How to Get Office Web Apps Server 2013 to Report a Healthy Health Status

I see this a lot in customer environments with Office Web Apps Server 2013 deployed for use with Lync Server 2013, where if you run the Get-OfficeWebAppsMachine cmdlet, the HealthStatus parameter is Unhealthy:

However, even though Office Web Apps Server 2013 reports as unhealthy, as far as Lync Server 2013 is concerned, everything is working fine.  Presenters in meetings are able to upload PowerPoint presentations and attendees can see the presentations.  So what is causing the unhealthy status and how do you fix it?

There are generally two issues that could be causing Office Web Apps Server 2013 to report as unhealthy.  If you look in the Microsoft Office Web Apps Event Log on the Office Web Apps Server 2013 server, you may see an error similar to the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<HealthReport xmlns:xsd="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <HealthMessage>BroadcastServicesWatchdog_Wfe reported status for BroadcastServices_Host in category '4'. Reported status: Contacting Present_2_0.asmx failed with an exception: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority 'test-owas1.test.deitterick.com'.</HealthMessage>
</HealthReport>

In this error message, you can see that there appears to be an issue with the certificate being used for the Office Web Apps Farm:

Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority 'test-owas1.test.deitterick.com'.

This is because when you create the certificate for the Office Web Apps Farm, you need to include SAN entries for all servers in the farm.  Even if there's only a single server in the farm, if the names that you enter for the ExternalURL and/or InternalURL parameters are different than the server FQDN, you will need to add the server FQDN to the certificate.  In this example, I have a single Office Web Apps Server 2013 server and for the ExternalURL and InternalURL parameters, I've entered:

When creating the certificate for the Office Web Apps Farm, I needed to add the server FQDN as a SAN entry to the certificate:

This may be enough to resolve your issue and get Office Web Apps Server 2013 to report healthy:

Note:  It may take awhile for the server to report a HealthStatus of Healthy.

 

If you are still seeing the HealthStatus reported as Unhealthy:

There may still be an additional error showing up in the Microsoft Office Web Apps Event Log:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <HealthReport xmlns:xsd="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">   <HealthMessage>AgentManagerWatchdog reported status for AgentManagerWatchdog in category 'Recent Watchdog Reports'. Reported status: Machine health is Unhealthy</HealthMessage> </HealthReport>

This error is generally caused by not having the HTTP Activation feature installed on the Office Web Apps Server 2013 server:

You can install the missing feature using Server Manager or by running the following PowerShell cmdlet:

Add-WindowsFeature NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45

 

After adding the missing feature, the Office Web Apps Server 2013 should now report healthy:

Note:  It may take awhile for the server to report a HealthStatus of Healthy.