Unity MWI - ports will not dial MWI

[dheavey30]

Hi,

Unity has now been rebuit from 4.0.3 to 4.2 onto new hardware from a DIRT backup.

Same problem still exists. MWI works for a while and then stops - ie if its on it stays on after deleting messages and if the subscriber receieves a new msg it doesnt illuminate. All ports are enabled for dialout and MWI.

It tends to start working about 1 hr after Unity is rebooted then stops working about 1hr afterwards.

The partner server is local to Unity (Exchange 2000 sp3) There are 12 other message store Exchange servers distributed across sites. I know this is not recommended for UM but not sure what symptoms to expect from this design.

I am not certain if this has ever been stable as have taken over from a previous maintenaince provider.

Once it has failed and I leave a message port status monitor does not show any ports dialling MWIs for mailboxes.

I noticed that the Exchange boxes hadnt been rebooted for about 1 year so rebooted those but its still the same.

I'm now trying to understand whether this is a Cisco or MS Exchange problem. I would have thought it is Exchange but then why would the ports not be dialling out for MWI?

I have followed the troublshooting MWI document and I am still none the wiser. It just says to gather micro traces but not what to do with the traces!

Unity is able to ping all of the Exchange servers.

Does anybody have any ideas? Should I be thinking about a new clean installation or is it a network problem?

There is nothing that really stands out in the event logs - I can post them if needs be.

Thanks for your time reading this.

[Erick Bergquist]

Here is quick rundown of what is involved in MWI working properly; it depends on Exchange.

1) Someone leaves a voice mail message

2) Unity delivers the message to the mailstore (Exchange)

3) Unity waits for a new message notification to come back from the mail server. If unity does not get a new message notification from exchange, then no MWI light gets turned on or off.

The micro traces will show whether unity is getting this notification from the mail store. I've always had to get TACs help in reading them when I've run into this issue.

MWI depends on exchange functioning correctly.

Does the new message show up in the persons mail box as a new unread message? Maybe they have a filter or rule to mark it read or move it to another folder besides the Inbox.

What version of Exchange, and Unity version?

[ranpierce]

I think I can help you out.

First is the version of exchange and sp the same on all the exchange servers and all of the Unity servers also. (Unity has to run the system tools and has to be patched with the same sp).

we will go from there.

rlp

[dheavey30]

Thanks for the feedback. We could be on to something here. Currently the following patches are installed

Unity

894689

931832

932689

Exchange 1 (Unity is homed to this)

824282

Exchange 2

90066

894689

906780

912442

916803

I installed the hotfixes on Unity using the Server Updates wizard. The hotfixes on the exchange boxes may not be approved to install on Unity. What should we do?

D

[stephen.himebaugh]

One tool that helped me in diagnosing MWI issues is the Unity Subscriber Message Activity Report. Under Reports -> Subscribers in System Administration. Shows what Unity is doing regarding the MWI for a subscriber.

Will tell you if Unity is recognizing a change in MWI state, and if Unity is telling (or trying to tell) CCM to change MWI.

[dheavey30]

Hi, I can see that this is not dialling the MWI extensions by looking in port status monitor during the intermittent failures. I'm now interested in whether I should run the MS Exchange hotfixes on the Unity server to bring all the servers into line with each other.

Any ideas?

Thanks

D