Exchange 2019: Presenting Outlook Anywhere With WAP

KB ID 0001548

Problem

Note: Applies to Exchange 2019, 2016, and 2013.

This is pretty much PART TWO, of presenting ‘Exchange Web Services’ using Web Application Proxy. Back in PART ONE we looked at publishing OWA and ECP, and that required having an ADFS server. To present the other web services, e.g Outlook Anywhere, Exchange Active Sync, Offline address book etc. You don’t need ADFS, you simply use ‘pass through‘ authentication with your WAP Server, directly to Exchange.

Solution

Before you start, you need to make sure in addition to the DNS records we used for OWA and ECP, you also need to be able to publicly resolve your Autodiscover record. I prefer doing this with public SRV records, see the following article for clarification;

Creating an AutoDiscover SRV Record

You now need, to make sure that the URLs that Exchange uses for it’s web services are set correctly, to do that use the following PowerShell commands;

[box]

Get-OutlookAnywhere |select InternalHostname,ExternalHostname
Get-OABVirtualDirectory |select InternalUrl,ExternalUrl
Get-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory |select InternalUrl,ExternalUrl
Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory |select InternalUrl,ExternalUrl
Get-MapiVirtualDirectory |select InternalUrl,ExternalUrl
Get-ClientAccessService |select AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri

[/box]

 


Make sure your internal URLS are resolvable inside and your external/public URL’s are resolvable outside, (To the public IP address of your WAP Server).

Exchange URLS To Publish with WAP

As with the URLs we published previously remember to publish them with a trailing ‘slash’. You need to publish and ‘Reverse Proxy‘ the following URLs;

Outlook Anywhere: https://mail.ubique.com/rpc/  
Offline Address Book: https://mail.ubique.com/oab/
Active-Sync: https://mail.ubique.com/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/
Exchange Web Services: https://mail.ubique.com/EWS/  
MAPI: https://mail.ubique.com/MAPI/
Autodiscover: https://mail.ubique.com/Autodiscover/

Note: Obviously your domain will have a different name!

Publish Outlook Anywhere with WAP

From the ‘Remote Access Management Console’ > Publish > Next.

Select ‘Pass-Through’ > Next.

Give the Published rule a sensible name like “Outlook Anywhere” > Enter the URL’s, and select your public certificate > Next.

Publish.

Close

Publish Active Sync with WAP

Active Sync is required for phones and mobile devices that cannot use Outlook Anywhere. To publish this rule repeat the procedure above, but at the Publishing Setting page use the following settings.

Publish Offline Address Book with WAP

Offline Address Book is required by devices to download a cached copy of the global address list. To publish this rule repeat the procedure above, but at the Publishing Setting page use the following settings.

Publish Exchange Web Services with WAP

Exchange Web Services allow clients to access calendars, contacts and scheduling information remotely. To publish this rule repeat the procedure above, but at the Publishing Setting page use the following settings.

Publish Exchange MAPI with WAP

Mail Application Programming Interface (over HTTPS) if the default connection protocol in modern Exchange deployments. To publish this rule repeat the procedure above, but at the Publishing Setting page use the following settings.

Publish Exchange Web Services with WAP

If you’ve used Exchange since version 2007, you will know how important Autodiscover is, (probably because of the headaches caused when it’s not setup correctly!) To publish this rule repeat the procedure above, but at the Publishing Setting page use the following settings.

Final Sanity Check

When complete, your WAP settings should look like this, (this is for all the pass-through, AND ADFS published settings).

Once setup correctly, Outlook should work fine externally, like so;

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

NA

Exchange ‘Cross Forest’ Mail Migrations

KB ID 0001356

Problem

PeteNetLive is full of Exchange Migration walkthroughs, going all the way back to Exchange 2003. But what if you are migrating to another forest? Well for small migrations you can of course export mail from the old Exchange Server, and them import it into the new mailbox in the new domain/forest (usually via .PST files). I’ll provide links at the bottom of the page, if that’s what you would prefer to do.

Earlier this year, I got involved with a client that was migrating many domains into one, and this method seemed a better fit for them. The process/screenshots below are taken from my testing and proof of concept for this project.

As you can see, (above) I’ve got a source Exchange server, (Running Exchange 2010) in domaina.com, and I’ve got a target Exchange server, (Running Exchange 2016) in domainz.com

Note: You may guess from the server names, these are also domain controllers, (this is not recommended in a production environment!) My old Exchange server is also running Certificate Services, which will become apparent below.

