Installing a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 2-node Single Copy Cluster (SCC)

 

Introduction

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 supports two types of cluster setups – Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) and Single Copy Clusters (SCC). Well, there is the Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) which is a new feature introduced in SP1. SCR extends the existing continuous replication features found in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and enables new data availability scenarios for Mailbox servers running SP1. I’ll put something up on SCR some time in the future. In this documentation, we’ll install and configure a 2-node active/passive Single Copy Cluster.

An Exchange 2007 Single Copy Cluster is very similar to an Exchange Server 2003 active/passive cluster, although a few changes and improvements have been introduced in Exchange Server 2007. A Single Copy Cluster is basically a clustered mailbox server, which consists of two or more servers (known as nodes) which share the same storage (typically for databases and log files). The shared storage subsystem is typically an SAN or a NAS.

Note
 Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 doesn’t support ACTIVE/ACTIVE clusters, only ACTIVE/PASSIVE.

An Exchange 2007 Single Copy Cluster (SCC) provides high availability of server resources, as the passive node takes over should the active node for some reason fail. In addition you can apply Hot Fixes, Service Packs etc. to the nodes without having any downtime of your mission-critical messaging environment at all. But bear in mind that a single copy cluster is susceptible to failure of the shared storage subsystem. This means that no matter how many nodes are part of your cluster you’ll always have a single point of failure when using this type of cluster opposite cluster continuous replication (CCR), which provides storage group fail-over via the new log file shipping and replay technology.

In order to follow the steps throughout this documentation, you need the following:

 

Note
 In order to install Exchange 2007 Single Copy Cluster, you need to install the cluster HotFix mentioned in MS KB article 898790 . On Windows 2003 SP2 installed servers, this fix is already installed.

 

Configuring the Network Settings for the Cluster nodes

When you have started the two servers that are to be the nodes in the cluster, start by naming the machines E2K7SCCNode1 and E2K7SCCNode2 or whatever naming scheme you want to use (these names have nothing to do with the Exchange server name which your clients will connect to). Now name the two network connections Public and Private for the external and the internal network respectively (remember to do so on both nodes).

Figure 1: Network Connections

 

Click Advanced > Advanced Settings, if it’s not already the case make sure Public is listed first on the binding order list,

then Private and lastly Remote Access Connections.

Figure 2: Binding order

 

 

Also make sure you untick File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks for the Private network connection.

Figure 3: Disabling File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks

 

 

Configure the Public network with the respective network settings you use.

Figure 4: Configuring the Public network

 

 

Configure the Private network with an IP address and a subnet mask.

Nothing else is required since this network is only used for communication (heartbeats) between the nodes in the cluster.

Figure 5: Configuring the Private network

 

 

Now click Advanced then select the DNS tab. Here you should untick both

Register this connection's addresses in DNS and Use this connection's DNS suffix.

Figure 6: Configuring DNS settings for the Private network

 

 

 

Click the WINS tab. Untick Enable LMHOSTS lookup and select Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP.

Figure 7: Configuring WINS settings for the Private network

Click OK three times and close the network connections window.

Now add both Windows 2003 Servers as member servers in your Active Directory domain.

 

 

 

Creating the Windows Server 2003 Cluster

Okay now that we have the two Windows 2003 Servers prepared, we can create the actual Windows 2003 cluster. In order to do so,

turn off E2K7SCCNode2 then logon to E2K7SCCNode1 with a Domain admin account. Now click Start > Administrative Tools > Cluster Administrator,

then select Create new cluster in the drop-down box and click OK (alternatively you can open a command prompt and type Cluster.exe /create /wizard).

Figure 15: Creating a new cluster

 

 

 

Click Next.

Figure 16: Windows 2003 Cluster wizard

 

 

 

If it’s not already the case, specify the domain in which the two Windows 2003 Servers are members, then type the name of the

cluster (the name clients will be connecting to), then click Next.

Figure 17: Specifying the domain and cluster name

 

 

 

If it’s not already the case, type the name of the Windows 2003 Server, which will be the first node in the cluster, then click Next.

Figure 18: Specifying the name of the first cluster node

 

 

 

The cluster wizard will now determine the cluster configuration, and after a while you should hopefully get a checkmark in each checked configuration step.

We can now click Next.

Figure 19: Analyzing cluster configuration

 

 

 

Now enter an IP address that cluster management tools will use to connect to the cluster, then click Next.

