Web Management Service will not start and causes Exchange update to fail

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Today I had an Exchange update issue that I’d previously never encountered before. Exchange 2013 CU10 update failed saying the Web Management Service could not be started. Attempts to manually start the service failed. Application logs pointed to IIS-IISManager 1007 event saying the following:

“Unable to read the certificate with thumbprint ‘{thumbprint}’. Please make sure the SSL certificate exists and that is correctly configured in the Management Service page.”

The thumbprint it was listing was not found on the server, either using Get-ExchangeCertificate or the MMC certificate snap-in. A web search led me to the below article which resolved the issue. Normally, an Exchange server will have a certificate called “WMSvc-servername” (Friendly Name of WMSvc) and it will be bound in IIS to the Web Management Service, but in this case the certificate was missing. By binding another certificate to the service we were able to get the service to start and continue the Exchange Update. An alternative would be to request a new certificate for the purposes of this service.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc735088(v=ws.10).aspx

Find the SSL certificate that the Web Management Service is using

To find the SSL certificate that the Web Management Service is using:

  1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Administrative Tools.
  2. Right-click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and select Run as administrator.
  3. In the Connections pane, select the server that you want to manage.
  4. In Features View, double-click Management Service.
  5. Under SSL certificate ensure that a certificate is selected.
  6. Note the name of the certificate. By default, the name starts with “WMSvc”.

Additional Reference:
http://exctech2013.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-web-management-service-could-not-be.html

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