Hi allWeare migrating toexch2k7 and I need todecide the best place to host the free busy public folders.Going to user CCR for mailboxes, going tohave 2x hub and 2x CAS.As we are going to keep outlook 2003 forat least another 24 monthsI am thinking the best place to host would be on the CAS servers as this will be the home for availability service going foward. Also to host these public folders on a dedicated CAS do I also need to install the mailbox role to enable me to create the PF database?Thanks

Hi,Yes, if you have outlook 2003 clients then free/busy information will be stored in PF and to host PF you need mailbox server role so ultimately you need to install mailbox server role on CAS but if you are going to install2 CAS serversin NLB (for high availibility) then you can't install mailbox server role on any of those.I assume that after migration you will have only one CCR as a mailbox server role then I don't see any problem hosting PF on CCR since it will have PF database by default if those are the first Exchange 2007 mailbox server in your environment.Amit Tank | MVP - Exchange | MCITP:EMA MCSA:M | http://ExchangeShare.WordPress.com

The Amit,I take it then if we where to add additional CCR server as planned then I could just add the PF replication on a PF database on that server? or do I need a dedicated server for PF as we will be using more than on CCR system?thanks again

Hi, That's really depends how you goanna plan your public folder availability. You can either use CCR replication or PF replication for your PF database (not both at a time and in that case PF database doesnt mount until second node comes online during unscheduled outage) ~ Even though you have multiple CCRs, it is fine to place one PF database in any one of CCR (if all CCRs are located in same data center) hence it provides high availability of PF DB through CCR replication and PF replication is disabled due to fact of only one PF database available in organization. ~If you place PF database on dedicate server you won't get high availability of PF and you need minimum two server to achieve that (this is good in case you have multiple data centers and CCRs are scattered across). It is worth reading "Cluster Continuous Replication and Public Folder Databases" session in below article... Planning for Cluster Continuous Replication -http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123996.aspxAmit Tank | MVP - Exchange | MCITP:EMA MCSA:M | http://ExchangeShare.WordPress.com

Thanks for your feedback Amit.