I have a unbound model setup for my DAG with 5 members at site01 and 3 members at site02.  The witness is at site01.  As I understand it, because I have an even number of members in my DAG I need to have the Witness to maintain quorum.  In the scenario that I lose site01 which would take out my witness as well, would I be ok without the witness server vote for quorum because I am left with an odd (3) members in the DAG at site02?  Would my resultant 3 member DAG be ok without the witness?

Thank you for your help.

I'm going to resize our mail databases because they are too large, and I'm looking for advice as to choosing the right size.

Currently we have 6 databases, each 500-750gb and I want to break them into smaller DBs, maybe 150-200gb each. 500gb files make administration difficult whenever we need to deal with one of them. For example, all our Exchange servers are virtual machines, so we're always terrified to migrate storage since any slight network problem can cause the migration to crash (don't ask me how I know). I'm also hoping that reducing the file size will shorten the backup window since I can get more backup streams going simultaneously.

Our DAG is 4 servers: 2 at one location, and 2 at another offsite location. All servers contain active databases. We also have 3 copies of each database, one on each of the other servers. That's a total of 24 copies, including the live DBs.

We have plenty of storage, memory, procs, bandwidth, etc., so I don't have to worry about stretching resources.

I know I will have many more DBs and copies to manage, but I will trade that administration issue for better manageability of the storage sizes of the DBs.

Anyone have experience with multiple DBs in a DAG, with different DB file sizes? I’m looking for pros and cons, any “gotchas” that I may be missing, etc.

Thanks!
Dan

Dan

Hi Guys,

I am in the process of setting up DAG for the very first time on Exchange 2013.  Below is what I have done:
- Installed Exchange 2013 std on two VMs

- Configured a witness server

- Created the DAG (Name, Witness Server, Witness Directory and assigned it an IP)

- I have configured my databases and added the database copy

- Verified DAG health and confirmed Active, and index state as Healthy

- Verified Databases are mounted

Here is the problem I have. . . .

When I powerdown one of the exchange servers, after the exchange server begins to shut down Outlook (2013) , displays "Folder last updated xx:xx.  trying to connect"
When I check the connection status within Outlook on the workstations it shows the status as "Connecting" and after a few minutes (between 5 - 10) it finally connects and everything works fine.

I have tried researching this issue and have used the following command in hope this would resolve the problem, but it hasn't

[PS] C:\>Get-OutlookAnywhere | Set-OutlookAnywhere -InternalHostname mail.labtest.co.uk -InternalClientsRequireSsl $false

My questions are:
1. I assume that this isn't right that it takes over 5 minutes for Outlook to connect when the DAG failover occurs?  What additional steps should be checked to prevent this (as I thought it should take seconds to flick over)

2.  If a witness server goes down/fails, does this mean that all clients Email will stop working (i.e send/receiving)

If this is the case, is it possible to configure a witness failover? or is this something that would need to be created in the event of a failure?

Many thanks for any assistance in this.

Event 806 is continuously generated in HA Monitoring Event logs.

Also Event 1018 and 1008 are registered indicating that two-copy health check failed and then passed. 

Are 806 errors generated due to not having 2 copies of each database?

We currently have one passive copy for each database in the DAG and they are all mounted and healthy.

Ash422

trying to configure a mailbox for IMAP in exchange 2013 using Outlook 2013. 

seeing in the logs

authenticate,NTLM,"R=""172v NO AUTHENTICATE failed

88yf NO Server Unavailable. 15"

restarted the services on front and backend servers.  got cas and mbx servers separate.

thoughts please ... thank you

I have this little app running on a server it sends emails out to about 60  to 80 people daily.  I pointed to use the new hardware load balancer VIP and since then I am noticing the following in the applications log file:

Unable To Sent Mail : user@domain.com . Error: Service not available, closing transmission channel. The server response was: 4.4.2 Message submission rate for this client has exceeded the configured limit.

The receive connectors setup to use this new Load Balancers IP hasUNLIMTED Message Rate Limit when I run this command:  Get-ReceiveConnector | ft Name,MessageRateLimit

I am wondering may be the sending application is using other default receive connectors to send (some of them have Limit of 5) ---- so I searched ALL the SMTP receive logs on the CAS servers and mailbox servers but I don’t find nothing referencing to

The Unable To Sent Mail : user@domain.com . Error: Service not available, closing transmission channel. The server response was: 4.4.2 Message submission rate for this client has exceeded the configured limit.

