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Eric911
Contributor
Contributor

Migrate Exchange 2013 server VM's from traditional host/SAN infrastructure to Nutanix HCI

Hello,

          I'm gearing up to start migrating some of our more critical systems from a traditional host/SAN configuration (Dell rack mount servers going through FC into NetApp storage) over to our Nutanix HyperConverged infrastructure.  I've already migrated quite a few VM's from the old infrastructure over to the Nutanix and everything is working fine.  In case you're wondering how I've been migrating these workloads from the old infrastructure to the new, well, it's quite simple really, we dropped an FC HBA into one of the Nutanix nodes and tied it into the same NetApp fabric as the old infrastructure and I've been using vMotion/Storage vMotion to migrate the VM's and their storage over to the Nutanix cluster.

Up next I need to migrate our 4 server Exchange environment which is configured in a DAG.  I guess my question comes down to this:  Is it safe to migrate these Exchange servers with vMotion going in between different Compute/Storage infrastructure or is there some other way I should be approaching this?

My thoughts are that I could disable the databases on Server1, put it into maintenance mode, vmotion it over, once it's complete, bring it out of maintenance mode and then bring the databases back online, then do the same with the remaining 3 servers.  By doing that I figure I could lessen any chances of data corruption during the storage vMotion, I've even considered the idea of doing what I just mentioned and even shutting down the VM before the vMotion.

Has anyone been in a similar situation?   Any advice or thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

4 Replies
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

I've seen DAG migrations come down to two basic strategies:

  1. svMotion the DAG members as-is without making any application-level changes over to the new environment.
  2. Migrate the passive DAG member using svMotion to the new environment. Then failover the database from the active node (still on "old" env) over to the passive node (on "new" env).

In many cases, option #1 works just fine, but if your storage isn't particularly high performing or you have network bandwidth issues, it could cause a failover during the process. If that does happen, most of the time I've heard there was no application disruption, but still some prefer option #2 because it's predictable and within their control.

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Eric911
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the reply.

To be on the safe side I think I will go with option #2 and perform a server switchover, migrate the server to the new infrastructure, do some testing with a test DB and user on the migrated server and then repeat for the other 3 servers.  I just wanted to mostly make sure that vMotion and svMotion with exchange was not inherently dangerous or capable of causing corruption on the server being migrated as I know exchange can be temperamental.

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ThompsG
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi Eric911,

For a level of comfort, however a your mileage may vary warranty applies, we have ~6TB of Exchange 2010 mailboxes across 3 DAG members (6 DAG members in total). We have moved this from an HPE EVA (FC) to 3PAR 8400 (AFA) to a 3PAR 8200 (7.2K spinning rust) in two locations (primary and secondary sites) without issues.

In all these cases the servers never broke a sweat. When I did the move from the EVA to 3PAR 8400, I took option #2 as it appeared to me to be the safest route. Another engineer did the move from the 8400 to the 8200 without failing over the databases. No issues experienced with the databases or corruption.

Because of the enhancements svMotion (aka the mirror driver) there is a much greater level of confidence that the svMotion will complete in a timely and efficent manner however I prefer option #2 as any issues don't impact LIVE but that might just be me and you Smiley Wink

Noted that you also mentioned about vMotion. The only changes we made to enable a trouble free vMotion experience were to modify the Cluser Heartbeat settings for the DAG. I'm sure you are also well aware of this document but in case you are not, I've linked here for reference: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/solutions/vmware-microsoft-exchang... (Page 21 is where the settings are documented and recommendations made)

Kind regards.

Eric911
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for the response.  I am currently migrating one of four VM's now.  Fingers are crossed!

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