Field Report: Cisco and Exchange woes. 451 5.7.3 Cannot achieve Exchange Server authentication. Telnet fails with 200*****

So this was a strange case that i came across with. Here’s my setup.

 

In this scenario, strangely it was noticed that the mail is getting queued in our Exchange 2013 environment which is bound to Exchange 2010 mailboxes. Upon the error notification, we identified the below error.

451 4.4.0 Primary target IP address responded with: “451 5.7.3 Cannot achieve Exchange Server authentication.” Attempted failover to alternate host, but that did not succeed. Either there are no alternate hosts, or delivery failed to all alternate hosts.

Additionally, upon doing a telnet from the Server B range to Server A range, we noticed that we are not getting the expected banner while telnet’ing port 25 as below.

Also, EHLO command fails with 500 5.3.3 Unrecognized command

If i try to telnet the relevant server from the same subnet, I get the correct HELO banner and the EHLO reply as below.

If you are getting the above error, it could be due to two reasons.

1. The sending Exchange Server do not have authentication permission on the receiving Exchange Server(s).
   If this is the case, that means the Exchange server which we cannot send email to doesn’t have it’s Exchange Server Authentication enabled. Because of this, when the Sending Exchange server is trying to authenticate against the receiving servers, it fails. To resolve this we need to set Exchange Server Authentication enabled, on the recipient servers receive connector.
   1. Login to your Exchange Hub Transport Server where you cant send the mail to.
   2. In the Exchange Management Console, expand Server Configuration in the console tree, and select Hub Transport.
   3. In the work pane, select the Receive Connectors tab.
   4. Double-click the Default Receive connector.
   5. Ensure that the Exchange Server authentication option is selected.
      
   6. Click OK to save.
   7. Restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service.
2. There could be a Cisco firewall sitting between the Exchange Servers.
   This could be a trike situation. If you have placed a firewall between servers due to whatever reason and if your firewall is a Cisco FWSM,  Cisco PIX or Cisco ASA then the Mailguard feature might be the cause. (In my case, this was the culprit)
   If this is your issue. you need to disable ESMTP inspection. Microsoft has a KB article written which you can check out so the network team can set it up accordingly.

   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/320027

Did it work? Anything else you want to add? let us know..

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Field Report: Cant Move/Delete emails with attachments

Issue:

---

Users were complaining that they are unable to delete mails from outlook. The environment was Exchange Server 2010 with SP1. Users were on Outlook 2010. Strangely, the issue was not seen for all the users. However there were multiple complaints from a few users that they are getting an error message while trying to delete old emails.

Upon checking up with the users, here’s what was noticed:

• While using outlook:
  • User cannot delete email with attachments.
  • User cannot move email with attachments.
  • Upon deleting and moving the below error message is thrown.
  • User can move/delete emails that does not have any attachments.

Some items cannot be deleted. They were either moved or already deleted, or
access was denied.

More Details>>

This error may be the result of trying to delete more than 4,000 messages at 
one time.  Outlook can delete no more than 4,000 messages when it is working 
with a server message store.
To avoid this error, delete fewer than 4,000 messages in a single operation.
It is also possible that you do not have the appropriate permissions to 
delete messages. If you need to delete content from a folder owned by someone 
else, contact the owner of the folder to obtain the necessary permissions, 
or have the owner delete the content for you.

Now this was quite strange. After looking up for a bit, I came up with a similar issue. However it was related to Exchange Server 2010 RU6 or SP3 environments. If you have such an environment, you might want to look over here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2822208

In our case, it was Exchange Server 2010 SP1. So it had to do with something else.

Cause:

---

One gotcha out of the symptoms was that it had to do with something related to attachments. So while going through message sizing parameters for user, rules, database, connectors and Transport Services, it was identified that the there was a change done to the Exchange Transport Settings on the Hub Transport Server.  The Maximum Send/Receive sizes was reduced. And that my friend, was the culprit! Here’s what has happened.

