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by waelnady1

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Due to my company expanding I'm going to implement Exchange cluster
I have read a lot of documents but I still have some questions and need for confirmation before to apply this technology

1- I have already a machine running win2003 DC and Exchange 2003 with 1.8G CPU &2G RAM?. How to reserve the current exchange system(mailboxs,DB,..) when implement the cluster cause none of these documents described more details about retain the current state of exchange it only described install new exchange on anew win in the cluster

2- what is the disk Shared Storage requirements , am i in need for external SAN or I can use the exist HD on each node

3- I configured recipient policy to receive multiple domain emails
What is limitations of multiple domain emails after installing cluster (can I still use Internet Mail Wizard) to add new domains

5 replies

by Member 25348569

You can't run non-cluster Exchange 2003 on a Windows cluster and you can't install cluster-Exchange on a non-cluster Windows and I don't think there's an upgrade path unless someone's done a hack. The usual upgrade path is to install your Exchange cluster separate to your existing Exchange and migrate mailboxes. You could possibly move the databases into the recovery
storage group and detach them and move them over but you'll still need the separate destination cluster before you start.

After installation of the cluster Exchange, everything works much as it used to.

by waelnady1

can y plz give more details or a link about migrate the user mailboxes and DBs
and about minimum requirements for SAN

by Member 25348569

migrating the mailboxes is easy, you just move them from your old server onto the new cluster Exchange server at your leisure with the Move Mailbox Wizard. Nice and easy. The only danger - he says from personal experience - is when the Exchange server is toasted because someone forgets to put the circular logging on both ends.

Migrating entire databases is not so straightforward. I've never done it between a standalone and a cluster but it should be OK. Here's a "howto" from Microsoft http://technet.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/bb124463.aspx
Unfortunately, it's the Russian Technet so it's not as clear as it might be. I can't find the original that I used.

Minimum requirement for any Microsoft cluster is a shared fibre or SCSI disk. Really, though, you need more than one disk for Exchange. You don't need a SAN but you will need a disk that can be read and written by two servers. These should ideally be identically specced.

Hope this helps a bit.

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