Figure 20: Specifying the IP address used by the cluster management tools

 

 

 

You should now enter the cluster service account and password, then click Next.

Figure 21: Entering the username and password of the cluster service account

Note
Since we’re installing the Windows 2003 cluster in a test environment, we’ll use the administrator account.

But please bear in mind that you should always create a dedicated cluster service account when speaking about 

production environments.

You now see a screen with the proposed cluster configuration, click the Quorum button and make sure that the

cluster configuration quorum is set to Disk Q. Then click Next.

Figure 22: Proposed cluster configuration

 

 

 

The cluster will now be created, again you need to wait for each step to complete, then click Next > Finish.

Figure 23: Creating the cluster

 

 

 

We have now created the cluster itself but since it only consists of one node, we’ll need to add the other Windows server as well.

 In order to do so turn on E2K7SCCNode2 and login with a domain admin account. Now click Start > Administrative Tools > Cluster Administrator.

Select Add nodes to cluster in the drop-down menu then specify the cluster name in the Cluster or server name box and click OK.

Figure 24: Adding a node to the cluster

 

 

 

Click Next in the Add Nodes Wizard.

Figure 25: Add notes cluster wizard

 

 

 

Type E2K7SCCNode2 (or whatever you named the second Windows server), then click Add and Next.

Figure 26: Specifying the second cluster node

 

 

 

When the configuration has been analyzed click Next.

Figure 27: Analyzing cluster configuration

 

 

 

Enter the password for the cluster service account (in this case the administrator account), then click Next.

Figure 28: Entering the username and password of the cluster service account

 

 

 

Verify that you want to add the node to the cluster with the configuration shown in Figure 29 below, then click Next.

Figure 29: Proposed cluster configuration

 

 

 

 

After a short period the node would have been added to the cluster, if not you might want to expand the respective

 task as well as view the log. If each task has completed successfully, click Next > Finish.

Figure 30: Configuring the cluster with the second node

 

 

 

There’s one last this you want to do before we move on and that is to right-click and select Properties for the Private network

 in the left pane in Figure 31 below.

Figure 31: Cluster administrator will cluster resources listed and online

 

 

 

 

Since the sole purpose of the Private network is to be used for communications between the internal cluster nodes,

you should select Internal cluster communications only (private network), then click OK. Do the same for the

Public network but set it to Client access only (public network).

Figure 32: Changing the cluster role for the private network

Alright we now have a fully operational 2 node Active/Passive Windows cluster up and running.

 

 

 

 

Installing the necessary Windows Components

Before we move on and try to install the Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2 bits, we need to make sure the required Windows components

have been installed. All types of Exchange Server 2007 installations (no matter what server role we're talking about) needs the

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 component installed.

Note
If you have installed Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 on the nodes, you need to download the

Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86), since it’s only a standard Windows component when

speaking about Windows Server 2003 R2.

Figure 33: Installing the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Windows Component

Since we’re installing the Mailbox Server role in the cluster, we also need to install the below IIS 6.0 components:

Note
Remember to install these components on both cluster nodes.

Installing the Exchange Server 2007 Single Copy Cluster

It’s time to install the Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2 bits on each node, we’ll start with E2K7SCCNode1. First, if you haven’t already done

so, I recommend you copy the Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2 binaries to a drive locally on each node. When you have done

so double-click Setup.com.

Figure 34: Launching Exchange Setup

The Exchange Server 2007 Installation Wizard will start, and as you can see Step 1: Install .NET Framework 2.0 and

Step 2: Install Microsoft Management Console (MMC) have already been completed.

Note
If you have installed Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 on each node, you need to download Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0

and install it manually (by following the link in Step 2). On Windows 2003 R2 Servers, the MMC 3.0 is installed by default.

Figure 35: Exchange Server 2007 Installation menu

As you can see we still need to complete Step 3: Install Microsoft Command Shell (MSH), before we can start installing Exchange.

Therefore click the link to download MSH then unzip and install it.

 

 

 

Figure 36: Installing Microsoft Command Shell (MSH)

 

 

 

The Exchange Server 2007 Installation Wizard should refresh automatically, so now click Install Microsoft Exchange.

Click Next then accept the License Agreement and then Next once again. Decide whether you want to enable

 Error Reporting or not (a good idea to enable this functionality since the Exchange Product Group will receive any obscure

errors you should experience in your cluster setup) then click Next.

