Exchange - outlook.office365.com

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nunz

1421 posts

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#141302 7-Mar-2014 21:44

I wont rant - i want to but I wont - really - i wont - ive finally been so peeved off that I just sit gobsmacked by MS.

New client - previous IT guy put their email on Microsoft hosted Exchange server. outlook.office365.com.

They pay for it - it is a professional service.

Some of the clients have stopped working. Looking at their config they have mail servers with names similar to:

a2c20ac4-b4ac-4206-b7c7-2818392d4907@clientname.co.nz

they also have server names like hkdgn.outlook.office365.com - or similar.

Pinging those addresses shows they are off line, gone, kuput , finito, dont exist.

It would appear to me MS have scrapped or decommissioned those servers even though clients are using them.

Can anyone give me a heads up if I am correct in this assumption.

I've transferred them to other servers (outlook.office365.com) and changed protocols but am wondering what the heck MS is up to.

Also how do you get help for MS's paid, business hosted exchange server. No help lines, no online chat, adn the only person I got after 45 minutes plus on the phone pointed me at the free open community forums which is useless if I want to ask a technical question like WTF have my servers gone?

Why are we paying for worse service and servers then the free stuff?

Use NZ Cloud based services - at least you can eyeball or visit some one and get them on the phone.

Any thoughts
Shane

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4705 posts

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#1001027 7-Mar-2014 22:01

1. Servers and Services do not get turned off *just like that* without providing a decent warning via email communication which is probably delivered to the previous IT guy.

2. The previous IT guy selected a plan for your clients that has no phone call support/SLA. You can upgrade your plan to include phone call support and better SLA.

Do whatever you want to do man.

nathan

5695 posts

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Inactive user

#1001030 7-Mar-2014 22:05

http://office.microsoft.com/en-nz/business/office-365-for-businesssupport-options-FX103843554.aspx

Log into your account on the Microsoft Online Portal and click the Support button

as a guess whoever set it up didn't use Autodiscover

Outlook profiles are set up to use a specific server name instead of using Autodiscover. We need to be able to move mailboxes around for datacenter maintenance and service updates, so use of Autodiscover is required by your organization to make sure we don’t break things for you.

nunz

1421 posts

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Inactive user

#1001045 7-Mar-2014 22:22

nathan: http://office.microsoft.com/en-nz/business/office-365-for-businesssupport-options-FX103843554.aspx

Log into your account on the Microsoft Online Portal and click the Support button

as a guess whoever set it up didn't use Autodiscover

Outlook profiles are set up to use a specific server name instead of using Autodiscover. We need to be able to move mailboxes around for datacenter maintenance and service updates, so use of Autodiscover is required by your organization to make sure we don’t break things for you.

Its late - I am confused.

What autodiscover? The client uses mac and PCs. They use outlook and entourage and mac mail.

Also you seem to be saying the we need to set a specific server name and then saying we need to use auto discover. Maybe its that time of night but I am confused :)

i'm changing them to use outlook.office365.com as their servers and that seems to be working but if they want to use https or exchange mode I suspect we will run into the same issue again.

Also I have access to the admin for the sites email - no notifications came through.

Cheers
shane

nunz

1421 posts

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Inactive user

#1001047 7-Mar-2014 22:25

billgates: 1. Servers and Services do not get turned off *just like that* without providing a decent warning via email communication which is probably delivered to the previous IT guy.

2. The previous IT guy selected a plan for your clients that has no phone call support/SLA. You can upgrade your plan to include phone call support and better SLA.

Nathan below was right - there is a link embedded in the area he describe.d i had gone through Ms support, phone support, online support, tech net, clicked the help button on office365 etc but now I know where the link is.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#1001048 7-Mar-2014 22:26

1.Are they able to login via webmail? Go to http://webmail.geekzone.co.nz (yes, it's a redirect, make sure it shows "Microsoft" in the SSL cert) and login there. If they can login and see their email the domain and server are working.

2."Autodiscover" means there's a DNS entry pointing your email domain name to the Microsoft servers, so when entering an email address during configuration (Outlook or Windows Phone for example) it automatically loads the configuration based on that information. If in doubt, you can use m.outlook.com as the server name when configuring.

nunz

1421 posts

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Inactive user

#1001049 7-Mar-2014 22:29

nunz:
nathan: http://office.microsoft.com/en-nz/business/office-365-for-businesssupport-options-FX103843554.aspx

Log into your account on the Microsoft Online Portal and click the Support button

as a guess whoever set it up didn't use Autodiscover

Outlook profiles are set up to use a specific server name instead of using Autodiscover. We need to be able to move mailboxes around for datacenter maintenance and service updates, so use of Autodiscover is required by your organization to make sure we don’t break things for you.

Its late - I am confused.

What autodiscover? The client uses mac and PCs. They use outlook and entourage and mac mail.

Do you mean the initial auto discover when a client is first set up?

There is no mention of auto discover for mac / outlook 2003 and others in the hlep ( e.g. see here -> http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/gg471164.aspx ) except for the initial setup.

nunz

1421 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1001053 7-Mar-2014 22:42

freitasm: 1.Are they able to login via webmail? Go to http://webmail.geekzone.co.nz (yes, it's a redirect, make sure it shows "Microsoft" in the SSL cert) and login there. If they can login and see their email the domain and server are working.

2."Autodiscover" means there's a DNS entry pointing your email domain name to the Microsoft servers, so when entering an email address during configuration (Outlook or Windows Phone for example) it automatically loads the configuration based on that information. If in doubt, you can use m.outlook.com as the server name when configuring.

