Wednesday 30 May 2012

The nominated Exchange Server for offline address book has been deleted

Recently I was installing a new Exchange 2010 SP2 server into an Exchange 2010 'Enterprise' Hosting Test Lab and came across this error:


I have never seen this error before, it interested my hugely as I didn't think this was actually possible to let happen. Anyway I thought, ok so let's clean the offending OAL up and then I can continue the install.

So I check the Exchange Management Console:


And I check the Exchange Management Shell:


Very strange.. I cannot see the offending OAL anywhere. So I can't delete it nor fix it to continue the setup.

So I fire up ADSIEdit:


Fantastic I can see it. The reason I can see it is because it obviously exists, Exchange wouldn't be complaining about it otherwise, but when looking in the configuration container like I am above I see every object that is held within there, whether it is considered corrupt by Exchange or not.

What appears to have happened is that because the OAL has an issue, that issue being the home server for it doesn't exist anymore, Exchange is not showing it within the EMC or Powershell and thus it isn't fixable from those management tools.

In this instance I knew this was a test OAL and not needed, so I simply deleted it via ADSIEdit (right click, delete).

So can I continue the install now?


You bet, the issue is resolved.


Finally if this is a production environment you could open the object and find the 'offLineABServer' attribute and modify it to a server that does exist in the Org. This should be enough to allow it to show in the EMC or Powershell, where you can then update it and force a rebuild. But if you don't want to do that the above method is safe to use but remember you will have to recreate the object and apply it to databases and/or users ensuring your provisioning engine will be ok with that and continue to reference the newly created OAL with the old.

I hope this helps anyone else that runs into this obscure issue.

Take care,

Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server





UR3 for Exchange 2010 SP2 released

Yesterday Microsoft released update rollup 3 for Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2.

Notes:

Earlier today, the Exchange CXP team released Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 SP2 to the Download Center.
This update contains a number of customers reported and internally found issues. See KB2685289 Description of Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 for more details.

Note: Some of the following KB articles may not be available at the time of publishing this post.
In particular we would like to specifically call out the following fixes which are included in this release:
  • KB2689810 Meeting Requests bodies get rendered in plain text in Outlook when created via Exchange Web Services.
  • KB2674445 Need the function to check ACL consistency during moving mailbox.
  • KB2700705 RpcClientAccess crashes with SocketException when UDP push notification is enabled.
  • KB2705425 Memory Leak in UMWorkerProcess.exe.
  • KB2698976 MRM Assistant doesnt process a mailbox with a contact created in other tenants.

General Notes:


For DST Changes: http://www.microsoft.com/time.
Note for Forefront Protection for Exchange users For those of you running Forefront Protection for Exchange, be sure you perform these important steps from the command line in the Forefront directory before and after this rollup's installation process. Without these steps, Exchange services for Information Store and Transport will not start after you apply this update. Before installing the update, disable ForeFront by using this command: fscutility /disable. After installing the update, re-enable ForeFront by running fscutility /enable.



Take Care


Oliver Moazzezi MVP - Exchange Server