Exchange layout

[DrCheese]

Hi all,

 

At present we have

 

1 X Exchange mailbox server

2 X CAS servers - One for internal use (NTLM based) - One for external use (Forms based)

 

All are on 2013. In previous versions of exchange 2007 up, we found this was the best layout, however it's a bit unwieldy now. As CAS servers don't really do much nowadays I'm considering moving the CAS role to the Mailbox server & getting rid of the two seperate CAS servers.

 

Are there any downsides to this? Also - Is it worth the hassle of setting up another mailbox server as a DAG? Whist it would mean no downtime, I'm not sure I want the complexity of running it, how difficult is it? I've been reconsidering this today as we had a corrupt mailbox database this morning that meant email was down for a number of our students & whist I recovered it all, all mailbox's need transferring off onto a fresh mailbox DB - Something that would be easier with a DAG. Tho admittedly I'd be duplicating data

 

Thanks

Edited May 5, 2015 by DrCheese