Sunday, April 11, 2010

Exchange 2010 Unified Communication webcast

During some searching i found an excellent webcast on Exchange 2010 unified communication features. Following is the link;

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032442908&CountryCode=US

Friday, April 9, 2010

SharePoint website not opening on same server

I faced a strange issue recently, i have deployed SharePoint 2003 servers for one project and one of the requirements was to open SharePoint site from same server. when i was trying to open site from the same server i was getting authentication prompts and the site was not opening. I have even added the URL entry in the local host file but the issue remains same. After googling i found one Microsoft KB on the same issue which stated that  “This issue occurs if you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 include a loopback check security feature that is designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, authentication fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local computer name.”

In order to fix this we need to disable loopback check on all web server which are facing this behavior. I have applied this fix on my both front-end servers and after restarting both front-end servers the issue solved and i can now open website on same server. Following is the fix i followed.

  • Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
  • In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

  • Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
  • Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
  • Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
  • In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
  • Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer

     

    Following is the KB for this issue;

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

  • Wednesday, April 7, 2010

    Command for shrinking Log files

    Below command will shrink SQL log files and also release unused physical space on drives.

    Use DatabaseName

    Backup log databasename with no_log

    DBCC SHRINKFILE (logfilename)

    WSS search and SQL 2005 indexing issue

    Recently we have migrated our SharePoint 2003 from one AD forest to another forest, apart of this change we have also upgraded our backend DB from  SQL 2000 to SQL 2005.  Recently i faced a very critical issue, one of the heavily used site is not showing search result and the search is timing out. In order to investigate this issue i have identified the query in the SQL profiler and ran it directly on the SQL management studio. It took around 10 minutes to show results in new DB Server (SQL 2005)  but the same query is returning result in 1 sec in the old DB server (SQL 2000) i ran the query again with the Query execution plan against both servers and compared it, i have seen the cost for referencing Clustered index is very high in new DB server as compared to old DB server.  After some researching i have planned to update DB statistics by using following command;

    update statistics tablename

    SharePoint create its own indexes which we cannot alter and it uses the hard coded name for indexes such as ix_databasename. As per my analysis after moving DBs from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 the databases statistics were not updated and indexes were not using optimal path for searching for data that why it is showing results after long delays.

    Exchange 2007 unable to view deleted mailbox

    In exchange 2007 if you delete any mailbox or any AD user, the mailbox will be there for 30 days in disconnected mailbox view and you can reconnect it again within 30 days if you want to restore the mailbox to its original state. After 30 days the mailbox will be permanently deleted and you can then only restore it from the backup.

    Recently i faced a strange issue, one of the mailbox user was deleted by mistake and i am unable to see this user in disconnected mailbox view. The mailbox was deleted 2 days back which is under 30 days threshold but still the mailbox was not visible. After done some research and some help from one of my friend i figured out that i have to run following command in order to make this mailbox visible in disconnected mailbox view

    Clean-mailboxdatabase –identity Databasename

    As per Microsoft,

    “use the Clean-MailboxDatabase cmdlet to scan the Active Directory directory service for disconnected mailboxes that are not yet marked as disconnected in the Microsoft Exchange store and update the status of those mailboxes in the Exchange store. This cmdlet is not able to update the Exchange store unless the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is running and the database is mounted.

    A connected mailbox has two parts: the mailbox object in the Exchange store, and the user object with Exchange properties in Active Directory. A disconnected mailbox is the mailbox object in the Exchange store, but it is not connected to a user object in Active Directory

    Under normal circumstances, it is not necessary to run Clean-MailboxDatabase because a mailbox is marked as disconnected immediately after the Disable-Mailbox or Remove-Mailbox command completes. If you used the Disable-Mailbox cmdlet or the Remove-Mailbox cmdlet while the Exchange Information Store service was stopped, or if a mailbox was disabled by an external means other than the Disable-Mailbox cmdlet or Remove-Mailbox cmdlet, you may want to use the Clean-MailboxDatabase cmdlet to scan for disconnected mailboxes.”