Posts tagged ‘exchange 2016’
Cannot open mailbox features in ECP
Sometimes you may receive the below error , when you try to access the Mailbox features for a Mailbox via ECP.
In this situation the Exchange server version is 2016 and it happened only on a single mailbox.
After several hours of troubleshooting we came to know that , this could happen if the mailbox is in quarantined state. During this problem user will not be able to access his mailbox neither by Outlook nor any clients)
(You could refer https://www.nucleustechnologies.com/blog/how-to-fix-exchange-mailbox-quarantine-issue/ to have an idea about possible causes for a mailbox to go in to quarantined mode).
To confirm this we ran the below command via the Exchange Powershell
Get-Mailboxstatistics -identity “Test User” | fl Isquarantined
The output was True , now we could confirm his mailbox is in quarantined state.
To disable the quarantine state we ran the below command:
Disable-MailboxQuarantine “Test User”
But , for us unfortunately , the user mailbox goes again to quarantine mode after few minutes. Thus we tried to repair the mailbox using the below command.:
New-MailboxRepairRequest -Mailbox test@test.local -CorruptionType ProvisionedFolder,SearchFolder,AggregateCounts,Folderview
In our situation even the repair was not solving the issue and we had to recreate the mailbox. The reason , I shared the above steps as it could help somebody , without the need for recreating the mailbox.
Good Luck.
How to recover from FWS and DAG Member failure in 2 Node DAG
Hi Folks
Recently we had a situation where one of our customer was affected with a malware and most of his servers became unusable. The impact caused the File Witness Servers( a Domain Controller) and one of the Exchange Node from the 2 Node DAG environment to become instable.
So after studying the impact we decided to do the below ;
- Remove the Failed Node from the DAG and rebuild it from scratch and attach it to the DAG again.
- Change the FWS to another server.
But unfortunately we were not able to proceed as we expected because the cluster service on the remaining node was not able to reach any cluster defined. When I opened the Failover Cluster Manager I was not able to reach or connect it to the DAG Cluster (As it was not able to reach any the Quorum in our case it is the FWS. The same was confirmed by the below command:
- cluster node
This will show the failed node as down and the survived DAG node in Joining state
To overcome the problem you have to restart the cluster without quorum to do that type the below command on the Exchange server
net stop clussvc
net start clussvc /fq
Boom .. everything returned normal with Windows Clustering on the remaining node ( you could verify it with the same command ; cluster node) . I was able to connect it to the DAG cluster via the Windows Clustering Manager.
Now the cluster is restored and I had to move the FWS to another server so I ran the command below which set the new FWS ( Source: https://practical365.com/exchange-server/recovering-a-failed-exchange-2016-database-availability-group-member/)
Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Identity “DAG-Name” -WitnessDirectory c:\FWS -WitnessServer “New Server Name”
Now we were able to proceed with the remaining steps that is to
– remove the Mailbox Copies from the Failed Server
– Move the Active Mailboxes from the Failed Server to the active Server
The commands I used are
- Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus -Server “Failed Exchange Server Name” | Remove-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Confirm:$false
- Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase “Mailbox Database Name” -ActivateOnServer “Exchange Server Name” -SkipHealthChecks -SkipActiveCopyChecks -SkipClientExperienceChecks -SkipLagChecks -MountDialOverride:BESTEFFORT
Thereafter you could proceed with the remaining steps as mentioned below;
To remove the failed server from the DAG (-ConfigurationOnly switch will execute the command without trying to contact the failed server)
- Remove-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity “DAG Name” -MailboxServer “Failed Exchange Server Name” -ConfigurationOnly
Thereafter you need to remove the failed server from the Cluster Group to do that;
- Get-ClusterNode “Failed Exchange Server Name” | Remove-ClusterNode
Once you are able to pass through all the steps , the only thing left is to rejoin the Failed Exchange Server to the same DAG. (Refer Article:https://practical365.com/exchange-server/recovering-a-failed-exchange-2016-database-availability-group-member/)
Hope this will help someone in a similar situation.
Good Luck
Muralee
How to Allow Mail Relay on Exchange 2016
Hi All
Being an Exchange Administrator you would often come across requirements to allow mail relay from Internal Application or Some Appliances in order to send emails alerts through your Exchange Server. In this case you need to do the below;
- Create a New Receive Connector with any name E.g: Anonymous Relay
- Select the Role as FrontEnd Transport
- Select the Usage Type as Custom
- Leave the bindings as default.
- In the Remote IP addresses that are allowed to use this connector enter the IP addresses of your appliance of application server which wants to use the Exchange for Mail Relay
Once the above steps are done , you need to run the below PS Commands:
-
Set-ReceiveConnector "Anonymous Relay" -PermissionGroups AnonymousUsers
-
Get-ReceiveConnector "Anonymous Relay" | Add-ADPermission -User "NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON" -ExtendedRights "Ms-Exch-SMTP-Accept-Any-Recipient"
Source1 :https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt668454(v=exchg.160).aspx
Source2:http://exchangeserverpro.com/exchange-2016-smtp-relay-connector/#comment-409194
UPDATE:1 With Exchange 2016 CU3 you will not be able to create this connector through the ECP , thus you need to use the below PS commands:
New-Receiveconnector -Name “Mail Relay” -RemoteIPRange (“Remote IP “) -TransportRole “FrontendTransport” -Bindings (“0.0.0.0:25”) -usage “Custom” -Server “Exchange Server Name”
Hope you like it.. 