INTRODUCTION

Performing an Exchange upgrade is a stressful experience for any IT professional, and when you start adding Blackberry Enterprise Server or other tier 0 applications the process becomes even more complicated. This article is for users who have Exchange 2010 with or without Blackberry Enterprise Server and with or without OCS 2007 R2. If you don’t have BES or OCS installed then you can skip those sections.

The Exchange 2010 SP1 file can be used to install a brand new Exchange 2010 SP1 environment and does not require you to use the Exchange 2010 RTM disc. This article will only focus on upgrading to SP1 not deploying a new SP1 environment but some of the same principles will overlap.

Installing Exchange 2010 SP1 should not be taken lightly. This is a major upgrade that requires careful planning and good documentation; this is where I come in. Microsoft has really dropped the ball with this Service Pack and has frustrated a lot of customers. There are quite a few known issues that I have outlined in this article in the Possible Issues section. Please note that I cannot list every possible issue but I have done my best to list the better known ones. When dealing with an upgrade that impacts business in such a profound way. You don’t want to be using documentation that skips details; this is one of my biggest pet peeves! It’s my goal to provide too much detail so when a problem occurs you have one source to go to. Warning this upgrade is not for Exchange novices, this is probably the hardest Service Pack update I think I have ever seen, the concepts are easy but there are so many factors/bugs.

Part 1 of this article outlines the necessary preparation you need to perform before upgrading your environment to SP1. Part 2 of this series will show step by step instructions on how to actually perform the upgrade as well as some post upgrade steps.

Please click here to check out some of the latest features included with Exchange 2010 SP1.

PREREQUISTES OVERVIEW

  • Microsoft Exchange 2010 installed on Windows Server 2008 or Server 2008 R2 X64.
  • Several Exchange hotfixes/updates (which I will review in detail)
  • BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.2 (Only if you are using BES). There has been a lot of confusion around the official support of BES with Exchange 2010 SP1. Please note that Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0.2 is officially supported. This is shown on the Blackberry Enterprise Server Compatibility Matrix.

  • Configure BES Throttling and maximum number of address book connection policies with the Exchange Management Shell
  • OCS 2007 R2 integration with Exchange 2010 SP1 requires you to install 2 updates, install a new web service provider and reconfigure your certificate.
  • Make a backup of your web.config file for your OWA customizations these are overwritten during the upgrade.
  • Ensure your Backup and Anti-virus software is supported.

UPGRADE PLANNING

Blackberry Enterprise Server


  1. Ensure you are running BES 5.0.2 you can check this by going to the landing page of the BES administration UI.

  2. Set the Throttling Policy for the BESAdmin account and ensure all RCA parameters are set to $null. This was one of the steps you should have already performed when you upgraded to Exchange 2010. Start by signing into your Exchange Server and Launching the Exchange Management Shell with the Run as Administrator option.
    1. In the Management Shell Type Get-ThrottlingPolicy BESPolicy (note this is taking into consideration that you named your BESPolicy “BESPolicy”, if for some reason you called your BES Policy something different replace that name)
    2. Scroll down until you start seeing the RCA entries that look like this. If the RCA parameters are $null they should match my screenshot below and you should be safe to perform the Exchange 2010 SP1 upgrade.

    3. If these parameters are not set to null then do so now. In the Exchange Management Shell type the following command
    4. Set-ThrottlingPolicy BESPolicy -RCAMaxConcurrency $null -RCAPercentTimeInAD $null -RCAPercentTimeInCAS $null -RCAPercentTimeInMailboxRPC $null
    5. Type Get-ThrottlingPolicy BESPolicy to ensure the parameters now read as $null
  3. Increase the maximum number of connections to the Address Book Service
    1. On the Exchange 2010 CAS server browse to <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin, in a text editor, open the microsoft.exchange.addressbook.service.exe.config file
    2. Change the value of the MaxSessionsPerUser key to 100000
    3. Save and close the file and then restart the Address Book Service.


