Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Installing Exchange 2010 - Part 6

Activating the Mailbox database copy.

From the Database Management, select Add Mailbox Database copy.



Select a target mailbox server




Adding..






Added



Verify the completion



On EXB2, mailbox copy has started.


Do the same for the EXB2/DB2


Isn't this easy?

Installing Exchange 2010 - Part 5

Let's setup a DAG


I will name the DAG as "DAG1" and its IP will be 192.168.1.10, and use EXF1 for the FSW.


Creating DAG with EMC is a bit problomatic, use powershell instead.

If you use EMC, DAG will grab a DHCP IP.


New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -name DAG1 -WitnessServer EXF1 -WitnessDirectory c:\dag1fsw -DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIpAddresses 192.168.1.10


Now DAG1 is created but there are no members




Let's add members




I will add EXB1 and EXb2.





They are added, from the database management tab, you can see the owner of the DB. currently EXB1 is the owner of the DB1 and EXB2 is the owner of DB2.


Next time we will activate Mailbox Databse Copy.

Installing Exchange 2010 - Part 4

Eventhough Microsoft does not recommand using WLB on Exchange 2010 servers, I will show you how to do it. Microsoft actually recommand using H/W load balancer such as F5.

I will assume you already have experiences on creating NLB on exchange 2003/2007 servers.

Installing WLB on CAS&HT servers.

1. Install "Network Load Balancing" feature on each CAS+HT servers.

2. Setup the NLB (in my case my nlb name is "webmail.demo.local"), exf1 and exf2 are the members, also add it to DNS.

3. set a new client access array using new-ClientAccessArray command, it will be used among outlook clients (MAPI) to connect to the exchagne 2010 servers.





4. Now associate the array with a database using set-mailboxdatabase command



Now when db1 user try to connect to exchange database using mapi protocol, they will be directed to use webmail.demo.local to connect.

Some admins may perfer using a different name for this, for example "outlook-connect" or etc.

To do that,

Add A record for the "outlook-connect", but use the same nlb cluster IP (webmail's IP in my case)

Create a new ClientAccessArray, and associate a DB with it.

Let's verify the setting.





Monday, December 28, 2009

Installing Exchange 2010 - Part 3

The two servers I will use to install CAS & HT servers are called EXF1 and EXF2.

I will skip the prereq processes (eg: .net framework and etc)

1. For CAS and HT servers run following commands from the scripts folder/directory.
sc config NetTcpPortSharing start= auto
ServerManagerCmd -ip Exchange-Typical.xml -Restart
Click this link for more details on the command














2. Install exchange server, choose custom install and select CAS and HT roles.
3. Populate the internet facing server name (if your CAS&HT server will face the internet)


















4. Install



















5. Installed, internal URL will be changed once the load balance feature gets installed.



6. I will skip the installation process for the EXF2 (my second CAS&HT server)

Installing Exchange 2010 - Part 2

Name of the server I will install the first mailbox server is exb1

1. Start the setup, and choose language option


















2. And install exchange server
































\
Select mailbox role





































3. First look of the EMC

Installing Exchange 2010 - Part 1

I am going to install exchange server 2010 on a server 2008 SP2, for more information on Exchange 2010 Prerequisites, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354.aspx

1. Install .net Framwork 3.5 SP1, you can download the full package version from here

2. Install Windows Remote Management (WinRM) 2.0 and Windows PowerShell V2, download it from here

3. On servers that will host the Hub Transport or Mailbox server role, install the Microsoft Filter Pack. Download it from here

4. Run "ServerManagerCmd -ip Exchange-MBX.xml -Restart" from the scripts folder on a exch 2010 installation CD.












5. Prepare schema by running "setup /PrepareSchema"










6. Prepare AD by running "setup /preparead" (setup /PrepareAD will automatically perform the PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions )

7. Prepare domain
Run setup /PrepareDomain or setup /pd to prepare the local domain
Run setup /PrepareAllDomains or setup /pad to prepare all domains in your organization.

Exchange 2010

Exchange 2010 is out and there are a few information about how to create/setup high availablity features.

I am going to post how to setup exchange 2010 with DAG and setup load balanced CAS and HT servers.