March 2015 – JeroenvanRoon.nl

A few weeks ago I have installed an Exchange 2013 environment. After several weeks some strange behaviour started. Exchange was giving me errors when configuring several tasks. It seems like some of the internal databases or mailboxes were corrupted. To resolve this I have re-created the system mailboxes.

Step 1

Remove all Exchange mailboxes from the Active Directory Users and Computers console.

Step 2

Prepare Active Directory by running Microsoft Exchange 2013 Setup with the /PrepareAD switch in the root domain of your Active Directory forest. Make sure you are using the same version of the Exchange setup as the version that is installed. I have used the following command. Make sure you replace the “ExchangeName” with the name of your Exchange organisation.

Setup.exe /PrepareAD /OrganizationName:”ExchangeName” /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

After Setup finishes preparing Active Directory for Exchange, you’ll need to wait while Active Directory replicates the changes to all of your domain controllers.

Step 3

Re-enable the mailboxes with the Exhange Management Shell PowerShell module. Use the following commands:

Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration “SystemMailbox{1f05a927-53ec-455e-b236-02df87905326}”
Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration “SystemMailbox{bb558c35-97f1-4cb9-8ff7-d53741dc928c}”
Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration “SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}”
Enable-Mailbox –Arbitration “FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042”
Enable-Mailbox –Discovery “DiscoverySearchMailbox {D919BA05-46A6-415f-80AD-7E09334BB852}”

Make sure you replace the GUID’s with the GUID’s that are created in your environment. You can look these GUID’s up in the Active Directory Users and Computers console after running the /PrepareAD command.

While setting up a test Hyper-V lab I have been doing a few steps to remotely manage both Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 machines. Both machines are in a WORKGROUP. To make remote management of Hyper-V possible a few steps are required.

Step 1

Enable WinRM on both machines. This can be done trough an elevated command prompt. The command used for enabling WinRM is:

winrm quickconfig

Step 2

On the Hyper-V Management client open cmd.exe as administrator and add the server as a trusted hosts. Here you can comma separate to add multiple machines.

winrm set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts=”PC-I5″}

Step 3

On the Hyper-V Management client add credentials to make the connection possible.

cmdkey /add:PC-I5 /user:ADMINISTRATOR /pass:Password

Step 4

The last step that needs to be done is allowing Remote Access for Anonymous Logon. This has to be configured on the Hyper-V Management client. This can be done by following the next steps.