All the receive connectors on all servers are set for verbose logging. I have also restarted the transport services on all cas and mbx servers numerous times.

Any thoughts?

Note: If I point this app server back to the WNLB IP it works fine.

Hi Team,

Exchange 2010 Database size increase daily 3 Gb 

Please help me 

Satish Chaturvedi Mob-9990806001

Hello,

Not quite sure where to post this.

I have few legacy apps running on Windows 2008 servers which relay mail via our exchange 2013 anonymously.   I am thinking to enable SMTP service on the Windows 2008 server and have that authenticate against our exchange 2013 Load balanced VIP/receive connectors. Once that works then point this legacy application towards this SMTP Service on the same server. Will this work and makes sense? 

I am testing it and looks like I cannot seem to get it going?

thank you

New to Exchange 2013, new to DAG entirely.   We're standing up a DAG with 4 members across 2 sites.   Site1 is primary, Site2 is DR. I have a specific case that is causing me issue that I'm not sure how to remediate.

Take the following database configuration example:

     Site1:  Server1:  DB1  (Active, 1)   #number represents activation preference

     Site1:  Server2:  DB1  (Copy, 2)

     Site1:  Server2:  DB2  (Active, 1)

     Site2:  Server3:  DB1  (Copy, 3)

     Site2:  Server4:  DB1  (Copy, 4)

     Site2:  Server4:  DB2  (Copy, 2)

The DAG is configured in DAC mode.

Requirement:  Allow DB1 to failover automatically in Site1 but never automatically fail to Site2. 

In an attempt to configure for my requirement I set the servers DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy toIntrasiteOnly.  However it has caused an unintended issue I'm not sure how to resolve.

When I run Test-ReplicationHealth cmdlet, Server2 and Server4 report *FAILED* for DatabaseAvailability due to there only being one copy of DB2 in each site making an intrasite failover impossible for that specific database.

What is the best/correct way to handle this requirement?

Instead of setting DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy -IntrasiteOnlyat the server level, should I instead Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy using theActivationOnly parameter at the database level for my DR copies?  Or should I simply live with seeing a *failed* status for Test-ReplicationHealth (which runs as part of my daily monitoring scripts)?

We are planning to add another CAS in our Exchange environment for load balancing and we are going to use DNS load balancing for a while. I have configured virtual directories like the following example:

mail.contoso.local/owa for internal access 

mail.contoso.com/owa for external access

the question is: after adding another CAS, should the virtual directory settings be the same across all Client Access Servers?

Hi, hope You guys will be able to help with one of the issues we start seeing on the Exchange Server 2013 backups.

I can see errors reporting on the Windows Event Viewer with Event 2005 > Event 904 > Event 914 in future this might cause some serious issues with Databases randomly dismounting.

Below are the details of each Events:

Event 904 ESE BACKUP - ..store.Worker… Callback function call ErrESECBPrepareInstanceForBackup ended with error…

Event 914 ESE BAKCUP - The surrogate backup has stopped with error 0x50D

I will much appreciate any input from engineers who experienced similar problems. 

Let me know if you require any further details.

Cheers, Tomek

In the midst of migration from ex2010 to ex2013.

autodiscover.domain.com is the name of existing cas array wnlb.

Added a new hardware LB and gave a new name outlook.domain.com.  All is good with 3 cas 2013 servers.

Got 2 mailbox servers 2013.  Created a DAG and created first DB1 and added a copy. 

When I ran the

get-mailboxdatabase | ft name, rpcclientaccessserver the DB1 is pointing to autodiscover.domain.com.  It should point to

outlook.domain.com.  I updated the DB1 to point to outlook.domain.com using the ADSI edit and after few hours it goes back to  autodiscover.domain.com.

