After attempting to P2V the OWA server, and subsequently failing…I decided it would be FAR better just to migrate and build a new VM from scratch- and not to mention this would allow me to get rid of yet another stupid hostname and use something that makes sense. On top of the hostname was the fact that this server had started life as a 2000 box with Exchange 2000 installed, then was upgraded to server 2003 and Exchange 2003…probably why the P2V didn’t work so well. Building a new OWA VM was a bit annoying, because we will be upgrading to Exchange 2010 soon…so this was a bit mundane. While I was working on Exchange, I figured I would go ahead and remove a server that had been an exchange server some time ago, but I had never even seen it, so no one had taken the time to remove it (there was a single mailbox assigned to the unused server…which was producing an error- probably why it had never been done). Mailbox removed, and server removed successfully.
Installed the server, installed Exchange, set as FE server…all done successful. Then the usual optimizations:
Enable FBA: http://www.petri.co.il/configuring_forms_based_authentication_in_exchange_2003.htm
Change the default domain\username on login: http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/OWA2003Forms-based-Authentication-default-domain.html
HTTPS redirect: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/839357
Keep in mind, this VM was still in the same subnet (Inside) as the rest of the servers. OWA worked fine. I then moved the VM to the DMZ and updated the IP address, DNS entries, firewall, etc…OWA still worked fine…even after a reboot. Then, I installed our monitoring agent on the VM – which requires .NET 2.0. And to install .NET 2.0, you have to stop\start a few services, including IIS Admin, Exchange Routing engine, HTTP SSL to name a few. .NET 2.0 installed successfully, and the agent installed successfully. Now OWA stopped working. The website showed fine, but once you tried to login, there was “and unspecified error”…my favorite kind.
The eventlogs were littered with errors:
Event ID:2114 Category: Topology Source: MSExchangeDSAccess
Description: Process IISIPMF19D764E-7FD5-4AEB-B1CA-D0720033FC24-AP “EXCHANGEAPPLICATIONPOOL (PID=3156), Topology Discovery Failed, error 0x8007077f
There were numerous other 2114 errors with different processes notated…all errors had one thing in common: Topology Discovery Failed. Then I realized: this is exchange- it is active directory integrated- including sites. The VMs have a different subnet – which was not registered in Active Directory (Sites and Services). Running nltest /dsgetsite confirmed my suspicion – the command failed. After registering the new subnet in AD, and rebooting the server, the errors were gone from the logs, and logons were successful.