Multisite OWA wont complete for one domain

[gurner]

The preamble to this is a bit long, The situation is there is about 15 offices and a data centre. the data centre is the top level domain 'company.co.uk' and 'company2.com' it is the hub of a Frame Relay type of WAN

There are 3 DCs (all DNS) 2 for the .com one for the .co.uk and one Exchange OWA Frontend for both .com and .co.uk

Each site is either an 'office1.company.co.uk' or a 'office2.company2.com' (but not both)

All Replication, DNS, e.t.c. is top down never going from one office to another without first passing through the top. It is Class A based subnets with Cisco all the way through with full IP connectivity for the server ranges, i.e. 'office1' 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 full ip, and 192.168.2.0 0.0.255.255 no access out (and a Proxy on 192.168.1.10 forced to these IP ranges).

'office2' 192.169.1.0 0.0.0.255 full ip, and 192.169.2.0 0.0.255.255 no access out (and a Proxy on 192.169.1.10 forced to these IP ranges).

Each site has an Exchange server that sends to a bridgehead, holding the SMTP connector to the ISP, via connectors, this works great. and several DNS/DCs each, DNS and AD replication is fine as well.

The OWA frontend is 'not' the bridgehead 'sender' it is a dedicated frontend OWA server only.

Everyone can access the OWA externally using '

https://internet-email.company.co.uk/Exchange'

via an Internet based DNS 'A' record pointing the IP of a PIX with a port forward/NAT to the OWA server, and typing office4\user1 and password, absolutley fine, except one child domain 'office5.company.co.uk' for example.

they try '

https://internet-email.company.co.uk/Exchange'

and office5\user and password, but only half of the page loads, with no graphics, and no ability to send or recieve.

the OWA frontend has upto date LMHost files, Host files (these bizarrely are a necessity), DNS records, e.t.c there is full IP between it and 'office5' exchange server and DCs, exactly as other offices.

if you internally '

http://exch.office5.company.co.uk/Exchange'

or '

http://192.170.1.10/Exchange'

it works absolutley fine opening one of their mailboxes. It is only when you try via the OWA server (which is HTTPS only), regardless of wether you try the OWA server using its internal IP over HTTPS or External DNS over HTTPS, that it doesn't work for just this one office.

Pings, Tracerts, IOS ACL's, RPCPing, ExBPA all report back fine, Nslookup is cool as is nbtstat e.t.c.

Has anyone got any suggestions on other things to try or pointers, i'm stuck because of the apparent open transparency between them, the same as the other sites (that work)?

Thanks

(next stop Ethereal i think)

Cheers again

Gurner

 

[wblake76]

any luck on this problem?

bh

 

[gurner]

yeah, a Microsoft engineer on a news group helped indentify a hidden 404 error by the Front End server

after checks of IIS metabase files and logs I ran through and did a comparison of every update on both servers and their
implications, and found one discrepancy. the Back End had KB888619 but the Front End did not.

Also, the BE had a 6.5.7233.28 folder but the FE had something like 6.5.7232.28 in C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Exchweb

i applied the same patch to the FE, rebooted and it ran fine after


Gurner