Microsoft Product Versions and build number reference

This will be a quick reference page for links to build numbers for versions of various products

Configuration Manager 2012

Exchange 2007-2010

Exchange 2013

SQL Server

Windows Server and Workstation – Need better reference with build numbers

Exchange 2013 mailbox migration fails with no error

Following on from some recent database corruptions and repairs, I decided it was a good idea to create a new Exchange database and move all my mailboxes across to it.

This worked fine for all but one, which also happened to be my own.

Every time I would do the migration, it would all appear to be fine, but then it would finish as Completed, with no errors, but showing in the EAC as Synced and Finalized mailboxes: 0 of 0

I tried again and watched more closely and noticed it the extended “show details” that it was reporting an issue with the not being able to connect to the System Attendant mailbox. Various searches led me to articles about if the arbitration mailbox is accidentaly deleted how to re-create it etc, but this was not the problem.

Digging a bit further I noticed a mention of the mailbox being Quarantined.

Windows Server upgrade followed by quick and dirty Exchange Repair

NOTE: I am not an Exchange person by any stretch of the imagination, but I do run it at home for all my email as a partial learning exercise, and so get to encounter all sorts of issues I really think I’d rather live without. On that note, this post is here really for my future reference. If anyone else uses this it is at your own risk. Running Exchange 2013 on Windows Server 2012. I wanted to upgrade to Server 2012R2. I was already running Exchange 2013 CU6 so it was supported for 2012R2 at least. There is a *small* note on the Exchange pre-reqs page saying something about upgrading the OS not being supported when Exchange is installed. HA! http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354(v=exchg.150).aspx#prereq

You can't upgrade Windows when Exchange is installed on the server.

I figured I’d give it a go anyway. I mean, like, what’s the worse that could happen, right? A quick Hyper-V Checkpoint (snapshot) created, checked last nights backups were good and away we go! After the upgrade, the worst happened 😦

Exchange 2013 warnings Event ID 10010, 6002, 6027, 1035

I’ve started to get a *lot* of warnings being logged lately with EventID 10010, 1035, 6027 and 6002. The specific cause I don’t know yet, but they have only appeared recently after I have been “fixing” my server after some serious disk issues. It’s hard to say though because there have been so many that my event logs have been clearing out the older entries so I need to increase their size to capture them all. While the server appears to be running fine, these warnings are appearing repeatedly now.

I don’t know if they are because of further issues since the crashes, or have started because of the way I fixed something else. I know I’m not the only one, a lot of other people have posted with the same messages, so perhaps it’s specific to Server 2012, or a recent OS update that has been applied.

Further investigation required…

UPDATE: I’ve seen some reports that this has been fixed in CU1. I haven’t installed it yet, so can’t confirm at this time.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj983803(v=exchg.150).aspx

Exchange Event Viewer FailoverClustering Query Error

When you open Event Viewer to look at the “Microsoft Exchange with Database Availability Group Events” Custom view you will get a query error for “Microsoft-Windows-FailoverClustering” if you have an Exchange install that doesn’t have any Database Availability Groups (DAGs) installed. This would be typical of a small single server install.

(Check also this post on Event Viewer query errors)

While not critical, it is annoying.

Converting an Exchange Shared mailbox back to a normal mailbox

I have a few mailboxes I created way back in Exchange 2003 that are shared between several people, so after migrating to Exchange 2013 I decided to reconfigure those shared mailboxes “correctly” as actual “Shared” mailboxes. That was easy.

Then I discovered a small problem. Shared mailboxes only work when using the full Outlook client or through OWA. Up to now, Activesync was the primary method of accessing these mailboxes, and you can’t access a Shared mailbox using Activesync!

The reason is pretty simple. Shared mailboxes are created based on a disabled Active Directory user account. This is great for security, and also great because you don’t need a license for that mailbox. By disabling the AD account however, you have no way to authenticate using Activesync.

A mobile friendly TMG forms based (FBA) login for Exchange OWA

I came across this blog post while trying to find ways to change the TMG2010 Forms based login page to match the Exchange 2013 OWA page. I haven’t figured out how to do the OWA 2013 thing yet, but I think this will be quite sufficient:

http://www.fastvue.co/blog/mobile-friendly-forefront-tmg-forms-based-authentication-template

Those instructions are specifically for if you are using TMG Form Based Authentication (FBA) in front of a (non-owa/normal) web site. To make it work with Exchange OWA it needs to be done slightly differently. I’m using TMG 2010 and Exchange 2013, but the settings should be the same for Exchange 2007/2010 as well.

Exchange Server 2013 setup fails creating Mailbox role

There I was installing Exchange Server 2013 on a brand new Windows 2012 Server. All the pre-reqs went on fine, AD Schema extended, no problems, how simple could it be?

And yet, the setup itself fails!?!? I can’t even begin to understand how a vanilla setups on a clean fresh server could fail.

So, during the setup, it gets to :Step 7 of 14: Mailbox Role: Transport Service” and then fails with

Error:

The following error was generated when “$error.Clear();

          if ( ($server -eq $null) -and ($RoleIsDatacenter -ne $true) )

          {

            Update-RmsSharedIdentity -ServerName $RoleNetBIOSName

          }

        ” was run: “Database is mandatory on UserMailbox. Property Name: Database”.

Looks like Microsoft *still* haven’t been able to work out how to provide actual useful error messages.

Stop winmail.dat attachments to external recipients

This is such a pain. Only a very few people that receive mail from my Exchange server have problems where all attachments end up as winmail.dat. I don’t know the combinations that trigger it, but to simplify things, in Exchange 2010 I just set the external domain to send everything as plain text.

In Exchange 2013 you can’t do that through the GUI, so it’s time to resort to Powershell. Luckily the answer is much simpler than trying to work it out from the full command syntax.

Some users unable to connect with ActiveSync

So here’s one that had me stumped. I can’t get ActiveSync connections working for some users on some devices. I’ve found a lot of posts around the internet talking about it being an issue related to self-signed SSL certificates, but I don’t think that is what my problem is.

The environment:

• 1 x Exchange 2013 running on Server 2012
• 1 x Internal private Windows PKI handling certificates
• 3 x Active Directory based user accounts
• 2 x Windows RT Surface tablets
• 1 x iPad Mini
• 2 x PC running Windows 8
• 1 x iPhone
• 2 x Windows Phone 7

A fair collection of devices to compare the issue across.

So what does/used to work?