Database Status Unknown in 2k7 EMC? This might be why....

jeffstok — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Applies to Exchange 2007

So I ran into a case today that was pretty interesting. The symptoms were a fairly generic error in the app log:

Event ID: 4001
Task Category: General
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: server name
Description:
A transient failure has occurred. The problem may resolve itself in awhile. The service will retry in 56 seconds. Diagnostic information:
Kerberos test. . . . . . . . . . . : Failed
[FATAL] Cannot lookup package Kerberos.
The error occurred was: (null)

And in the Exchange Management Console, all the databases reported back a status of "Unknown". Also you couldn't run the EXBPA on the server, it came back with a network/registry error:

Error (The network path was not found) opening registry key reg:/servername/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, skipping object.

The customer could run the EXBPA against the server remotely, and remotely in the EMC the database status came back Healthy instead of Unknown.

Weird huh?

Turns out that there were corrupt / bad entries for the machine name in the hosts file, and it was causing all three symptoms. #'ing the records and doing an ipconfig /flushdns resolved everything in just a minute or two.

Dude where's my PFE? : unknown

Database Status Unknown in 2k7 EMC? This might be why....