Newest KB Articles in HC Exchange Module

KB Article: Resolving Bulk Mailbox Properties Update Issues in Exchange

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:06:52 GMT

Issue Overview

In Exchange, users may encounter issues when updating bulk mailbox properties, where the update process becomes unresponsive or "stuck," impacting mailbox management tasks. This challenge may stem from the configuration in TaskScheduler under the 'Hosting Controller' folder, which automates periodic maintenance tasks but may sometimes interfere with bulk update processes. Timely resolution is essential to maintain the efficiency of mailbox operations and support a seamless user experience.

Solution

To resolve this issue, follow these steps to ensure that the necessary scheduled tasks are running properly:

Step 1: Check the Exchange Queued Operation Scheduled Task

Open Task Scheduler:

Press Windows + R, type taskschd.msc, and hit Enter.

Locate the Scheduled Task:

In the left pane, navigate to Task Scheduler Library > Hosting Controller.

Verify Task Status:

Find the task labeled Exchange Queued Operation.
Ensure that the task is in a Running or Working state. If it is not running, right-click on the task and select Start.

Step 2: Monitor the Task

The Exchange Queued Operation scheduled task monitors structured bulk operations and resumes them if necessary. It is crucial to maintain this task in an active state to prevent operations from getting stuck.

Step 3: Retry the Update Operation

Once you confirm that the scheduled task is running, retry updating the bulk mailbox properties. This should allow the operation to complete successfully.

Additional Tips

Regularly check the status of the scheduled tasks related to Exchange to avoid similar issues in the future.
Ensure your Exchange environment is up to date with the latest patches and updates to minimize the risk of operational issues.

Conclusion:

By ensuring that the Exchange Queued Operation scheduled task is running, you can effectively resolve issues related to bulk mailbox property updates.

For any issues, please refer to our support team at support@hostingcontroller.com.

How to fix Exchange Connectivity failing in HC due to proxy settings?

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 23:51:37 GMT

Question: How to fix Exchange Connectivity failing in HC due to proxy settings?

Problem statement:

HC communication with exchange server using remote PowerShell was unsuccessful.

Manual connectivity with Exchange Server using PS script and Windows PowerShell interface on HC Portal was unsuccessful.

Error message:

Connecting to remote server IPaddress failed with the following error message : The connection to the specified remote host was refused. Verify that the WS-Management service is running on the remote host and configured to listen for requests on the correct port and HTTP URL. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.

Error Reaseon:

This issue can occur due to several reasons:

• WS-Management Service Issue: The WS-Management (WinRM) service on the remote server may not be running or may not be configured to listen for requests on the correct port or HTTP URL.

• Firewall/Network Configuration: Network issues, such as firewalls blocking the required ports or network configuration errors, can prevent successful connection to the remote server.

• Proxy Configuration: Incorrect proxy settings on the client machine can interfere with the connection to the remote server.

Solution:

The issue was resolved by running the following command from command prompt.

• netsh winhttp reset proxy

The command netsh winhttp reset proxy is used to reset the WinHTTP proxy settings to their default state. By running this command, you essentially clear any proxy settings that might be interfering with the connection.

Increase Exchange Remote PowerShell Connectivity Limit

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 03:24:23 GMT

Question: How do I increase the Exchange Remote PowerShell connectivity limit?

Answer: By default, the Exchange Server allows a maximum of 18 concurrent remote PowerShell connections. If you need to increase this limit according to your company's control panel usage and policy, follow these steps:

1. Create a New Throttling Policy: Use the following command to create a new throttling policy named "ITStaffPolicy" with the desired PowerShellMaxConcurrency value (e.g., 50):

New-ThrottlingPolicy -Name ITStaffPolicy -PowerShellMaxConcurrency 50 -ThrottlingPolicyScope Regular

2. Associate the New Policy: Associate the newly created policy with the service account that the HC application uses to communicate with the Exchange Server. Use the following command:

Set-ThrottlingPolicyAssociation -Identity HCEXCH -ThrottlingPolicy ITStaffPolicy

3. Restart Microsoft Throttling Service: After making these changes, restart the Microsoft Throttling service for the changes to take effect.

For a detailed reference, you can also check the Microsoft Article related to this topic.

How to use Microsoft Exchange builtin "Automatic Mailbox Distribution" mechanism in HC Panel?

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:42:10 GMT

Problem: HC Panel is adding Mailboxes only to one Mailbox Database despite having multiple Mailbox Databases deployed in Exchange, how to use the "Automatic Mailbox Distribution" mechanism of Exchange in HC Panel.

