If you get the following error message after migrating over to Exchange 2010:
Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Unable to open the Outlook window. The set of folders could not be opened.
It is because the default with Exchange 2010 is encrypted RPC traffic. This is easily rectified, you can find the encrption setting in MS Exchange mail properties under control panel for the PC. See here for more information.
When creating the CSR in Exchange 2010 ensure that all entries are made in lowercase. For whatever reason, mixing upper and lower case letters just seem to cause problems! See here on how to create Exchange 2010 CSRs.
I encountered problems with Outlook Anywhere complaining about MSSTD authentication and even the certificate provider automated system not authorising mixed case certificates. Especially when the certificate request doesn’t match (case wise) the common name: Example being CN = Mcdonalds.co.uk and using sync.McDonalds.co.uk or Legacy@McDonalds.co.uk. Notice the problem of the capital ‘D’.
Found a great write up here on how to use Windows Backup Server (ntbackup replacement).
This is particular useful for truncating Exchange logs, especially when you perform VMware level backups on Exchange servers.
I solved a whole load of problems with getting Outlook Anywhere to work by enabling IPv6. The customer had disabled IPv6 using a registry setting on their domain controllers and Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer would continually fail its testing with RPC_S_UNAVAILABLE (ox6ba) errors. Removal of the offending registry setting and checking the IPv6 box in TCP/IP protocols for the network adapter solved the problem.
Use IIS Manager to simplify the Outlook Web App URL when SSL is required
You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the “IIS Manager” entry in the Client Access Permissions topic.
The full articule can be found here.
There doesn’t appear to be any gui solution to this, so you need to run the following commands to backup and restore respectively.
Backup -> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe add backup “My Backup Name”
Resotre -> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe add restore “My Backup Name”
Further information can be found here.
If you ever find yourself having problems starting the VMware vCenter server always check that the default ports 80 & 443 haven’t been used elsewhere. I recently did an install for the customer and a couple of days later the vCenter console wouldn’t load up. Upon further inspection, I noticed the vCenter services not starting. The event log reported the following:-
The description for Event ID 1000 from source VMware VirtualCenter Server cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.
If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.
The following information was included with the event:
Failed to initialize VMware VirtualCenter. Shutting down…
the message resource is present but the message is not found in the string/message table.
We also had the following event logged:
The description for Event ID 1000 from source VMware VirtualCenter Server cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.
If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.
The following information was included with the event:
Error getting configuration info from the database
the message resource is present but the message is not found in the string/message table
There was nothing much more to report, not even in the Virtual Center logs. Turns out that by doing the following: http://localhost on the Virtual Center server, the server reported the following: This site is running TeamViewer. Apparently the customer decided to install their remote management software which effectively usurped the ports used by Virtual Center. I removed the software and everything started up without a problem.
Microsoft have just released a white paper on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 – you can pick it up from here.
Overview
TCPDump have a great write up on why and how to align Windows Server disks – see here. It’s not necessary with Server 2008 as this will automatically offset to 1024 out-of-the-box. Also, with VMware if you create the partition using the GUI this will auto align the partition.