EWS Free Area

.

  • 🛡 Antivirus on Exchange Servers: When “Configured According to Best Practices” Still Isn’t Enough

    Antivirus software is mandatory on Exchange servers, but misconfiguration goes far beyond missing folder exclusions. This article explains how antivirus process-level integration can silently affect IIS and Exchange services, why issues may look unrelated to antivirus at first glance, and how Microsoft-provided diagnostic scripts help identify configuration problems.

  • 📅 A Second Calendar Took Over: Why New Events Land There and How We Fixed It

    A real-world Exchange support case where a second calendar suddenly became the default one. All existing meetings stayed in the old calendar, while new events were created in the new one. We walk through why Exchange can’t tell you who caused it, why third-party mobile apps are often involved, and how to restore the correct…

  • ❌ Unsupported Exchange Server Recovery Methods

    Most Exchange server restore attempts “work” only by luck — but they are never supported. This post explains why snapshot-based, image-based, offline VM, or storage-level restores create state divergence between the recovered server and Active Directory, why this leads to silent corruption (Search, Cluster, IIS, Transport, CUs), and why Setup.exe /RecoverServer is the only supported…

  • 🔍 When Search Works “But Doesn’t” in Exchange 2016 DAG

    Search reported “Healthy,” but wasn’t working on a DAG node restored from a VM-level backup. The server had been recovered using an unsupported method, which left the Ceres Search Engine in an inconsistent state. The post explains how the issue manifested, why the correct recovery approach is Setup /RecoverServer, and how the customer temporarily repaired…

  • 🔐 Why You Cannot “Switch Exchange to LDAPS (636)” — and Why You Don’t Need To

    Why Exchange cannot use LDAPS (636) — and why it doesn’t need to. Auditors often require “LDAPS everywhere,” but Exchange relies on LDAP over SASL (Kerberos/NTLM), which already provides encryption and integrity via signing/sealing on ports 389/3268. No plaintext data is ever transmitted. This post explains the architectural reasons, shows packet captures, and provides a…

Available categories: