Exchange 2010 > 2013 Migration Advice

[Flapjack]

I was wondering if you fine folks might want to help me plan my migration from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013. I currently have a small 20-25 user environment for my family domain, spread across the country. They use inside the house, they use Outlook and of course cellphone for Exchange mail, and outside the house, they use Outlook Anywhere on their laptops and PCs (for those who live out of state.

I also have a semi-integrated instance of Lync 2013 running, which works, but the deployment wasn't planned well enough, and I believe some DNS issues are preventing it from being reliable enough for primetime. Some messages don't pass through reliably, and audio/video are 'almost' working... but not quite. I plan on redesigning that, along with moving to a wildcard GoDaddy Cert (vs the two 5 UCC certs), as well as beginning to utilize internal CAs on my DCs for the SSL certs that don't require external validation.

Here is a rough overview of my current setup:

- Three identical Xen servers in HA mode
-- 32GB RAM each
-- (2) Intel PCI 1x GigE NICs in LACP configuration

- Two FreeNAS boxes running on HP N40L Microservers
-- (2) Intel PCI 1x GigE NICs in LACP configuration
-- (5) 2TB drives running in a ZFS iSCSI
-- one runs a CIFS share for Windows backups
-- the 2nd runs a push/pull snap backup from the primary VM vol on the first

- VMs running on Xen pool:
-- (2) Win2k8 domain controllers (DHCP, DNS, CA for internal network)
-- (1) Win2k8 Exchange 2010 server running all roles (only port 443 open to the outside world, through a physical TMG server (also set as a proxy/reverse proxy)
-- (1) Instance of Mailcleaner (linux-based) which acts as the email gateway and passes email to the Exchange server)


We live out in the boondocks of Peyton, Colorado so our network connectivity was very limited. Being network savvy, I devised a solution with some help from the folks on the DSL forums, then talked to the right people until I got everyone to agree. In the end, I would up with four DSL lines at 10mb/1mb each, running through two C2000A modem, which pairbond two of the 10/1 lines for a total of 20/2 for each modem. After that, I use a load-balancing router with some clever rules to manage everything from there, along with a block of 16 IPs

Inside my network, I use a TP-LINK TL-SG2424 layer 3 "smart" switch, with (5) 2-port LAGs (one for each pair of cards coming off the Xen and FreeNAS boxes). Currently, the 5 LAGs are all in one VLAN, but I'm sure I can do something better. I want the XenMotion network to at least be on its own subnet, but I haven't gotten that far in design.

My primary concern has been to migrate Exchange 2010 to 2013... and that is where I really need help.

I've completed updated the Exchange 2010 server in preparation for upgrade to Exch2013 (CU2 and all that). I just tonight installed Rollup 4 for SP3. I'm not sure if there is anything I need to do on the Win2k8 DCs to prep the AD schema for the upgrade, or if there I actually have to build Win2k13 domain controllers and migrate my domain to them (not ideal, but not competely off the table, either).

I also am not sure what the limitations are. I know you cannot do an "in-place" upgrade, correct? So it sounds like I'll be doing a new build for Exchange 2013, then migrating DB from 2010 over... right?

Finally, I want to move from a single Exchange 2010 server to two 2013 servers in a cluster, to provide some sort of HA. I'm not sure what the options are for a two server setup in Exchange 2013, but ideally, I'd like to have the servers NOT residing on the same Xen server, in case one goes down. If only one Exch2013 server is running, I'd like to have users to have uninterrupted access to mail... which obviously does not happen with a single mail server. Does that mean I need a separate SQL server? (SQL currently is the lite version that installs with Exch2010).

Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

[ashman]

Let me get this straight, you are doing all of this to support family members? Why the HA? Why upgrade Exchange at all, what is wrong with EX2010 and what is the driving force to go to 2013? Seems to me you have put an awful lot of effort into building this (overkill IMO) solution for what it is. To do an upgrade you have to build a new server, install EX2013 and do a migration, move mailboxes, etc. In so far as HA for EX2013 I am not familiar with that, but seeing as you have three Xen servers, can't you do some kind of HA with Xen?

 

[ND40oz]

I'd probably just build another Exchange 2010 box with all the roles and use DAG, that would be the easiest way to get HA. TMG will act as load balancer, so you should be set for access for your remote users.

If you really want to upgrade as part of this, install Exchange 2013, migrate the users and functionality to it, decom your 2010 box, then install another Exchange 2013 server and use DAG again.

I'd also look into moving into a Colo or a hosted vm solution, you must be spending a fortune on DSL.

 

[Flapjack]

Let me get this straight, you are doing all of this to support family members? Why the HA? Why upgrade Exchange at all, what is wrong with EX2010 and what is the driving force to go to 2013? Seems to me you have put an awful lot of effort into building this (overkill IMO) solution for what it is. To do an upgrade you have to build a new server, install EX2013 and do a migration, move mailboxes, etc. In so far as HA for EX2013 I am not familiar with that, but seeing as you have three Xen servers, can't you do some kind of HA with Xen?

Suffice it to say I want to do this? I could add another 2010 server, I suppose... but I have the licensing for 2013 and want to use it. I don't want this thread to turn into a big "justification" thing. You could run rampant through this forum asking people to justify the things they do here. If building a new Exch2013 environment and migrating the mailboxes over is what I have to do, I guess that's what I will do. I was just hoping for a way to save a few steps, reuse my existing SSL certificate and DNS naming conventions, etc. If you can help with that, cool. If not, please don't bother.

