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Hybrid Exchange mailbox On-boarding : Target user already has a primary mailbox – Fix

Posted on November 7, 2019July 8, 2020 by Malinda Rathnayake3 Comments

During an Office 365 migration on a Hybrid environment with AAD Connectran into the following scenario:

Hybrid Co-Existence Environment with AAD-Sync
User [email protected] has a mailbox on-premises. Jon is represented as a Mail User in the cloud with an office 365 license
[email protected] had a cloud-only mailbox prior to the initial AD-sync was run
A user account is registered as a mail-user and has a valid license attached
During the office 365 Remote mailbox move, we end up with the following error during validation and removing the immutable ID and remapping to on-premise account won’t fix the issue

Target user 'Sam fisher' already has a primary mailbox.
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (tsu:MailboxOrMailUserIdParameter) [New-MoveRequest], RecipientTaskException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : [Server=Pl-EX001,RequestId=19e90208-e39d-42bc-bde3-ee0db6375b8a,TimeStamp=11/6/2019 4:10:43 PM] [FailureCategory=Cmdlet-RecipientTaskException] 9418C1E1,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Migration.MailboxRep
lication.MoveRequest.NewMoveRequest
+ PSComputerName : Pl-ex001.Paladin.org

It turns out this happens due to an unclean cloud object on MSOL, This is because Exchange online keeps pointers that indicate that there used to be a mailbox in the cloud for this user

Option 1 (nuclear option)

to fix this problem was to delete *MSOL User Object* for Sam and re-sync it from on-premises. This would delete [email protected] from the cloud – but it will delete him/her from all workloads, not only Exchange. This is problematic because Sam is already using Teams, One-drive, SharePoint.

Option 2

Clean up only the office 365 mailbox pointer information

PS C:\> Set-User [email protected] -PermanentlyClearPreviousMailboxInfo 
Confirm

Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Delete all existing information about user "[email protected]"?. This operation will clear existing values from
Previous home MDB and Previous Mailbox GUID of the user. After deletion, reconnecting to the previous mailbox that
existed in the cloud will not be possible and any content it had will be unrecoverable PERMANENTLY. Do you want to
continue?
[Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [?] Help (default is "Y"): a

Executing this leaves you with a clean object without the duplicate-mailbox problem,

in some cases when you run this command you will get the following output

“Command completed successfully, but no user settings were changed.”

If this happens

Remove the license from the user temporarily and run the command to remove previous mailbox data

then you can re-add the license

MS Exchange 2016 [ERROR] Cannot find path ‘..\Exchange_Server_V15\UnifiedMessaging\grammars’ because it does not exist.

Posted on December 4, 2018December 27, 2018 by Malinda RathnayakeLeave a Comment

So recently I ran into this annoying error message with Exchange 2016 CU11 Update.

Environment info-

Exchange 2016 upgrade from CU8 to CU11
Exchange binaries are installed under D:\Microsoft\Exchange_Server_V15\..

Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetItemCommand.ProcessRecord()". [12/04/2018 16:41:43.0233] [1] [ERROR] Cannot find path 'D:\Microsoft\Exchange_Server_V15\UnifiedMessaging\grammars' because it does not exist. 
[12/04/2018 16:41:43.0233] [1] [ERROR-REFERENCE] Id=UnifiedMessagingComponent___99d8be02cb8d413eafc6ff15e437e13d Component=EXCHANGE14:\Current\Release\Shared\Datacenter\Setup 
[12/04/2018 16:41:43.0234] [1] Setup is stopping now because of one or more critical errors. [12/04/2018 16:41:43.0234] [1] Finished executing component tasks. 
[12/04/2018 16:41:43.0318] [1] Ending processing Install-UnifiedMessagingRole 
[12/04/2018 16:44:51.0116] [0] CurrentResult setupbase.maincore:396: 0 [12/04/2018 16:44:51.0118] [0] End of Setup 
[12/04/2018 16:44:51.0118] [0] **********************************************

Root Cause 

Ran the Setup again and it failed with the same error
while going though the log files  i notice that the setup looks for this file path while configuring the "Mailbox role: Unified Messaging service" (Stage 6 on the GUI installer)

$grammarPath = join-path $RoleInstallPath "UnifiedMessaging\grammars\*";

There was no folder present with the name grammars under the Path specified on the error

just to confirm, i checked another server on CU8 and the grammars folder is there. 

