Exchange 2k3 Issues

msound

Junior Member
Nov 20, 2006
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Hello Hello.

I recently started working for an IT management company. Basically this company acts as the IT department for small to medium size local businesses that don't want to pay their own full time staff. I previously worked as a hands on Linux web/mail server admin where we ran Apache, Postfix, and Dovecot on a RHEL clone. The company I came from had about 200 mail users, dozens of aliases, dozens of groups, and we supported both IMAP and POP3 connections. The server rarely had any issues and usually only had to be rebooted about once a month.

Now on to my question. The company I work for now is a Windows shop and uses Exchange for all of its clients' mail servers. An average client probably has about 20 employees. Each week about 3 - 5 of our clients sites experience issues with their e-mail. Usually all that's required is a restart of a few of the exchange services. Very rarely do we actually reboot the entire server.

I guess my question is, is this common? Is Exchange just a service that needs to be restarted about once every week or every two weeks? Or is it something that should be able to run for weeks without any problems?

The techs at this company say that the service usually fails after MS releases an update. I just find that hard to believe. So I guess the real question, does Exchange usually need a lot of attention? Or are our techs probably just configuring the servers incorrectly?
 

dphantom

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2005
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327
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I managed and installed Exchange since 5.0 versions. Rarely does it fail every week or two. Exchange should be stable and operate without reboots or service restarts for weeks if not months.

I can't speak to the techs ability, but before implementing a patch/upgrade, I always test off-line and then have a fall-back plan if in production the patch does not work properly.

The only time I ever reboot an Exchange server is when a patch/SP requires a reboot. Restarting services is just as rare.
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
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I manage around twenty SBS 2003 Servers (with Exchange 2003 SP2). I can't recall the last time I had to re-start an Exchange Service. These Servers get rebooted once a month (usually) for patches, but that's all.
 

msound

Junior Member
Nov 20, 2006
16
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Ok I just got an update. Supposedly at many of our accounts we have the servers scheduled to reboot every Sunday morning at 1am. Supposedly we run into problems when a MS update was installed the week prior and that has an impact on the Exchange services starting automatically when the server reboots. Would that make sense? I don't see how a windows update could prevent a service from starting, at least not as often as what's happening here.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
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I havent heard of patches causing services to not start but anything is possible. I can say coming from a company of about 65,000 employees with about 8K in our division, exchange is pretty solid when configured correctly. Our two exchange boxes that housed about 3K clients stayed up and running without issue. The only time they came down was for patches.

 

msound

Junior Member
Nov 20, 2006
16
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Would it make sense if I just suggested that the servers don't get rebooted automatically on weekends anymore? But then the question is when do you reboot? Many of our clients will not allow a server to go down in the middle of the day which definitely makes sense.
 

dphantom

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2005
4,763
327
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You shouldn't need to reboot Exchange at all except when called for by a patch or SP upgrade. Exchange, properly configured, is extremely stable. Installation of patches may require a reboot. If the techs are nt rebooting when they should, then that could certainly cause a problem.

Part of applying patches/upgrades is to verify all services associated with the server are working properly. Testing is key to maintaining a high SLA with your customers.
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
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One thing that I've noticed is that, sometimes, if you run monthly patches but DON'T reboot as required, Exchange Services may be left in an "OFF" state.
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
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Originally posted by: msound
Would it make sense if I just suggested that the servers don't get rebooted automatically on weekends anymore? But then the question is when do you reboot? Many of our clients will not allow a server to go down in the middle of the day which definitely makes sense.
I do my patches and reboots after midnight, either on weekends or during the week. That's after backups have run and, hopefully, after most everybody has gone to bed (except for me). Unfortunately, since all my clients use Remote Web Workplace, I can never be 100% sure that everybody's off the Server. Oh well....