• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SuperTekBoy

Practical Help for Exchange & Office 365

  • Exchange
    • News
    • Tutorials
    • Solve a Problem
    • Videos & Podcasts
  • Office 365
    • News
    • Tutorials
    • Solve a Problem
    • Videos & Podcasts
  • Outlook
    • Tutorials
    • Solve a Problem
    • Videos & Podcasts
  • Windows
    • News
    • Tutorials
    • Solve a Problem
    • Videos & Podcasts
  • Quick Links…
    • Generate or Renew SSL Certs for Exchange
    • Connect PowerShell to Exchange Online
    • Connect PowerShell to Office 365
    • Extend Schema for Exchange
    • Exchange Schema & Build Numbers
  • More…
    • Kemp Load Balancers
    • Other tech…
    • About SuperTekBoy
    • Contact Us

Kemp Load Balancers

Disabling TLS 1.0 may cause Outlook to crash

November 11, 2017 By Gareth Gudger 1 Comment

244 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Reddit
Print

Disabling TLS 1.0 may cause Outlook to crash for some of your clients.

I encountered this recently while upgrading a customer from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2016. The customer had an existing Kemp Load Balancer they had been using for Exchange 2010. We upgraded the Kemp to the latest firmware and created a new Exchange 2016 VIP using the latest templates from Kemp. When we cut over our DNS to the new VIP some of our Outlook clients started to receive the errors below. Other Outlook clients continued to operate without incident.

For some Outlook clients, we would receive errors when creating a brand new profile in Outlook. Errors such as,“Windows Shell Common DLL has stopped working”

Outlook 2016 - Windows Shell Common DLL has stopped working

Clicking “Close Program” would then be followed by an error reporting that “System resources are critically low”.

Outlook 2016 - System resources are critically low
[Read more…] about Disabling TLS 1.0 may cause Outlook to crash

Filed Under: Exchange Solutions, Kemp Load Balancers

Make inbound SMTP highly available with Kemp LoadMaster

June 17, 2016 By Gareth Gudger 5 Comments

199 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Reddit
Print
Load Balancer Produkte Familie Kemp Technologies

In a previous article, Configure Kemp Load Balancer for Exchange 2016, we explored how to make client access services highly available for Exchange 2016. In this article, we continue that trend by making the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (otherwise known as SMTP) highly available.

If you don’t have a load balancer you can download one for free from Kemp. Kemp’s free appliance is what we will use in this guide.

Don’t worry. Despite the focus being on Kemp, you can translate these principles to any vendor.

Let’s get started!

Disclaimer: I need to point out that I am not sponsored by Kemp in any way. However, this document does contain some affiliate links.

The environment

In our example below we plan to have two Exchange 2016 servers behind a load balancer in a single site; EX16-01 and EX16-02.

Make inbound SMTP highly available with Kemp LoadMasters
[Read more…] about Make inbound SMTP highly available with Kemp LoadMaster

Filed Under: Exchange Tutorials, Kemp Load Balancers

Configure Kemp Load Balancer for Exchange 2016

November 17, 2015 By Gareth Gudger 39 Comments

767 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Reddit
Print

With each release of Exchange, we have seen a substantial shift in the way it required load balancers to be configured. For example, between Exchange 2010 and 2013, the requirement for session affinity was dropped. This allowed multiple requests from a single client to take different paths to its mailbox. It no longer mattered which client access servers in a site were involved in the session. This was a contrast to 2010 where a client session had to maintain a single path at all times. Ross Smith covers this in greater detail here.

Exchange 2013 also dropped support for traditional RPC connections. All client connections to Exchange 2013 were flipped to RPC over HTTP. Service Pack 1 saw another shift in client connectivity as it introduced the option of MAPI over HTTP (although disabled by default). This faster, leaner protocol allowed the Exchange Team to develop shorter failover times between servers. It introduced another virtual directory into the mix–the MAPI virtual directory–which would need to be load balanced as well.

Unlike its predecessor, Exchange 2016 did not see a shift in client connectivity. With Exchange 2016 an organization can choose between MAPI over HTTP, or, RPC over HTTP (although the former is now preferred).

Knowing the nuances between each version of Exchange can be daunting. Equally daunting is the configuration of the load balancer itself. But it doesn’t have to be.

A good vendor will give you instructions on load balancing Exchange.
A great vendor will give you a template to automate setup.

Load Balancer Produkte Familie Kemp Technologies

Which is lucky because this article is about a great vendor.