Initially, the Maximum Send/Receive sizes were at 10MB. Life was so good. People could send and receive attachments, they were able to delete, move and so much more. Suddenly the administration decided to reduce the sizes to 3MB. This seemed to be the main cause for our issue. Due to some reason (I’m yet to get deep into what relationship it has) mails that’s got attachments greater than the Maximum Send/Receive size (3MB) are not getting deleted.

Resolution:

---

1. Open Exchange Management Console.
2. Navigate to Organization Configuration, Hub Transport , Global Settings , Transport Settings , General tab.
3. Change the below values to a reasonable value (in my case it was 10MB, the previous value)
   1. Maximum receive message size (MB)
   2. Maximum send message size (MB)
4. Restart Microsoft Exchange Transport service.
5. Ask your users to close Outlook and check if the mail items can be deleted now.

That was it. Things worked and they were able to delete the emails.

Bit more information regarding why this happens, I’ll look into more and post over here.

If you have any inputs do comment over here.

 

Ignite 2016 Session Viewer for O365/Exchange – Technet Gallery

This is a small macro sheet I made to be used as a one-stop real time viewer for Office 365 and Exchange Server related sessions from the Microsoft Ignite 2016. Currently there are more than 170 Office 365 and 50 Exchange related sessions listed on the Microsoft Ignite site. This viewer is not fully updated, however the session list is getting updated and will post changelogs in whats news.

Download

Following sessions are available for viewing;

