Exchange 2007 / CCR with remote site?

[jasonfaraone]

I'm currently in the process of planning an Exchange upgrade, and I'd like to use CCR (Cluster Continuous Replication) as a DR mechanism. It looks like I need to find a way to stretch a VLAN across the WAN. This sounds like a terribly painfull idea, but according to a post from one of the links below,

"MSCS requires a stretched subnet for geographically-dispersed clusters. In my experience, setting up a VLAN is a fairly straightforward and simple process. If you are experiencing difficulty, I recommend contacting your network hardware vendor, as they can probably walk you through the process pretty quickly."

What am I missing?

As per Microsoft's document,

"1. The private and public network connections between cluster nodes must appear as a single, non-routed LAN (for example, using technologies such as VLANs to ensure that all nodes in the cluster appear on the same IP subnets) between the three sites.

a. All three-site public interface must be on same subnet

b. All three-site private interface must be on same subnet"

I'm really not sure how to go about setting this up. Does anyone have any experience here?

Please refer to:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/6/f/76f3db2f-6f43-4624-bfde-ff731e3c1f96/GDClusters.doc

http://exchangeexchange.com/forums/p/512/643.aspx

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/08/09/428642.aspx

for more information.

Thanks,

Jason

[campbell.thompson]

Jason,

I'm in exactly the same position and am drawing a bit of a blank at the moment.

My two sites are connected by a 100Mb line with a 2610 router at each end. I've been told to created a subinterface at each side and to have trunking enabled for the internal router port to our 3750 switch cluster. I'm working on it with little success at the moment, but I'm homing in on a solution. If I get there first, I'll let you know how I sort it.

Apparently in SP2 of Exchange 2007 and if running Server 2008, you won't need the 'same subnet' requirement. Need it now though...

[d.menkel]

I also have a customer that want to implement CCR, but we will be using layer 2 dark fiber links to solve the subnet issue.

We will be using two different SANs, one at the main site and a different SAN at the remote site. Any idea on how Unity would work in this type of a failover scenario with two different message stores in failover?