How to Upgrade your Exchange Server 2007 Environment to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (Part II: How to Upgrade a Clustered Mailbox Server in a CCR Environment).

This is the Second Part of the Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Upgrade Series. in this article i will show you the upgrade process of Second Scenario of Exchange Server 2007 Deployments, which is "Cluster Continuous Replication - CCR".

This is the First Article in this Article Series, which talks about Upgrading Typical Exchange Server 2007 to SP1:

• How to Upgrade your Exchange 2007 Environment to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (Part I: Install SP1 on Typical Exchange 2007 Installation)
  

Am using off course Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 to run my 5 Virtual Servers. these are the servers I am running on my Lab:

• PRODC01: This is my and Only Domain Controller which hosts my Single Domain Model which is called "ProRangers.net"
  
• PRO-HC1: This is Exchange Server 2007 HUB and CAS Server Roles and also my File Share Witness Server (FSW Server).
  
• PRO-CCR1: This is the First Cluster Continuous Replication Node - First CCR node or in other words, the Active Node.
  
• PRO-CCR2: Last Server which is the Second Cluster Continuous Replication Node - Second CCR node or in other words, the Passive Node.
• PROMAIL: this is my Clustered Mailbox Server Cluster Group Name.

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 Software Requirements

As I mentioned on the First Part of this Article Series, Exchange 2007 SP1 requires the following Software updates and hotfixes to be deployed under all your Exchange Server 2007 RTM Versions. its recommended to deploy these requirements before the actual upgrade process of SP1. These Requirements are:

For Production Exchange Environment (running 64-Bit Version):

• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 (x64)
  
• Update for Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition (KB933360)

For Testing Exchange Environment (running 32-Bit Version):

• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 (x86)
  
• Update for Windows Server 2003 x86 Edition (KB933360)
  

in my lab, I installed the above requirements before I started the actual upgrade process of SP1.

Which Server needs to be upgraded first ? and what is the recommended upgrade process for Exchange 2007 ?

the Recommended Upgrade sequence for your Exchange 2007 Environment based on your Server Roles, is to start with Client Access Servers - CAS which is the Internet Facing Server and to leave any Mailbox Server Role till the end of the Upgrade process. Start upgrading the First CAS Server , then continue with other CAS Servers under same AD Site or other AD Sites. here is the recommended Upgrade Path based on Exchange Server Roles:

1. Client Access servers
2. Unified Messaging servers
3. Hub Transport servers
4. Edge Transport servers
5. Mailbox servers

Microsoft Says "If you upgrade your servers in this order, you may avoid potential service interruptions"

Important Points to consider for upgrade process for Clustered Mailbox Server in CCR Environment

There are specific things that must be considered and planned for with respect to upgrading a clustered mailbox server in CCR environment to Service Pack 1:

• before you can upgrade to Exchange Server 2007 SP1 , the Clustered Nodes must be running Windows Server 2003 SP2.
• a clustered mailbox server can be upgrade to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 ONLY by using the Command-Line Version of Setup (Setup.com /UpgradeCMS), you can't use the graphical user interface version of setup to upgrade an existing Clustered Mailbox Server running RTM Version of Exchange 2007 to service pack 1 Version of Exchange 2007.
• backup your clustered mailbox server prior to upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 and also after successfully completing the upgrade service pack 1.
• update the operating system for all your Servers running the RTM Version of Exchange Server 2007 that mentioned above before you start the upgrade process to SP1. the upgrade process will not start if the above update (KB933360) was not installed on all your Exchange Servers 2007.
• upgrading clustered mailbox server in CCR environment to Service Pack 1 results in outage for the email service during the upgrade process.
• Both Nodes need to be upgraded to Service Pack 1 in order to be supported, but you must upgrade each node one at a time, then after each node has been upgraded to Service Pack 1, then the Clustered Mailbox Server is upgraded and then brought online.
• move all clustered resource groups to the active node which includes the clustered mailbox server - CMS, then start with Passive Node, don't start with Active Node. (In my lab, i will start with PRO-CCR2).