• BRK1001 : Maximize your Office 365 administration: tips and tricks
• BRK1003 : Explore accessibility in Office 365: plans and progress
• BRK1016 : Address your CXO’s top five cloud security concerns
• BRK1021 : Unplug with the Microsoft Outlook experts
• BRK1033 : Build your intranet with Microsoft Office 365
• BRK1044 : Dive deeper into what’s new and what’s coming in Outlook on the web
• BRK2008 : Understand your users: what’s new in Office 365 Usage Reporting
• BRK2009 : Manage Office 365 more effectively: what’s new in Office 365 administration
• BRK2010 : Implement ExpressRoute for Microsoft Office 365 (step by step)
• BRK2013 : Keep calm and automate: How we secure the Office 365 service
• BRK2032 : Identify and illustrate insights with new Microsoft Excel Charts
• BRK2033 : Discover Office 365 Groups – overview, what’s new and roadmap
• BRK2035 : Learn about advancements in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
• BRK2035 : Learn about advancements in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
• BRK2044 : Discover what’s new and what’s coming for Office Delve
• BRK2046 : Learn what to use when: Office 365 Groups, SharePoint Team Sites, Yammer, and OneDrive for Business
• BRK2050 : Dive into Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Hybrid Scenarios
• BRK2053 : Connect your business critical applications to Outlook and Groups
• BRK2093 : Design your Exchange infrastructure right (or consider moving to Office 365)
• BRK2097 : Drive Office 365 adoption: methodology, best practices, and resources from Microsoft
• BRK2100 : Move to Office 365 and drive adoption – lessons learned from the Carlsberg Group
• BRK2139 : Protect your business and empower your users with cloud Identity and Access Management
• BRK2160 : Build business applications with Power Apps, Microsoft Flow, and Office 365
• BRK2166 : Learn about Office 365 Secure Score: actionable security analytics
• BRK2170 : Discover what’s new with Microsoft Exchange Public Folders
• BRK2215 : Debate the top 10 reasons not to move your Exchange on-premises mailboxes to Exchange Online
• BRK2216 : Unplug with the experts on Exchange Server and Exchange Online
• BRK2216 : Unplug with the experts on Exchange Server and Exchange Online
• BRK2217 : Discover modern support in Outlook for Exchange Online
• BRK2218 : Move from Exchange 2007 to Modern Exchange
• BRK2219 : Meet twin sons of different mothers – Exchange Engineers and Exchange MVPs
• BRK2220 : Peer behind the curtain – how Microsoft runs Exchange Online
• BRK2245 : Transform the way you manage Skype for Business
• BRK2252 : Understand Microsoft’s Office 365 datacenter strategy and approach
• BRK2275 : Improve Office 365 adoption: top 10 ways
• BRK2298 : Plan to drive value and user adoption in Microsoft Office 365
• BRK3000 : Unplug with the experts on Microsoft Exchange Top Issues
• BRK3001 : Explore the ultimate field guide to Microsoft Office 365 Groups
• BRK3003 : Collaborate outside the firewall with Microsoft Office 365
• BRK3007 : Investigate tools and techniques for Exchange Performance Troubleshooting
• BRK3015 : Reduce costs and challenges with Office 365 eDiscovery and Analytics
• BRK3016 : Take control of your data with intelligent data governance in Office 365
• BRK3017 : Own your data and service – monitor and investigate with Office 365 Auditing, Insights and alerts
• BRK3018 : Take control of your security and compliance with Office 365
• BRK3019 : Manage Microsoft Office 365 Groups
• BRK3022 : Challenge cloud encryption myths and learn about Office 365 BYOK plans
• BRK3023 : Understand how Microsoft protects you against Spoof, Phish, Malware, and Spam emails
• BRK3024 : Building security and compliance solutions with the O365 Activity API – a Microsoft IT case study
• BRK3040 : Own your data with next generation access control technology in Office 365
• BRK3045 : Use Microsoft Graph to reach users on hybrid Exchange 2016
• BRK3046 : Build intelligent line-of-business applications leveraging the Outlook REST APIs
• BRK3074 : Discover what’s new in Active Directory Federation and domain services in Windows Server 2016
• BRK3083 : Secure Office 365 like a cybersecurity pro—assessing risk and implementing controls
• BRK3102 : Conduct a successful pilot deployment of Microsoft Intune
• BRK3109 : Deliver management and security at scale to Office 365 with Azure Active Directory
• BRK3215 : Dive into Modern Authentication – how it works and what to do when it doesn’t
• BRK3216 : Plan performance and bandwidth for Microsoft Office 365
• BRK3217 : Run Microsoft Exchange Hybrid for the long haul
• BRK3219 : Migrate to Exchange Online via Exchange Hybrid
• BRK3220 : Deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2016
• BRK3221 : Understand the Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 Architecture
• BRK3222 : Implement Microsoft Exchange Online Protection
• BRK3227 : Ask us anything about Microsoft Office 365 Groups
• BRK3242 : Discover a new level of Service Health insights for Office 365
• BRK3253 : Experience Scott Schnoll’s Exchange tips and tricks
• BRK3254 : Cert Exam Prep: Exam 70-345: Designing and Deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 2016
• BRK3281 : Deliver a BYOD program that employees and security teams will love with Microsoft Intune
• BRK3298 : Secure your Active Directory to mitigate risk in the cloud
• BRK4000 : Review ExpressRoute for Office 365 configuration (routing, proxy and network security)
• BRK4015 : Build client-side web parts for Microsoft SharePoint
• BRK4031 : Overcome network performance blockers for Office 365 Deployments
• BRK4032 : Dive deep into Microsoft Exchange Server High Availability
• THR1003R : Take control of your security and compliance with Office 365
• THR1004R : Empower employees with Microsoft Delve Analytics
• THR1005R : Dive deeper into what’s new and what’s coming in Microsoft Outlook 2016 for Windows
• THR1011R : Dive deeper into what’s new and what’s coming in Outlook mobile
• THR2004R : Manage Microsoft Office 365 from anywhere
• THR2006R : Get an edge over attackers – what you need to know about email threats
• THR2007R : Fight back with advancements in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
• THR2009R2 : Roll out Microsoft Office in one of the most demanding environments
• THR2020R : Deploy successfully : top 10 Office 365 ProPlus installation/activation tips
• THR2022 : Migrate your data to Microsoft Office 365 – why?
• THR2190R : Secure your sensitive email with Office 365 message encryption
• THR2207 : Modernize your clients with Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise mobility – the admin experience
• THR3001R : Migrate DL to Microsoft Office 365 Groups
• THR3007 : Protect your sensitive information with Office 365 Data Loss Prevention
• THR3008R : Gain visibility and control with Office 365 Advanced Security Management
• THR3010 : Help your users collaborate better with Office 365 Groups

Migrating from Gmail to O365 – Step by Step

Hello everyone,

Today’s post is going to take a different approach. It’s a video tutorial. The session is going to be a full step by step guide that describes how you can migrate from a gmail environment to an Office 365 environment using an IMAP migration process.

