About Michel de Rooij

Michel de Rooij, with over 25 years of mixed consulting and automation experience with Exchange and related technologies, is a consultant for Rapid Circle. He assists organizations in their journey to and using Microsoft 365, primarily focusing on Exchange and associated technologies and automating processes using PowerShell or Graph. Michel's authorship of several Exchange books and role in the Office 365 for IT Pros author team are a testament to his knowledge. Besides writing for Practical365.com, he maintains a blog on eightwone.com with supporting scripts on GitHub. Michel has been a Microsoft MVP since 2013.

Exchange 2010 SP1 Rollup 4 v2

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

After pulling Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 on July 13th, after potential data loss issues were discovered during folders movements, and publishing an intermediate hotfix to resolve the RU4 issues without a rollup rerelease, the Exchange team decided to publish an updated version of rollup 4. This is somehow unexpected because of the expected release of rollup 5 in August. It’s good to see the Exchange team getting very open in this post about recent missteps in published rollups for such a mission critical application.

Exchange 2010 SP1 Rollup 4 v2 raises Exchange 2010′s version number to 14.1.323.6 (initial release was 14.1.323.1). The related knowledgebase article is kb2579150.

For the correct procedure on how to update a DAG and its members, check here.

You can download Exchange 2010 SP1 Rollup4 v2 here.

Exchange 2010 SP1 RU4 pulled

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

Just a quick notice that few minutes ago the Exchange Team pulled Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 Rollup 4.

As reported earlier, there were potential data loss issues with this rollup when moving folders around in public folders or PST files using any version Outlook; Note that moving folders using OWA through Exchange Web Services works fine.

A fix for this issue will be incorporated in the RU5 update which is scheduled for August. So, like RU3 v2 v3 which took about a month to appear after the initial RU3 release was pulled, we’ll have to wait until August for RU5.

For those who already deployed RU4 an interim update has been made available that fixes this issue. The interim update can be obtained by contacting support.

Managing Remote IP Ranges of Receive Connectors

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

When managing receive connectors in Exchange, you probably had to configure IP addresses or IP ranges on those receive connectors. This may be required when limiting access to a certain receive connector for applications to drop their mail using SMTP. Of course this can be done using the Exchange Management Console, but this may become tedious when lots of addresses are involved. Also, when multiple Hub transport servers are involved you may need to keep those IP ranges in sync on those Hub Transport servers in which case mismatches are likely.

As you’ve probably guessed, a little PowerShell makes life more easier. To configure the allowed IP ranges we need to use Set-ReceiveConnector and configure the RemoteIPRanges attribute. We’ll use a text file to maintain the list of allowed IP ranges and a PowerShell one-liner to set RemoteIPRanges.

The file should contain IP ranges in a RemoteIPRanges acceptable format, e.g.:

192.168.1.10
192.168.1.20-192.168.1.29
192.168.2.0/24

When we have prepared the file, we can use the following cmdlet to set RemoteIPRanges:

Get-ReceiveConnector *\APPRELAY | Set-ReceiveConnector -RemoteIPRanges (Get-Content RemoteIPRanges.txt)

This will configure all receive connectors named APPRELAY on all Hub Transport servers in the organization using IP ranges defined in the file RemoteIPRanges.txt. Be advised that this cmdlet overwrites the current configuration of RemoteIPRanges; if you need to add it to the current configured set of IP ranges on each receive connector, use the following cmdlet:

Get-ReceiveConnector *\Appl-Relay | ForEach { Set-ReceiveConnector -RemoteIPRanges ($_.RemoteIPRanges+ (Get-Content ipranges.txt) | Sort -Unique) }

By adding the Sort -Unique filter, we make sure each range is only specified once. This prevents errors caused by setting a range using the RemoteIPRanges.txt file when that range has already been configured in the current value of RemoteIPRanges.

Note that when inspecting the results you can set $FormatEnumerationLimit to a value higher than the default (16) to have Get-ReceiveConnector * | fl RemoteIPRanges display all its values. Also, keep in mind when configuring connectors that the connector with the most specific matching IP address wins.

