Offline Address Book / Cached Exchange Mode Problem

[timmoat]

Hi there

I have an issue with the offline address book OAB which has been present since we started using our new Exchange 2007 infrastructure.

When I make changes to the AD such as add new users or remove old users these changes are not replicated to the OAB even after several days on cached exchange mode clients on Outlook 2007. Stranger still if I attempt to force a download of the address book it completes succsessfully but the changes are still not evident. This is the case even if in the EMC I right click on the OAB and force it to update.

I checked the URL of the OAB and it was set to default as

HTTP://servername.local/OAB

as opposed to HTTPS://

I can access the OAB XML file by visiting the URL so that doesnt appear to be an issue either.

This is a brand new AD/Exchange installation so I am abit stumped. Suffice to say that you can see the correct GAL when you access via realtime connection and via OWA.

Stumped! Does anyone have any places for me to start looking?

Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[58sniper]

The reason for http instead of https is because the OAB is transferred using BITS, which doesn't work with untrusted (internal) certificates. If you purchase a trusted cert, say, from GoDaddy, then you can change the URL to https.

What do the logs say?

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[timmoat]

Cert is indeed issued by goDaddy so that should not be an issue using HTTPS. Aside from that though I guess this means it is not a cause of this issue.

There are no events on the Exchange Server Application Log.

It does take over 4 minutes when trying to manually download the OAB from Outlook - after which it reports success but the changes still are not present. So something is certainly not right.

One issue I should point out, if I attempt to visit:

https://servername.local/oab/4685556a-471a-4292-a10e-a2cd84810807/oab.xml

from IE on a standard users account then I get a prompt for username and password. Is this correct? I would have thought authenticated users would have permission to view the XML file?

Thanks for attempting to assist with this - its quite important as it looks bad when new starters do not appear on the GAL.

 

[timmoat]

Ok I now know the solution!

Turns out that the Microsoft Exchange File Distribution Service had not started. It is set as AUTOMATIC but for some reason had not started.

The OAB of course relies upon this service when updates are made!

 

[58sniper]

Ah - ok. That was going to be my next question. FWIW, that is actually a test question for either 70-236 or 70-237 - I can't recall which.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/