BES 5.0.3 support for Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode–CDO - no longer supported

The compatibility matrix for BES has been updated to include Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode support, BlackBerry Enterprise Server Compatibility.

When BES 5.0.3 was released I upgraded BES in my Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode environment to resolve a calendar issue preventing meeting management from devices, this was great news for my team as it had caused some pain internally.

I actually performed a fresh install and moved users to the new BES, for me this minimised down time, allowed time for testing and gave me an easy roll back operation.

CDO no longer supported by BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft ® Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode

To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services on BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 SP3:

1. Copy the BlackBerry Enterprise Server installation files to a computer that hosts a BlackBerry Enterprise Server instance.
2. Extract the contents to a folder on the computer.
3. At the command prompt, navigate to <extracted_folder>\tools.
4. Perform one of the following actions:
   • To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services for a specific BlackBerry Enterprise Server , type
     TraitTool -server <server_name> -trait EWSEnable -set true
   • To enable Microsoft Exchange Web Services for all BlackBerry Enterprise Server instances in a BlackBerry Domain, type
     TraitTool -global -trait EWSEnable -set true
5. Press ENTER.
6. Restart the BlackBerry Controller Service for every BlackBerry Enterprise Server modified.

Daniel

Restoring a DAG member, don't forget to evict the node!

Hi,

When restoring a DAG member (please see a previous blog post on how to to do this) it is important to remember to evict the node from the cluster, otherwise errors will occur when you re-introduce it.

The error that will be shown should the server still be a cluster member, when running the cmdlet 'Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer' is shown below:













To remedy this open the Failover Cluster Manager on a valid DAG member. Select the DAG member you are performing DR on, right click it and select "Evict node"












Go back to your open Powershell session and re-run 'Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer' and this should now run succesfully.

You will see it succesfully adding the server to the cluster:












Finally once configuration is complete, it will show the server as a valid member:











You now simply have to reseed any databases that should reside on this DAG member and you are all set!

Take care,

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server

setup.com /m:recoverserver when server is a DAG member

Hi,

You cannot just recover a DAG member using /m:recoverserver, the setup process will notice the server is part of a DAG and stop, as can be seen below.













In order to succesfully recover an Exchange 2010 Server that is a DAG member we must remove it from the DAG. This involves removing any database copies it may have as a DAG member and also removing it from the DAG entirely.

The following process shows how this is done.

1. Remove any Database copies this DAG member may have

Remove-MailboxDatabaseCopy DATABASE\SERVER












2. Remove the server from the DAG it is a member of. Because the server is offline, or a standby server is present ready to be used, we use the -ConfigurationOnly switch. This tells Exchange not to search for the Exchange server (as it would error as it is not there), and instead remove the configuration data only.

Remove-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity DAG -MailboxServer SERVER -ConfigurationOnly











3. Going back to the server we are performing the recovery on, and re-running setup.com /m:recoverserver we should now see no issues performing DR












Finally after performing recovery setup completes and we can see the server is ready once a reboot is complete.












If the server is a combined server role it is important to make changes to any .config files you previously made changes too, as the recoverserver command will not re-introduce those changes.

Finally there are some other switches that can be used when recovering the Exchange 2010 server.














/TargetDir - this lets you specify the install location of the Exchange 2010 setup files. You can use this to ensure it is installed elsewhere if previously you did not install to c:\

/UpdatesDir - this allows you to place any updates in the directory so Exchange can slipstream these and ensure you do not have to apply them seperately after.

/InstallWindowsComponents - this will automatically install windows features should they be missing on the new server you are performing the recovery on.

/DoNotStartTransport - if the server is a Hub Transport or Combined Server Role, then you can initiate this switch to ensure the Transport Service doesn't start, should you need to perform more configuration or perform tests prior to allow SMTP to flow through it (from Mailbox Servers or Internet).


Take care,

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server