Microsoft Exchange 2010 Updates

  1. Download Exchange 2010 SP1 (Exchange2010-SP1-x64.exe) and extract the contents to your Exchange Server/s.
  2. After extracting the setup files run setup.exe, from the folder you extracted SP1 into
  3. Then chose your language preferences and click the Install Microsoft Exchange Server Upgrade link. Please note that we are not going to be installing Exchange 2010 SP1 at this time. We are only running the installation in order to perform the readiness checks.

  4. Click the Next button at the introduction screen

  5. Accept the Terms and Conditions and click Next

  6. During this phase of the setup some readiness checks will be ran against your environment. Don’t be alarmed when you get failure messages. You will need to install several hotfixes/updates before SP1 can be installed. The readiness check will provide you with links/more information on the updates you need to install. One of the glitches is that the click here for help links do not work.

  7. Please reference the grid below for a list of the updates that you will need, this should correspond to the failure messages that the readiness check produced.

  8. The download update process has gotten some individuals confused. Some of the updates come from the Microsoft Update site and others come from MSDN. If they are on the MSDN site there is a corresponding Download Tab. Within this download tab you should be able to choose the correct OS version. I believe in one instance only the Windows 7 link was present but if you read the KB article the Windows 7 code includes the files for Server 2008 R2. I am running Exchange 2010 on Windows 2008 R2 and here is the list of updates that I downloaded

  9. It is my recommendation to install the updates on the server after hours as most of them require a reboot. Follow your strategy for backup and ensure you have a rollback option if the updates cause issues. Furthermore, after the updates have been installed it’s a good idea to wait a few days or even a week before continuing the SP1 upgrade to ensure the updates haven’t caused any issues. You want to narrow down your troubleshooting as much as possible so check those event logs after installing the updates. **IMPORATNT** the readiness check will tell you which server to install the updates on. In small deployments the HUB, CAS, and mailbox roles may all be on the same server. In larger deployments these are often split into separate servers. So if there is an error in the readiness check under the HUB role then you need to install that update on that particular Exchange Server.
  10. Finally the last error message I got in the readiness check was that Symantec Backup Exec Remote Agent was running and had files open. Ensure you stop the services for all backup/anti-virus agents before you perform the actual upgrade.

Microsoft Exchange 2010 Checks

  1. If you setup a static Address Book Service Port when you installed Exchange 2010, then you may have a good chance of having issues when you try to update to SP1. Following a reboot of the server the address book will revert back to using a dynamic port instead of continuing to use your static port change, this will cause an interruption. In Exchange 2010 RTM this was configured under <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\microsoft.exchange.addressbook.service.exe.config. From the picture below you can see that my RpcTcpPort is set dynamically by using the value 0. In Exchange 2010 SP1 the RpcTcpPort is not configured in the address book configuration file rather in the registry under this key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\MSExchangeAB\Parameters
    Value name:     RpcTcpPort
    Type:     REG_SZ (String)

    You can setup this key ahead of time without having any impact on your server if you really need to use Static Ports. Exchange 2010 RTM will not use the SP1 registry key. If your RpcTcpPort value = 0 , then you shouldn’t have any issues.

  2. Ensure that one of your domains is marked as the default domain.
    1. Open the Exchange Management Shell and run as administrator type inà
      Get-AcceptedDomain | fl
    2. Ensure that one of the domain listed there has the Default = True option set. Furthermore, ensure the “DomainName” and “Name”
      values are correct. For example, if my email domain was paulslager.com then you would expect my “DomainName” & “Name” values to be equal to paulslager.com.


