Moved Exchange 2010 from Cisco ACS to F5 LTM

Hi all,

 

 

I'm having problems with Macintosh EWS Mail clients using the 06_08 Exchange iApp with Big-IP 11.2.1 HF6. I've got a support call open with F5, and I've been advised to disable the Exchange analytics profile, which oddly enough fixed my issue with Apple Mail, but not with Entourage.

 

 

This iApp seems useless, it needs to work with all supported Exchange 2010 clients, not just the basics of OWA, Active Sync and MAPI. All EWS clients need to work, otherwise we can't use the product.

 

 

I've seen a number of times in forums F5 engineers suggesting that customers use the yet to be finalised and still formally unsupported RC3-4 for Exchange 2010 and 2013. How on earth are you guys recommending that we use your beta software for our production services?! F5 hardware and licences cost a premium and we can't be expected to tiral out your software for you in the field.

 

 

Please can someone get back to me as soon as possible with some answers. I need to know which version of your iApp is supporting for Exchange 2010, using a mixture of mail clients including Mac OSX, and running on Big-IP 11.2.1 HF6. Please don't tell me that I need to upgrade Big-IP to get a later iApp, we've only just upgraded to this code level, and there are no functional issues with it for us, apart from the Exchange iApp.

 

 

Please F5, how about some straight answers here?

 

 

Gavin Connell-Otten

 

Victoria University Wellington

Hi all,

 

 

I'm having problems with Macintosh EWS Mail clients using the 06_08 Exchange iApp with Big-IP 11.2.1 HF6. I've got a support call open with F5, and I've been advised to disable the Exchange analytics profile, which oddly enough fixed my issue with Apple Mail, but not with Entourage.

 

 

This iApp seems useless, it needs to work with all supported Exchange 2010 clients, not just the basics of OWA, Active Sync and MAPI. All EWS clients need to work, otherwise we can't use the product.

 

 

I've seen a number of times in forums F5 engineers suggesting that customers use the yet to be finalised and still formally unsupported RC3-4 for Exchange 2010 and 2013. How on earth are you guys recommending that we use your beta software for our production services?! F5 hardware and licences cost a premium and we can't be expected to tiral out your software for you in the field.

 

 

Please can someone get back to me as soon as possible with some answers. I need to know which version of your iApp is supporting for Exchange 2010, using a mixture of mail clients including Mac OSX, and running on Big-IP 11.2.1 HF6. Please don't tell me that I need to upgrade Big-IP to get a later iApp, we've only just upgraded to this code level, and there are no functional issues with it for us, apart from the Exchange iApp.

 

 

Please F5, how about some straight answers here?

 

 

Gavin Connell-Otten

 

Victoria University Wellington

Gavin,

 

Regarding the Release Candidate iApps, these represent iApps that have been through unit testing by engineers, and are now going through more fine grained testing before eventual release to the downloads.f5.com site. In the case of Exchange 2010/2013, Release Candidate 4 has now been promoted and is live on that site. It is a fully supported iApp.

 

 

Our intention in posting Release Candidates is that it would get new updates into customers hands sooner, with the assumption that it would solve more problems than it created. This was done in direct response to other customer’s requests.

 

 

With regard to testing Exchange Clients, the team has endeavored to test all of the modern Exchange clients that we commonly hear about. My apologies that you have had struggles with Entourage. This is the first that we have heard of this issue. If you respond with your F5 Support case number, we’ll take a look, and see if it is something that we can correct in the iApp (as well as trying to understand how to reproduce the problem). Having the case number will help us take a look at the Analytics issue as well.

 

thanks,

 

Mike

 

Hi Mike,

 

It's been a while since my last post on this issue (or since my last 5 posts in a row, I've no idea how I did that - sorry!), just wanted to fill in the gaps between now and then. Apologies for the frustrated tone in my previous message, I just feel quite strongly about experimenting with per-release software in production environments, and I was at the end of my tether trying to close off that piece of work...

 

My problem ended up only being with Apple Mail, not Entourage. Strange, as they are both Exchange Web Services (EWS) clients. Simply turning off the analytics profile on the main HTTPS virtual server fixed it up. I've decided to stick with iApp version 2012_06_08, as it's tried and tested, a final version, and I know the terrain. Possibly we'll upgrade when the new iApp version is released (which I think it might be by now?) and experiment with re-enabling the analytics profile.

 

Just one question, you said you weren't aware of this issue existing? The support engineer I was mostly dealing with advised me to turn off analytics because it had resolved the issue for another customer, so maybe some comms from that support office haven't filtered up? If you're interested in the history the support number is 1-251921195. It would be great to hear if the issue has been re-produced / fixed in the latest iApp.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Gavin

 

Gavin,

 

We had the same problem with EWS+analytics profile. Sorry that I didn't see this message earlier. I may have been that "other customer" that your support engineer was referring to.

 

Josh