OWA goes down with no errors

24 Sep 2007 3:30 PM

Phil

My OWA site has been going down about once a week. Our company website is
also on the exchange server and it goes down as well, so IIS is serving no
pages at all.
Previously the only way to bring it back up was to reboot the server. It
went down this morning and I went through and restarted many services one by
one. Finally when I restarted exchange system attendant, which also
restarts mta stacks and the information store the website and OWA came back
up. Keep in mind email is functioning just fine the whole time, its just
anything web related that is not working. There are no errors in event
viewer and the IIS logs just stop, no errors. I appreciate any ideas on
this issue. Thank you.

24 Sep 2007 4:18 PM

Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]

Phil <P***@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> My OWA site has been going down about once a week. Our company
> website is also on the exchange server and it goes down as well, so
> IIS is serving no pages at all.
> Previously the only way to bring it back up was to reboot the server.
> It went down this morning and I went through and restarted many
> services one by one. Finally when I restarted exchange system
> attendant, which also restarts mta stacks and the information store
> the website and OWA came back up. Keep in mind email is functioning
> just fine the whole time, its just anything web related that is not
> working. There are no errors in event viewer and the IIS logs just
> stop, no errors. I appreciate any ideas on this issue. Thank you.

Version & SP of Exchange?
Everything fully patched?

Note that hosting a public website on your LAN, let alone on an Exchange
server or a DC, is foolhardy at best. If this is just an intranet, fine -
but if this is your company's official website, get a hosting account with
an outside provider.

24 Sep 2007 5:12 PM

Phil

Windows 2003 server fully updated, Exchange 2003 SP2. We are a small
company and have been hosting our own email and website for years. I
appreciate any replies.

24 Sep 2007 5:53 PM

Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]

Phil <P***@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> Windows 2003 server fully updated, Exchange 2003 SP2.

So this is a single server network?

> We are a
> small company and have been hosting our own email and website for
> years.

Hosting your own mail is fine. Hosting your public website on your Exchange
server (and a domain controller, yet!) is running with scissors, and the
fact that you're a small company is irrelevant.

In fact, small companies tend not to have as much money to invest in the
kind of hardware that might help them recover from an attack (a spare
server) or a good firewall. Seriously, outsource that - and llock down your
network. Just because you haven't gotten into a bad motorcycle accident yet
doesn't mean you shouldn't be wearing a helmet.

Since port 80 is one of the more frequently scanned for/targeted ports on
the internet, it's entirely possible that your hosting has something to do
with this.

Does an IISRESET fix the problem?

Can you test by blocking inbound traffic on 80 for a little while
to see if the problem recurs?

> I appreciate any replies.

This is a reply :)