Outlook is trying to retrieve data...

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Ever since I set up Exchange 2010 last year most of the users get "Outlook is trying to retrieve data from the Microsoft Exchange Server servername.domain.com." a couple of times a day. 9 out of 10 times it's when accessing calendars but other times it can just be looking at email.

At first I found it was an issue with our ESET Mail Security, and have since 'fixed' that and the issue has reduced but I am still getting it and it can hang Outlook for 2 or 3 minutes while it retrieves this mystical data. Outlook is setup with cached profiles (Shared and Public folders aren't).

I found out a couple of weeks ago that a FQDN in the "Retrieving Data" message means it's a GC issue rather than an Exchange server issue but I can't see what's actually the problem. We have 10 sites all with their own GC and Exch2010 servers and they all suffer the same.

I'm running out of ideas!

Thanks
 

Vanilla

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What's the backend? This error traditionally used to be an issue with older versions of Exchange when the disk latency was too great - i.e the worldoad too much for the backend (but is very much a general error for 'ooops I don't like something')

Here's an exert from a 2003 tool I used.

"Description: Avg. Disk sec/Read and Avg. Disk sec/Write is the average time, in seconds, of a read or a write of data to the disk. This analysis determines if any of the physical disks are responding slowly. If the response times for Exchange database access are greater than .020 (20 milliseconds) and response times for Logs greater than 0.10 (10 milliseconds), then the disk subsystem is keeping up with demand but does not have much overhead left. If the response times for database access’ are greater than .050 (50 milliseconds), then a noticeable slow down and performance issues affecting users will occur. This is evident in the users Outlook client “pop up” message that Outlook is trying to retrieve data from the Exchange Server. "

However, I would have thought that Exchange 2010 wouldn't really have had this kind of issue unless the backend was really under sized. How did you size it?
 
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oddjob62

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Stick Wireshark on one of the clients and see EXACTLY what it is doing during one of these "pauses"

We have just had a similar issue with one of our subsidiaries who have their email hosted on our exchange system. Turns out they hadn't setup their firewall properly and clients were getting blocked from connecting to our GCs. Eventually they timed out and tried another port, but it took a minute or 2 each time.

Exchange only uses local (same site) GCs so that might be what the clients are trying to connect to (again this will be obvious with Wireshark).
 

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I have used wireshark in the past and it's not shown anything obvious, but it might be worth me setting up a blank machine to try it on again.

I don't think it's overload on the server, all of our offices have no more than 30 people and some only have 3 or 4 and each one has an Exchange server (I know!) and they all suffer the issue. Exchange is running on Hyper-V with 12Gb of Ram and Quad Xeon, CPU usage rarely goes over 25%

All firewalls are off on clients and servers so don't think it's that.
 

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Oh, we've got some ridiculous sized mailboxes size of 15-18Gb aren't unusual. Thing is the older servers running Exchange 2003 didn't suffer the issue, and all our users have cached mailboxes so there shouldn't be large transfers of data.

I've been going through some other things, Exchange Best Practice Analyser has turned up a few things. Also been talking to ESET about it.
 

madman045

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It's not down to the size of the mailbox, but down to the number of items, especially in the inbox and sent items.

I will try and find the page I came across the other day, which basically said Exchange struggled to index mailboxes with thousands of items

I experience the same on our server at work and my own mailbox, my mailbox is only 1.5gb, yet my inbox has over 24000 items, this is Exchange 2007 / Outlook 2010
 

BoomAM

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Had this issue a while back...
Open outlook, and ctrl/right click on the tray icon to see what the RPC latency is.
Also use the 'test autoconfig' setting to see if its resolving things to the right servers internally and externally.

Based on the results of that you can then start to ascertain where the problem lies.

I'll keep an eye on this thread as i know this is a massive problem for users and thus, the admin. So i'll try and help as much as i can. :)
 

PR.

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Well so far the issue seems to have cleared up.

It was caused by ESET Mail Security for Exchange, there was an issue with Background Scanning.

My original thread on their forums - http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=295683 and a related post - http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=277715

Have to say I've been a bit disappointed in ESETs products at work (used it at home for years with no issues), the Exchange client has caused several different issues, and the desktop client is killing performance on our older machines. Was reading over the weekend that MS are altering their standard user CALs to include Forefront Endpoint, so might look at trying that when ESET comes up for renewal in a couple of months.
 
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