Hi, Currently I have a single Exchange 2010 SP1 server with all the roles, it's IS (information stores) are stored locally on the server, same as the logs. I have obtained another server, and Dell's powervault MD3000 to go along with it and Symantec's enterprise vault. My objectives for this "project" is to build a redundant exchange configuration. Basically I'lll be doing DAG this way or the other. Before I'm about to install Exchange 2010 SP1 on the other machine, and do all the needed configs for creating DAG, I have a few questions: 1. When creating the DAG, the IS will be replicated from one server to the other. If I want to do a "classic cluster" configuration in which the information stores will be on the storage and one server will be active and the other will be passive, how should I do me configurations form the Exchange perspective ? 2. The enterprise vault will be "deleting" emails and archiving them to the storage, so if I'll build my DAG the usual way - Two servers and each one holds a copy of the IS, am I about to have "huge" replication traffic because the vault constantly archiving ?

Hi, 1) Can't be done you can only define copy numbers, by default all database with a activation preference of 1 are active. After the other unit fails the databases with a activation preference of 2 will be activated. Each server has it's own copy of the database 2) Very hard to say it will cause some replication but how much depends on how you configure your archiving solution Regards, JohanExchange-blog: www.johanveldhuis.nl

An archiving event is just as any other exchange database transaction event so it gets recorded in the transaction log files, so lots of archiving events = lots of transation log files (large emails = even more log files) and lots of transaction log files creation = increased replication for the passive copy to keep up. If you have good connectivity between the two servers you'll enter what is called Block Mode replication where the actual in-memory transaction gets replicated (instead of log files) which might get you a smoother replication experience, but like always - it depends. A good thing would be to invest in a dedicated replication network in the DAG so the load doesn't impact the MAPI network (client connectivity) directly.Jesper Bernle | Microsoft Community Contributor 2011 Awardee

My plan for the replication network is to connect one NIC from each server with CAT6 cable, I'm guessing it should give enough bandwidth. Could you please explain some more on how to enable Block Mode replication ? or what prerequisites should be met ?

You can read about it here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff625233.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/scottschnoll/archive/2010/04/10/new-high-availability-features-in-exchange-2010-sp1.aspx http://eightwone.com/2010/11/03/exchange-2010-replication-sp1-block-mode/ Jonas Andersson | Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011 | MCITP: EMA 2007/2010 | Blog: http://www.testlabs.se/blog | Follow me on twitter: jonand82