Not sure why the folder got removed, it may have happened during the first run of the CU11 setup that failed, 

Resolution 

My first thought was to copy the folder from an existing CU8 server. but just to avoid any issues (since exchange is sensitive to file versions)
I created an empty folder with the name "grammars" under D:\Microsoft\Exchange_Server_V15\UnifiedMessaging\




Ran the setup again and it continued the upgrade process and completed without any issues...¯\_(ツ)_/¯











[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0416] [2] Ending processing Set-ServerComponentState
[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0417] [2] Beginning processing Write-ExchangeSetupLog
[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0420] [2] Install is complete.  Server state has been set to Active.
[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0421] [2] Ending processing Write-ExchangeSetupLog
[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0422] [1] Finished executing component tasks.
[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0429] [1] Ending processing Start-PostSetup
[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0524] [0] CurrentResult setupbase.maincore:396: 0
[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0525] [0] End of Setup
[12/04/2018 18:07:50.0525] [0] **********************************************

Considering cost of this software M$ really have to be better about error handling IMO, i have run in to silly issues like this way too many times since Exchange 2010.

Exchange 2010 Mailbox PST export – New-MailboxExportRequest

Posted on January 9, 2014November 26, 2018 by Malinda RathnayakeLeave a Comment

Remember the Export-Mailbox command on exchange 2007??? The main problem I personally had was the annoying outlook requirement.

With the exchange server 2010 service pack 1 release, M$ introduced a new Cmdlet to export mailboxes on the server. And it does not require outlook.

New-MailboxExportRequest

Step 01 – Mailbox Import Export Role Assignment

Grant the user account permissions to export mailboxes (By default no account has the privileges to export mailboxes)

New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role “Mailbox Import Export” -User administrator

Step 02 – Setup the Export File Location

We need a network share to export files. (Eg – \Exch01PST_export)

Note:

The Cmdlet gives an error if you point to a directory directly on the Hardisk (Eg – F:PST_export)

Create a Shared folder on a serverNAS and grant Exchange Trusted Subsystem user account read/write permissions to the folder

Exporting Mailbox Items with “New-MailboxExportRequest”

Supporting Cmdlets that can be used with MailboxExportRequest

Cmdlet	Description	Topic
New-MailboxExportRequest	Start the process of exporting a mailbox or personal archive to a .pst file. You can create more than one export request per mailbox. Each request must have a unique name.	Create a Mailbox Export Request
Set-MailboxExportRequest	Change export request options after the request is created or recover from a failed request.	Configure Mailbox Export Request Properties
Suspend-MailboxExportRequest	Suspend an export request any time after the request is created but before the request reaches the status of Completed.	Suspend a Mailbox Export Request
Resume-MailboxExportRequest	Resume an export request that’s suspended or failed.	Resume a Mailbox Export Request
Remove-MailboxExportRequest	Remove fully or partially completed export requests. Completed export requests aren’t automatically cleared. You must use this cmdlet to remove them.	Remove a Mailbox Export Request
Get-MailboxExportRequest	View general information about an export request.	View Mailbox Export Request Properties
Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics	View detailed information about an export request.	View Mailbox Export Request Properties

From <http://exclusivelyexchange.com/export-mailbox-exchange-2010/>

In this example

Shared folder name- PST_export

server name- EXCH01

Share Path – \Exch01PST_export

Mailbox – amy.webber

Folder permissions –

For this example we are going to use New-MailboxExportRequest cmdlet with the following parameters :

-baditemlimit 200 -AcceptLargeDataLoss

AcceptLargeDataLoss	The AcceptLargeDataLoss parameter specifies that a large amount of data loss is acceptable if the BadItemLimit is set to 51 or higher. Items are considered corrupted if the item can’t be read from the source database or can’t be written to the target database. Corrupted items won’t be available in the destination mailbox or .pst file.
baditemlimit	The BadItemLimit parameter specifies the number of bad items to skip if the request encounters corruption in the mailbox. Use 0 to not skip bad items. The valid input range for this parameter is from 0 through 2147483647. The default value is 0.

