Just can't get enough of IT

Troubleshooting Outlook connectivity issues with Office 365 is tricky. Administrators can use two valuable tools provided by Microsoft to identify and even fix client related connectivity issues.

1. Outlook Account Test Page

Start with the Outlook account problems test page in the Office 365 portal. You need to log on as the Office 365 user having issues.

The site tests for the following:

• You cannot create an Outlook profile or you are asked for your password repeatedly when creating one.
• You cannot connect to your mailbox or receive an error that a mailbox cannot be found.
• You are getting invalid license errors or messages that Office cannot verify the license.

If no issues are identified after you've logged on to Office 365, move to the next step.

2. Support and Recovery Assistant

The Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant (SARA) for Office 365 is click to run tool that is installed and executed locally.

These two tools fix most of the Outlook connectivity issues you are facing as an Office 365 administrator.

Links

• Outlook Account Test Page, https://portal.office.com/support/help.aspx?sid=sara
• Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant, https://diagnostics.office.com

Enjoy Office 365

The SMTP Simulator project has been started due to a specific demand during a customer project. We needed a solution to test native transport of Exchange Server 2013 and third party addons to Exchange in an isolated lab envrionment having no internet access at all.

While it is pretty easy to send test emails using PowerShell, we wanted to create an automated service which is capable of:

• replies to incoming emails
• has configured internal and external SMTP domains
• creates random local email addresses
• sends emails depending on a schedule to simulate user behaviour
  • fixed number of emails per timeframe
  • random number of emails per timeframe
  • send misformed emails
• adds attachments to outgoing emails
  • documents 
  • archives / password protected archives
  • EICAR files
• simple testing of POP3/IMAP4 remote connections 
• runs as a Windows service
• has a nice web interface for simplified administration
  • access to SMTP send/receice logs

The SMTP Simulator can be used with any Message Transfer Agents (MTA), not only with Exchange. Besides testing the MTA itself, we needed to test some of the following third-party solutions:

• Anti-Malware solutions using an Exchange transport agent
• SMTP gateway solutions

Architecure overview

Web client interface

The Visual Studio solution creates a MSI installer file. The MSI package created installs the SMTP Service itself, but not the required web application (see issue #49).

Documentation is provided by the SMTP Simulator Wiki.

Open Source

The code has been published as open source at Github. Feel free to fork the solution and contribute to the code.

Report any issues or feature requests at Github.

To-Do's

The project still has some open ends and needs some love and attention. Open issues are part of the issue tracker at Github.

• https://github.com/Granikos/SMTPSimulator/issues

Main topics are:

• Authenticated login
• Rebuild of the installer to include the main service component and the web client required for management
• Enhance wiki documentation

Links

• SMTP Simulator project at Github: https://github.com/Granikos/SMTPSimulator
• SMTP Simulator Wiki at Github: https://github.com/Granikos/SMTPSimulator/wiki

Problem

You have an Exchange Server 2016 organization and plan to upgrade to Cumulative Update 10. You log on to an  Exchange Server, activate DAG maintenance and prepare the Server Component States for installing the new Cumulative Update. 

You open an elevated PowerShell Session and start the Setup using

./Setup.exe /Mode:Upgrade /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

Out of a sudden the Exchange Server CU Setup fails while executing setup step Stopping Services with an error:

Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 10 Unattended Setup

Copying Files...
File copy complete. Setup will now collect additional information needed for installation.

Languages
Management tools
Mailbox role: Transport service
Mailbox role: Client Access service
Mailbox role: Unified Messaging service
Mailbox role: Mailbox service
Mailbox role: Front End Transport service
Mailbox role: Client Access Front End service

Performing Microsoft Exchange Server Prerequisite Check

    Configuring Prerequisites                                                                         COMPLETED
    Prerequisite Analysis                                                                             COMPLETED

Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server

    Preparing Setup                                                                                   COMPLETED
    Stopping Services                                                                                 FAILED

