Excessive transaction log growth with iOS 6.1 devices

Well, it appears that Apple has done it again: reports are starting to surface of runaway transaction log growth when mobile devices running iOS 6.1 synchronize with Exchange Server. Tony has a good synopsis here.

Those of you who have been administering Exchange for a while may think this sounds familiar– that’s because there was a very similar problem with Microsoft Entourage back in the day, as detailed by Jeremy Kelly here. Remarkably, a couple of years later, we got the same bug in a slightly different guise, as described in KB 935848. In both cases, the problem was that the client was too stupid to detect certain types of failures, so it would keep retrying the failed operation, which would keep failing. This endless loop quickly resulted in large volumes of transaction log files on the Exchange server.

Luckily, Exchange 2010 and 2013 include throttling to prevent misbehaving clients from using up an excessive share of resources. However, the throttling controls available regulate EAS based on the amount of time user requests take, the number of concurrent connections, or the number of device partnerships. None of these parameters are useful in preventing the iOS 6.1-related problem; it’s not that the individual requests take up an excessive amount of time, it’s that there are so many requests that they generate an excessive log volume. (This video may provide a useful explanation for the phenomenon.)

Exchange 2013 includes the ability to specifically block misbehaving Exchange ActiveSync devices based on “suspicious” behavior. I will have a lot more to say about that in the near future, although that spiffy feature doesn’t help anyone now suffering the problem. For now, all we can do is the following:

• Block iOS 6.1 devices using an Exchange ActiveSync device access rule
• Discourage your users from upgrading, although I expect this to be an ineffective strategy
• If you have a support relationship with Apple, report this problem to them. If you’re a developer, file a RADAR issue. If you have enterprise technical support with Apple, use it. I’ve seen reports that the ordinary consumer-level technical support (i.e. the $49 pay-per-incident support, as well as AppleCare) doesn’t have any way to report this particular problem in an actionable way.

Thoughts for another time: the rapid adoption rate of iOS devices has many benefits for users, including largely avoiding the fragmentation problems that plague Android with issues (like this “smishing” fix that virtually no one has). However, when Apple ships a buggy update, which is common, that rapid adoption multiplies the pain of the bug.

Update 1535 CST 8 Feb: Ina Fried at AllThingsD is reporting that Vodafone is telling iPhone 4S users not to upgrade to iOS 6.1.