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Creating and configuring an Exchange 2010

Database Availability Group (DAG)


Those of you that come from Exchange 2007 will love the way High Availability for databases are done in Exchange
2010. No more Single Copy Clusters (SCC), Standby Continuous Replication (SCR), Local Continuous Replication
(LCR), or Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR), is only Database Availability Group or DAG. Exchange database
and log files are replicated over a private network to Mailbox member serves that are part of the DAG. If the active
Mailbox server fails, clients are automatically redirected to another Mailbox server that holds a copy of the database.
More information can be found on the Exchange 2010 product documentation.
For this guide I have the following lab configuration

Now lets configure the networks on the Mailbox servers, and will start with the MAPI (public) network.

The second one is the private network, the one that is used for database replication.

Dont close the properties of the TCP/IP protocol yet for the private network. Click the Advance button an go to the
DNS tab. Here clear the box Register this connections address in DNS.

Now change the binding NIC order by going to Advanced > Advanced Settings.

Make sure the public network is on top.

Now open the Exchange management console. Here expand Organization Configuration and click the
Mailbox object. To create a DAG you can either click New Database Availability Group on the Actions pane, or
click the Database Availability Groups tab. On the New Database Availability Group wizard we need to configure
three components:
Database Availability Group Name the name of the new DAG; no more than 15 characters.
Witness Server a host that maintains the cluster quorum. This host can be a Windows server joined to the domain,
but is recommended by Microsoft to be an Hub Transport server. The witness server cant be a member of the DAG,
but it must reside in the same Active Directory forest as the DAG, and not also running the Mailbox server role. If
no witness server is specified in the box, a Hub Transport server in the same site as the DAG is automatically
selected.
Witness Directory a folder on the witness sever that stores some cluster information.
After you complete the required information click the Manage button to start creating the DAG.

If everything worked out well you should have a green check mark.

Now we need to add the Mailbox servers that are going to participate in the replication process. For that right click
the DAG and choose Manage Database Availability Group Membership.

Here click the Add button and select the Mailbox servers.

Click the Manage button to start adding the members to our newly created DAG. This is going to take some time
because the Windows Failover Cluster feature must be installed on those Mailbox member servers.

Because the wizard assigns all the available networks to the DAG the replication may occur on the MAPI (public)
network creating an increase of traffic. For this reason we need to disable it so the replication can take place only on
the private network. Click the DAG, find your MAPI network on the Networks section, right click Replication
Enabled and choose Properties.

Clear the box Enable Replication and click OK.

Now our MAPI network is disabled and replication will only take place on the private network, witch is what we
want.

We have created a DAG, we configured the network for the DAG, the next step is to add database copies. If your
database is located on a different drive than the default one, all the Mailbox servers that will keep a copy of the
database will need to have the same drive letter. In my case I have a database called Finance Database located on
the E drive, and the same E drive needs to be present on the other Mailbox system(s). If the same path is not found
on one of the replication partners an error message appears when you try to add a database copy.

Now go to Database Management tab, right click the database you want to replicate and choose Add Mailbox
Database Copy.

On the Add Mailbox Database Copy page click the Browse button to select the replication partner.

Click the Add button to start creating a copy of the database on the selected server.

If the operation succeeded a green check box appears on the wizard.

Now we have a healthy copy of the database on another Mailbox server as you can see in the Database Copies
section.

Lets see if it really works.

To be able to verify this properly, a user mailbox needs to be created on the mailbox database that is part of the DAG
(Finance Database).
Shut down the Mailbox server that holds the active (mounted) copy of the database; in this case is EX01. After a few
seconds the Mailbox database should be mounted on the second Mailbox server witch is EX02. You can see this by
opening the Exchange management console on EX02.

And user(s) can still access their mailbox(es), even if one the Mailbox servers is down.

Off course you can create multiple databases and configure them for replication, and if you have more then two
Mailbox servers who are members of a DAG you can mix and match those databases for better performance and HA

Backup Exchange 2010 Mailbox Databases with DPM 2012


Because you dont want to lose your users mailboxes in the case of a server crash, you started thinking about
backup. If DPM 2012 is your way to go, then read on, and Ill show you how to backup those Exchange Mailbox
servers. Using DPM you will have continuous protection of your data because transaction logs are continuously
synchronized to the DPM server, every 15 minutes (this can be increased). When changes are made to the database,
the DPM agent identifies which blocks have changed, and sends just the updated blocks or fragments to the DPM
server. One more thing, DPM uses VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) for backups, meaning your Exchange
Mailbox transaction logs will be automatically purged into the database.
You can also backup-up older versions of Exchange using DPM, but for this demonstration I will user Exchange
2010.

Before we actually start backing up those Mailbox servers we need to copy the eseutil.exe and ese.dll files on the
DPM server, or an error message is displayed if we opt to check data integrity.

Browse to one of your Exchange Mailbox servers in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\ and
copy those two files on your DPM server in C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\DPM\DPM\bin\;
assuming that C:\Program Files is your install directory. If the Exchange Mailbox servers are updated, you will
have to come are update the two files on the DPM server. To get read of this head ache create a hard link.
Also make sure the DPM agents are installed on your Exchange Mailbox servers. Now that everything is in place
lets do some work; and first we need to create a Protection Group. Go to the Protection section in the DPM
console (on the Wunderbar) and click the New button from the ribbon.

Click Next to skip the Welcome screen of the wizard.

Select what type of protection group you want to create. Because we want to backup Exchange, and Exchange runs
on a server platform, we need to go with the Servers option.

Expand the server list and choose which database(es) you want to backup. If you have an Exchange DAG
configured you can backup up that too.
If you dont see any servers in the list is because you dont have any DPM agent installed on them. Go ahead and
install the DPM agents on those servers then start this wizard again.

Give the protection group a name and click Next. The long-term protection is enabled only if you have at least
one tape device installed on the DPM server.

I recommend you run Eseutil to check data integrity. Again this is available only if you copied the eseutil.exe and
ese.dll files on the DPM server (see above).

Select the databases you want for full backup and express copy backup. If you want to have copies of the same
database select the database from the left and hit the Copy button. You cant use a stand alone MB for copy backup.

Specify the retention range and the synchronization frequency. By clicking the Modify button you can change the
Express Full Backup scheduler.

On the Disk space allocated in DPM section you can see how much space DPM will allocate in the storage pool.
You can modify this by clicking the Modify button. For a calculation of how much space you need to allocate on the
storage pool see this Microsoft Technet post.

If you have limited bandwidth you should choose to replicate data manually, if not select the Automatically over
the network option. Using the automatic option you have two choices, now or using a schedule date. Im going with
the defaults here.

You can set DPM to check for data inconsistency, automatically or scheduled. It depends on your hardware, because
the automatic method (Run a consistency check if a replica becomes inconsistent) will use some additional CPU.

On the Summary page review the tasks then click the Create Group button.

Now DPM will immediately start creating replicas, and if all succeeds you should have green check marks. Your
Exchange databases are now protected.

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