The following error was generated when "$error.Clear();
 & $RoleBinPath\ServiceControl.ps1 -Operation:DisableServices
-Roles:($RoleRoles.Replace('Role','').Split(',')) -SetupScriptsDirectory:$RoleBinPath; &
$RoleBinPath\ServiceControl.ps1 -Operation:Stop -Roles:($RoleRoles.Replace('Role','').Split(','))
-IsDatacenter:([bool]$RoleIsDatacenter)
 " was run: "Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.ProcessCommandException: Cannot stop
process "fms (2496)" because of the following error: Access is denied ---> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: Access
is denied
 at System.Diagnostics.ProcessManager.OpenProcess(Int32 processId, Int32 access, Boolean throwIfExited)
 at System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessHandle(Int32 access, Boolean throwIfExited)
 at System.Diagnostics.Process.get_HasExited()
 at Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.StopProcessCommand.ProcessRecord()
 ---
End of inner exception stack trace ---".

The Exchange Server setup operation didn't complete. More details can be found in ExchangeSetup.log located in the
<SystemDrive>:\ExchangeSetupLogs folder.

Why would an error like Access Denied happen while executing the Setup.exe as a member of the local Administrators security group from within an elevated PowerShell session?

Issue

The PowerShell code executed as part of the CU Setup sets the startup type of Exchange and some Windows services to Disabled. This ensures that in the case of a server reboot an automatic start of the service will not interfere partially executed the setup. After setting the startup type to Disabled the services are stopped. 

The services are controlled by the ServiceControl.ps1 script which is located on the Exchange Server installation media in \Setup\ServerRoles\Common\.

The function StopServices stops services using the Stop-Service cmdlet. Due to some timing issues some services are stopped by killing the running processes using Stop-Process -Force.

The services stopped by stopping the running process are:

• FMS
• MSExchangeServiceHost
• MSExchangeTransport
• MSExchangeInferenceService
• MSExchangeDagMgmt

Executing the Stop-Process cmdlet results in the Access Denied error.

Solution

The issue is related to fact that the user account logged on the server and executing the Exchange Server Cumulatice Update does not have the local User Rights Assignment to Debug Programs.

By default the right to debug programs is assigned to the local Adminstrators security group. In secured Active Directory infrastructures the user rights assignments and local security groups are often managed using Group Policy Objects (GPO). The GPOs manage the names of local security groups, group memberships and even user rights assignments.

• To avoid the error described above you must ensure that the group of Exchange Administrators that install Exchange Server Cumulative Updates has the user rights assignment to debug programs.

The client encountering the issue described above hasn't had any issues installing Cumulative Updates for Exchange Server 2013 in the past. So this is solution is related to the setup of Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Updates on Windows Server 2016 only. If you have any information regarding Exchange Server 2013, let me know using the comments section below.

Enjoy Exchange Server!

Issue

Recently I was facing an issue where Windows Server 2012 R2 reported remaining 22% of free disk space of one of the Exchange Server data volumes. The Exchange Server data volumes are connected using mount points. 

Before trying to identify any issues in regards to hidden system files or streams, I checked the volume shadow copy configuration using the Disk Management MMC.

Windows Disk Management showed that volume C: was using a mounted volume as shadow copy target.

Examining the available disk space using the Get-Diskspace.ps1 PowerShell script, it showed that WMI was reporting the FreeSpace the same way as the Disk Management.

[PS] D:\SCRIPTS\Get-Diskspace>.\Get-Diskspace.ps1 -ComputerName EX01
Fetching Volume Data from EX01

Name                                              Capacity (GB) FreeSpace (GB) BootVolume SystemVolume FileSystem
----                                              ------------- -------------- ---------- ------------ ----------
E:\ExchangeDatabases\DatabaseSet1\                         2048           1083      False        False NTFS
E:\ExchangeDatabases\DatabaseSet2\                         2048            445      False        False NTFS
E:\ExchangeDatabases\DatabaseSet3\                         2048           1219      False        False NTFS
E:\ExchangeDatabases\DatabaseSet4\                         2048           1091      False        False NTFS

The only viable solution to reclaim the wasted disk space was to remove the shadow copy of volume C.

Solution

First I checked the current list of shadow copies using the vssadmin command line tool.

