High Availability

Virtualizing Exchange? Microsoft addresses misleading VMWare guidance

Are you planning on deploying Exchange Server in a virtual environment, using hyervisors (aka hardware virtualization) such as Microsoft’s Hyper-V or VMWare’s ESXi/vSphere Hypervisor? Microsoft has frequently carried statements about supportability of Exchange Server in a hardware virtualization environment (see Microsoft support policies and recommendations for servers that are running Exchange Server in hardware virtualization […]

More →

Another Gmail Outage

After a widespread outage earlier this month, Google’s Gmail web-based email service is reporting yet another outage today— this time affecting only “a small subset of users”. More from Stephen Shankland in Gmail outage hits ‘small subset of users’.

More →

Gmail Outages And Cloud Availability

Google’s Gmail service had yet another widespread outage on Tuesday at 12:30 PM which lasted more than 3 hours between 100 minutes (according to Google) to 2 ½ hours (according to PC World). News of the outage quickly spread like a wildfire on social media networks, where it quickly earned the epitaph of Gfail. A […]

More →

Released: New Whitepapers on Continuous Replication and Planning for Large Mailboxes

New whitepapers have been released today on TechNet. Whitepaper: Continuous Replication Deep Dive– written by Ross Smith IV and Scott Schnoll This whitepaper discusses the different components of Continuous Replication— used by LCR, CCR and SCR, how replication works, backups and log file truncation, what happens during scheduled and unscheduled outages, and how Continuous Replication […]

More →

Standby Continuous Replication (SCR): Replay and Truncation Lag

Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) is a new High Availability feature in Exchange Server 2007 SP1. It uses Continuous Replication (also used by LCR and CCR) to replicate Storage Groups from a clustered or non-clustered mailbox server, known as a SCR source, to a clustered or non-clustered mailbox server, known as a SCR target. SCR is […]

More →

HOW TO: Create a new Storage Group in a CCR Cluster

Exchange Server 2007’s Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) clusters are not dependent on shared storage (when used with MNS quorum and a File Share Witness in Windows Server 2003). There are no protocol virtual server resources like SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, etc. — Exchange Server 2007’s Clustered Mailbox Server (CMS) role is designed to be a Mailbox […]

More →

Some more details on SCR

Besides Terry Myerson’s post on the team blog providing some details about SP1 (read previous post “Exchange Server 2007 SP1: A bag of goodies!“), there weren’t a lot of details about SCR available publicly until TechEd 2007 in Orlando earlier this month. Looking at the search engine keywords used to reach this blog, and the […]

More →

Cluster Continuous Replication and Public Folders

In previous versions of Exchange Server, Exchange Virtual Servers (EVSes) are not very different from standalone servers. Besides mailboxes, they can host protocol virtual servers (SMTP, IMAP4, POP3, HTTP/OWA), Public Folders, etc. Exchange Server 2007’s clustering model is simplified further to provide high availability for mailboxes. There is no protocol support – SMTP is the […]

More →

Determine cluster configuration of mailbox server (CCR/SCC)

To determine whether a mailbox server is clustered or standalone, and if clustered – whether it’s using Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) or Single Copy Cluster (SCC), use the following command: Get-MailboxServer | select name,ClusteredStorageType The possible values:1. NonShared = CCR cluster2. Shared = SCC cluster3. Disabled = standalone / non-clustered mailbox server

More →

CCR Over WAN: Failover and FSW questions answered

Exchange Server 2007’s Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) feature provides a way to set-up geographically-dispersed clusters to protect against data center failure (aka “site failure”). Though the documentation provides plenty of detail on how to set up CCR clusters in a single data center – where both cluster nodes and the computer hosting the File Share […]

More →