Not sure whats happening here....?

hello,

Here is my situation. I have a 2010 environment. I introduced a 2013 environment that consist of:

DAG has two nodes both have MBX and CAS roles:

MBXNode1 and MBXNode2

A standalone mailbox server:

MBXNode3 

A standalone CAS server:

CASNode4

I moved few mailbox to new DAG including the admin mailbox and the arbitration mailbox. So far coexistence works fine ( I am not including all the certs details here). For some reason, a junior admin compromised both 2013 DAG nodes to a point of no return. We do not have any backups of the databases on the DAG which is fine because we only moved few test/non critical mailboxes (except for the arbitration maybe). We are planning on building two new nodes and form new DAG and not use the disaster recovery switch but my question is about the cleanup. I know I can use ADSIEDIT to clean the computer names and the DAG but how can I clean the mailboxes that were already moved?

Hi, we have an Exchange 2013 server in a small Server 2012 environment. We have a high speed leased line for the main WAN connection, and a painfully slow DSL connection as a failover.

Today the leased line failed and stayed offline for about 8 hours (ISP fault). Our cisco RV042 router correctly switched over to the DSL line, and of course this is when we realised that Exchange won't work on the failover line because everything is set up to work on the IP address of the leased line.

So my question is, what would be the best practice way to ensure high availability of Exchange in the event that our leased line fails again? We currently have a domain with mail. owa. and autodiscover. prefixes, which all point to the leased line IP, and we have a SAN SSL certificate which names these addresses.

My initial thoughts are that setting up mail2.domain.com as a second MX record would be a good start, however will this cause problems with our SAN certificate which doesn't explicitly name this URL? Or will this not matter for incoming mail? Also we have a lot of clients accessing from outside the building, so getting client access sorted in a failover event is also important - would round robin DNS on the owa. and autodiscover. addresses work for this? Or is that likely to cause a lot of problems with 50% of clients attempting to reach the failover address when we have normal service on the leased line (meaning the failover line won't be connected)?

I will admit that this is an area I'm not well versed in, which is why I'm posting here asking for advice rather than trying to muddle through.

I am setting this copier for scan to mail.  Created a new custom receive connector with smtp auth and we fire the test but noting gets delivered and here is the log from the cas 2013 server.

2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,3,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,<,EHLO copierX.domain.com,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,4,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,*,SMTPAcceptAnyRecipient,Set Session Permissions
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,5,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-CAS-Hello [100.100.x.x],
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,6,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-SIZE,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,7,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-PIPELINING,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,8,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-DSN,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,9,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,10,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-STARTTLS,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,11,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-AUTH NTLM LOGIN,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,12,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-8BITMIME,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,13,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250-BINARYMIME,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,14,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,250 CHUNKING,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,15,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,<,AUTH LOGIN,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,16,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,334 <authentication response>,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.774Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,17,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,334 <authentication response>,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.821Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,18,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,*,SMTPSubmit SMTPAcceptAnyRecipient BypassAntiSpam AcceptRoutingHeaders,Set Session Permissions
2016-05-17T16:36:40.821Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,19,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,*,domain/copierX,authenticated
2016-05-17T16:36:40.868Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,20,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,*,,Proxy session was successfully set up. Session for domain/copierX will now be proxied
2016-05-17T16:36:40.868Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,21,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,>,235 2.7.0 Authentication successful,
2016-05-17T16:36:40.915Z,CAS\Custom Relay Connector,08D37E702B63431B,22,IP-ADDRESS-CAS2013:25,100.100.x.x:64851,-,,Remote(SocketError)

thoughts?

Why is by DAG DB showing Content Index State: Unknown in the Exchange Admin center.  2 Node DAG Active Passive.  Been reading around and found quite a few information but doesnot apply to my situation.

thanks

Good afternoon and happy Friday!

I have an interesting puzzle.

We have an Exchange 2013 environment with four servers: three servers participating in a DAG, and a fourth as an archive/management server. One of the DAG nodes is in a DR site connected via metro Ethernet. The remaining servers are in our main production data center. all four nodes have all services installed on them.

This is my first time managing a DAG, and we are approaching our yearly DR test. I am trying to determine the best way to test the exchange environment without causing problems to the production network, which will remain active during the entirety of the test. (We are a 24/7 shop and can't exactly bring things down for a day for testing.)

How we normally perform these DR tests is we disconnect the metro Ethernet connection between the data center and the DR site, simulating the total loss of the data center from the DR site's point of view.  I expect that the DR node will detect the loss of the other two nodes and bring itself active, but what happens when the test is over and we reconnect the metro Ethernet?

