I have an Exchange 2013 DAG that consists of 4 databases.

Server A: DB1 and DB2 are Mounted/Active  - DB3 and DB4 are passive/copies

Server B: DB1 and DB2 are Copies/Passive - DB3 and DB4 are Active/Mounted

Can I restart the "Microsoft Exchange Replication" service on Server A without any impact to production? Or do I need to put the server into Mnt Mode first? I'm having an issue with the VSS writer on this server.

Thanks

Yes, you can. When you restart the replication service, user will not be affected. DAG replication will suspended for a short while.

Hi Anthony,

Thank you for your question.

I agree with Li Zhen.

In addition, we suggest you restart this service out of production time. If there are any issue after we restart this service, welcome to our forum and we will give a better solution for you.

If there are any questions regarding this issue, please be free to let me know.

Best Regard,

Jim

Hi Anthony,

Its always a good pratice to make changes off production hours and in maintainance mode to avoid unexpected disruption of the service as Jim pointed out.

Active Manager runs inside the Microsoft Exchange Replication service (MSExchangeRepl.exe) on all Mailbox servers. On Mailbox servers that aren't members of a DAG, there is a single Active Manager role: Standalone Active Manager.

Restarting it might not directly impact you, but you might lack the ability to manage the database and database copy health, status, continuous replication and initiate switchover\failovers if required during the restart.

Active Manager

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776123(v=exchg.150).aspx

If the cluster group is on Server A, move the cluster group off to another server before restarting the Microsoft Exchange Replication service, to for sure make sure it won't have an impact on production.