Which Exchange Server 2007 Server Cluster Type Should I use, CCR or SCC?

cluster — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:36:00 GMT

This is becoming a pretty common question in my Exchange classes. Which should I use? Why one over the other? My current recommendation is to use CCR whenever possible vs. SCC. Why? I am glad you asked that question. High Availability, see my definition...(read more)

Moving a Cluster to a New SAN - Original Posted Jul 22, 2005

cluster — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 13:14:00 GMT

A fairly common scenario for a cluster administrator is to move a cluster from one SAN to another as SAN equipment is replaced with newer/faster SANs or the old SAN's lease is up and a new one is being brought in.

The easiest way that I have found to do this is to use these steps (this is from memory, let me know if I missed one or two):

Super High Level Steps:

Put the new array in the same fabric as the existing array
Create new LUNs on the new array and make sure they are visible to the nodes
Map the new LUNs to the old drive letters
Copy data from the old drive to the new drive
Move quorum and MSDTC

Slightly More Detailed Steps:

Carve the new LUNs on the new array
Add the new array and its LUNs to the same switch as the existing array
Configure the LUN masking on the switch to expose the new LUNs to NodeA and NodeB
Use the disk management tools in Windows to rescan the drives
Use the active node to partition and format the disks
Use Cluster Administrtor to create the new physical disk resources and put them into their proper cluster groups
Move the Quorum using the GUI to a temp location
1. In Cluster Administrator, right click the cluster name
2. Select Properties
3. Select the Quorum tab
4. Use the drop down box to select a temp location for the quorum
Delete the existing MSDTC folder (if any)
1. Stop the MSDTC resource
2. Copy the MSDTC folder from Q: to the final qurom disk target location
3. Stop the Q: resource (remember, the quorum isn't there anymore)
4. Delete the MSDTC resource
Move the quorum to its final location
1. Go into disk management and change the Q: name to another letter
2. Use disk management and name the final quorum drive to Q:
3. Repeat steps 7.1-7.4 to move the quorum to its final destination
Recreate the MSDTC resource
1. Create a new MSDTC resource with the clustername network name resource and the new Q: as dependencies
2. Bring the MSDTC resource online
Stop the cluster service and the application cluster groups (you can just stop the application resources if you want to move app data an app at a time)
Move the data from the old disks to the new ones
Re-letter the old disks to something outside the current range, but do not remove them yet - you might need to use them in your back out plan
Re-letter the new disks to the same drive letter as the old ones (no, you do not have to worry about disk signatures as applications don't understand disk signatures and don't care about anything other than drive letters)
Verify that all dependent resources are pointing to the proper physical disk resource.
Restart the cluster service
Make sure the new drive letters and disk resources are showing up properly in cluster administrator
Bring everything back online

Again, these are basic steps. Some of the individual steps will require lots of work. I have done this now several times and am very happy with the results.

Cluster Help : Storage Area Network

Which Exchange Server 2007 Server Cluster Type Should I use, CCR or SCC?

Moving a Cluster to a New SAN - Original Posted Jul 22, 2005