Evan Dodds - Microsoft Exchange Server Blog : Exchange 2003 SP2

Using PowerShell + WMI to manage legacy Exchange

evand — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:44:00 GMT

Dmitry blogs all about it here. I'd been meaning to write pretty much this very same post ever since I attended Devin's talk on managing Legacy Exchange with PowerShell at ExchangeConnections ~~last November~~ this past April, so I'm glad to see Dmitry write it up!

KB.867624 replaced

evand — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 04:58:00 GMT

Looking for KB.867624? It’s been replaced and retired (and removed)...

I had previously blogged about the “Upgrading to E2k3 SP2 on a cluster” process, and in that posting I had referenced the KB.867624 article about how to upgrade to E2k3 SP1 (pointing out that the process is essentially unchanged for SP2).

But, someone brought to my attention the other day that this KB article has recently been removed. In fact, I dug around a bit and discovered that the various E2k3 Service-pack-on-a-cluster details have been rolled into the Clustered Server section of KB.328839, rendering the KB.867624 redundant.

Yes, it would be nice if the old link had a redirect or some sort of notice of the removal. But, well, evidently that’s now how these things work. Send your comments through this link.

Virtual Server Host Clustering Step-by-Step

evand — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:37:00 GMT

A Step-by-step guide for using MSCS clusters to host Virtual Server guests was just released: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09cc042b-154f-4eba-a548-89282d6eb1b3&displaylang=en

Here’s the overview:

Overview

This document provides an introduction to the methods and concepts of Virtual Server host clustering. With Virtual Server host clustering, you can provide a wide variety of services through a small number of physical servers and, at the same time, maintain availability of the services you provide. If one server requires scheduled or unscheduled downtime, another server is ready to quickly begin supporting services. Users experience minimal disruptions in service.
Virtual Server host clustering is a way of combining Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 with the server cluster feature in Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003. This document describes a simple configuration in which you use Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 to configure one guest operating system, and configure a server cluster that has two servers (nodes), either of which can support the guest if the other server is down. You can create this configuration and then, by carefully following the pattern of the configuration, develop a host cluster with additional guests or additional nodes.

IMFv1 getting in the way of your SP2 upgrade?

evand — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 19:12:00 GMT

I’ve seen a couple of questions about this since SP2 released, so I’ll give a shot at it. If you try to upgrade to E2k3 Sp2 on a server that has Intelligent Message Filter (IMF) version 1 installed, you’ll get this error message:

“Service Pack 2 for Exchange Server 2003 includes an updated version of the Microsoft Exchange Intelligent Message Filter. An earlier version of the Exchange Intelligent Message Filter has been detected on this system and this earlier version must be uninstalled before applying Service Pack 2.”

So, what to do if you’ve already uninstalled IMFv1 and you’re still getting this message? Well, you can double-check the same way the pre-requisite check does whether or not the system thinks IMFv1 is really installed.

This prereq check is actually looking into the registry. If IMFv1 is installed, then at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Exchange there will be a value “ContentFilterVersion”. If this value is in the server’s registry *AND* is set to “0” (to indicate IMFv1), then the prereq will fail and you’ll see this message pop up.

Your best bet, if you’re sure you’ve removed IMFv1 properly, is probably to simply (and VERY CAREFULLY) remove this “ContentFilterVersion” registry value so that the prereq check will not find it – and will therefore assume IMFv1 is not installed. Don’t remove the Exchange key, just the ContentFilterVersion value. All the normal “editing your registry is dangerous” and “make a backup/export of the registry key before making any changes” stuff applies.

Upgrading to E2k3 SP2 cluster

evand — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 18:51:00 GMT

There are a couple of important things I wanted to point out about the upgrade to E2k3 Sp2 on a cluster:

Same process as the upgrade to E2k3 Sp1
Fixes broken virtual directories and other upgrade snafus
IMF still not supported for use on cluster

Ok, more detail on these three, as I’m sure the one-sentence-explanation is not helpful…

Same process as the upgrade to E2k3 Sp1 – Here I am referring to KB.867624. This KB was written for the upgrade from E2k3 RTM -> E2k3 SP1, and it applies just the same for the upgrade from E2k3 RTM -> E2k3 SP2 or the upgrade from E2k3 SP1 -> E2k3 SP2. You’ll need to do the “Upgrade Exchange Virtual Server” bit again, ensuring you’re executing it from the upgraded node and with the EVS partially-online also on the upgraded node. It’s a bit complicated, but the steps should work just fine if you follow them carefully.

Fixes broken virtual directories and other upgrade snafus – Here I’m talking about the Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) and Recovery Storage Group (RSG) problems that some of you may have run into (and perhaps not even realized). These “new to E2k3” functions will be unavailable in E2k3 Sp1 if the upgrade wasn’t done correctly to E2k3 Sp1. Sp2 upgrade closes all the loopholes and ensures that this part of the upgrade is finally done and the functionality becomes available.

Here’s some more detail. The correct way to do the upgrade from E2k SP3 -> E2k3 SP1 is this high-level set of steps:

Upgrade the node(s) to E2k3 RTM
Do the “Upgrade Exchange Virtual Server” step at E2k3 RTM
Upgrade the node(s) to E2k3 SP1
Do the “Upgrade Exchange Virtual Server” step at E2k3 SP1

In that case, the server goes E2k SP3–>E2k3 RTM->E2k3 SP1

However, if you skip step #2 (ie - apply the E2k3 RTM binaries, then the E2k3 SP1 binaries, and only THEN do the Upgrade Exchange Virtual Server step), some of this “new to E2k3 RTM” functionality will be inaccessible.

Whew, that was a mouthful explanation. Anyways, the end summary is that E2k3 Sp2 “Upgrade Exchange Virtual Server” step goes back and ensures that in all cases the E2k3 RTM “Upgrade Exchange Virtual Server” actions were done, fixing anyone who did the abbreviated upgrade steps (skipping step #2).

IMF still not supported for use on cluster – Yes, it’s included as an integral part of E2k3 Sp2. But the “transport” portion of IMF (the thing you used to have to manually install on the SMTP gateway servers) is still not designed for clustered back-end servers. Store action behavior (moving stuff to the Junk E-mail folder automatically based on SCL) is still supported there, of course, as it’s a back-end server function. But the “stamping an SCL onto the message” part is not. This still makes sense though — do you really want to directly expose your “high availability email cluster” to the Internet? Any high-availability installation of Exchange should definitely have separated Internet gateway functionality, where the IMF will work just fine.

Updated Support Policy for E2k3 on hardware virtualization software

evand — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 18:32:00 GMT

Changes to the support policy for Virtual Server: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320220.

Please read the article for specific details (and there are some specific details!), but the short version is there are now some scenarios where this is a supported configuration.