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Database availability groups – High availability with Exchange Server 2012
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If you want to keep your Exchange databases in sync across multiple servers, you can do this with database availability groups (DAGs) – even without a cluster configuration. However, DAGs use components of the Windows Server 2008 R2/2012 cluster functionality to replicate Mailbox Databases. For this reason, you must use the Enterprise Edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 or the Standard or Enterprise version of Windows Server 2012.
DAGs are also possible with the Standard Edition of Exchange 2013. DAGs are therefore an excellent means of implementing highly available Exchange databases without a complex Exchange 2013 configuration, even for smaller companies and public folders.
Understanding DAGs
Databases are replicated between servers via transaction logs. Because the Exchange databases in Exchange 2013 have a unique name in the organization, you can use Mailbox copies in a DAG to copy all production databases to all Mailbox servers, enabling them as needed. In case of a failure, you do not have to move the entire Exchange server to another cluster node.
Exchange 2013 uses a fixed TCP port for the data exchange. Active transaction logs from the production Exchange database send a data stream to the passive copies; the stream is encrypted and compressed. Exchange 2013 can use the production database, or a different Mailbox Database copy, as a source for replicating data. Both editions of Exchange 2013 support high availability of DAGs. You can even mix editions in a DAG.
Database availability groups are created either in the Exchange Management Shell or the Exchange Management Console. In the shell, you need to work with the New DatabaseAvailabilityGroup commandlet. In the Exchange Management Console, the settings are accessed by selecting Server | Database Availability Groups
. A DAG is initially an empty object in Active Directory. When you add the first
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