 

Solution

The service that does all the ‘heavy lifting’, is the Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication Service. Out first task is to get it running on the legacy Exchange server. Open the Exchange Shell and execute the following command;

[box]Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity “EWS (Default Web Site)” -MRSProxyEnabled $true -MRSProxyConnections 50[/box]

Ensure the service is running;

The front end of the MRS service is presented via IIS, and it’s secured with HTTPS, so it will use the certificate you have presented, (i.e the same one for OWA). Therefore the new (Target Exchange Server) needs to trust that certificate. If you have a publicly signed certificate from a third party vendor, then you don’t need to import anything you can skip this step.

The World is Full of People Who are Scared of Certificates! I have no idea why? For a certificate to work, you need to TICK TWO BOXES;

  • BOX ONE: You need the trust the Certificate Authority who issued the certificate, (this is printed onto the certificate, and in most cases can be extracted from the web certificate as well. This is the CA Certificate of the issuer, NOT the certificate you see in OWA.
  • BOX TWO: The certificate will have a name on it, it will be either the common name, or a subject alternative name (within the certificate), it will look something like, owa.your-domain.com, or *.your-domain.com for example. This must be resolvable via DNS, and also be the hostname you are looking at.

Below, I’m simply importing the Root CA Certificate, from DomainA into my Exchange server on DomainZ.

Note: Start > Run > mmc.msc > File > Add/Remove Snap-in > Certificates > Local Computer.

In production, I’d setup conditional forwarding between the two domains to handle DNS, but in this case I’m being lazy and just putting the FQDN of the Exchange 2010 server in the Exchange 2016’s hosts file, (old school eh!)

To Setup Conditional Forwarding; Take a look at the first three steps in this article.

Providing you have done everything correctly, you should be able to ‘browse’ from Exchange 2016, to Exchange 2010, to the following URL, and not receive any certificate errors, it should look like this;

[box]https://servername.domain-name.com/EWS/mrsproxy.svc[/box]

Note: If you get any certificate/untrusted errors, fix them before proceeding.

Pre-Staging the Cross Forest MailBox Migration

Actually moving the mailboxes is a ‘two-step‘ procedure, first you pre-stage the move, this creates a Mail User* in the new domain.

*Note: A Mail User is an a little bit like a Contact insofar as they both have external email addresses (i.e ‘username@domaina.com’, while the mail user is in domainz.com, (until the mailbox is migrated). The difference between a Mail user and a contact is, a mail user has a logon name and a password. Once migrated the Mail User is converted into a User Mailbox in the new domain, and the User Mailbox back in old domain gets converted into a Mail User with an email address of username@domainz.com for the mail user in domaina.com. This (while being cool) allows mail flow between the domains during migration. (Assuming your DNS is all setup correctly, of course).

The following procedure is carried out on the new Exchange server, open an Exchange Shell Window and execute the following command;

[box]$Rcred = Get-Credential[/box]

Then supply an administrative account in the SOURCE, (remote) domain.

Repeat the procedure, but this time use Lcred;

[box]$Lcred = Get-Credential[/box]

Then supply an administrative account in the TARGET, (local) domain.

Exchange has a script to do the do the staging for you, it’s in the Exchange install directory, in the ‘scripts’ folder. Mine is in the C: drive, but the path to yours may be different, (depending on how you installed Exchange). But once located, you need to change to the directory that the Prepare-MoveRequest.ps1 script is in i.e.;

[box]cd “c:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Scripts”[/box]

Note: V15 denotes Exchange 2013 and 2016.

Now execute the following command, (this is all one command if it gets wrapped);

[box].\PrepareMoveRequest.ps1 -Identity “username@domaina.com” -RemoteForestDomainController dc2a.domaina.com -RemoteForestCredential $Rcred -LocalForestDomainController dc1z.domainz.com -LocalForestCredential $Lcred -TargetMailUserOU “OU=Migrated,DC=domainz,DC=com“[/box]

Note: This assumes you have created the OU to migrate into! And, (as you can see in the example below,) I’m using the public email address of my user, not the internal one, (it doesn’t matter).

Execute Cross Forest Mailbox Migration

Now the mailboxes are ‘pre-staged’ we can select them for migration, in the new Exchange environment, Recipients > Migration  >Add > Move to this forest.

Add.

Select the User(s) > Add > OK.

Next.

 

Enter the administrative credentials for the source domain > Next.

Enter the FQDN, of the legacy server, (use the SAME NAME that’s on the certificate) > Next.

Give the migration ‘Batch’ a name > Set the ‘target’ email domain > Select the target Exchange Database, (and Archive database if applicable) > Next.

