Seven-Winds Blog

Running Exchange 2007 has had its pros and cons. Now that Exchange 2010 is out we want to take advantage of the new features you need do the Exchange migrations. After installing Exchange 2010 server in an Exchange 2007 server environment can give some quirky results. After the installation Exchange 2010 and open the Exchange management console you go to Microsoft Exchange On-Premises -> ServerConfiguration -> Client Access and you will receive the following error message.

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Everything between <..> needs to be replaced or contains your specific environmental information.

To enable the AD recycle bin you first need to upgrade all your DC’s to Windows Server 2008 R2. Next you need to bring your domain and forest to 2008 R2 fictional level. Once your forest level is at the 2008 R2 functional level you can then enable the recycle bin feature.

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We upgraded one of our DC’s to 2008 R2 and everything went fine except for the DNS issue that I blogged about here. After an installation I inspect the server and check to see if everything is ok. I disable hidden en system file viewing in explorer and see what is left. Can across the following two folders $INPLACE.~TR and $WINDOWS.~Q. These folders can be large. In my case they were 3.4 Gig. These folder were left over from the in place upgrade and can be deleted with no consequences.

I ran in to this one awhile back but had to figure it out again recently.
Customer has a root DFS Name Space on a single server. He decommissioned the server without removing the name space first. Now his login scripts are failing and he want the name space back but the server has been reinstalled. Quickest way is to delete the name space and recreate it on another server but that’s the problem, deleting the name space. To delete the name space you need to start up adsiedit and go to CN=Dfs-Configuration,CN=System,DC=<name_of_your_domain>. On the server that you are creating the new name space you need to execute the following commands:

Dfsutil /PktFlush
Dfsutil /SpcFlush
Dfsutil /PurgeMupCache

Now you should be able to create the same name space on the new server. I do highly recommend that you wait 15 min before doing so. DFS stops giving referrals to the decommissioned server within 15 minutes of the update to the DFS Active Directory directory service object. The DFS Active Directory object resides on the local domain controller and is issued by the PDC emulator master. The time that the update can take depends on Active Directory replication schedules.

We have seen this problem with every installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 behind an ISA server. Clients are not able to resolve certain DNS names. We noticed that we had problems resolving all Microsoft .com sites.
All the other Microsoft site like www.microsoft.nl or www.bing.co.uk do work. So what gives? As it turns out in Windows 2008 R2 EDNS Probes is enabled by default. This can causes the DNS UDP packets to be larger than the ISA Servers DNS filter allows.
To fix this you need to execute the following command:

dnscmd <Server Name> /Config /EnableEDnsProbes 0

I was upgrading a customer of ours to Exchange 2007 sp2 I encountered an error that stomped me for a little while. The error occurred during the /PrepareAD Duplicate AcceptedDomain found. Ok just run the GUI and all will be fine. The GUI setup will automatically do the AD prep for you. Errrrroooor The accepted domain already exists. What the F… Ah the exchange setuplog will hold the clue.

This is what I got:
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [2] Processing object "d8bf2a74-f28f-448a-8cfa-53d364a9eb84".
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [2] [ERROR] Unexpected Error
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [2] [ERROR] The accepted domain <DomainName>.com already exists.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [2] Ending processing.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] The following 1 error(s) occurred during task execution:
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] 0.  ErrorRecord: The accepted domain mages-touch.com already exists.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] 0.  ErrorRecord: Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.DuplicateAcceptedDomainException: The accepted domain <DomainName>.com already exists.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] [ERROR] The accepted domain <DomainName>.com already exists.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] Setup is halting task execution because of one or more errors in a critical task.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] Finished executing component tasks.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [1] Ending processing.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [0] The Exchange Server Setup operation did not complete. For more information, visit http://support.microsoft.com and enter the Error ID.
[9/6/2009 2:07:24 PM] [0] End of Setup

Bing and google both had no anwsers to this. Neither did MS support site.

Ok the domain is my domain so what the f.. It’s late and the customer isn’t their so I’ll rename the accepted domain name and then change it back. No way, logically so but it was worth a try. I’ll use ADSIEdit. Goto the configuration container -> Services -> Microsoft Exchange -> <DomainName>.com -> Transport Settings -> Accepted Domains and I selected the object and clicked edit. Next I went to the attribute msExchAcceptedDomainName and the value was *.<DomainName>.com. Is the “*.” causing the problem? In earlier versions of exchange we used the *.DomainName to except all sub domains. In Exchange 2007 things changed it was not required any more but it still works. So I still come accros this in Exchange 2007 implementations.

Removing the “*.” allowed me to upgrade the server without any problems.

Upgrading Exchange 2007 to sp2 will be necessary for all exchange admins that want to migrate (transform) to Exchange 2010. This service pack is not for the faint hearted because it does about a complete reinstall of your exchange server. First thing we have to upgrade our AD. Yes a new ForestPrep. This is well documented so I won’t go in to that here.

What about unified communication role? No problem if you don’t have language packs installed. If you do you need to de-install them first. Upgrade to SP2 and then install the SP2 language pack.

What about your language settings? Do you lose them? No, once you install the SP2 language pack your auto attended will continue work as before.

De-install command :     Setup.com /RemoveUmLanguagePack:<UmLanguagePackName>

Install command :            Setup.com /AddUmLanguagePack:<UmLanguagePackName> /s: d:\<MyLocalFolder>

Setup.com is from the exchange installation files.
MyLocalFolder is folder that contains the language files.

• LCD: 43%
• Chipset: 21%
• Processor: 9%
• Graphics: 8%
• Hard Drive: 5%
• Network: 4%
• Other bits: 10%

The two items that surprised me were the chipset and hard drive. From the “olden days” hard drives consumed way more power than anything else. That belief lasted for a long time in the computer world. I knew that the power consumption had been reduced but not that much.