i want to use the DAG for DR purposes only, and that would do it.

but because of this issue, i have to continue to use 3rd party tools, or potentially MS DPM 2010. bleh. DAG’s are just so easy.

Yes, because I have 3 offices, all with a local mailbox server. I need the mailbox server local for various reasons, mainly performance.

I really like the DAG feature in Exchange 2010, but it clearly was designed for the datacenter model, and not a multi-office model, at least those that run active/passive.

Got any ideas for me??

Any particular reason you’re doing active/passive across sites? You’re correct that there is significant complexity added.

Thanks,

Jeremy

2 sites, each with a local mailbox server, connected via a WAN.

The witness server has to be 1 site or the other. for the sake of this example, it doesn’t matter which.

Both sites are replicating to the other site’s mailbox server. about as simple a setup as you can get.

When there is a simple WAN outage, the site with the witness server stays fine, but the other site, oh boy does the other site suck.

At the other site, the local database goes offline, because that MBX server has lost majority, and it down’s the DB’s to correct this.

Now, in an automatic failover situation, I can understand this. How does it know what server has the active DB? it doesn’t. it has to protect itself.

However, I don’t use automatic failover. I turn that off. I don’t want a 3 minute WAN blip to flip over my DB’s, it won’t do my any good.

I have researched and researched, and tested and tested, and there is no way around this. I have come up with 1 way to make it work, but from a licensing perspective, it’s not realistic.

basically i’d create 2 DAG’s, each having a local witness server. but because each MBX server can only participate in 1 dag at a time…..yup you guessed it, an extra mbx server at each site, just to house the replicated databases. that means enterprise windows, and an exchange license. ouch.

if anyone finds a way around this, please let me know.

oh also, i have a 3 site dag, and have the same issue, it doesn’t matter how many sites, please don’t say use DAC, as that is for “primary” and “failover” datacenter type scenarios, not 2 active offices, with active and passive DB scenarios, it just doesn’t work.

HELP!!!

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any other questions.

Thanks!

Jeremy

I have been going through the web trying to get a clear answer on site replication using only 2 exchange 2010 servers and 1 database.

I have 2 locations A and B seperated by a WAN. Each site will contain 1 Exchange 2010 server that will replicate a single database. I understand a DAG will need to be created with a Witness server. The problem is where to you place the witness server as if the WAN goes down between the sites then according to what i have read the site without the witness server database will go offline until a witness server is found. Is that right? if so that means you would have to replicate the witness server as well! It kind of defeates the object of replicating the database over a WAN or is there something i have missed? Thanks Regards
Jason