From <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607299(v=exchg.150).aspx>

Exporting the Whole Mailbox

Run the following Cmdlet to initiate the mailbox move request: New-MailboxExportRequest

New-MailboxExportRequest -baditemlimit 200 -AcceptLargeDataLoss -Mailbox amy.webber -FilePath \Exch01PST_exportamy.webber.pst

Exporting the User’s Online Archive

If you want to export the user’s online archive to .pst, use the –IsArchive parameter.

New-MailboxExportRequest -baditemlimit 200 -AcceptLargeDataLoss -Mailbox amy.webber -IsArchive -FilePath \Exch01PST_exportamy.webber-Archive.pst

Exporting a Specific Folder

You can export a folder from the users mailbox using the -IncludeFolders parameter

Eg: inbox folder layout-

To export the inbox folder

New-MailboxExportRequest -baditemlimit 200 -AcceptLargeDataLoss -Mailbox amy.webber -IncludeFolders #Inbox# -FilePath \Exch01PST_exportamy.webber.pst

Checking the Progress of the Mailbox Export Request

To check the current statues of the mailbox export request use the following cmdlet:

Get-MailboxExportRequest | Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics

People do crazy stuff scripting with this Cmdlet. Look around in the interwebs for some scripts.

Useful links:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607299%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

http://exclusivelyexchange.com/export-mailbox-exchange-2010/

http://exchangeserverpro.com/exchange-server-2010-mailbox-import-request-logging/

Until next time…

Recover Exchange Mail store Using Database portability feature in Exchange 2010

Posted on May 28, 2012November 26, 2018 by Malinda RathnayakeLeave a Comment

“Mail server crashed” worst nightmare for a System admin. Followed by tight Dead lines, incident reports, load of complains you have to listen to, Its a full fledged disaster.
In this scenario its a medium size business with with just one single Server running AD and Exchange 2010(not ideal i know) which was upgraded from SBS 2003

AD and DNS failed after de-commissioning the old SBS server.

Recovering from full server backup was not an option and we had the Databases on a separate drive.

Important things to keep in mind when recovering DB’s on a different AD domain

Organization name and the Exchange Administrative Group should be the same in order for the Portability feature to work
Database must be in a clean shutdown state
After mounting the old DB’s always move the mail boxes to new database’s
Exchange 2010 Slandered only supports up to 5 Databases.

there are few method’s to recover DB’s on exchange 2010, This is the method we used.

Check List before proceeding further

Once you have

Restored the Old Databases from backup to a different location on the server
installed the AD (with the same domain name) and the Exchange with the same Administrative Group as the earlier

Preparing the Databases

Checking the statues of the database file

in order for the Database portability feature to work. we need the DB’s in clean shutdown state. To check the Database State we are gonna be using the Exchange Server Database Utility’s file dump mode

Note : if you are restoring from a windows Backup the Database should already be in a Clean shut down state as the exchange VSS backup re-plays the log files before backing up the DB

More Detail on eseutil /MH – link

Launch command prompt and type

eseutil /MH “D:RestoreoldDB.edb” (the text in blue is the location of the restored old database file)

Check the output you get and check if the DB is in a Dirty shutdown or a clean shutdown state

If the DB file is in Dirty shutdown state

In this case we did not have any recent backups and we were not able to soft recover the DB since this is a new DC. so we had to do a hard recovery using this command.

eseutil /P “D:RestoreoldDB.edb” (the text in blue is the location of the restored old database file)

Click ok on the prompt to continue

Note : using the Hard recovery will result in loss of information depending on the amount of log files you have for that Database

After the Hard recovery to fully rebuild indexes and defragment the database

eseutil /D “D:RestoreoldDB.edb” (the text in blue is the location of the restored old database file)

Mounting the Database using the Portability feature.

