Error Adding Members to a DAG on Server 2012

Ran into an error this morning trying to add members to a DAG running on Server 2012

When I try to add the nodes to the DAG I got the error

“You must provide an value for this property”

Decided I better do some reading on TechNet regarding 2010 DAGs and Server 2012 and it turns out that you must pre-stage the CNO (Cluster Named Object)

The documentation states

Pre-staging the CNO is required for Windows Server 2012 DAG members due to permissions changes in Windows Server 2012 for computer objects.

There are 2 methods to achieve the pre-staging.

1. Add the “Exchange Trusted Subsystem” group with Full Control to the CNO
2. Add the first DAG member with Full Control to the CNO

For me I choose to add the “Exchange Trusted Subsystem”

Adding the Nodes to the DAG after making the necessary changes worked without issue

Rebuilding an Exchange DAG

Recently I’ve been working with a customer where their DAG has been misbehaving.

The DAG was stretched between 2 AD sites. There were multiple issues with cluster resources in addition to the PAM (Primary Active Manager) not failing over properly

After looking at it for a few hours I decided that the best course of action would be to rebuild the DAG

The following are the steps required in order to remove the DAG and rebuild it

• Remove All Database Copies from the DAG

Remove-MailboxDatabaseCopy “DBName\ServerToRemove” –Confirm:$False

• Turn off DataCenter Activation Mode

Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Identity DAG1 -DatacenterActivationMode Off

• Remove the MailboxServers from the DAG

Remove-MailboxDatabaseAvailabilityServer DAG1 –MailboxServer ServerToRemove

Be sure to allow time for replication to occur between executing commands

• Recreate the DAG

New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Name DAG1 –WitnessServer “WitnessServer” -WitnessDirectory D:\DAG1  -DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIpAddresses 192.168.100.100,192.168.101.100

• Add the servers back into the DAG

Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity DAG1 –MailboxServer “SourceMBXServer”
repeat this command for all servers that you wish to add

• Enable Database Activation Mode

Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Identity DAG1 -DatacenterActivationMode DAGOnly

• Finally Add the mailboxdatabase copy server

Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy –Identity DBName -MailboxServer MBXServerToAdd -ActivationPreference 2

• Finally we can test the Primary Active Manager Failover

Cluster.exe DAG1.DOMAIN.LOCAL Group “Cluster Group” /MoveTo:PassiveServerNode

Error 0x800706D9 deploying Exchange 2010 Client Access Servers

As part of a large scale migration from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 I’ve been installing  a number of Client Access Server using the SP2 binaries of Exchange 2010

The servers displayed the error below when installing the Client Access Server role complaining about End Point mappings

 

After digging around the ExchangeSetup.log file located in the C:\ExchangeSetupLogs folder I noticed that setup was trying to configure some firewall rules

I checked the status of the Firewall and sure enough it was disabled.

All servers were deployed from a template which has the firewall disabled.

I uninstalled Exchange from the server, set the firewall to Automatic and rebooted.

After the reboot the Exchange Client Access role installed on all servers without issue.

Public Folders Fail to Replicate between 2007 and 2010

I have just migrated a company from a mixed 2003 & 2007 environment to 2010.

2003 server removed successfully without issue, however when trying to add the 2010 server as a public folder replica the issues began.

Lots of 1020 MSExchangeStoreDriver and 3091 Replication Errors in the event logs

Finally tracked the issue down to the server object in First Administrative Group in ADSIEDIT.

Open adsiedit and check if there any objects in

CN=Servers,CN=Fist administrative group,CN=Administrative Groups,CN=Erste Organisation,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=domain,DC=local. Is the container “CN=Servers”

If servers is empty, then delete it.

Full blog post available at

http://get-exchange.blogspot.com/2009/11/public-folder-mayhem-exchange-2010.html?showComment=1260569369909#c8199449617092465069

Exchange 2010 SP1 Fails

Recently while patching Exchange 2010 servers one Mailbox server failed to patch throwing the error

Some controls aren’t valid. Setup previously failed while performing the action “Install”. You can’t resume setup by performaing the action “BuildToBuildUpgrade”.

The solution was a painless affair

Open up registry editor…

1. HKLM\software\microsoft\exchangeserver\V14\
2. Export Key hive for backup.
3. Look in each “role” folder (MailboxRole, HubTransportRole, etc) and delete any key labelled “Watermark” and “Action”

Setup completed after performing the steps above.

How to Issue a SAN Certificate to Exchange Server 2010 from a Private Certificate Authority

There is a great tutorial over on ExchangeServerPro by Paul Cunningham on how to setup a SAN cert for Exchange 2010 using an internal PKI

See here for full tutorial post.