You can use the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to migrate user email from Gmail, Exchange, and other email systems that support IMAP migration. When you migrate the user’s email by using IMAP migration, only the items in the users’ inbox or other mail folders are migrated.

Note:

• It is required that you create a mailbox for each user before you migrate their email from the gmail account.
• You can migrate a maximum of 500,000 items from a user’s mailbox (emails are migrated from newest to oldest)
• The biggest email you can migrate is 35 MB.
• You can only migrate items in a user’s inbox or other mail folders. This type of migration doesn’t migrate contacts, calendar items, or tasks.
• Migration provisioning requires the user passwords or delegated access to user mailboxes using administrator credentials.

 

Watch-out for a step by step guide in the near future. If you do encounter any errors, please do comment below. Cheers!!

PowerShell: Manage your O365 – Step by Step

In this article, let’s see how we can use PowerShell and start with the scratch in getting into O365.

The scenario that we are talking about assumes that the user has created a tenant in the office 365 environment. No further changes in terms of domain/users etc. has not been performed.

---

Import PS Module

Import PowerShell Online Module: Before doing any of the below tasks, we need to download the commands and functions. By default, PowerShell doesn’t include the commands. So run the below command which will load the Online command modules;

Import-Module MSOnline

Login

Login to Office 365 tenant: Now after loading the module, we need to connect to the Office 365. The Connect-MsolService cmdlet will initiate a connection with Microsoft Azure Active Directory.

This first command will prompt for the credentials and pass it on in the second command that will authenticate with your tenant.

$msolCredentials = Get-Credential

Connect-MsolService -Credential $msolCredentials

List down authorized Domains:

The below cmdlet is used to retrieve the associated domains under the given tenant. Here we check the existing domains.

Get-msoldomain | fl

Add Domain:

The cmdlet is used to create a new domain object in the given Office 365 tenant environment. Once completed a domain entry will be displayed under the domain list. However, the verification is still under pending.

New-MsolDomain –Authentication Managed –Name scko.info

Domain Verification

Domain Verification Part 1:

Is used to return the details of the DNS records that need to be set to verify a domain. Values for Mode are DnsMXRecord and DnsTxtRecord where you will use the values in your DNS Registrar.

Get-MsolDomainVerificationDns -DomainName scko.info -Mode DnsTxtRecord

Domain Verification Part 2:

Used to confirm ownership of a domain. Once you have added the above TXT or MX records to your DNS list, you run the below command which will run the verification from Office 365 end to verify and confirm the domain ownership.

Confirm-MsolDomain –DomainName scko.info

List down authorized Domains:

Now we will use the cmdlet again to retrieve the associated domains.

Get-msoldomain | fl

Note: Please note that after this step, the retrieval of the DNS records associated with Office 365 services (Exchange/SharePoint/S4B etc) needs to be done using the web based Office 365 Admin page. You cannot retrieve the related DNS records through PowerShell.

Note: Adding Licenses needs to be done from the web portal.

Check Office 365 License:

The below cmdlet will list all the SKUs that the tenant owns.

Get-MsolAccountSku

At this point we have finished the following;

• Tenant Creation
• Domain adding and verification

User creation

In the next step we will look at user creation.

Create Single User:

The cmdlet will create an individual account.

