Question

RPC over HTTPS has stopped working

Asked by: leesowden

I am beginning to go out of my mind over this one. We have been running Exchange with an RPC over HTTPS scenario for over 2 years, and after patching the servers and firewall over the weekend, it has now stopped working and I have no idea why.
My deployment scenario is as follows:
I have a clustered Exchange Server 2003 configured as a backend RPC over HTTP server (call it mail). On the same network are 3 separate domain controllers, one of which is GC server (call it GC). In our firewall DMZ I have a server with IIS and Exchange Server 2003 configured as a Frontend RPC over HTTP server (call it web).
Now as I said the only thing that has changed was we patched everything up over the weekend to the latest MS patches. And the firewall which is a watchguard was upgraded graded to version 10 of the firmware.
So web is our RPC Proxy server. And I have checked all the settings on it the RPC virtual directory is correctly configured and when tested responds in the correct way (prompts for credentials 3 times and then reports 401.3 error on the ACL)
The firewall ports are still open correctly between the front end and back end server.
The only difference I can see in the clients is that when prompting for credentials it used to say please enter username and password for web, now it says please enter user name and password for mail.
Running an outlook.exe /rpcdiag on an external outlook client, shows the connection attempting to be made to mail via HTTPS then it drops without connecting. I do see Directory connection attempts to GC also, but these never seem to work either.
I really don't know what to do at this point because it seems everything I try doesn't change anything. I have even removed the RPC over HTTP proxy on web and redeployed to no avail.

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Asked On
2008-04-22 at 02:28:31ID23342261
Tags

Microsoft

,

Exchange

,

2003 SP1

Topics

Exchange Email Server

,

Windows 2003 Server

,

Microsoft IIS Web Server

Participating Experts
1
Points
0
Comments
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Answers

 

by: masa77Posted on 2008-04-22 at 02:34:40ID: 21409284

Is the SSL Certificate at the server side still valid?

 

by: leesowdenPosted on 2008-04-22 at 02:37:03ID: 21409291

SSL Cert is still valid and in the correct name of web.
What I have also observed in the RPCDiag is after a while Directory connections are correctly connected using RPC over HTTPS but mail won't connect.

 

by: masa77Posted on 2008-04-22 at 02:43:43ID: 21409324

 

by: leesowdenPosted on 2008-04-22 at 02:52:19ID: 21409346

I have seen that and apparently the 401.3 error is now the 'Normal' error for RPC over HTTP rather than the 403.2 error.
We have Server 2003 SP2 and exchange server 2003 SP1.

 

by: leesowdenPosted on 2008-04-23 at 09:41:55ID: 21422670

I believe an RPCDump might have revealed my error, but how to fix? This is an rpcdump run against mail:
ProtSeq:ncacn_http

Endpoint:6002

NetOpt:

Annotation:MS Exchange Directory RFR Interface

IsListening:ACCESS_DENIED

StringBinding:ncacn_http:172.19.200.20[6002]

UUID:1544f5e0-613c-11d1-93df-00c04fd7bd09

ComTimeOutValue:RPC_C_BINDING_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

VersMajor 1  VersMinor 0



ProtSeq:ncacn_http

Endpoint:6002

NetOpt:

Annotation:MS Exchange System Attendant Cluster Interface

IsListening:ACCESS_DENIED

StringBinding:ncacn_http:172.19.200.20[6002]

UUID:f930c514-1215-11d3-99a5-00a0c9b61b04

ComTimeOutValue:RPC_C_BINDING_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

VersMajor 1  VersMinor 0



ProtSeq:ncacn_http

Endpoint:6002

NetOpt:

Annotation:MS Exchange System Attendant Private Interface

IsListening:ACCESS_DENIED

StringBinding:ncacn_http:172.19.200.20[6002]

UUID:83d72bf0-0d89-11ce-b13f-00aa003bac6c

ComTimeOutValue:RPC_C_BINDING_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

VersMajor 6  VersMinor 0



ProtSeq:ncacn_http

Endpoint:6002

NetOpt:

Annotation:MS Exchange System Attendant Public Interface

IsListening:ACCESS_DENIED

StringBinding:ncacn_http:172.19.200.20[6002]

UUID:469d6ec0-0d87-11ce-b13f-00aa003bac6c

ComTimeOutValue:RPC_C_BINDING_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

VersMajor 16  VersMinor 1



ProtSeq:ncacn_http

Endpoint:6004

NetOpt:

Annotation:MS Exchange Directory NSPI Proxy

IsListening:ACCESS_DENIED

StringBinding:ncacn_http:172.19.200.20[6004]

UUID:f5cc5a18-4264-101a-8c59-08002b2f8426

ComTimeOutValue:RPC_C_BINDING_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

VersMajor 56  VersMinor 0

 

by: leesowdenPosted on 2008-04-23 at 09:53:26ID: 21422801

Also noticed that there is no entry for ncacn_http:6001 for the information store. This is on my backend Exchange box.

 

by: masa77Posted on 2008-04-24 at 23:55:56ID: 21437470

You might need to configure the registry for allowed ports
http://redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=654
Have you read this document?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998950.aspx

 

by: leesowdenPosted on 2008-04-25 at 01:18:27ID: 21437741

I have read both, and I have even configured ports using the registry on both FE, BE and Global Catalog servers. Still nothing.

 

by: leesowdenPosted on 2008-05-06 at 08:37:13ID: 21508214

Managed to resolve it with a support call to Microsoft. Another process was starting up and grabbing port 6001 on the backend server before exchange could. What a nightmare, just goes to show you should always know everything that is running on your boxes.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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