XADM: Move Server and Move Failure when DN is Longer than 256 Characters

ID: Q196415

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Exchange Server, version 5.5

SYMPTOMS

If a stand-alone server, S1, in a site called Site, has an object (mailbox) whose Distinguished Name (DN) is 256 characters, and you run the Move Server wizard on S1 to move the server into a site called Site1, the mailbox in question will now have a DN with 257 characters (by virtue of the fact that the site name is now a single character longer--Site1 instead of Site).

As the Move Server wizard imports mailboxes, when it encounters this mailbox, a fatal error will occur with the following message:

One or more errors were encountered while importing objects into the
directory. Please see the Application Event Log for details.

When you click OK, a new error dialog box appears with the following message:

An error occurred. Your server has not been moved. Error code c103757c
The server is recovered.

Looking in the Windows NT Event Viewer, you find a corresponding log entry whose description reads:

Could not create object 1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456 because the directory service reported the following error: An internal processing error has occurred: invalid name. Try restarting the application or the Microsoft Exchange Server computer, or both.

Restarting the application or the computer does not resolve the problem.

CAUSE

This problem occurs because the length of the object's DN exceeds the 256- character limit.

RESOLUTION

The issue has been noted in the Release Notes for Move Server wizard. The entry in the Release Notes reads:


   It is possible that by changing organization and site information, or
   resolving duplicate e-mail addresses, the directory name for an object
   can exceed the 256 character limit. If a directory name exceeds the
   character limit, the move will fail. Check for directory names in the
   original site that are close to the character limit prior to the move.
   If you have multiple nested containers, the directory name could be
   close to the limit. Also, this could happen if the directory name is
   close to the character limit and one of the following conditions made
   the directory name exceed
   the limit:

    - New organization name was longer than the previous organization name.
    - New site name was longer than the previous organization name.
    - Resolved duplicate objects have names that are longer than the
      previous names.

WORKAROUND

There is no workaround for this problem. The administrator in charge of the move should ascertain that the DNs are not close to the 256-character limit before the move. This is most possible when there are several layers of nesting.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Move Server wizard component for Exchange Server version 5.5.

MORE INFORMATION

The information that the Move Server wizard considers as "the" Distinguished Name of the user includes ALL the default forms of address for each user. To view all these forms of address, export the directory to a CSV file and examine the contents of the EMail Addresses field. This is a multi-valued field and normally includes Microsoft Mail, SMTP, X.400, and Lotus cc:Mail address formats. In cases where DMS is in use, this field may also contain an X.500 version of the address. If the total number of characters in the EMail Addresses field for ANY user exceeds 256 characters, the Move Server wizard stops running.

Additional query words:

Keywords : MoveSvr exc55
Version : winnt:5.5
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbbug