[MacTUG] Updates to Connect adversely affecting Mac email clients

[Trevor Bain]

Hi there,
I sent this out to the helpdesk list at 8:00am this morning but apparently that list doesn't have as broad an audience as I thought. Since the issues are primarily with Mac clients, I thought I'd fire off a note out to this list.

Shortly after 7:15am this morning, the front-end (client access) servers for Connect (Exchange) were switched over to two Exchange 2010 servers behind a network load balancer (NLB). For most clients, the change went undetected. For Mac clients using EWS (not IMAP), this morning's changes to Connect may not sit well. In order to get Entourage and Mac Mail clients up and running again, you may need to edit the account information as follows:

In the Account Settings, Exchange Server box, the old value would have been something like:
https://connect.uwaterloo.ca/Exchange or  
https://connect.uwaterloo.ca/Exchange/username@connect.uwaterloo.ca (where username is the UW userid). 

That may need to be changed to point directly at one of the Exchange 2007 servers, as follows:
https://connhub1.connect.uwaterloo.ca/Exchange or  https://connhub1.connect.uwaterloo.ca/Exchange/username@connect.uwaterloo.ca

When the Mac Mail or Entourage clients are set up to use Exchange Web Services (EWS) as opposed to IMAP, the server settings get "auto-populated". So any new configuration will have the correct settings. The issue is with the settings on existing clients where "connect.uwaterloo.ca" may have been entered and worked because that resolved directly to the Exchange 2007 servers. Now "connect.uwaterloo.ca" resolves to the Exchange 2010 servers behind an NLB and are then redirected to the Exchange 2007 servers to process mail (because the mailboxes still reside on Exchange 2007 servers).

Hopefully this will help.

Trevor

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Trevor Bain, IST
University of Waterloo
519-888-4567 x33738
etbain at uwaterloo.ca
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