Deploying EV in Exch Brick Environments
EXCHANGE ENVIRONMENT
Exchange 2010 is configured with the "Brick" approach
where all Exchange servers are CAS, MBX, & HUB servers
All configured identically and thus interchangeable
Frontended by an external Load Balancer
All servers are CAS servers and a CAS array is configured with a single name which is aliased to the the load balancer.
Exch Databases & their backup copy(s) are distributed across all servers.
Each Exch Database is configured with the CAS Array name.
AutoDiscovery is enabled to simplify Outlook user configuration and migration of existing users.
EV ENVIRONMENT
Single EV Mail Archiving server
Multiple Archiving Tasks, one per Exch server
THE PROBLEM
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In a multiserver Exchange 2010 solution configured with a BRICK approach, and all servers being CAS servers in a CAS Array, and MBX servers EV 9 mbx archiving tasks fail to start.
EV configured according to the following
Enterprise Vault 9.0
Archiving from
Exchange Server 2010
Dan Strydom
Technical Field Enablement
November 2010
EV902 Installation guide
EV902 Archiving from Exchange Guide
THE CAUSE
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According to EV Support, EV REQUIRES that the MBX Archiving Task connects to the CAS SERVER NAME, it will not work with a CAS ARRAY NAME.
In Exchange Each Database is configured with the name of the CAS Server or ARRAY which services it.
In an exchange 2010 environment with multiple CAS servers in an array, a single CAS ARRAY NAME, is configured on all the Exch databases.
Creating the Profiles on the EV server, the Exchange server name will be automatically changed to the CAS Array name by Autosdiscovery, thus a profile cannot be made referring to the CAS SERVERNAME, and thus the EV Arch Tasks cannot connect to the CAS SERVERNAMES, and will therefore fail.
The recommended workaround (TECH169970) is to create a host file entry on the EV server, mapping the CAS Array Name to a specific CAS Server IP. This works but only for ONE server (you cannot map one name to multiple IPs in a host file) Thus one Archiving task will run, the others still fail
CONFIRMATION
============
Change the designated CAS servers on the Exchange dbs from the CAS Array Name to the CAS Server Names
On the EV Server:-
Remove any host file redirection of CAS Array names
Delete and re-create the EVSA & System Account profiles
Test profiles with Outlook - OK
Restart MBX Archiving Tasks - All Run OK
Check Tasks show the correct active Exchange Databases - OK
Tested running of tasks, failover of DBs, provisioning, and confirmed that DBs move to the appropriate task - OK.
WORKAROUND
============
To solve this issue without compromising the provision of a CAS Array to support the users, will require the EV System Accounts to be created in separate databases, with their CAS Server set to the CAS SERVERNAME, not the CAS Array.
This approach was tested on a 4 server Exchange Farm in a production environment and worked fine.
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Comments
Maybe I have misinterpreted something here but from this experience the EV recommended approach just will not work with multiple Exchange servers.
I suggest that the integration of EV into Exchange environments such as this be re-investigated, and possibly the approach of the separate databases be used as the standard mechinsm for configuring EV Archiving Tasks.