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Albert WidjajaFlag for Australia

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Deploying DAG on Exchange 2013 Standard edition

Hi All,

I’m about to deploy 2x new Exchange Server 2013 SP1 Standard edition DAG on the Windows Server 2012 R2 VMs.

I wanted to simplify the operational management as much as possible, hence I heard in the 2013 SP1 I can deploy the DAG without witness server (Dynamic Quorum) and also IP less DAG.

Can anyone here please share some pitfalls or disadvantage that I need to know before going through the path above ?

How many vNIC per mailbox server do I need it ?

Thanks in advance.
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Michal

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ok, so is it absolute minimum to have two vNICs ?
I assume that the second vNIC should have the different non-routable VLAN ?
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Michal

Yes you`re right.
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Todd,

Thanks for sharing the knowledge more about Exchange Server 2013. So it seems it is possible to combine the two feature:

IP-less DAG with Dynamic Quorum into the solution since I'm building the OS for the mailbox server on Windows Server 2012 R2.

OK, so if I install the additional Mailbox server in a new DAG config with 2013 SP1+CU16, can I still migrate my mailboxes to the new DAG-enabled DB ?
Regarding quorum (dynamic or otherwise), a witness server is required.  In 2013 and 2010, if a witness server was not specified Exchange would attempt to locate an Exchange non-mailbox server to assign as a witness server.  If no such server, then the creation of the DAG failed.

At the moment:
AD Site: HQ
PRODEXC01-VM - Stand Alone Mailbox + CAS

AD Site: Site-2
PRODEXC02-VM - Stand Alone Mailbox + CAS

AD Site: Site-3
PRODEXC03-VM - Stand Alone Mailbox + CAS

The proposed solution that I am building will be:

AD Site: HQ
PRODEXC01-VM - Stand Alone Mailbox + CAS
PRODEXC03-VM - Mailbox DAG1 - Member

AD Site: Site-2
PRODEXC02-VM - Stand Alone Mailbox + CAS
PRODEXC04-VM - Mailbox DAG1 - Member

AD Site: Site-3
PRODEXC03-VM - Stand Alone Mailbox + CAS

All of the mailbox DB is migrated accross to the DAG1 member. While the remaining CAS server is used for OWA & Active Sync.
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Thanks guys !
Hi Todd,

Does placement of the Exchange transaction logs must also be on the same drive letter for the DAG member ?
The logs can be on a different drive from the databases but for a specific database must match for the other DAG members hosting that specific database.  It may be best to have them on a separate drives depending on the type of storage/RAID is being used.