Create a new Database

Create a new Database for example we will create one named – recoveryDB1

Go to properties of the new DB > Maintenance Tab > Select the option “This Database can be overwritten by a restore”

Apply the Changes and dismount the Database

Replace the new Database file with the Repaired Database

Firstly go to the folder where the new DB file(recoveryDB1.edb) is located and Rename or delete it

Delete the log files / Catalog files

———————————————————————————————————————–

Rename the Recovered Database

Go to the Folder where the Database we repaired before is located and Rename it to “recoveryDB1”

————————————————————————————————————————–

Replace the newly created Database

Copy the Repaired DB file and replace the new Database file recoveryDB1.edb

Remember the Log files should be deleted or moved before you mount this DB.

Mount the “recoveryDB1” Database From EMC

now the mailStore should be mounted with out an issue

Errors you might run in to
In case you do get errors when mounting the DB such as

Operation terminated with error -1216 (JET_errAttachedDatabaseMismatch, An outstanding database attachment has been detected at the start or end of recovery, but database is missing or does not match attachment info) after 11.625 seconds.

you are getting this error because The DB is in dirty shutdown state, refer to the Preparing the Database Section above to fix the issue by performing a Hard Recovery

unable to mount error ‘s

The new Database Log files are still present, Delete them or move them.

Now you can go ahead and Attach the Mailboxes to the corresponding user accounts.

Word of advice

It will be wise to not to keep this recovered Mail Store in production for long. you will run in to various issues as the Mails start to flow in and out

Create new Mail stores’s and Move the mail boxes to avoid future problems.

Some mailboxes might be corrupted. in that case

Easiest way is to use the

“New-MailboxRepairRequest” cmdlet

Refer to this tech-net article for more info – link

Export it to a PST
Attach the user to a fresh mailbox
Sync back the Data you need through outlook

Managing calendar permissions in Exchange Server 2010

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Malinda RathnayakeLeave a Comment

Admin may get asked to set and add / Edit permissions for shared Calendars.
these Sharing options are not available in EMC, so we have to use exchange power shell on the server to manipulate them.

View existing Calendar permissions

Get-MailboxFolderPermission -identity "Networking Calendar:Calendar"

There are 4 MailboxFolderPermission cmdlets in Exchange Server 2010:

• Add-MailboxFolderPermission

• Get-MailboxFolderPermission

• Remove-MailboxFolderPermission

• Set-MailboxFolderPermission

Each cmdlet have different syntax, follow the links for more information..

In this scenario we need to set following permissions to the Calendar Resource named “Networking Calendar.

user – “Nyckie” – full permissions

all users – permissions to add events without the delete permission

To assign calendar permissions to new users “Add-MailboxFolderPermission”

Add-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "Networking Calendar:Calendar" -User [email protected] -AccessRights Owner

To Change existing calendar permissions “set-MailboxFolderPermission”

set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "Networking Calendar:Calendar" -User default -AccessRights NonEditingAuthor

This assigns the owner righs to the user “nyckig” for the calendar of the “Networking Calendar” resource.and sets NonEditingAuthor permissions as the default permission for the calendar for all other users

__________________________________________

Here are the other permission levels you can assign:-

None – FolderVisible

Owner – CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderOwner, FolderContact, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems

PublishingEditor – CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems

Editor – CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems

PublishingAuthor – CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, DeleteOwnedItems

Author – CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, DeleteOwnedItems NonEditingAuthor – CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible

Reviewer – ReadItems, FolderVisible

Contributor – CreateItems, FolderVisible

The following roles apply specifically to calendar folders:

AvailabilityOnly – View only availability data

LimitedDetails – View availability data with subject and location

source –

technet.microsoft.com

http://blog.powershell.no/2010/09/20/managing-calendar-permissions-in-exchange-server-2010/