Upgrade Passive Node (PRO-CCR2) of Clustered Mailbox Server in CCR Environment

now, we can start the upgrade process of Clustered Mailbox Server in a CCR Environment, we will start with the Passive Node First, so here are the steps:

1. Logon to the Passive Node (PRO-CCR2) that has delegated the Exchange Server Administrators Role and is part of Local Administrator of on the Passive Node. for my lab i use the Domain Administrator Account. remember that we don't require a user that has been delegated the "Exchange Organization Administrators", such user account is only required when you upgrade your First Exchange Server 2007 RTM Server under your Forest, cause it needs a permission on the AD Schema and Exchange Organization Containers and Folders under the schema, since I had a Hub and CAS server already installed under this organization, i used such account to upgrade this first Hub and CAS server. after the successful installation of my first Exchange 2007 RMT Server to SP1 , then the rest of the upgrade process i only require a user which has been delegated the "Exchange Server Administrators" Role.
   
2. Move all Clustered Resources Groups to the Active Node (PRO-CCR1). make sure that the passive node hosts NO Cluster Resources, all Clustered Resources and Groups need to be moved to the Active Node. Clustered Mailbox Server Cluster Group can be left with Online Status at the Active CCR Node during the upgrade process on the passive node. you can use this command from the command line of the passive Node to move your clustered resources from passive node to active node: cluster group <Cluster_Group_Name> /Move
   
3. Start the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service. This service is disabled by default, and you must set its Startup type to Manual or Automatic for the service to be started, starting this service is necessary to allow SP1 Setup to add Windows Firewall exceptions for Exchange services. After the clustered mailbox server has been upgraded on passive node, you can stop and disable this service. here i used the manual status.
   
   
   
   
4. Stop any Performance Counters services, like Performance Logs and Alerts and any Microsoft Operations Manager agents.
   
5. Stop, and then restart the Remote Registry service on the passive node.
   
   
   
6. Open a Command Prompt window, and then navigate to the Exchange 2007 SP1 installation files, then run the following command:
   
   D:\Setup.com /m:upgrade
   
   where D: Drive is my DVD Media
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Now, after we successfully upgraded the Passive Node (PRO-CCR2) , we have to restart the passive node, this is a must. Now, in my lab, i faced an issue from leaving the Windows Firewall Service in the starting state, and i lost communication between the Two Nodes, so since i don't use Windows Firewall in my lab, and since i am not enabling the Fire Wall service between the Clustered Node, i sat it again as disabled, and restarted the passive node again, and everything was working fine. If you faced the same issue in your production environment, and you are not enabling the communication between the two Clustered Nodes through Windows Firewall, just disable it back again as it was before the upgrade, and restart your passive node again.
   

Upgrade Clustered Mailbox Server - CMS (or in my lab PROMAIL) in CCR Environment

now, after successfully we upgraded the Passive Node of the Clustered Mailbox Server in the CCR Environment, the next step would be to upgrade the Clustered Mailbox Server Clustered Group - CMS , where i called it here in my lab as (PROMAIL). in this step we will upgrade the CMS from the passive node, and while the CMS Group is in Offline State, its important to bring the CMS Group or PROMAIL (as I call it in my lab) offline before you upgrade it to SP1. here are the steps you need to do:

1. after you logged into Passive Node (PRO-CCR2), open Exchange Management Shell (EMS) of Exchange Server 2007, and bring the Clustered Mailbox Server "CMS" - PROMAIL offline. you have to know that by starting this process, your Mail Service will be down, so the users will not be able to connect to their mailboxes till you successfully complete CMS Upgrade process to Service Pack 1. To bring the CMS Cluster Group (PROMAIL) offline, run the following command from EMS:
   
   Stop-ClusteredMailboxServer PROMAIL -StopReason "<Type Any Descriptive Reasons like : Upgrading CMS to E2K7SP1>"
   
