We have an Exchange mailbox/hub transport server on clustered Hyper-V with both the VM and mailbox databases stored on a SAN in our local office.

We would like to relocate the Exchange server to a remote data center.  The hardware is not moving.  It will be set up on new hardware at the data center and may be using local disks there instead of a SAN.

What are the options and best way to get the server and its roles and mailbox database moved and set up and running at a new location?

The biggest issue I see is how to get the data off the local SAN and moved to the remote location without a long term outage.

Hi ,

what version of exchange did you have ?

How many mailboxes did you have ? 

Did you have dag in your existing environment ?

However i have given some points please have a look in to it.

1.First establish the connectivity between your remote data center and the current data center.

2.If DAG is already in place and the number of mailbox count is too high,Then the next step would be to install and add the new server in the remote datacenter to the existing DAG and create a passive copies for all the mailbox databases on the new server.

3.In case DAG is not in place and the number of mailbox count is low and  then you can move all the mailboxes from the mailbox server in the existing datacenter to the newly installed server in the remote datacenter.

4.If DAG is not in place and the number of mailbox count is too high then i would recommend to create a DAG and add the existing mailbox server and the new server in DAG and then you can make the passive database copies on the new server.Finally you can mount all the databases on the new server in the remote datacenter.

5.Then we need to concentrate on the mail flow part.

On the send connectors you need to add the new mailbox server in the source server list.As well as we need to point the mail flow from the smarthost to be forwarded to the new servers in the remote datacenter.The server which is going to receive the emails from smarthost would be an exchange box with CAS+MBX role or else it would be the server with only the CAS role.

Don't forget to route the emails from the applications server to the new server's ip address  by having the new receive connector with same settings on the new server as same in existing servers.

6.Don't forget to install the same SAN certificate on the new exchange server and enable it for the exchange services.

7.Then the most important part is the client connectivity.

Just point the internal dns records for autodiscover and internal outlook anywhere to the new server in the remote datacenter.

8.For the services like external OA,owa,active sync ,pop and imap we need to do the below.

For the above one i would have assumed you are having the TMG as the reverse proxy .On that reverse proxy you would be having the web based rules.On that rules you need to redirect all the https traffic to the new server.Like wise pop and imap traffic needs to be routed to the new exchange server from TMG.

9.After all the above is done , most of the things can be checked and verified it on the EXRCA tool.

10.Then finally shutdown the old exchange server for a time period and check the re

There is no existing DAG involved.  It is the only existing Exchange mailbox server.  It has mailbox and hub transport roles.  The CAS is in the data center this will be moved to.

We want to move this Exchange 2010 server to the data center in preparation to migrating to Exchange 2013 so we will not have to do the mailbox moves from 2010 to 2013 across a WAN connection.  The new Exchange 2013 servers will be installed in the data center.

After Exchange 2013 is set up, then a new DAG will be created for the first time.

Is the storage (SAN) vendor managing the remote data center by any chance?

NetApp or EMC for example?

They might have a migration process.

What virtualization software does the data center use? Hyper-V also? If it is the same, that would facilitate matters to some extent.

How much downtime can you accept (if the databases had to be dismounted and then mounted in the new location)?

If the amount of data is significant (hundreds of GBs, or even TBs) copying the data over the Internet may be slow.

What kind of Internet access do you have? And link to the remote data center?

How close is the remote data center?

Is Active Directory remaining on-premises?

In theory, you could dismount the databases and the Exchange VM and then mount them / reattach databases in the remote data center but...

- How will Exchange talk to Active Directory?

- You'll need to adjust DNS

There's more questions there than answers but maybe if you describe the environment a bit more someone would be in a better position to make recommendations.

The smoothest transition would be a hybrid environment where you could move mailboxes gradually and then remove the on-premises Exchange hardware once finished.

This type of migration seems less typical than Exchange migrations to O365, Intermedia, AppRiver, SherWeb, etc..

Have you considered something like that?

Hi ,

As an additional info ,please use the below links for the storage considerations in exchange 2010 and exchange 2013.

Exchange 2010 :

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee832792(v=exchg.141).aspx

Exchange 2013 :

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/ee832792(v=exchg.150).aspx

Hi ,

Based on my knowledge , the only way to move all the data's from the SAN disk can be achieved it via mailbox move.Same time Even if you create the DAG in the existing environment you cannot have the exchange 2010 and the new exchange 2013 in a same DAG because it will not support the different exchange and os versions.

Note : One more thing is that you cannot make use of the feature database portability .

Reference Link for database portability:

http://exchangeserverpro.com/exchange-2010-database-portability-disaster-recovery/

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876874(v=exchg.150).aspx#DBPort

So our only hope is to go on with the mailbox move option between the exchange servers in the different datacenters.In addition to that you need to have one additional domain controller (ADC) on the remote datacenter to have the exchange server to communicate with active dire

The total size of Exchange mailbox and archive databases is about 800GB.

Currently, we only have 2 Exchange servers.  The first Exchange server is the mailbox server and hub transport.  This server is currently in our local office as a Hyper-V VM using a iscsi SAN for everything.

The second server is only a CAS server and is located in a remote datacener and is also a Hyper-V VM.

We need to do 2 things.  1.  Migrate everything we have now to the data center.  2.  Migrate from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013.

With Exchange 2013, the new design planned is to have 3 Exchange 2013 servers with all the roles we use enabled on each of them so any one of them can be shut down or rebooted without an outage.  Two of the the three new servers will be installed in our primary data center behind a load balancer and the third will be by itself in a secondary data center as a failover.  It would become a 3 member Exchange 2013 DAG with 2 in one datacenter and 1 in a second datacenter.

The issue is how to get the current server and its 800GB of data moved.

The idea to move the data first before migrating to Exchange 2013 is so that when we migrate, we will not have to do the mailbox migration over the WAN.  If everything is moved to the datacenter first, we can migrate mailboxes from 2010 to 2013 on the fast LAN connection.

What about temporarily adding a second Exchange 2010 server on our local LAN, creating a 2 member DAG, physically moving the new Exchange 2010 server to the datacenter, then retiring the DAG and the old Exchange server?

We are considering using local disks for the Exchange servers at the data center instead of SAN.

I suppose another possible option is to do the migration from 2010 to 2013 over the WAN and just spread it out over several nights instead of knocking out in a few hours.  

Also, what about restoring the previous day's Exchange database backups to new server in the data center to create a new DAG and then it would just have to catch up to the current day's transactions?

• Edited by MyGposts 7 hours 56 minutes ago