Question

Exchange Server refuses to use In-site Global Catalog servers

Asked by: davidt67

For those of you deeply familiar with the MS Exchange DS Access process.
Any ideas?

DS Topology shows the attached results, yet all three Exchange servers within site then refuse to use the in-site GC, instead opting for the out of site GC.

Manual configuration allows you to select the in-site GC, but that then causes an event ID 2103 error 'All Global Catalog Servers in use are not responding: '

Confugration by Auto Discovery gives event ID 2085  "No Global Catalog server is up in the local site 'LONDON'. DSAccess will use the  following out of site Global Catalog servers: "

If the Topology discovery is correct, what then causes the Exchange servers to refuse to use the closest GC?  
Note that it is happy to use the same DC as an Auto discovery Config DC and DC
I know one service uses port 389, whereas the other uses port 3268.

We have tried setting additional in-site DCs to be GCs and this yields the same result.

Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Build 7638.2 Version 6.5
Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard 5.2.3790 Service Pack 2
Domain Controllers Windows 2003 R2 SP2
All WSUS Updates applied as at 20 January 2008.  

Event Type:	Information
Event Source:	MSExchangeDSAccess
Event Category:	Topology 
Event ID:	2080
 
DSAccess has discovered the following servers with the following characteristics: 
 (Server name | Roles | Reachability | Synchronized | GC capable | PDC | SACL right | Critical Data | Netlogon | OS Version) 
In-site:
pdc.LawDeb.Net	CD- 6 6 0 0 0 1 6 1
gc1.LawDeb.Net	CDG 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
bdc1.LawDeb.Net	CD- 6 6 0 0 0 1 6 1
bdc2.LawDeb.Net	CD- 6 6 0 0 0 1 6 1
 Out-of-site:
gc2.LawDeb.Net	CDG 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1

                                  
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Asked On
2008-01-22 at 06:18:10ID23101120
Tags

Exchange Windows 2003 Server LDAP AD DSAccess Topology GC PDC 389 3268

Topic

Exchange Email Server

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Comments
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Answers

 

by: greesh_hemPosted on 2008-01-22 at 06:26:04ID: 20714397

This should give you some information

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/03/17/422350.aspx

 

by: davidt67Posted on 2008-01-22 at 06:46:26ID: 20714622

Thanks, but that article appears to apply to DSProxy which relates to Outlook clients not DSAccess which relates to Exchange servers use of Global Catlog servers.

 

by: davidt67Posted on 2008-01-22 at 07:01:17ID: 20714760

Someone here has suggested restarting all in-site GCs and DCs and then all Exchange Servers!  
Not something we can really do on a whim, but will schedule for Sunday.

 

by: darkstar3dPosted on 2008-01-22 at 11:40:22ID: 20717508

Rebooting has fixed this for me multiple times. Normally only rebooting the GCs did the trick. I would reboot them in succession to avoid an outage if you can.

 

by: davidt67Posted on 2008-02-11 at 13:03:49ID: 31423782

Rebooting AFTER replication has completed and all DC / GC are in sync seems to be the key.
Thanks for the advice.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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