Exchange Server 2007 CCR Configuration.

Exchange server 2007 introduces new features for high availability.one of them is Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR).This feature uses log shipping and replay with windows active /passive cluster setup.

you need following in order to configure CCR.

A Windows 2003 Active Directory forest with at least one Domain Controller
Two Windows 2003 Server R2 Enterprise Editions or Windows 2003 Server SP2 Enterprise Editions.
One Windows File share Witness (Microsoft recommends this to be an Exchange 2007 Hub Transport Server in the existing Exchange 2007 organization)

When you start the servers that are to be the nodes in the cluster, start by naming the machines E2K7Node1 and E2K7Node2 or whatever naming scheme you want to use (these names have nothing to do with the Exchange server name which your clients will be configured to connect to later on). Now name the two network connections Public and Private for the external and the internal network respectively (remember to do this on both nodes).




Click Advanced > Advanced Settings, make sure Public is listed first on the binding order list, then Private and lastly Remote Access Connections.



Before Exchange 2007 SP1 released, it was also recommended to disable File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks for the private network as shown in Figure 3. However, when SP1 released this guidance changed, since Exchange 2007 SP1 introduced a new cmdlet named Enable-ContinuousReplicationHostName. This cmdlet makes it possible to specify over which network log files should be ship and seeded. So no matter whether you deploy CCR on Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 based servers, please don’t disable File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks for the private network.





Configure the Public network with the respective network settings you use in your test environment.




Configure the Private network with an IP address and a subnet mask. Nothing else is required since this network is only used for communication (heartbeats) between the nodes in the cluster.


Now click Advanced then select the DNS tab. Here you should untick both Register this connection's addresses in DNS and Use this connection's DNS suffix.



Click the WINS tab. Untick Enable LMHOSTS lookup and select Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP.



Click OK three times and close the network connections window.

Now add both Windows 2003 Servers as member servers in your Active Directory test domain.



Creating and Configuring the Windows 2003 Server Cluster
Now that the two servers are ready to act as nodes in a Windows 2003 cluster, it’s time to create the actual Windows 2003 Server Cluster. In order to do so logon to E2K7Node1 with a Domain admin account, then click Start > Administrative Tools > Cluster Administrator, and select Create new cluster in the drop-down box. Now click OK.



Note
You can also open a command prompt and type Cluster.exe /create /wizard in order to start the cluster wizard.

Click Next.