Saturday 1 May 2010

Exchange 2007 SP2 on SBS 2008: OWA not working after Update Rollup 4

The server is running SBS 2008 and Exchange 2007.

This morning SP2 was applied followed by Update Rollup 4 for Exchange 2007 SP2 (kb981383).  I was called because OWA stopped working and Entourage clients could no longer connect...

After comparing with another pre-SP2 server, I discovered that in IIS Manager, Default Web Site was running but the site, SBS 2008 Web Applications, was not running.  The former has WSUS and Sharepoint components, the latter has Remote, OWA, OMA, OAB, Autodiscover etc.  Autodiscover is required by Entourage clients.

The reason SBS 2008 Web Applications was not starting was because https on 443 had been enabled for Default Web Site by either SP2 or the Update Rollup 4.  Presumably these updates haven't been tested thoroughly enough on SBS...?  Initially I stopped Default Web Site and the SBS site started... and everything was back to normal.  The server at another client that I compared with did not have a binding on Default Web Site for https (no domain) on port 443.  So I removed that and Default Web Site started up...

Thinking that was enough, I was then told that OWA, Entourage, etc no longer worked again.  After removing https from Default Web Site.  I could not access webmail externally nor internally.  Entourage clients were no long connected to Exchange...

It appears that removing https from Default Web Site also removed the SSL self-signed certificate from https bound to SBS 2008 Web Applications - crazy ... So after editing bindings for the SBS site, edit the https 443 binding... add a certificate back... everything got working again.

My guess is that SP2 or the Update Rollup 4 forgets that SBS has its own default web site... and applies https to Default Web Site... and for a quicker fix...

  1. Open IIS manager
  2. Open Web Sites
  3. Right click SBS 2008 Web Applications and select Edit Bindings 
  4. Select https .... 443 and click Edit
  5. Make a note of the SSL certificate being used - click Close/OK
  6. Right click Default Web Site and select Edit Bindings
  7. Select https .... 443 and click Edit
  8. Make a note of the SSL certificate being used - click Close/OK
  9. Delete https 443 in the Default Web Site bindings..
  10. Right click SBS 2008 Web Applications and select Edit Bindings
  11. Select https ... 443 and click Edit
  12. Make sure that the SSL certificate you noted down is selected... click ok close
  13. Start up whichever Web Site is stopped... all done ... if not restart IIS...
For once .. AVG is not involved... :)

2 comments:

  1. Thank you!

    This may have been posted 18 months ago, but I ran into this now. Thanks so much for the explanation and the step by step instructions.

    Best Regards,

    Russell

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brilliant - this got me out of the mire following exactly the same Update Rollup 4. Thank You.

    Dave

    ReplyDelete