All tag results for ‘Exchange-2007’
With Exchange 2007 enterprise edition, administrators can subdivide the storage groups up to 50 independent units whereas Standard Edition allows only maximum 5 storage groups. In Exchange 2003, the corresponding limits were 20 & one. There has been always requirements from companies to subdivide its users within the multiple storage groups for various reasons from its organizations such as, VIP, Legal users, sales, marketing, HR etc. I believe following are the 3 key reasons why companies requests for subdividing the storage groups in Exchange 2007.
- Mitigating the data disaster – if users are spread across multiple storage group databases, the single storage group catastrophe affects only part of the organization. So the benefit here is like partial high availability of employees in such events where one of the storage groups becomes unavailable within the Exchange 2007 environment.
- Greater reduction in restoring the system – Data for a single storage group can be restored more quickly from backup than the entire message database. This is great! Isn’t it? I remember the instance where my customer had only one Storage Group in Exchange 2000, and it caused about a day productivity lost for the entire organization as the data corruption happened just about the day began! Hmm… We could have avoided this to great deal if we had exchange 2007 released that time and implemented storage group subdivisions. J
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Flexible Administration – breaking the storage group into multiple databases provides easy way to delegate accountability for specific groups of users to different administrators. You can give different groups of users different mailbox attributes, for example, mailbox storage capacity limits. You have the convenience of defining different service level agreements (SLA) for different set of users, for example, take more frequent backups for your legal department & assign different mailbox quota for VIP users.
In short, Microsoft Exchange 2007 enterprise edition (EE) will still make substantial differentiation by offering maximum 50 Storage groups compared to Standard Edition’s 5 storage groups. So Exchange EE edition is recommended if you want to make use of the above benefits to its fullest. See the table here in a glance to see the highlights of difference between Standard Edition & Enterprise Edition.
Tech-Ed is the event of assorted geeks where you see enthusiasm, networking of Microsoft technologies, with Microsofties, IT pros, developers, vendors etc. Upcoming Tech-Ed for South East Asia will be held at Kula Lumpur Convention Center from 10-13 September, 2007. This is the place where “Microsofties” deep dive into the “SEA” & empower themselves with emerging Microsoft Technologies.
I will be off to make my mark at Tech-Ed 2007 SEA at KL, Malaysia, and spend valuable time to learn from the experts, share my knowledge with some of you guys, hands-on at the lab with latest & greatest in Microsoft especially Exchange 2007, OCS 2007 & MOSS 2007.
So why wait? If you are not registered yet, here is the link and below shown is current promotion as I write this blog post now. To answer most of your Tech-Ed related questions, visit here and Ed Quek scribble exclusively about Tech-Ed 2007 SEA event, so don’t forget to visit his blog.
Tech-Ed brings benefits in many ways to many people. I still remember, I started my site MessagingTalk.org and got the inspiration to get my MVP after attending Tech-Ed 2005 at Singapore. Every Tech-Ed is a win-win event for me personally, as I get more ideas from the experts around and I make connections with Technologists, entrepreneurs, IT pros and developers. If you can’t make it for Tech-Ed 2007 SEA, there are other places in Asia where you can make your mark. Here is Tech-Ed worldwide site.
What actually you can expect from Tech-Ed 2007 SEA?
2007 is “Year of release” for Microsoft and MS community started discussing about chain of new products and technologies. Every year, Tech-Ed event is getting to be huge and mining the precious of gold among the large number of sessions is challenge. In messaging and collaboration perspective, I would like to guide you on what to look for during Tech-Ed 2007 SEA.
I believe Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 will be a one of the worth sessions, as OCS 2007 gets closer to release. You may probably hear about “Quality of Experience” (QOE), as Microsoft is projecting this as a better metric for Voice/video quality over traditional “Quality of Service” (QoS). Obviously, Microsoft will be keen on showcasing some of the cool VoIP communications devices including its own like Round Table, Tanjay etc.
Hmm…This could be a spark. You will also be eager to see what vendors could be offering on Exchange 2007. As you aware, the new High Availability & disaster recovery options built into Exchange 2007 might have caused some upheaval in the vendors offering.