Solution: Hosting Controller allows the use of the built-in "Automatic Mailbox Distribution" feature of Microsoft Exchange. To configure in HC panel, the following steps will be required:

1. Login as GlobalAdmin user in HC Panel.

2. Navigate to the menu: “Configurations >> Server Manager >> Servers >> Edit Exchange Server”.

3. Now select the "Database Selection Mode" as Automatic for your Exchange Server added in HC panel as shown in the below screenshot.

Upon saving this configuration in the HC Panel, HC10 Control Panel will be set to use the built-in mechanism of "Automatic Mailbox Distribution" for Microsoft Exchange to distribute the mailboxes across multiple Mailboxes Database on Exchange.

This way Microsoft Exchange will decide which mailbox database has the least load of mailboxes and will assign the next mailbox to that particular Mailbox Database which increases efficiency and performance. Also, Exchange randomly selects a database and if the chosen database is online and in good health, Exchange utilizes it else it ignores the unhealthy or offline database and proceeds to randomly select another database.

Note: "Automatic Mailbox Distribution" will apply to both single mailboxes added via HC Panel as well as to the mailboxes added in bulk using the csv file.

For any further help regarding the aforementioned steps, feel free to contact the Hosting Controller Support department by sending an email to support@hostingcontroller.com.

Distribution List Creation Issue via API Caused by a Space in Email Address

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 11:06:27 GMT

Problem: Error prompts when creating a distribution list via API due to the space character in the email address.

During the process of creating a distribution list through the API, an error is encountered when an email address contains a space character. The below example contains space in the email address which prompts an error message as highlighted in the below screenshot.

Resolution: To mitigate this issue and successfully create distribution lists without errors, avoid the spaces in the email address since a valid email address does not contain spaces in it.

"A device attached to the system is not functioning" error is thrown while creating Exchange Mailbox

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 12:31:44 GMT

Problem: While creating Exchange Mailbox in HC panel, an error is thrown with the description "A device attached to the system is not functioning".

Reason: This error is returned by the system itself as Microsoft Limits the SAM Account Name of an Active Directory User object to be less than or equal to 20 characters. See Microsoft document for reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/adschema/a-samaccountname

Solution: To avoid this error, do not provide a mailbox with SAM name having a character length greater than 20.

The WinRM service cannot process the request because the request needs to be sent to a different machine. Use the redirect information to send the request to a new machine

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 05:52:39 GMT

Exchange connectivity in the Hosting Controller Panel returns the following error:

The WinRM service cannot process the request because the request needs to be sent to a different machine.Use the redirect information to send the request to a new machine.

1: Access the Exchange machine.

2: Open IIS Manager by using Start > Run > and type inetmgr.

3: Select Default Website > PowerShell virtual directory and enable Basic Authentication on it.

Video Guide:

How to split one Organizational Unit (O.U.) into two?

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 11:16:30 GMT

Problem: This knowledge-based article targets scenarios where there is a need for splitting 2 Exchange Mail Domains that reside under a single Organizational Unit into their respective Organizational Units OR this helps in separating one organization from an existing Organizational Unit.

Scenario: Let’s assume there are 2 Exchange Mail Domains ( Company1.com, SubCompany1.com ) that reside under a single O.U. named OU-Company1 in Active Directory.

OU-Company1

Mail Domain # 1 = Company1.com

Mail Domain # 2 = SubCompany1.com

Now at any point in time, SubCompany1.com which is a subsidiary of Company1 may grow into a big entity and may want to maintain a distinct identity. It can move its AD Users, Groups, Contacts, etc. into a separate Organizational Unit in the Active Directory. The following diagram shows what the resultant OUs in AD will look like:

To achieve the goal, follow the below steps:

Login into the HC panel and navigate to the menu Provisioning >> Exchange Organizations and click on Create Exchange Mail Domain button.

Open SQL Management Studio and open HC10 Database as shown below.

3. In the HC10 Database, remove 2 records from tables tblExchangeMailDomains and tblProvisionedResources by making IsDeleted = True against the existing SubCompany1.com in HC Database.

DELETE FROM tblProvisionedResources

WHERE RecordID in ( SELECT MailDomainID FROM tblExchangeMailDomains WHERE SystemName = ‘SubCompany1.com’ )

AND ProviderID in ( SELECT ProviderId FROM tblProviders WHERE DisplayName in ('MS Exchange 2010','MS Exchange 2013','MS Exchange 2016','MS Exchange 2019')

4. In HC10 Database open the table named tblExchangeMailDomains and rename test.com to SubCompany1.com.

5. Remove the test.com accepted domain record from Exchange Admin Center too. Search for the test.com domain and delete it from ECP. See the below screenshot for clarification.