Exchange 2007 SP3 Update Rollup 4

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

Today the Exchange Team released Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 (KB2509911). This update raises Exchange 2007 version number to 8.3.192.1.

Here’s the big list of changes included in this rollup:

2531208 You cannot synchronize a folder hierarchy by using Outlook for Mac 2011 in an Exchange Server 2007 SP3 environment
2528437 EWS applications cannot connect to Exchange Server 2007 servers after you make changes on accepted domains
2521063 You are incorrectly displayed as a meeting organizer after you synchronize the meeting by using your mobile device in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
2517337 You cannot open a mailbox that has a “#” character in the primary SMTP email address by using OWA in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
2515428 The MSExchangeMailboxAssistants.exe process crashes when the managed folder assistant tries to journal a message in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
2508872 The W3WP.exe process in the Autodiscover application pool on the Exchange Server 2007 Client Access servers consumes excessive CPU resources
2507374 “Cannot open this item” error message in Outlook online mode in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
2506827 An UM auto attendant times out and generates an invalid extension number error message in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
2502276 A meeting request series are deleted unexpectedly from the calendar in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
2498924 “Could not connect to a directory server” error message when you click the last page button in the search results in Exchange Server 2007 OWA
2498156 OLM/OLD incorrectly runs against databases in a RSG in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
2496806 A mobile phone times out when you use ActiveSync to synchronize the calendar on the mobile phone with an Exchange Server 2007 mailbox
2543879 A PDF attachment sent from a Mac Mail client does not display when you open the email message by using Outlook 2010 in an Exchange Server 2007 SP3 environment
2491751 Spell checking does not function correctly in OWA when an S/MIME control is used and SSL Offloading is enabled in Exchange Server 2007
2484147 “HTTP Error 400 Bad Request” error message when you use OWA to log on to a newly created Exchange Server 2007 mailbox
2466220 Question mark (?) characters appear in the subject of a reply email message in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
2223294 A new feature is available to disable the “No end date” check box in OWA when you create a recurring meeting item in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
977906 You receive an error message when you run certain commands in the EMS on an Exchange Server 2007 server
2495010 The EdgeTransport.exe process consumes 100% CPU usage on an Exchange Server 2010 Edge Transport server or an Exchange Server 2007 Edge Transport server
2484817 A mailbox does not show in certain address lists after you run commands on an Exchange Server 2007 mailbox

When running ForeFront Protection for Exchange, make sure you disable ForeFront before installing the rollup and re-enable it afterwards, otherwise the Information Store and Transport services may not start. You can disable ForeFront using fscutility /disable and enable it using the fscutility /enable command.

Note that update rollups are cumulative, i.e. they contain fixes released in earlier update rollups for the same product level (RTM, SPx). This means you don’t need to install previous update rollups during a fresh installation but can start with the latest rollup available right away.

You can download Exchange 2007 SP3 Rollup 4 here.

Exchange 2010 SP1 Update Rollup 4 Issues

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

Be advised that in addition to earlier reports, there are not only data loss issues with Exchange 2010 SP1 Rollup 4 when moving folder structures from public folders to mailboxes or other public folders. Apparantly, data loss can also occur when moving folder structures to PST files. In both cases, only the top folder and messages are moved, subfolders and their contents are not moved but deleted.

On the issue, Microsoft’s Ross Smith said the following:

In SP1 RU4 we addressed the issue where you could not recover deleted public folders from dumpster. However, Outlook incorrectly passes a flag that indicates the item has been deleted when it has not. As a result, when you perform a copy or move in the manner Jens described, the sub-folders are deleted. As mentioned previously, you can recover these deleted folders from dumpster. We’ve contacted the Outlook team to assist in further diagnosis of the issue and to help us determine the right vehicle for a fix, we’ll provide more details soon – in the meantime please open a CSS case.

You can uninstall Rollup 4 from your Exchange servers to prevent potential data loss caused by these issues.

Note that Rollup 5 is scheduled for August, so you might start to wonder what will arrive first, RU5 or RU4v2.