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Exchange 2007: Issues with OAB

HI,

We are having issues with the OAB on a new Exchage 2007 build. Users are not getting a correct copy of the GAL.

I do see the below two error messages in the event logs:

Event ID 1018
Process MSExchangeFDS.exe (PID=3264). Failed to connect to remote server mailcluster. The remote server may be down, or its Server service may not be running.

AND
Event ID 1028
Process MSExchangeFDS.exe (PID=3264). Errors occurred while content was being synchronized from Unified Messaging server "mailcluster" for object "OAB". The remote server is unavailable. The local server stopped trying to synchronize after 5 retries. Check the previous error events that were logged by Microsoft Exchange File Distribution Service for more information.

I did find a article saying the DNS needs to be enabled for short names, and I THINK I did this correctly by enabling netbios. Not sure what else to try.

Thanks
David

Britt Thompson

Check your virtual directories for your OAB and see if you can browse to them from the browser. You can see the actual URLs by using this command in your Exchange Management Shell:

Get-OABVirtualDirectory | fl

Look for the internal and external URLs listed and make sure they are pointing to the correct place and that you can browse to them.

Britt Thompson

Also, do you have public folders? Typically, the OAB is distributed using public folders to Outlook clients.

If you go to the Exchange Management Console -> Organization Configuration -> Mailbox -> OAB -> You can verify the distribution method here or create a new OAB

dross333

ASKER

Thanks Renazonse.

here is what I see.

When I try to browse from IIS I get this error.: HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error
The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.

For the distribution, CAS servers are listed, but Enable Public folder distrbution is unchecked. I have now checked this.

For the http error above, any suggestions?

Thanks

Britt Thompson

Post the URL's (mask them somehow if you need) so I can give you some troubleshooting steps to getting connected to the virtual directories. We may need to change or update the directory URLs.

Go to the Send/Receive section in Outlook and choose "Download Address Book" to see if you're actually downloading the GAL to your Outlook clients now.

dross333

ASKER

OK, I was eable to get rid of the 500 error by giving "authenticated users" read access to the OAB directory. I can now browse the directory is IIS and directly. However, I still get the errors as in my original post. I tried the send/receive, but same issue. It's using an older OAB copy. Not sure when that was created.

The url is https://autodiscover.nycemailtest.com/oab

Britt Thompson

You should be able to create a new OAB from the Exchange System Manager and delete the old one...it's likely not available in the public folders for the Outlook clients and it's simple enough to just create a new one and update it.

dross333

ASKER

Hmm. I seem to be getting closer to the source of the problem. When I try and add a new OAB, the wizard fails with the following error.

Error: Exchange Active Directory Topology Service on the server mailcluster cannot be contacted via RPC interface. Error 0x6BA.

By the way, the CAS and mailbox servers are on the same vlan. So firewall issue are not likely.

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Britt Thompson

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dross333

ASKER

Thought I post my findings on this. This turned out not to be a problem with Exchange, but a problem with connecting to to the \\MAILCLUSTER\ExchangeOAB from the CAS server. It turns out the a security patch (KB971657) was preventing this. I uninstalled the patch, rebooted and then then OAB was able to sync. Thanks renazonse for your suggestions.

dross333

ASKER

Thank you for your help and quick responses.