Lookout for some of the cool hands-on labs focused on Exchange 2007. Some of the previous TechEd had topics like “Deploying Exchange Activesync on Exchange 2007 (with certificate-based authentication), Using Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner to size Exchange 2007 deployments, some labs on Transitioning Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007, Setting up Cluster Continuous Replication & Local Continuous Replication.
It’s Free & Easy, just wander around the event. Who knows, we may get a chance to see each other and say Hi.
Below is couple of snaps taken during last year Tech-Ed (Source: Microsoft)
YUMMY!!!
Microsofties Networks…!!
Last thing you would rather do after TechEd is hang-in and take a tour to see Malaysia
J
-Shaji
Cluster Continuous Replication is now most discussed topic in Exchange 2007 these days and many of you might be running Exchange 2000/2003 in your organization and willing to invest high availability. CCR will provide both Exchange services and database failover. Using Log shipping technology, CCR will replicate the production database with the one in Passive node. I have discussed this earlier in my post here, but this new post is like a check list before you enable CCR in your environment. Below is the simple CCR diagram using Exchange 2007.
Scenario:
I assume you are running a simple Exchange 2003 system in your organization and you would like to install Exchange 2007. Then move mailboxes, public folders and at the end, decommission the Exchange 2003. The following steps are important and must be done before you proceed to enable High Availability using Exchange 2007 CCR.
- Transition current Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 - A transition is the process in which an upgrade to Exchange 2007 has to be performed, and then move data from Exchange 2003 servers in your Exchange organization to new Exchange 2007 Servers. As a next step, decommission the Exchange 2003 servers. Note that in-place upgrades from Exchange 2000 or 2003 to Exchange Server 2007 aren’t supported, mainly because Exchange 2007 is 64-bit and therefore requires the x64-bit version of Windows Server 2003.
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Prerequisites - Before deploying Exchange 2007 Servers in your existing environment, there are several requirements that must be fulfilled first as below:
- Exchange 2003 organization should set to Native Mode (no pre-Exchange 2000 servers)
- Both Exchange 2003 Servers upgrade to SP2.
- Domain Controller that is the schema master and Global Catalogue servers in your Active Directory runs Windows Server 2003 with at least Service Pack 1 applied. Also, recommended to run Windows Server 2003 with at least Service Pack 1 applied on all Domain Controllers in your Active Directory Forest. Because, this version supports Exchange 2007 service notifications, allows users to browse the address book in Microsoft Outlook Web Access and provides the ability to look up distribution list membership in a more efficient manner than in Windows 2000 Server.
- The x64 hardware specifications have been chosen in order to provide a scalable system with enough flexibility built in to accommodate both organizational and capacity changes. However, it is expected that the systems should comfortably handle the volume of processing which is currently forecast.
- It is recommended to prepare the Active Directory first using Microsoft provided switches before you start the actual deployment process. Here are some of the steps to be performed to prepare AD.
- Prepare Legacy Exchange Permissions: The very first thing to be done when deploying an Exchange 2007 into a legacy Exchange organization is to run Setup.com /PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions. This process will grant specific Exchange permissions in ORGANIZATION’s Active directory domain. The reason why you must run the Setup.com /PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions is because the Exchange 2003 Recipient Update Service won’t function correctly after the Active Directory schema has been updated with Exchange 2007 specific attributes.
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Prepare Schema: As a next process, run Setup.com /PrepareSchema, this process will connect to the Domain Controller schema master and import LDAP files to update the schema with Exchange 2007 specific attributes.
- Prepare AD: The Setup.com /PrepareAD command is used to configure global Exchange objects in Active Directory, create the Exchange Universal Security Groups (USGs) in the root domain as well as prepare the current domain. The global objects reside under the Exchange organization container. In addition, this command creates the Exchange 2007 Administrative Group which is named Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT) as well as creates the Exchange 2007 Routing Group called Exchange Routing Group (DWBGZMFD01QNBJR). Exchange 2007 doesn’t make use of Routing Groups and Administrative Groups like Exchange 2000 or 2003 did. Administrative Groups have been dropped completely and message routing in Exchange 2007 is based on Active Directory Sites. But in order for Exchange 2007 to co-exist with Exchange 2000 or 2003, Exchange must create the ORGANIZATION’s Administrative Group and Routing Group> This can be viewed via an Exchange 2000 or 2003 System Manager.
