Comments on: Exchange 2010 RTM High Availability Load Balancing Options

By: Elan Shudnow

Elan Shudnow — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 20:01:20 +0000

Well, I did this over a year and a half ago. Any Rollup and/or Service Pack could have prevented this from working since it's not supported. I would suggest using a Hardware Load Balancer. You can only use Windows NLB if your CAS roles are on separate boxes from your Mailbox Server as I outline in my article.

By: Elan Shudnow

Elan Shudnow — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:59:45 +0000

Well you have InternalURL and ExternalURL for the Address Book Server. Since you're not using load balancing and just using Round Robin, one thing you could do is just set the InternalURL and ExternalURL the same. Then when one server goes down, you'll just remove one of the A records so it's just pointing at the second server. I would suggest using a very low TTL record though so once you make the change the clients will pick up the change fairly quickly.

By: Patsy

Patsy — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 22:55:08 +0000

HI Elan, all your theards have been great and very helpful. thank you Very much.

Question on this Piece, Dag Is in and working, I created a Generic cluster service and as you said gave it a made up name. however when i try to stamp the DAG database with the RPC name, it responds with Exchange server "Name.domain.com" was not found. DNS is proper and reachable, however i have not actually created an NLB array. is that required for this solution? Or skip directly to creating the Exchange CAS New-ClientAccessArray etc, taht being the piece i missed?

I appologize if this is a silly question, last time i set up a cas array was with 2007 and quite a while ago….

Thanks again sir

Patsy

By: Syed khan

Syed khan — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 07:24:13 +0000

Thanks for the great article. I was wondering how will be the offline address book working in case of 1 node failure in DAG? Lets assume I Server A and Server B both are in the DAG and I use poor mans Load Balancing which is round robin dns and at certain period lets say that my Server A went down Server B is Active so all the client will eventually point to Server B as there will be a DNS record which I will manually change the records IP address mail.contoso.com
How about the address book what would I do
I believe there are some more additional steps to be performed which you should mention if the hardware load balance is not present as lot of people are lamers and starters they just believe you say .

By: FAHD

FAHD — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:57:30 +0000

i want to run to full rule two exchange servers "both with MB HUB CAS" and to configure WNLB between the CAS and DAG between the MB
i got recommendation to have the setup like below
- 2 Host servers "each host will carry 1 MB and 1 CAS"
- 4 virtual instances-servers " 2 MB and 2 CAS "
my setup is DB of 120gb and 100 mail box
MY QUESTIONS IS
what the recommended hardware and OS required for the two hosts and the 4 instances-servers ??
my setup is DB of 120gb and 100 mail box

By: Kevin Hilson

Kevin Hilson — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 20:47:26 +0000

Elan, I am quoting a solotion for a 2 member DAG with a hardware load balancer and due to financial restraints my client can only purchase 1 load balancer at this time. What will happen if that load balancer fails? Will that disable his email functionality or can his email be pointed to another server automatically? This is a virtual enviroment and we have not done one of these installs yet. Keep in mind I am a sales rep and not a tech so excuse my ignorance on this matter.

By: Elan Shudnow

Elan Shudnow — Tue, 10 May 2011 03:08:57 +0000

Still need ISA or TMG if you want RSA.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 09 May 2011 21:11:09 +0000

I have 2 datacenters and currently use both F5s and ISA. My only real reason to use ISA was to achieve RSA forms based (i.e. username password token code all on one page) authentication on OWA. If that is still the only way to achieve that in 2010 then I will need ISA again. If I do not need ISA for this purpose it sounds as though my existing F5 infrastructure will be a more robust solution. Does that sound correct to you?

By: Sandy

Sandy — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:54:19 +0000

Hello Elan,

Need suggestion whether i can NLB Across Site …I have Site A with 2 HUB/CAS server …..Site B with One HUB CAS Server …..Can I configure Windows NLB for these 3 HUB/CAS server across site…ur suggestion will be helpful with proof any MS article …because non of site menetioned that we cant use these scenario??

By: Tony

Tony — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 00:42:07 +0000

Can you tell me more about how to do this:

You just go into your Failover Cluster Management GUI, go to services, create a generic (I think it was generic) cluster group, give it a new unused IP, make up some FQDN resolvable on the internal network like 2010array.internalnamespace.com, point it to that cluster IP, then stamp your databases (Set-Mailboxdatabase -Identity Database -RPCClientAccessServer 2010array.internalnamespace.com.