   
   
   from the above screen, to can see that the command asks for Confirmation for the action that is going to be applied to your CMS Cluster Group, so click "Y" to proceed. if you want to provide this confirmation within the "Stop-ClsuterMailboxServer" command, then this is the full command:
   
   Stop-ClusteredMailboxServer PROMAIL -StopReason "<Type Any Descriptive Reasons like : Upgrading CMS to E2K7SP1>" -Confirm:$False
   
   
2. now, you need to move the Clustered Mailbox Server - CMS "PROMAIL" from CCR Active Node (which is not yet upgraded to SP1) to CCR Passive Node (which was upgraded successfully to SP1) by running the following command from Passive Node (PRO-CCR2):
   
   Move-ClusteredMailboxServer PROMAIL -TargetMachine PRO-CCR2 -MoveComment "<use your own comments here>"
   
   
   
   also, to append the confirmation for this command along with your command, here is the full command:
   
   Move-ClusteredMailboxServer PROMAIL -TargetMachine PRO-CCR2 -MoveComment "<use your own comments here>" -Confirm:$False
   
3. Now, after we move the Clustered Mailbox Server "CMS" - PROMAIL from Active CCR Node (PRO-CCR1) to Passive CCR Node (PRO-CCR2), we need to upgrade the Clustered Mailbox Server - CMS - Cluster Group to Service Pack 1 Version. browse to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Setup Files , and run the following command from the command line:
   
   D:\Setup.com /UpgradeCMS
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   After successfully upgrading the Clustered Mailbox Server - CMS (PROMAIL) to Service Pack 1 Version, the Setup brings this Cluster Group Online again, and your users can access their mailboxes again. when you reach this stage, actually your Exchange Service provided by Exchange Server 2007 will be running Service Pack 1 Version of Exchange Server 2007 with full features provided by SP1, the only remaining step is to upgrade your First (Active CCR Node - PRO-CCR1). which will be demonstrated in the following section.

Upgrade Active Node (PRO-CCR1) of Clustered Mailbox Server in CCR Environment

now, we can start the upgrade process of the first CCR Node (PRO-CCR1) in the CCR Environment:

1. Logon to the First Node (PRO-CCR1) that has delegated the Exchange Server Administrators Role and is part of Local Administrator of on the First Node.
   
2. Move all Clustered Resources Groups to the Second Node (PRO-CCR2). make sure that the First Node (PR-CCR1) hosts NO Cluster Resources, all Clustered Resources and Groups must be moved to the Second CCR Node which was successfully upgraded to SP1 and which runs the CMS Cluster Group. Clustered Mailbox Server Cluster Group can be left with Online Status at the Second CCR Node during the upgrade process on the First CCR Node. you can use this command from the command line of the First Node to move your clustered resources from first node to second node:
   
   cluster group <Cluster_Group_Name> /Move
   
3. Start the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service on the First CCR Node.
   
   
   
4. Stop any Performance Counters services, like Performance Logs and Alerts and any Microsoft Operations Manager agents.
   
5. Stop, and then restart the Remote Registry service on the First Node.
   
   
   
6. Open a Command Prompt window, and then navigate to the Exchange 2007 SP1 installation files, then run the following command:
   
   D:\Setup.com /m:upgrade
   
   where D: Drive is my DVD Media
   
   
7. After successfully upgrading the First CCR Node, you need to restart the CCR Node first, and don't forget to disable back the Windows Firewall Service before the restart.
8. after you upgraded all your Exchange 2007 Servers from RTM to Service Pack 1 Edition, open Exchange Management Console, and make sure that all your Exchange Servers have the same Version Edition.
   
   
   

Conclusion

I know that this article and most of my articles are very detailed ones :) but i feel that i have to be detailed in my articles so others can understand exactly what i am talking about in my articles. I would appreciate from the readers to rate this article if they found it good, Excellent, or even Bad article.

stay tuned for others upcoming articles.

