This task must be performed on the Domain Controller – Fixed

For anyone who has deployed Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2, or more likely the 2012 R2 Essentials Experience Role, you may well have hit the issue where you were unable to run any of the integration wizards with online services such as Office 365 or Windows Azure.

When trying to run one of those Wizards from the Essentials Dashboard, you would have been given the helpful response “This task must be performed on the domain controller"

Well, excuse me Mr Essentials, but, this is the Domain Controller, thank you very much.

Unfortunately there was a bug in the RTM Builds of the Essentials Experience that meant if _any_ other Domain Controller was found in the network, the Wizard would crash with this Error, or simply crash with no visible error.

Very little was written to any of the logs and a lot of people were left wondering what exactly was going wrong. Indeed this even affected deployments where the Essentials Server was a member server, and the Domain Controller was a separate server.

“Unable to obtain DNS hostname of Active Directory domain controller with ntdsa object name "CN=NTDS Settings,CN=WIN-B81EKCB7R9G,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Sites,CN=Configuration,DC=EXI,DC=local".
[3356] 140813.120652.8318: MailServiceUtils: System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectoryOperationException: Unable to obtain DNS hostname of Active Directory domain controller with ntdsa object name "CN=NTDS Settings,CN=WIN-B81EKCB7R9G,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Sites,CN=Configuration,DC=EXI,DC=local".

Using some other techniques to try and enable these integration features did wield some more information on what the problem was, but not how to fix it.

Good news, however! The fix has finally been pushed out in the latest round of Updates. KB 2974308 is included in the Update Rollup KB2975719.

A Reboot of the Essentials Server is required, but that is all.