Exchange

Exchange 2013 Recreate Arbitration Mailboxes

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While testing with Exchange 2013 CU9 in our lab environment we utterly destroyed the DAG and after recreating the DAG and the Mailbox databases we found that the Arbitration Mailboxes were in a corrupt state. The accompanying user accounts were still available in Active Directory, but mandatory properties were incorrect. This was clearly visible when running a Get-Mailbox –Arbitration command:

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To recreate the Arbitration Mailboxes we first have to remove everything the accompanying user accounts, which can be found in CN=Users in Active Directory:

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When the user accounts are deleted you can run the Get-Mailbox –Arbitration command again to see if they are really removed.

Once removed, you have to run the Setup.exe /PrepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms command again (from the correct installation media by the way) to recreate the Arbitration Mailboxes:

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The user accounts are now created again, and the next step is to Mail-Enable them:

Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration –Identity "FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042"
Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration –Identity "SystemMailbox{1f05a927-8668-4003-adad-9b80758e86db}"
Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration –Identity "SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}"
Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration –Identity "SystemMailbox{bb558c35-97f1-4cb9-8ff7-d53741dc928c}"

To prevent typos you can also use the following command:

Get-User | Where {$_.Name –like "SystemMailbox*"} | Enable-Mailbox -Arbitration
Get-User | Where {$_.Name –like "FederatedEmail*"} | Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration

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The DisplayName of the Arbitration Mailbox SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9} needs to be changed to “Microsoft Exchange”. This can be achieved using the following command:

Get-Mailbox –Identity "SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29*" –Arbitration | Set-Mailbox –Arbitration –DisplayName "Microsoft Exchange"

The federation Arbitration Mailbox needs to have a 1MB quota limit set to it, this can be achieved using the following command:

Get-Mailbox –Arbitration –Identity "FederatedEmail*"} | Set-Mailbox –Arbitration –ProhibitSendQuota 1MB

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The Arbitration Mailboxes are up and running again, you can check using the Get-Mailbox –Arbitration command:

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Ps. If you’re wondering why I use the Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox construction…. I typically use the Get-Mailbox command to check if something is available, and then run the same command and pipe the output into Set-Mailbox command…. To prevent changes to objects I do not want to change 🙂

11 thoughts on “Exchange 2013 Recreate Arbitration Mailboxes”

    1. It wasn’t me 🙂
      Seriously, the operations team did some testing, but I don’t know exactly what, but stuff broke. They tried to fix it but didn’t succeed, and then it was beyond repair. Had to remove the databases and the DAG with ADSIEdit and recreate DAG and databases. A couple of days later I found out that the Arbitration Mailboxes were lost during my ADSIEdit recoveries…. So, it wasn’t the DAG…..

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  3. Mailed you already but wanted to leave this here as well in case someone else has a good idea. I had a meltdown last friday and after some digging found out that when i run Get-Mailbox -Arbitration only two of the system mailboxes would show. The others would not. The AD accounts are there but that is all. I followed this guide to recreate the needed accounts and got this error:

    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0786] [0] **********************************************
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0802] [0] Starting Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1 Setup
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0802] [0] **********************************************
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0805] [0] Local time zone: (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0806] [0] Operating system version: Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0809] [0] Setup version: 15.0.847.32.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0811] [0] Logged on user: EVEREST\admin.everest.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0855] [0] Command Line Parameter Name=’preparead’, Value=”.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0855] [0] Command Line Parameter Name=’iacceptexchangeserverlicenseterms’, Value=”.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:45.0855] [0] Command Line Parameter Name=’sourcedir’, Value=’E:\SW_DVD9_Exchange_Svr_2013w_SP1_MultiLang_Std_Ent_MLF_X19-35118′.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:46.0035] [0] RuntimeAssembly was started with the following command: ‘/PrepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms /sourcedir:E:\SW_DVD9_Exchange_Svr_2013w_SP1_MultiLang_Std_Ent_MLF_X19-35118’.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:46.0040] [0] The registry key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\v8.0, wasn’t found.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:46.0040] [0] The registry key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v14, wasn’t found.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:46.0054] [0] Copying Files…
    [05-11-2016 07:29:46.0064] [0] Starting copy from E:\SW_DVD9_Exchange_Svr_2013w_SP1_MultiLang_Std_Ent_MLF_X19-35118\Setup\ServerRoles\Common to C:\Windows\Temp\ExchangeSetup.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:55.0546] [0] Finished copy from E:\SW_DVD9_Exchange_Svr_2013w_SP1_MultiLang_Std_Ent_MLF_X19-35118\Setup\ServerRoles\Common to C:\Windows\Temp\ExchangeSetup.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:55.0551] [0] File copy complete. Setup will now collect additional information needed for installation.
    [05-11-2016 07:29:55.0563] [0] Assembly dll file location is C:\Windows\Temp\ExchangeSetup\Microsoft.Exchange.Setup.Console.dll
    [05-11-2016 07:30:01.0453] [0] Setup is choosing the domain controller to use
    [05-11-2016 07:30:01.0806] [0] The MSExchangeADTopology has a persisted domain controller: DC5.everest.nl
    [05-11-2016 07:30:01.0944] [0] [ERROR] Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
    [05-11-2016 07:30:02.0013] [0] [ERROR] Method not found: ‘Boolean Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Mime.MimeAddressParser.IsValidDomain(System.String, Int32, Boolean)’.
    [05-11-2016 07:30:02.0013] [0] CurrentResult SetupLauncherHelper.loadassembly:444: 1
    [05-11-2016 07:30:02.0019] [0] The Exchange Server setup operation didn’t complete. More details can be found in ExchangeSetup.log located in the :\ExchangeSetupLogs folder.
    [05-11-2016 07:30:02.0026] [0] CurrentResult main.run:235: 1
    [05-11-2016 07:30:02.0026] [0] CurrentResult setupbase.maincore:396: 1
    [05-11-2016 07:30:02.0029] [0] End of Setup
    [05-11-2016 07:30:02.0029] [0] **********************************************

    Resulting in me not being able to recreate the needed accounts. Email is working but especially the resources calendars are a friggin nightmare.

    Need a good solid piece of 2×4.. no wait.. advice 🙂 that is what i need.

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    1. To answer my problem. You can recreate the system accounts. Just make damn sure you use a CU which is at least as high or higher then what was latest installed on your Exchange server.

      Jaap thanks once again for the assist!

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  4. Pingback: Exchange 2007 to 2013 migration - Beaming

  5. Thanks for your post! Did you use the install media for Exchange 2013 when running the prepareAD command or the legacy version of exchange?

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  6. Hi Hein Tragg,

    Can you explain what you mean by CU. I accidentally deleted the 3 systemmailboxes/ Your help would be greatly appreciated.

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