Upgrade to Exchange 2007 SP2 on SCC

When you are going to consider upgrading from Exchange Server SP1 to SP2 on Single Copy Cluster environment, following needs to be taken care..Our Environment as follows

2 Domain controller
2 Hub and CAS
2 Mailbox on SCC
1 Edge server

We have to just finish the upgrade process and the steps recorded as follows.

First step is to prepare the Schema on the Active Directory for Exchange server SP2 installation. This installation is typically a preparation of Exchange server 2010 readiness and i believe there won’t be any schema preparation, when you migrate from Exchange server 2007 SP2 to Exchange Server 2010.

Go to the domain controller, and insert the Exchange Server SP2 CD or copy the folder to the C drive of the domain controller.
Run on the command prompt level : SETUP /PS or SETUP /PREPARESCHEMA
once you successfully finish the above step, run SETUP /PREPAREAD
once you successfully finish the above step, run SETUP /PREPAREDOMAIN

Now you have prepare your domain to accept the Exchange Server 2007 SP2 upgrade….(Server don’t re-start after the upgrade)

Now go to the Passive Node of each role.. Start with Hub & CAS role server(first one) and then copy the SP2 folder to C drive and run the setup on GUI mode…and then go to Hub & CAS (next server) and run the same… This will take minimum 1hr to complete on each server on Virtual machine.. Once the Hub & CAS is upgraded to SP2, Goto Exhcange Server Edge server and run the same. In each server, you will see the roles are getting updated to SP2.. Once you finish these server, the main task starts…While doing the upgradation process, there will be minimal disturbance…when H&C server in progress, OWA, OMA, IMAP will not work, When Edge is in progress, Mail flow will be disturbed…If you have a mail queue, users won’t notice any disturbance. You can do this on the live environment…with a minimal disturbance only.

This picture shows that all role are on the same..because this is on my test environment…when it comes to the role based server to do the upgrade, each role prerequisite will run on that server.

Lets go to Mail box(Mail1) and Mailbox server (server 1 & server 2) upgrade on SCC scenario…

Go to Passive cluster server(server 1) (This time Active mailbox (server 2) will be running and no disturbance)
Stop all the service that have open handles to performance counters…this includes OpsMgr Health Service, Backup Exec remote agent, Performance Log and Alerts, MOM Agent.
Then Stop and then restart the Remote Registry Service.
Now you have to go to command prompt and go to the folder of SP2 under C drive and run SETUP /M:UPGRADE
This will perform command line Exchange Server SP2 upgrade….once this finish, either restart the server or restart the service that has been stoped.
Now you have one Mailbox server (server1) with SP2 upgraded..
Go to Server1 and open Exchange Management Shell (this is to bring the mailbox to upgrade to SP2)
Type Stop-ClusteredMailboxServer Mail1 -StopReason “Upgrade to EXCH SP2″ …Press enter and then “y” to confirm
Now the Mail box is offline
type Move-ClusteredMailboxServer Mail1 -TargetMachine server1 -MoveComment “Upgrade to SP2)..Press enter and then “y” to confirm
Now goto Command prompt of server1 and goto the directory of SP2 on C drive
Run the command to upgrade the clustered mailbox that is now owned by server1
type Setup /upgradecms
This command will perform the clustered mailbox prerequisite checks and then upgrade the mailbox to SP2
Once this task is completed, and if it is not come online, we have to go and mount the database manually using Exchange management console GUI…now your mail store is also on SP2
Now your mail server is up and running with Exchange server 2007 SP2…don’t forget you have one more server on SCC to upgrade.
log on to server2 and go to goto the directory of SP2 on C drive and run SETUP /M:UPGRADE
Once this is finish, your Exchange server environment is now on SP2… Versioning number will be 8.2.xx

Exchange Server SP2 upgrade procedure results in a brief outage during the upgrade process. Exchange Setup should be run only on the passive nodes in the cluster. All nodes need to be upgraded to Exchange 2007 SP1 or SP2 to be supported, but you must upgrade the nodes one at a time. After all nodes have been upgraded, the clustered mailbox server is upgraded, and then brought online.

Microsoft Exchange Server adds new Active Directory schema classes and attributes and modifies new ones. This document provides a summary of the Active Directory schema changes that are made when you install Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2). Refer to the .ldf files for more information about changes to the Active Directory schema. The .ldf files are located in the \AMD64\Setup\Data\ directory on the Setup media. For release note from Microsoft on this topic, click here

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