Hello,I have the following situation:A client has a clustered (windows 2000) exchange 2000 installation. NODE1NODE2VEXCH1If you look at it from the exchange manager, you only see entries for VEXCH1. You find, nowhere in the registry for either node, a reference, concerning exchange, to NODE1 or NODE2. All management is pointing to VEXCH1.My client wants to do a P2V of 1 server in the cluster. No failover/failback is possible as the ESX cannot access the cluster storage. They also want to get rid of the cluster, as ESX will do vmotion. They idea now was, after P2V is done, to rename the VM NODE1 to VEXCH1, and then kill off all cluster services, the exchange should not see the difference?? or does it?Is this at all do-able. They do not want to upgrade yet, neither install a new machine, install exch2000 and move mailboxes...Help is appreciated a lot.BRDannyGreetings, Danny

Good luck with that!-- Ed Crowley MVP"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems.". "bitnoise_danny" wrote in message news:d7582b35-9165-4bcf-8001-f288ae3ede6d... Hello,I have the following situation:A client has a clustered (windows 2000) exchange 2000 installation. NODE1NODE2VEXCH1If you look at it from the exchange manager, you only see entries for VEXCH1. You find, nowhere in the registry for either node, a reference, concerning exchange, to NODE1 or NODE2. All management is pointing to VEXCH1.My client wants to do a P2V of 1 server in the cluster. No failover/failback is possible as the ESX cannot access the cluster storage. They also want to get rid of the cluster, as ESX will do vmotion. They idea now was, after P2V is done, to rename the VM NODE1 to VEXCH1, and then kill off all cluster services, the exchange should not see the difference?? or does it?Is this at all do-able. They do not want to upgrade yet, neither install a new machine, install exch2000 and move mailboxes...Help is appreciated a lot.BRDanny Greetings, Danny Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

As I know, it isn’t supported to build such cluster between the physical machine and virtual machine. I would suggest you to introduce a new virtual exchange machine, move all the data from old exchange cluster, and then decommission the cluster Resources: Clustering a Physical Machine with a Virtual Machine Physical with virtual machine Windows Server cluster Converting Physical Computers to Virtual Machines in VMM (P2V Conversions) James Luo TechNet Subscriber Support (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/ms788697.aspx) If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com

Well, it would have been possible if we found out a way to remove the cluster dependency from the smtp virtual server... :/sadly we didn't.. and rolled back..thanks for the effort. :)Greetings, Danny <iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="397px" height="180px" src="https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/DannydeHaan/card"></iframe>