Exchange Shell errors after incorrectly modifying IIS

Scenario
Customer stated that after replacing a certificate for their Exchange 2013 server they were unable to access Exchange Management Shell. The following error was displayed in Exchange Management Shell:

VERBOSE: Connecting to server-a.domain.com.
New-PSSession : [server-a.domain.com] Connecting to remote server server-a.domain.com failed with the following error message
: The WinRM client sent a request to an HTTP server and got a response saying the requested HTTP URL was not
available. This is usually returned by a HTTP server that does not support the WS-Management protocol. For more
information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
At line:1 char:1
+ New-PSSession -ConnectionURI “$connectionUri” -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Excha …
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo          : OpenError: (System.Manageme….RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [New-PSSession], PSRemotingTransportException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : URLNotAvailable,PSSessionOpenFailed

 

Resolution
In this case I decided to just refer to my own notes from a previous blog post. Because this error is typically associated with IIS related issues such as improper bindings, stopped web sites, or firewalls I made my way through each of the settings.

After right-clicking each of the web sites & selecting “Edit Bindings” I was greeted by the below image which immediately told me what was wrong.

(These images are actually from my lab where I recreated the issue)

It seems that in their confusion, instead of just using EAC or Exchange Management Shell to replace their certificate they decided to go into the default bindings (which rarely ever need to be modified using the IIS management tools) & add the subject name of their new certificate to the “Host Name” field of each binding. This was done on both the “Default Web Site” as well as the “Exchange Back End” website.

It’s certainly unnecessary but while it may seem harmless, it actually negatively affected the way in which IIS handles the incoming client connections. Since the Exchange Management Shell module sends the request using the Exchange Server’s internal FQDN, IIS would not answer the request because to it, it was not hosting that service. It was only answering requests for mail.ash.com (my lab’s name for the purpose of issue reproduction in this article). Interestingly enough, we could access OWA/ECP etc. using mail.ash.com but we were unable to access those services using the server’s hostname/FQDN. This makes perfect sense if you consider how IIS treats inbound connections when you use Host Names to define binding. Simply put, if you don’t leave blank Host Name fields, IIS will only answer requests for the Host Names you specifically defined.

So the solution was to blank out the Host Names & restart IIS. After doing so EMS connected without issue.