Unity Connection 7.0 and IMAP TTS Exchange 2007

Fred Nielsen (ePlus) · ‎03-10-2009

Hi all, looking to see if anyone else if having the same troubles configuring Unity Connection against Exchange as we have, described below.

Unity Connection is 7.0(2) and Exchange is 2007 SP1 Rollup 6.

When configuring the External Service using the Exchange 2007 template, we are failing the subsequent "Test" as shown below:

- The validation result for external service Exchange2007 Message Access.

- The server domain name can be resolved.

- Server epdemo-exch07.eplus.demo can be reached by ping.

! The service port for IMAP is not functional.

- The credential verification result from SSL is X509_V_OK.

! Un-expected responses were received from the service port. The response is Received unexpected response from the server!.

- The service port for calendaring is functional.

- The credential verification result from SSL is X509_V_OK.

It would seem that SSL is functioning okay, but there is a problem with the IMAP connection. A look at the Unity Connection tomcat traces only shows what appears to be a normal response back from the Exchange IMAP service:

"* OK Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 IMAP4 service ready"

We changed the connection to non-SSL, non-TLS, basic authentication and still saw a similar error. A packet capture shows a normal IMAP connection, the same response above as shown in the logs, and then an immediate disconnect by Unity Connection. It almost appears as if Unity Connection is not correctly parsing the normal reply from Exchange. Anybody else seeing this?

Fred Nielsen (ePlus) · ‎03-12-2009

I solved my own issue. After staring and comparing the IMAP response from other Exchange 2007 servers it appears that there are sometimes differences in the initial connection banner text.

My *problem* Exchange 2007 server was displaying the following banner:

"* OK The Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 service is ready."

I noticed some other Exchange 2007 servers in our environment displayed the following banner instead:

"* OK Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 IMAP4 service ready"

It appears that Connection is looking for the specific text above. No customizations were performed to the banner on either system by the sysadmins. All of the Exchange 2007 servers I examined were running SP1 Rollup 6, so *should* have been the same. But the ones with the "problem" banner had been updated directly to SP1 and Rollup 6, and the ones with the "good" banner had been cumulatively upgraded (rollup 1, rollup 2, etc.) over time. So there must be subtle different/bug in the MSFT upgrade mechanism at work here. A google search revealed a few others who have noticed this difference under the same upgrade circumstances.

But Connection should be changed to not require such strict parsing of the initial banner, many customize banners to exclude the server and version altogether for security reasons.

Luckily, you can change the banner text easily within the ESM easily enough. Once I did this, everything worked great.

jeff.singh_2 · ‎04-15-2010

Hi Frederick

I have E2k7 and E2k3 within same routing group. My Unity Connection 8.01 is connecting to the E2k3 system using an external service account, however when I test this I keep getting error 'imap service port is not functioning' . Outlook clients can connect to the server using IMAP with no issues. Do you think I need to change the banner on E2k3, any hints on how to do this and what to change it to?

I did find this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=303513

Regards

Jeff