Applying Exchange 2007 Update Rollups to Clustered Mailbox Servers

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Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP3

Applying Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 update rollups to a clustered mailbox server is a relatively straightforward process. However, there are specific things that must be considered and planned for with respect to the update. We recommend that you carefully consider the following before applying update rollups to a clustered mailbox server:

  • Downloading and installing update rollups manually   Update rollups for Exchange 2007 are not detected for clustered mailbox servers by Microsoft Update. Update rollups can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.

  • Applying updates only to truly passive nodes   Update rollups should be installed only on passive nodes. In Exchange 2007, a passive node is a failover cluster node that does not contain a clustered mailbox server. During the update rollup installation, the Cluster service on the node on which the update is being installed will be stopped and restarted. This will cause any resources owned by the node to fail over to a remaining node (if possible), or go offline (if moving to another node is not possible). For this reason, before you start the update rollup installation, we recommend that this node not contain any other cluster groups, including the default cluster group and other resource groups that are not Exchange related. These groups should be manually moved to another node (for example, the active node) before installing an update rollup on a passive node. Use the following command from the command line to move the default cluster group to another node:

    Cluster.exe group "Cluster Group" /move:<NodeName>

  • Planning for downtime during the Exchange 2007 update procedure   Installing an update rollup in a failover cluster involves some downtime for the clustered mailbox server. The amount of downtime varies based on how long it takes each organization to move the clustered mailbox server between nodes and bring it online.

  • Applying updates to clustered mailbox servers that have one or more storage groups enabled for standby continuous replication   Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Exchange 2007 includes a feature called standby continuous replication (SCR) that allows an administrator to configure one or more copies of a storage group running in a single copy cluster (SCC) or cluster continuous replication (CCR) environment. If a storage group for any clustered mailbox server is enabled for SCR, you should apply the update rollup first to the SCR target computers. After all SCR target computers have been updated, the clustered mailbox server (which is also the SCR source) can be updated.

For detailed steps about how to install update rollups on a clustered mailbox server, see the following topics: