Exchange - Mail flow New Year 2022 bug

[DrCheese]

If you have any on prem exchange servers left that handle mailflow, you may experience this after new year 2022 (No mailflow)

 

[ozydave]

If you have any on prem exchange servers left that handle mailflow, you may experience this after new year 2022 (No mailflow)

 

Yep the exchange server the company my wife works for has the problem. Also the company that looks after her companies IT, had also had the problem.

Another push from Microsoft to force them into the cloud [emoji848]

[3s-gtech]

Guessing that this is affecting our hybrid (mailbox in cloud, MX to server) as mail in doesn’t seem to appear. Mail out is working.

 

Wonderful.

 

I am still on holiday. Can I be bothered to sort it now?

 

Edit: yes, the message queue was stuck and disabling the filter set it free. Hybrid not immune to this!

Edited January 1, 2022 by 3s-gtech

[smarties11]

Microsoft have released an official fix for this now -> https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/email-stuck-in-transport-queues/ba-p/3049447

 

I have run it in my environment and there's a few things to be aware of

 

1. If you have already disabled the malware filter as a mitigation, you MUST re-enable this first by running Enable-Antimalwarescanning.ps1 from the scripts folder of your exchange installation AND restart the transport service. This means you'll have no mailflow again, temporarily.

2. It takes ages to update the malware database, in my case around 25 mins. You'll have no mailflow during this period.

3. If you are behind a proxy, you MUST first set a proxy in Filtering Management via PS, otherwise it will fail

 

Setting a Proxy

Run this

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Forefront.Filtering.Management.Powershell
Set-ProxySettings -Enabled $true -Server xx.xx.xx.xx -Port 80

from Exchange Management Shell, substituting your proxy IP and port

 

Once done you can run Get-EngineUpdateInformation from Exchange Management Shell, and you should see 'UpdateAttemptSuccessful', and update version 2112330001 (looks like they've fixed the issue by reverting back to versions prefixed 21....this one is 33rd December 2021 :-D)

Edited January 2, 2022 by smarties11

[2097]

Just had this happen to us . 2016 Exchange.

 

Ran the MS fix but then also had to restart the transport service after to kick start the submission queue.

 

Pain in the arse but all seems ok now.

 

Maybe the final nail in the coffin for us to go full Online Exchange

[free780]

Annoyingly you are not supported to make changes to Exchange Attributes unless you have a hybrid exchange server. MS need to correct this as many orgs don't need on prem Exchange anymore.

[DrCheese]

Annoyingly you are not supported to make changes to Exchange Attributes unless you have a hybrid exchange server. MS need to correct this as many orgs don't need on prem Exchange anymore.

 

Yes it's dumb. All they need to do is make a basic admin console that doesn't require the entire exchange server to be installed.

[free780]

Yes it's dumb. All they need to do is make a basic admin console that doesn't require the entire exchange server to be installed.

 

I wish they could just integrate it with AADConnect. I'm guessing larger organisations may have some mailboxes on prem and it can get quite complex to support mailboxes in the cloud and on prem.