Note: If you keep getting failed migrations, that say ‘FailedOther‘ then you can raise the bad item limit, and large item limits.

Select a user to get the mail notification > Select ‘Automatically Complete Migration Batch’ (or it will stop at 95% and you will have to complete this manually) > New.

You can now view progress in the ECP, (a big buggy and slow to update,) or by running ‘Get-MoveRequest | Get-MoveRequestStatistics

 If there’s a problem, both the ECP (Exchange Control Panel) and EMS (Exchange Management Shell) should give you a clue. You can remove and rerun a migration on a failed user and nothing will break! Sometimes you need to raise the bad item limit or make sure the source mailbox isn’t too large before proceeding for example. (Use the search box at the top of the page, I’ve posted a lot of Mailbox Move problems).

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

Exchange 2007 / 2010 – Export Mailbox’s to PST files

Exchange 2003 – Exporting Mail to .pst files with ExMerge

Exchange (2010 Post SP1 and Newer) Bulk Importing Mail From PST Files

MRS Proxy Error ‘The connection to the server could not be completed’

GFI MailArchiver

Deploying GFI MailArchiver with Exchange 2010, Using the Outlook Connector, Importing and Exporting Data.

KB ID 0000666

Problem

I’ve been involved with Exchange for a long time, either being directly responsible for it, or supporting others that do. And like all systems it would run a lot smoother if you kept users away from it! But unfortunately you can’t, so your system is probably full of users “Deleted Items” and “Sent Items” and a copy of every email that some users have ever received “Because I might need them”. And for years I’ve been saying “It’s a messaging system not a file storage system” and lecturing users about tidying up their inbox. Yes you can setup retention policies but most people don’t.

Even if you do have conscientious users, some of them click “Yes” when Outlook asks them “Would you like to Auto-Archive your old messages now?” Then you have PST files all over the place getting corrupted and not getting backed up.

In addition, just as techs like me are shouting at users to delete things, businesses are now finding that they need to keep ALL their digital messaging for things like Sarbanes-Oxley and Freedom of Information enquiries. Yes I’m sure you back up your Exchange server but what if you needed to produce a message thread about a particular project that was two years ago in the middle of a month?

Archiving

Is the process of taking a copy of mail messages as they pass through Exchange and copying them off to an external location, in this case a database. The advantage of doing this is that database can be on cheaper midline storage and (potentially) keeps the Exchange database sizes down. With Exchange this is done by setting up Journaling (that’s the process of sending a copy of all [or specified] mail to a journal users mailbox). MailArchiver then takes this mail and put it into its database.

Advantages

1. Performance: Getting all the ‘Old’ Data out of the exchange databases makes them smaller, and more efficient.

2. Elimination of PST files: There’s a big list of reasons why I don’t like PST files. If you’ve ever had a user lose email because of them, then as far as they’re concerned its YOUR fault. There are tools to import PST file into the database, (and to export as well).

3. Disaster Recovery: How nice would it be, the next time users email message ‘disappears’ (Users never delete emails they just disappear), they could restore it themselves, from within Outlook. the Outlook Mail Connector software will do this. Also your backup window for Exchange will be a lot smaller.

4. Compliance: Saving a copy of all messages in a database has the advantage, that it’s searchable, and you can export the data you find in a format that you can import straight back into Exchange or send to someone.

5. Investigation: MailArchiver provides some powerful search and reporting tools. If your HR department needed to see who said what to who about projectXYZ then using conventional methods would be a nightmare.

Solution

GFI MailArchiver 2012 Installation and Configuration

Enabling Journaling in Exchange 2010

Note: GFI Mail Archive setup can do this for you but I prefer to do things manually.

1. Launch the Exchange System Management Console > Recipient Configuration > Mailbox > New Mailbox.

2. User Mailbox > Give it a name and set the password > Don’t create an archive > New > Finish.

3. Option 1: Standard Journaling can be enabled on a mailbox store > Organisational Configuration > Mailbox > Locate the store> Properties.

4. Maintenance tab > Tick Journal recipient then browse for the user you created > Apply OK.

5. Option 2: (Note: Requires an Exchange Enterprise CAL) This is set up using a Journaling rule > Organizational Configuration > Hub Transport > Journal Rules > New Journal Rule.

6. Give the rule a name > Browse for the user you created earlier > Set the scope (in most cases you will want global) > New > Finish.

7. To test it’s working send and email then log on as your ‘Journal’ user and make sure you have a copy in the inbox.

Installing GFI MailArchiver 2012

8. Before installing the GFI MailArchiver server needs the Exchange MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects 1.2.1 (Unless you are installing it on the Exchanges server).

