Exchange Server component Mailbox role: Mailbox service failed.

The short version of this story is READ THE LOGS!  Now here's the long version.

I was trying to install Exchange 2013 in my lab environment and kept running into this error consistently. I scoured the Internet and tried everything that was suggested for anything even similar, with no success. At one point I even scrapped the VM and built a new Server 2012R2 VM from scratch, and the same thing happened. The Exchange setup wizard would fail at about 97% into the Mailbox role installation with the following output. It's not all here, because its ultimately wasn't of much use.
The following error was generated when "$error.Clear(); 
          $name = [Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.EnableMailbox]::DiscoveryMailboxUniqueName;
          $dispname = [Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.EnableMailbox]::DiscoveryMailboxDisplayName;
          $dismbx = get-mailbox -Filter {name -eq $name} -IgnoreDefaultScope -resultSize 1;
          if( $dismbx -ne $null)
          {
          $srvname = $dismbx.ServerName;
          if( $dismbx.Database -ne $null -and $RoleFqdnOrName -like "$srvname.*" )
          {
          Write-ExchangeSetupLog -info "Setup DiscoverySearchMailbox Permission.";
          $mountedMdb = get-mailboxdatabase $dismbx.Database -status | where { $_.Mounted -eq $true };
          if( $mountedMdb -eq $null )
          {
          Write-ExchangeSetupLog -info "Mounting database before stamp DiscoverySearchMailbox Permission...";
          mount-database $dismbx.Database;
          }

I was sitting at my desk monitoring an upgrade for a client today and figured I'd try again and started digging into the event logs. I came across one entry, Event ID 2120, which turned out to hold the key.

Process Microsoft.Exchange.Directory.TopologyService.exe (PID=5068). Error ERROR_TIMEOUT (0x800705B4) occurred when DNS was queried for the service location (SRV) resource record used to locate a domain controller for domain devel.domain.local
 The query was for the SRV record for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.devel.domain.local
. The DNS servers used by this computer for name resolution are not responding. This computer is configured to use DNS servers with the following IP addresses:
192.168.10.254
192.168.10.253
fec0:0:0:ffff::1Microsoft.Exchange.Directory.TopologyService.exe
fec0:0:0:ffff::2Microsoft.Exchange.Directory.TopologyService.exe
fec0:0:0:ffff::3Microsoft.Exchange.Directory.TopologyService.exe

. Verify that this computer is connected to the network, that these are the correct DNS server IP addresses, and that at least one of the DNS servers is running.
Event Xml:

 
   
    2120
    2
    3
    0x80000000000000
   
    2556
    Application
    exch1.domain.local
   
 
 
    Microsoft.Exchange.Directory.TopologyService.exe
    5068
    800705B4
    devel.domain.local
    _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.devel.domain.local
    192.168.10.254
192.168.10.253
fec0:0:0:ffff::1%1
fec0:0:0:ffff::2%1
fec0:0:0:ffff::3%1

 


I have a domain, and ultimately forest, by the name of domain.local. Underneath that, I have devel.domain.local, which was set up mostly to see where things behaved differently in a multiple domain forest, and I guess I found an instance where this happened. The domain controller for devel.domain.local was powered down (no matter how much memory you give a virtual machine host, there's just never enough for all the VMs you eventually want, right?) at the time.

So I powered up that domain controller, restarted the Exchange setup wizard, and sure enough it completed.  Long story short, read the logs folks, the answer was there all along.