Generational Differences Thought.

So I was discussing the generational differences in regards to technological advancement.

While we were talking the following statement was uttered.

"Generation Y doesn't create anything, they only modify." (TM)

Though it's possible you could argue creation of a modified item is still creation ... it gets metaphysical.

Import-Mailbox ... Still no love.

So as any of you who read this blog know a client of ours has been having Import-Mailbox cmdlet issues. We opened a case with Microsoft only to find out we knew more about the error than the tech assigned to us. Below are the steps that we went through.

PSS Call.

Checked permissions and verified error.

Installed support tools on S6 and added "transition" account to have send-as and receive-as.

replicated information and logged off.

Logged back on and tried again. Same error.

Created new account and granted most of the same rights except for Exchange View only Admin.

Proceeded to test Import-Mailbox cmdlet with the same parameters.

Ran BOTH Import and Export cmdlets and got the same error. PSS asked for more time to research the issue.

Attempted to re-run process with a different user. Result was the same.

Opened ADSIEDIT and manually forced permissions on the config,services,exchange, ORG container.

Logged off and then back on.

Tried an import and then an export GUESS WHAT....SAME Error DUH!

PSS then asked Technician to run Export-Mailbox on the exchange server itself. This again did not work.

Create Test user and try export SAME error.

Mail-Enable new user and try to open OWA.

This process repeated itself a number of times ...all of them resulted in the SAME MAPI error.

But the below manual process works fine. It's just manual and takes forever.

****Able to successfully move mail via profile migration steps:

Add transition user to full access on the mailbox.

Create a new profile for transition that uses migrating user's mailbox.

Open PST and manually DRAG in the old messages.

Contact User and verify that old content has been properly migrated into the Mailbox.

This is a manual process and will take SOME time to complete.

Manual Process is as follows:

For the manual migration process exmerge must take place first. 

To perform this EXmerge.

Use powershell to grant access with Add-MailboxPermission -Identity -User -AccessRights Fullaccess

Create a new outlook profile while logged into your machine with the migration account.

Copy PST file to your local drive.

Open outlook.

Open the PST drag and drop all items from the PST into the Mailbox according to where they go.

Verify with user that process is successful.

Move on to the next mailbox in the list.

Going to speak with the client tomorrow to see if they got resolution.

Talk to you next time,

C-SQD

Import-Mailbox cmdlet Error.

So in working for a client they had a need to import Exchange 2003 mailboxes cross-forest. This seemed pretty straight-forward according to Microsoft's articles on TechNet and so forth. However as we are all aware things rarely go as planned.

According to MS the process is as follows:
1) Exmerge out the mailbox to a PST.
2) Copy the PST over to a client machine since you cannot Import on an Exchange Server.
3) Open the Exchange Management Shell and run Import-Mailbox ...
4) Be happy since it worked.

Well steps 3 and 4 are kind of a no go for me.

I have verified that the account that I am using has Full Access to the mailbox. Also the account is an Exchange Org Admin and an Exchange Server Admin. This account is a local admin on the client and server as well.

According to all the documentation this should be relatively easy and work once all these are set. But alas I have now had to call PSS. Let's see what they can come up with and where we go from here.

The error that I continuously get is here:
because: Error occurred in the step: Moving messages. Failed to copy messages to the destination mailbox store with error:MAPI or an unspecified service provider.ID no: 00000000-0000-00000000, error code: -1056749164


C-SQD

Question?

Do you think that cloud computing and distributed computing resource solutions that are federated are new thoughts?

Haven't these ideas been kicking around for decades?

Post a comment.

SQL Cluster configuration and moving the MSDTC.

So over the last 5 or 6 days we have been dealing with a mess of a SQL cluster here at the office. After speaking at length with MS on the issue we needed to perform the following actions.



Move the entire SQL Cluster group along with the MSDTC resource to the cluster group.

Fix the dependencies on the MSDTC resource.

Add a new clustered instance of SQL that can fail-over between all 3 nodes.



According to MS having the MSDTC resource depending on the SQL drive is NOT a supported configuration. MS SQL Team and the MS Windows Cluster Team both had to be involved in case things went bad during the move. MS wouldn't allow me to perform these cluster changes myself due to some possibility of the whole thing going south.



So we moved the MSDTC and SQL group. Then deleted the MSDTC and created a new one. Then we deleted the folder on the SQL data drive that had been there. We made the MSDTC dependent on the Quorum drive. So at this point MSDTC was all set. From there we moved all the SQL stuff to the right place in the SQL cluster first instance.

Then we installed the second instance and then upgraded it to fail over between all 3 nodes of the cluster.

Now that all the cluster stuff was fixed we had to move TEMPDB and the SQL DB and Tlogs and Backups. From there we were good. Since we were on an EMC array PowerPath FULL was then installed on all 3 nodes to ensure that connectivity via fibre-channel was as reliable as it could be.

Since it was 5am at this point and I had been working all night I calmed down and wrapped everything up. Then as quickly as it started it was all over and I could get some sleep :). LOL

Be BOLD!

In my employment history I have run into a number of situations that I wanted to discuss with other professionals. Mainly because true SPARKs or TALENTs understand and appreciate being in similiar types of situations.

I started asking myself the following questions:

• If I could go back in time and speak to myself 10 years ago, what would I tell myself?
• Would I discuss world-views and big picture corporate understanding?
• What tidbits that I know now would I tell myself?

These are all good questions. If you are a young person or really ANY person that wants a deeper understanding on how to circumvent the "Old Garde" then keep your eyes peeled.

Go to : The Corporate Bold Homepage.

There you will read about a book that could help many people. I have been selected as a co-author. The book is slated to come out this summer. It is a collection of 100 short experiences. I can't give you anymore information, but realize that it's 100 experiences and pieces of truth from 100 Top Performers.

If you have questions visit the site and ask them.

More SQL Cluster stuff to come soon. :)

SQL Cluster Storage Changes.

This past weekend we had a client environment that needed to move from Microsoft iSCSI to Fibre for SAN connectivity. The reasons for this are numerous.

• Fibre connectivity has greater throughput.
• The Microsoft iSCSI initiator is junk for a clustered environment. ( when installing 2.07 the cluster nodes would intermittently lock up and lose resources, this is a known issue with 2.07. We updated to 2.08 and still had issues.)
• PowerPath on Fiber has proven to be solid numerous times.
• Less complexity.
• Greater reliability.

We ran into some issues though and since I didn't see any direct posts on the web or on TechNet. So I will detail the issue and the solution here.

Specs:

Servers HP DL380G5; Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise 32-bit, SQL Enterprise 32-bit. Current cluster configuration is Active/Passive. Initial storage configuration is iSCSI. Moving to Fibre HBAs.

Issue:

After installing a Fibre HBA Dual port card and zoning it to the storage. We uninstalled the MS iSCSI initiator and disabled the iSCSI NIC ports on the server. Upon rebooting we attempted a full failover. The cluster group would fail over with the Quorum but the SQL instance would fail over the IP resources and the T log drive then hang. The result is a full failover is not possible, which in an environment that HAS to be online is not a good thing. The event ID would reference not being able to flush the transaction log.

Solution:

After reboots and trying to see if we missed anything these are the steps that we followed to resolve the issue:

• Uninstall from windows the NICs used for iSCSI.
• Remove the physical adaptor used for iSCSI from the server.
• Reboot.

Once these steps were completed a full failover was again possible.

If you have any questions/concerns or if you are having this issue yourself please feel free to comment. We will do our best to assist you.

CC