Server Shutdown/Startup Order of Precdence
Does anyone know of any best practice guidance regarding bringing down or bringing up an entire Exchange organization? For example, there's a power outage and you need to shutdown your systems gracefully before your UPS runs out of juice. I looked for about an hour and didn't come across anything definitive. Anybody ever heard/seen anything from Microsoft about this? I don't have CCR, LCR, SCR or any UM roles installed From my personal perspective, the process would look like this: Shutdown HT, CAS, then MBX. Startup CAS, HT, and then MBX. I'm not sure it matters which is shutdown first, the HT or CAS systems, but tried to reason out which would be best. Mostly I was thinking that it was good to shutdown HT first so that it has a chance to transfer as many messages into or out of the organization as possible. Then CAS to stop client access via active sync and OWA, and finally the MBX roll with hopefully all messages committed from the HT and the load slightly smaller from knocking off all the remote users. My logic for the startup is much the same, start HT to allow mail transport avaliability, then CAS simply because it seems better to have all other services running and avaliable when users finally get notified that the connection was restored to there Exchange server when we finally bring the MBX systems online again. Anybody have thoughts on this? If we don't have any official guidance from Microsoft, what about technical reasons we can come up with as to why one order would be preferable than another? All feedback greatly appreciated. Jason
July 8th, 2010 8:51pm

I have always done it in the same way as patching - outside in. Hub, CAS, Mailbox. Then startup in the reveres order, so Mailbox, CAS, Hub, so that email flows immediately as Hub is available. Although I can see no reason why it matters. Any messages in Hub when it goes down will be delivered when it comes back. Users on CAS will be kicked out when mailbox goes down anyway. Cas, well when it comes to shutting down, who cares about users accessing the server, it is being shutdown. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP. http://blog.sembee.co.uk , http://exbpa.com/
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July 8th, 2010 10:13pm

I agree that it shouldn't matter, but your order makes logical sense. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Sembee" wrote in message news:47e4109d-4580-4e37-a279-55861707a59e... I have always done it in the same way as patching - outside in. Hub, CAS, Mailbox. Then startup in the reveres order, so Mailbox, CAS, Hub, so that email flows immediately as Hub is available. Although I can see no reason why it matters. Any messages in Hub when it goes down will be delivered when it comes back. Users on CAS will be kicked out when mailbox goes down anyway. Cas, well when it comes to shutting down, who cares about users accessing the server, it is being shutdown. Simon. Simon Butler, Exchange MVP. http://blog.sembee.co.uk , http://exbpa.com/Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."
July 8th, 2010 11:41pm

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