HMC 4.0 Blog and installation issues

Building the Infrastructure

We started out by doing all the base builds of all the servers required and made sure we installed all the hot fixes listed in the documentation as well as all the latest Microsoft updates including windows server 2003 SP2. This caused us problems down the line as I will explain later. The first issue we came across was deploying the core MPS components. We installed all the infrastructure servers with the United Kingdom locale. When we used the deployment tool to deploy the core MPS components we received an error that the locale was incorrect. We had to change the locale back to US on all the infrastructure servers to continue with the deployment. (Make sure to apply the changes to the current profile as well as the default user profile.) After that we continued deploying the prov01 and mom, with no issues or errors.

Building the Services

We continued and deployed Exchange 2007 using CCR for the clustered mailbox server and a separate mailbox server for public folders and OAB. One thing to remember is to make sure to that all cluster service or any account that starts services through out the deployment has the rights to log on as a service. KB327545 We received an error in the application log with Event ID 9317 every time the system attendant comes online on the exchange cluster. To resolve this we followed KB935676 to give each node write permission to the cluster.

Running the Infrastructure and Services

Run the infrastructure and services We then added the email plans, created the reseller org using provtest without any issues. When then logged on to the Sample Provisioning UI and created a new business organisation, added an smtp domain, subscribed to hosted email and added available plans. We created 3 users with 3 different plans and everything was working besides from a couple of AD. Provider errors in the application logs on the provisioning engine servers. We continued and added another new business organisation added the about 8 users, we created a mailbox for the 1 users and then suddenly nothing would work. We could not add any smtp domains, could not create mailboxes, could not delete mailboxes. Logging on as administrator@fabrikam.com would allow us to do these tasks. We reviewed these errors and soon realised that these problems were been caused by Windows Server 2003 SP2. Please see quote below from Microsoft. “Windows Server 2003, Service Pack 2 and the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration The Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5 and version 4.0 support Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Service Pack 2 (SP2), except for servers running the Microsoft Provisioning System Engine. Installing Windows Server 2003, SP2 on servers running the Microsoft Provisioning System Engine will cause those servers to fail. These servers include MPS01 and MPS02, which are described in the Deployment Walkthrough section of each solution’s documentation. Microsoft is working to resolve this issue. Please check this Web site http://www.microsoft.com/technet/serviceproviders/hmc_sp2_news.mspx Check provided link in July 2007 for updated information. “

Rebuilding the infrastructure

Firstly we tried just to re-install Windows 2003 SP1 on the mps01 and mps02 but we still received errors. We tried to work through the errors but the more we fixed the more seemed to break. At this stage we made a decision to rebuild the platform except for exchange and the domain controllers. We deleted all the users we had created and uninstalled the MPS using the deployment tool. We also removed any reference from the AD. We installed windows server 2003 SP1 on the MPS, SQL and the PROV servers. Once rebuilt we received netbt errors in the system log. After a few reboots the server sorted itself out. We have now recreated the reseller and 3 demonstration business organisation without any problems.