Recreating Exchange 2013 Health mailboxes
In Exchange 2013 a new feature called “Managed Availability“, a built-in monitoring system is available.
This performs various tests continuously like, end user actions, Server components related issues etc. & when these tests fails, it automatically performs a simple recovery to resolve the issues related to the specific components. This action requires a special type of mailbox called “Health Mailbox”. Health Mailbox is a type of mailbox that is used for monitoring the Server by itself. It is just like a normal mailbox with an Active Directory Account. The Microsoft Exchange Health Service is the one which is responsible for creating & maintaining the Health Mailboxes. The Microsoft Exchange health Manager Service runs in two Processes: MSExchangeHMHost.exe and MSExchangeHMWorker.exe. This MsExchangeHMWorker.exe process checks for the availability of the Health mailboxes and creates the health mailboxes are required.
How to Recreate the Exchange Health Mailbox?
Step 1: Run Get-Mailbox -Monitoring (This command will list all the Health Mailboxes that are available in the organization) There will be two health Mailboxes created for every Mailbox database (One for Mailbox & other for Public Folder).
Step 2: Go to the ADUC. Navigate to ADDomain.Local/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/Monitoring Mailboxes. We can see all the Health Mailboxes listed. Select all of them & delete it.
Step 3: Next we have to restart the Exchange Health Manager Service or the Exchange Server itself. This process will recreate the health mailboxes.
Step 4: Now we can run the same command again Get-Mailbox -Monitoring to make sure all the Health Mailboxes a listed with the new names.
Points to Note:
=> If you have multiple Mailbox Servers, simply restart the Exchange Health Manager Service on all the servers to get the health Mailboxes recreated back.
=> In CU2 & higher version running setup /p re-creates the Health Mailboxes, if it does not get re-created by restarting the Exchange health Manager Service or Server.
=> It’s advisable to exclude the Health Mailboxes from user account lock out policies.
=> Don’t make any changes to the Health Mailbox like moving it to a different container, change AD permission inheritance or any other changes in the properties of the Health Mailboxes.
=> Don’t move the Health Mailbox from one database to another.
=> You can also run the following command to delete the health mailboxes:
Get-Mailbox -Monitoring | Remove-Mailbox (to remove all health Mailboxes)
To remove a single Health Mailbox with its Name (guid)
Get-Mailbox “HealthMailboxec3ed6f8756d4f09ab23da7bfe99f076” -Monitoring | remove-mailbox
Ratish Nair
Microsoft MVP | Exchange Server
Team @MSExchangeGuru
March 27th, 2017 at 11:09 am
What can i do if they dont be recreate…??
April 13th, 2017 at 2:16 pm
It will recreate with the service restart.