9. Also (though not essential) I prefer to disable IE Enhanced Security Configuration, so IE wont get upset with the management console.

10. You can add the URL to trusted sites if you want, but I’m not a fan of IE ESC anyway so I simply disable it.

11. Now run the GFI MailArchiver installer.

12. Now this I DO LIKE, why can’t Exchange do this! These are the server pre-requisites, rather than just falling over and giving you an error (I’m looking at you Windows Exchange Developers!) It offers to do the hard work for you. It takes a while though, best go for a coffee at this point > Next > Select whether you want to check for a newer version > Accept the EULA > Set the destination folder > Next.

13. Here the default setting, WARNING if you already have web services on this server (or even UPS software using port 80), have a common sense check.

Note: If you are not sure, the following command will tell you if port 80 (http) is in use;

[box]netstat -aon | find “:80″[/box]

14. Select Install > Finish.

Configuring MailArchiver 2012

15. The GFI MailArchiver management console will launch > Configure.

16. Next.

17. Enter your licence key and select verify licence key > Next.

18. Next.

19. In this example I’m using the Firebird database, in a production environment you should be using SQL server > Next.

20. Change the paths if required > Enter some domain credentials> Next.

21. Next

22. Next

23. Next

24. I’m selecting Auto > Next

25. As I set the user up myself I’m choosing Manual > Next.

26. Exchange Web Services seems to be less problematic > Enter your Journal user account > Next.

27. Next.

28. Finish.

29. We are now up and configured.

GFI MailArchiver – Outlook Connector, Import and Export

GFI MailArchiver – Using the Outlook Connector

30. Firstly you need to enable ‘Mailbox Folder Structure Retrieval’ on the GFI server > Launch the MailArchiver Management console.

31. Mailbox Folder Structure Retrieval.

32. Change Settings.

33. Enter a user account to connect to Exchange Web Services with, here I’m using my domain admin, whichever account you use needs to have administrative access on the Exchange and the GFI server. It also (domain admin included) needs the following Powershell commands running on the Exchange server before it will work, (change the user name to match your own);

[box]New-ManagementScope -name “MAUMPolling” -recipientrestrictionfilter {recipienttype -eq “UserMailbox”}</p> <p>New-ManagementRoleAssignment -name “MAUMPollingRA” -role:applicationimpersonation -user “administrator@petenetlive.net” -customrecipientwritescope “MAUMpolling”[/box]

34. Next.

35. Finish.

Installing the Outlook Connector on a Client

36. I’ve already got a client PC setup with Outlook 2010.

37. I’m just connecting to the GFI servers management URL from the client and downloading the Outlook Connector.

Note: The versions are for Outlook 32 bit and Outlook 64 bit, even if your Windows client is 64 bit you may still be running 32 bit Outlook/Office. If you get it wrong it will tell you your version of Office is not supported.

38. Install the client software, accept the defaults, all you need to specify is the URL of the GFI MailArchiver server.

39. Now when your user opens Outlook, they get an additional mailbox called “GFI MailArchiver Mailbox” that carries a copy of ALL the users mail (Note: Not the mail from before the product was installed, to import that see the import section below, and choose ‘Import for Exchange mailbox’. In addition each user now has a MailArchiver tool bar from which they can search for their mails.

Note: If a user ‘loses’ a mail they can simply drag a copy from their GFI mailbox to their live inbox.

GFI MailArchiver – Importing Data from PST Files

Note: To do this the machine needs to have Outlook installed on it (and NOT Outlook 64 bit!)

40. Launch the GFI MailArchiver Import and Export Tool.

41. Import from .pst files.

42. Add PST file > Browse to your PST file > Open.

43. Select the folder(s) required > Next

44. Select a date range > Select the user that will own the imported data > Next.

Note: I’d rather have an “Import Everything” option!

45. When complete > Finish.

46. Now that user will have the imported mail as well (Note: The default view is “Emails in last 30 days” so don’t panic if you don’t see it all).

GFI MailArchiver – Exporting Data to PST File

47. Launch the GFI MailArchiver Import and Export Tool.

48. Enter the URL of the GFI server > Verify > Ensure it says OK > Next.

49. Select what you want to export (I’m going to search for email containing particular words) > Next.

50. Type in your search text > Find > Next.

51. Here you can restore the mail to a mailbox, export it to .msg or .eml format, or my old nemesis .pst files, I’ll choose the latter > Next.

52. And there’s my .pst file, ready to be sent out to satisfy my freedom of Information enquiry.

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

NA