Unity Services Failing To Start

[mwheinz]

I have 4 Unity 4.04 VMO servers, Exchange on-box, integrated to CallManager. The AD is off box on 2 DC/GC servers per customers req., and the Unity servers are members of that domain. On the first 2 installs, Unity starts fine but the next day, when I re-start these servers, Unity fails with service logon errors in the Event Viewer. I correct the passwords on these services (AV*) and then Unity starts fine. The next day, same thing.

What could cause these passwords to change? The accounts in AD are fine, it's on the Unity servers. Could I have miss-typed the passwords in Service Configuration on install and that is overwriting the passwords?

Any help would be appreciated!

[mrmccann]

For the account(s) that own Cisco Unity services, ensure that the password for the account(s) never expire. If the password expires, Cisco Unity will stop working the next time the server is restarted.

That's the only thing I can think of for this one.

Service Configuration Wizard would not let you continue if the password you entered does not match the actual password on the account.

[mwheinz]

The AD account passwords are fine. Another thing I noticed when it failed again was that if I run Permissions Wizard again, the services will start and I can start Unity. It will fail again, and I can re-run PW again, and Unity will start. So, re-run PW or re-type the services passwords on the Unity server and that fixes the problem temporarily.

Go figure. I'm convinced its a problem on the DC/GC but I can't figure out what. One thing for sure, it's not the AD passwords, they never change. Maybe some policy....

[Hin Lee]

What you are describing sounds like a policy being refreshed after permission wizard sets the necessary rights/permissions.

You can try to figure it out by opening MMC, add Snap-In, Group Policy, and see which policy is in effect.

Good luck.

[justin.cohen]

Take a good snapshot of the accounts and the policys on the system before you run Permissions Wizard (PW) and then after it stops working, see what has changed and let us know here.

[mwheinz]

I manually set the domain permissions for the 2 service accounts, log on as a service, batch job, act as part of the os, then Unity starts fine. Now when I create a subscriber account, there is no email account showing up in AD under the new subscriber. I have an existing user working great (new install) but any new user gets an error when you attempt to leave message. I tried logging on the Unity server as domain admin, creating an AD user, adding the Exchange mailbox, even then when you look at the new user, no email info.

Any ideas?

[justin.cohen]

OK so it seems that unity is not your problem, you have a MS problem.

If you create the user on the unity box it doesn't show in the exchange store? Is that what you are saying?

[mwheinz]

Well, it was. Now it seems that AD is not creating an Exchange mailbox. My mailstore is full of "trial" created users, but now it's not creating the new user in Exchange, although when you add the user via ADUC on the Unity server, the confirmation box displays the Exchange attributes that AD will create. What I find unusual in this is that after I create a test user, I cannot delete this user with my unityinstall account. It says I don't have the rights. I've never seen that with this account. I've run the latest Permissions Wizard I don't know how many times.