Wow. That’s a mouthful. For those who aren’t aware, it stands for Remote Procedure Call (RPC) over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) on (Windows) Small Business Server 2003. Essentially, making an Exchange RPC connection via standard HTTP protocols, over a secure (SSL) connection.
I had been royally frustrated with this, as every document I seemed to find talked about installing this proxy server or that back-end server and this front-end server. In this install, I have a single server. It’s the proxy, the front end and the back end. Though the pages I found said it could be done, I couldn’t get it to happen.
Then I stumbled across this gem, surprisingly enough, at Microsoft. Naturally I didn’t find it through Microsoft, but I found it nonetheless. I think I actually stumbled onto a Usenet thread through Google, which had a link to another knowledge base article, which in turn linked to this one.
And that’s it. It’s done. Simple as that. The only particularly difficult step was getting the certificate installed (it’s self-issued). I had to load up the site in IE, then install the certificate, and Voilá. It worked the first time. Un-freaking-believable. I think I’ll retire. Not for the night. Permanently. This will never happen again.
Update: Thanks to Ian Tomkins for pointing out that Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to update their knowledge base and remove a useful page. Luckily, the Wayback Machine has come to our rescue with this copy of the original. Thanks Ian!
Comments
17 responses to “RPC Over HTTP on SBS 2003”
Hello,
I had the same problem at one of my clients that run SBS 2003 server std. I have read all the blogs and options to try.
So for your info I have updated the Network cards, Broadcom – but did not solve he issue and rerun the internet connection wiz but I have re-entered all the info and recreated the certificate. Still didn’t to solve the issue but after I read
“>this page
I changed the security logon of the RPC server and all is working fine.
Thank you all for contributing to the net for us all to find answers so I hope this help someone out there
Check that – I just got it. Go here for the final answer to this problem. In particular, my problem was merely the RPCProxy registry key. The article above includes a link to an awesome tool that makes me feel stupid and inadequate.
I sure wish I could get this working. I have 2003 SBS SP2, Exchange SP2, Outlook 2003 sp whatever (latest). I have a GoDaddy certificate. I have lost the better part of three days and my client is getting frustrated – I took them from hosted exchange to their own small business server. That’s it, a single SBS box with a router, static DSL, and a certificate on the Default Web Site. Help??!!
Microsoft have removed all the useful information from the linked KB article and now just link to Technet, the SBS relevant bit is here.
You can also see the old version of the KB article here.
I was having the same problems with our SBS2003 server RPC over HTPP implementation…could not connect , kept getting “Exchange server not available”. Went thru Q833401 to no avail. Then decided to recreate the web server certificate, noticed that I had used “server.domain.local”. It actually states in the wizard to use FQDN ie server.company.com…ie the EXTERNAL dns name of the server. I created the new self-issued certificate using the FQDN…bingo!!! it all works fine now! YAY!
I have not been able to get it working without. I cannot say if that means it is required, however – there may be some other way to do it without a certificate.
Do you have to have a certificate to use RPC over HTTP?