All things Exchange
Exchange 2016 CU21 has been released to the Microsoft download centre! Exchange 2016 has a different servicing strategy than Exchange 2007/2010 and utilises Cumulative Updates (CUs) rather than the Rollup Updates (RU/UR) which were used previously. CUs are a complete installation of Exchange 2016 and can be used to install a fresh server or to update a previously installed one. Exchange 2013 h… Read the rest “Exchange 2016 CU21 Released”
As more people are starting to use the Exchange Online V2 module (yay!), there are some new and different issues appearing.
In this case, the command to connect to the tenant was failing when App-Only authentication was used. A certificate was installed onto the machine where PowerShell was running.
The command used is shown followed by a glorious error.
Error Acquiring Token:
System.Exception:… Read the rest “Exchange Online App-Only Authentication Error AADSTS70011 Invalid Scope”
The question "Does Exchange setup automatically run /PrepareSchema?" was something that came up many times in the recent Hafnium remediation activities. This was due to many customers not updating Exchange for multiple years, and being extremely behind on updates. In order to get Exchange updated, it was necessary to perform multiple steps in the upgrade process. Sometimes the /PrepareSchema ta… Read the rest “Does Exchange Setup Automatically Run PrepareSchema?”
When running /PrepareSchema in an Exchange organisation with an existing Exchange Hybrid deployment you may run into an error which states:
"A hybrid deployment with Office 365 has been detected. Please ensure that you are running setup with the /TenantOrganizationConfig switch"
This is shown below:
A similar issue will occur if you specify only /PrepareAD
Note that the /TenantOrganizationConfig switc… Read the rest “TenantOrganizationConfig Required When Preparing Active Directory”
When installing Exchange updates, I place the server into maintenance mode and restart it prior to installing the actual Exchange update. This is due to have being burned many times by other teams or third party tools that conveniently "overlooked" the fact that their setup required the machine to restart. It also provides an opportunity for issues caused by those third party tools to surface be… Read the rest “Unable to Run Exchange Setup–Pending Reboot From a Previous Installation”
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.
After remediating multiple other i… Read the rest “Exchange Managed Availability State Unknown”
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”
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?”
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…
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”
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”