SharePoint alerts stop working when you add a new web front-end server to the farm

SharePoint alerts is a very useful user notification service. It is heavily relying on out-going email configuration. There are many on-line articles talk about how to setup out-going email services and troubleshoot alerts issues. Today, I would like to share a different scenario I had when alerts were not working properly.

We have a SharePoint farm and alerts have been working properly for years. In the past few months, we were in the process to add a new web front-end server to replace the current one, not doing load balancing (regarding this decision, it is another story).

It took sometime to install and configure the new server to make it ready to join the farm. After I ran the configuration wizard, I noticed that some of the immediate alerts stopped working. However, I still received daily and weekly summary alerts and emails sent by workflows were fine.

Obviously, out-going email service and configuration was working OK, otherwise I would not receive any emails from SharePoint. Alerts did not stop working entirely, only immediate alerts were stopped. Nevertheless, it did show that this problem has something to do with the new server.

When I checked the server events, I did see errors regarding "cannot connect to the SMTP mail server". At the time I saw these errors, the new server were not opening to end users and I was the only one using local Hosts file to gain access to SharePoint. The in-coming email service was running fine on the old web front-end server and I did not install SMTP components to the new server. There was only one service running on the new server, which is the SharePoint foundation web application service to allow users to access SharePoint sites and content.

No changes were made to either email, Exchange or alerts configuration and this service has been running fine for years from the existing web front-end one. I knew the new one could not connect to the email host, but the old one should and why alerts stopped working?

After some research, I thought perhaps SharePoint needed everyone on the same page, otherwise services would stop working even though one of the servers in the farm was capable doing that. In order to eliminate this possibility, I added the new server to the Exchange anonymous relay list. I added the old web front-end server to it when I established the farm. Few minutes after the new server is added, immediate alerts started working. The email host connection errors were gone and everything went back to normal.

So, it did not occurred to me that SharePoint is working like a gang: you don't go and we don't go. :) Even though other servers could handle alerts, SharePoint did not want leave one of them behind and decided not to functioning as it should be. 

Lessons learned.

Deployed a Large Server Farm Today

Today is a good day to me since I worked with our client to finish 2 days server farm deployment.

We have 8 servers in this farm: two web front end, one index server, one query server, one project server, one Excel service server and two SQL clustered server.

I joked to my client that I will bump my head to the wall three times since I misunderstood that we have to use Kerberos to deploy a farm like this. So today's reault gave me one good and one bad thing:

1. It approved that I was wrong and I learned from it with well documented steps.

2. I have to find out why my previous test deployment failed with authentication errors,which definitely has nothing to do with Kerberos.

I will put my experience here since I believe some points should be cleared.

This is definitely a good feeling to enjoy the whole weekend after some unpleasant issues, especially I learned more today.

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers

Microsoft recently released a new update targeting Office Servers, including MOSS and WSS 3.

One of the feeture I was looking for answers was Federated Search. In the description of this update, Microsoft added this functionality to MOSS's search features. This makes me pretty exciting to know and want to try ASAP.

The details of the update can be found here:
Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Description of the Microsoft Office Servers Infrastructure Update: July 15, 2008

Issues that are fixed in Microsoft Office Servers by the Microsoft Office Servers Infrastructure Update

I will add more infromation and reactions from the community later.

Have fun.