Customizing Your Exchange 2000 Server Installation

Each SG has a set of transaction logs. Use ESM to select the SG whose logs you want to move. Right-click the SG and click Properties. The Properties dialog box's General tab, which Figure 3 shows, identifies the system path for the checkpoint file. To move the transaction logs, follow these steps:

1. Use Browse to select the new location for the transaction log set. Before ESM lets you move the logs, it displays a warning that the procedure dismounts all databases in the SG, so be sure to schedule downtime for the move. Click OK to proceed. When the logs are successfully moved, you'll see the message The paths have been successfully changed and all the previously mounted stores are back online.
2. On servers with multiple SGs, assign names to folders to reflect the SG (e.g, F:\exchsrvr\sgroup2\db for the folder holding the databases in SG 2, L:\exchsrvr\sgroup2\logs for the folder holding the transaction logs).

Move the message-tracking logs. The Exchange 2000 Setup program places the message-tracking log files on the same partition as the Exchange binaries. For performance reasons, don't put the tracking logs on the same drive as the SMTP folders. If you want to keep tracking logs longer than the 7-day default period, open ESM and go to the General tab of the server's Properties dialog box. If the message-tracking settings aren't accessible, a message-tracking policy has been configured and applied to this server. To check which policies have been applied to your server, go to the Policies tab of the server's Properties dialog box. You can view and update policies under the Policies container for the Administrative Group. To move the message-tracking logs, perform the following steps:

1. Take all Exchange services offline by stopping the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service.
2. Note the permissions of the current tracking-log directory. Right-click the current tracking-log folder, select Properties, select the Security tab, then verify that the permissions on the old and new folders are consistent.
3. Create a new directory for the transaction logs (e.g., T:\exchsrvr) with permissions that match the current tracking-log directory.
4. Copy the current tracking-log directory (e.g, D:\Exchsrvr\yourservername.log) to T:\exchsrvr (e.g., T:\exchsrvr\yourservername.log).
5. Open ADSI Edit and navigate to Configuration, Services, Microsoft Exchange, your Exchange organization, Administrative Groups, your administrative group, Servers, your Exchange server.
6. Right-click your Exchange server and click Properties. In the Select a property to view drop-down box, choose msExchDataPath, as Figure 4 shows.
7. Click Clear, then enter T:\exchsrvr as the path in the Edit Attribute box. Click Set, then click Apply.
8. Open the registry editor and update the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeSA\Parameters\Log Directory subkey to match the new tracking-log folder (e.g., T:\exchsrvr\yourservername.log). Also update the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares registry subkey to make the tracking-log file share match the new tracking-log folder (e.g., T:\exchsrvr\yourservername.log).
9. Allow some time (about 15 minutes) for the ADSI Edit changes to take effect. Restart the Exchange server; this reboot is required to create the share. Verify that the share is created correctly after the reboot by typing

net view \\<your server name>

at a command prompt.

10. In ESM, go to Tools, Message Tracking Center to open the Message Tracking Center, then track a message on the server. For instructions about using the Message Tracking Center, see Tony Redmond's Windows & .NET Magazine article "Exchange 2000's Message Tracking Center," http://www.winnetmag.com, Instant Doc ID 16006. If you can successfully track a message, rename the old tracking-log folder to D:\exchsrver\old_servername.

Move the Site Replication Service database. The Site Replication Service (SRS) replicates configuration information between the Exchange 5.5 Directory and AD in mixed-mode Exchange sites. The SRS is automatically installed when the first Exchange 2000 server joins an Exchange 5.5 site. Each Exchange site can have only one SRS server. To move the SRS database (srs.edb) and transaction logs to another partition, use the following procedure. As you do with all other Exchange databases, place the SRS database and transaction logs on separate drives.

1. Stop the Microsoft Exchange Site Replication Service.
2. Create a new folder for the SRS database (e.g., G:\exchsrvr\srsdata).
3. Use Robocopy with the /sec switch to copy D:\exchsrvr\srsdata\srs.edb to G:\Exchsrvr\srsdata.
4. Create a new folder for the SRS transaction logs (e.g., H:\Exchsrvr\srsdata).
5. Open regedt32. In the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeSRS\Parameters\DSA Database File subkey, change the DSA Database File key to G:\exchsrvr\srsdata\srs.edb. In the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeSRS\Parameters\Database log files path, change Database log files path to H:\exchsrvr\srsdata. Close regedt32.
6. Restart the Microsoft Exchange Site Replication Service. To verify that the SRS has started successfully, check that event ID 1000 appears in the Application event log.
7. Rename the old SRS folder to D:\exchsrvr\old_srsdata.

Clean up. After you customize the installation, the system will contain duplicate directories and inactive files. As a precaution, perform a full backup before deleting any folders. Using Table 1 as a checklist, delete or rename the directories that no longer contain active files. Update your server-build documentation to reflect the changes.

Do-It-Yourself Customization
Despite the lack of a dedicated utility to move Exchange 2000 files and directories, you can customize your installation by using ADSI Edit and modifying the registry. Take care to copy files properly and perform all steps with due regard for system availability and user access. And always perform a full backup.