Got it - cname autodiscover.clientname.co.nz outlook.office365.com

although for thunderbird it seems to be
autoconfig.clientname.co.nz outlook.office365.com

My my my - I am learning a lot tonight. The rest of the clients are okay as I had set them up to use outlook.office365.com as their server names

Wise

Send money globally for less with Wise - one free transfer up to NZ$900 (affiliate link).

nunz

1421 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1001054 7-Mar-2014 22:42

Which lead me to wondering how do I imlpement that for my imap / pop3 / smtp linux / dovecot / postfix servers I host .... and found this:

http://0wned.it/geek-bits/scripts/open-source-autodiscover-implementation-in-php/

nunz

1421 posts

Uber Geek
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#1001055 7-Mar-2014 22:46

Thanks to all and sundry for the support. Chocolate fish all round.

Regs

4066 posts

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Snowflake

#1002463 10-Mar-2014 22:43

nunz:

Pinging those addresses shows they are off line, gone, kuput , finito, dont exist.

It would appear to me MS have scrapped or decommissioned those servers even though clients are using them.

Can anyone give me a heads up if I am correct in this assumption.

ping is a very poor indicator of whether a server is online or not. many servers block ICMP traffic (ping traffic) as a security measure.

Try pings to:
www.telecom.co.nz
www.asbbank.co.nz
www.anz.co.nz
www.microsoft.com

they will all typically fail, but the websites are up and running as expected.

nunz

1421 posts

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Inactive user

#1002486 10-Mar-2014 23:34

freitasm: 1.Are they able to login via webmail? Go to http://webmail.geekzone.co.nz (yes, it's a redirect, make sure it shows "Microsoft" in the SSL cert) and login there. If they can login and see their email the domain and server are working.

2."Autodiscover" means there's a DNS entry pointing your email domain name to the Microsoft servers, so when entering an email address during configuration (Outlook or Windows Phone for example) it automatically loads the configuration based on that information. If in doubt, you can use m.outlook.com as the server name when configuring.

Thanks for that.

Coming back to this post - a little fresher - I am still perturbed that two different servers have stopped responding. one looks like it was based in hong kong (from its name) and the other who knows where.

It would be a poor service that forces the IT guys to change server names every year on large numbers of mail clients.

I'm using the bog standard outlook.office365.com server names but the question I have is did MS start by using very specific names nad have now pulled configuratons back to the default standard?

Cheers
shane

nunz

1421 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1002487 10-Mar-2014 23:35

Regs:
nunz:

Pinging those addresses shows they are off line, gone, kuput , finito, dont exist.

It would appear to me MS have scrapped or decommissioned those servers even though clients are using them.

Can anyone give me a heads up if I am correct in this assumption.

ping is a very poor indicator of whether a server is online or not. many servers block ICMP traffic (ping traffic) as a security measure.

Try pings to:
www.telecom.co.nz
www.asbbank.co.nz
www.anz.co.nz
www.microsoft.com

they will all typically fail, but the websites are up and running as expected.

Agreed - when I ping and get no response from some servers I am also likely to tracert, telnet or nmap a few ports to see - all failed in this case.

Shane

nathan

5695 posts

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Inactive user

#1002516 11-Mar-2014 00:04

nunz:
freitasm: 1.Are they able to login via webmail? Go to http://webmail.geekzone.co.nz (yes, it's a redirect, make sure it shows "Microsoft" in the SSL cert) and login there. If they can login and see their email the domain and server are working.

2."Autodiscover" means there's a DNS entry pointing your email domain name to the Microsoft servers, so when entering an email address during configuration (Outlook or Windows Phone for example) it automatically loads the configuration based on that information. If in doubt, you can use m.outlook.com as the server name when configuring.

Thanks for that.

Coming back to this post - a little fresher - I am still perturbed that two different servers have stopped responding. one looks like it was based in hong kong (from its name) and the other who knows where.

It would be a poor service that forces the IT guys to change server names every year on large numbers of mail clients.

I'm using the bog standard outlook.office365.com server names but the question I have is did MS start by using very specific names nad have now pulled configuratons back to the default standard?

Cheers
shane

we have always recommend you use autoconfigure

that doesn't mean that people have to follow the recommendations

Your mailbox will move around servers much more often that once per year. That is the nature of a multitenant environment. But you shouldn't notice this at all, its transparent to you

Regs

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Snowflake

#1003080 11-Mar-2014 23:16

nunz:
Regs:
nunz:

Pinging those addresses shows they are off line, gone, kuput , finito, dont exist.

It would appear to me MS have scrapped or decommissioned those servers even though clients are using them.

Can anyone give me a heads up if I am correct in this assumption.

ping is a very poor indicator of whether a server is online or not. many servers block ICMP traffic (ping traffic) as a security measure.

Try pings to:
www.telecom.co.nz
www.asbbank.co.nz
www.anz.co.nz
www.microsoft.com

they will all typically fail, but the websites are up and running as expected.

Agreed - when I ping and get no response from some servers I am also likely to tracert, telnet or nmap a few ports to see - all failed in this case.

Shane

a tracert is the same as a ping. it will fail on the last hop if ICMP is blocked.
telnet and nmap may not make it past border firewalls if content inspection and intrusion detection is enabled

nunz

1421 posts

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Inactive user

#1003121 12-Mar-2014 08:41

Telnetting to the port you are trying to access shouldn't fail if the service is running.
Akso same for nmap. In this case 25 465 587 993 995 and http ports all had no response.
The mail server is dead or gone.
There are akso options to not icmp but udp or tcp the above progs.

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