Paul Brown's Blog

Adding a Mailbox Server Role to Exchange 2010: “Database is mandatory on UserMailbox”

// December 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Microsoft, Technology

I came across an interesting error while adding a Mailbox Server to my Exchange Server 2010 environment the other day. The error was pretty clear-cut, and the solution was also pretty simple, but very non-intuitive, so I thought I’d explain how to fix it here. To give full credit, I got my answer from this dialog on the Microsoft TechNET forums, and the fellow with the username Nair.SS helped my solve the problem. It turns out another individual was having exactly the same problem, and he got his issue solved as well. Many thanks to Nair.SS.

The Error

The error message is pictured in this screenshot, and I’ve included the text in the caption:

Error Message when trying to add a mailbox server to Exchange Server 2010.

Here’s the text from that error dialog box.

The following error was generated when “$error.Clear(); if ( ($server -eq $null) -and ($RoleIsDatacenter -ne $true) ) { Update-RmsSharedIdentity -ServerName $RoleNetBIOSName }” was run: “Database is mandatory on UserMailbox. Property Name: Database”.

Database is mandatory on UserMailbox. Property Name: Database

One important detail to include here is that I had two mailbox servers installed in this environment and I was unable to gracefully uninstall them. Thus I had to delete them out of Active Directory using ADSI Edit. I’m pretty sure this is what caused the problem.

The Fix

One of the mailboxes had incorrect settings in Active Directory, so I used ADSI Edit to edit that user.

I connected to the Domain well known Naming Context in my root domain and found the user named CN=FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042. I’m not sure if all those numbers will be the same for everyone, but you can just find the FederatedEmail user. The homeMDB property was blank, so I inserted the CN value of an existing database into the value field, formatted as such:

CN=db1,CN=Databases,CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT),CN=Administrative Groups,CN=GTRI,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=gtri,DC=test

After inserting the database value in the homeMDB field

I went to install the additional mailbox role, and it installed without any problems. There was one other blog post found here that noted the particular error posted above, but the solution offered was different than mine. This error might have multiple solutions, but that post’s proposed solution did not work for me.

If you have anything to add, please leave it in the comments. Hope this helps!

Microsoft’s Office Communications Server Is Broken

// June 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Microsoft

At my day job, I primarily deal with Microsoft products, and of those, my main project is implementing Office Communications Server. I had rolled out a stripped down version of OCS 2007 back around Christmas, and in February Microsoft released OCS 2007 R2. The difference between the two versions is not worth going into here, but they did change some substantial infrastructure elements with the upgrade.

As I was installing the 2007 version, I wanted to gouge my eyes out repeatedly, as the process to get the servers installed was painful to say the least. I was hoping they would fix at least some of this with the 2007 R2 release, but no, it is still just as painful. To sum up most of the frustration, I will say that the installer looks like an easy step-by-step walk-through, but there was a theme that kept recurring as I experienced this installation. You have to run different sub-steps of the installer from different servers under different usernames (Active Directory domain admins, schema admins, local administrators, etc.), and the error messages hardly gave a clue.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with too many details, but I did come across two particular screenshots that I thought were funny. In true This Is Broken taste (which has moved to Good Experience since I was actively following it), here are two screenshots that show that OCS is written sloppily, and is simply “broken”.

There is plenty more I could write about with regard to this product, but I thought those two pictures summed it up pretty well.

Microsoft Exchange 2007 Setup Error

// February 12th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Microsoft

I don’t plan on putting many posts about Microsoft products up here (who am I kidding, I have enough trouble posting anything), but I ran across this problem at work the other day and since it was a silly problem that wasted a few hours of my time, I thought I’d share it with you.

Basically, I am installing Exchange 2007 from scratch in a test environment on a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine. Our domain controllers are all running Windows Server 2003, so we are running at a Window Server 2003 domain functional level. After having used the 32-bit evaluation version of Exchange 2007 to prep the schema, prep Active Directory, and prep the domains (the 64-bit version is required in production environments, and for domains with Server 2003 DC’s, you have to use the 32-bit evaluation version for all the prep steps), I ran the Install Exchange step of the Exchanger installer application. Here’s the resulting error I received from the installer:

For the sake of Googlability (yes, that is a word), I will type out the error in plain text here.

Error:
Setup needs to contact the Active Directory schema master but this computer is not in the same Active Directory domain as the schema master (DC=abc,DC=org).

Error:
Setup encountered a problem while validating the state of Active Directory: Exchange organization-level objects have not been created, and setup cannot create them because the local computer is not in the same domain and site as the schema master. Run setup with the /prepareAD parameter on a computer in the domain gtri and site Default-First-Site-Name, and wait for replication to complete.

Well, this error didn’t help solve the problem at all, because the local computer was definitely in the same domain and site as the schema master. We eventually traced the problem back to the fact that I had used the 32-bit RTM version of Exchange to prep the schema, AD, and domains, instead of the 32-bit SP1 version of Exchange. I went back and reran the prep steps and the Exchange installation step went off without a hitch.

So, lesson learned: When installing Exchange 2007 SP1 on a Windows Server 2008 machine (or any machine) and you have to prep the schema, Active Directory, and domains with the 32-bit version of Exchange 2007 because your DC’s are 32-bit, make sure you are using the SP1 version of Exchange 2007 32-bit and not your old non-SP1 version you have sitting around.