What is Active Manager in Exchange 2010

What is Active Manager in Exchange 2010

Active manager works part of exchange replication service, basically active manager is a organizer, active manager decides which mailbox database is active and which database is passive in DAG or which mailbox database copy should be mounted and which mailbox database copy acts as healthy copy in DAG. This will be decided depending on the mailbox database activation preference number.

Let us know much more details on this Active manager, there are two roles in Active manager

Such as Primary Activation Manager (PAM) and Standby Activation Manager (SAM).

Both the roles monitors the health of the database from the information store level and from the ESE level however PAM  determines which database is active and which is passive.

SAM concentrates on health of the information store which is running on local server, if SAM detects failure of information store or database, it initiates communication with PAM for the database fail over.

Server that hosts PAM initiates the fail over. You may have a question if PAM server is down?

Or PAM server itself is offline then another server seizes the PAM role in DAG and initiates the fail over.  

PAM hosts in cluster quorum resource server, if cluster quorum server fails then PAM moves to where ever cluster quorum resource moves to another server in DAG  

Q:-Which Exchange server holds the SAM role?
A:-All the DAG members holds the SAM server role, responsible for monitoring the respective server databases from the information store level

Q:-Which Exchange server holds the role of PAM
A:-At any given point of time only one server can hold the PAM role in DAG. the server that contains cluster quorum information that server holds the PAM role.

Two node DAG maintenance during the power shutdown activity or electrical maintenance

Two node DAG maintenance during the power shutdown activity or electrical maintenance

We have to put the DAG member servers in maintenance mode during the datacenter maintenance or during the power shutdown activities or installing exchange updates/roll ups. Not necessary to put DAG members in maintenance mode for windows updates because windows updates is for operating system and not for exchange right, however if you feel you want put maintenance mode even in windows updates you can.

To bring the DAG member to the maintenance mode need not follow manual steps but certain planning is essentially required, let me explain you how to carry this activity

Assume that we have DAG configured in two node, now execute the below inbuilt script, you may have question what this command will do. This command makes few changes such as moves all the active database copies to the another DAG member, pause the cluster services and blocks the auto activation,

Now DAG member safe with passive mailbox database copies, this script basically stops all the communication with other DAG member server

During the execution as shown below you observe warning just be patience and ignore

.\StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 –server ex2010a

After completing the above command check the database status by executing the below command

You can observe whichever the mailbox database moved ‘last inspected logs time stamp’

Now you can safely shutdown the DAG member (the server on which you executed the above script)

Once maintenance activity completed execute the below mentioned script to stop the maintenance

This will makes the server back to DAG communication after that you have to distribute the mailbox databases for that execute the below command

.\RedistributeActiveDatabases.ps1 –DagName DAG01 –BalanceDBsByActivationPreference –Confirm:$false   

Mailboxdatabases distributed across the two DAG members by referring the activation preference number

Brief summary

Shutdown servers in sequence

1. Mailbox server 01 which doesn’t hold any active database copies

2. Dismount the mailbox databases on server02 and shutdown

3. Shutdown the file share witness server (if you shutdown file share witness in before mailbox server then might endup with some issues because DAG will lose the quorum. If you made FS down but mailbox servers still ON then start FS wait for few minutes then shutdown mailbox server and then finally file share witness)

3. then shutdown HT,CAS and EDGE

Switching on the servers in sequence

1.Start File share witness server

2.start server02 and mount the databases

3.start HT CAS Edge servers

4.Observe mail flow by sending couple of mails and once everything settled distribute the mailboxdatabases as explained in earlier steps

Everything is possible keep learning J

If you feel this article helped leave your comments