Transition upgrade from exch 2003, few questions

[lachesis09]

Hi

I'm shortly going to be attempting an upgrade from exch 2003 on a single server up to 2007 for resilience and failover.

I feel I'll be pretty comfortable installing it as the walkthrough seems straightforward, but I have a few configuration issues. I'll explain what I want, and then perhaps some kind person can advise on which configuration would suit me?

We have two sites, one mail server can service the domain which has about 2000 mailboxes, or has been quite comfortably.

What I am aiming for is to have a solution where both servers are load balancing, but in the event of one failing, the other one will automatically take over until the other is fixed.

After reading some notes, I'm still a little confused as to how this will be set up, so I'll wrtie what I think is ocrrect and maybe someone can give me some pointers?

Firstly, I assume I'll need an active-active exchange connection. To pursue that above role, I would need to have two exchange servers using SCR (this means both have their own storage area??) with the mailbox role installed.

On the other 2 servers I would install client accesss (OWA), hub and transport and configure them for load balancing.

I have also considered clustering using a SAN but am totally alien to the configuration of reislience or failover in this scenario.

Grateful for any advice.

Thanks

 

[Zelandakh]

automatically take over" and SCR don't match in this instance.

Automatic means cluster. Read up on CCR (continuous clustered replication). No shared storage area required.

Clustering on a SAN means that if one SERVER goes then Exchange carries on but if one SAN goes then everything has gone.

 

[lachesis09]

Thanks I'll go and have a quick read of any articles now.

So, what you are saying is to have the setup with the two exchange servers and have CCR enabled and configured.

This means I lose load balancing as it would be an active/passive connection, so I could potentially need 4 servers as only the mailbox role can be configured on a clustered box?

Thanks for your time.

 

[Zelandakh]

No, you need to read up on CCR first then it should make more sense.

 

[Cstorms]

Also, you can use NLB for your CAS role now in a supported fashion after the release of SP1, giving you high availability for your OWA users as well

Cory