I ran into a real head scratcher this week. While migrating a very public folder dependant organization, I couldn’t access public folders through OWA. I had full public folder functionality in the Outlook client, only OWA was affected. The environment was still in a hybrid state with production Exchange 2003 servers in the organization as well as DR servers which were using a third party replication package. The exact error I was getting looked like this:
I had already established all 2010 and 2003 mailbox servers as replicas of both the system folders and public folder hierarchy. I was also able to confirm replication was working by using:
| [PS] C:\>PublicFolderStatistics –server servername |
All my folders showed the correct number of items, so my content was replicating.
I also verified that my 2010 databases were pointed to the correct public folder database on the Client tab of the database properties.
NOTE: Exchange 2010 Outlook Web App cannot proxy to a 2003 public folder database and needs a replica on a 2010 server.
I also came across this article that had me check the replication limits set against the public folder databases on 2003 side. Again everything configured correctly.
After scouring the blogsphere for the better part of the day, I finally gave in, swallowed my pride, and called MS support. The MS engineer had me again check all the above. He also had me start checking the MsExchOwningPFTree attribute in ADSIEdit on the public folder databases on the 2003 side. The databases on my two production 2003 servers had this attribute set correctly. On a whim, I decided to check this attribute on the 2 DR servers as well. These servers aren’t really in production but are mimics of the production servers. However they do each show an unmounted public folder databases as far as Exchange is concerned. Sure enough, the DR Mimics’ public folder databases did not have the attribute set. After setting this attribute and forcing active directory replication everything functioned correctly.
The value of MsExchOwningPFTree should be set to the public folder hierarchy:
CN=Public Folders,CN=Folder Hierarchies,CN=Administrative Group,CN=Administrative Groups,CN=Organization,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=domain,DC=local
Where Administrative Group and Organization are the names of your 2003 Administrative Group and your Exchange organization.