Exchange 2010-2013 Migration and OAB

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Michel de Rooij

Last year, Exchange fellows Andrew Higginbotham, Paul Cunningham as well as the Exchange Team reported on checking, and when necessary configuring, your Offline Address Book (OAB) in your current Exchange Server 2010 environment, prior to installing Exchange Server 2013. Not doing so could result in a complete download of the Offline Address Book created by Exchange Server 2013, titled ‘Default Offline Address List (Ex2013)’.

Today I received a report that there is a different symptom of configuration absence. In this case, the customer reported on the inability to download the offline address book, and upon further inspection the Autodiscover server did not report back on the offline address book URL to use. In other words, OAB information was absent from the Autodiscover response, and Outlook gets confused. Note that this issue was reported in Outlook 2010 after installing Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 10. I’m not sure if this change in behavior was introduced in these later builds of Exchange 2013 or Outlook, but it’s still a good thing to know.

The remedy here of course is to configure any (Exchange 2010) mailbox database with unconfigured Offline Address Book setting, and point them to the default offline address book using:

Get-MailboxDatabase | Where-Object {$_.OfflineAddressBook -eq $Null} | Set-MailboxDatabase -OfflineAddressBook (Get-OfflineAddressBook | Where-Object {$_.IsDefault -eq $True})

Exchange 2016 goes RTM!

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Michel de Rooij

Update (4nov2015): You can block creating mixed DAGs using Cmdlet Extension Agents, I blogged about that here.

Today, the Exchange Team reached a milestone for the On-Premises by releasing Exchange Server 2016. The official announcement contains information on new features and enhancements.The version number of Exchange 2016 RTM is 15.1.225.42. After extending it, the schema version should report 15317, and the forest and domain versions after preparing Active Directory should read 16210 and 13236, respectively.

Much of what’s new or requirements for coexistence scenarios were already announced during the release of the Exchange 2016 Preview, a little over 2 months ago. I did a write-up on that here. However, some features didn’t make it for the RTM release. For example, the feature that makes Search Indexer use Passive Database Copies for indexing, instead of copying indexes from the active copy, is to be expected in a later Cumulative Update. Also, the auto-expanding Archive feature, available in the Preview, has not made it in the RTM version.

Also make sure you read the Release Notes, which contain important information on potential issues. For example, Exchange 2016 does not prevent you from adding Exchange 2013 Mailbox servers to an Exchange 2016 Database Availability Group, or vice-versa. This ability is also not blocked by the Exchange Admin Center console. This is totally unsupported (the database structure is different), but more importantly also puts your data at risk. Just don’t.

Some links to get you started:

Official Announcement
Release Notes
Exchange Server 2016 Product Guide
Exhange Server 2016 Online Documentatation (TechNet)
Exchange 2016 Active Directory Schema changes
Download the Exchange 2016 RTM bits here.
UM Language Packs for Exchange 2016

The first Cumulative Updated is to be expected in Q1’16.

Accompanying the launch, Microsoft also published a number of videos highlighting certain aspects or features. One of them is the ever charming Greg Taylor talking about Exchange Server 2016 – Performance, architecture and compliance updates:

Other videos from the Exchange Team and Office Garage:

Exchange Server 2016 Preview is here!

Posted on July 22, 2015 by Michel de Rooij

And so it begins. Few moments ago, the Exchange team published the public preview of Exchange 2016. The build number of the preview version is 15.1.225.17 (yes, 15.1.*, not 16.*). Exchange 2016 Preview raises schema to version 15317.

The team’s post contains information on the changes and features introduced in Exchange 2016. Many of these were already announced at Ignite earlier this year. An earlier blog post on these announcements can be found here.

With this Exchange 2016 Preview, there are important deviations from announcements made at Ignite 2015:

Minimum required Forest Functional Level (FFL) and Domain Functional Level (DFL) is Windows Server 2008. At Ignite is was announced Windows Server 2008 R2 FFL/DFL would be required.
Supported Operating Systems will be Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. At Ignite, it was announced Windows Server 2012 was not going to be supported. Note that Windows Server 10 (Windows Server 2016) is currently in preview, is not (yet) supported, but likely will be at or shortly after both reach RTM status.
Coexistence requires Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 8 or Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 Rollup 9. This is lower than Exchange 2013 CU10+ or Exchange 2010 SP3 RU11+ as was mentioned at Ignite.
Exchange 2016 Preview works with Outlook 2013, Outlook 2010 with KB2965295, or Outlook 2016 (currently in Preview). This is a lower requirement than Outlook 2010 SP2 with KB2956191 and KB2965295 or Outlook 2013 SP1 with KB3020812 as announced at Ignite. Note that Mac users can utilize Outlook for Mac for Office 365 or Outlook for Mac 2011.
Not mentioned at Ignite, but something which recently was introduced in Exchange Online, is the introduction of auto-expanding In-Place Archives in Exchange 2016 Preview. After filling up the initial archive with 100 GB (default quota), Exchange will create auxiliary archives in chunks of 50 GB. To the end user using Outlook 2016 or Outlook for the web (the new Outlook WebApp branding), these archives will appear as a single archive. Downlevel Outlook clients will only display the initial 100 GB archive.