Thank you in advance for any assistance or advice.

I have 2 Site DAG. In normal mode quorum is in the Main Site. PAM is also in the Main Site. Datacenter Activation mode – DAG Only.

After maintenance and reboot of server in DR Site, servers can’t determinate database status of each other. But replication and replaying logs works fine. Server in DR site can’t connect to PAM.

Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Status -Identity MYDAG | fl name,primaryActiveManager in DR Site takes very long time and can’t determinate PAM in the end. After a long time output is:

WARNING: Unable to get Primary Active Manager information due to an Active

Manager call failure. Error: An Active Manager operation failed. Error: An

Active Manager operation encountered an error. To perform this operation, the

server must be a member of a database availability group, and the database

availability group must have quorum. Error: Automount consensus not reached.

[Server: DRExch.mydomain.local]

Test-replicationhealth in DR Site

Server          Check                      Result     Error

------          -----                      ------     -----

DRExch ClusterService             Passed

DRExch ReplayService              Passed

DRExch ActiveManager              *FAILED*   Active Manager is in an unknown state on server 'DRExch'. Basic database administrative operations such as mounting or dismounting an…

DRExch TasksRpcListener           Passed

DRExch TcpListener                Passed

DRExch ServerLocatorService       Passed

DRExch DagMembersUp               Passed

DRExch DatabaseRedundancy         *FAILED*   Failures:...

DRExch DatabaseAvailability       *FAILED*   Failures:...

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus in DR Site.

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus * | where {$_.name -like "*DRExch" -or $_.name -like "*MAINExch"} | ft

Name                                          Status          CopyQueue ReplayQueue LastInspectedLogTime

                                                              Length    Length

----                                          ------          --------- ----------- --------------------

DB1\MAINExch                  ServiceDown     0         0

DB2\MAINExch                 ServiceDown     0         0

DB3\MAINExch               ServiceDown     0         0

DB4\MAINExch                  ServiceDown     0         0

DB5\MAINExch                 ServiceDown     0         0

DB6\MAINExch               ServiceDown     0         0

DB7\MAINExch                ServiceDown     0         0

DB5\DRExch                 Healthy         0         0           5/22/2016 11:57:37 AM

DB2\DRExch                 Healthy         0         0           5/22/2016 11:59:56 AM

DB4\DRExch                  Healthy         0         0           5/22/2016 11:49:19 AM

DB1\DRExch                  Healthy         0         0           5/22/2016 11:54:42 AM

DB3\DRExch               Healthy         0         0           5/22/2016 11:55:45 AM

DB6\DRExch               Healthy         0         0           5/22/2016 11:54:11 AM

DB7\DRExch                Healthy         0         0           5/22/2016 11:50:58 AM

In main Site this command works well and says that the server in main site is PAM.

Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Status -Identity MYDAG | fl name,primaryActiveManager in MAIN Site

Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Status -Identity MYDAG | fl name,primaryactivemanager

Name                 : MYDAG

PrimaryActiveManager : MAINExch

Test-replicationhealth in MAIN Site

Server          Check                      Result     Error

------          -----                      ------     -----

MAINExch ClusterService             Passed

MAINExch ReplayService              Passed

MAINExch ActiveManager              Passed

MAINExch TasksRpcListener           Passed

MAINExch TcpListener                Passed

MAINExch ServerLocatorService       Passed

MAINExch DagMembersUp               Passed

MAINExch MonitoringService          Passed

MAINExch ClusterNetwork             Passed

MAINExch QuorumGroup                Passed

MAINExch FileShareQuorum            Passed

MAINExch DatabaseRedundancy         *FAILED*   Failures:...

MAINExch DatabaseAvailability       *FAILED*   Failures:...

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus in MAIN Site.

