New Disk storage - Change drive letters

From: mark (mark_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 03/22/05 

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 10:45:01 -0800

Hi,

I'm planning on adding a new SAN to our Exchange system (Active/Passive 2
node cluster) and this has been connected to the Exchange cluster nodes and
is accessible as shared disk storage.

But that isn't the question I've got, basically the mail stores are
currently located on a Powervault (Drive S:) and I need to present a plan for
moving this data (14 databases) onto the SAN storage, I can see two options
Option1) Use the ESM to migrate databases to new drive letter
1. Use exmerge to export all email to PST files (and ensure backup)
2. use the ESM utility to change the database & storage group paths onto the
SAN storage

Option 2) Manually copy the files onto the new disk storage
1) use exmerge to export all email (and ensure backup)
2) Take all Exchange servicfes offline
3) File Copy all Exchange files from the S: drive onto the new SAN disk
4) Change disk drive letter storage for the previous disk and the new SAN
attached (i.e, SAN attached becomes S:)
5) Bring Exchange back on-line, it should now look to the new S: drive for
data storage.

I believe that Option (1) offers a more reliable solution with less downtime
(only when migrating user's storage group/database_ however the rollback
option would be more difficult.
Option (2) would require more downtime, I believe it carries more risk but
may offer a better rollback solution.

Has anyone out there tried a similar practice and what method/pointers do
they have

Thanks for any help

Mark

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