Category Archives: Server Support

Uninstalling Exchange 2003

Server Support,

For a couple weeks now I have had our new Exchange 2007 in production.  After finally weeding out the last few pieces of equipment that were pointed at the old server I started to try and uninstall Exchange 2003 off of it.  Of course my first attempt resulted in this error:

One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved  to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.

As suggested in the online articles I did the search through active directory users and computers and found two accounts that were pointed at the old mail server. Since they didn’t have mailboxes I just removed the attributes, reran setup to uninstall and:

One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved  to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.

I then found a different article that me do a more thorough job of making sure the public folders were moved over. I also disabled all the exchange services to see if anything failed on the Exchange 2007 server. It was then that I noticed that the server was generating errors when trying to compile the offline address book. I resolved that by forcing a rebuild with the ‘OAL post full if diff fails’ registry entry. Rerun setup:

One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved  to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.

Hmmm…most aggravating. Since I knew that everything was off I took some more drastic measures and removed the two information stores:

One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved  to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.

Okay. Since our site isn’t that large I decided to take a drastic step and performed a ‘remove exchange attributes’ in active directory users and computers for ALL users and groups that did not have an association of some sort with the new server (I added a column that gave the home exchange server so that I could sort properly and not accidentally nuke someone’s attributes). I immediately reran setup:

One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved  to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.

BUT! I keep forgetting that although I try to use the active directory replication monitor to force ‘syncs’, it rarely works properly with Exchange attributes. After waiting an hour or so I was able to uninstall Exchange 2003 successfully. Although I was quite upset with the server, I’m sorry to see it go now. I had to put a strong argument together to acquire the hardware and I had put years worth of time into it to keep it running smooth. Now it’s just a dark block in the rack that I have to pull out and recycle. Such is the life of anyone who works with computers, where the the object of their labor ‘exists’ only so far as someone cares to turn it on and use it.

Upgrading Customized Exchange

Server Support

So if I have created custom e-mail address policies and/or custom address lists the upgrade process will not upgrade them?  It’s stuff like this that makes me think that Microsoft still sells 90% of their product to five person shops that never change or monitor anything and the other 10% to gargantuan enterprises that can afford to hack around the missing pieces (in this case by crafting a complicated custom script).  Equally, it’s unfortunate that and the needless interface changes to both the Exchange and IIS management consoles detract a little bit from some of the nice new enhancements to those packages (in particular, I’ve already had users tell me that they liked the ability schedule out-of-office notices with Exchange 2007).

And no, I don’t think that the scripting back-end is what goofed up the interface.  IBM’s SMIT did the same thing but it was easier to use (ASCII menus and all).  It’s the inevitable learning curve with a new package I guess; I’ll just have to be patient!

ArcMail Defender

Server Support

I’m torn on this device. 

When we were first looking into an e-mail archiving solution I thought about ‘brewing my own’ since I didn’t figure that it could be that hard to use the Exchange journaling option to dump e-mail out to a Linux box running MySQL (which as near as I can tell is what the ArcMail Defender box is).  However I would be running the risk of having it go the same road as all my other Linux projects: a stable, low maintenance solution that’s preceded by a horrible, painful amount of configuration time (a time so painful that I might not finish it).  In this case that was time I didn’t have so we elected to go with the most cost effective solution, the mini-ATX ArcMail Defender.

I’ve have had to use the software that comes with the device twice to retrieve e-mails and it proved a trouble free task.  The box also helps me sleep easier at night since I know that there’s yet another e-mail backup running, one that runs all the time.  The only issue I have is the sketchy support.

If you go to the company’s front page you’ll notice (at least at this time) that there’s no link for support.  No support forums (usually the only source for decent online support anywhere anymore), no e-mail links (it’s support@arcmail.com) and no phone number (it’s 1-888-790-9252) all of which give the impression of a fly-by-night operation.  On top of that I’ve had four hardware issues with the box, three of which required ordering parts. 

I should note that the first issue occurred when we initially received the device.  While checking out the box to see what it was made of (it’s made of off-the-shelf parts) I noticed that the RAID card was improperly wired and seated.

I guess it’s like a lot of tech items: a dream when it works, not so much when it doesn’t.  I think I’d feel a lot sunnier about if ArcMail would turn their game up a notch.  Generic parts are fine, so long as they don’t fail and less rigorous tech support is acceptable, so long as your customers can get to it.

*What instigated this post was a hard drive replacement that took more than two weeks to get to me (they blamed UPS, which might be legit I guess) and subsequent late call back to tell me how to rebuild my RAID 1 set using the opaque RAID tools that come with the system.

Why?

Server Support

I applied an update to a virtual server sitting on Microsoft’s Hyper-V and rebooted it, but it didn’t come back up.  When I tried to start the virtual machine I received the error “Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID {GUID}): Failed to power on with Error ‘General access denied error'”.  The fix was to remove the hard drive from the virtual machine and re-add it.  What is up with that?!?

Backing Up Hyper-V

Server Support,

Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager (DPM) is a dream when it works, but I spend way too much time wrestling with it to make it work and the reports it issues to track jobs are worthless.  The whole experience reminds of Arcserve circa 1997: poorly made technology trying to do too much. 

It seems as if the software doesn’t miss a chance get a protection status of ‘Recovery point creation failed’ or ‘Replica is inconsistent’.  Why did it ‘fail’?  Why is it inconsistent?  Disk space seems to have something to do with it most of the time, but other times it just seems as if the software just got grumpy.  One of our servers is in an even worse state since any Windows Server 2008 backup (either the built-in or DPM) ends with a not entirely unknown  0x0000007E blue screen stop error. 

Is DPM going to be like Arcserve where it took CA six years to write a product that wouldn’t crash every time I went to back up Exchange?  I hope not.