Restoring Exchange Virtual Directories in Windows SBS 2011

Windows Small Business Server is an interesting product. It’s Windows 2008 R2 + SQL Server + Exchange 2010 packaged into a single OS installer, with some additional GUI to make it a all-in-one server. I have one running at home to learn about Windows Servers and Active Directory things, while serving my imaginary company – Planet Express. Main goal was to make use of the Exchange Server and its powerful calendar and push email.

A downside of SBS2011 is that, since it’s an all-in-one package, you don’t get to make a lot of customisations that you may get if you install separately.

One item that bugged me was the name of the website in IIS Web Server : the “Default Web Site”. It’s such a generic and bad name that I just couldn’t ignore. So one day I decided to just change it… Well.. naturally, I lost my Outlook Web Access and Exchange Console started shouting at me for missing virtual directories in IIS.

Here’s what I had to do in order to restore them, using the new name.

1. Remove all existing Virtual Directories by browing to Server Configuration -> Client Access  in Exchange Management Console, and clicking on Reset Virtual Directory. If you already have changed the website name in IIS, this wizard will delete the existing virtual directories while failing to restore them due to mismatching site name.
   
   
2. Go to IIS Manager, confirm the previous virtual directories are gone.
3. Open Exchange Management Shell, and enter following commands one by one. No arguments are needed; SBS2011 will use the correct default values to create them under the renamed default web site.

   New-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory
   New-EcpVirtualDirectory
   New-EwsVirtualDirectory
   New-OwaVirtualDirectory
   New-OabVirtualDirectory
   New-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory

4. Each command should output the result of newly created virtual directories, similar to the result below (screenshot is after New- commands were done) :
   
5. Restart IIS using iisreset /noforce in Windows command prompt, or if you can afford to, reboot the server.

 

Lesson of the Day for a noob learner like me:

Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken. But when you want to fix it, fix it well.