New-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName jude@scko.info -City Colombo -State Western -Country “Sri Lanka” -DisplayName”Jude Perera” -FirstName Jude -LastName Perera -Password admin@123 -UsageLocation LK -LicenseAssignmentjcpciex:ENTERPRISEPACK

Note: If the license assignment is done at this point the USAGELOCATION and LICENSEASSIGNMENT parameters are required. The value for the LicenseAssignment can be obtained through the Get-MsolAccountSku cmdlet

Office 365 User Attributes

New-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName -City -Country -Department -DisplayName -FirstName -LastName -MobilePhone -PasswordNeverExpires -State -StreetAddress -Title -UsageLocation -LicenseAssignment

Attribute	Description
UserPrincipalName	This is the account name that’s used to sign in to Office 365 services.
City	This will include the city
Country	The country of the user
Department	The department
DisplayName	This is the display name that’s used in Office 365 services.
FirstName	First Name
LastName	Last Name
MobilePhone	Mobile phone number
PasswordNeverExpires	This specifies if the user password is set to expire(false) or not(true)
Password	If you don’t specify a password, a random password is assigned to the user account, and the password is visible in the results of the command. If you specify a password, it needs to meet the following complexity requirements: ·         8 to 16 ASCII text characters. ·         Characters from any three of the following types: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
UsageLocation	This is a valid ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code. For example, US for the United States, and FR for France. It’s important to provide this value, because some Office 365 services aren’t available in certain countries, so you can’t assign a license to a user account unless the account has this value configured.
LicenseAssignment	This is the licensing plan (also known as the license plan, Office 365 plan, or SKU) from which an available license is assigned to the user account. The license defines the Office 365 services that are available to account. You don’t have to assign a license to a user when you create the account, but the account requires a license to access Office 365 services.

 

Get User Details:

The command will retrieve the user information for the given users UPN

Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName jude@scko.info |fl

Now that we have learnt how to add a single user and what attributes we can associate it with, lets see how we can do a bulk import. This is especially useful when you are creating the users at first or having to add multiple users at a single time.

In preparation for this task we need create the users and attributes in CSV format. The below table lists sample data and the attributes that will be imported to Office 365.

Sample CSV file can be downloaded from here.

Bulk Import:

The below cmdlet will import the users and attributes from the given CSV file

Command 01:

$users = Import-Csv “D:\Demo ITPro\Office365Users.CSV”

Command 02:

$users | ForEach-Object{

New-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $_. UserPrincipalName -City $_.City -Country $_.Country -Department$_.Department -DisplayName $_.DisplayName -FirstName $_.FirstName -LastName $_.LastName -MobilePhone$_.MobilePhone  -State $_.State -StreetAddress $_.StreetAddress -Title $_.Title -UsageLocation $_.UsageLocation -LicenseAssignment $_.LicenseAssignment

}

Password Configuration:

The below command can be used to enable(true) or disable(false) the requirement of Strong Passwords for users

Get-MsolUser | Set-MsolUser -StrongPasswordRequired $false

Password Change:

If you wish to change the passwords of your users in bulk mode, the below import method can be used.

The import method will import a list of users, their UserPrincipleName and the new Password along with the Set-MsolUserPassword cmdlet. You can use a CSV file with below format.

UserPrincipalName	Password
User One	pass@word1
User Two	pass@word2
User Three	pass@word3

 

Import-Csv “D:\Demo ITPro\Office365Users.csv” | % {

Set-MsolUserPassword -UserPrincipalName $_.UPN -NewPassword $_.password -ForceChangePassword $false

}

Create Office 365 User Groups:

The New-MsolGroup cmdlet is used to add a new security group to the tenant. Note that creating groups does not mail enable them. Mail enabling a group needs to done with the help of the Microsoft Exchange Online PowerShell module which we will look in a later stage.

New-MsolGroup -DisplayName “Security Group” -Description “Security Group”

View Office 365 Groups:

The below cmdlet will list down with the Groups and all related attributes.

Get-MsolGroup | fl

Adding users to Group: Adding users or members to a group is not simple as the browser based controls. The Add-MsolGroupMember cmdlet is used to add members to a security group. The new members can be either users or other security groups. The group memberships totally depends on Group and User ID’s under the user/group properties.

Add-MsolGroupMember -GroupMemberObjectId <Guid> -GroupObjectId <Guid> [-GroupMemberType <string>] [-TenantId <Guid>] [<CommonParameters>]

-GroupMemberObjectId <Guid>: The object ID of the member (User or Group) to add to the group. The ID of the group to add members to. To get the value, run the Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName singleadd@scko.info | fl command. The Users ObjectID is shown in the below screenshot.

