCredential cred)

   at Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.NewMoveRequest.InternalValidate()

   at Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.Tasks.Task.ProcessRecord()

As you can see in the error message there went something wrong with the Exchange Mailbox Replication Service (MRS). These services are located on a server which has the Client Access Role installed on it and is responsible for moving the mailbox from the source to the target server. When you have multiple CAS servers in one site the MRS services will share information about the mailbox move process to prevent multiple servers are busy with the same request.

As their was only one CAS, cas.domain.local, I decided to have a closer look at that server. The MRS service was running according to the services.msc so I decided to restart the Mailbox Replication Service. After this was done I tried the move of the mailbox again and this time it went without issues.

I haven’t found the cause why this issue happened. One of the issues could be a mailbox database which is not 100% healthy. By using eseutil and isinteg you can fix the database and then try the process again.

Below you will find some links to sites containing further information about this topic:

Technet: Understanding Move Requests open

Technet: Troubleshooting Mailbox Moves open

Gepost in Exchange 2010 ~ 1 Reactie

Sometimes you may have the discussion if it is supported to place these files on fileserver so they can be accessed via a LAN/WAN connection. The answer for this is no, it isn’t officially supported by Microsoft. But when you will try it in your environment it will work, so what are the reasons it isn’t supported?

The PST, OST and PAB files will be accessed by a method called file-access-driven. With this method special file access commands will be offered by the OS to read and write files. For writing files to local disks this is an excellent method but when writing to a fileserver via a LAN/WAN another method is used. This method is called network-access-driven and uses specific command from the OS to send/receive data from/to other systems which are connected to the network.

But what does Outlook when a PST is located on the network? Outlook will first try to use the file-access driven commands to read/write to the file. Because the file is not on the local disk but on the network, the OS will send the network-access-driven commands to the server where the file is located.

This will cause a lot of time  for the process to be completed because of all the extra steps.

Besides the performance issues you might  get there are some other things which you should keep in mind:

• files can get corrupted caused by network issues
• writing- can take 4 times longer then read actions

If you want to get more information after reading this have a look at the sides below:

Ask the Performance team: Network stored PST files …. don’t do it! open
Configuring Outlook for Roaming Users open

Gepost in Exchange ~ Geen Reactie

Because Microsoft hasn’t released the new version of the Exchange Supportability Matrix I decided to create my own updated version. This “new” version is created using the information found on Technet. If your missing something please let me know so I can update it:

Release Model

Supported Operating System Platforms

* only for Exchange Management Tools
** only for Exchange 2000/2003 System Manager
*** only with Exchange 2003 System Manager for Windows Vista

Supported Active Directory Environments

* Only Rollup 9 or higher for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1, or later

Supported Web Browsers

* Requires Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
** Requires the hotfix that is described in Knowledge Base article 963664
*** Requires the hotfix that is described in Knowledge Base article 911829
**** Safari 3.1 only for Mac OS

Supported Web Browsers for using with smime

* Hotfix Knowledge Base article 963664 required
** Rollup 8 voor Exchange 2007 SP1 required
*** Hotfix Knowledge Base article 924334 required

Supported clients

* Enable encryption on Outlook profile
** WebDav: Contacts, Events, IMAP: Mail
*** WebDav
**** Rollup 4 for Exchange 2007 SP1 required

Supported .NET versions

* .NET Framework 2.0 Post-RTM Rollup required
** Only applicable when upgrading from .NET 2.0
*** .NET Framework 3.5 and 3.5SP1 contain the supported .NET versions

Supported Powershell versions

Supported MMC

Supported Windows Installer

Gepost in Exchange ~ Geen Reactie

Today I had a nice issue at a customer site who tried to install Exchange in a test environment. First I will give a short introduction. Let’s say you have an AD forest which contains a child domain where you want to host Exchange in. You first will need to do some things in the forest before you can install Exchange in the child domain. You will start with the schema upgrade followed by the forest prep. As last step you will prepare the child domain and you could start the Exchange setup to install Exchange.