Figure 37: Enabling Error Reporting

Now select Custom Exchange Server Installation then click Next.

Figure 38: Selecting a custom Exchange Server installation

 

 

 

 

 

Tick Active Clustered Mailbox Role and click Next.

Figure 39: Selecting to install an Active Clustered Mailbox Role

 

 

 

Now select Single Copy Cluster then specify a name for the mailbox server (the name you want your Outlook clients to connect to)

and a unique IP address on your public network. Finally, specify the path for the clustered mailbox server database files (the virtual

shared database disk you created earlier on), then click Next.

Note
 In order to set the path for the clustered mailbox server database files, it’s important the cluster group containing the shared disks is

owned by E2K7SCCNode1. The reason for this is that you aren’t allowed to use the shared disks if the cluster group is currently owned

by E2K7SCCNode2.

Figure 40: Selecting to install a single copy cluster and specifying name and IP address of the clustered mailbox server 

 

 

 

 

Let the readiness check complete, and if no issues are found click Next to begin the installation.

Figure 41: Exchange Server 2007 Clustered Mailbox Role Readiness Check

 

 

 

 

The Exchange Server 2007 installation wizard will now copy the needed Exchange files, install and configure the Mailbox Role

then finally create and configure the clustered mailbox server resources locally and create the object in Active Directory. When each

step has been completed, untick Exit Setup and open Exchange System Manager (yes this will be corrected in a later build), then click Finish.

We don’t want to open the Exchange Management Console just yet, we’ll install Exchange on the second node first.

Figure 42: Installation of the Exchange 2007 clustered mailbox role completed successfully

 

 

 

 

Log on to E2K7SCCNode2 with a domain admin account and perform the exact same steps as we did when installing Exchange Server 2007

on E2K7SCCNode1. Only difference is you should tick Passive Clustered Mailbox Role instead of Active Clustered Mailbox Role as shown in

 Figure 43 below.

Figure 43: Installing the passive clustered mailbox role on the second node

When you have installed the Exchange Clustered Mailbox Role on the second node, we can move on to the next section, where we verify

that the functionality of the clustered mailbox server works as expected.

 

 

 

 

Testing the functionality of the Single Copy Cluster

It’s time to verify that Exchange 2007 clustered mailbox server is working as expected. Let’s first open the Cluster Administrator and

check whether the respective Exchange Resources have been created. If you take a look at Figure 44, it looks good, we have both nodes

 listed in the left pane and all Exchange resources have been created and are currently owned by E2K7SCCNode1.

Figure 44: Listing all Exchange cluster resources in the cluster administrator

Now try to open the Exchange Management Shell by clicking Start > All Programs > Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 > Exchange Management Shell

on one of the nodes, then type Get-ClusteredMailboxServerStatus. As you can see in Figure 45 below the status of the clustered mailbox server is

 Online, and E2K7SCCNode1 is currently the active node. This just keeps getting better and better doesn’t it?

Figure 45: Requesting the online status of the clustered mailbox server

Now that we have verified that the clustered mailbox server is online, let’s try to move the Exchange resources from node one to node

 two using the Move-ClusteredMailboxServer CMDlet. In the test environment used in this article, we do so by issuing below CMDlet:

Move-ClusteredMailboxServer -Identity:MailboxServer -TargetMachine:E2K7SCCNode7 -MoveComment:"Testing functionality!"

You’re then asked to confirm this action, type Yes then hit Enter. After a while the clustered mailbox resources would have been moved

to the second node.

Figure 46: Moving the clustered mailbox resources to the second node

Note
 Although it’s possible to move the cluster resource groups between nodes using the Cluster Administrator console,

you should always do so using the Move-ClusteredMailboxServer CMDlet as the Move Group task in the Cluster Administrator

 console isn’t Exchange 2007-aware.

Let’s also take a look at the clustered mailbox server in the Exchange Management Console. To do so click

Start > All Programs > Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 > Exchange Management Console, then drill down to

Server Configuration > Mailbox. Notice the clustered mailbox server which we named MailboxServer is listed in the Result pane and

that it’s recognized as a cluster server. Also notice that the Mailbox Database for this server points to the S: drive exactly as we

specified during the installation of the Active Clustered Mailbox Role.

Figure 47: Viewing the clustered mailbox server in the Exchange Management Console

 

 

Well, that’s it for the clustered mailbox role installation. Look out for more posts.