D:\>vssadmin list shadows
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.

Contents of shadow copy set ID: {eb09ce08-f8a6-47ea-b48d-2d6da7591d4e}
   Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 23.06.2017 16:05:56
      Shadow Copy ID: {3684b224-bca2-42c4-a0b3-43b7d0db2d96}
         Original Volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{df40ac48-f610-11e3-80ce-806e6f6e6963}\
         Shadow Copy Volume: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy1
         Originating Machine: ex01.granikossolutions.eu
         Service Machine: ex01.granikossolutions.eu
         Provider: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
         Type: ApplicationRollback
         Attributes: Persistent, No auto release, Differential

The vssadmin tool does not clearly state the path to the shadow copy volume. Therefore, it is much more convenient to identify the shadow copy target using Disk Management. But the output shows that the shadow copy is nearly six months old. So it's safe to delete this orphaned shadow copy.

You can easily delete all shadow copies of a selected volume using the following command

vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /all

But it turned out that the shadow copy could not be deleted, even with administrative credentials in use.

D:\>vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /all
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.

Error: Snapshots were found, but they were outside of your allowed context.  Try removing them with the
backup application which created them.

Needless to say, that a well-known third party solution is in use to backup the servers. The shadow copy remainers are copies created by the backup solution and were not properly removed after backup due to a system failure during backup.

But how can you remove the current shadow copy without tempering the exisiting permissions for your account?

Simply use the Disk Management MMC to modifx the current shadow copy configuration and the shadow copy is removed.

• Open Disk Management MMC
• Open Properties windows of an existing volume
• Select the Shadow Copies tab
• Select the source volume having the shadow copy configured (see screenshot above)
• Click the Settings button
  • Leave the Located on this volume setting unchanged
  • Change the Maximum size setting to Use limit 320 MB
  • Click OK

Switch to the command line and check for existing shadow copies.

D:\>vssadmin list shadows
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.

No items found that satisfy the query.

The oprhaned shadow copy is gone.

Now open the Settings windows for the source volume again and change the Located on this volume to be the same as the source volume anfd change the Use Limit to the same value for the volume that is configured on other servers.

Enjoy Volume Shadow Copies

Links

• Vssadmin delete shadows
• Best Practices for Shadow Copies of Shared Folders

When you run your Exchange Organization in hybrid mode with Office 365 and you migrate your on-premise Public Folders to Office 365, you are required to configure a remote Public Folder Mailbox in the Exchange Organization settings.

Organization Configs with Exchange 2013 Public Folders On-Premise

With Public Folders on-premise your Exchange Online Org looks like this:

Get-OrganizationConfig | fl *public*

DefaultPublicFolderAgeLimit             :
DefaultPublicFolderIssueWarningQuota    : 1.7 GB (1,825,361,920 bytes)
DefaultPublicFolderProhibitPostQuota    : 2 GB (2,147,483,648 bytes)
DefaultPublicFolderMaxItemSize          : Unlimited
DefaultPublicFolderDeletedItemRetention : 30.00:00:00
DefaultPublicFolderMovedItemRetention   : 7.00:00:00
PublicFoldersLockedForMigration         : False
PublicFolderMigrationComplete           : False
PublicFoldersEnabled                    : Remote
PublicComputersDetectionEnabled         : False
RootPublicFolderMailbox                 : 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
RemotePublicFolderMailboxes             : {PublicFolder-Mailbox001}

With Public Folders on-premise your On-Premise Exchange Org looks like this:

Get-OrganizationConfig | fl *public*

DefaultPublicFolderAgeLimit             :
DefaultPublicFolderIssueWarningQuota    : Unlimited
DefaultPublicFolderProhibitPostQuota    : Unlimited
DefaultPublicFolderMaxItemSize          : Unlimited
DefaultPublicFolderDeletedItemRetention : 30.00:00:00
DefaultPublicFolderMovedItemRetention   : 7.00:00:00
PublicFoldersLockedForMigration         : True
PublicFolderMigrationComplete           : True
PublicFoldersEnabled                    : Local
PublicComputersDetectionEnabled         : False
RootPublicFolderMailbox                 : ae0ef819-90d2-45d0-92b6-8b2062cf71a3
RemotePublicFolderMailboxes             : {}