Exchange 2007 SP1 Upgrade Failed - Weird Problem while upgrading Exchange 2007 RTM to SP1

Hello all, while I was preparing my Virtual Machine which is running single Windows 2003 SP2 as DC and running Exchange 2007 RTM Version (HUB, CAS, and MBX) for my next article to post, I faced a weird problem which misses up the whole virtual machine, for no valid reason. Here is the problem that I faced:

I was updating this virtual machine to Exchange Server 2007 SP1, and while the upgrade was in the process, suddenly the whole machine got frozen, and it stayed like that for almost 30 minutes, I could not access it, where I had to force the shutdown of this machine. Now, when this machine restarted I logged on and found so many errors in the event viewer related for Exchange. Here is the Weird thing, I couldn’t find the Exchage 2007 folders under the program list, where did they go??????

So, I tried to run the SP1 upgrade setup again, using the GUI, but this is what I received:

“The Exchange Files are not installed, but the backup settings registry key is present. Only build to Build upgrade mode is available”

When I checked the services to see if any of the services are not working, I saw that all Exchange 2007 Services (around 13 Services) with IIS and others were disabled. Actually these services were disabled by the upgrade process, and suppose to be restarted again after the upgrade process finished successfully but since the installation failed in the middle of the way, all these services remains disabled.
Now, how to solve this problem?
Since the GUI could not solve my problem, I tried this time the Shell command, so I ran this command:

Setup.com /Mode:Upgrade

And also, it failed, but this time, the error is manageable somehow, this is the output I got:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unattended Setup

Preparing Exchange Setup

The following server roles will be upgraded

Hub Transport Role

Client Access Role

Mailbox Role

Performing Microsoft Exchange Server Prerequisite Check

Hub Transport Role Checks ......................... FAILED

Setup cannot continue with upgrade because 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin\ExchHelp.chm' is open. Close the file and restart setup.

Client Access Role Checks ......................... FAILED

Unable to read data from the Metabase. Ensure that Microsoft Internet Information Services is installed.

The World Wide Web (W3SVC) service is either disabled or not installed on this computer. You must exit Setup, install the required component, then restart the Setup process.

Setup cannot continue with upgrade because 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin\ExchHelp.chm' is open. Close the file and restart setup.

Mailbox Role Checks ......................... FAILED

Unable to read data from the Metabase. Ensure that Microsoft Internet Information Services is installed.

The World Wide Web (W3SVC) service is either disabled or not installed on this computer. You must exit Setup, install the required component, then restart the Setup process.

Setup cannot continue with upgrade because 'C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin\ExchHelp.chm' is open. Close the file and restart setup.

The Exchange Server setup operation did not complete.Visit http://support.microsoft.com and enter the Error ID to find moreinformation.

Exchange Server setup encountered an error.
-----------------------------------------------------------

So, as you can see from the output of the upgrade command, the ExchHelp.chm file is missing and can’t be located under the Bin Directory of Exchange server 2007 in the path that was mentioned in the error output. Also the setup process can’t access IIS Metabase , off course because the IIS and other related services were disabled.

So, here are the steps I took to solve this problem:

• Locate the ExchHelp.chm file from Exchange 2007 SP1 setup directory (located under “Media Drive:\Setup\ServerRoles\Common”) and copy it back under Exchange Binaries directory (BIN) located under my server ('C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin’).
  
  
• Set the following services back to Automatic and started them:
  
  o IIS Admin Service
  o HTTP SSL Service
  o World Wide Web Publishing Service.
  
  
• Rerun the upgrade again:
  
  Setup.com /Mode:Upgrade

And here we go, the setup completed SUCCESSFULLY :) and now I am happy, I restarted the server and testing the health of my server , everything is back to normal now, with an updated server to SP1 :)

Now, I can start preparing for my second article, Actually I stopped the article till I figure out why this problem happened, and thanks god I solved it :) now I am happy.

Stay tuned for my next article from my working virtual machine :)