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“The attempt to connect to http://ExchangeServer.domain.com/PowerShell using “Kerberos” authentication failed: connecting to remote server failed with the following error message : The WinRM client cannot complete the operation within the time specified.  Check if the machine name is valid and is reachable over the network and firewall exception for Windows Remote Management service is enabled.  For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.”

You might notice above error message after opening a Exchange Management Console. This error message indicates that connecting to given exchange server using WinRM has failed. Today I received the same error and verified that exchange is doing well on this box. I tried opening the console from different server and it worked file. So, it appeared some sort of profile problem to me.

I did the following to resolve the issue.

1. Close Exchange Management Console MMC
2. Go to %appdata%\Microsoft\MMC
3. Rename “Exchange Management Console” file to “Exchange Management Console.old”
4. Launch the console again.

Hope this helps…

Yesterday I got a requirement to verify if a given list of folders are replicated to new installed PF server or not. I added the new sever to replica list of required PF folders and now I need to verfiy if the replication is completed so that I can remove the old PF server from the replica list.

Either Exchange management console or the exfolder util(utility to manage PF replicas and permissions) is not having the option to verify the replication status. Exfolder.exe is helpful to some extent as it is showing the list of items in that PF so that I can compare and confirm that all mails are replicated. I can do this for folders which has less number of items, but if the folder has more number of emails, then it is not a ideal way of doing it.

After researching for time, I found the way that solves my problem. The “Get-PublicfolderStatistics” cmdlet is the right choice here. I used this and generated the email items count in a PF from a particular PF server. After that ran two queries (listed below) and directed the output to a file for comprison. I tried to assign the output of each command to a variable and tried to compare-object cmdlet to compare the contents of both the output variables, but it didn’t work as exepcted for some weird reason. Let me know if it works for you.

Get-PublicFolderStatistics -Server PFServer1
Get-PublicFolderStatistics -Server PFServer2

Hope this helps…

In exchange 2010 environment, if you don’t provide the database name to cmdlets like new-mailbox, enable-mailbox, and new-moverequest, exchange automatically chooses a database using a process called “Automatic mailbox distribution” feature.

It sounds little weird and scary, but this might be a handy feature for environment where exchange environment is large and mailbox creation process is delegated to multiple people.

Some of the highlights of this feature

1. You have options to exclude a few databases from automatic selection process
2. You can choose to exclude a database either permanently or temporarily
3. You can allow a mailbox creation process from a group administrators to choose mailbox database from a predefined list

You can read more details about this feature at TechNet site[http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff872148.aspx]

People who got their hands really wet with exchange 2007/2010 has a good amount idea about Exchange back pressure. Basically it is a kind of situation where Microsoft Exchange stops receiving emails. This is a new condition introduced in Exchange 2007 and improved in Exchange 2010 for better handling of emails.

Exchange server feels this back pressure when it is out of resources. This resource outage can be of two types 1) Disk out of space 2) High Memory utilization

See this video to understand it better.

[Video Source : www.insidetheregistry.com]

If Exchange 2007 queue is growing fast and you want to find who is the top contributor, below code helps you. You need to run this code from a exchange management shell since the code involves Exchange cmdlets like get-message.

Find top 10 senders in Exchange Queue:

$senders = @{}
$queuemessages = Get-message -Resultsize unlimited
$queuemessages | % { $senders[$_.FromAddress] = $senders[$_.FromAddress] + 1 }
$senders.getenumerator() | sort value -last 10

Similarly you can filter the Get-Message output by recipients to get the top recipients.

For one of our client, we have received an alert stating that “The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service terminated with service-specific error 0 (0×0)”.

The error seems to simple and everyone would just suggest to start the service back. But the root cause was different.

One of our colleague started working on the alert and here is the chronology of steps followed in resolving the issue. found that the Information Store service was in stopped state and started the service.  Started verifying queues , encoutered error stating that “Default SMTP Virtual Server is unavailable”. Verified and found that SMTP Service was in started mode.

Escalated call to me and I’ve started working on the issue.

Upon further analysis, found that the SMTP Virtual Instance was stopped in ESM (Exchange System Manager). Tried to start the instance, encountered error stating that “Queue Directory is corrupted , hence the instance could not be started”.

Error logged in Eventlog & Error pop-up when accessed Queue Directory from explorer.

Executed following Steps to resolve issue:

1. Uninstalled existing Antivirus (AVG)

2. Executed chkdsk on volume in which the exchange database is stored. Found disk errors.

3. Executed chkdsk /f on the volume and restarted the server

4. Created new Queue Directory and pointed the path from ESM to the new folder.

5. Started SMTP Virtual Instance & Information Store Services.

Mails started flowing fine.

Are you facing frequent time out issues with your exchange server? Your problem might be related to the components described in http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/05/14/454877.aspx.

The first Exchange 2010 ebook I have seen.! I had glimpse at the book and it has topics a general Exchange admin look for and a good stage to start the journey with Exchange 2010.

This was written by a member (Jaap Wesselius) in http://draft.blogger.com/www.sysadmin-network.com and published through redgate.

Here is the TOC if you want to take a look and download the complete book from reg-gate site

Happy Learning…,
Sitaram Pamarthi

Go through this video to have initial understanding of products stated in subject. Forefront team, PM is explaining about them at http://edge.technet.com/Media/FPE-vs-FOPE-and-Exchange-2010–Secure-messaging-with-Forefront/

FPE RC for Exchange 2010 is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b8a7d36f-cc8d-4335-ae60-8f27c48f3a37&displaylang=en#filelist

Happy Learning,
Sitaram Pamarthi

DAG(Database Availability Group) is a new feature provided in Exchange 2010 to facilitate automatic database level recovery. In Exchange 2003/2007, there is no option to recover a single damaged/corrupted mailbox store alone than restoring the DB from backup. In this case, I will loose all the data added to the store after backup. This feature(DAG) of Exchange 2010 avoids this data loss and provides a seem less and automated recovery with up-to-date information regardless of when you last backed up the store.

Few points I have to highlight about DAG

• A DAG can consists of 16 exchange 2010 servers max. Which means that any database in these 16 exchange servers can be failed over to another server in the same DAG incase of curruption. The failover time is as low as 30 seconds and transparent to users.
• DAGs use continuous replication and a subset of Windows Failover Clustering technologies to provide continuous mailbox availability. So you need to install this manually on Exchange 2010 server or it will get installed automatically when you add it to DAG
• It’s needs a file share witness share to maintain the availability of Exchange servers in DAG
• DAG configuration has some similarities with Cluster configuration like, CNO creation, multiple network cards for exchange hear beat data and public data, common IP to access DAG CNO, etc

Reference links:

Technet
MsexchangeTeam (it has videos; don’t miss them)

Happy Learning..,
Sitaram Pamarthi