In this article, we configure the Kemp load balancer to provide high availability for Exchange 2016. If you don’t have a load balancer you can download one for free from Kemp. Kemp’s free appliance is what we will use in this guide.

Don’t worry. Despite the focus being on Kemp, you can translate these principles to any vendor.

Let’s get started!

Disclaimer: I need to point out that I am not sponsored by Kemp in any way. However, this document does contain some affiliate links.

The environment

In our example below we plan to have two Exchange 2016 servers behind a load balancer in a single site; EX16-01 and EX16-02.

Load Balancing Exchange 2016 Kemp VLB
[Read more…] about Configure Kemp Load Balancer for Exchange 2016
767 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Reddit
Print

Filed Under: Exchange Tutorials, Kemp Load Balancers

Configure Kemp Virtual Load Balancer on VMware ESXi

March 16, 2015 By Gareth Gudger Leave a Comment

84 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Reddit
Print
Load Balancer Produkte Familie Kemp Technologies

The Kemp Load Balancers are a fantastic series of products. Just this month, Kemp announced that it is offering a free virtual load balancer.

The free load balancer is great for a lab, proof of concept, or, small production environment. Be sure to check out our review here.

Given this fantastic offer–and the fact we were already huge Kemp fans–we decided to start a series on configuring Kemp load balancers for Exchange.

In part one we look at how to deploy the free virtual load balancer from an OVF template. We will deploy this to our standalone ESXi 5.5 environment. In the second part of our series, we will configure the load balancer for Exchange 2013.

Disclaimer: I need to point out that I am not sponsored by Kemp in any way. However, this document does contain some affiliate links.

Deploy the OVF

To get your free virtual load balancer visit, https://freeloadbalancer.com/download/. Once at Kemp’s site you will need to register for a Kemp ID (if you don’t already have one). Also, be sure to confirm your email address from the activation message.

Once logged in you will be asked to Select Your Platform. We are going to deploy to ESXi 5.5 so let’s pick VMware (OVF).

Kemp Virtual Load Balancer Download OVF

Download and extract the ZIP file to a convenient location. Inside this archive, you will find 4 files. The OVF and VMDK files are the ones we will import. To do this connect with your VSphere Client, select the File menu and click Deploy OVF Template.

[Read more…] about Configure Kemp Virtual Load Balancer on VMware ESXi
84 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Reddit
Print

Filed Under: Kemp Load Balancers

Free Layer-7 Load Balancer from Kemp Technologies

March 9, 2015 By Gareth Gudger 3 Comments

29 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Reddit
Print

The Kemp Load Balancers are a fantastic series of products.

Just this month, Kemp announced that it is offering a free virtual load balancer.

Always free

This is a perpetually free license!

This is not a watered-down version of the paid product. Nor is it a watered-down version of the hardware appliance. This is a fully-featured Layer-7 load balancer. The main drawback – it is throttled to 20Mbps throughput.

Free Kemp Layer-7 Virtual Load Balancer

While this may seem restrictive, this is more than enough for any lab, proof of concept, or, for small production environment.

Why is Kemp doing this? Here is a quote from their website.

“The availability of a proven free load balancer from a well-established company will enable many start-ups and QA/Dev teams to focus on the task at hand. They will no longer have to worry about addressing the trade-off between cost, quality and upgradeability associated with some open source and application-embedded load balancing solutions.”

On Twitter @KempTech stated “We did it for our fans.”

[Read more…] about Free Layer-7 Load Balancer from Kemp Technologies
29 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Reddit
Print

Filed Under: Exchange News, Kemp Load Balancers

Primary Sidebar

Want to stay up to date?

Join thousands of IT professionals and get the latest Exchange & Office 365 tips and tutorials direct to your inbox

Free Kemp Loadbalancer 300x300
(help support us using our affiliate link)

DigiCert Banner 300x348

(help support us using our affiliate link)

Passware

(help support us using our affiliate link)

My favorite book on all things Office 365! Continually updated with fresh content by MVPs Tony Redmond, Paul Robichaux, Brian Desmond, Ståle Hansen & more! Get the eBook
Office 365 for IT Pros 7th Edition
(help support us using our affiliate link)

Footer

Site Navigation

  • Subscribe to blog
  • About SuperTekBoy
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • Contact Us

Want to stay up to date?

Join thousands of IT professionals and get the latest Exchange & Office 365 tips and tutorials direct to your inbox

Join the conversation

  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • RSS

Copyright © 2021 · SuperTekBoy LLC