Problems with Exchange on ESX

EvilGrin

EvilGrin

EvilGrin

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Joined
12 Oct 2004
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1,432
Location
Aberdeen, Scotland
Hi guys, I'm having some issues with my Exchange 2007 VM on my old ESX 3.0.2 host which is completely at capacity in all regards, it's intermittently bluescreening and there is no discernable pattern to this behaviour.

This just happened all of a sudden, there have been no configuration changes, no windows updates, no software updates, no driver updates since prior to the first issue, so I'm at a loss as it also can't be hardware as all other VMs on the host are fine.

I need to put a plan of action in place as this is starting to interrupt our business operations, and we have some new as yet unused servers that we can leverage to assist (running vsphere v5.1), so what do you think my best way forward is? My current thoughts are to;

  1. Use veeam to replicate the server onto a new unused host and give it more memory/cpu etc., then perform diagnostics from there if the issue remains.
  2. Or, use an old backup VM of the server (from about a year back), replicate this onto the new server, take our production exchange server offline and copy over the virtual hdd's which hold the exchange DBs/logfiles etc. and mount them on the backup exchange copy. The configuration of exchange hasn't changed in a year, the only thing that will have changed are the databases themselves. In theory this sounds like a better option as I know the backup of the server was stable, I'm just not sure if just adding the current databases would work?

What do you think guys? Any other suggestions? Cheers!
 
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How long does it stay up for?

Can you spin up a new Exchange server on another system, joined to the same domain, and just move the mailboxes across to the new server/storage etc?
 
Assuming it is the resource starving that is causing the bluscreens.

Probably the safest way and quickest is to shut the VM down, and then use FastSCP to copy the VM to your new enviroment or use Veeam.

How big we talking?
 
The server has stayed up for almost a week without a crash, but for last week it was every day or every other day, it seems a little better this week so far. Interesting idea to just create a new server, only thing I'm a bit wary of is having to re-make OWA and all the ballache that comes associated with that on the new server when it comes time to decommission the old one... Sounds like a good idea though.

The server has 2 mailbox databases that are each around 250gb, one db is on the host's local storage, the other is on an iscsi SAN, so I could just point the new server at the same storage without the need of moving it. It might be better to move both databases onto the new server's local storage though I guess...
 
Is your exchange server entering to backpressure mode? (This would be recorded in the event viewer)

If it were me, I'd create a new server on the new host and setup replication and then gracefully decommission the old server.
 
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