First part of this series I showed you how to install the exchange server and what are the pre-requisites to install the exchange 2010

In this part I will show you how to create DAG, how to add the member servers to DAG and how to configure the DAG network.

Create the new DAG:-

Go to the exchange management console, in organization Configuration click the Mailbox sub menu

From the Database Availability Group tab right-click and create new Database Availability Group

Figure: 1

Type the DAG name and File share Witness server name and path of the Witness Directory.

Click New to create the new DAG

Figure: 2

Now we are successfully configured the new Database Availability Group named DAG01.

Click Finish to complete the configuration

Figure: 3

In the below screenshots we can see the newly created DAG name (DAG01), Witness server name and Witness Directory path

Figure: 4

Adding Member server to DAG:-

Now I am going to add the member servers to the newly created DAG, this process will also install and configure the failover clustering in the servers.

For that right-click the DAG01 and click the Manage Database Availability Group Membership

Figure: 5

Then click Add button to add the member servers to DAG01, this will give you the server selection window for adding the servers to DAG01

Figure: 6

Select the appropriate server from the selection window, in my example I have only 2 servers with mailbox role installed.

Click ok to complete the selection of Servers

Figure: 7

Now we can see both Mailbox server added to the Database Availability Group Membership window.

Click Manage to add both servers to DAG01

Figure: 8

Now we are successfully completed adding the server to DAG01

Click finish to exit the Database Availability Group Membership window.

Figure: 9

The below mentioned screenshot we can see the we can see the member server of the DAG01, network interfaces of the both servers and the status of the interfaces

Figure: 10

Assigning the Virtual IP address to DAG:-

In the below screenshot we can see that there is no IP assigned for the DAG01

We have to configure the Virtual IP address for the DAG01

Figure: 11

This is the PowerShell command for configuring the DAG IP address

Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup DAG01 –DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIpAddresses 192.168.1.165

Figure: 12

Now we can see that the IP address (192.168.1.165) is assigned to the DAG01, also a computer account is created in the active directory

Figure: 13

Figure: 14

This the file share witness folder which is created by the DAG

Figure: 15

The below mentioned screenshot we can see the status of the DAG01 nodes, IP address of the DAG01 and the Witness directory path in Failover Cluster Manager.

Figure: 16

Figure: 17

In the next parts i will show you how to create the database copy and how to test the DAG