The Fix is In! For the Exchange 2007 provisioning issue with ILM 2007 anyway…

Microsoft released the fix for the Exchange 2007 provisioning issue I blogged about earlier.  Essentially, Exchange didn’t properly use the domain controller parameter that was to the Update-recipient cmdlet, which in environments with multiple DCs would result in the mailbox not being properly provisioned because the DC in use by Update-Recipient didn’t know anything about the mailbox, as it was created on another DC.

Anyway, after a long wait (and a teaser release/un-release), Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 has been re-released and contains the fix.  The KB article (949858) behind the specific issue is also public now.  Here are the details on the issue from the KB:

When ILM 2007 calls the Update-Recipient cmdlet to provision user objects, ILM 2007 passes a domain controller parameter to the Update-Recipient cmdlet to make sure that the task uses the same domain controller as the domain controller that was used where the object was created.

However, the Update-Recipient cmdlet creates two domain controller sessions. One session is for a domain controller, and the other session is for a global catalog server. The Update-Recipient cmdlet uses only the parameter that was passed for the global catalog server session, and it enables the Active Directory directory service driver to obtain a domain controller for the domain controller session. Then, the domain controller session is used for various operations, such as retrieving the properties of the object to pass to the Recipient Update Service.

If the domain controller that is selected for the domain controller session differs from the domain controller that is passed by ILM 2007, the Recipient Update Service object may not find the recipient. This issue occurs because of replication latency.

When this issue occurs, user objects may not be updated correctly by the Update-Recipient cmdlet. These objects are displayed as "mail users" instead of as "user mailboxes" in Exchange Management Console.

You can download Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 here.