Exchange Server 2010 SP2 Update Rollup 5 v2 Released

Similar to what happened with Update Rollup 4, this one was released a few weeks ago but was almost immediately withdrawn due to a bug that affected DAGs...

Now version 2 has been released. For a full description of this RU, please check KB2785908  and to download it click here.

As with every RU or SP, Microsoft has updated the useful Exchange Server and Update Rollups Build Numbers wiki page.

I haven’t applied it on my lab yet, but will let you know as soon as I do.

Exchange 2010 SP2 Update Rollup 4

"On August 13th 2012, the Exchange CXP team released Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 SP2 to the Download Center.

This update contains a number of customer reported and internally found issues. See KB 2706690 - Description of Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 for more details."

Exchange Server 2010 SP2 Help

The latest version of the Exchange 2010 help file has been released. This version (related to SP2) is from 31st of January 2012 and can be found here.

Exchange 2010 SP2 Breaks OWA

The other day we decided it was time to apply SP2 to our Exchange 2010 SP1 environment (in pre-production first of course). After installing it to one CAS server without any issues, it was time to test it to make sure OWA, ECP, etc., was working fine.

We have Hardware Load Balancers in front of our CAS servers and we also do SSL Offloading so to test it we connected directly to the CAS server:

1. OWA opened fine. We could navigate through all the e-mails in the Inbox folder without any problems;
2. We noticed that the integration with OCS wasn’t working… After checking all the configurations, everything seemed to be correct;
3. The ECP was working without any problems;
4. But whenever we selected a different folder in OWA, we would get the following error message:

After a while, we noticed that by using HTTP://CASserver/OWA we would experience all these problems but if we used HTTPS everything would work fine!

So we checked IIS settings regarding SSL, Certificates, SSL Offloading and the OWA Virtual Directory configuration but everything was as before!...

It was only when we compared the web.config file for OWA that we noticed something different:

SP2 introduces a new key called httpCookies:

<!-- Require all cookies to be sent over SSL only. This config applies only to DataCenter where HTTPS is required (PS: 445778) -->

<httpCookies httpOnlyCookies="false" requireSSL="true" domain="" />

Although in IIS we have the Default WebSite to require SSL but the OWA one to not require SLL, this setting seems to take precedence and so it makes OWA to require SSL. For this reason, we were getting all those problems when using HTTP only...

After changing the requireSSL="true" to false, everything was back to normal!

According to Microsoft, this is a new feature in SP2 to simplify the Outlook Web App URL (in most scenarios).

In the Exchange 2010 SP2 Release Notes there is a mention to this that we missed:

If you’re using redirection for Outlook Web App and aren’t requiring Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), redirection will fail after the Client Access server is upgraded to Exchange 2010 SP2. To avoid this problem, after you’ve completed the upgrade to Exchange 2010 SP2, modify the Outlook Web App web.config file. For directions, go to “Use IIS Manager and Notepad to simplify the Outlook Web App URL when SSL isn’t required” in Simplify the Outlook Web App URL. You don’t have to make any changes in IIS Manager to prevent redirection from failing. You just have to modify the web.config file.

Bottom line: always read everything in the release notes and always test it before implementing any change/rollup/SP in your production environment!

Prevent Mailbox AutoMapping

With Exchange 2010 came the great AutoMapping feature. With it, administrators could grant users full access to mailboxes and these would automatically appear in user’s Outlook without the need to manually add them.

As you might know, this is done by using an Active Directory attribute on the user’s mailbox called msExchDelegateListLink that contains a list of Distinguished Names of mailboxes the user has full access to and should auto-mount in Outlook.

However, in cases where administrators have access to dozens, hundreds or thousands of mailboxes, this is not ideal... You can give permissions and then manually edit msExchDelegateListLink to remove the mailbox from the list or create a script to do this automatically, but with Exchange 2010 SP2 comes an easier way to achieve this.

By using the Add-MailboxPermission cmdlet you now have available the –AutoMapping parameters that allows you to specify if the mailbox should auto-mount or not!

Add-MailboxPermission "mailbox" -User "user" -AccessRights FullAccess –AutoMapping $False

Hope this helps!

Multi-Valued Custom Attributes

As I mentioned in my previous post, Exchange 2010 SP2 introduces “multi-value custom attributes”. But what exactly does this mean? Basically, now there are 5 new custom attributes that can hold more than one value: ExtensionCustomAttribute1 to ExtensionCustomAttribute5, which can now hold up to 1,300 values each! Why do we need to store more than 1 value when we have 15 CustomAttributes?! Well, you might want to save in ExtensionCustomAttribute1 all the times you increased the user’s mailbox or all the databases you moved the user from/to, etc... I’m sure someone will come up with a good use for them!

If we compare CustomAttributes with ExtensionCustomAttributes, we can see that the new ones are stored in an array to allow for multiple values:

These parameters are used by the following cmdlets:

• Set-DistributionGroup
• Set-DynamicDistributionGroup
• Set-Mailbox
• Set-MailContact
• Set-MailPublicFolder
• Set-RemoteMailbox

As you can see from this list, you can use attributes with Distribution Groups, Mailboxes, Contacts, mail enabled Public Folders and Remote Mailboxes.

There are several methods of saving data in these attributes. First, let’s look at how we can set new values:

Now let’s add values to the existing ones. Here we have two options:

1. Using the “normal” method that most administrators are used to;
2. Using the Add functionality introduced with SP1.

As you can see, the second method is much easier! A very welcome improvement.

To remove, we can also use both methods but, again, the easiest one is the second:

Hope this helps and please let me know if you plan to use them and for what!

Exchange Server 2010 SP2 Released

Exchange 2010 SP2 has been released today! Here are the new features/improvements: 

• Hybrid Configuration Wizard
• Address Book Policies
• Cross-Site Silent Redirection for Outlook Web App
• Mini Version of Outlook Web App
• Mailbox Replication Service
• Mailbox Auto-Mapping
• Multi-Valued Custom Attributes
• Litigation Hold

I’m not going to describe what each one of these are/do as the topic What’s New in Exchange 2010 SP2 does the job very well. What I will do is post here some more information once I test them.

Just a quick note: when you try to install it, you might get the following error:

CAS Prerequisites SETUP error: The "IIS WMI Compatibility" component is required.  Install the component via the Web Server Manager.

This is because SP2 introduces a new requirement for CAS servers to have the IIS6 WMI Compatibility role. So, probably the best way is to use one of the following methods:

1.

setup.com /m:upgrade /InstallWindowsComponents

2.

Import-Module ServerManager
enable-windowsfeature web-wmi

3.

Import-Module ServerManager
Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework, RSAT-ADDS, Web-Server, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-Metabase, Web-Net-Ext, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, RSAT-Web-Server, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dyn-Compression, NET-HTTP-Activation, RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy, Web-WMI –Restart

Exchange Server 2007 SP2 available in Q3 2009

With Exchange Server 2010 expected to be available in the second half of 2009, the SP2 for Exchange Server 2007 is slated for release in the third quarter of 2009.

Customer Benefits

Key new features of Exchange Server 2007 SP2 unveiled today include:

Enhanced Auditing - New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository. This simplifies the auditing process and makes review of audited events easier by segregating audited events in a dedicated location.

Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality - A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool. Exchange Server 2007 didn't have this capability on Windows Server 2008 and additional solutions were required to perform this task.

Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation - The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don't exist in the AD schema.

Public Folder Quota Management - SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.

Centralized Organizational Settings - SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
Named Properties cmdlets - SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.

New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging - SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.

Let's see what else they will include...