    3. Domains cannot have a space in the name if they do you can fix it by running the following command.

      Set-AcceptedDomain –Identity -Name “ValidSMTPDomainName

      For Example, if the Name was “Paul Slager” you would need to run the following command

      Set-AcceptedDomain –Identity “Paul Slager” –Name “PaulSlager.Com”

  3. Many users have had issues with .NET 4.0 causing problems with the Upgrade, the current consensus is to remove it and use .NET 3.5 SP1. Furthermore, .NET 4.0 does not work if you want to enable Office Communicator integration into OWA 2010 SP1. If you have .NET 4.0 installed remove the .NET Framework 4 Client profile first and then the .NET Framework 4 Extended. Finally, .NET 4.0 has been known to cause issues with the Exchange Management Console not loading properly.
  4. Ensure that you’re Domain Controller and Exchange Servers do not share the same SID (Security Identifier). If they do you have a strong chance of not being able to access the Exchange Management Console properly. If you have matching SID’s I wouldn’t suggest upgrading yet until a hotfix is released as the workaround is complex and not recommended. Use use Sysinternal psgetsid.exe to check the SID’s for your DC and Exchange servers ensure they do not match. If you have severs with the same SID this means you didn’t properly deploy the server by sysprepping it.

POSSIBLE ISSUES

Important this list is not exhaustive and if you follow the Upgrade Planning steps I will save you the headache of 3-4 issues that I haven’t even listed below.

*denotes a Blackberry Enterprise Server issue

  1. Outlook 2003 clients are unable to open more than 1 shared calendar/mailbox at a time.

    Resolution – try setting the RCA parameters to $null to accept unlimited connections. This step is explained in step 2 of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server section.

  2. Exchange Management Shell Shortcut is missing

    Resolution: check here

  3. OWA will not open after an upgrade

    Resolution: a secondary website is created in IIS with bindings to local host using port 80 and port 443 preventing the default website to boot because of a port conflict. Remove the newly created port bindings and manual start the default website.

  4. HTTP to HTTPS Redirection stops after upgrading to SP1.

    Resolution: The SP1 installation turns on the option “Require SSL” on the default website on the CAS server. Manually reconfigure the HTTP to HTTPS redirection, and ensure you uncheck “Require SSL”; steps are here

  5. * The Microsoft Exchange RPC Client Access service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 5000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

    Resolution: BES 5.0.2 requires a public folder database to function correctly. For more details please click here

  6. When opening the Exchange Management Console this error occurs “The following error occurred when retrieving user information for domain\user: Unexpected error while executing command ‘Get-LogonUser”

    Resolution: The current workaround is to ensure that you’re Domain Controller and Exchange Servers do not share the same SID.

  7. * Calendar entries disappear after rebooting the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The Throttling Policy parameter for EWSFindCountlimit changes from $null to 1000.

    Resolution: Create a new BlackBerry Enterprise Server Policy using the Exchange Management Shell click here for the KB article outlining the steps needed.

  8. Outlook Web Access is not showing pages properly when installed on a Unified Access Gateway(UAG)

    Resolution: Click here to find out how to fix this issue.

  9. Upgrade process seems to hang and will not complete

    Resolution: If you have Forefront installed disable and stop all of its services before performing the installation, this goes for rollups as well.

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 (KB2407028) was released a few weeks ago that fixes a few issues. None of the issues I have documented here are explicitly documented as being fixed with this hotfix but I recommend applying it anyway. To read about what was fixed with this update please click here

CONCLUSION

This article outlines the preparation that needs to occur before you attempt the SP1 upgrade. In part 2 of this series I will explain step by step how to actually perform the SP1 upgrade, run post upgrade fixes/checks, and reconfigure OCS 2007 R2 integration. If you have any questions in the meantime please don’t hesitate to let me know.


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More about Paul Slager

Written by Paul Slager
Paul is the owner of PaulSlager.com and enjoys writing a wide variety of technical articles for the community. Paul specializes in Virtualization, Storage, DR, Strategic Planning, Backup, SharePoint, Active Directory, and MS Exchange. He holds his PMP, MCITP, and VCP. Paul also does free community service and consulting for any companies that wish to use his resources.