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Tag Archives: Exchange 2003

Is Exchange 2000/2003 a Ticking Time Bomb?

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Microsoft Exchange Server uses a transactional database architecture. This means that all database transactions are stored in Log files. Exchange versions prior to Exchange 2007 used a 5MB file with a unique naming convention. The log file name is a sequential Hexadecimal number starting with log file E0000001.log. Once the Log File is full of changes the next log file in the sequence is created E0000002.log. Exchange continues to do this until exactly 1,030,000 log files have been created (E00FFFFF.log) and then “HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM”. Now before we get to the fix, just how big of a deal is this? 1,030,000 is a lot of transaction logs files that can be generated and we should never run out right?. However, some Exchange 2000/2003 Servers have been in production for 10+ years. If we do the math on the number of maximum available logs and divide that by 3650 (10 Years) we can roughly estimate 282 log files a day or 1410 MB of email transactions per day. For smaller organizations this would seem like a significant amount of space on a daily basis considering weekends and holidays when email traffic is lessened. Unfortunately, even smaller Exchange Server shops run 24X7 365 days a years and Exchange is never down and constantly sending and receiving email.

Now, here is some detailed explanations before we all go running and screaming that the sky is falling. These log files are generated per storage group and per server. So, multiple storage groups reduce the possibility of hitting the max. Other activities such as stopping the database and deleting the checkpoint file and all transaction logs will reset the sequence back to E0000001.log. It is not recommended to perform these activities frequently as they can cause issue with backup and restore, they are sometime performed during database maintenance and or recovery.

So what do you do if you hit the max? Thankfully the folks over at Microsoft have already written an article explaining what to do. Check out this link to do some additional reading.

In summary check your log files and event viewer to figure out how much time you can run before action must be taken.

Exchange 2003/2007/2010 ActiveSync Proxy and Redirection

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When performing a mail migration from Exchange2003/2007 to Exchange 2010 a little understanding of how proxy and redirection work can smooth your migration woes. A quick definition of proxy and redirection can help eliminate confusion between the two. A redirection happens when a device is configured to communicate with Exchange at specific URL and the initial server sends the device a redirection to a different URL that is closer or better suited to handle the device.  The device then updates it configuration to talk to the new location.   A proxy happens when a device is configured to a specific URL and the responding server gets the required data from mailbox server on behalf of the device regardless of version and or location. To help further explain the situation the following graphics can be used to as an example of a proxy and a redirect.

 

Figure 1.  Redirection

 

Figure 2.  Proxy

 

One could look at the above graphics and could make the determination to always proxy due to the  belief that it is faster and would appear to be simpler.  However, redirection is a very effective way of moving devices to servers more suited to handle the request.  For Example, if a user from the UK has a device configured to communicate with a server in the USA, it is along away across the pond for a proxy request from server to server.  In this particular scenario a redirection would be better suited to allow the device to talk to a server in the UK that is closer in proximity.

Proxy and Redirection determination is handled by the existence of the external URL on the 2007/2010 Client Access Server.  If all Internet facing servers have their External URLs configured then those servers will always redirect devices to the Client Access Server closest to the mailbox.  If only 1 site is Internet facing, that one site will Proxy connections to all other exchange Servers in the environment.

When performing a migration from 2003 to 2010 it is always best practice to point the external address at a 2010 Client Access Server.  Since Exchange 2003 has no concept of sites and Internet connected sites, 2010 will always proxy to 2003.  The last trick to the configuration is to ensure that devices configured to point to an Exchange 2010 server and have mailboxes on Exchange 2003, need to have integrated authentication enabled on the Exchange 2003 ActiveSync Virtual Directory.  Unfortunately, when you enable integrated authentication on 2003 it goes behind you and resets the configuration back to basic every so many minutes.  The Fix for this issue can be located here at the following MS support article.

if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment :)

Remove Missing Exchange 2003 Mailboxes

Posted on by Posted in Active Directory, Exchange Leave a comment

The other day I was trying to removing the last Exchange 2003 Server from a customer and it would not let me uninstall the server with the error

“The component “Microsoft Exchange Messaging and Collaboration Services” cannot be assigned the action “Remove” because: 

-One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.”

The problem with this error message was, the server had all of its databases removed. so I know for a fact that it could not possibly have any mailboxes on it.  Running a query in Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) for users with mailboxes on this server returned nothing.

The Fix
For me I did a LDAP query in ADUC using Custom Search and Advanced on the same tab.  

msExchHomeServerName=/o=Exchange Org/ou=First Administrative Group/cn=Configuration/cn=Servers/cn=EXCH2K3

This query returned a set of users who no longer had mailboxes but still had Exchange Attributes.  I then “Right clicked” on the users and selected remove Exchange attributes. This cleared up the error message and the server was uninstalled in short order.