Tag Archives: Exchange

Office 365 and Exchange 2007 Mail Flow Issue for Sub Domain

Office 365 logo

Office 365 logo

I have recently had an Office 365 and Exchange 2007 Mail Flow Issue for Sub Domain. We have our primary users on [email protected] and have setup Office 365 to process mail for [email protected] .

The setup for Office 365 went extremely smoothly (with a lot of help from a friend – you know who you are J.P.) and I have integrated Office 365 with our on-premise Active Directory using ADFS and Synchronization Service Manager for Single Sign On.

However when a user,  [email protected] tried to send an email to [email protected] using the on-premise Exchange 2007 the mail was not delivered.

User [email protected] could send email to [email protected] without any problems, but again a reply from [email protected] was not delivered.

I investigated further on the Exchange 2007 Server and found that in Queue viewer there was an Unreachable Domain queue with emails which could not be delivered. Continue Reading

System Center DPM 2012, Exchange Server 2010 and Eseutil.exe

System Center 2012 - Eseutil

System Center 2012

I recently had an issue where System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 was constantly reporting Replica Inconsistent on my Exchange Server 2010 Protection Group for the relevant Storage Groups, upon investigation I was pointed towards Eseutil as being a possible cause.
Basically if there is a mismatch between the versions of Eseutil on the Exchange Server and on the DPM Server then the replicas will appear to be inconsistent.

This can occur if you install a Service Pack on Exchange.

So the solution is to copy the version of Eseutil.exe and ese.dll from your Exchange Server to your DPM Server;

<Exchange Install Path>\bin\eseutil.exe to <DPM Install Path>\bin\eseutil.exe

<Exchange Install Path>\bin\ese.dll to <DPM Install Path>\bin\ese.dll

This should then solve the Replica Inconsistent problem, after a Consistency Check.

Full details and further information can be found on the following

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/91198fbb-3016-4571-b83c-0ece920588ed#bkmk_EseutilEse

Windows 7 Rebuild Search Index

I experienced a problem today where I could not search for e-mails older than 1 day in Outlook. As I have over 10,000 email messages the search function is crucial to quickly find emails. The solution seemed to be a Windows 7 Rebuild Search Index. Continue Reading

Exchange Transport Rule Corrupting Mail

A really interesting thing was happening to some of our clients e-mails which we eventually discovered was relating to Exchange Transport Rules.

Here is the mail flow through our setup.


Internet

\/

Sophos ES1100

\/

Exchange 2010

\/

Exchange 2007

\/

Client


The reason for both Exchange servers is that we are currently in the process of migrating from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010.

In particular circumstances email was coming through containing what can only be described as “oriental” characters, see below…..

tml> 格ead> 猼tyle㰾!– .hmmessage P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body.hmmessage { font-size: 10pt; font-family:Tahoma } –>⼼style> ⼼head> 㰊body class=’hmmessage’㰾div dir=’ltr’> 昼ont face=”Tahoma” size=”2″>,⼼font㰾div style=”font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt; “㰾br㰾/div㰾div style=”font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt; “>

Upon further investigation and an attempt to replicate the issue it was found to occur through some e-mail clients when sent from mobile devices.

Our first instinct was to investigate any possible problems with the Sophos Email Appliance.

However upon doing further searches on the internet there was a suggestion that certain Exchange Transport Rules could be the cause of this issue.

As we were in the process of migrating from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 the existing Transport rule from our 2007 Hub Transport server had  copied over to the 2010 Hub Transport server.

The transport rule in question simply applied an HTML disclaimer to all e-mail both internal and external.

We disabled this rule and the problem disappeared (at least we were unable to replicate it).

Upon further research we found that we could enable the Transport rule to add a disclaimer to mail going external only.

It would appear that the process of Exchange Transport Rules re-writing certain HTML type e-mails  would cause the corruption of e-mail as illustrated above.

Installing Exchange 2010 SP2

This morning I have installed Exchange 2010 SP2.

I must say it was (as expected) a very straightforward process.

The setup wizard passed most pre-requisites first time.

The only pre-requisite which failed was the UM Language Packs.

As I work in the UK I had the en-GB language pack installed.

This was easily done using command prompt in the
<EXCHANGE SERVER INSTALL POINT>\bin directory

I ran;

Setup.com /RemoveUmLanguagePack:en-GB

Then continue with the install.

Once completed re-install the language packs, the desired language pack can be found here;
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=231660

Download the correct one and run it and you will have your desired UM language pack installed.

The only other issue I came across was the
“You must close all dialogue boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console” problem.

A quick google pointed me here;

http://smtp25.blogspot.com/2011/07/you-must-close-all-dialog-boxes-before.html

This seems to indicate some problem with IE9.

I added https://localhost  to trusted sites in IE9 and all worked fine.

So as said the install was all good and was straightforward.

 

Disjoint Namespace – Netbios Domain Differs from DNS Domain Name

I administer a Windows 2008 R2 Active Directory Domain.

All was good, all worked OK.

Came to install Exchange 2010 and found the missing “Document” functionality (but I don’t like to talk about this!).

Made a decision to implement UAG 2010 with SSO for OWA along side File Access and access to Remote Apps (RDS).

Followed recommended guides for setting up UAG with SSO but was always prompted for Username and Password when accessing OWA.

Continue Reading

Additional Steps for Exchange 2010 Migration

After evaluation of the new features of Exchange 2010 the decision to implement it was taken.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 introduces the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant or ExDeploy, a new Web-based tool that can help you with your Exchange deployment. ExDeploy asks you a few questions about your current environment and then generates a custom checklist and procedures that help simplify your deployment.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exdeploy2010/default.aspx#Home

DO NOT FORGET (as I did!)

Install Exchange SP1

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2010/04/07/3409710.aspx

Because I also neglected to tick the Install pre-requisites check box I also came acrosss the following aditional steps I needed to carry out……

Continue Reading

Auto Attendant Greeting / Menu Prompts

OK here we go again….

Microsoft in their wisdom thought it would be a good idea to disable a feature that most people would find very useful!

In trying to set up a site wide auto attendant I went through the relevant steps to add custom greeting and menu prompts to an auto attendant.

Got a decent Microphone.
Found a quiet room.
Got a staff well spoken member.
Recorded Greetings and Menu Prompts
Saved them as the appropriate type of WAV file (PCM 8kHz 16Bit mono)
Uploaded them via Exchange Management Console
Checked them on the phone system (Nortel (Avaya?) CS1000)
Sounded dreadful – hissing and cracking and quiet!
Not suitable at all!

Continue Reading