Exchange 2010 on vSphere
After installing Exchange 2010 virtual in a vSphere Vm, and rebooting the Exchange server for maintenance, I got the error that the Exchange System Attendent service and Information Store couldn’t start anymore because of time issues…
I saw this error in Windows event viewer:
Unable to initialize the Information Store service because the clocks on the client and server are skewed. This may be caused by a time change either in the client or the server, and may require a reboot of that computer. Verify that your domain is properly configured and is currently online.
I checked time sync for my domain controllers and Exchange server, but everything seemed to be in place on that level…
After research, I saw that my Exchange server and domain controller (NTP) were on 2 different ESX hosts which had time differences.
Even when time synchronizing in Vmware Tools was disabled for all my VMs, and time was synchronized at domain-level, Exchange has some difficulties when ESX hosts are not in sync.
I put the same NTP-server on all my ESX-hosts, synced them all, and Exchange System Attendent service/Information Store started again…
Problem solved!