In Exchange 2010, you may notice that when you want to seed your 3rd copy of the DAG, you don’t have the option to select a source server like you have in newer versions of Exchange.
It will always seed from the Active copy.
To achieve this goal using the Exchange Management Shell (EMS), you need to perform 3x commands.
Command number one:
- Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity Store1 -MailboxServer MBX03 -SeedingPostponed
The first command adds the database copy to MBX03 but does not start the seeding operation. You will notice it is in a failed and suspended state when done, now you can move onto command number two:
- Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity Store1\MBX03 -SourceServer MBX02 -DeleteExistingFiles
In the command above, you are now able to specify a source server, in this example it is MBX02 that is the passive server.
You will notice we use the -DeleteExistingFiles switch, if you try update it without this you will receive a few red lines telling you to include it.
Hope it helps.