Meanwhile, the TechNet technical library has been updated with information on Exchange 2016. Be advised that this documentation may be incomplete and subject to change, and in fact may even be not on par with the preview product. However, as the product reaches RTM, the documentation should become more complete and final.

Some links to get you started:

The official announcement from the Exchange Team can be found here
Preliminary documentation for Exchange 2016 can be found on TechNet here
Documentation on Active Directory schema changes for Exchange 2016 can be found here

Needless to say, this is a preview. It’s great to play with in a lab, but don’t install it in your production environment unless you are part of the TAP program.

You can download the Exchange 2016 Preview here

HCW fails on intra-organization configuration

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Michel de Rooij

For my lab, I often have to recreate the Exchange Hybrid configuration for a fresh setup of Exchange On-Premises using formerly used namespaces. Normally you would just run the Exchange Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) after configuring certificates and endpoint URLs. If you don’t clean up the previous configuration information from your tenant upfront, you may then run in the following error message when running the HCW:

Updating hybrid configuration failed with error ‎’Subtask Configure execution failed: Configure IntraOrganization Connector Execution of the Get-IntraOrganizationConfiguration cmdlet has thrown an exception. This may indicate invalid parameters in your hybrid configuration settings. Multiple OnPremises configuration objects were found. Please use the OrganizationGuid parameter to select a specific OnPremises configuration object.

Multiple OnPremises configuration objects indicates there are multiple intra-organization objects defined in your tenant. You can clean up previous intra-organization configuration objects from your tenant as follows:

First, in your Exchange On-Premises environment, run the Get-OrganizationConfig cmdlet from the Exchange Management Shell:
Copy the Guid value, in the example 1a95d446-ff56-4399-a95e-8ab46c30912b.
Connect to Exchange Online (instruction here).
Check the existing On-Premises definitions in your tenant by running Get-OnPremisesOrganization. There should be more than 1 entry.
To remove the orphaned objects, remove all the objects that don’t match the Organization Guid you retrieved from your On-Premises environment earlier, e.g.:Get-OnPremisesOrganization | Where { $_.OrganizationGuid –ne ‘1a95d446-ff56-4399-a95e-8ab46c30912b’ } | Remove-OnPremisesOrganization
Now you could try re-running the HCW immediately, but chances are you will run in another error caused by orphaned intra-organization connectors (IOC). In those cases, when the HCW tries to run New-IntraOrganizationConnector, it will fail as the namespace defined by TargetAddressDomains is already in use by an existing connector, and ‘The domain <domain> already exists in another intra-organization connector’ is reported. Those connectors, named ‘HybridIOC – ’, where GUID is the Guid of previously used organizations, exist in your tenant. In your Exchange Online session, run the following cmdlet to remove orphaned connector definitions:Get-IntraOrganizationConnector | Where { $_.Identity –ne ‘HybridIOC – 1a95d446-ff56-4399-a95e-8ab46c30912b’ } | Remove-IntraOrganizationConnector
While you’re at it, you also might want to remove previously created connectors. Again, in your Exchange Online session, run the following cmdlets to remove orphaned inbound and outbound connectors (again, using the previously noted Organization GUID):
Get-OutboundConnector | Where { $_.Identity –ne ‘Outbound to 1a95d446-ff56-4399-a95e-8ab46c30912b’ } | Remove-OutboundConnector
Get-InboundConnector | Where { $_.Identity –ne ‘Inbound from 1a95d446-ff56-4399-a95e-8ab46c30912b’ } | Remove-InboundConnector

After removing these orphaned objects, you should be able to run the HCW succesfully.

Official 70-341 and 70-342 Preparation Books

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Michel de Rooij

For those striving for Exchange certification, there is nothing like good written material to prepare you for the exam at hand. Of course, hands-on experience is invaluable, but it could be you don’t know where to start, and find TechNet contents great for reference but more written with the support audience in mind. In those cases, you may need more guidance through the exam subjects, as with a regular course.

In this situation, the following two recently released Microsoft Press titles may be of interest:

Exam Ref 70-341 Core Solutions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 (MCSE), by fellow Exchange MVP’s Paul Robichaux and Bhargav Shukla.
Exam Ref 70-342 Advanced Solutions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 (MCSE), by fellow Exchange MVP’s Steve Goodman and Brian Reid.

Both books are the official preparation material for the exams, and they written by authors with proper field experience. Also, both Bhargav and Reid teached on the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM/MCSM) program at Microsoft in Redmond. If getting certified for Exchange 2013 is on your personal roadmap, be sure to check out these titles.

On another note, fellow Exchange MVP’s Tony Redmond, Michael van Horenbeeck and Paul Cunningham, together Jeff Guillet in the role of technical editor, will self-publish an e-book-only title, called “Office 365 for Exchange Professionals”. Intention of self-publishing an e-book-only title is to be able to incorporate Office 365 service changes more often. They plan to have it ready before Microsoft Ignite in 2 weeks time.

If you are looking for titles on Exchange or Exchange-related subject such as PowerShell or Active Directory, be sure to check out my section of recommended titles here.