April, 2021 - 250 Hello

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Exchange Managed Availability State Unknown

Posted on 30th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

The below is one of the cases where the "Zen of Exchange Management" is what fixes the issue. I've been know to say that sometimes you just need to wait for Exchange to do what it needs to do. To pass the time, feel free to adopt a meditation pose and emit calm and peaceful humming noises. This is Zen.

Exchange Managed Availability Reports Status: Unknown

After remediating multiple other i… Read the rest “Exchange Managed Availability State Unknown”

1

Exchange 2016 CU20 PrepareAD Required

Posted on 28th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

This is a quick heads up for those who may be deploying Exchange 2016 in the near future. If you are currently on Exchange 2016 CU19 there are no AD schema changes required, but there are AD changes. The former is performed by /PrepareSchema, and the latter by /PrepareAD.

You can take a look at the history of Exchange 2016 schema changes in Active Directory schema changes in Exchange Server and th… Read the rest “Exchange 2016 CU20 PrepareAD Required”

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Exchange .NET Framework Upgrade – The Unsupported Kangaroo In The Room

Posted on 27th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

It is critical Exchange installations are properly maintained in all regards. In order to stay current with Exchange Cumulative Updates (CUs), it is necessary to read the release notes for a given CU to determine if an update is required for the .NET Framework. Staying current on updates is required to receive full support from Microsoft. Exchange Hybrid supports N and N-1 for on-premises CUs, … Read the rest “Exchange .NET Framework Upgrade – The Unsupported Kangaroo In The Room”

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Exchange 2019 Setup Screenshots – Commandline Install

Posted on 26th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

This is a reference post for Exchange 2019 screenshots of the command line installation process. You will note similarities to the Exchange 2016 installation.

Update 30-9-2021 Newer versions of Exchange 2019 have slightly modified the prerequisites and also the original command line options that are shown below. Please see the Exchange 2019 CU11 setup changes post for details.

Planning And Preparat

… Read the rest

13

Should I Overwrite The Default Exchange SMTP Certificate?

Posted on 26th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

Exchange Prompt To Overwrite Default SMTP Certificate

When adding a TLS certificate on an Exchange server, the inevitable prompt will appear to enquire if you wish to overwrite the default SMTP certificate binding. While the UI in the current versions of Exchange is slightly different, it was basically the same prompt in Exchange 2010 & Exchange 2007.

While the prompt language was the same in Exchange 2007 and newer versions, the way that transpo… Read the rest “Should I Overwrite The Default Exchange SMTP Certificate?”

1

Azure Firewall Rule Not Working – Orange Triangle

Posted on 26th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

The below is from a customer situation where an Azure Network Security Group (NSG) firewall rule entry was not working as they expected. This was was created to allow RDP connectivity for some of their test servers.

However they were not able to connect to the server, and were being blocked by the NSG.

Ideally we do not want to allow RDP to our Azure VMs are there are more secure methods such as cli… Read the rest “Azure Firewall Rule Not Working – Orange Triangle”

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Faulting Module Name NTdll.dll

Posted on 23rd April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

One of my hosted lab environments ran into series of issues, and after unplanned maintenance there were multiple problems to resolve. The below error with a faulting ntdll.dll module was something I recall seeing many years ago with a Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) deployment where the MOM agent simply would not start. On every single attempt to start the service it would crash with the erro… Read the rest “Faulting Module Name NTdll.dll”

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Microsoft Defender for Identity–Replaced Domain Controller

Posted on 19th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

The below environment was migrated from one hosting provider to another. Unfortunately one DC did not survive, and it was removed from the domain. This was done by using dsa.msc as it can now clean up the AD metadata rather than using NTDSUtil. That was a welcome change in Windows Server 2008.

A replacement server with the same name was built, joined to the domain and then promoted to be a DC. T… Read the rest “Microsoft Defender for Identity–Replaced Domain Controller”

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Can You Fix This? Exchange 2013 Setup – Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra Isn’t Installed

Posted on 14th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

There was a request to fix the issue below when installing Exchange 2013 CU23. When running setup the error received was "Installing Exchange Error - Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra isn't installed".

If you look closely at the image below, you might be able to state the answer in advance…

Alternative Reality

As a side note. If you are installing Exchange 2016 onto Windows Server 2016 and receive this error, … Read the rest “Can You Fix This? Exchange 2013 Setup – Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra Isn’t Installed”

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April 2021 Exchange Security Updates

Posted on 13th April 2021 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

Today is patch Tuesday for April 2021 and there are critical Exchange server security updates in the release. You can review all of the affected products on the MSRC blog or on the Security Update Guide (SUG).

Updates have been released for supported versions of Exchange 2013, 2016 and 2019. Details can be found in KB 5001779.

Update 5-5-2021. Two articles with known issues relating to this securit… Read the rest “April 2021 Exchange Security Updates”