Name                                          Status          CopyQueue ReplayQueue LastInspectedLogTime

                                                              Length    Length

----                                          ------          --------- ----------- --------------------

DB1\MAINExch                  Mounted     0         0

DB2\MAINExch                 Mounted     0         0

DB3\MAINExch               Mounted     0         0

DB4\MAINExch                  Mounted     0         0

DB5\MAINExch                 Mounted     0         0

DB6\MAINExch               Mounted     0         0

DB7\MAINExch                Mounted     0         0

DB5\DRExch                 ServiceDown         0         0          

DB2\DRExch                 ServiceDown         0         0          

DB4\DRExch                  ServiceDown         0         0         

DB1\DRExch                  ServiceDown         0         0          

DB3\DRExch               ServiceDown         0         0          

DB6\DRExch               ServiceDown         0         0          

DB7\DRExch                ServiceDown         0         0         

MYDAG configuration is below

Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup MYGAG | fl

RunspaceId                             : b4e31455-78d2-43ee-bd92-e9f570403ce9

Name                                   : MYGAG

Servers                                : {EXCHMain, EXCHDr}

WitnessServer                          : srv02cas15p.domain.local

WitnessDirectory                       : C:\MYGAG

AlternateWitnessServer                 : srv01cas15p.domain.local

AlternateWitnessDirectory              : C:\MYGAG

NetworkCompression                     : InterSubnetOnly

NetworkEncryption                      : InterSubnetOnly

ManualDagNetworkConfiguration          : False

DatacenterActivationMode               : DagOnly

StoppedMailboxServers                  : {}

StartedMailboxServers                  : {EXCHDr.domain.local, EXCHMain.domain.local}

DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIpv4Addresses : {10.110.128.126, 10.100.128.126}

DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIpAddresses   : {10.110.128.126, 10.100.128.126}

AllowCrossSiteRpcClientAccess          : False

OperationalServers                     :

PrimaryActiveManager                   :

ServersInMaintenance                   :

ServersInDeferredRecovery              :

ThirdPartyReplication                  : Disabled

ReplicationPort                        : 64327

NetworkNames                           : {}

WitnessShareInUse                      :

DatabaseAvailabilityGroupConfiguration :

AutoDagSchemaVersion                   : 1.0

AutoDagDatabaseCopiesPerDatabase       : 1

AutoDagDatabaseCopiesPerVolume         : 1

AutoDagTotalNumberOfDatabases          : 0

AutoDagTotalNumberOfServers            : 0

AutoDagDatabasesRootFolderPath         : C:\ExchangeDatabases

AutoDagVolumesRootFolderPath           : C:\ExchangeVolumes

AutoDagAllServersInstalled             : False

AutoDagAutoReseedEnabled               : True

AutoDagDiskReclaimerEnabled            : True

AutoDagBitlockerEnabled                : False

AutoDagFIPSCompliant                   : False

ReplayLagManagerEnabled                : False

MailboxLoadBalanceMaximumEdbFileSize   :

MailboxLoadBalanceRelativeLoadCapacity :

MailboxLoadBalanceOverloadedThreshold  :

MailboxLoadBalanceUnderloadedThreshold :

MailboxLoadBalanceEnabled              : False

AdminDisplayName                       :

ExchangeVersion                        : 0.10 (14.0.100.0)

DistinguishedName                      : CN=MYGAG,CN=Database Availability Groups,CN=Exchange Administrative Group

                                          (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT),CN=Administrative Groups,CN=domain,CN=Microsoft Exchange,

                                        CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=domain,DC=local

Identity                               : MYGAG

Guid                                   : 61920fc9-6496-4bc3-ab78-341eaedb2917

ObjectCategory                         : domain.local/Configuration/Schema/ms-Exch-MDB-Availability-Group

ObjectClass                            : {top, msExchMDBAvailabilityGroup}

WhenChanged                            : 09.02.2016 11:06:01

WhenCreated                            : 09.02.2016 9:55:54

WhenChangedUTC                         : 09.02.2016 8:06:01

WhenCreatedUTC                         : 09.02.2016 6:55:54

OrganizationId                         :

Id                                     : MYGAG

OriginatingServer                      : dcp.domain.local

IsValid                                : True

ObjectState                            : Unchanged

There are errors in Microsoft - Exchange - Managed availability - monitoring on both sides for all databases. Example

Connectivity between servers is OK. MS failover cluster also shows that servers are UP.

What can be the reason of this strange behavior and how can I fix it?

Hi Guys

Can someone please help. I have exchange 2013 in the business . Someone as delete my mailbox and created a new mailbox. I can not access my previous emails. I try restore my mailbox from a backup it say " The job failed with the following error: The object was not found, or could not be accessed (Exchange restore)".

Thanks

KLTPILL