Troubleshooting

Migrating Exchange 2010 To Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager Environment
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Deploying Exchange with AIM - A Brownfield scenario
This section describes setting up Exchange with AIM environment in a Brownfield scenario. A Brownfield
scenario assumes that an Exchange ecosystem already exists, and an AIM environment needs to be
integrated in a cooperative manner to the existing Exchange ecosystem. In this effort, we first plan and
set up an AIM environment suitable for the Exchange ecosystem, and then integrate it. We have an
existing topology to take in to consideration when deploying AIM and planning network architecture.
Also, the availability of Exchange services to Outlook clients is a major consideration. Taking advantage
of the application‘s native high availability (i.e. DAG), we migrate one server at a time into the AIM
environment, once setup is complete. The following subsections describe a step-by-step procedure to
deploy Exchange with AIM.
Preparation for an AIM Environment
This section describes the preparation of an AIM environment required to set up and/or integrate
Exchange 2010. Preparation was done with respect to AIM release 3.4.1 GA. Dell recommends that you
update the firmware on the modular switch fabrics PowerConnect M6220s, the Chassis Management
Controller (CMC), Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC), and the network interfaces as
mentioned in the AIM 3.4.1 GA interoperability matrix.
Network Planning for Exchange with AIM
AIM provides a ‗cable once and reconfigure repeatedly‘ kind of network environment. Dell recommends
planning for the design and deployment of the network scheme once, taking application and AIM
networking requirements into consideration. Exchange 2010 with SAN mounted databases has three
specific networks, a public (MAPI) network, private (replication) network, and iSCSI network for SAN
mounted databases. AIM requires its own network i.e. SCN.
Table 4. Networks for Exchange on AIM
Fabric A1
Public/MAPI Network
192.168.15.X / 24
VLAN 15
Fabric A2
Private/Replication Network
192.168.18.X / 24
VLAN 18
Fabric B1
Exchange iSCSI Database Network
192.168.16.X / 24
VLAN 16
Fabric B2
Exchange iSCSI Database Network
192.168.16.Y / 24
VLAN 16
Fabric C1
AIM SCN Network
192.168.14.X / 24
VLAN 14
Fabric C2
AIM SCN Network
192.168.14.Y / 24
VLAN 14
iDRAC
Management Network
192.168.17.X
VLAN 17
The IP subnets mentioned in the above table are optional, and depict an example network scheme. In
order to mimic a typical Brownfield, Fabrics A1 and A2 are used for Exchange public and Exchange
private network respectively. Fabrics B1 and B2 are used for Exchange database iSCSI network enabled
for Multi Path I/O (MPIO). The C fabric is assumed to be unused, and NICs attached to these fabrics are
leveraged later for the AIM SCN once Exchange 2010 is incorporated into AIM environment.
Before proceeding further with your deployment please identify the NICs on the servers associated with
each fabric, and identify 2 channels available for the AIM SCN network. In order to support the above
network configuration, each PowerEdge M610 blade server used in the deployment requires two dual
port 1 Gb add-on mezzanine cards. The iDRAC management network is used by the AIM controller to
power-on and power-off servers using Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) commands. In