DAY 4 – INSTALLING HUB AND MAILBOX SERVERS

During the first three days, we planned our new Exchange 2007 organisation, ordered the necessary jobs, prepared Active Directory, installed our first Exchange 2007 server (CAS server) and got an SSL certificate from a third party authority for our CAS server. In Day 4, i wil install Hub Transport and Mailbox servers. First of all, i add the HUB server to Active Directory and enter the name of the HUB server (as i did for CAS server) to the “Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\User Rights Assignment\ Manage Auditing and Security log” setting in Domain Controllers Policy.

I install Windows Powershell and .Net Framework 3.0 to the server as prerequisites for HUB server (via Server Manager -> Features console) and then i also install some of the IIS components for management purposes as below via command prompt:

ServerManagerCmd –i Web-Metabase

ServerManagerCmd –i Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console

After all these installations, i restart the server and begin to install Exchange 2007 server. Throughout the Setup Wizard, i select Hub Transport and Management Tools boxes in Custom Installation window. As a part of the installation (different from the other Exchange 2007 role installations) setup asks me the bridgehead server of Exchange 2003 organisation. I choose the proper Exchange 2003 bridgehead server and continue the setup. It finishes without a problem. The reason for bridgehead server selection is that setup is creating two connectors to make 2003 organisation and 2007 organisation communicate each other. By using these connectors, e-mail traffic can be achieved between these two different organisations. I restart the server after setup.

After the restart, all the Exchange 2007 services start without a problem and there is no error in Windows Application or System Logs, which means HUB transport server installation is less problematic than CAS server installation :). Also it is a good practise to control whether the connectors are created or not by using System Manager on one of the Exchange 2003 servers (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Connectors created during HUB server installation

Actually i have to create another send connector for handling the e-mail traffic through internet direction. By default, Exchange 2007 organisation don’t let users to send email to external domains. For this purpose, i open the EMC console on HUB server and go to “Organization Configuration->Hub Transport -> Send connectors”. I click the “New Connector” link on the right-side menu. The wizard is self explanatory. I have to be careful about the IP address of smarthost server, only. I enter my SMTP server IP address (which is located in DMZ) as a smarthost in the wizard. After a successful send connector creation, i must give a relay access for my new HUB server on my SMTP server. I open the IIS console in SMTP server and enter the IP address of my HUB server to the “SMTP virtual server -> Access -> Relay” part. There is only one more step left for my configuration to end. This last step is a little trick. For emails destined to my internal domain (mstip.com) from external domains, i have to set Anonymous Authentication on receive connector of HUB server. If i don’t set this authentication type, my HUB server can not receive external emails.

It is now time to install mailbox servers (MB). I install two Windows 2008 Server and make them members of Active Directory Domain (mstip.com). I add their names (as i did for CAS and HUB servers) to the “Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\User Rights Assignment\ Manage Auditing and Security log” setting in Domain Controllers Policy. I attach storage areas to these servers from a SAN (Storage Area Network) device (by the way, i have SAN storage device in my environment). For mailboxes, I create three mailbox databases on each MB server and for each database, i bind a disk area to the servers. Also i bind another disk area to each server to store Transaction Log files. I format all these areas as NTFS partitions.

Some of the services automatically started by default are unnecessary in my environment. Therefore i stop them and make their startup type “Disabled”. These services are “Application Experience, Distributed Link Tacking, IKE&AuthIP, IP helper, IPSec Policy Agent, Network List Service, Network Location Awareness, Shell Hardware Detection, Print Spooler, Windows Error reporting, DHCP client”. In your environment, you can stop more services according to your needs. These are enough for me for now.

I install the prerequisites (Powershell and Web Server) for MB01 and MB02 mailbox servers before the Exchange 2007 installation. After these, Exchange 2007 setup is completed by selection of Mailbox Role component from Custom Installation windows.

After Exchange 2007 server installation, i create necessary folder structure on my disk partitions and arrange the mailbox database paths similar to the following example via ExchangeCommandShell:

move-DatabasePath -Identity ‘MB01\First Storage Group\Mailbox Database’ -EdbFilePath ‘E:\Store01\Mailbox Database.edb’

After that, i change the names of Storage Group, Mailbox Store and Public Store which are created by default during Exchange 2007 setup (using ExchangeCommandShell).

get-storagegroup

Name                     Server            Replicated        Recovery
----                     ------            ----------        --------
First Storage Group       MB01                None              False
Second Storage Group      MB01                None              False
First Storage Group       MB02                None              False

set-storagegroup -identity ‘MB01\First Storage Group’ -name StorageAB

set-storagegroup -identity ‘MB01\Second Storage Group’ -name StoragePublic

set-storagegroup -identity ‘MB02\First Storage Group’ -name StorageMN

get-mailboxdatabase

Name               Server       StorageGroup      Recovery
----               ------       ------------      --------
Mailbox Database    MB01        StorageAB         False
Mailbox Database    MB02        StorageMN         False

set-mailboxdatabase -identity ‘MB02\Mailbox Database’ -name MailboxesMN

set-mailboxdatabase -identity ‘MB01\Mailbox Database’ -name MailboxesAB

get-publicfolderdatabase

Name                       Server     StorageGroup
----                       ------     ------------
Public Folder Database      MB01      StoragePublic

set-publicfolderdatabase -identity ‘MB01\Public Folder Database’ -name Publicfolder01

The next step is to mount the additional Storage Groups and Mailbox Stores which i create:

new-mailboxdatabase -StorageGroup ‘MB02\StorageTZ’ -Name ‘MailboxesTZ’ -EdbFilePath ‘G:\Store06\MailboxesTZ.edb’

mount-database -Identity ‘CN=MailboxesTZ,CN=StorageTZ,CN=InformationStore,CN=MB02,CN=Servers,CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT),CN=Administrative Groups,CN=mstip,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=mstip,DC=com’

Until now, we have created Storages and Storage Groups that i need. Examples above do not cover all the storages, storage groups or mailbox databases that i create. The whole list is as below:

Table 1: Databases and their locations on disk partitions

At the end of Day 4, i have three new servers which are acting as Hub Transport server and Mailbox Servers. I can start transition now as all the internal server roles are finished. In Day 5, i will talk about transfering critical organisational roles from Exchange 2003 servers to Exchange 2007 servers. Also i will be talking about the mailbox transfers to my new mailbox servers.  Bye for now.

1. Exchange Transition Scenario (2003 to 2007) – Day 5
2. Exchange Transition Scenario (2003 to 2007) – Day 1
3. Exchange Transition Scenario (2003 to 2007) – Day 3