We have a few windows 2003 clusters. Just found out this weekend that one of the nodes isn’t working. its complaining of bad disk signatures so right now the cluster can only run on the one node. I’d also like to know the best practice for add another drive (LUN) to the cluster. I need a larger disk for our exchange db, I could add another LUN or move the LUN to a larger one and use diskpart to extend it in windows. I just don’t know how well that works in a cluster

1.         Under no circumstance should any other resource be created in the Cluster Group other than the default ones which are Quorum, Cluster IP Address and Cluster Network Name. (ref: KB168948)  If MS DTC is installed in the Cluster Group using the cluster’s resources and it’s not going to be used heavily by SQL, then this is the only exception that is supported as long as the MS DTC resource has the “Affect the group” box on the Advanced tab unchecked.

Ask the Core Team : TOP 10 Best Practice Tips for Windows Server 2003 Cluster Service (MSCS)

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These Best Practice Analyzers are some great tools from Microsoft. I’ve used the Exchange one before and its found issues we didn’t even know about. Now they have one from group policies. I know what I’m going to do next week!

Hi, Tim here. Ever heard of a Best Practice Analyzer , otherwise known as a ‘BPA’? It’s a type of tool that many of our product or support teams have been creating the last few years which can be used to gauge the general health of a…(read more)

Group Policy Best Practice Analyzer
NedPyle
Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:32:30 GMT

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This is some incredibly usefully information. I’m posting this just for my own need.

If you are running into environments and working on aspects of them such as Exchange, OCS, PKI, or other Active Directory integrated applications, you will encounter situations where you may need to update the AD schema. Of course, the first question is, what version am I at today?

Here’s a handy way to find out:

Query for the objectVersion attribute of the CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=yourdomainhere of your Active Directory domain and compare the value to the table below.

I’ve provided links to the schema update information (where available), if you are curious as to what is updated in each.

objectVersion
AD Schema Update

13
Windows 2000 Server

30
Windows Server 2003 **

31
Windows Server 2003 R2

44
Windows Server 2008

** The Windows Server 2003 upgrade from 2000 also adds the CN=Windows2003Update,CN=ForestUpdates,CN=Configuration,DC=yourdomainhere and sets its revision attribute to 9. This hasn’t been used again, yet.

Exchange Server saves the current version of its schema updates in an attribute of two locations.

For /forestprep operations, query the rangeUpper attribute of the CN=ms-Exch-Schema-Version-Pt,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=yourdomainhere object.

For /domainprep operations, query the Microsoft Exchange System Objects object in each domain for its objectVersion value.

The table below provides the number to version translation.

Value
Exchange Version

4406
Exchange 2000 Server

6936
Exchange Server 2003

10628
Exchange Server 2007

Active Directory & Exchange Schema Versions

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Even with all that horse power, they didn’t talk about network traffic running all exchange 2007 roles on the same box. I wonder how long one of these boxes takes to vmotion. Also I’d like to know the details on how they setup the luns and if they used vmdk files

We recently finished a large Exchange 2007 capacity test on VMware ESX Server 3.5. How large? Well, larger than anything ever done before on a single server. And we did it from start to finish in about two weeks.

We did this test because we have felt for a while that advances in processor and server technology were about to leave another widely-used and important application unable to fully utilize the hardware that vendors were offering. Microsoft has guidelines on what environment works well with Exchange, and a system with more than eight CPUs and/or 32GB of RAM is beyond the recommended maximums.

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We where just talking about this feature last week at work. I think we’d have to install it on our front end server, because I don’t think you can install this on a cluster.

There is a new release (v08.01.0240.006) available of the ActiveSync Web Administration Tool for Exchange Server 2003 SP2.

Brief Description
The Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration tool is designed for administrators who want to manage the process of remotely erasing lost, stolen, or otherwise compromised mobile devices.

Overview
The Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration tool enables administrators to manage the process of remotely erasing lost, stolen, or otherwise compromised mobile devices.
By using the Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration Web tool, administrators can perform the following actions:

• View a list of all devices that are being used by any enterprise user
• Select/De-select devices to be remotely erased
• View the status of pending remote erase requests for each device
• View a transaction log that indicates which administrators have issued remote erase commands, in addition to the devices those commands pertained to

The Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration Tool is designed for use With Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and compatible mobile devices.

ActiveSync Web Administration Tool (Exchange 2003)
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Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:06:15 GMT

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Another post about not storing PST files on the network. Man we so need to get an email archive application at work!

We’ve had some recent posts in one of the SBS listserves asking how to manage Outlook archived PST files for users, and it was asked if the PST files could be stored on the server. Microsoft’s KB 297019 specifically says that .pst, .ost, and …(read more)

PST on a Network Folder - Not!
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We are upgrading the code on our EMC device tonight. Everything was going great until the last reboot. Now the NAS head won’t come up. EMC sends a tech to do all upgrades, so he’s working on it.
Scott and I have to working on other little projects all night. Moving some more servers to our vmware enivorment, removing our exchange 55 server from the exchange org, setting up outgoing email to go though our spam software. Its amazing how much you can get done when you don’t have anyone distracting you.
jb

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Let’s see Monday started by having the drive our exchange logs on fill up. Yeah….who would have thought we could have 3GB of changes to the database over a weekend…..exeutil is your friend…
The rest of the week, we’ve had an onsite vmware workshop. We installed 3 Dell blades with ESX onto our SAN and we now have VCenter and Vmotion. This stuff ROCKS!!! VCenter is SO MUCH better than the MUI you get when you only have ESX. The workshop runs one more day. Only a few more things to clear up and then it’s time to move about 15 machines to the new virtual server farm.
This Saturday we have family coming for a Christmas party and if the weather is good enough we are heading to Detroit Sunday for the Lions game. You can’t beat free tickets!!!!

later,jb

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