Hey guys, 

 I just completed a v2v on Saturday for our Exchange. We went from a thick provisioning to a thin provision. My question is this. I know I have to move the database from the old VM to the new one. I was wondering if there is a step by step guide on how I can do this. The Exchange Servers are on two separate hosts. That do not share a common datastore. 

By the way, we are using Exchange 2013

Thanks in advance. 

You have two main ways of doing this.

1. Create a DAG, add the new server to the DAG, create a database copy on the new server, allow it to seed, then remove the copy from the old server (optional).

2. Create a new mailbox database.  Move all mailboxes from the old to the new server.

The second option will create more transaction logs so watch your space and run ba

 Thank you for your response. Would I run into issues creating a DAG on the new server, when its an "exact" copy of the old server? Meaning how would I be able to run both servers at once?

Thanks

• Edited by Tomson74 8 hours 46 minutes ago

There's no reason to make an "exact" copy.  If you really want to do it that way, then all you need to do is simply copy all the files from the database and log directories to the exact same location on the new server.  That way is more risky than doing it one of the two ways I told you about, but if that ship has sailed, that's the way you're going to have to do it.  Be sure to dismount all the databases first.

 Thank you for your response. Would I run into issues creating a DAG on the new server, when its an "exact" copy of the old server? Meaning how would I be able to run both servers at once?

Thanks

• Edited by Tomson74 Tuesday, August 25, 2015 10:42 PM

Hi,

Please consider Ed's suggestion.

Additionally, here is a similar thread for your reference:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/0576f07e-f38b-4243-825a-314e1b8c9579/exchange-vm-migration?forum=winserverhyperv

Regards,

Can DAG be setup "live"? Meaning can I set this up during production on a live Exchange Server without user impact? 

There should be no user impact.

This won't work with an "exact copy", i.e., a clone or a VM copy.  You'll need to build a new Exchange s

If you just need to thin provision the data disk then you can create a new thin provisioned disk and then move the database and log paths but note that this does require downtime.

Other options include doing a Storage vMotion in VMware and configure the destination disks to be thin provisioned or use the Microsoft Hyper-V equivalent. 

Least downtime will be creating a DAG and then just moving the active mailbox database copy. Moving mailboxes can be done also but this will require more downtime than the DAG. These two options do you require you to build a new Exchange server and if you're using Server 2012, you don't need server enterprise licensing but you will do if you're using Server 2008/2008 R2. 

Do also note that dymanically expanding disks are not supported. See here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj126252(v=exchg.141).aspx.

Ideally if you need to shrink the disk to reduce SAN usage then create a new thick provisioned disk and extend as needed.

Thanks.

Why do you want to use thin provisioned disks?  You are going to see a performance decrease on writes to the database since the space will need to be allocated at the time of the write.