Azure Hybrid & Cloud Migration Blog

Updated: 02/14/2013 – 7:36 AM

Back in October, 2012 I blogged about the bug found in Apple IOS 6, where if an employee having iOS 6 enabled device receives a meeting invitation from other employees, those who are using same Exchange Server messaging infrastructure, decline the meeting request, then iOS 6 based device instead of sending the notification to the meeting organizer that user will not be able to make it. This iOS 6 device sends meeting cancellation notices to the entire meeting distribution list, effectively canceling the invitation for all attendees.

This legacy of the Apple Iphone IOS 6 compatibility issues with Microsoft ActiveSync protocol for accessing Exchange mailbox on Iphone continues with Apple IOS 6.1. With latest release of IPhone IOS 6.1, many Exchange customers of Exchange Server 2007/2010 and 2013 reported that IOS 6.1 incompatibility making excessive amount of log generation on their Exchange messaging infrastructure, which in result filling up the Exchange Mailbox Database storage.

The problem is that when Iphone IOS 6.1 based devices tries to communicate with Exchange Server over ActiveSync protocol for accepting, rejecting or even updating the meeting status, then IOS 6.1 based device cannot properly communicate this to the Exchange Server, thus then this communication goes into the loop of never ending. And this in result generates excessive amount of Exchange database transaction logs on the Exchange server and causing mailbox database storage bottleneck.

“The same compatibility problem of Iphone IOS 6.1 also got documented in Microsoft recent released knowledge base article (2814847), and for more information on the possible solutions pleaes read this KB”.

In addition to the above KB released by Microsoft, the next day after on 02/13/2013 Apple also released their KB to support this malfunctioning behavior of iOS device. You can read more about their KB and suggested workaround on this (kbTS4532).

As an preliminary solution to take care of this problem, could be summarize in the following bullet-points:

• Organization should inform its employees for not to upgrade their IOS based devices to 6.1, until there is a fix or new IOS version release by Apple as a hotfix or compatible OS to work with Microsoft Exchange Server.
• User can delete the account account from their IOS devices, and then Exchange admin can also delete the partnership for the same device. Once deletion of the partnership from both sides happened, then user can try to re-pair the device with Exchange ActiveSync after 30 min. As an important workaround of this problem, we can ask the users for not to respond to the meeting request using their IOS devices.
• We can also take benefit of trottling policy especially creating for IOS 6.1, where we can customize the policy parameters for “EASPercentTimeInCAS, EASPercentTimeInMailboxRPC, EASPercentTimeInAD”, and keep them between 10 to 15.
• For customers those who are suffering from excessive log generation on their Exchange Server and Exchange mailbox database storage related issues, can block all the Apple IOS 6.1 based devices for ActiveSync partnership.
• If your company is using F5 BigIP load balancer, you might also consider to put workaround on your F5. Read this for more information.
• Organizations should also consider practicing for informing their end-users to first receive a green-single from their company before they upgrade their smart-phone for latest OS, this would save both end-users and the corporate messaging infrastructure being victim of any malfunctioning of overall eco-system.Apple suggested workaround is to suggest users to do the following on their iOS devices:
• 1. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars
  2. Select the Exchange account from your Accounts list.
  3. Turn the switch for Calendars to OFF.
  4. Wait ten seconds.
  5. Turn the switch for Calendars back to ON.

I will update this blog post once there will be an official hotfix or solution will be made available either from both of the vendors.

Cheers