Exchange 2010 Migration Problem

[wjolley]

Hoping someone here can help me ...

I've just migrated all our users to Exchange 2010 from 2003, and everything seemend fine. BES 5.0.1MR1 installed and sync'ing emails without problem, until I moved the BESAdmin mailbox to the Exchange 2010 server

As soon as I did that, all Blackberries stopped working and my email box filled up with error messages (unable to start user).

I have rebooted BES and Exchange 2010

I have run the IEMSTEST utility and here is the strange thing ... with all services started I get an error that it cannot open the message store for the profiles (BESAdmin). If I stop the Blackberry Controller service and run the IEMSTEST utility all tests pass successfully.

If I move the BESAdmin account back to Exchange 2003, it can open the BESAdmin profile but none of the user mailboxes on 2010.

I had been running with my mailbox on Exchange 2010 and the BESAdmin account on Exchange 2003 for a few weeks without any problems.

I can post any logs needed if anyone can help with this?

[wjolley]

Found the solution - RIMs documentation is incomplete and are apparently due to update it.

Had to run the following command on the Exchange 2010 server to resolve the issue. Set-ThrottlingPolicy -RCAMaxConcurrency $null -identity BESPolicy

[Skorkles]

There is a good article on that right here written by Brian Desmond.


One of the new features in Exchange Server 2010 is the concept of Client Throttling Policies. In summary, Client Throttling Policies are designed to limit the amount of system resources a given user can consume and in turn impact performance for other Exchange users. Out of the box there is a default throttling policy (use the Get-ThrottlingPolicy cmdlet) applied to all users:

RunspaceId : ba3cdf92-fc9f-4a70-a912-2cf225e6d573
IsDefault : True
EASMaxConcurrency : 10
EASPercentTimeInAD :
EASPercentTimeInCAS :
EASPercentTimeInMailboxRPC :
EWSMaxConcurrency : 10
EWSPercentTimeInAD :
EWSPercentTimeInCAS :
EWSPercentTimeInMailboxRPC :
EWSMaxSubscriptions :
EWSFastSearchTimeoutInSeconds : 60
EWSFindCountLimit :
IMAPMaxConcurrency :
IMAPPercentTimeInAD :
IMAPPercentTimeInCAS :
IMAPPercentTimeInMailboxRPC :
OWAMaxConcurrency : 5
OWAPercentTimeInAD :
OWAPercentTimeInCAS :
OWAPercentTimeInMailboxRPC :
POPMaxConcurrency : 20
POPPercentTimeInAD :
POPPercentTimeInCAS :
POPPercentTimeInMailboxRPC :
PowerShellMaxConcurrency : 18
PowerShellMaxCmdlets :
PowerShellMaxCmdletsTimePeriod :
ExchangeMaxCmdlets :
PowerShellMaxCmdletQueueDepth :
RCAMaxConcurrency : 20
RCAPercentTimeInAD :
RCAPercentTimeInCAS :
RCAPercentTimeInMailboxRPC :
MessageRateLimit :
RecipientRateLimit :
ForwardeeLimit :
CPUStartPercent : 75
AdminDisplayName :
ExchangeVersion : 0.10 (14.0.100.0)
Name : DefaultThrottlingPolicy_f017f530-3edf-4c59-9955-d94bb7892fb0
DistinguishedName : CN=DefaultThrottlingPolicy_f017f530-3edf-4c59-9955-d94bb7892fb0,CN=Global Settings,CN=
GreenOrg,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=green,DC= briandesmond,D
C=net
Identity : DefaultThrottlingPolicy_f017f530-3edf-4c59-9955-d94bb7892fb0
Guid : af1aeaac-4d88-43da-92df-24c0924d4ad8
ObjectCategory : green.briandesmond.net/Configuration/Schema/ms-Exch-Throttling-Policy
ObjectClass : {top, msExchGenericPolicy, msExchThrottlingPolicy}
WhenChanged : 10/10/2009 5:44:29 PM
WhenCreated : 10/10/2009 5:44:11 PM
WhenChangedUTC : 10/10/2009 10:44:29 PM
WhenCreatedUTC : 10/10/2009 10:44:11 PM
OrganizationId :
OriginatingServer : BRIAN-GRDC02.green.briandesmond.net
IsValid : True


As you can see, most of the valuesa re null, however each of the services has a *MaxCurrency property. These define the maximum number of connections a given user can have to that service. For example, the EASMaxConcurrency value limits a given user to a maximum of ten Exchange ActiveSync connections. Each of the values is documented in the Set-ThrottlingPolicy cmdlet documentation. Of particular note to this discussion is the RCAMaxConcurrency value which defines the maximum number of concurrent connections a given user can have to the RPC Client Access service. The RPC Client Access service is new in Exchange 2010 and it handles all MAPI connections to Exchange.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) uses a single service account to proxy all of the connections to Exchange on behalf of BlackBerry users. The side effect of this is that it’s quite likely that BES will need to have more than twenty (default limit) connections open to Exchange at a given time. If you review the documentation from RIM, they recommend setting the RCAMaxConcurrency value to null (equivalent to unlimited) for all users. This is really not a great idea at all.

Instead, what you can do is define a new Client Throttling Policy without an RCAMaxConcurrency value and apply it directly to the BES service account. The PowerShell script below does just that. The script assumes that your BES service account is called “BESAdmin”. If it isn’t modify the script accordingly.

1.
New-ThrottlingPolicy "BES Throttling Policy" -RCAMaxConcurrency:$null
2.
Set-Mailbox besadmin -ThrottlingPolicy "BES Throttling Policy"
You can easily confirm that the new policy is applied to the BESAdmin account by inspecting the properties of BESAdmin mailbox:

1.
Get-Mailbox besadmin | fl Name,ThrottlingPolicy
You should see results similar to the following:

Name : BES Admin
ThrottlingPolicy : BES Throttling Policy