Upgrading Exchange RAID

I had SBS2000 on a COMPAQ server with several RAID arrays. The array with
the Exchange program and data files has recently had the drives upgraded to
larger capacity units. I now need to reallocate the space on the RAID drives
and to do so I need to:
1) temporarily relocate the Exchange installation
2) reallocate the space on the hard drives
3) restore the Exchange installation.

Can I accomplish this by simply using MS Backup utility?
If I stop all the Exchange services can I just xcopy the drive contents to a
temporary location and then xcopy them back?

I would like to make this a goof-proof as possible.

Steve
Mon Jul 18 05:23:48 CDT 2005

Ron wrote:

>I had SBS2000 on a COMPAQ server with several RAID arrays. The array with
>the Exchange program and data files has recently had the drives upgraded to
>larger capacity units. I now need to reallocate the space on the RAID
>drives
>and to do so I need to:
>1) temporarily relocate the Exchange installation
>2) reallocate the space on the hard drives
>3) restore the Exchange installation.
>
>Can I accomplish this by simply using MS Backup utility?

NTBackup would probably make it harder than necessary, as there are extra
steps required for restoring Exchange.

>If I stop all the Exchange services can I just xcopy the drive contents to
>a
>temporary location and then xcopy them back?

Yes. Or, given there's space somewhere else for the databases temporarily,
you could just use Exchange System Manager to move the databases live.
You'd then use ESM to move the stores back again once the Exchange "drive"
is ready again. This would allow Exchange to remain online while the RAID
array is resized, with the only downtime being the time required for the
actual store moves.

--
Steve Foster [SBS MVP]
---------------------------------------
MVPs do not work for Microsoft. Please reply only to the newsgroups.

Duncan
Mon Jul 18 08:03:22 CDT 2005

In article <32DFE8D9-3823-4FF0-8B63-2ED0AD9F5ECD@microsoft.com>,
Ron@discussions.microsoft.com says...
> I had SBS2000 on a COMPAQ server with several RAID arrays. The array with
> the Exchange program and data files has recently had the drives upgraded to
> larger capacity units. I now need to reallocate the space on the RAID drives
> and to do so I need to:
> 1) temporarily relocate the Exchange installation
> 2) reallocate the space on the hard drives
> 3) restore the Exchange installation.
>
> Can I accomplish this by simply using MS Backup utility?
> If I stop all the Exchange services can I just xcopy the drive contents to a
> temporary location and then xcopy them back?
>
> I would like to make this a goof-proof as possible.

Sounds OK to me. There are folk more expert around here than me, but you
probably just need to unmount the store. Stopping all the Exc. services
is what I'd do though - and an easy way to accomplish this is to stop
the IIS Admin Service. Any Exc. aware backup will tidy the log files,
but as you say, MS Backup will work just great too.

--
Duncan