Hello, I will be migrating to Exchange 2007 here shortly and wanted to get a plan together. I have Exchange 2003 set up right now as a stand alone server. I would like to set up 2 exchange 2007 boxes for failover. Just not sure exactly how yet. I want those two boxes, the database on a SAN, and the ability to failover at anytime. I have two SAN's, one in the server room, and one in the DR. I was thinking maybe CCR? But I was thinking of keeping all server roles on that one box...bad idea? Can I have one 2k7 box running all the exchange roles in the server room with it's database on the san. And another 2k7 box runing all the same roles in the DR Site? Should this box use the same database on the primary San? Or if the DB get's corrupt should it keep it's own DB? At this point, I'm really up for any kind of info you guys may have. Thanks a lot. Joe

Clustered Mailbox Servers, weather you are using CCR or SCC must not have any other Exchange Server roles on them. This means, you are going to need at least 3 servers based on your plan so far. Additionally you've asked some really loaded questions. I think it would be remiss if I just gave answers without better understanding the SAN, the rest of your infrastructure and your business needs. If you'd like to contact my company for professional consulting, please see my email address in my profile. Otherwise please review this documentation: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1A6EFDD6-D80E-489D-9A1D-8F3E01BAA3C5&displaylang=en

gmc8757 wrote: Can I have one 2k7 box running all the exchange roles in the server room with it's database on the san. And another 2k7 box runing all the same roles in the DR Site? Should this box use the same database on the primary San? Or if the DB get's corrupt should it keep it's own DB? Technically, yes. If this computer is joined to the domain, it can simply be another Exchange server.If you put another Exchange server in another location, in the event of a disaster, you could restore data to that server and use the /ConfigurationOnly However based on the rest of what you said, I'm imagining you are looking for more than this.

Thanks for the response. I apologize for the loaded questions, i just started typing and that's what came to mind. I'm going to read over this document you sent, and get back to this thread. Not sure how I missed that doc to begin with.

Another question, how critical is it to have the roles split up? I would like to have the 3 roles on one server, with something like a barracuda filtering the email from the outside. Is that a bad idea to combine the roles?

Nothing wrong with putting 3 roles on one box. The only problem is Clustering. A clustered mailbox server cannot exist with other roles. This also applies to Edge Transport if you elect to use that.

So what is the best way to get redundancy incase one exchange box fails, it can easily go over to the second one. Can you do this without clustering? You had a question about the san's I was using. I have 1 - PS Dell Equallogic as my primary, and 1 - PS Dell Equallogic strictly for DR. All the data from the first one is replicated to the DR one ever hour. So I'm ok with having the Exchange Database on the first San, and replicate from San to San. Worst come to worst, I lost an hour's worth of data, we're ok with that.

You cannot get data "redundancy" per se without clustering with native Microsoft software. Look into doubletake. San-Based data replication is a complex topic and isn't always supported with Exchange, you should speak with your vendor on how to best use this.