6. Open Active Directory Users and Computers using command dsa.msc and add uPNSuffix value as SubCompany1.com against SubCompany1 OU as shown below.

7. To apply Address List Segregation for the new Address Book Policy objects on this SubCompany1 organization, follow the steps below:

Download the utility from this link: http://downloads.hostingcontroller.com/misc/utilities/ImportExchangMailboxesAndListsIntoOrg.zip

This utility can be executed on the HC server or on the Exchange server. Before executing the HC import utility, there is a configuration file with the name "ImportExchangMailboxesAndListsIntoOrg.exe.config". Enter the details of Exchange server and administrator credentials in this config file.

After the execution of the import script on command line, below options will appear:

Following are the required Inputs for this utility:

Enter Mail-Domain Name: Enter SubCompany1.com as Mail Domain name.
Enter Organization-Name: Enter SubCompany1 as the Organization Unit in AD.
Enter Organization-OU: Enter the OU path (distinguishedName) here.
Enter Domain Controller: Enter the DC details or skip it without providing the details

This will separate the desired SubCompany1 OU and its accepted domain from an existing OU to its own OU in the HC panel. For any query regarding the instructions, feel free to contact us at support@hostingcontroller.com

Note: In the above instructions, names of organizations are merely examples which can be replaced by actual Organizational Units and Mail Domain names.

Common issues related to Microsoft Exchange Public Folders

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 00:10:44 GMT

In this knowledge-based article, a few of the common issues related to Public Folders are discussed and step-wise instructions are also provided for resolution of each one of the discussed issues.

Query # 1 : Public Folder is created from HC panel but while adding that Public Folder to favorites in outlook returns the following error: “No public folders are available. Check that a public folders deployment exists in this Exchange Organization. If so, please try again”

Solution : When public folder is created via HC panel, HC automatically sets default user settings. However, if manual manipulation is done this can cause issues. A process User Permission for Public folders is controlled by a Scheduler which can be triggered on demand by going to Provisioning>>Exchange>> Organizations >>Mailboxes >> drop-down button on the create mailbox button >> Edit Bulk Mailboxes.
On the Edit Bulk Mailboxes page select Default Public Folder in the properties section and public folder mailboxes will be listed. Now save the settings to assign permissions on the selected public folder. However in some cases, It is recommended to restart the information store service of Exchange server on all of your servers in off peak hours for permissions to take effect in case if any required.

Query # 2: Users cannot add subfolders to the Public Folder in outlook after adding it to favorites

Solution: When you are adding a Public Folder into the favorites, you have to click “Options” to get more settings about subfolders and select the options of “Add subfolders of this folder” and “Automatically add new subfolders” as shown in the picture below:

Query # 3 : Public Folders show up via OWA but not in Outlook. The “defaultpublicfoldermailbox” parameter is also set in all user mailboxes but Outlook does not show the public folder hierarchy?

Solution: This sometimes happens when the Auto-discover service cannot discover the email address that is stamped on the public folder mailbox. In addition to this, there should be an email domain that has already published Auto-discover records.

You can run this command and see if PF Mailboxes has an "internal" primarysmtpaddress assigned, if yes then change that to the auto-discovered enabled mailbox. You have to restart the information store on all servers for changes to take place.
(Get-Mailbox -PublicFolder “hctestPF1” |fl name, *smtp*).

If the returned value from the above command is not an auto discovered email address then please run the below command and check:

(set-Mailbox -PublicFolder “pfprimary” -PrimarySmtpAddress “autodiscoveredmailboxname@your maildomain” -EmailAddressPolicyEnabled $false).

Also, please refer to the below Microsoft tech-net article for your reference: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2788136/outlook-users-cannot-access-public-folders-in-exchange-server-2013-or.

For any further queries or concerns, feel free to contact our support department by sending an email to support@hostingcontroller.com

Increase Exchange Remote PowerShell Connectivity Limit

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 13:10:41 GMT

Question: How to Exchange Remote PowerShell Connectivity Limit

Answer:

By default, Exchange Server allows a maximum of 18 concurrent remote PowerShell connections. If it is required, then you can increase the concurrent limit as per your company control panel usage & policy.

New-ThrottlingPolicy -Name ITStaffPolicy -PowerShellMaxConcurrency 50 -ThrottlingPolicyScope Regular

You can associate this new policy to the service account under which the HC application is communicating with Exchange Server

Set-ThrottlingPolicyAssociation -Identity HCEXCH -ThrottlingPolicy ITStaffPolicy

Restart Microsoft Throttling service

For a detailed reference, you can check MS Article as well.