Organization Configs with Exchange 2013 Public Folders in Exchange Online

With Public Folders in Exchange Online your Exchange Online Org looks like this:

Get-OrganizationConfig | fl *public*

DefaultPublicFolderAgeLimit             :
DefaultPublicFolderIssueWarningQuota    : 1.7 GB (1,825,361,920 bytes)
DefaultPublicFolderProhibitPostQuota    : 2 GB (2,147,483,648 bytes)
DefaultPublicFolderMaxItemSize          : Unlimited
DefaultPublicFolderDeletedItemRetention : 30.00:00:00
DefaultPublicFolderMovedItemRetention   : 7.00:00:00
PublicFoldersLockedForMigration         : False
PublicFolderMigrationComplete           : False
PublicFoldersEnabled                    : Local
PublicComputersDetectionEnabled         : False
RootPublicFolderMailbox                 : 5810bb30-cdda-4287-85a4-8a2547bb9b01
RemotePublicFolderMailboxes             : {}

With Public Folders in Exchange Online your Exchange On-Premise Org looks like this:

Get-OrganizationConfig | fl *public*

DefaultPublicFolderAgeLimit             :
DefaultPublicFolderIssueWarningQuota    : Unlimited
DefaultPublicFolderProhibitPostQuota    : Unlimited
DefaultPublicFolderMaxItemSize          : Unlimited
DefaultPublicFolderDeletedItemRetention : 30.00:00:00
DefaultPublicFolderMovedItemRetention   : 7.00:00:00
PublicFoldersLockedForMigration         : True
PublicFolderMigrationComplete           : True
PublicFoldersEnabled                    : Remote
PublicComputersDetectionEnabled         : False
RootPublicFolderMailbox                 : 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
RemotePublicFolderMailboxes             : {mcsmemail.de/Users/PF365-Mailbox-01-55e3d544-ed5a-4557-9008-d8c1b6f06d86}

The remote public folder mailbox has been added to the on-premise Exchange confguration by using:

Set-OrganizationConfig -RemotePublicFolderMailboxes PF365-Mailbox-001 -PublicFoldersEnabled Remote

To be able to add the remote public folder mailbox in a hybrid configuration you are required to add the public folder mailbox (or mailboxes, if you have more than one serving the hierarchy) as a mail user.

Microsoft provides a PowerShell script as part of a script collection here.

The issue with Import-PublicFolderMailboxes.ps1

When you run the Import-PublicFolderMailboxes.ps1 script you might run into the following error:

Cannot bind parameter 'Name' to the target. Exception setting "Name": "The length of the property is too long. The
maximum length is 64 and the length of the value provided is 65."
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (:) [New-MailUser], ParameterBindingException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterBindingFailed,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.NewMailUser
    + PSComputerName        : ex2013.mcsmemail.de

The name attribute for a mail user is limited to 64 characters. But why are you exceeding the length when the mailbox name is only 17 characters long?

It turns out that the PowerSheel script adds a prefix name "" and ther mailbox GUID as a suffix. And voilá, the name exceeds the allowed length for the mail user name attribute.

Recommendation

Don't use more than 16 characters when naming the Public Folder mailboxes in Office 365.

Or modify the Import-PublicFolderMailboxes.ps1 script to fit your needs.

$hasPublicFolderServingHierarchy = $true;
$displayName = $publicFolderMailbox.Name.ToString().Trim();
# ORIG: $name = "RemotePfMbx-" + $displayName + "-" + [guid]::NewGuid();
$name = $displayName + "-" + [guid]::NewGuid();
$externalEmailAddress = $publicFolderMailbox.PrimarySmtpAddress.ToString();

Links

• Microsoft Exchange 2013 Public Folders Directory Sync Support Scripts

You need assistance with your Exchange Server setup? You have questions about your Exchange Server infrastructure and going hybrid? You are interested in what Exchange Server 2016 has to offer for your environment?
Contact me at thomas@mcsmemail.de
Follow at https://twitter.com/stensitzki

Description

This script deletes all Exchange and IIS logs older than X days from all Exchange 2013+ servers that are fetched using the Get-ExchangeServer cmdlet.