Normally you will use the same media for all servers, but in Exchange 2007 this can be different. This because Exchange 2007 had a 32-bit version which could be used in test environments or to prepare the schema/forest on a 32-bit DC.

You may think aaahhh that happened ?? Everything was done via the correct steps but when starting the Exchange installation via the GUI the following errors were displayed in the log:

[2/7/2010 11:30:46 PM] [0] Setup has chosen the local domain controller dc.ota.company.corp for initial queries
[2/7/2010 11:30:46 PM] [0] PrepareAD has either not been run or has not replicated to the domain controller used by Setup. Setup will attempt to use the Schema Master domain controller dc.company.corp
[2/7/2010 11:30:46 PM] [0] The schema master domain controller is available

So first checked if the servers can connect to eachother which was no issue. After trying some things we decided to move the schema master to the child domain to look if that would help. But this was also a no go and gave the following warnings:

[2/8/2010 3:32:34 PM] [1] [ERROR] PrepareDomain for domain ota has partially completed. Because of your Active Directory site configuration, you must wait for forest-wide replication to occur, and then run PrepareDomain for ota again.
[2/8/2010 3:32:34 PM] [1] [ERROR] Active Directory operation failed on dc.ota.company.corp. This error is not retriable. Additional information: The specified group type is invalid.
Active directory response: 00002141: SvcErr: DSID-031A0FC0, problem 5003 (WILL_NOT_PERFORM), data 0

Waiting for 15 minutes didn’t fix the issue so we reversed all changes and I decided to start the Exchange setup via the GUI on the schema master. Then I saw the issue immidiatly the files used on the schema master were files for Exchange 2007 RTM and not for Exchange 2007 SP1. After using that files it worked without any issues.

It was a nice jigsaw after all.

Gepost in Exchange 2007 ~ Geen Reactie

I had a nice issue during the installation of Forefront for Exchange 2010. It began with an issue with the pre-release which caused the Exchange Transport service to stop after a failed update of Forefront. This had as result that several Forefront services didn’t start anymore. As the Exchange Transport service is dependent on the Forefront service this had as result that this service didn’t start anymore also. Which caused no mails could be send and received.

As the RTM is released it was a nice moment to install that one. So first removed the pre-release so this couldn’t cause any issues. After this the problems began, the first steps went OK till I reached the prerequisite check. This gave the following error:

First I checked the group membership of the user, these were:

• local administrator
• domain administrator
• Exchange organization management groep

So this couldn’t cause issues because this should be enough. So I tried to connect to the domain controller on specific ports which was no issue at all. You may ask why does the setup needs to reach the domain controller? Well during the setup the computeraccount needs to be added to the Exchange Hygiene Management group. Because we had to make some changes in the firewall so the servers could reach some other domain controllers in another location.

As last step I wanted to show a collegue the issue and was surprised when the setup continued. So we started to investigate the issue. The problem was that the Exchange server couldn’t reach the domain controller which had the PDC and RID Master FSMO roles.

Now everything is fixed I can look back at a good learning moment en why the pre-release installation worked ? All servers where in the same location when that happened.

Gepost in Exchange 2010 ~ Geen Reactie

Microsoft has released rollup 2 for Exchange 2007 SP2, this rollup contains several fixes among which:

• CAS server becomes slower when a user access a folder with a lot of content
• Meetings will be displayed as all day events while this is not the case when synchronized via a mobile device
• log and database increase abnormally
• mails which need to be send to remote domains get stuck in the queue

These are a few of the fixes in Rollup 2 for a complete overview you can visit the following site.

open

Gepost in Exchange 2007 ~ Geen Reactie

Almost all software vendors have updated their backup software so it can backup Exchange 2010. Because there are a lot of packages I decided to create a small overview:

Gepost in Exchange 2010 ~ 2 Reacties