Clients (AD Sites) randomly lose access 1

[hunterdw]

So, a fun one that's been making me bang my head.

I have 6 sites in AD

2 of them, randomly, will lose access to Exchange. It's usually every 3 or 4 days.

At first, I thought it might be a replication issue. I check the logs and everything replicates correctly.

Then, I thought it might be a DNS issue. I check the logs, and the DNS mmc and everything has moved over correctly... everything is within 1 or 2 revisions of DNS which is faily normal convergence

Now, I don't know the issue.

THE FIX - if I reboot the Exchange server, all is well.

What in the world?

Any ideas? Nothing seems strange in the application or system logs.

Dell PowerEdge 2650, dual 3.06xeon, 3gigs RAM
Server 2003 Standard, SP1
Exchange 2003 Enterprise, SP1
I am *NOT* using the /3GB /Userva=3030 switches in my boot.ini because this link

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...ide/e834e9c7-708c-43bf-b877-e14ae443ecbf.mspx

says not to with Server 2003 standard

Thanks,

--DW

 

[asktheman]

What are you using between sites. PIX???

 

[hunterdw]

Good question, forgot to give that information.

At the data center, it's a Cisco 1710 VPN Router, IOS c1710-k9o3sy-mz.123-14.T.bin

At the two remote ends, it's a Cisco 1760V router, IOS c1700-k9o3sv8y7-mz.123-14.T2.bin with the extra 10BT Ethernet WIC, 2 VIC-2FXO cards for phones, and the 3DES VPN Module

Pure IPSec VPN.

--DW

 

[hunterdw]

bumping back to the top

this happened again today...

3 days... 2 sites lose access to Exchange... I reboot exchange and all is well...

Nothing in the logs to give away the problem

--DW

 

[hunterdw]

Well, it's every day now.

Reboot exchange, all is well.

No Warnings or Errors in the Applog or Syslog.

Anyone?

 

[nickpark]

What connectivity do you lose? Outlook, ping by name or ip, telnet 25?

 

[hunterdw]

Just Outlook. Ping works. IP Works. Telnet 25 works. RDP works. VNC works. SNMP works.

Just outlook connectivity.

No pix in the way. No random ACLs in the way.

"Lost connection..."

or

"Getting data from server..."

or other odd messages.

 

[nickpark]

What happens when you hold CTRL, right-click the Outlook icon in the notification area, click connection status and try a 'reconnect' there?

 

[hunterdw]

Ive never held CTRL and right-clicked...

I'll try that next time it happens.

I also am running a complete RAM test just incase I have a bad stick of ram somewhere.

Thanks,

I'll report back to this group when I try the CTRL right-click thing.

 

[cbowers1971]

Sounds like a very simular problem to mine.

I have related my problems to W2K3 SP1 and any kind of remote connections. Everything works fine from within the LAN, but on the WAN side it all stops after 2 or 3 days and a reboot clears it every time. I have been searching hard on this and can't find anyting. Hopefully this will shed a new light and someone has an idea.

 

[hunterdw]

yes, identical problem it appears.

Server 2003 Standard SP1
Exchange 2003 Enterprise SP1

 

[cbowers1971]

After some extensive reasearch I found the following link and am going to attempt this evening.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;898060#XSLTH5131121123120121120120

 

[hunterdw]

Well, I did two things.

I ran that patch that cbowers1971 suggested

I also popped the top off and looked at ram. In the back of my head I remembered upgrading a PowerEdge 650 and filling all the slots and had "extra" ram. I had put that PE650 ram in my PE2850. It's all PC2100 DDR, so I didn't think anything of it. I took that ram out.

Everything is back to normal on my network.

So, it was either the cbowers1971 link, or mis-matched ram, or both.

Star for cbowers1971 just incase it was his brilliant research and not my ram

 

[silentsam33]

Look at this MS update

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/898060/

 

[hunterdw]

Isn't that the same thing as cbowers1971 gave us two posts above yours?

Just making sure I didn't miss something.

 

[silentsam33]

Sorry, yes. I was looking at the end of his url which added some stuff. After we applied the Windows 2003 SP1 we also started to have replication problems between our VPN tunneled remote offices. The patch cleared these up as well as the remote access to Exchange via WAN. Good luck.