Standby Continuous Replication (SCR)

Exchange 2007 SCR Setup

(or, subtitled, Patience is a Virtue)

1. Make sure that the drive array setup for the source server and the target server are identical. At a bare minimum, the same drive letters must be available. With enough space.

a. For this specific example

i. F: (logs)

ii. G: (SG1\DB1)

iii. H: (SG2\DB2) (public folder DB)

iv.  Full paths are not needed upfront, but will work if they are present.  What is needed is the duplicate drive arrangement.  If the source server has the logs and whatnot on Drive F, then the target needs to have the same arrangement.

2. Ensure that the servers both have Exchange 2007 SP1

3. Modify the registry for remote streaming backup – this is “on” for RTM, “off” for SP1. This needs to be enabled or SCR will not work.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem
Name: Enable Remote Streaming Backup
Type: DWORD
Value: 0 = default behavior (remote backup disabled)
1 = remote backup enabled

4. Restart msexchangeis on each server.

5. Commands will work from each server, but for simplicity sake, we will operate commands from the target server because there is a chance that the update-storagegroupcopy may need to be run manually – and that requires working from the target server (same as CCR).

6. Commands that will be used – these are the same commands used for CCR and LCR. The difference is that SCR needs to have “-standbymachine targetserver)” at the end of them, or things don’t look right or work right.

a. Enable-storagegroupcopy

b. Suspend-storagegroupcopy

c. Resume-storagegroupcopy

d. Update-storagegroupcopy

e. Get-storagegroupcopystatus sourceserver\* -standbymachine targetserver

7. Enable-storagegroupcopy sourceserver\sg1 –replaylagtime 0.0:10:0 –truncationlagtime 0.0:10:0 –standbymachine targetserver

a. This enables the storagegroup for SCR, with a log file delay of 10 minutes, and waits for 10 more minutes before truncating the log file.

Replaylagtime- Time that the Microsoft Exchange Replication Service should wait before replaying logs. Default is 24 hours and max time is 7 days.

TruncationLagTime- Amount of time Microsoft Exchange Replication Service waits before truncating log files that have been copied to the target

b. Do this for each SG that is needed.  Be Patient!

c. Be patient after running this command. About five minutes will do.

d. If there is a need to manually seed, wait the five minutes.

a. If needed, update-storagegroupcopy sourceserver\SG1 –standbymachine targetserver

b. Be patient. The command should resume the storagegroupcopy status to active when it gets done.

OK. So we have good SCR: