Aka. The Greatest Hits Collection…

Overview

Over the years, I’ve found a common reason for blogging is not only to share information with others, but also to help yourself when enough days have passed that you’ve forgotten your own advice. In my role as a Domain/Practice Lead in our Support organization, there are certain posts of mine that I frequently refer people to as well as find myself using in the field.

With that in mind, here’s a list of some of my most commonly referenced posts, along with reasons why they’ve proven useful:

Note: Like having a resource for Exchange troubleshooting tips? I’d also recommend the Exchange Server Troubleshooting Companion that Paul Cunningham and I wrote. You’ll likely find many of these within it as well.

Quick method to diagnose Exchange Active Directory Access & Service Startup Issues

Info: Active Directory and DNS issues are one of the most common Exchange support issues. When Exchange is having service startup issues or random failures, it’s useful to be able to utilize Event Viewer to determine if Exchange is properly able to access the Global Catalog servers in the environment.

Checking for Open Relay in Exchange 2007/2010 (and Exchange 2013/2016)

Info: The most useful piece of information from this post (aside from explaining the differences between SMTP Relay and Submit) is the below command I frequently use to check for Receive Connectors that have been configured as an Open Relay:

Get-ReceiveConnector | Get-ADPermission -User “NT Authority\Anonymous Logon” | Where-Object {$_.ExtendedRights -like “ms-Exch-SMTP-Accept-Any-Recipient”} | Format-List Identity,ExtendedRights

Quick method to determine installed version of .NET Framework

Info: With Exchange 2013, it became extremely important to ensure you were running on the appropriate (and supported) version of .NET Framework. A quick method to determine this (given to me by my good friend and fellow Exchange MCM Mark Henderson) is to use the below command to pull the currently installed .NET version, then compare it to the versions listed in the post:

(Get-ItemProperty ‘HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full’ -Name Release).Release

Once again, Unchecking IPv6 on a NIC Breaks Exchange 2013

Info: Probably my most commonly referenced topic when it comes to Exchange networking; IPv6. Microsoft’s statement is fairly simple when it comes to IPv6 (this goes for every product line), they perform zero testing or validation on Windows with IPv6 disabled. Simply put, good luck with disabling it. The point of my post is that should you choose to disable it, do it via the registry and NOT just unchecking it on the NIC.

Common Support Issues with Transport Agents

Info: Transport Agents are a common cause of mail flow issues with Exchange, at least when they’re misbehaving. At the very least, know how to utilize the “Get-TransportAgent” command and what each Transport Agent does, especially the third-party agents.

ActiveSync Synching Folders but not Mail

Info: While this post initially focuses on ActiveSync, the real issue it addresses is the impact of corruption on a mailbox, as well as why it’s not a good idea to run an ESEUTIL /P on a database

Incorrectly Adding New Receive Connector Breaks Exchange 2013 Transport

Info: This is a fairly common issue with Exchange 2013 (though technically the GUI should now prevent this issue from happening) where two different Exchange Transport services could end up listening on the same port number and causing issues

Understanding controller caching and Exchange performance

Info: Working for a hardware vendor, I spent a lot of my time helping customers with their storage solutions for Exchange. I commonly get pulled into Exchange Calculator or Jetstress escalations and this post has become a very useful reference for explaining the importance Controller Caching, even when using an Exchange JBOD architecture.

Overcoming corruption during mailbox moves

Info: I could retire if I had a dollar for every hour I’ve spent helping customers overcome corruption issues with Exchange, usually the result of running an ESEUTIL /p and not vacating the database afterwards. This is a great reference I like to send customers and frontline phone agents which describes how to recover from such corruption.

CPU Contention and Exchange Virtual Machines

Info: In past conferences like IT Dev Connections, I’ve said that CPU overcomittment and the resulting contention is THE most common Exchange Virtualization support issue I encounter. This is a great article to send to someone who is struggling to understand how CPU overcomittment works and still somehow thinks that virtualization is just magic, where you can give a VM as many resources as you want and it will just work 🙂

A Practical Look at Exchange Database Internals — Part 1

A Practical Look at Exchange Database Internals Part 2: Transaction Logging and Recovery

Info: These articles are great references when attempting to explain or understand Exchange Transaction logging. This topic is important to understand when working with Exchange Backups, DAG log shipping, and HA recovery.

Legacy Public Folder remnants in Exchange 2013 cause “The Microsoft Exchange Administrator has made a change…” prompt

Info: A very common issue encountered after an improperly performed Legacy-to-Modern Public Folder migration which results in Outlook pop-ups.

Unable to Delete Exchange 2016 Database

Info: A common issue when attempting to delete an Exchange Mailbox Database (typically the first one which was created by the system). The important commands to remember from this post are the following:

Get-Mailbox –Database MailboxDatabase –Arbitration

Get-Mailbox –Database MailboxDatabase –AuditLog

Bad NIC Settings Cause Internal Messages to Queue with 451 4.4.0 DNS query failed (nonexistent domain)

Info: Going back to my previous statement about improper DNS settings being one of the most common causes of Exchange issues, this post discusses the impact NIC DNS settings can have on an Exchange Server.

Remember the basics when working with Dynamic Distribution Groups (I didn’t)

Intro: I honestly didn’t expect this to be a popular post, but oddly enough, the topic of Dynamic Distribution Lists is a very common one on the forums. While the issue I experienced wasn’t extremely common on its own, the explanations within the post about how DDL’s work has become a common point of reference.

Troubleshooting Issues with Client Access Servers

Info: The blog post that spurred the idea for the Exchange Server Troubleshooting Companion. I often refer people to it when they need to recreate an Exchange Virtual Directory.

Deploying & Configuring Server 2012 R2 Essentials with Office 365

Info: Having spent a lot of time working with small businesses and SBS, I wrote this post hoping to shine a light on the benefits of the Essentials Office 365 integration tools and how they’re a great alternative to using Directory Synchronization for small businesses. I tend to send this link to customers and colleagues once a month as I’ve found most people don’t even know what Essentials is.

As time goes on, I plan to update this post as needed…