Hi All, I was thinking about setting my two Exchange 2010 servers (one with database role and one with CAS and hub roles) to automatically reboot the Mondays after Patch Tuesdays. I already have a number of servers doing this, but I figure I should make a post here and ask what you all think instead of just scheduling a reboot on them. The script on the other servers is as follows: shutdown.exe -r -t 10 -f -c "reboot scheduled for patch remediation and general system stability." -d p:1:1 All of the servers generally seem to behave okay with it, but I know how tempermental Exchange can be, so I figured I'd get some opinions. So would that script be good enough, or should I do a specific script for each Exchange server to stop the services then force a shutdown? Thanks in advance!

As long as you do use a shutdown application, like shutdown.exe then Exchange would be shutdown correctly. No problem there. If you want to shutdown Exchange first, which will speed up the reboot time, then I have a script here: http://exchange.sembee.info/2010/shutdown-script.asp Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources | In the UK? Hire Me.

I will go with stop exchange services first and then reboot server, it save us sometime to server hung some time. I see this issue several time :) Anil

Hi, stop all the services before restart system can save some time. I also find a bat script for stopping the services manually. you can write in your script net stop MSExchangeADTopology /y net stop MSExchangeFBA net stop wsbexchange net stop MSExchangeMonitoring net stop MSExchangeIS net stop MSExchangeSA Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

All of the above is good advice on HOW do do this, however nobody has mentioned that you probably SHOULDN'T do this! You should be around to verify services come back online after patches are installed. An automatic reboot means you might not see a problem until it is too late. Mike Crowley Check out My Blog!

Thanks for the replies, guys. From what I've experienced, doing a "normal" restart of Exchange servers seems to work okay, but my fear was using the "-f" switch in the shutdown/reboot script (afraid it might cause some issues). I understand where you're coming from Mike, but there is no "regular" time that I can actually reboot my Exchange servers (my users are nuts and many people work very late). Working with the old "Which is the lesser of two evils?" mentality, do I just reboot the servers on people once a month around 9:00p some night or do I script it to run and see what happens? Meh...decisions, decisions. I may write-up a script and test it over the weekend.