Tuesday, March 26, 2013

The release date for Exchange 2013 RTM CU1


I'm waiting and waiting to perform a test with Exchange 2010. 
After Easter, it should be ready.

According to the Exchange Team Blog the completion has been scheduled for April 2nd.

Exchange 2013 RTM CU1 Status

We regret the impact that this delay has on our customers, and as always, we continue to identify ways to better serve your needs through our regular servicing releases. The release date for Exchange 2013 RTM CU1 is currently planned for April 2nd. We will let you know if that date changes, as well as, post an announcement when the download is live.


Hopefully it will not be an April Fool's joke!

Thursday, March 14, 2013

After changing the SMTP connector, Error: 451 4.4.0 Primary Target IP address responded 421 4.2.1 unable to connect.

In the last week I was involved in the following issue:
After changing the configuration of the SMTP send connector on a NLB cluster (second smart host added) user reported that no mails can be sent to the internet. The other way round (receiving) was working fine.


Configuartion:

Exchange Server 2007 - Hub Transport role, Send Connector with the following configuration:
All SMTP outgoing mails are sent to a smart host in the perimeter network.

Error Message:

Checking the send-queue on the exchange server, we see there over 70 emails that are not sent with the following error message:

451 4.4.0 Primary Target IP address responded 421 4.2.1 unable to connect.  
Attempted failover to alternate host, but that did not succeed. 
Either there are no alternate hosts or delivery failed to the all alternate host.
Troubleshooting steps:
  • We reviewed the smarthost server and logs but we didn’t  find any errors.
  • Incoming mails were forwarded without any problems to the exchange server.
  • Attempting to send a test mail using the telnet port 25 directly to the smarthost went well.
  • We have set the logging to verbose mode on the exchange server and smarthost.
  • After checking the log file on the smarthost server we saw no attempt for a connection from the exchange server to the smarthost. Just our e-mail sent by telnet could be seen in the logfile.
  • In the log file on the exchange server merely “451 4.4.0 Primary Target IP address responded 421 4.2.1 unable to connect....”   is shown.

  
Solution:
We decided to create new send connector for testing with just one special test domain (gmx.net) and a cost with a value as high as the other  connector ( =1 ).
After sending a  test-mail to our test recipient (mausi@gmx.net) were successful.
E-mail was transferred without any problem to our smart host and sent to the recipient.

Conclusion:  send connector object has been corrupted!

We put in a not existing domain to our old connector and set costs to a maximum value of 99 to deactivate it to be deleted after some days of monitoring. Our newly created connector got the original value for the domain (*) and the cost ( 1 ).

Sequential problem:
In the meantime we had a lot of e-mails in the queue still waiting for transmission.
Now the important question: How to get all the e-mails from the old queue to the new one?

No problem – restarting the transport service brought them to the correct queue and all mails were delivered immediately to the smarthost server and sent out.

Recommendation: 
create second send connector with high costs for alternate/backup way.





Saturday, March 9, 2013

Install Exchange 2010 SP3

In my test environment I have configured a server with Client Access and Hub Transport server role and two mailbox server as database availability group (DAG).


The recommended order for the upgrade is as follows:

Client Access
Hub Transport
Unified Messaging
Mailbox

Since the servers are monitored by SCOM 2012, I put all servers into maintenance mode and stopped System Center Management Service (SCOM Health service).

An upgrade can be performed through (using) GUI, starting setup.exe or when being in unattended mode through command. 
Here is the upgrade of CAS/HUB Server through command:

SETUP /m:upgrade /InstallWindowsComponents





















With Get-ExchangeServer | fl Name,AdminDisplayVersion you can check the version.












Upgrade Mailbox Servers in DAG

Since Exchange 2010 SP1, there are some new functions and scripts. Amongst others "StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1" and "StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1". Both scripts were created for maintenance of group members of a DAG.

StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 and StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1(new)   You can use StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 to take a DAG member out of service for maintenance. It will move active databases off of the server and block databases from moving to that server. It will also make sure all critical DAG support functionality (for example, the Primary Active Manager PAM role) that might be on the server is moved to another server, and blocked from moving back to the server. Another script, StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1, is provided to complete the operation and remove the blocks.

Detailed description:
  

Status of the Database:
















Scripts are located at:  \Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Scripts




After that run script from  .\StartDagServerMaintenance -ServerName LABMXDAG02  Cluster Node 2 is set to pause.








Mailbox Databases are moved to Node 1:
















Even with Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus * check if everything fits.






Now, the upgrade can be started here as unattended setup:

Setup.com /M:Upgrade /InstallWindowsComponents






















Now the maintenance mode will be terminated:
.\StopDagServerMaintenance -ServerName LABMXDAG02
The mailbox databases remain active on the Node 1.








Next, the second DAG member server is updated analogously. 

You can run the script RedistributeActiveDatabases.ps1 for distribution of databases based on configured preference.

.\RedistributeActiveDatabases.ps1 –DagName DAG01 –BalanceDBsByActivationPreference –Confirm:$false




















Then checking the version:

Get-ExchangeServer | fl Name,AdminDisplayVersion





Done.