Exchange 2010 UM Old Voicemails

I ran into an issue in applying Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 on an Unified Messaging server - the Prerequisite Check came back with the following error:

Unified Messaging Role Prerequisites
Failed

Error:
The Unified Messaging voice mail folder 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\unifiedmessaging\voicemail' isn't empty. This folder must be empty before upgrade can proceed.
Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.3.123.3&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp

I went and looked, and indeed this folder was not empty. Looking at the dates on the voicemails, it was obvious that they were all old, and had been there for some time (the most recent was 6 months old). I believe there had been some previous delivery issues that had prevented them from being delivered to the proper mailbox. Since they were all old, I merely made a copy of them, and then removed them from this folder. Once the voicmail folder was empty, SP3 was able to continue installing without issue.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Installing Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Rollup 6

To get the permissions correct for installing Rollups on Exchange 2010 SP3, you will need to either disable UAC (not recommended) or you will need to launch the Rollup installer from an elevated command prompt (Right click and Run as Administrator) with the following command:
msiexec /update Exchange2010-KB2936871-x64-en.msp

This will allow the rollup to install properly. Other words, it will Roll Back and say that it Ended Prematurely.

Another note on Rollup 6 for SP3 is that it takes (at least in my environment) an extremely long time to generate native images for .NET assemblies. One of my servers took 45 minutes for this process. Wait it out and you'll be able to get it installed, just plan your windows accordingly.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Host update fails after updating to 4.1u2

After updating vCenter Update Manager (right after updating my vCenter Server) from 4.1u1 to 4.1u2, I received the following error when trying to update on of my hosts:

Remediation did not succeed for esxihost: SingleHostRemediate: esxupdate error, version: 1.30, operation: 7: ('http://esxihost:9084/vci/hostupdates/hostupdate/vmw/vibs/cross_oem-vmware-esx-drivers-net-vxge_400.2.0.28.21239-1OEM.vib','/var/tmp/cache/-1699692350','[Errno 14] HTTP Error 404: Not Found')

After doing some research, I discovered what happened is that Update Manager 4.1u2 is case sensitive, whereas 4.1u1 was not. Any patches that were downloaded previous to the 4.1u2 update that contain upper case letters will fail with this error. VMware has a KB article about it here.

The patches affected are the ones below. I've put the correct capitalization on them for you. If you go to your patch repository, you can rename the files that you have to the below, and you should then be able to update your hosts. The repositories are located here:

• Windows2008: C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Update Manager\Data\Hostupdate\vmw\vib\
• Windows2003: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Update Manager\Data\Hostupdate\vmw\vib

bind-libs-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_5.3.i386.vib
bind-libs-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_5.3.x86_64.vib
bind-utils-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_5.3.x86_64.vib
bind-libs-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_5.3.i386.vib
cross_oem-vmware-esx-drivers-net-vxge_400.2.0.28.21239-1OEM.vib
cross_oem-vmware-esx-drivers-scsi-3w-9xxx_400.2.26.08.036vm40-1OEM.vib
vmware-esx_swMgmt_provider-4x.1.0.1-1.4.348481.vib


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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Syslog not configured on ESXi 4.1u2

When I updated my ESXi host from 4.1u1 to 4.1u2, I got the following error message:

Configuration Issues
Issue detected on esxihost in datacenter: Warning: Syslog not configured. Please check Syslog options under Configuration.Software.Advanced Settings in vSphere client.

I thought it was odd since the host previously never complained about the Syslog before. I compared the settings between it and the other 4.1u2 hosts that I had, and indeed, it was missing the Syslog.Local.DatastorePath setting.

The setting on my hosts was:
[] /scratch/log/messages

Once I copied this into my Syslog.Local.DatastorePath setting on the server, it was happy. I went ahead and copied the setting to my remaining 4.1u1 servers so that they will be happy when updated as well.

So apparently ESXi 4.1u2 has issues with the Syslog running on ramdisk, but ESXi 4.1u1 doesn't.

I found the following VMware KB Article that explains why it complains about it:
Syslog not configured messages on ESXi host console or in logs

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

ESXi Host Unable to Update

I had a VMware ESXi 4.1 host that I was unable to update/patch using Update Manager the today.

It was coming up with the following errors when I tried:

VMware vCenter Update Manager had an unknown error. Check the Tasks and Events tab and log files for details.

And when I did that, I found this:

Could not install patches on esxihostname
Remediation did not succeed for esxihostname: SingleHostRemediate: Install error on host: esxihostname, error details: vim.fault.NoHost.

So I did some quick googling, and ran across this website that had the answer I was looking for.

The particular host that I was trying to update did indeed have an Unknown (inaccessible) VM on it (left over from yanking the storage and being sloppy...). I removed the VM from inventory, then was able to successfully patch the host.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

vSphere 5 is now available!

According to Yellow Bricks, it is now available for download. I'll update with links as soon as I get to a computer, but here is Yellow Bricks post.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Exchange 2010 and IE9 Issues

Ran across a known issue with Exchange 2010 and IE9. How do I know it was a known issue? I happened to be on the phone with Microsoft Support at the time for another issue...

The error that this combination causes is that you cannot close the Exchange Management Console in Exchange 2010. When you try to close it you receive the error message "You must close all dialog boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console."

My friendly guy on the Microsoft call told me that there is currently no fix - they are expecting to have a patch out around Q4 2011. The current fix, according to him, was "Don't install it. And uninstall it if you have already." I almost forgot to mute the phone before I started laughing. Gotta love when Microsoft tells you to not keep your computer up to date because it will break it...

So I decided to do some research on my own and (easily) found an article here with the fix.

Basically what you need to do is disable the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration, then add https://localhost to the trusted sites in IE and your good to go.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP