Separate two Servers

[richsilva]

We have a two server cluster, each serving a separate domain within a forest...

One half of the company (LA) is served by one, has primary emails in one domain. The other half of the company (ADL) has a different primary email domain. Both sides have both addresses though... Just different primary addrs depending on which continent you are on...

The LA side of things is moving to a Hosted Exchange service... We're changing the MX records and a few other things so that email is received there. A migration process copies the existing mailboxes "up" to the Hosted service...

What I need to do is 1) Export all the mailboxes on the LA side to files (archival process; see my other question) Once that is done, I need to remove the Exchange Server; I need to do this in such a way that email from within the ADL server doesnt end up queued forever to server that will never return...

Ideally I'd like to "separate the servers", without having to "delete" the LA one (that would allow the Archival process to run at its own pace...)

 

[58sniper]

We have a two server cluster, each serving a separate domain within a forest...

That's not how clusters work. If it's a true cluster, both nodes of the cluster do the exact same thing for the same users. The cluster appears as one resource to the organization, with the active node handling the work unless it fails over to the passive node.

Please clarify.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[richsilva]

Oh sigh...
The ADL server is the Master
The LA server is a Member

We have domains, call them LAfoo.com and ADLbar.com with MX records that point into the exchange servers (that's simplified too, but oh well!)

Let me explain my non-techno speak.
"One half of the company (LA) is served by one, has primary emails in one domain" == The LA setup is one AD server with an Exchange server running on the same box. Those users with accounts in the LA domain have mailboxes stored in the LA Exchange Server DB (I dont know if this is a configured arrangement or if its just inherent in this, so dont slap me with the "of course it is" comment!)

Users in the LA domain have primary email addresses set to LAfoo.com, but also have a ADLbar.com email address as well.

The ADL arrangement is slightly different in that the AD and Exch servers are separate. Of course, their accounts have primary addresses ADLbar.com but also have LAfoo.com addresses configured into their accounts.

Yes, I know the cluster is a single resource. BUT, there is (or seems to be) separate mailbox stores that segratate along the lines of the users in the AD forest. (IF that topology matters, the ADL domain is the Parent, the LA a Child to it).

I hope that contained what you were looking for. If not, give me explicit directions to the information you want me to pull from the server(s).

Assuming I havent lost you all. My main concern (and why I thought of "splitting" the servers is "internal email". We have changed the appropriate MX records, so external email will behave... And emails from the users in the LA domain will behave (since they route "out of" the Hosted service). But what about emails that are "created" by an ADL user destined for an LAfoo.com email address? Will the ADL server just throw that email to its cluster member?

My first goal is to remove the LA Exchange Server from the cluster... and (logically) all linkages to the LAfoo.com email addresses (as all the active ones are hosted elsewhere now. MX records for that domain point into the Hosted servers). My current reading suggests that to do this I uninstall Exchange from the LA server...

That seems "harsh"...
My second goal is to "maintain" the LA Exchange server long enough (this might only be days) so that I can archive to PST files all the mailboxes in that DB. (Exmerge, overnight, has caught all but a few of them; those left are all over 2GB in size and I'm looking for alternatives there without using Outlook to export the files (looking for something that will do them unattended, rather than my doing them serially)).

My third goal (because the cynical me knows this always happens!) is to do this in a fashion that is (easily[sic!]) reversible. The client doesnt want me "wasting time" with some contingency planning, but I know that as soon as the last "bridge is burnt" they will decide they dont like the Hosted Service (performance!) and want to return to the "old way"... (Yes, I have complete backups of both the servers and Exchange via BE, but would like a better plan than relying on Backups anyway)

I have still left out a number of other details as not particularly pertinent to the discussion of how to separate these two Exchange Servers... Yes, I have to remove the non-primary email addresses from the various accounts (and set up some sort of aliasing for some of them) in both the new Hosted service and in the ADL server)

 

[58sniper]

Well, if it's a true cluster, and you're just after removing email for those now hosted users, I'd leave the cluster in place, and just remove the recipient policy aspects that give out those email addresses, and then manually remove the addresses from the accounts, and any mailboxes that are no longer needed. That way, you still have a working cluster for the remaining users.

Even if you evict a node from the cluster (essentially destroying the cluster), you're still going to have to do the above steps. In fact, the cleanup will be far more involved.

If it's not a true cluster, then you can't just uninstall Exchange. You have to remove all mailboxes, public folders, etc., first. You mention "master", "member", and some users in one domain. I suspect there is no true Windows cluster here.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/