Hello All,
I have Microsoft Exchange running on Server 2012 R2. I had some difficulty with the exchange installation and certificate configuration. I was able to use OWA reliably locally and thought all was well. Was able to create users, login, and import PSTs from Exchange 2003 server. All seemed well. The morning of go-live some systems could not proceed through the add account setup for the Outlook 2013 profile: The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Others were able to complete this process, but intermittently through the day everyone would get Exchange is unavailable message when trying to setup Outlook and mail delivery would stop. Restarting all the Exchange services did not help, but restarting brought everything back to normal; however only for a few hours before it occurred again. All the workstations are brand new/fresh installs.
The message the Outlook client shows is "trying to connect". During this time I am able to Telnet to the Exchange Server on port 25. When I right click on the Outlook icon in the system tray the autodiscovery appears to work. When I look at the connections monitor I see multiple connections with appropriate info, except the message "trying to connect". Yesterday clients were able to intermittently connect all day. Even without server restart email via Outlook client would be up and down.
At first I thought it was something to do with the X500 addresses I added to each user to allow then to reply to migrated mail from the old environment. Removing those address does not seem to fix the issue.
Could it be something incorrect with my certificates? I issued a self-signed certificated and deployed as a GPO, all the clients can browse OWA locally without issue; however the server is SLOW to bring up OWA or at time is unable to browse to it locally. Also all SSL/HHTPs web sites load really slow on the server itself, but are normal on clients. Furthermore, when I try to remote desktop out of the server to a client it takes A LONG TIME (30 seconds at the "securing connections" state) to actually connect, but I can use remote desktop on other systems and they connect immediately. Thinking I have messed up certificates, but not sure if this is part of my issue.
Final area, I started to setup external access to OWA, but aborted when I had issues. I removed all the links to the external domain from ECP. At this time I am only using Exchange locally.
Other than these areas, I think everything is working right. The issue is intermittent, but once it occurs you seem to have to restart the server OS to resolve it. In the meantime OWA works just fine.
This morning, I tried to connect the Exchange Management Shell to do some connection testing and it could not connect:
VERBOSE: Connecting to DecorDC.lan.decorproducts.com.
New-PSSession : [dc.lan.domain.com] Connecting to remote server dc.lan.domain.com failed with
the following error message : WinRM cannot complete the operation. Verify that the specified computer name is valid,
that the computer is accessible over the network, and that a firewall exception for the WinRM service is enabled and
allows access from this computer. By default, the WinRM firewall exception for public profiles limits access to remote
computers within the same local subnet. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
At line:1 char:1
+ New-PSSession -ConnectionURI "$connectionUri" -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Excha ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : OpenError: (System.Manageme....RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [New-PSSession], PSRemotin
gTransportException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : WinRMOperationTimeout,PSSessionOpenFailed
If anyone has a suggestion, direction, or tip I would really appreciate some guidance!