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PrepareDomain and PrepareAllDomains: Prepare all domains in the Active Directory using Setup.com /PrepareAllDomains. These switches will set permissions on the Domain container for the Exchange Servers, Exchange Organization Administrators, Authenticated Users, and Exchange Mailbox Administrators, create the Microsoft Exchange System Objects container if it does not exist, and set permissions on this container for the Exchange Servers, Exchange Organization Administrators, and Authenticated Users and create a new domain global group in the current domain called Exchange Install Domain Servers. In addition it will add the Exchange Install Domain Servers group to the Exchange Servers USG in the root domain.
Setup First Exchange 2007 Server
Now starts, the transition from your Exchange 2003 to an Exchange 2007 Server deployed in the same Active Directory Forest. Install first Exchange 2007 Server which acts as Hub Transport & optionally the Client Access Roles in the same server or different one - choose custom installation mode in Exchange 2007 setup screen. The following software and Windows components are installed on the server prior to launching Exchange 2007 Setup.
- Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 (including this update)
- Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0 (bear in mind MMC 3.0 is installed by default when using Windows Server 2003 R2)
- Windows Power Shell V1.0 (can be found here or on the Exchange 2007 DVD media)
Other Required Windows Components for various roles
Mailbox Server Role
When installing the Mailbox Server role, you also need to make sure you install the hot fixes mentioned in MS KB article 904639 and 918980.
Client Access Server
- World Wide Web Service
- Remote procedure call (RPC) over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Proxy Windows networking component (Required only if you are deploying clients that will use the Outlook Anywhere functionality, previously called RPC over HTTP)
- ASP.NET v2.0
Hub Transport Server
- No additional Windows components are required by the Hub Transport server; But SMTP and NNTP services should not be installed.
Global Settings
Global Settings that have been configured on YOUR Exchange 2003 Server will be transferred to the Exchange 2007 Server automatically, as these settings are stored and read from Active Directory. Recipient policies, Internet Message Formats, SMTP connectors and Exchange delegation permissions are applied to user mailboxes stored on Exchange 2007 as well. Also, when the Exchange 2007 Server has been deployed in the Your Exchange 2003 organization, any of the organization-level settings should be managed using Exchange 2007 Management tools (EMC or EMS) during the co-existence period.
In short, planning is important. Study your existing exchange environment thoroughly. Ensure that all the steps in the prerequisites are met or completed. A reliable backup set is to be completed before transitioning to Exchange 2007.
-Shaji Firoz
Below is the diagram for cluster continuous replication (CCR) & Local Continuous Replication in my Exchange 2007 virtual lab.
I have the following setup:
- A Windows 2003 Active Directory forest with a Domain Controller (raised to 2000 or 2003 forest functional level).
- Two Windows 2003 Server R2 Enterprise Editions with SP2 installed (Node names are MX2K7NodeA & MX2K7NodeB as per the Diagram).
- One Windows File share Witness (as per MS recommendation, I configured FSW in Exchange 2007 Hub Transport Server which also exists in myExchange 2007 organization - refer diagram, the server name is CASHUB).
I applied the update as per MS KB article 921181 in MX2K7NodeA & MX2K7NodeB that acting as nodes in my Exchange Server 2007 Clustered Mailbox setup. This update added a new file share witness feature to the current Majority Node Set (MNS) quorum model. This file share witness feature use a file share that is external to the cluster as an additional “vote” to determine the status of the cluster in a two-node MNS quorum cluster deployment, which is a requirement in order to make use of the cluster continuous replication (or CCR in short) functionality in Exchange Server 2007.
In the two cluster nodes, I named the two network connections as Public and Heartbeat for the external and the internal network respectively on both nodes. Then ensured Public network connection is listed first on the binding order list, then HeartBeat and lastly Remote Access Connections. Unticked File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks for the Heartbeat network connection. Configured the Heartbeat network (private) with an IP address and a subnet mask. No additional configuration is required since this private network is only used for heartbeat communication between the nodes in the cluster.
At this stage, I created the first cluster node in MX2K7NodeA using “Cluster Administrator” tool which installed as part of windows 2003 server. While configuring, we provide the name for cluster - here I gave Cluster name “E2007CLUS” and the IP is “10.1.10.32″.
