Build an Exchange 2003 Cluster: Install Exchange on the Cluster

In the Windows IT Pro article "Build an Exchange 2003 Cluster—Part 1: Plan and Prepare," July 2005, http://www.windowsitpro.com, InstantDoc ID 46621, I explain the tasks you must perform before you actually install Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) on a Windows Server 2003 SP1 cluster. Assuming you've made these preparations, you're ready to install Exchange 2003 on a cluster server. Although installing Exchange on a cluster is straightforward, it involves a few more steps than installing Exchange on a standalone server. To recap, the cluster we built in Part 1 is a two-node, active/passive cluster. Let's get started with the installation.

Before You Install
Before building your new Exchange 2003 cluster, check that you've met all the requirements for deploying Exchange 2003. Read the guidelines at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/sysreqs/2003.mspx, and make sure that you've completed all the steps described in the Windows IT Pro article I mentioned earlier.

In that article, I discussed building the cluster by using Windows 2003 SP1 and Exchange 2003 SP1. Since that article's publication, Microsoft released Exchange 2003 SP2. To run Exchange 2003 SP2, you should apply a Windows 2003 SP1 hotfix to each cluster node before you configure Exchange. The hotfix resolves a problem with Windows 2003 SP1 that can cause network-connectivity problems between Windows 2003 SP1 servers and other servers or clients. You can find information about the problem and download locations for the hotfix at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=898060. After you apply the hotfix, you need to reboot the cluster node. Be aware that the connectivity problem can also affect servers running Windows 2003 release to manufacturing (RTM) version with security update MS015-019.

Creating an Exchange Virtual Server
By now you've configured the cluster group with the cluster name and IP address resource and a Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MS DTC) resource. You've also configured an Exchange resource group that contains disk resources, a cluster network name, and an IP address resource for your Exchange Virtual Server (EVS). Your next task is to install Exchange 2003 on the cluster nodes, by following the procedure I outline below.

Document the installation. Document every step of the installation. The documentation shows other administrators how you built the server and can also be useful for disaster recovery purposes (i.e., if you have to rebuild the cluster). The easiest way to create documentation is to open a new WordPad or Microsoft Word document, then for every step of the installation take a screen shot of the active window by pressing Alt+Print Screen, which copies an image of the window into the Clipboard. From WordPad, select Edit, Paste Special, and choose Device Independent Bitmap. Choosing to paste the image as a device-independent bitmap (instead of doing a standard paste) reduces the document's size. Store the documentation log somewhere safe (and off the cluster).

Install Exchange 2003 on the first cluster node. Log on to Node 1 by using an account that has Exchange Full Administrator permissions. Run the Exchange 2003 setup program (located in the \setup\i386 folder of the Exchange 2003 CD-ROM). You'll get the error message Exchange Server 2003 has a known compatibility issue with this version of Windows. Ignore this message for now; later we'll apply Exchange 2003 SP2 to correct the problem. At the Welcome screen, click Next.

Click I Agree to accept the End User License Agreement (EULA). Under the Action menu, select Typical. At the next screen, accept the terms of a Per Seat Licensing Agreement. The installation begins; a completion message is displayed when the installation is done.

Install Exchange 2003 on the second cluster node. Install Exchange 2003 on the second node (Node 2), repeating the steps you followed for Node 1. You can't update the binaries to Exchange 2003 SP2 yet; you must create the EVS before you can apply SP2.

Create the EVS. After you've installed the Exchange binaries on the cluster nodes, you can create an EVS. You must create the EVS on the active node (the node that currently owns the EVS) because the setup program places Exchange databases, transaction logs, and other components on the shared storage so that each node can access them.

To create the EVS, log on to the active node by using an account that has Exchange Full Administrator privileges. Open Cluster Administrator; click File, New, Resource; and select Microsoft Exchange System Attendant. Create this resource in the Exchange cluster group (not the same as the cluster group), which in our example is DARA-EVS1-GRP, as Figure 1 shows. Click Next.

You're prompted to specify nodes as possible owners for this resource. Both cluster nodes should be listed as owners by default. Click Next to continue. Next, you're prompted to supply dependencies for the Exchange System Attendant resource. Select all the resources (IP address, network name, and disk resources) in the left pane and click Add to add them as required resources for the Exchange System Attendant resource. Click Next.

Now you'll choose an administrative group for your EVS. Select a group and click Next, then select a routing group for your EVS and click Next. At the next prompt, select a data directory folder in the shared storage to contain Exchange databases, transaction logs, the SMTP folders, the full-text–indexing database, and the message-tracking log files. The default location for this folder is the \exchsrvr folder on a physical disk resource in the Exchange resource group that you created in Part 1. A limitation of the Exchange setup program is that it places all the components (such as the databases) in the same folder at installation time. You need to move them manually after the installation. To help me identify which Exchange components the setup program has placed at installation time, I usually name the folder by using the convention \exchsrvr_staging-EVSname. (In this cluster build, I called it \exchsrvr_staging_DARA-EVS1 to indicate that this folder was created at installation time for that EVS.) Later I'll explain how you can move these components to other drivers or folders.

The setup program displays a summary screen that lists all the settings, as Figure 2 shows. Click Finish to accept the installation summary. The Exchange setup program automatically creates resources for Exchange components such as the Information Store and protocol resources for IMAP and POP. Upon completion, the setup program displays a message stating that the Exchange System Attendant cluster resource was created successfully.

At this point, you can see in Cluster Administrator that all Exchange resources are offline. Bring each resource online by right-clicking the Exchange resource and selecting Bring Online. The list of resources displayed in Cluster Administrator should look similar to the screen that Figure 3 shows.

To verify that the EVS is online, open Exchange System Manager (ESM) and check your administrative group. DARA-EVS1 appears as a clustered server running Exchange 2003 RTM version 6944.4.

I recommend you now perform a failover test to Node 2 to verify that the EVS can run on both nodes. To perform a failover by using Cluster Administrator, right-click the Exchange resource group associated with the EVS (here, DARA-EVS1) and select Move Group. Doing so triggers a failover of your newly created EVS from Node 1 to Node 2.

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