Manually Interact with IMAP(s) Using Telnet or OpenSSL

Sometimes it can be handy to connect into an IMAP(s) server to verify it is working as expected, or to view emails via a command line interface. In this example I’m connecting to a Microsoft Exchange 2016 Server with IMAP enabled, specifically IMAPS, so running on port 993. Connect and Login Firstly we need to […]

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Exchange 2016 SMTP StartTLS “Didn’t find STARTTLS in server response”

We use SMTP on our Exchange Servers to provide authenticated SMTP email service for those who are using email clients which require SMTP to send email. We had an issue that following a certificate expiry that any SMTP connections to the server (that were attempting to use STARTTLS) would fail. For example: The issue was […]

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Microsoft Exchange 2016 Database not Mounting

We had an issue where a recent Windows update broke the Exchange Server, luckily booting into safe mode and removing it resolved the issue, however although the databases mounted okay, there was one that did not. We attempted the typical ESEUTIL steps because it was reporting “dirty shutdown”, and got the database back to a […]

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Query Message Tracking Logs on Microsoft Exchange using Powershell

You want to search your Microsoft Exchange message tracking logs to track an email, you can do this using a Powershell command (run from the Microsoft Exchange Powershell console), the below command will query all your Microsoft Exchange servers to find the tracking logs and then obtain all emails sent by the user “sender@domain.com” between […]

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Microsoft Exchange 2016 DAG Error Setting Witness Server and WitnessDirectory

We have a number of 2 node DAGs which provide our Microsoft Exchange 2016 service. Being a 2 node DAG a file share witness server is in place. We had a datacentre event that took out one of the nodes and the witness server, rendering the one of the DAGs unhealthy and a second in […]

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Microsoft Exchange 2016 – How to Fix Exchange DAG Witness Failed State

In certain situations the Exchange DAG witness can become a problem, this can occur during an upgrade or can happen if there is a network interruption. Although the DAG will continue to operate the witness is considered failed, which can cause odd behaviour in a failover scenario, as there is no quorum available for the […]

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Calendar Publishing to Internet from Microsoft Exchange (2016+)

Microsoft Exchange provides the capability to allow publishing of user calendars to the Internet, this is different from calendar sharing (which is typically internal, i.e. within our organisation). These instructions explain how to enable publishing by policy and how to apply it your own user mailbox. Calendar Publishing Policy Configuration on Microsoft Exchange These steps […]

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Internal, External URLs, InternalAuthenticationMethod and ExternalAuthenticationMethod Explained

Within the Microsoft Exchange configuration you’ll see that there is an InternalURL and ExternalURL attribute for each of the key Microsoft Exchange Web Services, e.g. OWA, ECP, ActiveSync etc. Personally i’ve never really used these when they are different, but what it allows is for your internal and external URLs to access the services to […]

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