To answer your question about Xen, yes. I can do HA in Xen, but it is not a heartbeat type setup as something like neverfail would be. If one host goes down, an instance of a VM will get rebooted on another host. During that time, mail is inaccessible. The users notice. I was looking for a level of tolerance at the Exchange level. I know Exchange can do clustering, so in my mind (without yet knowing the details of such a deployment), I would set up one Exchange server on two different Xen boxes and "home" them to prevent them from both running on the same host. If one Xen host, or an Exchange VM went down, the other would still be up and running.

A few other notes:

- Building these environments is a huge source of experience for me. I am a senior-level architect in my career, so I don't really get any 'hands-on' computing anymore. It is also rewarding as a hobby, and makes my family and friends who use it happy. That really should be all the justification I need to give you fellas.

- Right now, my Exch2010 server takes the longest to boot after a server or virtual host failure. I have tweaked, prodded, and prioritized services about as best as I can. It often still requires human intervention to get everything accessible (I usually have to go in and start at least the FBA or RPC services). I thought about rebuilding it altogether, but then again, I have the licensing for 2013 and might as well move forward down the product line and gain some experience while I'm at it.

I'd probably just build another Exchange 2010 box with all the roles and use DAG, that would be the easiest way to get HA. TMG will act as load balancer, so you should be set for access for your remote users.

I've actually thought about that. The idea behind 2013 was to upgrade, get the experience in deploying it, and being able to recommend (or not recommend it) for others in the future. From what I've read, 2013 is a good upgrade from 2010, but I'm not really getting that feeling from you guys. In particular, my users are asking about the better touch interface and end-user benefits. I really haven't looked much into that stuff, but most seem pretty happy with the 2013 experience.

If you really want to upgrade as part of this, install Exchange 2013, migrate the users and functionality to it, decom your 2010 box, then install another Exchange 2013 server and use DAG again.

I do believe this is the best route. There just doesn't seem to be a smooth upgrade path. Since it's such a small deployment, it's probably not a big deal anyway.

I'd also look into moving into a Colo or a hosted vm solution, you must be spending a fortune on DSL.

I pay a total of $130 for two bundled pairs (total of four DSL lines) through CenturyLink CoreConnect Business and a block of 16 IPs. Each line is 10mb/s down, 1mb/s up, for a total of 20mb/s down, 2mb/s up on each bonded pair. The two bonded pairs are setup through a load-balancing router for a total of 40/4 throughput (though only 20/2 through a single connection). I am still working on the routing rules, but the "server" traffic is pretty well separated from the rest of the house. Since we're out in the boondocks, they threw in an analog line as well, since we only had VOIP before. We don't use it, but it's nice to know its there in case the power goes out.

The whole thing was quite difficult to arrange. It took a lot of research, help from folks on dslreports.com, and lot of working with the CenturyLink engineers to convince them that yes... they could do this. I'm absolutely happy with the price, and am locked in for 3 years at this rate. We'll see what happens with it afterwards, but I don't see them hiking it up too much. They actually updated their database for this area and can now provide different tiers of service to the folks out here, who have been screaming for more bandwidth. Leave it to a company like CenturyLink to deploy a high-end DSLAM and fiber to a neighborhood, then not know how to get the most out of their investment.....

 

[ND40oz]

That's a surprising price from CenturyLink, they wanted $160 for 40/20 business service the last time I looked at their offerings and that didn't even include static IPs.

If you're looking for better touch support and everyone is using OWA, then that's probably the only benefit 2013 is going to bring over 2010. Easier to just put Outlook 2013 on their touch devices and get Outlook Anywhere configured though then use OWA. If they're not on Win 8.1, but on Android or iOS, I'd use the built in clients rather then OWA.

 

[gersson]

If you are willing to spend $ microsoft tickets are awesome. It's $250-ish and they will stay with you until the task is done.

 

[ND40oz]

If you are willing to spend $ microsoft tickets are awesome. It's $250-ish and they will stay with you until the task is done.

And if you have an MSDN sub, you should have 2 or 4 support incidents with it that you can use.

 

[Flapjack]

If you are willing to spend $ microsoft tickets are awesome. It's $250-ish and they will stay with you until the task is done.

And if you have an MSDN sub, you should have 2 or 4 support incidents with it that you can use.

I haven't looked into the MSDN options, but I definitely will today. Thanks for suggesting it. I hadn't even thought about it.

I went ahead and migrated the entire domain to 2012 over the last few days. It went very, very smooth. I just demoted the last 2008 server, setup load balanced DHCP, and have been doing the last bits of cleanup prior to building the Exchange 2013 server.

Before I do that, I'd like to rename the last DC, which was also my WSUS server. I'd really rather not rebuild the WSUS server, as it is working absolutely perfectly, but my OCD is keeping me from leaving it named "DC2".

Suggestions, or should I just leave well enough alone?

**EDIT**
Actually, I'll probably just keep the old DC's provisioned VM resources, load up Server 2012 Standard on it, and install a new instance of WSUS on it from there. If I'm going to go 2012+, I may as well go all in, and I'm definitely impressed with how hitch-free and smooth the Server 2012 migration has gone so far (knock on wood).