ServerComponentState cannot be changed to Active after Exchange Server Maintenance

A few days ago, I was installing CU updates one one of our customer’s Exchange servers. As usual, I put the server into maintenance mode using ‘Set-ServerComponentState’ and did my work.

When I finished my tasks, I wanted to take the server out of maintenance mode. I executed the Set-ServerComponentState command and set the state to active again. The command ran through, and no errors were reported. But when I checked the result using ‘Get-ServerComponentState’, I was surprised: All components were still Inactive. That was weird.

I investigated a little. Although the command seemed to be running alright, it seems that something was still keeping the components down.

My first idea was to take one of the components and give them a little more thorough check. I picked the OwaProxy and checked it by executing:

Get-ServerComponentState -Identity EX01 -Component OwaProxy | fl

The result was even more strange: There was no RemoteState or LocalState indicating any state that could cause the inactivity.

I tried the same command again, but this time, I checked the component ‘ServerWideOffline’. The result was a lot more interesting here:

Get-ServerComponentState -Identity EX01 -Component ServerWideOffline| fl

If we look at the states we see, that there is another requestor called ‘Functional’ that is keeping the components from coming back up. Let’s see what happens, if we remove it as well:

Set-ServerComponentState -Identity EX01 -Component ServerWideOffline -State Active -Requester Functional

And voilà, the states are back online. This is great! But why did it happen?

Why did it happen?

When Exchange Setup prepares the Exchange Server for being updated, it sets the server component states to inactive itself. It identifies itself with the requester ‘Functional’.
Now, if for some reason the setup can’t revoke the state change, it will remain. So now we actually have two requesters for maintenance. This will cause the components to stay offline as long as not ALL of the states are being set back to active. That’s pretty much it.
So, if you find yourself stuck with components that won’t come back up, it may very well be a problem with another state blocking the component.

Further reading:

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