So I use Zenoss for centralized system monitoring, including everything from network devices, ESXi hosts, all the way to end server such as Windows VM’s using WMI.
As I receive a flood of events from SharePoint and it’s child service a terrible workflow server add on called K2 Blackpearl, I ignored my Zenoss server quite a bit. I did clean up my other servers pretty well. So when I noticed this alert on my Exchange server, I wasn’t too happy. I like clean event logs in most of the servers I manage. (I’ve made an expectation to SharePoint and K2 since there a whole mixed bag of service accounts and permissions, and web parts… so many moving parts, I simply don’t care about their events.. Given there are no issues)
So I set out to figure out what was causing this event… usual googling came up with the usual TechNet articles of those claiming it probably just re-associating to another acceptable protocol and to accept it. And as per usual whenever people can’t figure out why a event is triggering but doesn’t seem to affect production: “you can just ignore it, or disable SChannel events” This is not good enough for me, as it clearly indicates an issue going on in the back end.
Digging further I came across this tid bit of info. Using this info I knew it was a protocol version issue, with SSL and since it’s on my exchange server I had an itchy suspicion it was ActiveSync related.
Installing Wireshark onto the server and running it with the SSL filter in place, I sure enough was able to pin point the device triggering the events. My boss’s Note 4 running Android 5.01 using the native mail app. At first I simple went into his exchange settings (just to note that it would work externally but not internally) and unchecked SSL (caused Auth to fail as expected), then re-enabled SSL. At first this seemed to make his ActiveSync work and I figured the events would go away, they did not, checking Wireshark it was still from his phone.
To Paraphrase to solution:
1) Remove the corporate email account from the device. (Completely) 2) Re-add the account to the device.
So that’s it! Since doing that I haven’t received any other SChannel fatal error (70). I hope this helps other that come across the same events in their Exchange environment. Just note this was on Exchange 2010 SP3 RU 10.
Jan 2018 Update
Got to love event logging. See so much, but sometimes, so much can drown you. Just have to take care of the ones you can when you can.
