Exchange 2010 SP1 - Missing Folders... sigh

[randal]

I've inherited an Exchange 2010 server that appears to be a little poorly/in need of a trip to the glue factory.

Running on W2K8R2, and now on SP1 for Exchange 2010 as of last night. SP3 to follow once I'm happy it's stable(ish).

Problem I've got is that certain accounts keep losing the sub-folders in the Inbox view. It only seems to be affecting shared accounts "help@" or "contact@" that sort of thing.

These mailboxes are open across multiple Outlook instances at any given time.

I've tried opening an affected mailbox in mfcmapi and I can't see the folders in there. However, I can restore the folders from backup and they stay there for a bit... then disappear again.

Longer term I'm building a 2013 host to migrate across to, but I need to upgrade the 2010 host to SP3 for coexistence and migration purposes. Until then though I'm at a loss as to what's causing these folders to repeatedly disappear...

Any ideas?

 

[randal]

Hmm. Clue.

Going into "Recover Deleted Items" on each mailbox affected shows a massive deletion of mails around the time of the server being restarted.

Keh?

Oh and the folders are missing in OWA too...

OK, this is looking more and more like a circular logging annoyance. Two of the three mailstores have it enabled, and both affected mailboxes are in those mailstores.

 

[randal]

I have yep, that's why I installed SP1 last night to give me the tools.

Detect Only didn't give me anything which is why I think this is a circular logging foul up. Server seems to think there's nothing wrong with the mailboxes or itself...

I'm restoring one mailbox affected from backup, moving it into the mail store without CL and then I'll do a restart later this week before I install SP3.

 

[randal]

this sounds like retention policies to me.

Policy behaviour also changed with SP1 onwards so could well be your issue.

check what retention tags are there and what polities are applied with which tags and to which mailboxes /stores.

use
Get-Mailbox -Identity MAILBOX | fl *retentionpolicy*

to see which policy is in effect for the mailbox and then I would use the EMC as its easier to see what tages are applied to that policy.

Nope, no policy has been applied to either of the affected mailboxes.

Create another DB and move the mailboxes to the DB see if that helps. Often a suggestion for corrupt mailbox problems.

Only other time i have seen mail move between mailboxes or vanish is when users A opens a mailbox B as the primary mailbox and then opens their mailbox A as a secondary mailbox. For some reason i have seen mail move from the B mailbox to A mailbox. If you don't stop it ive seen it move the entire inbox.

I think this is a bug with outlook 2010 and shared mailboxes.

Hmm, now that is interesting/annoying/stupid. I'll have a look in a moment.

Just to thicken this soup, the mailbox in question is 3GB, in use by 10+ people and receives a steady flow of mail.

My next steps are to restore the backup to a PST, destroy the inbox and recreate on a new datastore without circular logging...

 

[randal]

Apparently it's happened before this week on a couple of occasions in the past pre-SP1 installation.

SP1 was installed to give me the mailbox repair/import/export cmdlets on Monday, after the notification of missing mails.

Nope, server has been at 2010 since build. It will be going to SP3 eventually so I can introduce a 2013 VM into the domain to migrate to.

 

[randal]

it its not consistent I would be looking client side as its more likely to be that side of the fence.

usually if exchange does something it always does it.

I would be auditing the mailbox now to see who or what deletes the files/folders.

Good call, thanks for your advice and insights. I'll get on that audit this arvo, hopefully that'll sort this.

also I would get onto SP3 and the latest roll-up asap. who left this poor 2010 on RTM for 4 years?

My predecessor...

Couldn't agree more, I will be doing the SP3 haul next week out of hours. Then probably the 2013 integration and migration shortly after!

 

[randal]

Problem is, the mailbox is used all day to field customer enquiries. I might have a 30 minute window tomorrow morning before the desk opens, keep you posted.

TBH I just want to restore the whole thing to PST and archive it off. It's too big and unwieldy and really could do with a damn good pruning.