Here’s a quick command that will set the amount of days your lagged database is lagged for

Set-MailboxDatabaseCopy –Identity “DatabaseNameServerName” –ReplayLagTime “7.0:0:0”

The Above command will set a lag retention of 7 days, but change the days to what you need (Please note the Maximum is 14 Days)

Just a very quick blog to let you know how you can force an Object Discovery instead of waiting the desired amount of time specified in the Discovery rule which can sometimes take up to 24 hours.

You can just restart the “System Center Management” service and the discovery will kick in straight away

We had an issue recently when we migrated some exchange 2003 mailboxes onto an Exchange 2010 (Please note Exchange 2010 was SP1) Environment.

Basically after the migration all migrated users using Outlook in online mode could only see a blank Global Address List.

After looking into the issue we found that the resolution was to clear the value from the following attribute “msExchQueryBaseDN” via ADSIEDIT for the effected user.

After clearing the value the GAL suddenly appeared correctly

I believe Microsoft are looking into sorting this issue in Exchange 2010 SP2.

We came across an issues recently where one of our Exchange servers in a DAG started having the below errors appear in it’s Event Log.

Event ID 5301

Detected catalog corruption for database Database1

Event ID 123

At ’9/20/2011 3:17:57 PM’ the Microsoft Exchange Information Store Database ‘Database1’ copy on this server experienced a corrupted search catalog. Consult the event log on the server for other “ExchangeStoreDb” and “MSExchange Search Indexer” events for more specific information about the failure. Reseeding the catalog is recommended via the ‘Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy’ task.

Basically the events were pointing to a corrupted catalog, so we simply fixed this by reseeding the catalog from another server that has a valid copy of the catlog via the following command

“Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy –Identity Database1Servername –CatalogOnly”

After running the above the errors disappeared

Just to let you know Exchange 2010 Sp1 Rollup 5 has been released. We have been running it now for 2 weeks in our environment and have noticed no issues with it

Here is the link to the update http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27193

Recently we had an issue on Exchange 2007 that required us to change the mailbox database that the System Attendant Mailbox was located in.

We did this by doing the following

1. Open Adsiedit.msc
2. Connect to the CN=configuration
3. Navigate to CN=Services , CN=Microsoft Exchange, CN=Organisation Name, CN=Administrative Groups ,CN=Administrative Group, CN=Servers, CN=Server Name,  CN=Microsoft System Attendant
4. Right click Microsoft System Attendant and choose properties
5. Select “HomeMDB” in the list and click edit
6. Change the value to the Distinguished Name of the mailbox you would like to move the System Attendant to
7. Click ok and exit
8. Restart the System Attendant service on the mailbox server

Now your System Attendant Mailbox should be moved

Here’s a quick command you can run in AD PowerShell that will give you a list of all Expired accounts in your domain.

Search-ADAccount -AccountExpired | fl Name , AccountExpirationdate

This will give you a list like below.

Name                                    : User1

AccountExpirationdate         : 30/03/2011 00:00:00

Name                                    : User2

AccountExpirationdate         : 23/04/2011 00:00:00

Here’s a quick command you can run in AD PowerShell that will give you a list of all disabled accounts in your domain.

Search-ADAccount -accountdisabled | FL SamAccountName

This will give you a list like below.

SamAccountName : User1

SamAccountName : User 2

SamAccountName : User3

SamAccountName : User4

Came across an issue recently where a customer was unable to delete the first mailbox database they created in their exchange environment due to the following error.

Error:
This mailbox database contains one or more mailboxes, mailbox plans, archive mailboxes, or arbitration 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. To get a list of archive mailboxes in this database, run the command Get-Mailbox -Database <Database ID> -Archive. To get a list of all arbitration mailboxes in this database, run the command Get-Mailbox -Database <Database ID> -Arbitration. To disable a non-arbitration mailbox so that you can delete the mailbox database, run the command Disable-Mailbox <Mailbox ID>. To disable an archive mailbox so you can delete the mailbox database, run the command Disable-Mailbox <Mailbox ID> -Archive. Arbitration mailboxes should be moved to another server; to do this, run the command New-MoveRequest <parameters>. If this is the last server in the organization, run the command Disable-Mailbox <Mailbox ID> -Arbitration -DisableLastArbitrationMailboxAllowed to disable the arbitration mailbox. Mailbox plans should be moved to another server; to do this, run the command Set-MailboxPlan <MailboxPlan ID> -Database <Database ID>.

The issue was that the arbitration mailboxes get place in the first mailbox database you create. Quick way to resolve the problem is to move the arbitration mailboxes by running the following in the Exchange Management Shell.

“Get-Mailbox –Arbitration | New-MoveRequest –TargetDatabase DatabaseName”

Then you should be ok to remove the database now

Just a few easy instructions that will allow you to mount a lagged database in Exchange 2010 into a recovery database. This will allow you restore items/mailboxes that may have got deleted from a maximum of 14 days ago.

In these instructions I will be restoring a mailbox database name  DB01 to the point in to of 03/08/2011. The Database and Transaction logs were located in E:DB01.

The file/database names will differ to your environment so please append steps when needed

1. Log onto Server that holds lagged EDB and create a folder on a drive that will have enough room for me to take a copy of DB01 Database and Log Files

2. Now Suspend database copy on DB01

3. Now copy the EDB from E:DB01 to the folder you created in step one (in my case it was E:RecoveryMBX)

4. Next we need to copy the transaction logs over.  But depending on what transactional logs we choose will be the date the database will be reverted to.

For Example if we want to restore the database to the 03/08 we would copy all transaction logs that got created prior to and including the 03/08. i.e don’t copy anything from the 4^th ,5^th onwards.

5. Now open command prompt and navigate to the folder you create “E:RecoveryMBX”

6. Run the following command “eseutil.exe /r E03 /a /d E:RecoveryMBX /l E:RecoveryMBX”  Please note E03 may need to be changed to  the first 3 letters of the transaction log files that you copied will differ for each mailbox database. Ie some may be E01,E02 etc

7. Next open the Exchange Management Shell and Run “New-MailboxDatabase -Name “RecoveryDB” –Server LagServerName -EdbFilePath “E:RecoveryMBXDB01.EDB” -LogFolderPath “E:RecoveryMBX” –Recovery”

8. Now run Mount-Database “RecoveryDb”

9. If we now run “Get-MailboxStatistics –Database RecoveryDB” this will show us all mailboxes in the recovery database and the last logon time should give you a rough indication on the date the DB has been restored to.

10. Know you can recover anything you like from that recoverydb with the use of the “Restore-Mailbox” cmdlet.

11. Once you have finished with your recoveries run “dismount-database recoverydb” and then “Remove-Mailboxdatabase recoverydb”

12. You can then delete the “E:RecoveryMBX” folder to regain space

13. Finally Resume database copy on DB01