Hello. I have two Exchange 2013 CU3 Standard servers in a DAG. Both servers have both the CAS and Mailboxes roles installed. The servers are running Server 2012 Standard. The DAG uses a file share witness server. The witness server and one Exchange server, which is usually the active server, are on the same subnet in our primary data centre. The second Exchange server is on a different subnet in our backup data centre across town.
My organisation did a test of its datacentre failover capability.
For Exchange, this meant activating the database copies on the server at the backup data centre, and putting the Exchange server at the primary data center into maintenance mode. The co-worker who put the server into maintenance mode reported difficulty in doing that, but is unable to provide details about what exactly happened. After the initial issues, the Exchange server was, however, put into maintenance mode. The witness server was powered off for most of this seven day failover test.
To achieve the failback to normal operations, the Exchange server at the primary data centre was taken out of maintenance mode, and its database copies were activated. The witness server was started up.
The Server 2012 Failover Cluster Manager now reports that the File Share Witness has failed. When I try to bring the witness online, I am presented with an error message stating the following.
An error occurred while attempting to bring the resource ‘File Share Witness’ online.
Error code 0x80070533
The user can’t sign in because this account is currently disabled
Through the Server 2012 Failover Cluster manager, I changed the quorum settings from File Share Witness to Disk Witness. I then tried to change the setting back. That worked in a previous occurrence of these symptoms, but failed with the following error when I specified the file share path.
Access was denied to the share path.
The Exchange Trusted Subsystem is a member of the local administrators group on the server acting as the witness.
The Cluster Events contain some Event ID 1206 entries that state the following.
The computer object associated with the cluster network name resource 'Cluster Name' could not be updated in domain '<fqdn>'. The error code was 'Resource post online'. The cluster identity '<DAGname$>' may lack permissions required
to update the object
Based on the many postings and knowledgebase articles that I have read I gave the disabled DAG computer account Full Control NTFS permissions to the shared folder on the witness server.
I am still unable to bring the File Share Witness online through the Failover Cluster Manager. When I try to change the quorum settings back to File Share Witness, I now get past the point where I specify the shared folder on the witness server. That suggests that the permissions issue has been resolved. I get to the Confirmation box of the quorum configuration wizard. When I click on Next to complete the wizard, I am presented with the following error.
An error was encountered while modifying the quorum settings.
Your cluster quorum settings have not been changed.
There was an error configuring the file share witness '<UNCpathtoshare>'.
The given key was not present in the dictionary.
If you have any insights into this, please share them with me. Thanks.