The Exchange log file location is read from the environment variable and used to build an administrative UNC path for file deletions.

Optionally, you can use the Active Directory configuration partition to determine the Exchange install path dynamically, if supported in your Active Directory environment.

• It is assumed that the Exchange setup path is IDENTICAL across all Exchange servers, when not using the UseDynamicExchangePaths parameter
• The IIS log file location is read from the local IIS Metabase of the LOCAL server where the script is executed and is used to build an administrative UNC path for IIS log file deletions
• It is assumed that the IIS log file location is identical across all Exchange servers
• Use IsEdge switch when running on an Exchange Server holding the EDGE role

Examples

# EXAMPLE 1
# Delete Exchange and IIS log files older than 14 days 

.\Purge-LogFiles -DaysToKeep 14

# EXAMPLE 3
# Delete Exchange and IIS log files older than 7 days with automatic discovery

.\Purge-LogFiles -DaysToKeep 7 -Auto

# EXAMPLE 3
# Delete Exchange and IIS log files older than 7 days with automatic discovery and send email report

.\Purge-LogFiles -DaysToKeep 7 -Auto -SendMail -MailFrom postmaster@sedna-inc.com -MailTo exchangeadmin@sedna-inc.com -MailServer mail.sedna-inc.com

# EXAMPLE 4
# Delete Exchange and IIS log files older than 14 days, but copy files to a central repository and compress the log files before final deletion

.\Purge-LogFiles -DaysToKeep 14 -RepositoryRootPath \\OTHERSERVER\OtherShare\LOGS -ArchiveMode CopyZipAndDelete

# EXAMPLE 5
# Delete Exchange Server, IIS, and HTTPERR log files older than 7 days, and send an HTML email. Identify Exchange file paths using AD configuration objects.

.\Purge-LogFiles.ps1 -DaysToKeep 7 -SendMail -MailFrom postmaster@sedna-inc.com -MailTo exchangeadmin@sedna-inc.com -MailServer mail.sedna-inc.com -UseDynamicExchangePaths -IncludeHttpErr

Version History

• 2.3 Option for HTTPERR added, Option for dynamic Exchange install paths added, Html formatting added, tested with Exchange Server 2019
• 2.21 Issue #12 fixed
• 2.2 Minor fixes, but no changes
• 2.14 Issue #9 fixed | IsEdge parameter added
• 2.13 Issue #7 fixed | SendMail switch query
• 2.11 Issue #6 fixed | Missing Remove-Item cmdlet
• 2.1 Logfile archiving and archive compressions added
• 2.0 CopyFilesBeforeDelete implemented
• 1.93 Minor chances to PowerShell hygiene
• 1.92 Count issue fixed to run on Windows Server 2012
• 1.91 Write DaysToKeep to log
• 1.9 Global functions updated (write to event log)
• 1.8 Support for global logging and other functions added
• 1.6 Count Error fixed 1.7 Email report functionality added
• 1.5 Sorting of server names added and Write-Host output changed
• 1.4 Handling of IIS default location fixed
• 1.3 Check if running in elevated mode added
• 1.2 Auto/Manual configuration options added
• 1.1 Variable fix and optional code added
• 1.0 Initial community release

Requirements

• This PowerShell script requires the GlobalFunctions module, described here.
  When using PowerShell 5 or later you can simply use Install-Module GlobalFunctions to install the module to your system.
• Windows Server 2012 R2 or newer
• ActiveDirectory PowerShell module
• Exchange 2013+ Management Shell

Links

• Download and follow at Github: https://github.com/Apoc70/Purge-LogFiles
• Download and like at TechNet Gallery: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Purge-Exchange-Server-2013-c2e03e72

Additional Credits

Brian Reid, C7 Solutions, http://www.c7solutions.com/2013/04/removing-old-exchange-2013-log-files-html

Follow

• Twitter @stensitzki
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