Exchange 2010 Client Access Priority

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I have two Exchange servers set up in a DAG, both with client access roles as well as database roles. One system is a physical machine hosted internally with a lot of horsepower behind it, while the other is a VM at a remote site offering DR capabilities.

For some reason, most if not all of my Outlook client have a preference set to connect to the remote Exchange server as opposed to the local Exchange server, even though the local has priority on all the databases and significantly more resources available to it.

Is there a way to set the priority of which Exchange server is selected as a Client Access Server by the Outlook clients?

Best Answer

If you have two distinct CAS servers in 2 different sites, and you want the clients associated with a specific MailboxDatabase to connect to one over the other, make sure you set the RPCClientAccessServer attribute on that specific MailboxDatabase to the FQDN of the primary CAS server.

To set the RPCClientAccessServer attribute on a mailbox, issue the following command in EMS:

Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity “MyAwesomeDatabase” –RPCClientAccessServer cas-server01.domain.tld

To ensure connectivity when the database is failed over to the secondary mailbox server, set the AllowCrossSiteRPCClientAccess attribute on the DAG:

Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Identity "MySuperSweetDAG" -AllowCrossSiteRpcClientAccess:$true

The following article will probably give you some nice pointers: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/05/30/rpc-client-access-cross-site-connectivity-changes.aspx

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