Category Archives: Exchange

Exchange

Exchange 2016, backup and recovery databases

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Last week I got a request from a customer. A long time ago I posted a blogpost on Exchange 2010 recovery databases, but after the customer migrated to Exchange 2016 his procedure around recovery databases didn’t work anymore. His request was basically to rewrite my blogpost.

For this blogpost I have a pretty simple Exchange 2016 Mailbox server, configured with one Mailbox database which is stored on a dedicated disk, and I’m using Windows Server Backup to backup the entire Mailbox database disk (VSS full backup).

Don’t pay too much attention to the naming of my Exchange server and the Mailbox database I’m using here. In fact, this is an Exchange 2016 hybrid server I’m misusing for the purpose of this blog Smile

Recovery database

You can restore a mailbox database to its original location and mount again, but you can also use a Recovery Database to restore and recover your data. A recovery database is a mailbox database that can be mounted on your Exchange server, but it is not visible for regular users but only for the Exchange administrator. The Exchange administrator can access this recovery database and recover data, for example create a PST of a particular mailbox in this database.

When restoring a database from backup, select the restore option and follow the wizard. When you reach the Select Recovery Type window select Applications as shown in the following screenshot.

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Continue reading Exchange 2016, backup and recovery databases →

Exchange

This mailbox database contains one or more mailboxes

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After moving all mailboxes from a mailbox database to other mailbox databases (both in Exchange 2016), including archive and arbitration mailboxes the mailbox database still cannot be deleted. Trying to remove the mailbox database still generates the following error message:

This mailbox database contains one or more mailboxes, mailbox plans, archive mailboxes, public folder mailboxes or arbitration mailboxes, Audit mailboxes. To get a list of all mailboxes in this database, run the command Get-Mailbox -Database <Database ID>. To get a list of all mailbox plans in this database, run the command Get-MailboxPlan.

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Get-Mailbox -Arbitration or Get-Mailbox -Archive doesn’t return anything.

Exchange 2016 introduced a new type of mailbox, the auditlog mailbox. This can be returned by the Get-Mailbox -Auditlog command:

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Move this auditlog mailbox to another mailbox database and the old mailbox is now fully empty and can be deleted.

Exchange

REGISTRY_FILTER_DRIVER_EXCEPTION (swin1.sys)

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A blue screen on your Windows box, is there anyone that has never seen it? One place you don’t want to see this is on your Exchange server.

While upgrading 3 Exchange 2013 CU12 servers for a customer to Exchange 2013 CU15 I experienced a blue screen while updating the UM components, resulting in the following screen:

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A quick search on Google (search on “swin1.sys”) revealed that McAfee was the culprit. I’m not a fan of installing (file level) anti-virus software on an Exchange server, and IMHO it’s not needed when you have a properly secured environment.

I was successful installing CU15 on the Edge Transport servers earlier, but it turned out that these servers were not running McAfee software.

Uninstalling the McAfee agent is not a big deal, just a matter of deselecting the server in the EPO console. The McAfee Solidifier didn’t want to uninstall, not via the EPO console nor via Add/Remove Programs.

According to the McAfee knowledgebase article KB75902 you can uninstall this software using a command line with the following commands:

sc stop scsrvc
sc delete scsrvc
sc delete swin
"\Program Files (x86)\McAfee\Common Framework\Mctray.exe" unloadplugin=scormcpl.dll
del /Q "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\swin.sys"
rmdir /S /Q C:\Solidcore
rmdir /S /Q "C:\Program Files\McAfee\Solidcore"
rmdir /S /Q "C:\ProgramData\McAfee\Solidcore"
reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Network Associates\ePolicy Orchestrator\Application Plugins\SOLIDCOR5000_WIN" /f
reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Features\4E9BD2348836F234A9BD168E87F25439" /f
reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products\4E9BD2348836F234A9BD168E87F25439" /f
reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{432DB9E4-6388-432F-9ADB-61E8782F4593}" /f

After running these commands and a reboot I was able to finalize the installation of Exchange 2013 CU15.

Exchange

Updated Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator

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The Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator which you need for designing a proper Exchange 2013 or Exchange 2016 on-premises environment has been updates, currently the calculator is at version 8.4.

Some new functionality is added to this version:

  • Added support for ReplayLagMaxDelay
  • Added support for SafetyNetHoldTime in CreateDAG.ps1

And seven bug fixes in this version:

  • Improved the DAG auto-calculation results display to highlight deployment configuration in both datacenters
  • Fixed an issue that prevented DAG auto-calculation in single site DAG deployments
  • Fixed a SPECInt2006 validation issue with DAG auto-calculation
  • Fixed a bug with the DAG auto-calculation with Active/Passive deployments
  • Fixed conditional formatting issues with the transaction log table
  • Removed data validation from certain unused cells on the Input tab
  • Fixed bug in calcNumActiveDBsSF formula

The requirements calculator can be downloaded here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Exchange-2013-Server-Role-f8a61780

More information:

Exchange

Exchange 2016 CU4

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On Tuesday december 13, 2016 Microsoft has released its quaterly updates:

and Update Rollups:

Looking at Exchange 2016, what does this CU bring us?

There are minor changes to the user interface of Outlook on the Web or Outlook Web App, whatever you may call it. It’s not that dramatically, the formatting controls have been moved to the bottom of the frame containing the editing pane, as can be seen on the following screenshot.

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And finally, there’s support for the .NET Framework 4.6.2. Using .NET Framework 4.6.2 is still optional (but recommended), but the upcoming release in March 2017 (Exchange 2016 CU5) will require the use of .NET Framework 4.6.2.

As you might have noticed, Exchange 2016 CU3 (the previous release) introduced support for Windows Server 2016. This was also announced at the Ignite 2016 in Atlanta. Unfortunately there was a major flaw in Windows 2016 clustering that caused issues with Exchange 2016 in a Database Availability Group configuration. This has now been fixed by the Windows team (KB3206632), and Exchange 2016 again fully supports Windows 2016. The hotfix is mentioned is mandatory, and the setup application does a check for this hotfix.

Exchange 2016 does not introduce any new schema changes, but you may execute setup.exe /prepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms to make sure any changes in the configuration partition are applied successfully.

As usual, and especially after the latest issues with Exchange 2016 CU3 and Windows 2016 I strongly encourage everybody to thoroughly test Exchange 2016 CU4 (or any other update that’s needed of course) in your lab environment before bringing it into production!