 

-GroupObjectId <Guid>: The ID of the group to add members to. To get the value, run the Get-MsolGroup | flcommand. The Groups ObjectID is shown in the below screenshot.

Now we will combine the above values to add the User “Single Add” to the new group we created earlier.

Add-MsolGroupMember -GroupObjectId 1a3edbb9-ec64-4184-bd22-5df4ae830158 -GroupMemberObjectId 52db4e40-bd95-426b-9c5a-bc752ceb044e

Once the member is added, now we run the below command to check the member adding

Get-MsolGroupMember -GroupObjectId a0b12555-e840-4f53-a857-91e41b69dbf0

Part 1 is done. In the coming days let’s see how we can use PowerShell to connect to Exchange Online services and manage things.

Until then, happy (power)shell’ing 🙂

MigrationPermanentException error while migrating from Gmail to Office 365

Here’s the scenario,

There was a client with Gmail who wanted to migrate things to Office 365. So as you may already know, you have the option of IMAP Migration. However, while almost everything looked to get sync’ed from Gmail, there were a set of users who were getting failed on the mailbox syncing. Checking up on the migration batch status for the specific user, the following error was thrown;

Error: MigrationPermanentException: We had troubles signing in to this account. Please confirm that you’re using the correct user name and password.

 

Resolution.

Step 1:

First thing you can check is to make sure that the logon credentials are all correct. Just open up gmail on your browser and try to login to verify. If you are unable to login, means you have wrong credentials so double check on that. But if the problem still exists, proceed to Step 2.

Step 2:

In my case the issue was a security setting of gmail side that prevented Office 365 to connect, thus throwing an authentication exception error. To resolve that, go through the below steps.

1. Login to the gmail user account who’s getting the error.
2. Right click on the user and click My Account
   
3. On the My Account page, under Sign-in & security section, click on Connected apps & sites.
   
4. On the connected apps & site section, under Allow less secure apps, ensure that the selection is set to OFF.
   
5. Go back and run back the Office 365 migration task and you’ll see the user mailbox getting sync’ed!

Happy migrating. Look forward for a complete step by step guide on gmail to office 365 migration soon. Meanwhile if you encounter the above error and the resolution was something new, do share.

POP Connectivity Fails for Outlook Users on Exchange Server

Issue: So basically the scenario was, due to a power failure all the servers were restarted. Once they were all back, things were running smoothly until we noticed that there were connection problems with POP users.

Here are the symptoms;

• Outlook users who are connecting through POP is able to connect, but unable to send or receive mails.
• Microsoft Exchange POP3 Backend service is in the Running state.

 

 

 

• On the Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer page, the POP connectivity test fails with the following error.

The POP service is being tested.
There was an error testing the POP service.
Additional Details
S:
C: CAPA
S:
Microsoft.Exchange.Tools.ExRca.Tests.ImapPop.MailProtocolException
at Microsoft.Exchange.Tools.ExRca.Tests.ImapPop.Pop3ProtocolTester.SendCommand(String command,StringlogString)
at Microsoft.Exchange.Tools.ExRca.Tests.ImapPop.MailProtocolTester.SecureConnection()
at Microsoft.Exchange.Tools.ExRca.Tests.lmappop.BaseProtocolTest.PerformTestReally()

Elapsed Time: 125 ms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So basically, something clearly wasn’t right on the Exchange Server. If you are getting the above error here’s the fix.

1. Log on to the Exchange Server
2. Open Exchange PowerShell
3. Run the following command
   

   Get-ServerComponentState -Identity <ServerName>

   

4. Note the PopProxy component state is “Inactive”

   

5. On the Exchange PowerShell module, run the following command to activate the PopProxy component.
   

   Set-ServerComponentState -Identity <ServerName> -Component PopProxy -State Active -Requester HealthAPI

   

6. Run the Get-ServerComponentState command again to verify that the service state is up.

   

7. To verify POP service is working for users, go to the Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer and perform a POP test. The connection should be successful.