unity failover and exchange and DC

[ciscoforum]

we are designing a voice mail only unity failover for 404 over e2k cluster for about 300 subscribers.we planned to have DC/GC on the same box as exchange cluster server. Though it's good to have a different server dedicated for DC/GC, but is it imperative to do that one from Cisco design point? Thanks

[kechambe]

DC/GC functionality is not support by Microsoft on clustered Windows machines. So you will need to have it on another machine. Also a DC/GC is a point of failure for Unity so if you are going for a fully redundant solution you will want two of them.

Also, please keep in mind that Cisco TAC is not going to support the actual Exchange cluster. Clusters require additional hardware which is not sold by Cisco and are far more complex to support and maintain. This is why we explicitly don't support them. I don't want to be a party crasher but a lot of end customers have been led to believe that Cisco will support their Exchange cluster and it's just not the case. If you want to use it for VM that's okay but make sure there are provisions for support of the Exchange cluster.

Thanks,

Keith