Provisioning Layer Initialization Failed: ‘Failed To Reconnect To Active Directory Server. Make Sure The Server Is Available And That You Have Used The Correct Credentials.

I came across this strange error while installing Exchange 2010 SP2 on a brand new server running Windows 2008 R2 SP1.

[ERROR] The following error was generated when "$error.Clear(); & $RoleBinPath\ServiceControl.ps1 EnableServices $RoleRoleName.Replace(‘Role’,”)
" was run: "Provisioning layer initialization failed: ‘Failed to reconnect to Active Directory server DC.Domain.Local. Make sure the server is available, and that you have used the correct credentials.’".
[ERROR] Provisioning layer initialization failed: ‘Failed to reconnect to Active Directory server DC.Domain.Local. Make sure the server is available, and that you have used the correct credentials.’
[ERROR] Failed to reconnect to Active Directory server DC.Domain.Local. Make sure the server is available, and that you have used the correct credentials.
[ERROR] Active Directory server DC.Domain.Local is not available. Please retry at a later time.
[ERROR-REFERENCE] Id=AllRolesCommonFirst___56139ce4432346ecb7936afae4c3a9cc Component=EXCHANGE14:\Current\Release\Shared\Datacenter\Setup
Setup is stopping now because of one or more critical errors.
Finished executing component tasks.
Ending processing Install-BridgeheadRole
[WARNING] Setup has made changes to operating system settings that require a reboot to take effect. Please reboot this server prior to placing it into production.
End of Setup

It was complaining about the DC being not reachable/ online and that the credentials was wrong. I checked both – DC was up and running without any issues and the credentials was correct.

After having a chat with Microsoft support, I came to know that it is a known issue – at least among the Microsoft PSS guys. The problem was that the server had SCOM agent installed and the server was put in maintenance mode during the Exchange installation.

After taking the server off from the maintenance mode in SCOM, the setup ran without any issues! I had installed Exchange on a number of other servers with maintenance mode on in the same environment. So, the question remains – what exactly is maintenance mode for? ;)