Upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 SP1

Posted on March 9th, 2008 webmaster No comments          Print

We just upgraded from Exchange 2007 RTM to Exchange 2007 SP1 yesterday morning and I’m happy to say that the upgrade went very smoothly. It took about 20 minutes.

Here are some things to consider:

1. Install .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 before upgrading. This may not be required but Microsoft recommends it.
2. If you have more than one Exchange server, Microsoft recommends that you upgrade the servers running the Mailbox server role last. Upgrade your servers in the following order:
   1. Client Access servers
   2. Unified Messaging servers
   3. Hub Transport servers
   4. Edge Transport servers
   5. Mailbox servers
3. If you have third party software running on the Exchange server, stop the services/processes for those software before running the SP1 installation (e.g. antivirus, Backup Exec Remote Agent, etc.).
4. Check the compatibility of other software that use/connect to the Exchange server. Some examples:
   1. BlackBerry Enterprise Server. We have BES version 4.1.3 and I can confirm that this version works with Exchange 2007 SP1. E-mails, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, Out-of-Office are synchronizing properly. No issues so far. I’m assuming that higher versions would also work.
   2. Symantec Backup Exec 11d. Make sure that you upgrade the Exchange Management Tools on the server running Backup Exec to Service Pack 1 as well (and install other patches for Exchange that you have installed on your Exchange server) or you may get this error: Unable to complete the operation for the selected resource using the specified options. The following error was returned when opening the Exchange Database file: ‘-514 The version of the log file is not compatible with the ESE version.’ Go here for more details: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/289970.htm.

5. Read the release notes.

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (KB945684) was also just released three days ago and you may want to install this as well.

Exchange 2007: Mapi session exceeded the maximum of 32 objects of type “session”

Posted on February 13th, 2008 webmaster 29 comments          Print

Error Message:

Mapi session “/o=Organization/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=JohnSmith” exceeded the maximum of 32 objects of type “session”.

Source: MSExchangeIS

Event ID: 9646

On the client side, the user is unable to connect to Microsoft Exchange or getting this error:

Unable to open your default e-mail folders. The Microsoft Exchange Server computer is not available. Either there are network problems or the Microsoft Exchange Server is down for maintenance.

This usually happens when the user loses network connectivity while Outlook is still open. The Exchange server wasn’t able to close the sessions properly so they just stayed there even when they are not in use.

By default, Exchange only allows up to 32 MAPI (Outlook) sessions per user. To fix this problem, you must close some of the sessions.

What to do:

1. Download and extract Sysinternals’ TCPView (free) on the Exchange server
2. Open the Exchange Management Shell and type in the following command to get a list of all the opened sessions. Make a note of the IP Addresses:

    Get-LogonStatistics jsmith | Sort-Object clientipaddress | Format-Table username,clientipaddress,logontime 

3. Open Tcpview.exe on the server. Sort it by Remote Address, then sort it by Process.
4. Look for the IP Addresses from Step 2 in the Remote Address column (if you only see hostnames, go to Options -> uncheck Resolve Addresses) and close their connections for the store.exe process (right-click and choose Close Connection, you can select multiple connections by holding the Shift or Ctrl key)
5. Run the command from Step 2 again and you will see that the sessions disappeared. The user should now be able to connect to the Exchange server again.