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giorgio71

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Exchange 2010 Site Changes

Dear Exchange gurus,

I have two exchange servers in two sites each with the following roles:

a) Client Access
b) Hub Transport
c) Mailbox Role

One is on SP2 Rollup 4 and the other is on SP2 Rollup 1 (or none)

Currently, OWA/ Mobile Access are working properly.

I need to :

1) Update all servers to the best / most stable SP and rollup (not necessarily the last)
2) Can I separate Server 1's roles so in Site A I will have 2 exchange servers - one with CA,HT, and MBX and the other server ONLY MBX role?
3) In what way is 2 advisable? I will thinking of doing this primarily for setting up an fresh EX 2010 SP3 server with all updates and migrating mailboxes to it.

Any tips are appreciated.

Thanks,
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Peter Hutchison
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1. I would recommend SP3 at least. Do the CA/HT servers before mailbox servers.
2. Yes, that is possible.
3. Depends on how far apart the sites are. If they are far apart, then users will experience slower access times using Outlook and they may need to change their profiles to pick up a different CAS server.
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giorgio71

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Thanks....but.....

Sorry for not being clear.

In each site there is one exchange server. Each exchange server has the CA/HT/MB roles.

Can I apply SP3 ? Which patch level of SP3 is most stable?

In one of the sites, can I split the one server in two? So one has CA/HT/MB and the other one just MB role?

Thanks,
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Mahesh
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Multirole installation is recommended by MS

However you can split Exchange roles if wanted to.

Remember, if you want to use windows NLB for CAS load balancing and MBX DAG, then you must split CAS and MBX roles on different server as windows NLB Cluster and failover cluster can't co-exists on same server
If you want to use Hardware load balancer, then you don't need to split roles

Since i don't know if you are using DAG, but still you can directly upgrade your both servers to SP3 one by one.
Just check my earlier comment for possible failures and precautionary measures

Mahesh