When the Exchange module runs, it queries AD for the DB/log/system paths of Exchange and creates the Spec's according to how they are configured on the Source production Exchange server. Therefore, if you are running the module to get the Spec's created and not creating the Alias, then technically the paths must be the same.

However, it is possible to manually create the Spec's and not use the Exchange module. Therefore, you can Source and Target the paths to any drive you like.

The solution you describe sounds as though it may work. Keep in mind that the paths for the Exchange data have to be identical in order to successfully mount them upon a DR. This is a limitation of Exchange 2003. Exchange 2007 overcomes this limitation with DB portability.

Keep in mind that the solution you are proposing has not been tested by EMC and therefore, may not be supported.

Be sure that you are also running ESEUTIL against the shadow copied data ont he Target to ensure DB/log consistency. This is a mandatory step required by Microsoft to validate shadow copied Exchange data.

Thanks Duncan, that's about what i thought.

My problem is i can't get the shadow copy transfer to work when i set it up that way - whenever i shadow copy the Source, it tries to write it to the Target, and gets a Validation error and deletes the shadow copy off the target.

Am wondering if Replistor is expecting the shadowstorage locations to be on the same drive letters at both ends

Am also concerned as to whether i would need to commit the shadow copy before or after i disconnect the drive and reconnect it to a copy of the original OS.

Any thoughts?

You say that the validation is failing. Do you know why the validation is failing?

Is it b/c the ESSEUTIL script is not completing successfully?
Are you taking a shadow copy to a drive with sufficient space to hold the copy?Did you use vssadmin to allocate the shadow storage ont he Target?
What kind of error is returned for the validation failure?

Hi Duncan,

no, no idea why validation is failing.

Ton's on space on the target with a separate drive dedicated to shadowstorage.

Have killed the test VM's i was using, so don't have exact error messages - but they were the same as this-

https://solutions.emc.com/nsepn/webapps/stqv768481dmts46655278/emcsolutionview.asp?id=esg99465

but is not part of a group spec- one spec, containing only one folder, which had multiple files under it (i.e. the MDBDATA folder).

The eseutil certainly fails, but the output of that seems to come after the "validation" failure, which I'm guessing is before the shadow copy volume gets mounted?

My bet is that the 'validation' failure is occurring due to the script not completing. I do not think the order it is displayed in the log plays a part here.

If you can get this re-produced and get the exact error logging it would be helpful.

Duncan