Also, one of the steps to provide the credentials of the cluster service account. Since this is demo, I used “administrator” as cluster service account and selected Majority Node Set as the resource for Quorum entity. Once I am done with full working Windows 2003 cluster node, I added the second Windows 2003 server as the second node. I consider this stage is the first phase of my lab setup for CCR.
Now I turned to my Hub server - CASHUB.firoz.com: I installed the Windows components required by Exchange Server 2007 as well as configure the Majority Node Set (MNS) Quorum with File Share Witness. Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 component must be installed in all type of Exchange server 2007 installation. I then finished the config by enabling and configuring the transport dumpster on the HT server.
the following components are needed which will be installed as part of IIS -
Enable network COM+ access
Internet Information Services
World Wide Web Service
I created the file share on the Hub Transport server (as per MS best practise recommendation). In my setup, the share name is MNS_FSQ_E2007CLUS on the C: drive; Since I used Administrator account as Cluster service account, I gave full permission to this account for this share folder and security as well. Then from the node MX2K7NodeA, I fired the following command:
Cluster res “Majority Node Set” /priv MNSFileShare=\\CASHUB\MNS_FSQ_E2007CLUS
You should get a warning, something like this:
“You will get a warning that all properties were stored but not all changes will take effect until the next time the resource is brought online”
Once you move the Cluster Group to the node MX2K7NodeB using the following command, all these changes should take effect.
Cluster Group “Cluster Group” /Move
Then to verify the Majority Node Set is properly pointed to the right server by typing the below command:
Cluster Res “Majority Node Set” /Priv
Then set Transport Dumpster. Now another major phase is over in this Lab.
Its time to setup Exchange 2007 Server in both nodes. I ensured all the prerequisites are installed, custom install option is selected so I can have clustered mailbox setup. While configuring, I gave the mailbox server name & IP - in this scenario, its E2K7CCR & 10.1.10.33 respectively. I repeated the same for Passive Clustered mailbox setup and verified using CLuster administrator console. Done!
I used the below command to verify the cluster setup:
“Get-ClusteredMailboxServerStatus –Identity E2K7CCR“
So how did I simulate the failover? Its simple! I used the below powershell command to move the Exchange mailbox server to other node:
Move-ClusteredMailboxServer -Identity:E2K7CCR -TargetMachine:MX2k7Node2 -MoveComment:”This is a test!”
Let me stop here.
With the introduction of SP1 in Exchange 2007, we all are excited to see this breakthrough functionality of Standby Continues Replication (SCR). Check out MSExchange Team Blog for other enhancements in Exchange 2007 SP1Beta, also you can read more in release notes here.
Now Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) can replicate storage group to standby servers or clusters in the remote site or in your datacenter, then it can be activated in the event primary server is crashed/failed. In Local Continuous Replication (LCR), we copy the DB replica into an external hard disk.
not sure about the licensing part - if the target server has more than 5 storage groups or part of cluster, it will require enterprise edition. However, SCR is big change in SP1. It used to be challenging for corporations to find a proven remote site recovery solution. Now with SCR, its reality.
MS Exchange Team is rocking with Exchange 2007!
CCR (Cluster Continuous Replication) in MS Exchange 2007 provide the cost balance for DR & HA.
How do we measure the DR cost?
There are many ways. For sure, cost is the first measurement when people think of DR solutions.
- Up-front cost
- cost of related upgrades, such as bandwidth
- support and personnel cost
- Maintenance
- Testing and monitoring cost.
- Last but not the least, what if it doesn’t work?
So Exchange 2007 introduces few great DR options.
Cluster Continuous Replication
Local Continuous Replication
lets see how do these new features change the DR cost balance?
Cluster continuous replication is Database+log replication between cluster nodes and it provides the following benefits:
- It gives resiliency against single-server failure
- shared storage is not required
- resiliency against site failures
- minimized log playback time when compared to SCC
- more offline operations can be done on passive nodes (e.g. backup)
However, the following disadvantages to be noted:
- all nodes must be in same IP subnet if this is being used for site failure
- complexity level is higher
- CCR is limited to two nodes
- This protects at the Storage Group level (1 DB per SG)
If you really want to learn more, there is a great video by Scot Schnoll - watch it here
Also, read Henrik’s great article here about implementing CCR
For those who are in Singapore, I am talking about more on CCR based HA at Community Launch - Love 2007 event
-Shaji Firoz
