Add exchange 2013 DAG – Database Availability Group

DAG can run on exchange with the roles Mailbox or Mailbox+CAS, The basic requirement is 2 exchange server and a witness server, with windows 2016 this server can be assign automatically by the wizard. in any case you need to prepare witness server with share folder for that matter, The Exchange Trusted Subsystem group in Active Directory must be added to the local Administrators group on the witness server and the storage disk should be identical on all the mailbox server, the exact disk\partitions path&size !

The file share server need to have file and printer sharing option enabled through the firewall

*. If the witness server is selected by the wizard or it is the cas server it is already will have the right permissions configured.

you can ether use the same network as the exchange server or create different network or subnet, if you create different network make sure to disable the DNS on that network interface.

To create the DAG through the ecp :

Fill in the data :

To create the DAG with powershell : this will create DAG with the name DAG1 and the witness server: CAS1 with multi IP configuration, but you can just have one IP:

New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Name DAG1 -WitnessServer CAS1 -WitnessDirectory C:\DAG1 -DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIPAddresses 10.0.0.8,192.168.0.8

To add the mailbox servers as a members in the DAG use the ECP :

Or add Mailbox serve to the DAG (MBX1 is the name of the mailbox server) With powershell:

Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity DAG1 -MailboxServer MBX1

To chack

Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup |FL

When adding copies to mailbox database, First learn about the locations of the database files to make sure both mailbox server ready :

Get-MailboxDatabase "Mailbox Database Name" | select edbfilepath,logfolderpath

Then to add copy to database in the DAG through the ECP :

Or with powershell assuming the active database on server MBX1:

Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity "Mailbox Database Name"" -MailboxServer MBX2 -ActivationPreference 2

To check the status of the replication and database copies you can use:

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus | ft -auto

By now you should have successfully configured DAG on your exchange 2013 environment !

Good Luck